Tuesdays With Dorie: Kugelhopf

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was a bit of a challenge for me. First of all, the recipe, which was picked by Yolanda of The All-purpose Girl, is for a yeast cake called Kugelhopf. This recipe scared me because of the fact that I have never made anything by myself with yeast. Nothing, ever. So I was very nervous that I would somehow mess this up and end up looking silly on my second week in the group. But amazingly everything with the dough went just fine. My dough rose like it was supposed to each time, much to my amazement. So when the last rise in the fridge was done I had a perfectly risen dough.

Then came the real trouble. This cake can be made in a special Kugelhopf pan or in a regular bundt pan, I planned to use a bundt pan. I have never made anything in a bundt pan, so I planned to use the one from a Kitchen Aid set I had gotten a while ago at Linens 'n Things for the first time. Well, lets just say I learned an important lesson: always check your pans before you start baking. It turns out I had a mini bundt pan, not the full size one I thought I had. Luckily I had read on the Tuesdays with Dorie site that you could make these in a muffin pan, so that's what I did. So we had Kugelhopf rolls, instead of a cake.

This recipe was actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be. It has a nice texture and a good taste to it. I think if I make it again I will use something other than raisins in it, I'm not a big fan of raisins in my baked goods. Overall though this was an easy recipe and, I think, a nice introduction to yeast.

Kugelhopf from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Pages 61 to 63.