First Drafts at Quitterbread Bars (Mostly Nonsense)

[radiantfracture]

This is a continuation of the experiment in trying to bake treats invented by The AI Weirdness neural net. (Scroll down to cookies post.)

I made two versions, incorporating various perspectives on the notion, including my own preoccupation with yeast and sazerac's suggestion about shortbread and marmalade.



It's all a little rustic and perhaps slightly reminiscent of Mendl's confections in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Draft 1: A Loaf of Quitterbread

This is the big loaf in the photo (since cut into slices)

-Yeast-based nutmeg-flavoured coffee cake recipe from Le Internet
-Orange glaze


I liked this. It had the nice median feel between bread and cake that seemed important for quitterbread.

I do not think I raised my yeast quite right, and the recipe seemed to call for about twice as much flour as was necessary. The result is thus quite dense, but I like dense cake.

I looked at various recipes, including Ghanian butter bread, whence I got the nutmeg.

I think I'll make another draft of this with more spices and more upstanding yeast.

Pro: Definitely gives the sense that I started making bread and then quit
Con: These are clearly slices and not bars.

Can I just layer the slices? I feel like the grain would be going the wrong way or something.

Draft 2: Quitter(short)bread Sandwich Bars

These are the little square things. This is layers of the family shortbread recipe with apricot jam-orange buttercream icing in between the layers, to imitate the picture a little:



There wasn't very much jam (it was a tiny sample jar, not the gift jam) -- hence adding the orange.

I got worried that they weren't fancy enough, so I melted some chocolate and mixed it with pecans and draped that over some of them. Then I realized that I'd forgotten to sweeten the chocolate. However, the layers under the chocolate are so sweet that it doesn't actually matter.

Pro: I mean, shortbread.
Con: These are more bar-y, but still not very bar-y.

What makes a bar a bar?

sazerac's actual suggestion involved jam and royal icing, and that would be more bar-ish. I just didn't have enough experimental jam in the moment. I now have many, many egg whites, so I could definitely try that.

Maybe I want a layer of shortbread, then jam, then cake, then icing...

And other important issues -- sorry. I'm just enjoying fussing about something totally frivolous and low-pressure creative.

{rf}

Comments

[hlagol]

Bustard = broken custard? so easy to do! :D

[elusis]

I mean, if you like scrambled eggs in your pie, have at it...

[radiantfracture]

I made orange curd yesterday, and I think I accidentally cooked my eggs with the orange juice.

[elusis]

Indeed. Do you have experience with tempering eggs, or was this your first time with it?

[radiantfracture]

As I don't precisely know what tempering eggs means, I'm going to say it's my first time. (I feel like I made curd once before, but maybe I just thought about it.) Do you have any tips?

[elusis]

Ah, there's the problem then. In order to make a custard (curd, etc.) you have to fold eggs into some kind of hot liquid. But if you just put them straight in, you'll have scrambled eggs. So you have to temper them, or slowly bring them to temperature. Basically you put your eggs in a separate bowl, whisk them, and then slowly add bits of the hot liquid to the eggs while whisking vigorously, until they slowly come up to a similar temperature as the liquid. More info here:

https://www.seriouseats.com/2018/03/tempering-eggs-why-when-and-how-to-do-it.html

Hence my comment on "broken custard" - if you don't temper the eggs while making custard, you'll basically have chunky egg bits in your sweet milk etc. and it's deeply unpleasant.