B-day bakes, 12.26.19

AKA proof that when I’m distracted and outside the comfort of home, all my baking goes topsy turvy.

We decreed last year that, much like the Pie Friday tradition after Thanksgiving, this Christmas would be followed by a Boxing Day celebration of food and games that all started with the letter B. Because I am both indecisive and prone to overcommitment, I elected to make brown sugar brown butter macarons (an experiment but a familiar template), berry brown butter bars (what I considered a sure thing), and a babka (a more ambitious long-con bake, by request).

The brown sugar macaron shells were a mess, likely because of the increased moisture added by the sugar, but not helped by some inconsistent oven temps. (The browned butter buttercream interiors were a huge win, on the other hand, and we binned the crummy shells in favor of salvaging the remaining buttercream for a brighter future.) The brown butter bars were equally sloppy: I almost put them in the oven without the titular brown butter at all, and had to scrape the filling out of the pan to quickly mix that final ingredient in before baking. They charred a bit on the edges (again, ovens were not my friend that day), but were salvageable with a little judicious trimming. The babka, easily the most time intensive of the day and the recipe with which I was the least familiar, turned out beautifully. Go figure.

All that said, my brother-in-law loved the macarons, my mom-in-law loved the bars, and the babka was still getting rave reviews three days later. All’s well that ends well?

Babka via Smitten Kitchen, following her instructions for a one-day bake