u/hannberry27

Maritozzi, Italian cream buns, combine a soft and buttery enriched dough with a light and fluffy cream filling to get you the perfect sweet bite to go with espresso.

I went a bit off-book with my version, since I wanted to add a little more visual flair and also work in some of my favorite flavors.

The buns themselves are made using Kristina Cho's milk bread recipe from Mooncakes & Milk Bread, a reliable staple for me. The filling is a whipped mascarpone with pistachio paste, and then the buns are all topped with a dusting of powdered freeze dried strawberries and toasted pistachios or strawberry slices.

My hollandaise is a travesty. I know this. But there's a point to making eggs benedict that you just kind of have to roll with what's happened or else you need to start 3 components with specific timing over.

Eggs Benedict is my all-time favorite breakfast, but I've never made it myself. (I might be leaving it to the professionals from now on). It's the perfect way to top Claire Saffitz' classic English muffins recipe, which turned out beautiful and craggy muffins for me this morning.

I added some smoked salmon and arugula instead of ham, since I love a seafood variation of anything. Thankfully, my poached eggs were excellent even if my hollandaise never emulsified.

Coconut is the height of summer, I baked this coconut cream pie from Milk and Cardamom (Hetal Vasavada, from her cookbook Desi Bakes).

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The recipe calls for tender young coconut, which I'd have to work a little too hard to source right now while also painting and moving into a house. I did have some frozen grated coconut meat in my freezer, and that seems to have worked great to bring fresh coconut flavor into this pie! I am excited to make this again someday with fully fresh ingredients 😊

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The colors are summery too, with some food coloring turning dried shredded coconut into a beautiful decoration opportunity.

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My showstopper was an extended project: create a deep bench of cookies for my sibling's wedding in Pittsburgh, PA last weekend. There's a hyper-local tradition in Pittsburgh for family and friends to bring cookies to the cookie table, where all guests can eat or grab and go desserts.

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Alllll the cookies are gluten free, which was a big part of the reason I decided to make so many -- gluten-free baking can be an intimidating skill, but I didn't want that to mean the couple's cookie table was anemic!

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I tried to connect each type of cookie meaningfully to my sibling and brother-in-law. In order, 5 batches of cookies:

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1. Strawberry Sweetheart Sablés: I've already posted these for a previous week, adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

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2. Red Bean & Peanut Butter Cookies: what if you took two of the most iconic dessert flavorings from Chinese and American baking traditions and smashed them together? Recipe adapted from Kristina Cho (you can find it on her substack!)

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3. Cocoa Coffee Beans: these adorable little espresso and chocolate flavored, bean-shaped cookies have been on my bucket list forever and I was excited to finally make these for some of the biggest coffee fiends I know. Recipe adapted from One Happy Bite.

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4. Miso Toffee Oatmeal Cookies: my reasoning wasn't too deep here, I just wanted to put an oatmeal on the table! I used The Loopy Whisk for the base GF oatmeal cookie and then mixed them with the miso toffee from Kristina Cho. These were a little uggo but were my favorite cookie for taste!

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5. Orange & Ginger Thumbprints: classic thumbprint cookies dipped in coconut shreds and filled with homemade orange and ginger marmalade, a callback to many hot teas my brother-in-law has brewed for us in the winter.

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I've had this recipe saved since I saw it published, so this was the perfect week to try it out! https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/mexican-street-corn-cornbread-recipe

This cornbread is easy and so good, with some of the corn, cilantro, and cotija baked into the bread itself and then the rest sprinkled on top with a layer of lime crema. I'll definitely be making it again as a really flavorful quick bread option!

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I've made pizza dough quite frequently, well before I started thinking about baking as a hobby. But I don't think I've ever made pizza with delayed gratification in mind: letting the high protein flour and gluten meld and age and get flavorful over time as opposed to knowing I have a homemade pizza just 2 hours in the future.

I used Serious Eats' Neapolitan pizza dough recipe for this 48-hour challenge, and went for a 72-hour cold ferment in the fridge (extra credit?). I am super, super happy to have waited -- the result is a chewy, flavorful, almost sourdough-tasting crust. I topped these with Parmesan, tomato sauce, ricotta and basil leaves and then baked them at high heat and hit them with the broiler at the end.

When thinking of baked goods with holes, pretzels are definitely up there with me. But I've made soft pretzels a few times before for this challenge, and to switch it up I went with the bread bowl: one big hole to turn this week's challenge into dinner.

The soft pretzel recipe is from Erin Jeanne McDowell's avory Baking, which is likely my most-used cookbook of the year so far. Instead of using the dough for 12 pretzels, you split it into four honking buns so there's plenty of room for soup.

The soup is from 101 Cookbooks and is really perfect for this. I was looking for a lighter, veggie-forward soup to pair with this massive carbo-load, and her version of broccoli cheddar soup tastes summery instead of heavy with just enough cheddar for richness and a blended potato instead of cream. Pretzels aside, a soup I'll likely be repeating! https://www.101cookbooks.com/broccoli-cheddar-soup-recipe/

I loooove blackberries so this tart from Claire Saffitz' "Dessert Person" is heaven for me. It's not the first time I've made this, so I felt pretty confident this time around. (I do wish I'd gotten a little more caramel strained out of the cooked blackberries just so it looks a little fuller).

I really struggled with the tart crust this time around, it needed serious patchwork. I had to remake it after my first parbaked crust split apart (fortunately I always make 2 crusts at a time). Not totally sure what I did differently from past successful executions of this crust, but it still tastes really good!

Cute little sablés from @smittenkitchen. They're made by stamping out dozens of little hearts from pink dough, stacking them, and then using plain dough to encase the shape. Then you can slice the log up and roll each cookie in sprinkles for that extra sweet touch.

Sure, it's a little bit of a fussy way to get to a slice and bake cookie, but they're just so cute! I departed from the recipe by using crushed freeze-dried strawberries to color and flavor the pink dough, my favorite trick for getting punchy fruit flavor into a baked good.

To adapt a lower sugar dessert, I wanted to use seasonal fruit to bring some sweetness, and an upside down cake was the perfect vehicle for April rhubarb.

The cake itself is pared back: about 50% of the sugar of a standard cake, and I made a few other substitutes for health like using mostly whole wheat flour and adding some flaxseed.

Sprinkled a little bit of sugar to caramelize the rhubarb as it baked, and I ended up with a really nice breakfast cake for the week. I do wish the rhubarb stripes popped a bit more, but the cake batter overtook the pattern quite a bit.

36 baked doughnuts for my sibling's farmers market themed bridal shower this week! Half carrot cake with cream cheese icing, half lemon lavender with lemon glaze, 100% gluten free.