Five things I baked 🥧
Matcha pie, baby lasagna, and more.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we bake our pain away. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Babby roasted eggplant lasagna at home
Adapted from Martha Rose Shulman
Happy New Year! I hope this email finds you well. Hope you had a great holiday! Hope everyone is holding up OK. Maybe democracy is crumbling and also I have a mouse infestation? Is it a net win or net loss for animal cruelty if my cat is happy from torturing house mice? You know what? Screw this. Let’s jump straight to the carbs. I know what you’re here for. You’re here for this tiny and adorable comforting BABBY* LASAGNA. Good. Welcome. This lasagna is cute and delicious and also a little high maintenance, which means you will spend a few hours doing something that is *not* doom scrolling as you make it, a pretty good deal, if you ask me. I loosely followed this recipe from the New York Times, using one medium-sized eggplant. Dividing lasagna into two loaf pans is a really wonderful life hack. No-boil noodles are the perfect size for it, and you can bake both and freeze one (each loaf serves two, generously), or bake one and refrigerate the other (assembled) to bake a few days later, or just bake both and eat both, whatever floats your boat and your lasagna consumption capabilities.
** Update: I have now stress-baked three lasagne in 24 hours, using different roasted veggies (zucchini is great!) and making my own marinara with a 12-oz can of crushed tomatoes, sauteed onion, fresh herbs, a splash of red wine vinegar, and, most importantly, crushed raw garlic added at the end.
Matcha pie at home
Recipe from Four and Twenty Blackbirds, via NYT Cooking or Food52 (no paywall).
Like a fickle lover who has left me on read too many times, it is impossible for me to judge the tastiness of this matcha pie without bias. Even though I’ve managed to churn out pretty decent roasts, trays full of cookies, and even bread in my tiny 1.5 foot square oven, it seems that I’ve finally met my match(a) in pie. The instructions looked deceptively simple, but it took me two full tries to bake this pie. Right off the bat, I showed weakness, which may have been my first mistake; but I was too scared to make my own pie crust and purchased a two-pack of frozen ones. Even though I meticulously weighted the dough down with sugar, it still shrunk and cracked, after spending a full 45 minutes of my evening in the oven. The second time around, the crust made it all the way through; but it turns out that there is way too much custard in this recipe for a 9” store bought crust, so the filling spilled all over the baking sheet I had the good foresight to put beneath the pan. The final pie, which I added an extra teaspoon of matcha to (which also clumped, but that one’s on me), tasted way too eggy and rich out of the oven. A night in the fridge firmed the custard and made it taste much more smooth. To my surprise, every single person I gave a slice of this pie to raved about it (some likening it to the taste of egg tarts), even my mom, who liked it so much she texted me twice about it, the Highest of Chinese Mom Compliments.
Salted honey custard pie at home
Recipe from Life, Love, Sugar
A wonderful/horrible personality trait I have is that if something burns me the first time around, *cough cough pie*, this only strengthens my resolve to try it again. Thankfully, this salted honey custard pie, which turned out to be beautiful, low-drama, and fuss-free, was the perfect rebound recipe. With a smooth, rich golden yellow custard and a lovely honey taste, it’s a showstopper recipe that you can mix together in one bowl, both homey and impressive. Most importantly, there’s no need to parbake the pie crust (which I struggle with the most). Although I still spilled the custard when transporting the pie to the oven (put the pan on a baking sheet to catch drips), even burnt custard in the oven didn’t impact how wonderful the result was. If you use a store-bought pie crust, you can put the whole together in minutes.
King Arthur flour’s banana crumb muffins at home
Recipe from NYT Cooking; un-paywalled version
I will forever and always maintain that banana bread as the best of all quickbreads, and that the loaf is the superior form for baked goods. That being said, this recipe provides a pretty good argument for muffins: With a streusel topping, you get better coverage and textural contrast when you make individual little cakes (I did bake half of the batter in a small loaf pan for 30 minutes, and surprisingly preferred the muffins). I really like this recipe as it’s extremely simple, and bakes up fluffy and light without being too dry or cakey. I reduced the sugar to half cup with no problems; you can find the recipe at NYT cooking, if you’re a subscriber, or via the power of Google if you’re not ;)
Perfect no-knead buns at home
Recipe from Bincy Chris on YouTube
This is a recipe for Quarantine, Year Two. Maybe in Year One we had the gumption to grow our own sourdough starter; a level of energy that now seems laughable. Quarantine, the Sequel requires pre-made yeast and butter and milk in our bread. We need little luxuries to sustain us, and our recipes to have an air of simplicity our life does not. These lovely little dinner rolls are so easy to make, they require no kneading. They turn out beautifully golden-brown when you paint them with an egg wash before baking; it almost looks like a restaurant display model. They are soft, moist, almost brioche-like, and don’t dry out the very next day, if you wrap them well with foil. They make an absolutely wonderful base for a softly scrambled egg sandwich.
Until next time,
Soph
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