02.27.10
Posted in Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Italian at 10:54 pm by julie
The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.
When I heard that this month’s challenge was tiramisu, I was less than enthusiastic. My family doesn’t drink coffee or care for the flavor of it in desserts, and we also don’t do alcohol, so tiramisu doesn’t have much to offer us. But I’ve never made ladyfingers, zabaglione, or homemade mascarpone before, so I took on our personal flavor preferences as an additional challenge for this recipe, and made a tiramisu with no coffee, marsala or rum extract.
My family are big tea drinkers, and we have quite a collection of loose leaf tea, so I decided that I would substitute in tea for all the other liquids in my dessert. I chose black teas because they are the strongest, and I thought they would assert themselves the best. I went with a vanilla tea for the zabaglione, and a chai tea to soak the savoiardi.
First off, I had to make the mascarpone cheese, as it needed the longest time to set up in the refrigerator. Because the tiramisu only required a small amount of mascarpone, and because my strainer is not particularly large, I cut the recipe down to 1 1/2 cups of cream. I don’t have a double boiler, so I always have to scrounge for an appropriate bowl to use as a bain marie. Here I started out with a glass batter bowl, but because of the imperfect fit, the water just kept boiling away and my cream took a good half hour to heat up. Eventually I gave up the bain marie and just put it in a small saucepan. Shortly after, the cream hit 190F and I added the lemon juice. It thickened almost immediately, and I poured it off into a strainer lined with damp paper towels.
After several hours in the fridge, it had firmed up beautifully into a round of mascarpone cheese. Very easy to make, and much cheaper than the store-bought sort; I’ll be doing this again!
The next morning, I mixed up a batch of vanilla pastry cream, flavored with vanilla and orange zest. Once cooled, it was a bit thinner than I would have liked. I think I should have heated it slightly longer, but I always worry about curdling, and it did coat the back of the spoon.
Zabaglione came next, and mine was flavored with black vanilla tea rather than marsala or coffee. I always understood that zabaglione needed to be whisked vigorously over a double boiler in order to give it a light, foamy texture, but this recipe didn’t seem to require that, as it just gets whipped together with cream, mascarpone, and pastry cream later on. My zabaglione took close to half an hour of gentle heating, this time in a silicone-bottomed metal bowl, to thicken up according to the recipe’s description. It ended up reminding me very much of caramel, both in color and texture.
While the pastry cream and zabaglione chilled in the refrigerator, I made my savoiardi, which turned out to be really easy to make. Essentially a meringue with egg yolk and a bit of flour folded in, they came together quickly and I got them piped out onto two trays, each cookie about the size and length of my own fingers. They don’t call them ladyfingers for nothing.
One of the more unusual aspects of these little cookies is the fact that you dust the unbaked cookies with powdered sugar to help them bake up with a little bit of a crunch.
My cookies came out a little on the flat side, but I was pretty pleased with them overall. My son took one look at the trays cooling on the counter and started begging to taste the cookies, so we shared one. I thought they had a good texture but were pretty bland; I can see why they are traditionally dunked in coffee or wine.
At this point everything was ready to assemble. I brewed some chai tea, unsweetened, and let it cool while I whipped some cream and folded it together with my pastry cream, mascarpone and zabaglione. I used a small casserole dish as a mould, and lined it with plastic wrap on the off-chance that I would be able to unmould the tiramisu for serving. My cream mixture was pretty soupy, though, probably because of the pastry cream, so I wasn’t optimistic about my chances of that. I lined the mould with vertical ladyfingers and then started layering cookies and cream. The recipe provided exactly the right number of savoiardi for my dish (minus the two we snacked on) and filled the dish perfectly. I did have to whip a bit of extra cream to go on top of the last layer, as I didn’t quite divvy my cream filling evenly. Out of concern for the soupy texture, I decided to freeze my tiramisu overnight.
The next day, I took my tiramisu to a lunch party at my aunt’s house. Between the drive up to Portland and the lunch itself, my dessert thawed just enough to become creamy and still hold together; we didn’t attempt to unmould it. It may not have tasted quite like a traditional tiramisu, but it was still delicious and seemed well appreciated. The savoiardi soaked up the chai flavor beautifully, and the hint of spice played well with the subtly vanilla-orange cream. One of my cousins, who isn’t big on dessert, actually went back for a second piece, so that seems like a good review to me. I thought it was delicious too, but mostly I was just relieved that it didn’t disintegrate into a big sloppy mess. (That happened later, when it completely thawed on the car ride home.)
This was an interesting challenge, and I think I successfully made not only a tiramisu, but one that avoided both coffee and alcohol. I doubt that I would make it again unless specifically requested to do so, but it was fun to try, and I will use the mascarpone and possibly the savoiardi recipes again in the future. Ladyfingers can be hard to find, so it is good to have that recipe up my sleeve. I should note that I greatly preferred this tiramisu half-frozen, which kept the ladyfingers from being unappetizingly soggy and gave the cream filling a texture akin to ice cream. Thanks so much to Aparna and Deeba for the challenge selection, and be sure to check out all the amazing tiramisu creations at the Daring Bakers Blogroll.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
Tuiles – January 2009
Chocolate Valentino and Ice Cream – February 2009
Lasagne of Emilia-Romana – March 2009
Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake – April 2009
Apple Strudel – May 2009
Bakewell Tart and Homemade Jam – June 2009
Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies – July 2009
Dobos Torte – August 2009
Vols-au-Vent – September 2009
Macarons – October 2009
Cannoli – November 2009
Nanaimo Bars and Homemade Graham Crackers – January 2010
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11.27.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Italian at 12:09 am by julie
The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.
This challenge was a lot of fun because although we love Italian food, my family had never even tasted cannoli. I’ve done a bit of frying, so this wasn’t a particularly nerve-wracking challenge, but it did give me a handy excuse to buy a deep-fry thermometer and a spatter screen, which will hopefully make a big difference in the quality of my fry sessions and the amount of clean-up afterwards.
I made my cannoli dough several hours in advance. I had no marsala and briefly contemplated attempting mirin (since it is a sweet wine), but in the end I chose to use plain old white wine, and I used a few tablespoons over 1/2 C, enough to give me a kneadable, but not sticky, dough. The recipe didn’t specify Dutch-processed or natural cocoa powder, so I used the latter. While it hung out in the refrigerator, I made a batch of fresh ricotta to divide between my cannoli and the homemade cannelloni I decided to prepare for dinner, for the sheer synergy of it all. Thank heavens for the pasta roller attachment on my stand mixer!
After dinner, I started heating the oil and dividing my dough into 1″ spheres. The oil was a blend of about 3:1 extra virgin olive oil to canola, partly because cannoli are Italian and I was channeling Mario Batali, and partly because I ran out of canola. While I heated it up to about 375F in a heavy 4-quart saucepan, I rolled out my first four cannoli in the pasta roller, thinning them out to setting 6, which gave me about 5″ rounds to wrap around the forms. I had no trouble with the dough sticking to my roller or shrinking back; actually, it behaved very well and smelled delightfully of cinnamon.
I fried my cannoli two at a time. The oil temperature was a little hard to keep steady; mostly it kept wanting to creep above 375F, so some of the shells got a little darker than I had planned, but none tasted burnt. The recipe called for turning them as they fried, but mine just rolled back whatever way they wanted, so that didn’t really happen. I should also note that I never had a problem with my olive oil smoking, despite temperatures that occasionally got above 400F.
While they fried, I prepared the next two forms, which went in for a bath when the first two came out to drain. I was able to carefully remove the hot forms from the hot cannoli by keeping a thin cloth in each hand and gently twisting the shell free. For the first night’s batch, I then dunked the hot forms into water to cool them quickly for the next round; they caused some spattering in subsequent frying due to water droplets inside the hollow forms, so the next night I just gave them an extra minute to cool and skipped the dunking.
Using my pasta roller, I was able to make a dozen large (5-6″) cannoli shells with half the dough. For the most part they blistered very nicely, and I suspect that has to do with a combination of factors, namely the amount of moisture in the dough and the temperature of the dough relative to that of the oil. My shells blistered better when the oil was at least 375F and the dough was still cold. Several shells near the end of the frying session, with the dough at room temperature, almost didn’t blister at all.
For the first batch of cannoli shells, I made a filling of about 1 C freshly made and drained ricotta, 4 oz cream cheese at room temperature, 1 tsp vanilla paste, and about 1/3 C sugar. It was thick and lovely, and tasted like a cheesecake. I piped it with a star tip into my cooled shells, and had just barely enough to fill the lot. Because it was so thick, I was able to fill the extra shells and keep them in the fridge overnight with very little sog factor.
A few days later, I had time to fry up the other half of the cannoli dough, so I played around a bit more. Using a second batch of fresh ricotta, I made two new flavors of filling, chocolate and banana cream. Both used a base of about 1 C fresh drained ricotta and 4 oz cream cheese; the chocolate was flavored with about 1/4 C sugar and 1/2 C melted semi-sweet chocolate, while the banana cream was flavored with 1/3 C brown sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, and most of a very ripe banana. In addition, I dipped the ends of my cannoli shells into melted chocolate and toasted unsweetened coconut before filling. Both of these fillings were tasty, but the original simple vanilla filling was our family’s unanimous favorite. I should also note that the banana filling was of a moister consistency, and caused the leftover cannoli to soften considerably; I ended up deciding to save most of it to swirl through loaves of pumpkin bread.
We made short work of the lot, and even our 20-month old dug in. These were a lot of fun to make, and incredibly versatile. Every variety we tried tasted great, looked elegant and impressive, and were much easier to make than expected. Since I can have the shells and filling ready in advance, I will definitely be making cannoli for guests in the future, and it would be fun to try savory varieties too. Thanks so much to Lisa Michele for choosing this recipe, and check out all of the amazing cannoli at the Daring Bakers Blogroll!
Lidisano’s Cannoli
Makes 22-24 4-inch cannoli
CANNOLI SHELLS
2 C (250 grams/16 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 T (28 grams/1 ounce) sugar
1 tsp (5 grams/0.06 ounces) unsweetened baking cocoa powder
1/2 tsp (1.15 grams/0.04 ounces) ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp (approx. 3 grams/0.11 ounces) salt
3 T (42 grams/1.5 ounces) vegetable or olive oil
1 tsp (5 grams/0.18 ounces) white wine vinegar
Approximately 1/2 C (approx. 59 grams/approx. 4 fluid ounces/approx. 125 ml) sweet Marsala or any white or red wine you have on hand
1 egg white
Vegetable or any neutral oil for frying – about 2 quarts (8 C/approx. 2 litres)
1/2 C (approx. 62 grams/2 ounces) toasted, chopped pistachio nuts, mini chocolate chips/grated chocolate and/or candied or plain zests, fruits etc.. for garnish
Confectioners’ sugar
Note – If you want a chocolate cannoli dough, substitute a few tablespoons of the flour (about 25%) with a few tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process) and a little more wine until you have a workable dough (Thanks to Audax).
CANNOLI FILLING
2 lbs (approx. 3.5 C/approx. 1 kg/32 ounces) ricotta cheese, drained
1 2/3 C (160 grams/6 ounces) confectioner’s sugar, (more or less, depending on how sweet you want it), sifted
1/2 tsp (1.15 grams/0.04 ounces) ground cinnamon
1 tsp (4 grams/0.15 ounces) pure vanilla extract or the beans from one vanilla bean
3 T (approx. 28 grams/approx. 1 ounce) finely chopped good quality chocolate of your choice
2 T (12 grams/0.42 ounces) of finely chopped, candied orange peel, or the grated zest of one small to medium orange
3 T (23 grams/0.81 ounce) toasted, finely chopped pistachios
Note – If you want chocolate ricotta filling, add a few tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder to the above recipe, and thin it out with a few drops of warm water if too thick to pipe.
DIRECTIONS FOR SHELLS:
1. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer or food processor, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the oil, vinegar, and enough of the wine to make a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and well blended, about 2 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge from 2 hours to overnight.
2 Cut the dough into two pieces. Keep the remaining dough covered while you work. Lightly flour a large cutting or pastry board and roll the dough until super thin, about 1/16 to 1/8” thick (An area of about 13 inches by 18 inches should give you that). Cut out 3 to 5-inch circles (3-inch – small/medium; 4-inch – medium/large; 5-inch;- large. Your choice). Roll the cut out circle into an oval, rolling it larger and thinner if it’s shrunk a little. (A pasta roller also works nicely for this step. Divide the dough into 1″ balls, flatten one slightly, and roll it through from the widest setting to the smallest.)
3. Oil the outside of the cannoli tubes (You only have to do this once.) Roll a dough oval from the long side around each tube/form and dab a little egg white on the dough where the edges overlap. (Avoid getting egg white on the tube, or the pastry will stick to it.) Press well to seal. Set aside to let the egg white seal dry a little.
4. In a deep heavy saucepan, pour enough oil to reach a depth of 3 inches, or if using an electric deep-fryer, follow the manufacturer’s directions. Heat the oil to 375°F (190 °C) on a deep fry thermometer, or until a small piece of the dough or bread cube placed in the oil sizzles and browns in 1 minute. Have ready a tray or sheet pan lined with paper towels or paper bags.
5. Carefully lower a few of the cannoli tubes into the hot oil. Do not crowd the pan. Fry the shells until golden, about 2 minutes, turning them so that they brown evenly.
8. Lift a cannoli tube with a wire skimmer or large slotted spoon, out of the oil. Using tongs, grasp the cannoli tube at one end. Very carefully remove the cannoli tube with the open sides straight up and down so that the oil flows back into the pan. Place the tube on paper towels or bags to drain. Repeat with the remaining tubes. While they are still hot, grasp the tubes with a potholder and pull the cannoli shells off the tubes with a pair of tongs, or with your hand protected by an oven mitt or towel. Let the shells cool completely on the paper towels. Place shells on cooling rack until ready to fill.
9. Repeat making and frying the shells with the remaining dough. If you are reusing the cannoli tubes, let them cool before wrapping them in the dough.
DIRECTIONS FOR FILLING:
1. Line a strainer with cheesecloth. Place the ricotta in the strainer over a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap and a towel. Weight it down with a heavy can, and let the ricotta drain in the refrigerator for several hours to overnight.
2. In a bowl with electric mixer, beat ricotta until smooth and creamy. Beat in confectioner’s sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and blend until smooth. Transfer to another bowl and stir in chocolate, zest and nuts. Chill until firm. (The filling can be made up to 24 hours prior to filling the shells. Just cover and keep refrigerated).
ASSEMBLE THE CANNOLI:
1. When ready to serve, fill a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain or star tip, or a ziplock bag, with the ricotta cream. If using a ziplock bag, cut about 1/2 inch off one corner. Insert the tip in the cannoli shell and squeeze gently until the shell is half filled. Turn the shell and fill the other side.
2. Press or dip cannoli in chopped pistachios, grated chocolate/mini chocolate chips, candied fruit or zest into the cream at each end. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and/or drizzles of melted chocolate if desired.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
Tuiles – January 2009
Chocolate Valentino and Ice Cream – February 2009
Lasagne of Emilia-Romana – March 2009
Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake – April 2009
Apple Strudel – May 2009
Bakewell Tart and Homemade Jam – June 2009
Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies – July 2009
Dobos Torte – August 2009
Vols-au-Vent – September 2009
Macarons – October 2009
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05.14.09
Posted in Cuisines, Dairy, Foodblog Events, Italian, Pastas at 9:43 pm by julie
This month marks the inaugural installment of the Daring Cooks challenges, and the recipe chosen was Zuni Cafe’s ricotta gnocchi. To be honest, gnocchi isn’t my favorite, but I’ve tried making several varieties in the past, ricotta included, and this was one of the best I’ve made, texture-wise.
For this challenge, I decided to step up and use freshly made ricotta cheese, which I’ve also done before, but I only made a half-gallon batch because I feel guilty using up Nolan’s whole milk. I drained my fresh ricotta in a tea towel tied up and set over a strainer. Every so often I pulled it out of the fridge and gave it a good squeeze; weighting didn’t seem to help that much.
By the next day, I had 7.5 ounces of thoroughly dry ricotta, so I halved the gnocchi recipe. When I was ready to make my gnocchi, I actually had trouble with the recipe’s instructions to break up the curds using a spoon or rubber spatula. I recalled another Daring Cook using a ricer to break up the ricotta, but mine was too firm for that either. I ended up popping it in the food processor, along with an extra-large egg, and some lemon zest for flavoring.
Because my ricotta was so very dry, I had no problems with shaping my gnocchi. I used a 2-tsp disher to scoop balls of batter into the flour, so it took no time at all. I was confident enough that I threw caution to the wind and dropped a plateful of gnocchi in the boiling water without doing a test-run; they came out light and fluffy, with no signs of disintegration, and while they cooked, I made up a quick sauce.
I sauced my gnocchi with a simple tomato-butter sauce: half a stick of butter melted with a tablespoon of tomato paste, a pinch of thyme, and a splash of lemon juice whisked in, and a tablespoon of capers sprinkled in at the last moment. Once the gnocchi were cooked, I transferred them into the skillet with the sauce and gave them all a few minutes to meld.
The gnocchi was delicious, rich but light, with the flavor of the fresh cheese shining through. We both liked the sauce, and Jeremy imagined that it had some sort of chile spice in it, to my surprise. In all, it was a straightforward recipe, and I would definitely recommend making the ricotta fresh. I do have to admit that I missed the traditional gnocchi shaping, just because it is really fun to roll those little bits of dough off a fork, but the scoop-and-dredge method probably saved me a little time. If you’d like to make your own gnocchi, the recipe can be found here; and be sure to behold all the brilliant Daring Cooks variations via the Daring Cooks Blogroll.
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04.27.09
Posted in Cake, Dairy, Dessert, Pies & Tarts at 11:18 am by julie
The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. This month, my two biggest personal challenges were not adapting the recipe too much, and then trying to bake it with a baby who has clearly just taken a crash course in separation anxiety. I wasn’t able to bake my cheesecake until yesterday because I didn’t have cream cheese on hand, and Nolan wouldn’t let me out of his sight from 1:30 a.m. (yes, that’s a.m.) until 11:30 p.m.—he spent two hours sleeping on my chest mid-morning and then I managed to get him in the crib for a second nap in the afternoon that lasted maybe half an hour before he realized he was alone and flipped out. He hung out in his high chair and taste-tested graham crackers while I baked the cheesecake, but when it was ready to decorate and I handed Nolan off to his daddy while I piped some whipped cream and cut us slices, he threw a monumental fit the whole time, even though I was in sight of them. Nolan wouldn’t even let me sit next to them to eat my cheesecake; he wailed and flung himself at me the whole time I was trying to eat.
I had Jeremy look through the Junior’s Cheesecakes
cookbook for flavor inspiration and he chose pumpkin swirl. Not the easiest adaptation because of the extra moisture from the pumpkin, so I had to almost hybridize the challenge recipe to make it work. I went with a 9″ springform pan, double-wrapped with heavy-duty aluminum foil. My crust was graham cracker with just a few gingersnaps thrown in for interest. I’ve made pumpkin pies with all-gingersnap crusts, and we don’t much like them because it’s a pretty strong flavor. As you can see, I decided to push it up the edges somewhat.
I used 8 oz of full-fat cream cheese and the rest was reduced fat. (Junior’s says this is a big no-no, but I forgot to specify when I sent Jeremy to the store for them, and we couldn’t taste the difference, honestly.) I flavored my batter with vanilla paste, then removed half and added pumpkin puree and your typical pumpkin pie spices: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves. I stabilized the batter with 1/4 C cornstarch, a Junior’s trick, to offset the additional moisture from the pumpkin. I think I saved too much vanilla batter out, though, because it didn’t swirl very well.
It baked at 350F in a waterbath for about 1 hour 15 minutes, until it was set and just barely starting to color on top. Then it came out and rested on a cooling rack for a good two or three hours before covering with plastic and chilling in the fridge. This was also the Junior’s method, and it set up beautifully with no cracks. By the time it had cooled, the cheesecake had clearly pulled away from the sides of the springform, so I knew it would release nicely.
I decorated my cheesecake with maple almond brittle, which I whipped together during Nolan’s brief nap in the crib. I also made vanilla whipped cream in the food processor, which Rose Levy Berenbaum recommends for piping borders as it creates a dense rather than fluffy texture. I didn’t try anything fancy because Nolan was beside himself, but this was the first time I’ve piped something and felt satisfied with the outcome.
The cheesecake was cool but not completely chilled when I cut it, so the center was a little soft yet. We anticipate that it will be firmer today, but I have to draw the line at cheesecake for breakfast. You can see the two flavors of batter a little bit in the cross-section. The cheesecake came out beautifully, with a definite flavor of pumpkin pie that balanced the richness of the cream cheese. The brittle was pretty sweet, but added a good crunch, and I could taste the hint of gingersnap in the crust. Nolan was far too upset to taste it, but I suspect he will really like it too, and he could certainly use the calories more than his parents can. 
Thanks for choosing this month’s challenge, Jenny! It was a delicious one, and I don’t think I’ve made a cheesecake since that towering German chocolate cheesecake over two years ago. (And please be sure to check out the wild creativity going on in the Daring Bakers Blogroll.)
Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake at Midnight (i.e. Turned into a Pumpkin)
Crust:
2 C / 180 g graham cracker crumbs (I added 4 gingersnaps to my grahams)
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 T / 24 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 C / 210 g sugar
2 extra-large eggs
3/4 C heavy cream
2 tsp vanilla paste
1/4 C cornstarch
1 C pumpkin puree
1 tsp pumpkin pie spices (I used a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves)
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.
2. If you are using a springform, wrap its outside thoroughly with foil. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too – baker’s choice. Set crust aside.
3. Combine cream cheese, sugar, and cornstarch in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream and vanilla, and blend until smooth and creamy. Set aside about a cup of batter for the swirl, then add the pumpkin and spices to the bowl and blend well.
4. Pour pumpkin batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Top with spoonfuls of vanilla batter, and use a knife to gently swirl the batter in a figure-8 pattern and create marbling. Place pan into a roasting pan, set in the oven, and carefully pour boiling water into the larger pan until about halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. Don’t splash any water into the cheesecake!
5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done – this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve. (I used the Junior’s method to bake—1 hour 15 minutes in the oven with the waterbath, and 2 hours resting on a rack at room temperature before chilling. Not sure if the cornstarch makes the difference here, but it’s never cracked on me.)
Pan note: The creator of this recipe used to use a springform pan, but no matter how well she wrapped the thing in tin foil, water would always seep in and make the crust soggy. Now she uses one of those 1-use foil “casserole” shaped pans from the grocery store. They’re 8 or 9 inches wide and really deep, and best of all, water-tight. When it comes time to serve, just cut the foil away.
Prep notes: While the actual making of this cheesecake is a minimal time commitment, it does need to bake for almost an hour, cool in the oven for an hour, and chill overnight before it is served. Please plan accordingly!
Maple Almond Brittle
1/3 C Grade B maple syrup
1 T light corn syrup
pinch salt
1/3 C sugar
1/2 C sliced unblanched almonds, toasted lightly
In a heavy saucepan combine the maple syrup, the corn syrup, the salt, and the sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil over moderate heat, stirring and washing down any sugar crystals clinging to the side with a brush dipped in cold water, and boil the mixture, undisturbed, until it registers 300 degrees F on a candy thermometer. Stir in the almonds quickly and pour the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with foil or a silpat. Spread the mixture as thin as possible with a metal spatula and let it cool. Break the almond brittle into serving pieces.
Source: Scaled down from Food Network.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
Chocolate Éclairs – August 2008
Lavash Crackers and Dip – September 2008
French Yule Log – December 2008
Tuiles – January 2009
Chocolate Valentino and Ice Cream – February 2009
Lasagne of Emilia-Romana – March 2009
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10.09.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream, Italian, Pies & Tarts at 7:37 pm by julie
I apologize for the long delay in getting back to the story… Nolan came down with his very first cold last week, and I caught one to commiserate, so we’ve generally been pretty fussy and sleepless around here. For once, the little guy fell asleep on Daddy’s chest instead of mine, so here I am. Anyway, our friends brought over a beautiful cake from Konditorei for the party, but I was feeling like an overachiever and wanted to provide another option, particularly in view of all the luscious fruit that was in season. To keep it relatively simple, I opted for a freeform summer fruit galette, filled with local peaches. Thinking I might combine the peaches with something else, I stopped by one of the berry stands, even though I don’t much care for berries personally. Blackberries are particularly low on my list because I find them to be so gritty and sour, not to mention pernicious and thorny. But somehow, for the sake of politeness, I found myself agreeing to sample all the berries at the stand, and was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I eat my very first non-sour blackberry, but I also realized that boysenberries were in season, and impulsively bought two pints.
I used all my fresh fruit to make a peach-boysenberry crostata following the summer galette recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. (What is the difference, by the way? In some recipes, galettes and crostatas appear to be the same thing, just French and Italian, respectively.) I made the pie crust in my food processor the day before the party, then rolled it and filled it and baked it off the next morning. I’ll definitely use this crust again, as it produced very flaky results and wasn’t too fussy to work with. Wish I could say the same for the peaches, which refused to slip their skins neatly despite two blanchings. The galette was absolutely simple to put together, and looked beautiful until I poured the simple custard over the fruit: it spilled right over the sides of the crust and burned, so it was fortunate I had the foresight to be baking on a silpat. I’m still not quite sure what it added to the finished galette, and it made such a sloppy presentation that I saved it as a tidbit for the guests of honor to sample, rather than putting it out for everyone. It was, however, delicious, both at room temperature and sliced straight from the fridge the next day. Jeremy wasn’t really interested in trying it at first, but said it had really grown on him by the time we finished it off, and I, who love nectarines but not peaches (especially cooked ones), am now very tempted to make the custardy peach pie from the same book next summer.
Since I still had over a pint of boysenberries leftover after the galette, I offered to make Jeremy some boysenberry sorbet or something. He countered with a request for vanilla ice cream with boysenberries swirled through it, so I adapted David Lebovitz’s raspberry swirl ice cream. The recipe calls for slightly mashing and macerating the berries with sugar, then layering it through freshly churned custard-style vanilla ice cream. This sounded good in theory, but when I actually made the ice cream this way, my berries froze up rock solid in the ice cream and made a difficult, if tasty, eating experience, not to mention that the seeds were really bothering me in this application. If I were to do this again, I would either just macerate the berries and spoon them over the ice cream as we served it, or puree and sieve the fruit with a higher sugar content (to keep it from freezing rock solid) before layering it much more thinly in the ice cream, or just stir it right into the custard and lose the swirl aspect. It looked pretty, but just wasn’t worth the effort, and we ended up eating around the berries, which was a terrible waste.
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09.09.08
Posted in Chocolate, Dairy, Dessert, Ice Cream at 11:17 am by julie
One night a week or two ago, I was craving brownies. Nolan was still awake, but I thought I could pull it off pretty quickly anyway while he was hanging out with his daddy. I opted for the semi-sweet variation of my favorite brownie recipe, which I’d never tried out before. (Usually I go for the bittersweet version, but we have a ton of semi-sweet chips.) As soon as I measured out the chocolate, however, Nolan started fussing, and I ended up holding him and dictating the recipe to Jeremy. The batter turned out more like cookie dough, so much so that he had to pat it into the pan, but the recipe had warned that the cocoa butter content of the semi-sweet chips would create a stiff batter, so I brushed aside my doubts.
Twenty minutes went by, and I managed to get Nolan down for a nap just in time to pull the pan from the oven. I knew immediately that there was a problem, because the brownies looked heavy and dull. A touch confirmed that they were hard as rocks, and suddenly it struck me: the flailing baby had distracted me so much that I forgot to tell Jeremy to put two eggs in the batter. No wonder my brownies looked more like a huge square sablé cookie. Good thing we had that 10-lb bag of chocolate chips from Costco—I darted around the kitchen whipping up a second batch of brownies, this time double-checking myself at every addition. Into the oven they went, and I pondered what to do with the evidence of my failure. I could probably have tossed them out and Jeremy would never have been the wiser, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw out something that still tasted fine. I had just decided to break them up for ice-cream mix-ins when Nolan woke up again and off I went.
A few days later, once gooey, delicious Brownie Batch #2 had been eaten up, I went back to Batch #1, crushed it up into cookie crumbs in a ziploc bag, and mixed it into freshly churned Philly-style vanilla ice cream. The result was like upscale cookies-n-cream ice cream, so fantastic that I will be sorely tempted to “forget” the eggs in future batches of brownies just for that purpose. The recipe is below, in case anyone else would like to make the same mistake.
Brownie Crumbles for Ice Cream
10 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
5 T unsalted butter
2/3 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C flour
Preheat the oven to 350F, and line a 9×9 pan with foil or parchment, extending up past the edges of the pan on two opposite sides for easy removal after cooking.
In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the chocolate chips, butter and sugar. Microwave just until chips and butter are melted (for mine, I did 60 seconds at 80% power, stirred, then back in for 30 seconds at 60% power); stir with a wooden spoon to combine, then add the vanilla and salt.* The batter will be thick like cookie dough. Press into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes, until the brownies are cooked through. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan using the parchment or foil edges and allow to cool to room temperature on a rack. Crumble into chunks and crumbs for stirring into vanilla ice cream, or eat shards like cookies.
*If you want to make actual brownies with this recipe, beat in two cold eggs one at a time at this point. The batter will be thick, glossy and pourable. Bake for about 20 minutes, and remove when the top is shiny and crinkly, but the insides are still moist.
Source: Adapted from Bittersweet, by Alice Medrich
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08.31.08
Posted in Chocolate, Cuisines, Dairy, Dessert, Foodblog Events, French at 12:15 am by julie
I’ve just been waiting for another Daring Bakers challenge to feature pate a choux, ever since the remarkable gateaux St. Honore that inspired me to apply for membership last year. So when this month’s challenge was announced to be Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs, I couldn’t be happier: my first pate a choux, my first pastry cream, and actually my first éclairs period. In view of all these firsts, I decided to stick with the recipe, despite the creative leeway permitted by our hosts, Tony Tahhan and MeetaK, and make both chocolate glaze and pastry cream.
I’m still not sure what happened to August, but before I knew it, the challenge posting date was looming, so I stocked up on whole milk, eggs and bittersweet chocolate, and looked for an open time slot in the baby’s schedule. Jeremy sat down to watch a Red Sox game with Nolan a few days ago, so I pounced on the opportunity and set to it.
Chocolate sauce: check. (I still don’t quite understand why this step was necessary, but oh well.) I cut the sauce recipe in half and still had too much. Next came the pate a choux. I wasn’t sure how long to cook the dough to dry it out, but it came together really quickly without incident. I stuffed the resulting dough into my pastry bag with no tip attached, and piped my éclair shells. They seemed really small. I was tempted to try different shapes or sizes, but worried about differing bake times, so I restrained myself.
Into the oven they went, and I fastidiously followed the instructions about rotating and switching the pans, and cracking the oven door. After 20 minutes, as called for, I proudly pulled my beautifully golden, puffy éclair shells from the oven—and watched them turn into sad little pancakes. I recalled having read some comments that this could be caused by underbaking, so they went back in the oven for several more minutes, with another tray switch to keep them from cooking unevenly. They puffed up again, felt hard and sounded hollow, but flattened again after a minute or two out of the oven. I was worried about overbaking them, so I ended up just calling it good enough, and moving on to the pastry cream.
By this point, Nolan was sleeping like a little angel on Jeremy’s chest. The pastry cream turned out to be oddly familiar. Am I crazy, or is it basically just pudding? I think I made pretty much this same stuff for a chocolate cream pie a week or two back. Anyway, it tasted good, but never got quite as smooth as I would have liked, despite sieving it. It was also still a tad loose for piping after its ice bath, but would have firmed up a little better with some fridge time.
I started making the chocolate glaze and slicing my shells, finding the end in sight and optimistically thinking I could finish the whole project before the baby woke up again. Then Dustin Pedroia hit a grand slam, Jeremy yelled excitedly, and Nolan instantly woke and started crying. Sigh. The rest of the assembly was a blur: I frantically sliced through the impossibly thin shells, then dipped their top halves into the runny glaze, a messy proposition because it dripped everywhere and took its sweet time setting up. I then shoveled cream into my pastry bag with the star tip, hurriedly piped out the filling, sandwiched everything together, and gave two to my husband for sampling while I calmed Nolan down. The rest went in the fridge, where I hoped the glaze would set up a little more firmly.
It was the first time since I joined the Daring Bakers that I have completed a challenge with a sense more of frustration than accomplishment. My pate a choux shells were nothing like what they should have been. My pastry cream was essentially chocolate pudding. The chocolate glaze had the seemingly extraneous step of making chocolate sauce first, leaving me with tons of leftover sauce, glaze, and pastry cream—and 4 stranded egg whites as well. The glaze was too runny to spread with an icing spatula, and dipping them made a mess. For that matter, I managed to dirty half the dishes in my kitchen making this recipe, partly because I was rushing to get through it and didn’t have time for my usual practice of washing up as I went. All I got for my trouble was a trayful of small, flat, sloppy éclairs, and my husband ate the two I brought him with a fork and a shrug, and said they tasted right but éclairs aren’t really his thing.
Once I got Nolan fed and napping again, I went back to the kitchen and tried one of my éclairs from the refrigerator. The glaze had set, and the pastry cream firmed up as well, melding together the halves of the shell so they no longer slipped to and fro. The flavor was good, the pastry tasted properly cooked, and the cream filling was delicious. They still weren’t pretty, but at least each éclair appeared as a single unit. I ate another one, and another, and my frustration faded. Jeremy decided they were much better cold as well, and I caught him standing behind the refrigerator door eating éclairs surreptitiously later that day.
So thanks to Meeta and Tony for choosing this recipe. It was an excellent learning experience, if not an out-and-out success, and that’s what the Daring Bakers are all about. I don’t know that I would make this particular recipe again, but I definitely still want to master pate a choux, so I’ll continue playing with it in the future. At least now I have a baseline to start from. Next time I need to do a chocolate glaze, though, I’ll go back to Alton Brown’s no-fuss recipe, which has worked beautifully for me. Now please go check out the Daring Bakers blogroll to see some fantastically puffed and stuffed éclairs in every possible flavor combination.
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns – September 2007
Bostini Cream Pies – October 2007
Tender Potato Bread – November 2007
Traditional Buche de Noel – December 2007
Lemon Meringue Pie – January 2008
French Bread – February 2008
Perfect Party Cake – March 2008
Opéra Cake – May 2008
Danish Braid – June 2008
Filbert Gateau – July 2008
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08.18.08
Posted in Dairy, Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream at 10:40 am by julie
Since we had to suffer through several straight days of 100F+ weather, I was determined to make a batch of ice cream to combat the heat. The Orange Popsicle ice cream from The Perfect Scoop was the perfect candidate for several reasons: It gave me a means to use up a big bag of sweet little clementines I’ve been trying to eat singlehandedly for several weeks; it called for half-and-half and sour cream, both of which I was able to run to our little corner market and pick up in a matter of minutes (they don’t carry whipping cream); it is a blender recipe, which is awfully convenient for chilling and later pouring into the running ice cream machine; and most importantly, it isn’t a custard-based recipe, which means no heat required!
I was a fan of orange creamsicles growing up, and with my addition of vanilla extract (the original calls for orange liqueur, which is not my thing), this recipe matches that flavor beautifully, with a creamy texture and refreshing hit of citrus. I predict that this ice cream won’t last the weekend in our fridge. But I have to admit that I actually liked the textural contrast of crunchy orange popsicle and creamy vanilla ice cream in the original treat, so I’m also tempted to make plain vanilla ice cream sometime and top it with orange granita to get that citrus crunch.
Creamsicle Ice Cream
2/3 C sugar
Grated zest of 5 clementines
1 1/4 C freshly squeezed clementine juice
1 C sour cream
1/2 C half-and-half
1 tsp vanilla extract
In a blender, pulverize the sugar together with the zest until very finely ground. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until the sugar is entirely dissolved. Chill thoroughly in the refrigerator before churning in your handy-dandy ice cream maker.
Source: Slightly adapted from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz (p. 50).
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08.04.08
Posted in Dairy, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 5:53 pm by julie
The first week of August is World Breastfeeding Week, an event designed, as the name implies, to promote breastfeeding on a global scale. As you may have noticed from my previous posts, breastfeeding is a big part of my life right now, even though I have to come at it a little sideways. Nolan has had latching issues from Day One, so I’ve been exclusively pumping for him since Day Two. It is a huge time investment—I just did some quick math, and estimate that I’ve spent at least 360 hours attached to that pump since Nolan’s birth 19 weeks ago (that is a conservative estimate, based on 8 20-minute sessions per day… it sometimes takes 30 minutes per session, and I pumped 9-10 times per day the first month or two, while establishing my supply). With all that effort, I produce just barely enough for Nolan on a daily basis, with perhaps a few ounces to store in the freezer against future need. But it is such a worthwhile investment, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have both the supply and the time to pump for my son.
I realize that breastfeeding may not be an option for every family, but it is so incredibly beneficial for both mother and baby that it is certainly worth attempting, even for a short period of time. I am bound and determined to at least reach 6 months, and a year or more if possible.
In case you were wondering what set off this little discourse on my foodblog, you can thank Linda at Make Life Sweeter! for hosting an event called Got Milk? in honor of World Breastfeeding Week, for which this post is my entry. Anyway, off the soap box and on with the food.
I had some praline paste leftover from the filbert gateau even after whipping up a batch of praline ricotta pancakes. It didn’t amount to much, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, so I used it to flavor some vanilla pudding instead. I adapted a recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, using 1% milk rather than whole milk. It worked out alright, but I imagine the texture would be a bit creamer and less gloppy with a higher fat content. I’m not convinced that her method of using the food processor to make the pudding was worth the extra dishes, however; the stove-top tempering method has always worked just fine for me.
Praline Pudding
2 1/4 C 1% or whole milk
6 T sugar
3 T cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
3 egg yolks
2 T butter, room temperature
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 C praline paste/powder
Bring 2 cups of milk and 3 T sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan. Meanwhile, in a blender or food processor, blend remaining 3 T sugar and egg yolks for 1 minute. Add remaining 1/4 cup milk and pulse just to mix. Then add cornstarch and salt and pulse a few more times.
With the machine still running, very slowly add hot milk mixture. Process for a few seconds more, then pour everything back into the saucepan. Whisk without stopping over medium heat until the pudding thickens and some bubbles pop on the surface. Do not let it boil completely, so if it hasn’t thickened yet, turn down the heat. Scrape the pudding back into the machine (avoiding any scorched spots) and pulse a few more times. Add butter, vanilla, and 3 T praline paste, and pulse until evenly blended.
Pour the pudding evenly into 6 4-oz ramekins or cups. Press a piece of plastic wrap over each surface. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Serve with a sprinkle of praline powder or some caramelized nuts.
Source: Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan (p. 384).
Praline Paste
1 C (4 ½ oz.) hazelnuts, toasted/skinless
2/3 C sugar
Line a jelly roll pan with a silpat, or lightly buttered parchment.
Put the sugar in a heavy 10-inch skillet. Heat on low flame for about 10-20 min until the sugar melts around the edges. Do not stir the sugar. Swirl the pan if necessary to prevent the melted sugar from burning. Brush the sides of the pan with water to remove sugar crystals. If the sugar in the center does not melt, stir briefly. When the sugar is completely melted and caramel in color, remove from heat. Stir in the nuts with a wooden spoon and separate the clusters. Return to low heat and stir to coat the nuts on all sides. Cook until the mixture starts to bubble. Remember – this is an extremely hot mixture. Then onto the parchment lined sheet and spread as evenly as possible. As it cools, it will harden into brittle. Break the candied nuts into pieces and place them in the food processor. Pulse into a medium-fine crunch or process until the brittle turns into a powder. To make paste, process for several more minutes. Store in an airtight container and store in a cook dry place. Do not refrigerate.
Source: Great Cakes by Carol Walter
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05.29.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dairy, Dinner, Foodblog Events, Italian, Meats, Pastas, Poultry at 9:34 am by julie
I was looking to make something a bit more interesting than plain old spaghetti for dinner the other night, working with limited time and ingredients. My usual quick fancied-up spaghetti sauce, which I’m not sure I’ve ever posted here, adds a bit of cream to jarred sauce. Since I didn’t have any cream on hand, I was looking for something else to provide a similar effect, and came across a tomato-mascarpone sauce that fit the bill. With a little sauteed chicken for protein, it was a very tasty meal that didn’t take all evening to put together. The leftover mascarpone gave me the perfect excuse to make banana-Nutella pancakes for breakfast the next day too, and you can’t beat that!
This post marks my return to Presto Pasta Nights, hosted by the lovely Ruth of Once Upon a Feast. Hopefully it won’t be quite so long before my next entry!
Angel Hair with Chicken and Tomato-Mascarpone Sauce
2 T olive oil
1 T unsalted butter
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 cloves garlic, roughly sliced
1/3 C white wine
Salt and pepper
1/4 C onion, diced
1 14-oz can fire-roasted tomatoes, chopped, with juices
1 tsp dried basil
4 oz mascarpone cheese
1/2 lb angel hair pasta
Heat the olive oil and butter in a skillet over medium heat; add garlic and saute until just beginning to turn golden brown. Add chicken, season with 1/4 tsp kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper, and saute until just cooked through. Add wine and stir to bring up the browned bits from the bottom of the skillet, then turn heat to medium high and reduce liquids.
Remove chicken from pan and add onion; saute until just translucent, then add tomatoes with juices, and basil. Simmer for several minutes to combine flavors, then cool slightly while you boil water for the pasta. Using a blender, puree the tomato-onion sauce with the mascarpone until homogenous, then return to skillet with chicken, adjust seasonings if necessary, and keep warm until the pasta has finished cooking.
Drain cooked pasta, and toss with the sauce. Top with shredded parmesan cheese and serve.
Source: Adapted from The Cookmobile
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