Desserts, Deconstructed

January Daring Baker's Challenge-Biscuits

2012-01-28T08:36:00.000-05:00

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

Something happened and this entire post was deleted. I'm going to have to re-write it. :(

Weekend Danish

2012-01-21T11:21:00.001-05:00

A danish is a special breakfast treat. It's flaky, it's fruity, it's creamy. It's sweet, it's rich, it's unexpected. Oh, and guess what....? IT'S EASY!

As long as you are not afraid of a rolling pin, making a danish is really easy. It does take a few steps, so I recommend starting the day before you want to eat it.

First, make your fillings. I like to have a combination of a fruit-based filling and a creamy filling. Todd asked for mixed berries and almond, so I made a mixed berry jam filling and almond cream.

Mixed Berry Jam Filling
yield: 2 cups

2 cups crushed mixed berries
1 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Cook the berries and sugar together over medium heat until most of the liquid evaporates and the mixture thickens and becomes glossy. This can take up to 20 minutes or more. Stir regularly and don't overheat. Remove the filling from the stove and stir in the lemon juice. Cool, then refrigerate for up to one week. Bring to room temperature before using.

Almond Cream Filling
yield: 1 cup

3/4 cup blanched almond flour (or 1 cup blanched almonds, toasted)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 egg white

Use a food processor to blend the almond flour (or almonds) and powdered sugar. Add butter, then almond extract and egg white and process to mix. Refrigerate for up to one week.

Once the fillings are made, get out your ingredients, food processor and a large bowl. It's time to make the danish dough.

Danish Pastry (from Baking with Julia)
yield: 2 pounds

1/4 cup (2 ounces) warm water (105-115° F)
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 cup (4 ounces) milk, room temperature
1 egg, room temperature
1/4 cup (2 ounces) sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups (12.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 sticks (8 ounces) cold, unsalted butter

Pour the water into a large bowl. (Tip: Since body temperature is almost 100°F, an easy way to test water at 105°F is to make it just warm to the touch, definitely not "hot." There is no need to use a thermometer.) Sprinkle the yeast on top to soften. Add the milk, egg, sugar and salt and whisk to blend. Set aside. Put the flour into the bowl of a food processor with a blade attachment. Drop tablespoon slices of cold butter into the flour, then pulse about 8-10 times. DO NOT over do this, you want the butter to remain in large chunks, no smaller than 1/2" in diameter. Empty the flour/butter mixture into your large bowl with the yeast/egg mixture and stir gently with a sturdy rubber spatula just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Again, do not over mix the dough, it must remain in discrete pieces to end up with a flaky pastry dough. (You are not mixing to the consistency of cookies or bread.)

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator overnight or up to 4 days.

When you are ready to roll out the dough, flour your countertop or other flat surface, and pour the dough out onto it. Lightly flour the top of the mound and use your fingers to shape the dough roughly into a square. Use a floured rolling pin to roll out the dough into a square, about 16 inches on each side. Fold the dough into thirds like a letter. Fold up the bottom first, then flip the top over. Turn the dough so that the closed fold is on the left (like the spine of a book).

Roll the dough out again, this time into a narrow rectangle, about 10" wide x24" long. Fold the rectangle in thirds again, bottom up, top down, then turn so that the spine is on the left. Roll again, to a 20" square. Fold again, roll out to a rectangle, 10"x24", then fold one last time. Wrap the dough well in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (or up to 2 days). The danish braid only calls for 1/2 recipe of dough, so at this point you can cut the dough in half, wrap one half well and freeze (for up to a month), and wrap the other half to refrigerate until cool.

Once your dough is cool, place on the floured countertop and roll out for the danish braid, to about 10" wide x 16" long. Move to a sheet of parchment (or Silpat) and spread your fillings down the center. If you made two fillings, start with the fruit jam on the bottom, spread it about 1/3 the width of the dough in the center. Put the creamy or almond filling on top of the jam, spreading it not quite as wide so that the jam peeks out underneath.

Use a sharp knife or pizza roller to cut diagonal slits in the sides of the dough, angling the cuts from the center of the pastry to the edge. Strips should be about 3/4" wide. Fold the strips of pastry into the center, criss-crossing the filling by alternating one strip from the left then one strip from the right. Lightly press the ends together to seal and run your hands along the sides to straighten.

Brush the pastry with a beaten egg white, then sprinkle with sugar and/or sliced almonds. Cover with a light kitchen towel and allow to rise at room temperature for 30 minutes. Since the dough is cold, it will not rise much, but should feel slightly puffy.

Bake in preheated 400°F oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden. Remove to cooling rack. Make a glaze by combining 1/2 cup powdered sugar with a tablespoon of coffee. Whisk smooth then drizzle over the top of the pastry. Best when served warm!

HAPPY WEEKEND!!

November Daring Bakers Challenge - Filipino Sans Rival

2011-11-26T17:01:00.001-05:00

I always love trying something new! It's one thing to try something new that catches my eye, and entirely another to make something new that is suggested by others. This challenge is what led me to join the Daring Bakers years ago! The Daring Bakers is a group of people across the world, united by the internet and a desire to come together for a monthly dessert challenge. Each month, a different member comes forward and challenges the group to make something new, unusual, difficult or in some way "a challenge." This month's Sans Rival perfectly embodies the spirit of the Daring Bakers.

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

The Sans Rival translated means "without rival." This gluten-free cake has its origins in France, but is one of the most popular desserts in the Philippines. In the 1920s and 30s there were many Filipinos who went abroad to study. Many went to France and, while there, learned French cooking techniques which they then brought home. A Sans Rival is made with layers of dacquoise, which is a baked meringue that incorporates finely crushed nuts. There is no flour in the cake, with the nuts completely taking the place of flour. The recipe typically uses crushed cashews, and is layered with a rich, French buttercream. This cake nicely pairs the two, with the silkiness of the buttercream complimenting the nutty crunch of the dacquoise cake layers.

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Polish Pierogi

2011-11-21T19:49:00.001-05:00

OK, so they are not really a dessert, but they sure are delicious and they do require a dough. So, here goes...I got a hankering for my grandmother's pierogi. I decided to make her dough and fill it with a bunch of different fillings using the stuff I happened to have on hand at the house. I ended up making them one of the nights that Anna was here visiting me so she could help! We made 3 kinds - sauerkraut ("kapusta" to which I also added finely chopped German brats and caramelized onions), sweet potato and butternut squash (with a little maple and cream) and a sweet variety using brie and strawberry preserves.

They were all delicious, but I have to say I liked the sauerkraut ones the best. It might be the Polish in me! Basically, you can stuff just about any food you want in these babies. The recipe below is for my grandmother's pierogi dough, along with instructions on how to make it and fill and cook the pierogi. Enjoy!

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Death by Chocolate...

2011-11-16T21:58:00.001-05:00

I haven't been posting as much lately, since I've been spending a lot more time at DaisyCakes baking fantastic things on a daily basis! I am, however, going to try to start snapping more photos of the things I'm making there, even though I can't share a recipe. At least I can share some decorating tips and ideas and maybe hope to advertise a little for my new employer. Tonight I'm starting on a "Death by Chocolate" cake that I'm making for my brother Tom's birthday this weekend. The cake is a moist chocolate cake, made using melted chocolate and sour cream. I'll cut the two cake layers in half (making four), then stripe each layer with a small amount of whipped ganache and fruit preserves. I'll also squeeze some whipped cream in between each layer. To top it off, I'll pour liquid chocolate ganache over the top, let it set and finish with an elegant chocolate design. Then, everyone's favorite part, we will cut into it and eat it!! Ahhhh...what a great way to go!

Heidi's Chocolate Cake
makes two 9" round cake layers

{Print this recipe!}

Ingredients:

16 oz (2 cups) sugar

7 oz (1 1/3 cup) all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon baking soda

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, cut into ¼” pieces

8 fluid oz (1 cup) hot water

2 eggs, room temperature

4 fl oz vegetable oil

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla

½ cup sour cream

1 fl oz buttermilk

Directions:

Butter and line two 9” cake pans (or spray with non-stickspray). It is essential that you line these pans with parchment paper, otherwise your cake will stick and will not be able to be removed from the pan. (Trust me, I know this personally to be true...#canyousayeatingchocolatecakepiecesforweeks?) Stir sugar, flour, salt, bakingsoda in mixing bowl. Put chocolate in another bowl and place hot water overit. Whisk eggs in a third mixing bowluntil liquid, then whisk in oil, vanilla, sour cream, and buttermilk, one at atime. Whisk chocolate and water mixture smooth, then scrape into egg mixture.Whisk smooth. Stir in the dryingredients. Divide between prepared pansand smooth tops. Bake at 325 for 30-40 min, until well-risen and toothpick isclean. Cool on racks for 5 min, then invert, peel paper and invert again tocool.

Basic Recipe for Chocolate Ganache

Mix equal parts chopped chocolate and heavy cream by heating the cream to scald, then pour over chopped chocolate. Let sit for 2 minutes, then whisk smooth. Allow the ganache to cool to close to room temperature (so that it will not melt the icing on top of the cake). Prepare the cake for ganache covering by icing smooth and bringing the cake close to room temperature. (You don't want the cake to be too cool, or else it will give you less time to work with the ganache once it's been poured.) Also, if you put some of this ganache in a metal bowl in the fridge or freezer for a few, and then, once it's solid, whip it up using a mixer, you'll have a nice whipped ganache that is of spreading consistency.

Stabilized Whipped Cream

This is a good recipe to have. Everyone knows how to whip some cream. Not everyone, however, knows how to stop. Yes, you must STOP when you have whipped cream. Or else you will get butter. Seriously. Stop when the cream is peaked. To make a delicious sweetened whipped cream, simply add 1/2 cup of powdered sugar to 2 cups cream and whip together in a bowl. Adding a little softened gelatin will help to stabilize the whipped cream, great for if you want it to hold up during travel or overnight. This part can be a little tricky, so pay attention. Get yourself about 2 teaspoons of powdered gelatin and sprinkle it over about 2 Tablespoons of cold water. This will allow the gelatin to absorb the water, called "blooming." Once the gelatin is softened, melt it into a liquid either by microwaving it in short bursts (5-10 seconds at a time) or by setting the bowl over a double boiler. Once the gelatin is liquefied, set it aside and allow the liquid to cool (but not set back up). You want the gelatin liquid to be sorta close in temperature to the whipped cream and if it's too hot it will solidify immediately when it hits the cold whipped cream. This creates hard little gelatin chunks in your cream which is not what you were wanting, was it? Once the gelatin liquid has cooled a little, pour it slowly into your mixer when the sweetened cream is at medium peaks. Keep whipping until at stiff peaks. This stabilized gelatin will be great for squeezing in between cake layers.

Stop reading and make this cake. Seriously, it will get you over any hump and make your day, week, month better. Yummy! Peace out -

Ice Cream Trio

2011-11-10T10:06:00.006-05:00

I've never been a person who gets sick often, but this week started out bad. I felt a little crummy when I got up on Monday, you know, a scratchy throat and some body aches. I went to work, mostly forgot about it and went to bed that night without giving it another thought. About 1:00 in the morning, I woke up, throat in flames, could not swallow, definitely could not sleep. I took some ibuprofen, switched on the TV, made myself some hot tea and a salt-water gargle (2 separate things!) and tried to make myself feel better. The hot tea felt good on my throat. I made another cup of tea. And another. And another. Pretty soon, another thing that was keeping me from sleeping -- I had to pee every 10 minutes! The next morning, I went to the doctor and found out I had strep throat. Do adults even get strep throat? Well, I did. The doctor sent me home with some penicillin and told me to get some rest and stay out of work for at least 24 hours. I crashed on the couch and willed myself to feel better. Two days passed in misery.

Now, today I am no longer contagious, the antibiotics have kicked in, and all that's left is that minor scratchy feeling in my throat, mostly a memory. I bet some ice cream would make it feel 100% better!

Please enjoy this delightful ice cream trio, adapted from David Lebovitz' The Perfect Scoop. Tomorrow, it's getting plated up as a grown-up banana split...

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Chocolate Tiramisu

2011-10-31T20:39:00.001-04:00

It's starting to get chilly outside. OK, correction, it got COLD. TODAY. We left the house this morning in Durham and it was chilly outside, but I swear the temperature dropped at least 10 degrees between 8:00 this morning and noon. I was not prepared. But, I will be soon!

To prepare, get yerself some hot coffee and some booze. Seriously. What better way to beat the chill? That's right, I'm making tiramisu. Tiramisu, literally translated from Italian, means "pick me up." This dessert will pick you up for sure. And then shake you off and make you dance! I'm hoping for some people to dance with me tomorrow night (so I don't look so silly dancing by myself), so hopefully this dessert will do it.

This recipe is a slight variation on the classic tiramisu, which typically consists of ladyfinger cookies soaked in espresso, alternating layers with a zabaglione (also known as zabaione, sabayon, or zabajone), which is an egg yolk custard mixed with rum, Kahlua, brandy or marsala (some kind of alcohol). The egg yolk custard incorporates heat and a lot of air from whipping to turn egg yolks, sugar and the sauce into a fragrant, boozy deliciousness! (Baking holds many faces of bliss for me in particular, and standing over a double-boiler with the steamy smell of eggs, sugar and marsala wafting into my face is seriously one of them!)

The zabaglione is mixed with mascarpone cheese, which is a sweetened Italian cream cheese, and some whipped cream. These layers are usually topped with whipped cream, chocolate shavings and cocoa or cinnamon. I'm adding some chocolate ganache in with the zabaglione to liven things up a little

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Apple Pielettes (itty bitty apple pies) with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

2011-10-28T17:30:00.001-04:00

Mini apple pies. Not tarts, not tartlettes, but pielettes. Say it how you want, but these things are amazing! Todd gave me the idea, the last time I made apple pie. He said something about the crust to filling ratio (which is, by the way, a frequent topic of discussion in our household) and how the pie could be even more delicious if the ratio was increased and the pies were hand held. Always a fan of mini desserts, mini ANYTHING, I was game to try! (My friend Kelly and I bought mini Windex at a gas station for our glasses when we were young. With our allowance.)

October Daring Bakers Challenge - Povitica!

2011-10-27T16:32:00.000-04:00

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

Povitica (pronounced po-va-teet-sa) is traditional Eastern European dessert bread that is usually served during the holiday season. It is also known as Nutroll, Potica, Kalachi, Strudia, just to name a few. Family recipes, and the secrets on how to roll the bread so thin, were passed down through generations of families. However, the tradition of baking this type of bread has become somewhat of a dying art form. I don't remember having this bread as a child, but we had a similar rolled sweet bread filled with poppy seed called macowiec. This Daring Baker's Challenge was a blast, the thin rolling of the dough was extremely challenging, yet therapeutic, satisfying and destressing, and the finished loaves were beautiful and delicious!

Povitica
(makes 4 loaves)

click here to view this recipe

To activate the yeast:
2 t sugar
1 t flour
4 oz warm water
2 T active dry yeast

For the dough:
16 oz milk
6 oz sugar
3 t salt
4 eggs
4 oz butter, melted
Up to 8 c flour, divided

Walnut Filling:
7 c ground walnuts
8 oz milk
8 oz butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 t vanilla
16 oz sugar
1 t unsweetened cocoa
1 t cinnamon

Directions
To activate the yeast, stir 2 t sugar, 1 t flour and the yeast into 4 oz warm water (approx 100° F) in a small bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to stand for 5 minutes.

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Lemon Macarons with Lemon Cream

2011-10-26T17:40:00.000-04:00

It's been over a week since I've made macs and I'm going through withdrawal. I thought I'd brighten things up with some zesty lemon macarons, sandwiched with a lemon cream filling. I'm still playing around with my mac recipes, the proportions of ingredients, the temp, the sizes, the baking times, the aging of the egg whites. Some days none of those things seem to matter and some days they all do. Aaaaargh! Alas, this is why I love these challenging darlings!

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Cranberry and Orange Oatmeal Scones

2011-10-25T12:42:00.000-04:00

I really wanted to bake something new today. Something breakfasty, but dessert-like. Oh, and healthy too. What? OK, maybe this really isn't too healthy, but it feels "good for you" while you are eating it. It's loaded with antioxidants (cranberry and orange), plus it has oatmeal in it, which we all know helps to lower cholesterol. Woo hoo!

Two (additional) thoughts occurred to me as I enrobed myself in my cupcake apron. 1. I don't have a recipe 2. I have not been to the grocery store. So, I decided that today's recipe was going to be a made-from-scratch, learn-as-we-go experiment, based on what I had already in my own house. (Granted, I usually have a lot more stuff for desserts than most people do in their house, but I still needed to be choosy!)

So, I'd really like to focus on recipe creation for this post. What goes into your favorite baked goods? And how much?

First of all, to create a recipe for any baked good, you first need to decide what qualities you want it to have. Moist? Dense? Flaky? Sweet? Rich? Most of the ingredients used in making baked goods fall into one (or more) of the following general categories:

Moisteners: add moisture to a baked good (examples include: water, milk, eggs, syrups, other liquid sugars like agave, molasses, honey, etc.)
Tenderizers: make your baked good more tender (examples include: sugar, butter or other fats, egg yolks, chocolate, starches or leaveners like baking powder)
Strengtheners: make your baked good stronger, more structured (examples include: flour, egg whites, powdered milk)
Driers: dries your baked good out (examples include: flours, egg whites, powdered milk)
Flavorings: Provide flavor to your baked good, may also fall into one of the other categories

A basic rule for making baked goods is that approximately 1 cup of flour will create one 8" cake layer. Remember, though, that cakes are light and fluffy and soft, but scones are supposed to be thick and dense. We're gonna need at least double the flour. Since about 8 scones would equal the size of a layer of cake (and we're making 16 scones), we'll start with 4 cups of flour. If you want to use some whole wheat flour, please do, but I generally don't go with more than 50% of the total flour in the recipe. A cup of oats helps to give these scones a "homey" feel, but you can leave them out if you'd like. Moving on to the sugar...Scones really aren't supposed to be too sweet. Often, a scone will be brushed with something (like cream or egg) before baking, and some coarse sugar sprinkled on top. Or, you can get really sassy and glaze them like I did here. Glaze can be spooned on top or drizzled across the scones. But, back to the recipe, I included a few tablespoons of sugar, but those of you who like a sweeter scone may want to increase to 1/4 cup. Baking powder and salt are needed for rise, generally up to a teaspoon is fine for a cake, but since biscuits and scones do not rely on whipping eggs for rise, you will want to add more. Two tablespoons should be fine for this recipe. Baking soda is used when baking with cocoa or yogurt, which are acidic. Since baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate (a base), it requires an acid of some kind in order to produce the reaction which causes the rise. In a pinch, you could use baking powder instead of baking soda (since baking powder contains an acid already), but you'd never want to use baking soda in place of baking powder in a recipe. Butter is a tenderizer and should be blended into the dry ingredients in order to form layers in the final product. This thinly blended butter (and occasional larger chunks) is what leads to super-flakiness in scones or biscuits. A (well-publicized) secret tip is to avoid mixing too much, because you don't want the butter to blend in homogeneously into the ingredients. Finally, to add liquids to this recipe, you really need to just feel it out. Scone batter/dough must remain thick (never pourable), so liquid should be kept to a minimum. I had 2 extra egg yolks on hand, so I mixed those with 4 eggs and a half cup of buttermilk, since I was out of cream. Since I ended up using buttermilk (an acid), I could have opted to go half and half on baking powder / baking soda. But, baking powder is fairly neutral, so the end result likely just leaves these scones with a little bit of a buttermilk taste (rather than a bitterness caused by too much alkali). To add flavor, I used the zest of one large orange and a large handful of dried cranberries.

Anytime you create a recipe from scratch, you will need to be aware of the texture of your creation as it's being made (does this seem right? too thin? too thick?) and can be adjusted as you go with the addition of more/less of the above categories of ingredients. If all else fails, just make sure you write it down, figure out how you feel about the final product and adjust the recipe the next time you make it to account for the flaws. With this recipe, I was pretty pleased with the outcome. Next time, though, I'd lessen the flour content a little in light of the oats and try cream instead of the buttermilk.

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Anatomy of a layer cake

2011-10-13T17:29:00.000-04:00

Today I would like to demonstrate how to assemble a simple layer cake, the banana blitz (or nannersplosion, please feel free to comment and let me know which name you like better), from start to finish.

To begin, the cake layers should have been baked, cooled, then wrapped in plastic wrap and frozen overnight. Bring them to room temperature to thaw for 1 hour before assembly. Also, put previously-made buttercream and ganache on the counter at room temperature for an hour as well.

Grab an appropriately sized cake board (at least 1" larger in diameter than your cake), place a small smear of buttercream on the middle of the board to keep it from sliding. Unwrap one of your cake layers and place it top-side down on the middle of the cake board. If you left your parchment on the cake when it cooled (a good idea), you can place your hand here to steady the cake as you cut it in half. Use a long, sharp, serrated knife (at least a couple inches longer than the cake) and start slicing through on one side in the center of the layer. If you watch the other end of your knife while you are moving the cake around, you will see that the knife continues to follow the path you originally cut. This helps to keep the layers even. Once the cake is cut in layers, remove the top half and set it aside.

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Autumn Macs - Vanilla Bean with Pumpkin Butter and Cinnamon with Pear Cream

2011-10-11T09:19:00.000-04:00

I designed today's baking experiment around making autumn macs that were NOT filled with buttercream. I've had a lot of success filling my recent macarons with buttercream, but I just wanted to try something different. My first batch today are cinnamon macarons filled with a unique filling called Pear Cream, which is basically a custard mixed with cooked/pureed pears. A splash of pear brandy is added to bring out the flavor and then the custard is blended with butter to give the filling some creaminess.

Todd suggested pairing the filling with cocoa macarons, but he's out of town and I'm not sure how I feel about chocolate and pear together...So, I decided to make cinnamon macaron shells. I used a basic recipe to which I added about 2 T of ground cinnamon.

Before I share the pear cream recipe, I would like to take a few moments to talk about custards. Simply and scientifically put, a custard is a liquid thickened or set by the coagulation of an egg product. Doesn't that sound delicious?? Ha ha. Seriously, there are 2 types of custards, a stirred custard (which is stirred over heat and remains pourable) or a baked custard (which sets as it bakes). The basic rule for any custards is that the internal temperature should never get over 185 F. This is the temperature at which the mixture coagulates and, beyond that, it will curdle. So, what this means is that stirred custards should always be stirred or whisked while being heated and baked custards are baked at a moderate temperature, usually with the use of a water bath to regulate heat distribution. Some examples of custards include creme brulee, bread pudding, creme caramel, cheesecake, quiche and ice cream.

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Some really awesome cookies

2011-10-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

So, if the title doesn't give it away, what follows here is a recipe for some really awesome cookies! If you are a cookie person and don't already own Carole Walter's Great Cookies, please do go out and get a copy. You can buy it off Amazon right now for about 20 bucks. It's the best cookie book out there!!

Anyway, cookies were on the menu on Friday since I found out that I have a nephew who is on the mend and I decided I needed to send him a little care package. These really awesome cookies are easy to make, use ingredients I already have, travel and store well and are AWESOME!

Most people are pretty familiar with how a basic cookie recipe comes together, but this one uses a few alternate ingredients that I'd like to take some time to explain.

One of the first steps for making a cookie is usually the creaming step. Butter is whipped until soft and then sugar(s) mixed in, edges scraped down and mixture continued to be whipped until "light and fluffy." This recipe, however, uses brown sugar in addition to regular sugar, and it also calls for a small amount of corn syrup. Brown sugar is a less refined sugar than granulated sugar and usually contains molasses. The molasses contributes not only to the distinct flavor of brown sugar, but also to its more hygroscopic nature. Brown sugar contains about 35% more moisture than granulated sugar. Hygroscopic means that it absorbs or attracts moisture. So, when brown sugar is added to a recipe, it serves to allow the cookies to be chewier, even after they have been cooled. The darker the brown sugar (i.e. dark brown sugar), the higher the molasses content. The extra addition of corn syrup in this recipe helps to give the surface of the cookies a little bit of a shine and it browns at a lower temperature than regular sugar. It is also part of the liquid in this recipe, and contributes to the moisture of the cookie while limiting its spread.

Finally, Carole's recipe incorporates oatmeal in 2 forms, the whole oats that are actually mixed in to the recipe, but there is also a little over a cup of oats that are ground in the food processor and mixed in with the sugar during creaming. This seriously limits the spread potential of these cookies, since the oatmeal binds the dough. This counteracts (in a good way) the impact of the added moisture from the brown sugar, leaving you with a cookie that is magically thick and chewy. On with the recipe...

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My go-to Italian Meringue Buttercream

2011-10-04T10:17:00.000-04:00

Anytime I refer to buttercream on this blog, I usually start here. I thought I'd posted this recipe, but I can't find it, so I'll publish in a separate, bookmark-it-please post.

Buttercream is a very broad term used to describe all sorts of fillings/icings make with butter. Heck, sometimes people even call them buttercreams if they are made with Crisco. But, I don't do Crisco. Simple buttercreams (the kind you might find on a cake from a grocery store) are usually a mixture of butter/Crisco plus powdered sugar. They tend to be somewhat grainy, very sweet and hold up well to decorations. If they are part or all Crisco, they also stand up well to heat. (Butter melts, Crisco doesn't.)

More complex buttercreams involve cooking eggs (whites or yolks or both) with sugar to create a meringue, which is a very stable base for a buttercream icing. A meringue is basically a mixture of egg whites and sugar. For buttercreams, the meringue base (either Swiss or Italian style) is heated for safety and stability and later mixed with butter. The meringue produces an icing with a smoother, lighter texture, a less-sweet taste and a beautiful shine. There are two major differences between Italian Meringue and Swiss Meringue. In a Swiss Meringue, the egg whites and sugar are mixed together and the mixture is heated, usually over a double-boiler (indirect heat) to a temperature of 140 F (just almost too hot to touch and, significantly the temperature needed to kill salmonella). The mixture is then whipped until cool. This is a Swiss Meringue. To make an Italian Meringue, the egg whites are whipped separately while the sugar is heated with a little water to make a hot sugar syrup. This syrup is cooked to around 243 F (just at the end of the soft-ball stage) and then poured over whipping egg whites to form a very stable, glossy meringue. Once the meringue is cool, the butter can be added, along with any flavorings or additions. This is where it always starts!

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Pecan Pumpkin Macs

2011-10-03T19:01:00.000-04:00

I have started calling macarons "macs" in conversation with Todd. It just makes things easier, plus I think it sounds cool. And, yes, that means that I do have conversations with Todd about macs...

I made some macs using ground pecans instead of almonds and let me tell you, the flavor was amazing. But it wasn't easy! Pecans are a much oilier nut than almonds, plus I have the luxury of being able to buy ground almonds (almond meal) and with pecans, I had to make it myself.

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Whoopie for Pumpkin!

2011-10-03T13:02:00.000-04:00

I've always liked whoopie pies. I've pretty much always liked dessert sandwiches period. Ice cream sandwiches, cookie sandwiches and by now you know I'm somewhat obsessed with the French macarons, another dessert sandwich! Let's get real, it's just a good idea.... Good stuff squeezed between more good stuff. Yum.

I always enjoy baking with the seasons and my son, Josh, actually decided on pumpkin when we were at the grocery store. He pointed and said "pumpkin." They had carving pumpkins, but also some cute (read: littler) pie pumpkins. I adore anything littler than it's regular size counterpart... So, I brought the baby pumpkin home.

To roast your own pumpkin (highly recommended, but very understandable to buy canned pumpkin), first rinse well, cut off the top near the stem, then cut it in half. Use a big spoon to scrape out the seeds and pumpkin "innards." If you are so inclined, save them so you can roast the seeds. (Yummy with salt!) Cut each half into thirds and place them cut side down on a sheet pan. Roast in the oven at 350 F for about 45 minutes.

It's not necessary to peel the pumpkin, once it's roasted the skin will start wrinkling up and trying to come off anyway. It's not easy to peel a raw pumpkin, so I always wonder why people want to do that before roasting!

Once the flesh is tender, remove from the oven and allow the pumpkin pieces to cool a bit in the pan. Then peel the skin, using a peeler for any stubborn patches that remain. Puree the pieces in your food processor until smooth. You can use immediately or freeze in well-sealed plastic baggies for about 6 months or so.

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September Daring Bakers Challenge - Croissants

2011-09-27T00:21:00.000-04:00

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Now, it's been a while since I've made croissants. I first attempted to make them years ago for a brunch party I was throwing at my first home, circa about 2001. I didn't understand the CRUCIAL importance of all of the steps and the folds and thus, my croissants came out a bit like hockey pucks. Flat, a little too buttery (there is such a thing) and too tough. So sad, but, everyone has a bad day. Back then, I had a lot of them in the kitchen. I learned a lot of baking tips since then and made croissants again while attending pastry school at the Institute of Culinary Education. For that post and to walk down my memory lane at pastry school, check out Heidi at ICE.

Anyway, just a couple of VERY SIMPLE things that I've learned that help this (and many other) recipe go much more smoothly.

1. Always assemble your needs in advance. This includes ingredients and equipment/tools. Make sure you've got what you need before you start so you don't end up running to the grocery store in socks and pjs while your yeast is dissolving...

2. Read through the recipe in its entirety. For this recipe in particular, there are many steps and some of them involve resting dough for hours (or overnight), so reading in advance helps you prepare and anticipate your timelines. You don't want to start a cheesecake you need for this evening at 11:00 am, or it won't have time to cool, chill and set before you take it with you!

3. Get a camera! Finally, I am learning to have a camera nearby, so I can show off my creations. Fantastic if you are making something you've never made before. Don't you want to be able to brag about the stuff you made?

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Linzer Torte

2011-09-26T16:48:00.000-04:00

This fantastic dessert, named after the city of Linz, originates in Austria. It's one of the oldest cakes in the world, dating back to 1653. The pastry is a very short, crumbly dough made of sugar, flour, ground blanched almonds, eggs, butter and spices/flavorings. It's typically spread with a thin filling of preserves (traditionally current, but often raspberry or apricot) and then covered with a lattice top using the pastry dough. Because of the leavening agent (baking soda) in the dough, the crust rises in the oven and puffs up to cover the filling. This dessert is seriously all about the crust! If you remember from previous posts, the fact that the pastry is a short dough means that there is a lot of butter. The butter keeps the dough from toughening after the flour is combined with the liquid.

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Snickerd-ooh-dles!

2011-09-23T10:27:00.006-04:00

I really wanted to sandwich something today, and I promised I would figure out a way to use up some of the many egg yolks I had hanging out in my fridge.

When I was a kid, my mom would use extra egg yolks to make us a Polish treat called Kogel Mogel. It's basically egg yolks mixed with sugar and sometimes rum *I think*. Hmm...not many people would think of feeding their children a highly-sugared, alcohol-spiked treat made out of raw eggs! But we loved it!

That is NOT what I am going to do with my extra yolks! I'll start with a batch of custard-based ice cream ("French style"), flavor = cinnamon. It's starting to become a little fall-ish outside, which makes me think of cinnamon. But, it's still warm enough to enjoy an ice cream sandwich.

The cookies I decided to make are a variation on a classic sugar cookie recipe that uses yolks only. The recipe is all over the web, called Egg Yolk Cookies. But, that name just sounds unappetizing to me, so I am going to call them resourceful Sugar Cookies!

When both components are done, what we'll have is a Sugar Almond Cookie with cinnamon ice cream sandwich. Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

Ok, let's get started.

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New Flavors!

2011-09-21T22:08:00.007-04:00

I wanted to try (to conquer) some new flavors of macaron today, plus I promised Todd that I'd make him something with chocolate and espresso. So...today I made three flavors of macaron: a repeat of the plum flavor I made a couple weeks ago (they were just so good!), a chocolate macaron with chocolate espresso ganache (I threw a touch of Kahlua in there for good measure), and a Marion Blackberry flavor. I had hoped to make a macaron using some kind of unusual frozen fruit from the grocery store (I was thinking passion fruit or guava), but they didn't really have any "unusual" fruits. Back when we were in NYC, I could buy fruit purees, just about any kind, at lots of locations throughout the city. But, the Marion Blackberries were really pretty and came in a nice biodegradable bag, which pretty much sold me on them. Ha ha!

I also bought some freeze-dried blueberries (couldn't find blackberries), which I ground into a powder and added to the macaron batter for the blackberry flavor. It gave the cookies a nice speckle and added to their flavor.

I'm somewhat lacking in photos today, it was cloudy and overcast and we don't have much natural light back here as it is. I snapped just a few pics, will try to get some more tomorrow to show off the details!

I will share a few recipes today, for my macarons, as well as some insight on the outcomes and tips/suggestions/ideas.

Berry Macaron with Marion Blackberry Jam
makes about 60 filled 1" macaron

5 oz egg whites (aged 24 hours at room temp, followed by 24 hours in the fridge)
0.8 oz freeze-dried blueberries (blackberries would have been ideal)
6.35 oz powdered sugar
6.35 oz almond meal
6.8 oz sugar
2 oz water

Process blueberries in food processor, along with powdered sugar and almond meal. Sift and set aside in a large bowl. Divide the egg whites in half and set one half aside. Beat the other half to firm peaks with a stand mixer. While whites are whipping, heat sugar and water in a saucepan to 244°F. When sugar water is at temp and whites are at firm peaks, turn off mixer and pour hot sugar into whites then immediately begin whipping again at high speed. This creates what is called an Italian Meringue. When the meringue has cooled to just slightly warm, add the extra egg whites to the dry mixture, followed by the meringue and use a folding motion to incorporate all of the ingredients. The batter, when mixed appropriately, should be the consistency of molten lava...Not that that's a concept that most of us will be very familiar with in real life, but you'll probably figure it out!

Pipe the macaron onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, double-stacked. Today, I baked 330°F, just to see what the extra 5° would do for me. I still baked all cookies on double baking sheets, but I did notice an impact using some new (thinner/cheaper) baking sheets. Since the double sheet is supposed to protect the bottoms of the macaron from browning or heating too much, I did realize that the bottoms of today's cookies were crunchier than past batches. (A little too much so.) Not sure if this is from the thinner pans or the extra 5°. Will bake on these pans again at 325°F and see what happens. I also baked this batch of macaron without letting them sit at room temperature. Overall, the MOST IMPORTANT thing I learned today is something I warned all of you about just the other day. If the macaron have peaks on top that don't settle out, it's very important not to overwet them. I think I used too much water on my fingertip to smooth the peaks and ended up compromising the integrity of the cookie shell for many of the first batch. This batter was slightly too thick, so I'd probably cut back a little on the quantity of dry ingredients next time. Cookies were DONE (no question) by 14 minutes in the oven and removed easily from pans. I ended up with half of this batch being "macawrongs" because of my overzealous wet finger.

Blackberry Jam
makes about 1 cup jam

1 cup mashed blackberries
1/4 cup agave syrup
2 t pectin

Heat blackberries over medium heat to a boil. Mix pectin with agave syrup. Once blackberry mixture is at a boil, remove from heat, stir in pectin/syrup mixture and stir well to dissolve. Place back on the heat and cook, stirring well, for a couple minutes. Remove from heat. Since I don't have equipment to can at home, I just poured this into an old glass jar (while hot), screwed the lid on and let it cool. Once cool, I refrigerated and will use within a few weeks. If you want to can this to store for a longer period of time, you should probably check out another resource on canning like this. Or this. Once this sits overnight in the fridge, the pectin has a chance to work and the jam thickened completely.

I filled some of the macaron with the jam itself and, the other half I filled with a buttercream mixed with a 1/4 cup or so of the jam. Both combinations were good, and a touch sweeter than I'd have preferred.

Chocolate Macaron with Chocolate Espresso Ganache
makes about 40 filled 1" macaron

3.2 oz liquid egg whites (pasteurized from a carton)
1 t meringue powder
3.8 oz powdered sugar
3.8 oz almond meal
1 oz cocoa
4.3 oz sugar
1.1 oz water

Process cocoa, powdered sugar and almond meal in a food processor. Sift and set aside in a large bowl. Divide the egg whites in half and set one half aside. Beat the other half (along with the meringue powder) to firm peaks with a stand mixer. While whites are whipping, heat sugar and water in a saucepan to 244°F. When sugar water is at temp and whites are at firm peaks, turn off mixer and pour hot sugar into whites then immediately begin whipping again at high speed. When the meringue has cooled to just slightly warm, add the extra egg whites to the dry mixture, followed by the meringue and use a folding motion to incorporate all of the ingredients.

For this batch, I was hoping to see the impact of using pasteurized, packaged egg whites. I did put a teaspoon of meringue powder in with the whites, hoping to strengthen the structure. Overall, though, I would say that this batch was largely a flop. Actually, when I first took them out of the oven, the looked nearly PERFECT. I think I even said, "A batch of perfect chocolate macaron!" But, not 2 short minutes later, the tops were all wrinkling and then they almost all cracked when I picked them up off the parchment. Like the top of a brownie, you know how it gets that paper-thin wrinkly top? The cookie was chewy, too, like a brownie. Hmmm, I'm not going to lie, it was really good, but didn't have the texture that a macaron is supposed to have. I think what happened here is that the batter may have been overmixed. Either that or the meringue wasn't strong enough because of having used pasteurized egg whites. I read that using pasteurized whites was not a good idea, because apparently the temperature at which eggs are pasteurized at is similar to the temperature at which proteins become denatured, which would likely ruin a successful meringue. So, for NOW, I will not be planning to use pasteurized egg whites any more. It was a cheap shot, but I had them in the fridge and I was trying to devise a way to limit the number of lonely YOLKS I have! (Those who know me well can predict that I will be posting egg yolky recipes in the next few days!!) If you have any suggestions or special requests, post a comment and I'll see what I can come up with...

So, on with the chocolate espresso ganache...

Chocolate Espresso Ganache
makes about 2 cups

8 oz chopped chocolate
10 fl oz cream
2 t instant espresso
2 t Kahlua (optional, but seriously, why not?)

Place chopped chocolate in a bowl. Heat cream just to scalding and dissolve espresso powder in the hot cream. Pour over chocolate, wait 2 minutes then whisk smooth. Add in the Kahlua if using. Allow to settle and harden at room temperature or in the fridge for a bit. Whip with a hand mixer before using to lighten and soften.

So, Heidi's lessons learned about macaron from today's marathon:
1. My ideal temperature (in this oven) seems to be 325°F, 330°F was too hot.
2. I will not be using pasteurized egg whites again.
3. Aging whites seems to be a good idea.
4. Letting the macaron sit on the counter to form a skin before baking also seems like a good idea.
5. No more wet fingertips on the macarons! Oh, and
6. Have fun, keep testing, keep learning!

(Macaron) Paradise Found...

2011-09-19T21:49:00.005-04:00

I am shell-shocked (macaron shell, that is), floating in a sugar-buzzed paradise. Some of you who have been to Paris may understand me when I speak of macaron bliss. They are just so...yummy. A perfect combination of flavor and texture, smooth and crunch and moist and sweet. Melt in your mouth good.

I can tell you that WAY TOO MANY of these melted in MY mouth today. I've been experimenting with macarons lately and decided to try my hand at a pistachio flavor after spying a half-bag of shelled pistachios in our pantry. (Shelling enough pistachios to make cookies and filling would have taken all day in and of itself, so I'm happy to have a source for shelled ones.)

The nice thing about macarons is that the flavors and combinations are limited only by the imagination. (The actual outcome is limited by much more, including the heat and humidity of the house, the temp of the oven, the consistency of the batter, the age of the egg whites, the number of pans, the amount of time you let the macaron sit before you bake them!)

I decided to test some of these theories, as well as to put together a recipe entirely from scratch, in the making of these pistachio macaron (macaron de pistache). How 'bout that?!?! OOOH LA LA!

Pistachio Macaron
makes about 100 filled macaron, approx 1"

5.2 oz egg whites (I did not age these at all, they came right out of the fridge)
3.5 oz almond flour
3.5 oz pistachios, finely ground
7 oz powdered sugar
7 oz granulated sugar
1.7 fl oz water

Preheat your oven to 325°F. Prepare baking sheets by cutting parchment paper to fit. You will also need to double-stack your baking sheets, so make sure to use ones that fit into each other.

Begin by pulsing powdered sugar, almond flour and pistachios in a food processor until homogeneous. Depending on how finely the pistachio was ground, you may or may not decide to sift the mixture. (I did not, since I couldn't grind the pistachio finely enough and didn't want to lose it in the sifter.) Place in a large (HUGE) bowl and set aside. Divide your egg whites in half (exactly, I use a scale), placing half in a small bowl and the other half in the bowl of your stand mixer.

Place granulated sugar and water in a small saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until the sugar syrup reaches 244°F. While the sugar syrup is cooking, you can go ahead and get the mixer going, the egg whites should whip to firm peaks. If they are not there by the time your syrup is close to temperature, go ahead and turn the mixer up briefly to high just to make sure that the whites are firm. Once the syrup is at temperature and the whites are firm peaks, stop the mixer briefly and dump the sugar syrup into the whites. Immediately turn the mixer on high (do not let this sit for any amount of time or the sugar syrup will begin to solidify) and whip until resulting meringue has cooled.

Pour the reserved egg white over the dry mix, then add the meringue. Use a spatula to fold both into the dry mix, aiming for a consistent and smooth batter that flows like LAVA! (Someday soon I will take a video clip of this and post.)

Place the batter into a decorating bag fitted with a round tip (I used a #9) and squeeze a small amount under each corner of the parchment paper, just to secure it while baking. Using a squeezing motion (not circular), pipe equal sized amounts of batter evenly across the baking sheet, leaving an inch or so in between to allow for the spread of the batter. If your macaron have peaks or tips on them, you can very carefully dab a finger into some water and gently tap on the peak to smooth it out. Water should not get on the cookie, just help your finger to keep from sticking.

When the tray is full, you can gently tap the baking sheet against the counter. Some people recommend letting the macaron sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to several hours to form a skin prior to baking, but I am not convinced this is necessary. I popped these right into the oven.

After about 5-7 minutes in the oven, you should start to see the macaron "rise" onto its "feet." This is the MOST exciting part!! Except when it doesn't happen. Most of today's macaron did rise up on their little frilly feet, so I was happy! Total baking time depends on the size of the macaron, but I baked each tray for approximately 14 minutes at this size. The macaron are ready when they only move slightly on their feet if you nudge them.

Take the tray from the oven, let the macaron cool briefly before removing them from the parchment.

Since these macaron were actually made with pistachios, I expected the cookie itself to have a pistachio flavor. AND IT DID! Yum. Often, the flavor of a macaron is most pronounced within the filling that is chosen. I couldn't decide what to sandwich inside of these, so I tried a number of different fillings. And....I'm gonna tell you which one I liked the best. (Todd agreed with me, without my prompting.)

I knew I'd want a pistachio filling, but wasn't sure if chocolate would be complimentary or overwhelming. I made a pistachio paste using the following (rough) recipe.

Pistachio Paste
makes about a cup

4 oz pistachios
1 oz almond flour
1 drop almond extract (optional)
2 oz sugar
~ 1 T water + 2 tsp water

Grind pistachios with almond flour in a food processor, add 1 drop almond extract and mix, set aside. In a small saucepan, heat sugar with 1 T water over medium-high heat to make a sugar syrup. Cook to about 250°F, remove from heat and immediately blend into the pistachio mixture until homogeneous. Add a teaspoonful of water, one at a time, until the paste is of the desired consistency. Store in a plastic bag in the freezer. Keeps for, oh, I don't know, say about a month. I just made it today, so it can be used right away. This can be added to ganaches, buttercreams, etc, to impart pistachio flavor.

I made the following combinations:
1. pistachio macaron + dark chocolate ganache filling
2. pistachio macaron + dark chocolate pistachio ganache filling
3. pistachio macaron + buttercream filling
4. pistachio macaron + chocolate buttercream filling
5. pistachio macaron + chocolate pistachio buttercream filling
6. pistachio macaron + pistachio buttercream filling

In general, the chocolate ganache fillings just didn't work with this. The flavor was too strong and overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the pistachio in the macaron. The pistachio macaron with (plain) buttercream was good, but definitely missing something. There were 2 combinations I felt were "pretty good (#4 and 5 above)," and one that was a homerun (#6). Yes, the pistachio cookie with the pistachio buttercream filling was JUST RIGHT. So much pistachio flavor and chewy, crunchy, moist, silky goodness.

Paradise Found...

Going to the State Fair...

2011-09-18T22:08:00.003-04:00

I have been wanting to enter a decorated cake into the North Carolina State Fair since at least 1996. I've even submitted an application, twice. But, I never did the planning and organizing that comes along with putting together a cake like this until this year. Applications were due by September 13th and mine has been submitted!

I'm entering the Category W (Culinary) Class 101, W03103: Novelty Shape and Design—Buttercream Frosting, Fondant Icing, or Royal Icing; Your Choice of Decoration Medium(s). In case anyone else wants to know, the *top* prize is $25. Yes, 25 whole dollars. I promise I'm not doing this for the money. Ha ha!

So, I've decided on a Margaret Braun-inspired cake, 4 tiers, primarily colored in purple with accents of gold and pearl, as well as highlight colors of teal and coral. The cake will be decorated with swags, pearls, keys, locks and treasures. I'm calling it "Old Secrets." I did a rough sketch, although a few details have since changed.

I'm planning to work on the cake a few hours per week between now and early October. It's due by October 9th (I think). Because this competition is strictly based on decorations, the cake layers themselves are not real, they are styrofoam cake dummies. But, part of the judging considers that the cake must be able to be made to be entirely edible otherwise. The other criteria for judging:

I. Overall appearance......................................................50 points
- pleasing appearance
- appropriate for occasion
- shows originality
- colors appropriate
II. Techniques and Designs.................................................50 points
- demonstrates decorating skills
- repetitive designs should be consistent
- if Styrofoam used, the same techniques should be possible with real cake

So, I after polling my friends on colors (purple won out by a landslide, but let's face it, purple is my absolute favorite color, so I kinda wanted to make it purple anyway), I began by making the fondant on Tuesday of last week.

Fondant (or rolled fondant) is a sugar-based, rollable cake covering that can be easily purchased at your local craft or cake decorating store. But, it's also pretty easy to make and much, much cheaper. I knew I'd need about 10 pounds of rolled fondant just to cover my cake, so I set out to make 4 batches.

Rolled Fondant
makes about 2.5 pounds

2 lb powdered sugar
1 T unflavored gelatin
3 T cold water
1/2 c light corn syrup (or "glucose")
1 1/2 T glycerin
1 T vanilla or other flavor (omitted for this, since no one will be tasting)

Sift the powdered sugar into a Kitchen-Aid mixing bowl (although I often don't believe in sifting, it is necessary for this to be sure there are no lumps in your fondant) and set aside. Sprinkle the gelatin over your water inside a small saucepan. Allow it to sit for 5 minutes or so to bloom/soften. Dissolve over low heat until transparent, then mix in the corn syrup, glycerin and vanilla (if using). Add in any colorings. (I used a 3:1 ratio of red to blue to make the dark purple.)

Set the bowl of powdered sugar on your stand mixer, with the paddle attachment on low speed. Gradually add in the liquid mixture and continue mixing until well combined. Scrape out (it will be sticky) onto a clean work surface and knead until smooth and pliable. (Some people say to use powdered sugar to dust your kneading surface, others say cornstarch. Definitely don't use flour. I actually use a spray or two of Pam and find that makes my fondant the nicest consistency and prevents sticking while kneading.) Fondant should be wrapped tightly and then placed in a zip-top plastic bag for storing. It's not necessary to refrigerate.

I made 3 batches of the dark purple fondant and one final batch of plain white.

Before you begin rolling or working with fondant, go into the bathroom and cut all of your fingernails. At least to the finger, if not all the way off. The tiniest piece of fingernail can rip or tear the fondant, which will not make you very happy. Once made, the fondant must be allowed to sit overnight in order to firm up. It will then need to be kneaded vigorously (possibly with a 10-15 second nuke in between to soften) to become pliable enough to roll out. Once it is warmed and pliable, roll out on a flat surface (I use cornstarch here, but lightly only) until the diameter reaches the diameter of your cake plus twice it's height. My bottom layer is approximately 14 inches in diameter and 4 inches high, so the fondant was rolled to a little over 22 inches. Do your best to keep it roughly a circle and pick it up periodically, redusting your surface so it doesn't stick. It should be rolled to about 1/4" thick.

Once the fondant is of the correct size, it's time to move. In order to provide a surface for the fondant to adhere to, I brushed my styrofoam "fake cake" with water then laid the fondant on top as evenly as possible. At this point, many people think they still need to be freaking out. As far as I'm concerned, once the fondant is ON TOP of the cake layer, the freaking out can cease. Now, just do your best to efficiently and neatly smooth first the top of the cake, followed gradually by the tops of the sides, then the middle, then finally the bottom of the sides of the cake. You should be able to pull and tug a little at the fondant draped around the bottom in order to make it fit. I usually use my hands or a fondant smoother to smooth the fondant all over the cake, then a sharp knife to bevel and cut the bottom edge.

I covered both the ~14" bottom tier and the 8" tier with dark purple fondant and set them aside to dry. Because I wanted the other two tiers to be a complimentary (but lighter) shade of purple, I wanted to avoid having to mix food colors in order to tint it. It's very hard to match a color exactly. I simply took most of the batch of pure white fondant I'd made and kneaded it in with the remaining purple and the resulting color was a lighter shade of purple, same tone as the other two layers. I rolled the lighter fondant out and covered my 10" and 6" layers and also set them aside to dry.

On Wednesday, the fondant coverings were mostly dry (no longer as susceptible to fingernail sticks!). Now, I began to paint the fondant. I've found that it's OK to paint fondant using a water-based food coloring, but it should be diluted using alcohol (vodka or lemon extract) in order to paint on without making the fondant sticky. I mixed up a purple similar to the colors of the fondant and painted over top for texture. I wanted to have visible brush strokes, particularly on the dark purple layer.

Once all layers were dry (overnight), it was time to stick them together and begin to pipe some decorations. I used Royal Icing (a liquid icing that dries incredibly hard like candy) to cement the cake layers together and also for my piped decorations.

Royal Icing
makes about 3 cupes

3 T meringue powder
1 lb powdered sugar
6 T warm water

Sift the powdered sugar and meringue powder into a bowl. Beat with the water for about 7-10 minutes, until stiff peaks form. Since this recipe is made without liquid egg whites, it can remain at room temperature.

Royal Icing can be placed into an icing or decorating bag and piped onto the cake using the decorating tip of your choice. I used a #5 tip to pipe pearls, borders and the swags surrounding the two tiers.

Now, the icing must be allowed to dry, at least overnight, before painting. Next up, more fondant decorations, embellishing the royal icing decorations with gold and pearl dust and finally, making gum paste keys, locks and the treasure chest for the top. Stay tuned to this work-in-progress...

As American as...

2011-09-18T21:46:00.003-04:00

Apple Pie!

When we invited my neighbor and friend over for dinner on her birthday, I knew I'd have to bake a pie. Trudi's been telling me for years that apple pie is her very favorite dessert. Luckily, I found some beautiful (and gigantic, I might add) apples at the store and I was on my way. (I should brag that I was able to peel the entire apple in one string of peel in 6 out of 8 of the apples I used. I know, I'm cool.)

I'm also testing out some new ice cream recipes, specifically some from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, a new ice cream cookbook that I pined for all summer and just received as a late birthday present from my brother-in-law Brian. Although I'd previously seen some of the flavor combinations in Jeni's book, I didn't realize that her recipes are not egg-based, like a traditional custard. In the past, I'd snubbed my nose at (I know, can you imagine?) those "Philadelphia-style" ice creams, but I've now opened my mind and decided that I definitely won't know until I try them. Jeni's ice cream's use starch as a thickener (corn starch or tapioca) and also add a small quantity of a liquid sweetener (she uses corn syrup, but I've subbed agave nectar), in addition to a little cream cheese.

I made two ice creams from Jeni's book this weekend (Classic Vanilla Bean and a very unique Olive Oil with toasted pepitas), either of which would go nicely with this apple pie.

So, to deconstruct this very classically American dessert, I'd like to take a few minutes to chat about pie crusts. The American style pie crust almost always contains shortening ("Crisco") instead of, or in addition to, butter. But, this hippie chick does not do Crisco. Not if I'm planning on eating it anyway...(Hmm, lol). So, I have become a believer in pie crusts made entirely with butter. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that an all-butter pie crust is "healthy," but it's definitely better than Crisco and tastes SO. MUCH. BETTER. Did you know that vegetable shortening does not have any taste? The role of vegetable shortening in an American-style pie dough, though, is to repel water and create the characteristic flakiness that people want in their crust.

Guess what? There is another way. The key (and this is real valuable info I'm sharing here) to an absolutely delicious, flaky, pie dough is in the handling of the dough. Don't overwork the dough. And, most people who think they are making the dough just "come together" have already overworked it. Now, I know how good it feels to knead the heck out of some dough. But, if you want to do that, please, make bread. Basically, to paint a mental picture, if you have to scoop up little crumbs of dough that have various sizes of visible butter into your plastic wrap, you're looking at a nicely done pie dough.

The dough spends a little time in the fridge, just to firm up and make certain that the butter doesn't become too homogeneous in the dough when it's being rolled out. Once it's been rolled out, it's usually a good idea to put the pie in the fridge again (or even freezer for 10 minutes or so), just to make sure that those visible chunks of butter" stay in chunks when it hits the hot oven. This has the effect of immediately melting the butter, which releases water as steam, which rises those pieces of dough into the air so they can hit the heat and brown. Thus, your flaky, American, all-butter pie dough. See, that wasn't so hard. Just remember not to work the dough too much.

While the crust is chilling, you can make your filling. Like I said above, I selected 8 gigantic apples (4 Granny Smith and 4 Fuji, a mix is always nice), peeled them and removed their cores. (As an aside, my favorite way to remove the core is by using a melon baller once the apple has been cut in half. It gets that core out nicely and you don't loose valuable apple.) I slice each apple half into 8 wedges, then cut each of those wedges in half. Apples contain a lot of water, so when they bake, they will settle within the pie, Making the slices smaller and uniform like this helps keep the height of your pie as predictable as possible. (Another thing you could do is bake the apples in the oven in advance to release the water, or you can place the sugared apple slices in a sieve for an hour or so before you construct the pie. Same outcome.) But, I kinda like all that yummy liquid that comes out in there and, as long as you make your pie crust thick enough and bake it long enough, it should still stand up to the liquid.

So, put these apples in a big bowl (huge), add the zest and juice of 1/2 lemon (about a tablespoon). In a separate bowl, mix about 1/2-3/4 c sugar with 2 T flour, 1 t salt, 1 t cinnamon and about 1/4 t ground nutmeg. (I always grind my own. If you buy whole nutmeg, you can grind it using your lemon zester and the unused nutmeg goes right back in the can for the next time you need it. One nutmeg lasts me a long time and would probably last you even longer.) Mix these dry ingredients in with the apples, making sure that all slices get coated.

**If you like lots of spice, you could definitely add more of either of these or experiment with adding allspice, ginger or even other ingredients to your mix (raisins, cranberries, toasted nuts, etc).**

When you are ready to roll out the dough, set the oven to a high temperature of 500°F and place a cookie sheet on the bottom rack. Remove one disk of dough from the fridge and roll it out on a lightly-floured counter until it's a few inches larger than the diameter of your pie pan. I used a 9" pie pan, so I rolled the dough to about 13" to allow for the sides and a little overhang. Place your apple filling in the crust, then put this in the fridge while you remove and roll out the second piece of dough. The second/top piece can be rolled slightly smaller, I went to about 12". Remove your pie from the fridge, place the second piece of dough on top and press the edges of the 2 crusts together, folding them under along with any overhang. You can crimp the edges using a fork or your fingers.

Provided your oven is at temperature and your pie is still cool, you can pop that sucker in the oven immediately. Like I said earlier, if you need to refrigerate or freeze it for 10 minutes, that's fine too. Just before putting it in the oven, brush the crust with egg white and sprinkle with sugar. (I used demarara sugar or coarse sugar.) Place the pie on the preheated cookie sheet, close the door, then immediately turn the temperature down to 425°F.

Bake at 425°F for about 25 minutes, or long enough to get a beautiful brown color developing on the crust. Once it's nicely browned, again decrease the temperature to 375°F and bake for another 35 minutes or so.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack for a few hours before serving.

All Butter Pie Dough
Yield: one double pie crust (or two singles)
2 1/2 c flour
1 T sugar
1 t salt
8 oz cold, unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
ice cold water

Whisk the flour with the sugar and salt in a large bowl. Sprinkle cubed butter over the dry ingredients and use your hands or a pastry blender to work the butter into the flour. Continue to work until remaining butter is pea-sized pieces. Do not overwork or overmix the dough. Gradually add ice cold water to the mix (start with ½ cup and plan to add another 2-4 Tsp beyond that). Stir in the water just until the dough begins to come together. Gather the dough, divide it in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour, but can be stored for about a week.

Apple pie is really not complete without the "a la mode," so now I'm going to talk about ice creams.

There are 2 styles of ice cream, French style and American or Philadelphia-style. The French style of ice cream involves making a custard by cooking milk and/or cream and tempering egg yolks with the hot mixture. This addition of the hot liquid to the egg yolks stabilizes the mixture and creates a thickening reaction when cooked over more heat. Because of this, ice creams made using the French custard method tend to be richer and silkier. The amount of egg yolks, as well as the milk/cream ratio, vary tremendously among recipes. Most recipes will tell you to use whole milk, but I've found 1% to be perfectly adequate. There are a couple of potential downsides to this method. First, since most people are not used to cooking a custard over heat, there is a reasonable likelihood that the custard may get overcooked or curdled. Sometimes the ice cream can be saved after pushing the custard through a fine-mesh sieve, but sometimes not. My advice on this is just to cook the custard slowly at first until you get the hang of when and how it thickens. Oh, and stir constantly at that stage. Second, since custards are, by definition, HOT, the resulting mixture will need to undergo significant cooling before you can freeze it in your ice cream machine.

The American or Philadelphia-style of ice cream isn't made with eggs at all. Usually just a mixture of milk and cream, with sugar and flavorings, perhaps some additional thickeners, this ice cream can be made in a fraction of the time of a traditional custard. In the past, I'd heard that these ice creams tasted as if they were missing something and that the texture was different than a standard ice cream. Not so with Jeni's recipes. I don't know if it's the cream cheese or the starch, but the consistency of the two ice creams I made was beautiful! And the taste, outstanding! As I mentioned above, I didn't really want to use corn syrup, so I substituted agave nectar which worked fine. With the olive oil ice cream, the amount of cream is reduced, since the mixture gets some fat from the oil. Oh, and pepitas are pumpkin seeds, shelled. If the ones you find are not toasted or salted, you can just toast them in a skillet over medium heat with a little olive oil, then salt them and cool.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
makes about 1 quart

2 c milk
1 T + 1 t cornstarch
1.5 oz cream cheese, softened
1/8 t fine sea salt
1.25 c cream
2/3 c sugar (I use less, about 1/2 c)
2 T light corn syrup (I used agave nectar)
1 vanilla bean, split in half and seeds scraped out

Mix about 2 T milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to make a slurry. Whisk the cream cheese with salt in a medium bowl. Cook the remaining milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup, along with the vanilla (+ bean pod) in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and add the cornstarch slurry. Bring back to a boil and cook until slightly thickened, a few minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk into the cream cheese until smooth. Cool your mixture in an ice bath (submerge in a larger bowl with ice and water) until cool. Remove the vanilla bean pod before spinning in your home ice cream machine.

Olive Oil Ice Cream with Sea-Salted Pepitas
makes about 1 quart

2 c milk
1 T + 1 t cornstarch
1.5 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 t fine sea salt
1 c cream
1/2 c sugar
2 T light corn syrup (I used agave nectar)
1/4 c olive oil
1 c salted roasted pepitas

Mix about 2 T milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to make a slurry. Whisk the cream cheese with salt in a medium bowl. Cook the remaining milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup, along with the vanilla (+ bean pod) in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and add the cornstarch slurry. Bring back to a boil and cook until slightly thickened, a few minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk into the cream cheese until smooth. Whisk in the olive oil. Cool your mixture in an ice bath (submerge in a larger bowl with ice and water) until cool. Spin in your home ice cream machine. Layer the pepitas in with the ice cream as you spoon the mixture into containers for freezing.

OMG, Macarons!

2011-09-09T22:05:00.002-04:00

Known as one of the hardest things for a pastry chef to master, the French treat known as a macaron is truly a myriad of challenges. I've attempted macarons many times, and have had an endless number of problems: flat macaron, cracked macaron, macaron with no "feet," macaron that were too light, too dark and macaron that stuck to the paper. But today, things finally fell into place! I've never blogged my macaron adventures before, but I'm ready to show some pictures today. I can't wait to create other combinations and flavors!!

Many sources attribute the origin of the macaron to Pierre Desfontaines of the famous Paris pastry shop Laduree. Now, macaron are being sold all over France, in some major cities in the US (I know there are a few shops in NYC that sell macaron), but this is not a treat that's available in most local groceries or bake shops.

Macaron should not be confused with another similarly-spelled cookie, the macaroon. Macaroons are a much heavier almond cookie, often made with coconut. The macaron is something different entirely. It's made from only 4 basic ingredients: almond flour (ground up almonds), powdered sugar, egg whites and regular sugar. The basic concept is to mix the dry ingredients into a meringue, but there are MANY different theories as to the best way to do that. The first recipe I attempted yesterday came from Today's Nest. Unfortunately, the macaron never did raise up off the baking sheet, so it didn't get the characteristic "feet" that a macaron is supposed to have. I went in search of more information and made another several batches, adjusting the ingredient ratios and the oven temperature. I even threw some cocoa powder into a batch and made chocolate macaron, with feet and all. So, there really isn't a specific "recipe" that I followed, but I ended up using a ratio of 1.35-1.5: 1 for each ingredient relative to the amount of egg whites I used. For the chocolate macaron, I removed an ounce or two of the other dry ingredients and replaced them with cocoa.

A few things that I learned (and this may NOT apply to your home, your oven):
- 310 F is too low of a temperature in my oven. 325 F was much better.
- Baking on double baking sheets is helpful.
- It did not make a difference whether I left the piped macaron to sit out before baking, I did it both ways and didn't see a noticeable difference.
- I did not find it necessary to prop the oven door open with a spoon to let heat out while baking.
- I sifted the powdered sugar and almond flour together, then processed in a food processor, then blended with a whisk to make sure there were no clumps.
- The egg whites I used were aged 24 hours at room temperature. I'm not sure if this made a difference, because I only used those whites.

The basic steps:
Blend your powdered sugar with the almond flour and set aside. Make a meringue with the egg whites and sugar. This can be a simple meringue, made by whipping egg whites to firm peaks, adding in the sugar and then blending into the dry ingredients. However, I found it easier to make an Italian meringue by cooking a sugar syrup (to about 244 F) and then pouring over whipping egg whites.

This mixture is then folded carefully into the dry ingredients. Once the mixture is smooth (DO NOT overmix), it can be piped into circles on parchment-lined baking sheets.

Macaron can be fickle and VERY frustrating, but they are also really beautiful, unique, extraordinarily delicious and one of the most versatile treats. If you can dream it up, you can put it in a macaron. Today's flavors are vanilla plum, chocolate/chocolate and chocolate chai.

Plum Buttercream

I wanted to make plum macaron because I'd never had them before and because plums are in season. I bought about 2 pounds of plums, pitted and chopped them and put them in a saucepan with some sugar and cooked the mixture down until it was thick and syrupy. I had hoped to strain out the solids, but to be honest, I couldn't get anything through my strainer, so I put it all back in the saucepan and cooked it a little more. I pureed the mixture using an immersion blender and added it to a classic Italian buttercream.

The finished product

Lemon Shortbread Cookies with Fig Ice Cream

2011-09-07T16:55:00.001-04:00

Yes, you read correctly! Fig ICE CREAM! Figs are perfectly in season right now and they are SO good, so I decided to make them into an ice cream and then sandwich it between a complimentary cookie. Even though the summer season is winding down, it's still upper 80s here in NC, so I'm makin' ice cream!

I bought about 20 Black Mission Figs, as ripe as I could find. A ripe fig feels like it just might burst if you squeezed it. I chopped up the figs and put them in a saucepan along with some water and some sugar and then cooked it down until it was all a sticky, gooey, mess, kinda like jelly with chunks of figs in it. I pureed this in the food processor and added some cream, some milk and a little lemon juice to temper the sweetness. Once the mixture was chilled, the whole thing got spun in my trusty ice cream machine. Voila, Fig Ice Cream!

Fig Ice Cream
adapted from David Lebovitz

Ingredients

about 20 fresh figs
1/2 c water
zest of one lemon
2/3 c sugar
1 c heavy cream
1/2 c milk
1/2 tsp lemon juice

Directions

Cut the stems from the figs, chop them roughly, and place them in a medium saucepan along with water, sugar and lemon zest. Cook over medium until the figs are tender and the mixture becomes thick and sticky, with the consistency of jelly. Cool, then blend in food processor with cream, milk and lemon juice. Chill and then spin in ice cream maker.

Moving on to the cookie. I think fig goes well with a number of other flavors. Nuts, for one, particularly I think of almonds. Figs also go well with citrus, orange or lemon. I had a beautiful large lemon at home, so I decided to go with lemon shortbread. Shortbread cookies are so named because the amount of butter in the cookie serves to "shorten" the dough. (This is also how shortening got its name.) When making baked goods, any liquid added to flour allows for the development of gluten, which is a protein that toughens the structure and adds elasticity and stretch (think of bread dough being worked, that's got a lot of gluten). But, with these cookies, you don't want stretch, you want crumb, so butter is added to essentially "shorten" the strands of gluten produced and limit the elasticity of the dough. If you want to see how elastic shortbread dough is, blend it really well, then pull the ends apart. You will not see any stretch, it will just break apart. So, there's a quickie on shortening, and shortbread cookies. Now, let's bake!

Lemon Shortbread Cookies
adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

8 oz unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tsp lemon zest
1 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg yolk
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 c flour

Cream butter, with lemon zest, sugar and salt, then add egg and yolk until combined. Add in vanilla, then reduce the speed and add in flour until just combined. Smush down the dough some, divide it in half and wrap it in plastic wrap. Allow to cool in the fridge for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 375°F, and separate your two oven racks. Roll out the dough to about 1/8 inch thick on a floured surface. Cut out shapes using cutters. Unused dough may be re-rolled one time.

Bake until the cookies are slightly golden brown at the edges (about 8 minutes, depending on the thickness of your cookies). Transfer to a rack and cool to room temperature.

All in all, I found the flavor of the lemon shortbread to be quite complimentary to the fig ice cream. The first time I made it, the shortbread cookie was fragile (the nature of shortbread) and got a little too hard in the freezer, making it difficult to bite down into the sandwich. I made the second batch a little bigger and a little thicker, so it stayed softer, even when frozen with the ice cream.

I think putting stuff into a sandwich makes it even more delicious! Consider this a work-in-progress.

What's fer breakfast?

2011-09-06T12:07:00.002-04:00

Ever since we got back from our family beach vacation in early August, I've been trying to stop eating everything in sight. Since, basically what we did during the week of family vacation was...ate everything in sight. Between the temptation of Tina's fantastic dinners and all the snacks I brought ("for the kids"), we packed a lot in. So...for the past 3 weeks I've been really, really good. No weekend morning pancake breakfasts have been happening. But, when presented with a delicious breakfast idea that was ALSO something new in the kitchen, I had to move on this!

Although I've made countless waffles in my life, I'd always heard of another type of waffle, the elusive "yeasted waffle." Most waffle batters use buttermilk to help with the fluffiness, but this recipe does not. The trick with yeasted waffles is that it's not a "spur of the moment" kind of breakfast. You gotta make the batter the night before so it can sit overnight and rise and bubble. Trust me, you are going to want to do this. When you wake up in the morning, you want to jump out of your skin and get right to eating! The smell of the yeast rising from the kitchen is INSANE!!

I searched all over the internet for yeasted waffles and almost all posts kept coming back to one recipe - Marion Cunningham's from The Breakfast Book.

A few really nice things about this recipe:
- It's easy
- It doesn't require any whipping or folding of egg whites (again, uses yeast for volume)
- It uses dry yeast, which is the kind that's most readily accessible (also called instant yeast or active dry yeast)
- You get to watch the yeast working, the bubbling is super duper cool.
- Did I mention how great it smells in the morning?
- Although you do have to think ahead, there is very little work to do in the morning!

On to the recipe:

½ cup warm water
1 package (or 2 ¼ tsp.) dry yeast
2 cups milk, warmed
1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 tsp. table salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
¼ tsp. baking soda

Put the warm water in a bowl (choose a large bowl, since the batter will double in size when it rises) and sprinkle the yeast over the top. After about 5 minutes, whisk smooth to be sure the yeast has dissolved. Now, add the milk, butter, salt, sugar and flour and mix until well blended. The batter will not be very thick, so this can be done with an electric mixer. If you are doing it by hand (which I did), use a whisk to be sure you break up the flour and end up with a smooth batter. Cover and set aside overnight at room temperature.

When you wake up, remember you are going to smell that yeasty goodness coming from the kitchen, get in der (no need to change out of your pjs, cause you're gonna want to laze around a bit after this) and add in your eggs and baking soda.

Get some coffee on now too, because it won't be long. Heat up the waffle iron and pour some batter in! The batter is very thin, so try not to over pour or you will have batter running down the sides of your waffle iron.

Give the first batch a few minutes in the waffle iron, I'd say at least 5, then gently lift up on the lid (like you would with any waffles) to check their doneness. They should be golden brown and they will be crispy. These waffles are easily THE BEST that Todd and I ever tasted. They are delightfully crisp and not too sweet, even slightly salty (which goes great with the maple syrup). Best eaten when fresh! Delish!

Up next, later this week: Macarons! (In keeping with the season, I'm going to try both plum and fig flavors. It will be an experiment!)

August Daring Bakers Challenge - Candy (Rolled Truffles)

2011-08-26T20:39:00.000-04:00

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I decided to make 2 rolled truffles, a lavender-blueberry and a chai flavored. I don't have a functioning candy thermometer, so tempering chocolate was not on the menu at this time. I promise I'll get one and do it soon, because it really is fascinating (as well as a delightful mess)! On to the truffling!

Truffles
Servings: Makes about 30 truffles

Basic Ganache Ingredients
9-11 oz Bittersweet Chocolate, finely chopped
2/3 cup Heavy Cream

To make the lavender-blueberry ganache, combine 1 1/4 c fresh or frozen blueberries (I used frozen for this) with about 1/3 c sugar in a saucepan and heat over low, crushing berries with your spoon and allowing them to macerate and release their juices. When mushy, increase heat to medium and add 1 tablespoon crushed lavender (culinary).

Boil until thickened and reduced, about 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and push through a fine-mesh sieve, to remove as much liquid as possible.

Add your chopped chocolate (I used about 11 oz for this recipe) to the same bowl.

In a saucepan, heat the cream until it is almost boiling (starts to bubble around the edges of the pot). Pour the cream over the chocolate and whisk until smooth.

To make the chai ganache, combine the cream with 1 1/2 Tbsp loose black tea, 2 cinnamon sticks, 8 cloves, 8 cardamom pods,1/4 tsp fennel seeds and 1/8 tsp salt in a small saucepan over medium heat; cook just until bubbles form around the edge. Cover, remove from the heat and let sit for 30 minutes. Place the chopped chocolate in a bowl, briefly reheat the cream and then pour through a fine-mesh sieve into the chocolate. Let sit for a minute and then whisk smooth.

To roll the truffles:

Allow the ganache (from above) to firm and use a teaspoon or melon baller to scoop up room temperature ganache.
With gloved hands, roll the balls between your palms to round them off.
Dip in tempered chocolate or roll in various ingredients like cocoa or chopped nuts as desired.
Place on parchment paper until set.

Tips:

If dipping in chocolate, refrigerate the ganache balls before dipping so that they're firm and don't melt from the warm chocolate
For a thicker chocolate shell, dip once in tempered chocolate and allow to set. Then do a second dipping or smear a small amount of chocolate over the truffle and roll in desired ingredients

Enjoy!

Although I do not have a candy thermometer, I tried to temper some chocolate for dipping using an instant read thermometer (AKA pain in the a$$). I did get a chance to make a big mess, covered myself in chocolate and dipped a few.

July Daring Bakers Challenge - French Fraisiers

2011-07-27T21:53:00.000-04:00

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

As I imagined putting the components of this recipe together, I struggled to see how it was all going to happen by the 27th. But, whaddaya know, today is the 27th and the cake is done, has been delivered to my dear friend Allyson (Happy Birthday Al!) and even eaten by her and her family. The nice thing about this challenge is that all of the components could be made in advance and putting it all together didn't take very long. One thing I didn't really like about this finished dessert is that the recipes included didn't make enough pastry cream (or call for enough strawberries) for me to be able to use leftovers to decorate the top of the cake. Thus, the cake itself was a little boring looking (to me). Of course, I haven't yet seen what it looked like when they cut into it.

Now, on to the recipe. The first component I made was the chiffon cake. One of my very first posts on this blog was for a chiffon cake, so some of this background may be repetitive to my regular readers. But, for the sake of you just joining, or those who want to hear it again, I'll give a background. My favorite thing about chiffon cakes is that they were created by Americans. Most cakes and cake making methods were developed by the French. Chiffon cakes became popular in the US because they were simpler to make than traditional European cakes, and they could easily be made at home. Also, they used oil instead of butter, which made them less expensive to make. (This was important in the early 1900s during the Great Depression.) Chiffon cakes were light and fluffy (due to the addition of whipped egg whites), like a genoise cake, BUT they tasted better because they used oil and egg yolks to give richness and flavor. This was a Suzie Homemaker kind of cake!

To begin, preheat the oven to 325°F and line the bottom of an 8-inch spring form pan with parchment paper. Do not grease the sides of the pan. In your mixing bowl, stir together 5.5 oz all-purpose flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 4.5 oz sugar and 1/2 tsp salt.

In another small bowl, combine 2 fl oz canola oil, 3 large egg yolks, 60 ml water, 30 ml lemon juice and 1.5 tsp lemon zest. Whisk thoroughly. Combine with the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly for about one minute until very smooth.

Now, put 5 large egg whites (this will leave you with 2 yolks hanging around, find a few more and make ice cream when you are done!) into a stand mixer, and beat on medium speed until frothy. Add 1/4 tsp cream of tartar and beat on a medium until the whites hold soft peaks. Slowly add 1.5 oz additional sugar and beat on a medium-high speed until the whites are firm and shiny. Fold the whites into the yolk mixture until just combined. Pour into the prepared spring form pan and bake for 45-55 minutes until it passes the toothpick test. Allow the cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack. To unmold, run a knife around the sides to loosen the cake from the pan and remove the spring form sides. Invert the cake and peel off the parchment paper. Refrigerate for up to four days or freeze for a week.

I made this cake on Saturday and froze it until Tuesday.

You'll also need a simple syrup to moisten the cake during assembly. To make just enough for this cake, combine about 1/3 cup each of water and sugar, stir, then put on the stove over medium-high heat. Allow to boil so the sugar will dissolve. You can also add in flavorings like vanilla or other extracts, as well as fruit juice or liquor as the syrup is cooling. Once it's cool, you can store this in a closed container in the fridge for up to a month. (I store mine longer than that on occasion with no problems.) For this cake, I just made a simple sugar syrup, no flavorings.

To make the pastry cream mousse for the filling, pour 8 fl oz milk, 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/8 tsp salt into a heavy saucepan and scald over medium-high heat. In another bowl, combine 2 T cornstarch with 2 oz sugar. Add to that 1 large egg and whisk until smooth. Once the milk is scalded, slowly add it to the sugar/egg mixture, while constantly whisking. Pour the entire mixture back into the saucepan and cook over medium heat until the custard is thickened and coats the back of a spoon. (You don't want it to boil.) Remove from heat and pass through a sieve into a large mixing bowl. Cool for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add 1 oz butter cut up into small pieces. Cover the pastry cream with plastic wrap directly on the surface to prevent it from forming a "skin." Chill in the fridge for up to 5 days. When you are ready to assemble your Fraisier, make the mousse by first sprinkling 3/4 tsp gelatin over about 2 tsp cold water. Let it stand for a few minutes to soften. Then, remove about 2 oz of chilled pastry cream from the bowl, and place in a small metal bowl placed over a small saucepan of simmering water. Make sure the bottom of the bowl is not touching the hot water. Stir the pastry cream until hot (125 F, almost too hot to touch) then add the softened gelatin and stir to mix. Remove from the water bath, and whisk in the remaining cold pastry cream in 2 batches. In a separate bowl (or stand mixer), whisk 1 cup cold cream to medium-stiff peaks. Immediately fold the whipped cream into the pastry cream.

For assembly, line the sides of your spring form pan with plastic wrap. Don't worry about lining the bottom, you won't be using it.

Place the plastic-lined spring form rim on the serving plate of your choice and then fit 1/2 of your chiffon cake layer in the bottom. (I recommend using a long serrated knife to cut your cake layer in half, but some stores do sell a tool specifically for this purpose.) Use about 1/2 of your simple syrup to thoroughly soak the bottom cake layer.

Now, using about 2 pounds of fresh strawberries, line the sides of the spring form pan with center cut slices of strawberry, pushed together around the sides with the tips pointing upward. Then, pipe a line of pastry cream mousse around the berries and in the center of the cake. Cut the remaining strawberries (may want to save a few for the top for decoration) into quarters and add to the center of your pan, on top of the thin layer of pastry cream.

Pipe more pastry cream mousse over the top of the berries to make an even layer with the tops of the strawberries lining the sides. Add your second cake layer on top then soak it with the rest of the syrup. Scoop the remaining 1-2 T pastry cream mousse on the top of the second cake layer and, on top of that, lay a custom-cut circle of almond paste (rolled out on a lightly dusted surface of confectioner's sugar). You can decorate it however you want, but you might want to have saved some of the components to do this!

Sure wish I'd gotten a cross-sectional picture or at least one of the sides!

May Daring Bakers Challenge - Chocolate Marquis

2011-05-10T20:51:00.000-04:00

After taking a month off to NOT create my own edible container with maple mousse, I'm back in the saddle again with the Daring Bakers. The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

This dessert REALLY appeals to me. It's creative, it's challenging, it's beautiful and it looks delish! Plus, because the meringue gets torched, it means I get to play with fire. Because the recipe makes SO MUCH, I was tempted to have people (might have to invite everyone I know) over to present it. But, because of the uncertainty of plating and finishing the dessert, as well as a newly discovered revelation regarding stress, I decided to halve the recipe instead and try it with a small (*intimate*) group. Since the marquis itself freezes well (it's in there now!), I can always decide to serve more once I've tried the presentation a time or two.

The dessert consists of several components. First, the marquis itself, which is a frozen custard that is thawed for serving. The marquis cube is coated in cocoa and placed upon a torched meringue and served with spiced nuts and a caramel. There are lots of different flavors and textures to enjoy!

Most components can be made ahead of time and stored (marquis and meringue in the freezer, caramel in the fridge), but I prefer to make the meringue at the time of serving. Since there are so many pieces to this, it's especially important to prepare your mis en place (get everything in place).

My first step was to make the chocolate base: Pour 6 oz hot (but not boiling) heavy cream over 6 oz bittersweet chocolate in a bowl. Whisk smooth after a minute or two. Add to that:
1/4 t salt
1/8 t cayenne
1/8 c tequila
1/8 c light corn syrup
1/2 t vanilla
1/8 c cocoa powder
1/16 t freshly ground black pepper
1 T unsalted butter, softened

Whisk smooth and set aside to cool somewhat.

Once the base is finished, begin whipping the eggs (6 large yolks + 2 large eggs) in a stand mixer for about 15 minutes until they lighten and become very fluffy.

Before

After

In the last few minutes of egg whipping, begin making a simple syrup by heating 1/3 c sugar with 40 ml water in a saucepan. Cook to softball stage (235 degrees) and then pour over whipping eggs, trying to place it in the crevice between the whisk and the edge of the bowl. Allow the meringue to continue whipping at high speed until cool (10 min or so). In a separate bowl, whip 1 c heavy cream to soft peaks.

When the meringue is cool, add in the chocolate base (give it a good whisk beforehand just to make sure it's smooth), being careful not to overly deflate the meringue. Fold in the whipped cream, then pour into a parchment-lined 8"x8" square pan. Wrap in plastic wrap (hit the surface of the custard) and put in the freezer to set for at least 4 hours.

Next, you can make your nuts and caramel. (Are you nuts?!?) To make the nuts, mix together 4 oz sugar, 1 t cinnamon, 1/4 t cayenne and 1/2 t salt. Whisk 1 large egg white in a separate bowl until frothy and thick. Add the spices to the egg white and whisk to combine completely. Add 1 cup blanched whole nuts (I used hazelnuts) to the mixture and toss with a spoon. Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 350 for 30 minutes, until they turn golden brown. Set aside for serving.

To make the caramel, combine 4 oz sugar with 2 oz water in a heavy saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until a darkened caramel is formed. Temporarily remove the pot from the heat and carefully add in 4 oz heavy cream. (Be careful because this mixture will vigorously pop and bubble.) Once the cream's been added and the mixture settles down, return it to the heat (low is fine) and use a spoon to break up any hard pieces that have formed. When the caramel has darkened to the point you want it, remove it from the heat and add 1/2 t salt and 1 T tequila. Set aside until ready to serve.

When you are ready to serve, prepare the meringue (this makes approx. 2 cups) by combining 6 large egg whites, 7 oz sugar and a splash of apple cider vinegar in your mixing bowl. Stir over a double-boiler until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is almost too hot for you to be able to put your finger in it. Move to the mixer and whisk the eggs to soft peaks. Add 1/4 t vanilla in the last few seconds of mixing.

When you are ready to serve, plate the meringue (pipe or scoop it onto the plate)and then torch it (or put under the broiler briefly) to give it some color. (Some others have suggested you can put any remaining meringue in a zip top plastic bag in the freezer until you are ready to use it again.)

Take the marquise out of the freezer and unmold it. Roll each of the 9 cubes in cocoa powder (about a cup), lay the cube on the meringue and let it soften in the refrigerator. Once it's softened, add the caramel and nuts and ENJOY!

March Daring Bakers Challenge - Filled Meringue Coffee Cake

2011-03-27T08:53:00.000-04:00

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Yeast is a fabulous medium to work with. It's active, it smells good and it's scientific. Think of yeast in its envelope or jar as in a state of sleep. In order for it to work as a rising agent, it must be "woken up" or activated. This is done by adding sugar to feed it and/or a warm liquid to excite it. The best temperature for activating yeast is liquid around 100°F to 115°F. If the liquid is too cool, the yeast will not activate (the reason why yeast is sometimes stored in the freezer, it becomes dormant there), but too hot and the yeast will be killed! The best way to judge the temp of the liquid is to put your finger or hand in it and if you don't feel it or it feels only slightly warm, it's about right. Keep in mind that the normal body temperature is 98.6, so 100 degree water is right around there.

This recipes makes 2 round coffee cakes, each approximately 10 inches in diameter
The recipe can easily be halved to make one round coffee cake. I did decide to halve the recipe, since Todd and I just got back from eating and drinking our waistlines away in Mexico last week. The last thing I need right now is 2 large coffee cakes hanging around in my kitchen tempting me!

Ingredients:
4 c flour
1/4 c sugar
3/4 t salt
2 1/4 t active dried yeast
3/4 c whole milk (room temp)
1/4 c water
1/2 c unsalted butter at room temperature
2 large eggs at room temperature

For the meringue:
3 large egg whites at room temperature
1/4 t salt
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 c sugar

For the filling:
1 c chopped pecans or walnuts
2 T granulated sugar
1/4 t cinnamon
1 c chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate

Directions:
To make the dough, combine 1.5 c of the flour with the sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl (I used my Kitchen Aid mixer bowl.) In a saucepan, combine the milk, water and butter and heat over medium heat until warm and the butter is just melted.
With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the warm liquid to the flour/yeast mixture, beating until well blended. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes. Add the eggs and 1 cup flour and beat for 2 more minutes. Using a wooden spoon, stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a dough that holds together. Turn out onto a floured surface (use any of the 1.5 cups of flour remaining) and knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes until the dough is soft, smooth, and elastic, keeping the work surface floured and adding extra flour as needed. This is my favorite part. Don't forget to make sure you get out any aggressions on the dough ball. It'll be better for it, and so will you!

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, turning to coat all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise until double in size, 45 – 60 minutes.

While the dough is rising, make your filling by combining the cinnamon and sugar.

Once the dough has doubled, make the meringue, by beating the egg whites in a clean metal bowl with the salt. Beat until foamy, then add vanilla followed by the sugar, one tablespoon at a time, until stiff, glossy peaks form.

To assemble the coffee cakes, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Punch down the dough and divide in half. On a lightly floured surface, working one piece of the dough at a time (keep the other half of the dough wrapped in plastic), roll out the dough into a 20 x 10-inch rectangle. Spread half of the meringue evenly over the rectangle up to about 1/2-inch from the edges. Sprinkle half of your filling evenly over the meringue. I had a helper with this part, that is when he wasn't reading the newspaper!

Now, roll up the dough starting from the long side. Pinch the seam to seal. Carefully transfer the filled log to one of the lined cookie sheets, seam side down. Bring the ends of the log around and seal the ends together, forming a ring, tucking one end into the other and pinching to seal. Using kitchen shears to make cuts along the outside edge at 1-inch intervals. Repeat with the remaining dough, meringue and fillings. Cover the 2 coffee cakes with plastic wrap and allow them to rise again for 45 to 60 minutes.

At this stage in the game (about 11 am), I left the house with Todd and Josh to go over to Todd's mom's house for what I thought would be lunch and then back home. I left the coffee cake proofing in the warming drawer of the oven. We didn't get home until after 3:00 and by then my coffee cake had over proofed, some of the outer portions of the dough were droopy, instead of tight and springy like they should be. This is what happens when you let yeast go wild for too long. I preheated the oven and baked it anyway. It looks great and will taste just fine I'm sure.

Preheat the oven to 350°F and brush the top of the cakes with beaten egg. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes until risen and golden brown. The dough should sound hollow when tapped.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a rack. Just before serving, dust the tops of the coffee cakes with confectioner’s sugar as well as cocoa powder if using chocolate in the filling. These are best eaten fresh, the same day or the next day.

And, this is another one of those things that goes GREAT with a cup of coffee. Enjoy!

February Daring Bakers Challenge - Panna Cotta and Florentines

2011-02-25T20:28:00.000-05:00

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

This was the perfect time for panna cotta. I don't know about you, but February was a blur for me, went by so quickly, without a whole lotta time to spend in the kitchen making desserts. So, I was happy to see this challenge. Panna Cotta is S.I.M.P.L.E. Not only that, it's really good. And, it's flexible, you can do whatever you want with it. And, last of all, it's jiggly!

Panna Cotta literally means "cooked cream." Which is what it is. Panna cotta is usually made up of a few ingredients: milk, cream, sugar and gelatin.

Ingredients
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon gelatin
3 cups cream
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon sugar
pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Pour the milk into a bowl and sprinkle gelatin evenly and thinly over the milk and let stand for 5 minutes to soften.
2. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat over medium heat until hot, but not boiling, about five minutes.
3. Add cream, honey, sugar, and salt. Making sure the mixture doesn't boil, continue to heat and stir occasionally until the sugar and honey have dissolved 5-7 minutes.
4. Remove from heat, allow to cool slightly then pour into glass, ramekin or mold. 5. Refrigerate at least 6 hours or overnight.

VARIATION: Add a tablespoon or two of espresso powder to the warm mixture (I DID!)

After I made the mixture, I poured it into the ramekins and let them set over night. To finish the dessert, I made a small batch of coffee gelee, just a little coffee, some sugar, some gelatin and let it cool to room temp, then poured in the last 1/8 inch of the ramekin. Once set, run a knife along the edge, and turn upside down on a plate. You can garnish with some chopped hazelnuts. Enjoy!

January Daring Baker's Challenge - Biscuit joconde and entremets

2011-01-22T19:46:00.000-05:00

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

A joconde imprime (French Baking term) is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake which lends an elegant finish to desserts formed in molds. A joconde batter is used because it bakes into a moist, flexible cake. The cake batter may be tinted or marbleized for a further decorative effect. You can even use color!

The joconde batter is spread very thinly and then baked on high heat for a short time. It must be watched carefully so that it stays flexible enough to fit into the molds. If under baked, it will be sticky. If over baked, it will dry out and crack. Once cooled, the sponge may be cut into strips to line any shape ring mold.

Entremet is a French term used to describe an ornate dessert with many different layers in a mold, usually served cold. Usually the layers are mousses or bavarians, but other components (such as meringue for crunch or gelee to add texture) can be added. A glaze often tops it off.

What a challenge it was! I have to say that this is the most "daring" thing I've baked since going to pastry school... I'll make sure to tell you about all of my screw-ups, as well as lessons learned (at the end), so you can hopefully learn from my mistakes.

The first part challenge was figuring out what flavors to use. Since the joconde itself is made from almond flour/meal, I decided to choose flavors that would compliment almond. Not too hard, since nearly everything tastes great with almond. Eventually, I decided on a base of dacquoise (a crunchy baked almond meringue), alternating layers of chocolate and almond mousse, along with a raspberry gelee layer in the very center. I used a raspberry glaze for the top.

Since the dacquoise takes the longest to prepare (it has to bake for 2 hours), I decided to make that first.

1 T unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup almond meal
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup powdered sugar
4 large egg whites

Heat oven to 200 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush with 1 tablespoon butter; coat with flour. Set aside. Whisk together the almond meal, 1/4 cup sugar, and the powdered sugar; set aside. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. One tablespoon at a time, slowly add remaining 1/4 cup sugar and continue to beat to stiff peaks. Fold in the nut mixture. Spread the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet until it is 1/4 inch thick. Bake the dacquoise 2 hours then turn off the oven, and leave inside until completely cooled, about 30 minutes.

Once this was done, I decided to make my gelee, since it too takes some time to set. A gelee, especially one spread this thinly, is a fancy word for what is basically a grown-up fruit roll-up.

Raspberry Gelee
1 1/2 tsp gelatin powder
1 T cold water
1 cup frozen raspberry
3/4 oz superfine sugar

Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water to bloom. Cook raspberries and sugar on the stove to dissolve the sugar, then blend in a blender. (You can strain to remove the seeds, but I like 'em in there.) Heat the gelatin until liquid (careful, this happens fast!), then mix into the raspberries. Pour the mixture into your cake pan set over a piece of plastic wrap, then allow to set for at least 2 hours.

Once this was in the fridge setting, I decided to mix up my joconde batter and decor paste.

Joconde

3oz almond flour/meal
2⅔ oz confectioners' sugar
1 oz cake flour
3 large eggs
3 large egg whites
⅓ oz sugar
1 oz unsalted butter, melted

In a clean mixing bowl, whip the egg whites and sugar to firm, glossy peeks. In a separate bowl, sift almond flour, confectioner’s sugar, cake flour. On medium speed, add the eggs a little at a time. Mix well after each addition. Mix until smooth and light. Fold in one third reserved whipped egg whites to almond mixture to lighten the batter. Fold in remaining whipped egg whites. Do not over mix. Fold in melted butter.

Cocoa Joconde-Décor Paste

7 oz unsalted butter, softened
7 oz confectioner's sugar
7 large egg whites
6 oz cake flour
2 oz cocoa powder

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg whites, beating continuously. Sift together flour and cocoa powder, then fold the mixture into the butter/sugar/egg mixture.

For those of you who don't already know this about me, I never waste an egg white or a yolk. All those egg whites we just whipped up produced a bunch of egg yolks that can be used for something. And....guess what? Each batch of mousse filling requires 6 yolks. And, even if we weren't making mousse, we COULD make mousse or we could make ice cream. Or creme brulee. This list goes on. You probably have NO idea how easy any of these three things are to make.

To make the joconde imprime (the "patterned joconde"), create a pattern out of decor paste, on a flat baking sheet with silicone mat. You can spread a thin layer of the decor paste and then use a spatula, decorating comb or even your finger to make a pattern. Or you can use a piping bag full of the decor paste to pipe your own design on the mat. Keep in mind the height of your mold and how wide your patterned strips are going to need to be. I decided to use the piping bag and piped designs similar to those that are usually done in melted chocolate. Once your design is finished, put the whole baking sheet in the freezer for about 15-30 minutes to harden up.

At this point, I decided to revisit my dacquoise and cut it to fit my entremet. What I didn't realize is that a rectangular meringue (this one anyway) is way too crisp to be cut into any kind of even-close-to-circular shape. So, when I tried, it basically just shattered into various sides shards of sugary, eggy, nutty goodness. I ate a few of the scraps, then tossed the rest in the trash and tried to decide what to do next. Hmmmm...I think I will make ANOTHER dacquoise, this time in the springform pan, so that when I remove it, it will be the perfect size/shape for the bottom of the cake. So, I set my joconde batter aside, left my patterned decor paste in the freezer, hardening, and whipped up another batch of that dacquoise. While it was in the oven for 2 MORE HOURS, I decided to take a break and go for a long run. So that I didn't have to wait for it to finish cooking, I asked Todd (my husband) to turn the oven off when the timer went off. One of the nice things about this dacquoise is that there really isn't any need to adjust baking time. After 2 hours, it's done, and it just cools in the hot oven. So, when I came back from my run, the pretty circular dacquoise was finished and cool in the oven. I decided to leave it there (***) and go take a shower. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, all clean. Well, at this point, the joconde batter I'd made HOURS ago was deflating (remember all those whipped egg whites that were folded in, as well as the melted butter? There is only so long that can sit, even in the fridge), so I decided to make another batch. When it was done, I cranked up the oven to 475 to preheat for my joconde, pulled the patterns out of the freezer and then...

I STOPPED. WHAT IS THAT SMELL? WHERE IS THAT SMOKE COMING FROM?

IT'S COMING FROM THE OVEN, inside which the pretty, circular dacquoise is still sitting. Burned to a *&$&*(# crisp at this point!!! I had completely forgotten to take it out before preheating my oven!!! Now, a second 2+ hour dacquoise ruined. I decided the entremet was going to have to go without.

Once I'd aired out the kitchen, I pulled the baking sheet with my patterned decor paste out of the freezer (it was nice and hard by now!) and spread a layer of the joconde batter on top . (Since the pattern is frozen hard, it shouldn't move at all.) Try to keep the joconde batter at a consistent height across the baking sheet, 1/4" is good. Bake in that hot, hot, 475 degree oven for 7-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of your batter. (Mine was fairly thin, so it baked on the lower end of that range.) Remove, cool slightly on the pan, and then quickly flip onto a kitchen towel or parchment paper sprinkled generously with powdered sugar. (This keeps the back of the cake from sticking.)

Once it's cooled a little more, trim the edges with a sharp knife (and a straight edge/ruler) to fit the inside of your mold. Remember, I used the springform pan (the kind you normally use to bake cheesecake in), so once it was cleaned of the blackened dacquoise, I went to prepare the pan. Place a piece of parchment paper on a solid surface (cookie sheet, cutting board, cookbook, whatever) and top with a piece of plastic wrap. Put your ring mold or springform pan on the plastic wrap and then snugly bring the plastic up the sides so that the bottom of the pan is taut. I also used a rubber band around the bottom edge to keep the plastic in place. Cut a piece of either parchment paper or acetate strip to line the inside of your pan. You probably should measure and cut it to be a little higher than the top of the pan, but then trim to the edge of the pan once it's lining the inside. This will help you smooth the top of your entremet.

Now, press your cut cake strips into the inside of the mold, decorative side facing out. Push and press the ends together so that the cake lining the mold is seamless. You don't want any of that yummy mousse and stuff sneaking out! If you want to cut a circle of joconde to press inside the middle to be the "bottom" of your entremet, you can do that now. I did decide to to do that since I didn't have any other plans for the bottom once dacquoise #2 got trashed.

Now, time to fill that thing! Remember above, I said I was filling with alternating layers of chocolate and almond mousse, as well as that grown-up fruit roll-up ("raspberry gelee") in the center. I whipped those mousses up in a snap and got to work filling that pan.

Chocolate Mousse

Place 12 oz chopped semisweet chocolate in a double-boiler (or a metal bowl set over a pan of simmering water). Add 4 oz butter. Careful not to scorch, melt the mixture until smooth. In another metal bowl, whip 6 egg yolks, add 3 oz sugar, an ounce or two of liquor if you want, and whisk over that pan of simmering water until it's almost too hot for you to stand it when you put your finger in. Move the metal bowl to a mixer and whisk on high until cool. (Since this takes a while, you might want to do that in your mixer bowl so you can just set it and forget it. For a few minutes.) When it's cool, it should be nice and thick. In a separate bowl, whip 1 pint (= 2 cups) of heavy cream to soft peaks. Fold the chocolate/butter mixture into the egg mixture, then gently fold in cream until no streaks remain. DO NOT OVERMIX or you will deflate. Refrigerate to set.

Almond Mousse

Now, I had never made almond mousse before, nor did I have a recipe. But, I did buy a really nice, gourmet, imported almond paste from Southern Season just for this occasion, so I had to ad lib. NOTE: It did not go as planned...Prepare the egg, sugar and liquor (if you want) mixture as above. For those of you taking notes, this is called a "sabayon" in French pastry terms. I tried softening the almond paste some by heating it in the microwave and then used a fork to try to soften it some more. When folding ingredients into each other for a mousse such as this, you really want the two components to be of similar consistency. This allows them to blend nicely. These two things did not blend nicely. The almond paste never got "smooth" and there were little chunks throughout the mixture. Plus, it was so much stiffer than the sabayon that I deflated a lot of it when mixing them. Once mixed, I folded in a pint of whipped cream (soft peaks) and refrigerated. Even though it had little almond paste chunks in it, it still tasted good!

To assemble, I spread a thin layer of chocolate mousse (about 1/2"), then almond mousse, then flipped the set gelee on top, then another layer each of chocolate then almond mousse.

You want the fillings to be higher than the top of the joconde. That way, when it's unmolded, your audience gets to see some of the mousse over the top. The whole thing goes in the fridge now for a few hours to set the mousse and chill.... When you are ready to glaze the top, heat some raspberry jam on the stove with a little apricot jelly, strain, cool slightly, then pour on top of the cold mousse and refrigerate to set.

You can decorate the top with fruit, chocolate shavings, nuts, or some kind of design or combination of these things.

I promised I'd share my lessons learned...

1.When cooling something in the oven, always remove from the oven once cool!
2.Dacquoise/meringue do not cut into circles!
3.Almond mousse is not easily made with almond paste. There's gotta be a better way, perhaps using almond extract to flavor. If you find one, let me know.
4.Plan ahead when layering your mousse. Make sure you know how much you have so that you have enough to make the layers you plan to make and have them all be the same thickness. If in doubt, make a double batch.

All in all, this was indeed a daring challenge. I brought the entremet to work and everyone loved it! (They didn't even have to know about the screw-ups.)

December Daring Baker's Challenge - Christmas Stollen

2010-12-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

Before I get started, I'd like to talk a little bit about yeast. Since the heart of this challenge is the yeast, it might be nice for you non-bakers out there to understand it a little better. So, what do you know about yeast? Maybe you know it is a fungus. Did you know it is alive? Yeasts are single-celled organisms, the ones used in baking (and beer making) are called saccharomyces cerevisiae. Evidence of using yeasts for baking has been found dating back to ancient Egyptian days, but they weren't discovered to be living yeasts until 1857 when Louis Pasteur wrote a paper describing their actions. When you see yeast bubbling, it means that the yeast is emitting carbon dioxide. When yeasts feed (on sugar primarily), they give off C02, which is what makes the bubbles and also what makes breads rise. Yeasts get more active when they get warm, even more active when they get warmer and then eventually die when they get too hot (which is when the bread stops growing and keeps baking). Yeasts will slow down when cold, so that is why you sometimes see yeast stored in the refrigerator or freezer. Many yeasts breads can be kept in the refrigerator to rise slowly, thus developing even more flavor. Before yeast breads are baked, they go through a process called "proofing," which basically means that you have a period of time where you want the yeast to show you "proof" that it works, that is is alive and active. So, after rising, you punch the dough down to release the built up CO2, then set it somewhere warm to "proof" right before you bake. When proofing, you usually want to see the bread rise or grow in size. Proofing is best done at warm room temperature.

Before actually starting the stollen, I'm going to need to make the candied citrus peel. I have 5 beautiful oranges here at the house, so I'm going to make candied orange peel. I used a recipe by David Lebowitz to make the candied peel, first blanching the peel, then boiling it in a sugar syrup to just below the soft-ball stage.

Stollen Wreath
Makes one large wreath. Serves 10-12 people
Ingredients
¼ cup water (110º F)
1/2 oz active dry yeast
1 cup milk
5 oz unsalted butter
5½ cups flour
½ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
Grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract or orange extract
¾ cup candied citrus peel
1 cup firmly packed raisins
3 tablespoons rum
1/4 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 cup almond pieces
Melted unsalted butter for coating the wreath
Confectioners’ sugar for dusting wreath

Before you start, soak the raisins in a small bowl with the rum and set aside.
To make the dough, pour 1/4 cup warm water into a small bowl (water at 110 will be warm to the touch, but not scalding), sprinkle with the yeast and allow to stand for about 5 minutes. This softens the yeast enough to allow you to stir to dissolve. You should soon see that the yeast begins to bubble.

In a small saucepan, combine milk and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted. Let stand a few minutes to cool. In the meantime, lightly beat eggs in a small bowl and add citrus (I used lemon) and vanilla extracts.

In the large bowl of your stand mixer, stir together the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, orange and lemon zests. Then, on low, mix in (using the paddle attachment) the yeast/water mixture, eggs and the lukewarm milk/butter mixture. This should take about 2 minutes. It should be a soft, but not sticky ball. When the dough comes together, cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let rest for 10 minutes. Add in the candied citrus peel, dried fruits and almonds and mix with your hands or on low speed to incorporate. On a lightly floured counter (or in the mixing bowl using a dough hook), knead the dough to distribute the fruit evenly.

This should take about 6-8 minutes. (A good way to tell when the dough is well blended is that some of the raisins on the outside will start to fall off the top of the dough because it is no longer sticky enough to hold them on.) Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling around to coat it with the oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight (or up to a week) to rise slowly and develop flavor.

Be sure you allow yourself about 5 consecutive hours for the final portion. Once you are ready to bake, remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow it to rest at room temperature for 2 hours to warm slightly. Punch the dough down, dump it out of the bowl and onto the counter. Roll into a rectangle, approximately 16 x 24 inches. (It should be about 1/4" thick.)

Starting on one long side, begin rolling the dough into a 24" tightly rolled log.

Transfer the log to a parchment or silpat-lined sheet pan and join the ends together to make a circle. Use your fingers to pinch the ends together to join them well. Going around the circle, cut slashes about 2/3 way through approximately every 2 inches around the circle to resemble a wreath.

Set the wreath aside to "proof" for about 2 hours at warm room temperature. After this time, it should have expanded to about 1 1/2 times the original size. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, rotate the pan, then bake for another 20-30 minutes. When done, the top should be dark golden brown and the internal temperature register 190 degrees. Transfer to cooling rack and brush with melted butter while still warm. Sprinkle generously with powdered sugar. (This butter/sugar process can be repeated multiple times. Each coat protects the stollen and prolongs the freshness.)

This stollen travels easily, keeps well and is FANTASTIC toasted with a smear of butter. Even better still alongside a cup o' joe. We have been eating off of it for days and no one could resist. This may become a new holiday tradition in the Durham home!!

November Daring Baker's Challenge - Crostata!

2010-11-24T10:23:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to make sure I don't get into a baking "rut" (If you call it a rut if I tend to always make chocolate or fruity layer cakes), I decided to rejoin the Daring Baker's group so that at least once a month I'd have a new baking challenge, proposed by someone other than myself. Getting back on this blog again will also hopefully help me to blog about some of my other desserts that I'm making. Just as a reminder, the purpose of this blog is for me to post pictures of some of the desserts I am making, as well as recipes and little scientific or baking-related "tidbits" that people will find interesting and explanatory.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

What is a Crostata? A crostata is an Italian baked dessert, like a "tart" or a pie. Typically, it's roughly shaped and the edges are folded over to give it a more rustic appearance. Typically they are filled with fruit jams or a combination of fresh fruit and pastry cream. If it were summer time, I would definitely have opted for a fresh fruit and pastry cream crostata, but because so many of the fall fruits are fantastic when roasted, I opted instead to make an autumn crostata of Apple, Pear and Quince.

Just to give some background on the quince, quince is a pome fruit related to apples and pears, native to Asia. Even when it is ripe, a quince is usually too hard and too sour to be eaten raw. A couple additional interesting tidbits about quince:

-Although the book of Genesis does not name the specific type of the fruit that Adam and Eve ate from the tree in the garden of Eden, some historians and ancient texts suggest that Eve's fruit of temptation might have been a quince

- Among ancient Greeks, the quice was a ritual offering at weddings

- Like apples, the seeds of the quince, if eaten in sufficiently large quantity can be broken down in the body to produce cyanide.

OK, now that you know that stuff, can we move on to the recipe? Sure. So, here we go.

For the base layer of the crostata, we were given several recipes from which to choose for "pasta frolla," which is a shortbread dough, like a pie dough, but uses eggs instead of cold water to bind the dough. As you can imagine, it is rich and delicious and, no matter how good that filling is, the *best* part of a crostata for many people. This is Simona's pasta frolla recipe, which is what I used. (Since I made an 11" tart, I used 1.5 times the recipe.)

Pasta Frolla
3 oz powdered sugar
8.25 oz AP flour
pinch salt
4 oz cold butter
zest from 1/2 lemon
1 egg + 1 egg yolk

To make, blend the sugar, flour and salt together in a mixing bowl, then cut the butter into small pieces and rub it into the dry ingredients until it has a coarse crumb. There can be a few larger, pea-sized pieces mixed throughout.

Make a well in the center and put in the lightly-beaten egg mixture (reserve a tablespoon or so to use for glazing the crust later).

Using a fork, pull the dry ingredients into the liquid and mix together until blended.

Shape into a ball and then flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until cold.

While the dough is chilling, roast the fruit.

3 ripe, but firm pears
3 firm apples (I used Fuji)
1 quince
1 stick of cinnamon
4 whole cloves
1/2 cup sugar
3 T lemon juice
2 T apple cider
1 T minced fresh ginger

Peel, core, quarter and then cut the fruits into about 1" sized pieces. Mix together with remaining ingredients and roast in a 375 degree oven for about an hour, mixing occasionally, until starting to caramelize. Remove from oven and cool.

Remove the crust, and roll out on a lightly-floured surface until it is a few inches larger in diameter than your pan. Lightly place in the pan and cut excess. You can decide whether you want the crust to roll over the top loosely, or whether you want to fit it to the edge of the tart pan. Put the crust in the pan back in the fridge to stay cool while you make the additional filling.

4 oz softened butter
1/2 c powdered sugar
1/2 c packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 t vanilla
1/4 c flour

Blend butter with sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, then vanilla. Blend flour in last, only mixing until blended.

Remove crust from the fridge, pour in the filling, then top with the roasted fruit (including juices). If you have saved crust to fold over, go ahead and fold it over now. Brush the edges with the reserved egg, sprinkle with sugar and bake at 375 degrees on a preheated cookie sheet for 50-60 minutes until the filling has puffed up around the fruit and the edges of the crust are browned.

In case you weren't already thinking of it, this is EXCELLENT with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Buon Apetito!

October Daring Bakers Challenge - Pizzaiola!

2008-10-29T20:19:00.000-04:00

October's challenge, brought to us by Rosa from Switzerland, is to make "real" pizza dough. The recipe is adapted from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. The original recipe makes 6 pizza crusts. I halved the recipe and made three, baking one right away and freezing the other two for another time. Each one of my pizzas measured to about 12-14" and was more than enough to feed 2 people for dinner, especially with a small salad on the side. I have made my own pizza dough before and I would say that, in comparison to other recipes, this one was not bad. I found it a little bland. With the right toppings, it can still be very tasty!

BASIC PIZZA DOUGH

4 1/2 Cups bread flour or all purpose flour, chilled

1 3/4 Tsp Salt

1 Tsp Instant yeast

1/4 Cup Olive oil or vegetable oil (both optional, but it’s better with)

1 3/4 Cups water, ice cold (40° F/4.5° C)

1 Tb sugar

cornmeal for dusting

To get started, get yourself a nice, flat place to work. I have tiled countertops, so I use a board from Chef's Catalog. Then, mix the flour, salt and yeast together in the mixer bowl. Add the oil, sugar, and cold water and mix (using a large spoon or your dough hook) well to form a sticky ball of dough. Move this to a well-floured board and knead (THIS IS THE FUN PART!) using your hands (also well-floured) for about 5-7 minutes. It took me 10 minutes. Once you are done, your dough should be elastic and smooth.

Cut the dough into equal portions using a bench scraper and, using floured hands, roll each portion into a smooth ball. Place each ball into an oiled bag (I use a plastic grocery bag) and store in the freezer (for future use) or, overnight in the refrigerator. Seal the bag by pressing the air out of it and tying a knot towards the top of the bag. You want to make sure to leave room in the bag for the dough to grow and release carbon dioxide during fermentation. If you freeze the dough, you can probably keep it there for a month or so, and make sure you move it to the fridge overnight the day before you want to use it.

The following day, about 2 hours before you plan to use your dough, remove it from the fridge and peel it out from the bag onto your lightly oiled and floured work surface. Using plenty of flour for your hands, the surface and the dough, press the dough into a round disk about 1/2" thick. Cover it with a towel or some plastic wrap and allow it to rest for about 2 hours.

About 45 minutes before you bake the pizza (1 hour 15 minutes after you set it to rest - are you paying attention to all of these timelines?), preheat your pizza stone by setting the oven to the highest temperature possible (500). Pizzas cook best with INTENSE heat underneath them. This is why stones or brick ovens (sometimes get up to 700 degrees!) are used. If you do not have a stone, you can use the back of your baking sheet, but it won't get as hot.

After 2 hours rest, sprinkle the back side of a large baking sheet or jelly roll pan with durum/semolina flour or cornmeal and move the dough to your floured hands, keeping your fists rounded. Begin by stretching the dough in a circular motion with your hands. When you are comfortable, progress to a full TOSS! While you are doing this, if the dough sticks to your hands - FLOUR them! If the dough does not want to stretch or expand, it just needs a little more time to rest. Set it down for another 20 minutes and try again.

Once your pizza crust is the size you want it, place it on the back of your baking sheet, making sure there is enough flour or cornmeal to keep it from sticking. (You are going to want to be able to slide it off onto your pizza stone.)

Top your pizza with the toppings of your choice and place the pan in the oven, or slide it off on to your preheated pizza stone. Bake at 500 for about 5-8 minutes and then begin checking. You want the crust to be cooked from the underside, but the cheese and toppings on top to be melted and hot.

When it's done, take it out of the oven and let it cool for 5 minutes before cutting. ENJOY!

September Daring Bakers Challenge - Lavash....

2008-09-27T03:01:00.000-04:00

...which is just a fancy word for crackers, really. This was fun!! I've never made crackers before, so this really was a new challenge.

Dough (makes 1 sheet pan of crackers)

1 1/2 c. bread flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. instant yeast
1 T. agave syrup or sugar
1 T. vegetable oil
3-4 fl oz. water, room temperature

There are a few distinct steps to making any bread dough. To begin, you measure and mix the ingredients. The recipe I used just said to mix all ingredients together in a bowl, but I prefer to mix the dry and liquid ingredients separately and then add the liquids to the center of the dry and mix, adding more liquid as necessary. Also, I did not have instant yeast, so I found a conversion chart on the web and substituted 1/2 t. + 1/8 t. active dry yeast.

Once the dough is mixed into a ball, it needs to be kneaded for a while to develop the gluten. Gluten is the protein in wheat that develops when the dough is kneaded with some liquid. Some flours are naturally higher in protein content, like bread flour, and are more appropriate for forming an elastic dough. (As an aside, flours with less protein, like cake flour or even all-purpose flour, are usually used for cakes, cookies or pastries that you do not want to be tough or chewy. The instructions also usually indicate not to overmix the batter/dough.) It took me about 12 minutes to knead this dough to the appropriate texture. When it is ready, it should pass the "windowpane test" (google it!), be smooth, stretchy and somewhat firm. Form it into a nice ball, put it into a lightly oiled bowl, then cover with plastic wrap and set it in a warm (not hot!) place to rise.

Now it is time for the fermentation! This is the key to yeasted doughs! In a nutshell, rising / fermentation is when the LIVE yeasts are eating!! Specifically in this dough, the yeast, when combined with something sugar or agave and warmed, begins to feed. Yeast feeds best at a nice, warm temperature. Too hot and the yeasts die, too cold and they slow down or become dormant. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen, the fermentation process for this recipe will take about 90-120 minutes. You'll know it's ready when the dough has doubled in size and the plastic wrap is poofing out. A little more science here - the byproduct of yeasts feeding on sugar is carbon dioxide and alcohol. (Did you know that beer and wine are also produced by feeding yeasts?!?! Sure you did.)

Now, preheat the oven to 350 and mist your workspace lightly with oil. Transfer the dough to the workspace. With your fingers, gently form the blob into a square, lightly sprinkle some flour over the top and begin using a rolling pin to roll out the dough. You may have to stop periodically to let the dough rest or relax. Working the dough now has the same effect as when you kneaded it early. Too much working and you develop more gluten, which equals more elasticity, which means that your dough might not stay where you roll it to! Take a 5 minute break, come back and check again. You also might want to periodically lift the corners of your dough up and shake them out to stretch it more. The final size of your cracker will depend on how thin you've rolled it. I like a nice thin cracker, so I kept going until it was almost translucent. Once the cracker is rolled out, gently move it to a parchment-lined baking sheet. If you want cut or shaped crackers, you can use a rolling blade or pizza cutter to precut the dough. You do not need to separate it, as it will snap apart after baking. If you want rough shards, just leave the sheet whole.
The creators of this month's challenge allowed us the option of choosing our own toppings and our own dip or salsa. I decided to go with a sweet cracker and lightly misted the top with water, then sprinkled raw sugar, cinnamon and vanilla powder. Alternatively, you could use seeds, other spices, sea salt, cracked pepper, etc. to make a savory cracker. You can also make stripes or designs across your crackers to give them a more colorful look.

Pop the sheet into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, just until the cracker is browning evenly across the top. Of course, if your dough is thicker, it might take a little longer. Remove the pan from the oven, let the crackers cool for about 10 minutes, then break (or snap on precut lines) them apart and serve!

I chose to serve my Cinnamon Sugar lavash with a Creamy White Peach dip. For the dip, I blended 2 cut peaches, 6 oz. plain yogurt (you can use soy yogurt for a vegan version), 2 T. brown sugar and about 1 t. lemon juice in a food processor. Serve, dip and enjoy!

July Daring Bakers Challenge - Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream

2008-07-26T13:48:00.000-04:00

I'm making plenty of desserts these days, but not branching out as often as I'd like. I joined the Daring Bakers in order that I might get at least ONE new challenge each month and write about it. For my first month's challenge, we were to make the Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Carole Walter's Great Cakes. This cake has several components - the Hazelnut Genoise ("the cake"), a sugar syrup (for soaking - genoise is a fairly dry cake and typically gets soaked to make it moist and provide flavor), Praline Buttercream, Apricot Glaze, and Ganache. I made the cake first, following the recipe exactly. My only change was to use two 9" pans (instead of one 10" pan). I filled them evenly and then torted each one, making my final cake 4 layers instead of 3. (This is my favorite size cake, plus it fits my cake boards and cake carrier.)

Filbert Genoise
1 1/2 c. toasted, skinned hazelnuts (also called filberts!)
2/3 c. unsifted cake flour
2 T. cornstarch
7 large yolks
1 c. superfine sugar, divided (buzz regular sugar w/food processor for 10 sec)
1 t. vanilla (never use imitation!)
1/2 t. lemon zest
5 large egg whites
1/4 c. warm (100-110) clarified butter

Remember to start with the mise en place. Get all of your ingredients, tools and equipment (food processor, bowls, saucepan, measuring cups) together. If you have to prepare the nuts or the clarified butter*, do so now. Preheat the oven to 350. Buzz the nuts, flour and cornstarch in the food processor for 30 seconds, then pulse until ground. Don't overdo this step, or you'll release too many of the oils in the nuts and end up with a pasty mess!

Beat the yolks until thick and lightened (3-4 minutes on medium-high), then add 3/4 c. sugar, slowly and continue to beat until ribbony. Blend in vanilla and zest. Next, whip the whites to soft peak. Slowly add the remaining sugar and whip about 30 seconds longer. Add the yolks to the whites and whip together for about a minute. Remove from mixer and add in dry ingredients ("nut meal") by sifting over (about 2 tablespoons at a time) with a medium strainer, folding carefully. When about 2 T of nut meal remains, pour the warm butter into the batter in a steady stream. Quickly fold in the remaining nut meal, taking about 15 turns. All of this folding should take you about 50 turns or so with a wide spatula. Since this cake has no chemical leavener (this is one of the hallmarks of a genoise cake - did you notice??), the whipped yolks and whites need to retain air in order to allow the mixture to rise some.

Pour batter into greased and floured pan(s), tap once on the counter to remove any bubbles, then bake for about 30 minutes. The cake is done when it springs back to the touch and pulls from the sides of the pan. Remove, cool slightly in pan, then invert on well-sprayed cooling rack.

*To skin hazelnuts , bake in a single layer on a cookie sheet in 325 oven for about 10-12 minutes, then rub them between a dish towel while hot. Remaining nuts can be reheated again if you need to. To clarify butter, place the amount you need PLUS about 25% more in the microwave in 30 second intervals on medium power. Alternatively, you can do this slowly over the stove. Once the butter separates into distinct layers, skim foam from the top. Pour off clear liquid butter into a fine sieve, taking care not to let any milk solids from the bottom come through.

To answer that big question that many of you inevitably are dying to ask - I don't know how important it is in this recipe to clarify the butter. The main purpose in removing milk solids and water in butter is to allow it to be heated to a higher temperature without burning. Clarifying butter slowly over gentle heat also helps it to develop flavor. Feel free to try it without clarifying the butter. IMO, it probably does not matter much in this recipe.

Simple syrup
1 c. water
1/4 c. sugar
2 T liquer, like Grand Marnier or Rum (optional)

Boil water and sugar, remove from heat and add liquer when cool. Rewarm to use.

For the buttercream, I made my own recipe, Italian Meringue Buttercream, instead of the recipe's Swiss Meringue Buttercream. With Italian Meringue, a sugar syrup is cooked to about 240-250 degrees (soft-firm ball stage) and then poured over whipping egg whites. With a Swiss Meringue, the whites are combined with the sugar and then whipped together over heat to about 120 degrees. I find the Italian method makes a more stable buttercream, so it's what I prefer to use.

Praline Buttercream
4 egg whites (or about 4 ounces)
1 c. sugar (or about 6-8 ounces)
pinch of salt
2-3 sticks of room temp butter, cut into chunks (start with 2 sticks)
1/3 c. praline paste

Place sugar in a saucepan over high heat with enough water to make a thick slurry. (It doesn't matter how much water you add because it will evaporate away as it boils. The more you add, the longer this step will take.) Put your whites in the mixer bowl with a pinch of salt and begin whipping on medium speed. Boil the sugar water until it reaches about 240. You can also look for visual clues - the bubbles on top will get bigger and slow down a lot. Like this:

One of these days, I'll show you a really cool trick for testing sugar stage. :)

You need to keep an eye on your whites while the sugar is coming up to temp. If they start to develop firm peaks, slow or stop the mixer until your sugar syrup is ready. When the sugar syrup is ready, make sure the whites are whipping at medium-high and SLOWLY pour the hot syrup down the side of the bowl.

Whip until cool (less than 100), then add your butter, piece by piece. Add in the praline paste. (If you can't find this, I bet you can use Nutella, which is a chocolate praline paste. YUM!) Since praline paste isn't very "stiff," you may need to add a little more butter in order to get the consistency and texture of your final buttercream where you want it.

Now that I've said all of that, here is a great EASY recipe to make Italian meringue buttercream. Following the steps above, use x amount of egg whites, 2x ounces of sugar and 2-3x ounces of butter. Another helpful tip is that 1 cup of sugar weighs about 7 ounces. Don't get too worked up over it. Just remember - x + 2x + 2-3x. For example, if x=4 egg whites, then 2x (sugar) is 8 ounces, or just over 1 cup. Butter is between 8 ounces (2x) and 12 ounces (3x). Or don't, and just pull up this blog!

Apricot Glaze
2/3 c. apricot preserves
1 T. water

Combine and heat to slow simmer. Remove from heat and strain out chunks. Thin if you want and rewarm slightly before using.

Ganache
6 ounces chocolate, chopped or chips
6 ounces heavy cream
1 T light corn syrup (optional)
1 T liquer (optional)
1 T water (optional)

Combine cream and corn syrup, bring just to a boil, then pour over chocolate. Whisk smooth after about a minute. Add liquer (optional) and water, if necessary. Cool to about body temperature (when you dip your finger in, you feel neither hot nor cold).

Cake Assembly
To assemble the cake, torte the cooled layer(s) as you wish. As I said above, I made two 9" layers and cut them each in half. (Torting simply refers to cutting a cake into more than one layer.) Place the bottom layer on your cake board, moisten with a few tablespoons of syrup, letting it soak in for a few minutes, then spread with about 1/4 of the buttercream. Continue stacking the layers, moistening each one with syrup before spreading with buttercream. Moisten the top of the cake with syrup, let it soak in and then pop the whole thing in the fridge (at least 30 min) or the freezer (10 min) to chill. Remove chilled cake and use a serrated knife to trim the sides perfectly straight. You can also give the top edge a slight bevel to allow the glaze to drip over the edge. Brush the top and sides of the cake with the glaze, sealing all of the cut areas. Chill in fridge while preparing the ganache.

When I'm covering a cake with ganace glaze, I always put it on a cake board that is exactly the same size as my cake, so that glaze can drip off without getting the board all messy. Then, when you are done, you can just pop the whole thing on another, larger, fancy (if you want!!) cake board. That said, place the whole cake on a cake rack set on top of a bowl that is at least an inch or two wider in diameter than your cake. When the ganache glaze has cooled some, pour it over the cake, starting in the middle and pouring until glaze goes down the sides. If you want to completely cover the cake, make sure you quickly check all of the sides and the back to see that the glaze has gotten everywhere. It's important to do this quickly because the chocolate will cool as it touches the chilled cake. Once you are done glazing, let the cake sit on the rack for a few minutes, then carefully lift using a spatula under the board. Place on your larger board or serving plate.

All of the above being said, I only had about 4 ounces of cream, so I skimped on the ganache and ended up running out before the cake was covered. So, I chilled the whole mess and then reworked it using a warm spatula over the cake. If you'd rather not pour the glaze, alternatively, you can chill the ganache, whip it with a mixer and spread it over the top of the cake. Nothing compares, though, to the fanciness of a ganache glazed cake!

You can decorate the cake however you want, using whipped ganache or the leftover praline buttercream. You can use chopped, toasted hazelnuts or candied hazelnuts for dramatic effect. I chose to use the praline buttercream for a shell border around the bottom and a decorative design on top.

Oh, and, most importantly, ENJOY!!!! YUM!

Gettin' my "chiff-on"

2007-12-13T09:25:00.000-05:00

Today I am making a chocolate chiffon cake. First, a little history about the chiffon cake. One of the interesting things about chiffon is that it was created by Americans. Most cakes and cake making methods were developed by the French. Chiffon cakes became popular in the US because they were simpler to make than traditional European cakes, and they could easily be made at home. Also, they used oil instead of butter, which made them less expensive to make. (This was important in the early 1900s during the Great Depression.) Chiffon cakes were light and fluffy (due to the addition of whipped egg whites), like a genoise cake, BUT they tasted better because they used oil and egg yolks to give richness and flavor.

Chocolate Chiffon Cake
1 3/4 c. Flour (All-purpose)
1/2 c. cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. vegetable or canola oil
6 large egg yolks
3/4 c. water
1/4 c. lemon juice
1 tbsp. grated lemon zest
10 large egg whites
pinch cream of tartar

Every good baker knows to begin with "mise en place," a french term that means "everything in place." Basically, you get your stuff together so that you don't find yourself in the middle of a recipe without an essential ingredient or tool.

Once you have everything you need, grab a large bowl and sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and most of the sugar (leave about 1/4 c to the side) into it. Whisk to combine. Now, combine the water, oil, egg yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice in another bowl and whisk well to mix. Add your liquid ingredient mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk well to combine. In another large bowl, whip your egg whites until frothy, add a pinch of cream of tartar, then continue whipping to soft peaks.

At this point, begin slowly adding the remaining sugar to the whites, increase the speed on your mixer to medium-high/high and whip until your whites are glossy and stiff. (TIP: This helps if your egg whites are at room temperature to begin.) Now, use a rubber spatula to incorporate a small portion of the whites into the chocolate mixture.

Fold in the remaining whites just until incorporated (but make sure it is fully mixed - no one likes to get a bite of cake that is just cooked egg whites!). Pour into a parchment-lined 10" springform pan and bake at 325 for about 50 minutes (or until a tester comes out clean). TIP: Make sure you put this in the middle of your oven and remove the rack above it - it does rise a lot!

Cool on a rack and run a knife along the sides of the pan to unmold. This cake is very versatile and can be used in place of butter cakes (for a lighter taste) or in place of genoise (for more flavor). ENJOY!

As an aside, if you conserve ingredients in this recipe, you will find yourself with 4 extra egg yolks. You can put them in a small container, cover the surface with plastic wrap and refrigerate for another use (hmmm...creme brulee). They'll keep for a couple of days.

Start of a New Blog...

2007-11-26T19:48:00.000-05:00

There are a couple of reasons why I decided to start a new blog. First, I really miss blogging. Sometimes I talk too much, so getting it out on a computer is always a good way to keep myself in everyone's good graces. Second, I have a hard time remembering to take photos of my finished cakes, so I figured this would help me remember to take pics along the way. Third, I've had quite a few people ask me when I was going to blog again and Last, I though this would be a great way to show YOU (my friends and family) the steps that go into building a cake. I guess I've given it away, then..."Cakes, Deconstructed" is going to walk you step-by-step through some of the cakes I'm putting together. I'll even include recipes sometimes... Thanks for staying tuned.