06.27.09
Posted in British, Cuisines, Dessert, Dips & Spreads, Foodblog Events, Fruits, Pies & Tarts at 12:55 am by julie
The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England. This was a fun one for me because I’d heard of bakewell tarts, but never seen or tasted one. They turn out to be surprisingly easy to make, and scrumptious with tea—go figure!
Although there are a variety of ways to make a bakewell tart, our recipe was composed of a rich shortbread crust topped with layers of jam and frangipane, a moist almond filling. We were allowed the option of using either store-bought or homemade jam, and since it is strawberry season AND right around Father’s Day and our 10th wedding anniversary, I made fresh strawberry jam for Jeremy, his favorite.
Now, I’ve done jams a few times in the past and it is not my forte. I tend to get paranoid that it hasn’t cooked long enough, thereby far overcooking it and ending up with fruit candy that won’t come out of the jars. This time I carried home 4 pints of gorgeous Oregon strawberries a mile home from the market, and promptly dumped every last one of them out on my front porch as I tried to dig my key out of my pocket. An inauspicious start, to say the least. Since my berries were now all bruised and dirty, the clock was really ticking. I immediately rinsed them all off individually and used them right away, since bruised and/or wet berries will spoil in the blink of an eye. Considering my previous track record, I decided to try my hand at freezer jam, which apparently uses an ungodly amount of sugar and gives the berries a kind of artificial citric acid tang. It was totally easy to do, but I think it didn’t really show off the natural flavor of the fruit, and it set up pretty soft. I followed the instructions exactly, but my berries were quite juicy, so I wonder if that affected the outcome. In the end, I really think I just need to come to terms with traditional jamming and keep practicing.
The next day, with 5 pints of sort-of set strawberry freezer jam at the ready, I proceeded with my tart. I did my crust in the food processor, and it came together in no time. After giving it a short stint in the fridge, I rolled out my crust and got it into the tart pan with a little help from plenty of bench flour and a jumperoo to keep the baby from making a break for the dog’s water bowl every 10 seconds. Then we made frangipane to the tune of “Oh Susannah” and “London Bridge is Falling Down” while the crust set up in the freezer for 15 minutes. Quick smears of jam and almond filling, and the tart went into the oven for half an hour.
It came out darker than I expected, which may be because 200 degrees Celsius is actually 392F, not the 400F that the recipe indicated. Guess I should have looked up the exact conversion. I got it out in time, but I wouldn’t call this frangipane “tanned”.
We gave it a few minutes to cool and set, and then dove into it with dollops of vanilla whipped cream. It was absolutely delicious; all three of us loved it, and it only lasted us about two days. I think I see many more bakewell tarts in our future! In the meantime, be sure to check out all the daring tarts at the blogroll.
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06.02.09
Posted in Baby Food, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Snacks at 11:48 am by julie
Nolan is teething something fierce right now. His first set of molars should be emerging at any moment—or at least I hope they will, because his gums are incredibly swollen and he has a scary-looking purple hemotoma on one side. Fortunately, he is a little trooper and tolerates the discomfort with very little fussing, but it really helps to have something to chew on. What does all this have to with my food blog? I’ve started making homemade teething biscuits of a sort for Nolan.
It all started back in April when we bought a box of graham crackers for my Daring Bakers cheesecake. I gave Nolan some to snack on while I was working, and he loved them. But after using some for the crust (and giving half the box to Jeremy for snacking at work), there weren’t many crackers leftover for Nolan. And anyway, store-bought graham crackers, for some reason, are full of hydrogenated fat and high fructose corn syrup, ironic since their inventor, Sylvester Graham, was firmly against the use of additives and highly refined ingredients. I’ve made homemade graham crackers once before, but they were more a grown-up cookie, for making into s’mores, ice cream sandwiches, or other desserts, and I wanted more of an everyday snack cracker, so I turned to The Petit Appetit Cookbook: Easy, Organic Recipes to Nurture Your Baby and Toddler
, one of my few “baby food” cookbooks, which contains a very simple graham cracker recipe. It turns out crackers that are pretty darn bland by grown-up standards, but Nolan seems to love them, and they are great for those swollen gums. Baby biscotti is next on the list to try out!
Greatest Graham Crackers
I adapted this recipe for the food processor, and added some cinnamon for flavor. I use all sorts of small cookie cutter shapes to make these a little more fun, and have seriously considered adding a sprinkle of sucanat or turbinado sugar to the tops for a little more interest (but I know it would just drop off and get everywhere as Nolan eats them).
1 C AP flour
1 C whole wheat flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 C unsalted butter
1/2 C honey
1/4 C whole milk
Preheat oven to 400F. In a food processor, combine the flours, cinnamon and baking powder, and pulse once to blend. Add butter, cut into chunks, and pulse until it disappears. Add the honey and pulse until incorporated; dough will be damp. Finally, add the milk and pulse just until dough forms a ball. (Alternatively, you could cut the butter in by hand and just stir the dough together with a spoon.)
Flour your work surface and roll out the dough as thin as you like, 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick. Cut into squares or use cookie cutters to shape dough, and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Prick with a fork if desired and brush with a little extra milk. Bake at 400F for 10 minutes if 1/8″ thick, or 12-15 minutes if 1/4″ thick, until cookies are set and golden brown around the edges. Cool completely on a wire rack before serving.
Source: Adapted from The Petit Appetit Cookbook: Easy, Organic Recipes to Nurture Your Baby and Toddler, by Lisa Barnes.
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06.01.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Dessert at 4:39 pm by julie
This edition of Leftover Night is dedicated to desserts, all of which incorporate chocolate because we are irredeemable chocoholics. First up, we have The Chewy, from Alton Brown’s chocolate chip cookie episode. Yes, I tried another one. We found this recipe pretty disappointing, unfortunately. While it was “soft-baked” after the fashion of a store-bought Chips-Ahoy cookie, that really isn’t what I think of as chewy—I prefer the denser chewiness of a cookie that is full of brown sugar and slightly underbaked. But the real problem we had with these cookies was the amount of salt called for. We didn’t notice it too much when they were fresh from the oven, but by the next day, they tasted so salty as to be nearly inedible. I won’t be using this recipe again, but if you try it, I would highly recommend easing back on the salt levels.
Next up we have the chipster-topped brownies in Baking: From My Home to Yours
. These baked up nice and thick, but were sort of unremarkable warm from the oven, which surprised me a little. I really couldn’t even taste the chocolate-chip cookie topping until they had cooled. Don’t get me wrong, these were very tasty, moist, decadent brownies; I’m just not sure they were worth the extra effort and dirty dishes involved in the cookie layer.
Finally, we have millionaire’s shortbread, which tastes just like a caramel Twix bar. These are a little messy to slice and eat, but absolutely delicious. I made mine with half AP and half rice flour for that extra crispness, and my caramel was homemade dulce de leche. Shortbread isn’t Jeremy’s favorite, but he liked these a lot too, so they go in the permanent recipe file.
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05.28.09
Posted in Cuisines, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Fruits, German at 8:59 am by julie
I’m a little late with my DB challenge this month, but better late than never, right? The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague
by Rick Rodgers. I was pretty excited about this challenge because I’ve never made a classic strudel before, and I’ve had my eye on this book for some time now. But I still ended up waiting until the last possible moment to make it, possibly because my 14-month old finally decided he was tired of sitting around and learned how to crawl. I’ve spent the last month chasing him around and trying to keep him from upending the dog’s water bowl. Anyway, last night I finally buckled down and made my strudel. I stuck with the filling called for in the recipe, just because we love apple strudel, but now that I know it isn’t that intimidating to make, I hope to experiment with other varieties also.
I started out with the dough, which was lovely and soft and made a tiny amount. I think I hand-kneaded it longer than the recipe suggested, just because it was so agreeable to work with. Then I wrapped it up in plastic wrap and left it alone for probably two hours while making and eating dinner.
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Finally I couldn't put off the stretching portion of the recipe any longer. I used my portable dishwasher as a little table---it is about 2.5 feet square---and a large flour-sack towel as a tablecloth. The dough rolled out pretty darn thin just using the rolling pin, and I gently stretched it over the edges of the table by sliding my hands under it. I ended up with a few small holes around the edges due to my long fingernails, but it actually went much more smoothly than I could have expected, and I was pleased with the thinness I was able to achieve.
I left the rum-soaked raisins out of the filling, just because I don’t like them. My apples were Cameos, so I cut down the sugar a bit to make up for their lack of tartness. They were starting to get juicy from contact with the sugar, so I drained them a bit before spreading over the dough. My dough ended up more square than rectangular, so I just picked an end and got to it.
Rolling up the strudel was the other part that had me worried, but it worked out alright. I didn’t really get the need for the cloth while I was stretching it out, but it totally made sense once it came time to roll. More difficult was the transfer from the cloth to the baking sheet—I was really afraid that I would tear holes in the dough trying to get the cloth out from under it, but it survived all the tugging.
After 30 minutes in the oven, my strudel came out looking golden brown and delicious. Difficult as it was to wait, we gave it a good 45 minutes before cutting into it, and it was still piping hot inside. I had hoped to serve it alongside some vanilla or cinnamon ice cream, but the timing just didn’t work out. However, it was delicious all on its own—the strudel dough came out paper-thin and crisp, just as it should, and the filling was pure apple, not too sweet or spiced. I was a little worried about sogginess, but the bread crumbs certainly seemed to take care of that issue.
This was a really fun challenge, so many thanks to the hosts. Maybe now I’ll be brave enough to try out one of my Italian strudel recipes too. Be sure to take a look at the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see all the amazingly creative strudel variations out there!
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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.
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04.07.09
Posted in Appetizers, Baby Food, Bread, Cake, Chocolate, Dessert, Dips & Spreads, Nuts, Grains & Legumes at 6:41 pm by julie
Amazing as it may seem (well, to me at least), our little boy turned one year old near the end of March. My mom flew out for the celebration, which was a small family affair combining Nolan’s birthday party with his dedication. I was mostly busy straightening up the house for company, but I made several savory hors d’oeuvres for our guests to snack on.
This is my homemade grissini with whipped spinach and chickpea hummus. The grissini was a recipe from the King Arthur cookbook, and made enough breadsticks for a week’s worth of snacking. I seasoned them variously with za’atar, smoked paprika, sesame seeds, and Parmesan cheese, and Nolan loved them, with or without a dip in the hummus. I also stuffed some split baby bell peppers with a mixture of feta and ricotta, but those were all eaten up before I remembered to get a photo.
Of course, the highlight of Nolan’s birthday party had to be his cake. Knowing that Nolan is already a big chocolate fan but not wanting the mess of chocolate frosting, I went with the devil’s food white-out cake in Baking: From My Home to Yours. It made the perfect baby birthday cake: moist and chocolatey, but not too big or fussy, and with that crumb coat, it just begged to be eaten with chubby little fingers.
Nolan had never eaten sweets more than a pinch at a time, so we weren’t sure how he would react to a whole slice of cake. But he dove right in without the slightest hesitation and proceeded to eat the entire thing. He didn’t even make all that big a mess, considering. My husband also posted a little video of Nolan chowing down on our main website if anyone is interested.
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02.28.09
Posted in Cake, Chocolate, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Ice Cream at 12:18 am by julie
You may have noticed that I left out any mention of a dessert in my Valentine’s Day post. But no Valentine’s Day (or any other holiday—or most weekdays, for that matter) would be complete without a dessert, preferably something chocolatey. And this month’s Daring Bakers challenge filled that need admirably. The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge. Decadent chocolate cake and ice cream—who could ask for more?
For me, the most difficult part of the challenge was acquiring a good quality chocolate on a shoestring budget. Although most of the time I am content to use bittersweet Ghirardelli bars from the grocery store, I was determined (in the spirit of the challenge, of course) to try out a brand we’d never eaten before. Chocosphere carries more options than I could shake a stick at, but I went with Valrhona Le Noir Gastronomie, a 61% bittersweet. I decided against a higher cocoa content because I was concerned about bitterness, considering the lack of sugar in this recipe. The 1Kg bag of fèves I purchased was more expensive than I would have liked, but on the plus side, I now have just over a pound of excellent chocolate leftover for another recipe.
The cake itself was incredibly easy to make. I went my usual route and melted the chocolate and butter in the microwave, and then it was just a matter of stirring in the yolks and folding in the beaten whites. I was stumped at first by the 50 sq. in. pan requirement, because I don’t have any springforms or cake pans smaller than 9×9, a deficiency I will someday have to rectify. But after taking my tape measure to every dish in the kitchen, I went with a small ceramic casserole of about 6×9, and couldn’t resist saving a bit of batter for my lone heart-shaped ramekin. The casserole went in for 25 minutes, and the ramekin joined it after the first 10.
They both turned out beautifully, and I had no problems with sticking. I decorated the heart with a simple cloud of powdered sugar, and attempted a stencil on the larger valentino that also incorporated cocoa powder.
As for the ice cream element of the challenge, I’ve tried countless ice cream recipes since receiving an ice cream maker a year or two ago, more than one of which was a variety of vanilla. And I was out of heavy cream. So I took the liberty of making peanut butter frozen yogurt instead, adapted freely from several recipes in The Perfect Scoop. It turned out very well, and beyond the obvious perfections of the chocolate-peanut butter pairing, the sweet tang of the yogurt proved a good counterpoint to the bittersweet chocolate. Too bad Nolan isn’t quite old enough yet to sample peanuts.
All in all, this was one of the more straightforward challenges, and I have to admit it was a welcome one. The cake really does showcase the chocolate you choose. The texture is a bit like crumbly velvet at room temperature, and reheats to fudgy decadence with just a few seconds in the microwave, a perfect Valentine’s dessert that lasted us several days. Thanks so much to Dharm and Wendy for choosing this month’s challenge, and check out all the other chocolate valentinos at the Daring Bakers Blogroll.
Peanut Butter Frozen Yogurt
3 C plain yogurt, whole or lowfat
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C brown sugar
about 2/3 C peanut butter (I used natural, and didn’t really measure)
1 tsp vanilla
Combine all ingredients in a blender, and process until homogenous. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight, then churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
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01.29.09
Posted in Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Foodblog Events, Ice Cream at 6:16 pm by julie
This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux’s Finest Desserts. And thank goodness they chose something so light and versatile, because I wasn’t able to try my hand at one of the recipes until this morning!
Payday isn’t until tomorrow, so the cupboards are looking a little bare. Part of this Daring Bakers assignment was to pair our tuiles with something light: a dip, a mousse, a sorbet, something fruity, you get the idea. I had the ingredients to make a chocolate-coconut sorbet from The Perfect Scoop, so I decided to pair that with a simple vanilla tuile. I was able to mix up the sorbet base before Nolan woke up this morning, but he’s been getting up earlier and earlier these days (a bit sad for me, as I was able to get so much done in the mornings when he slept until noon), so he got to supervise the tuile construction from his high chair. I cooked up the egg yolks leftover from making the batter, and they kept him busy while I worked.
The pizza dough I made the other night had screwed my Kitchenaid mixing bowl too firmly into the base for me to remove myself (this always seems to happen when I knead dough in it), so I took a chance and whipped up the tuile batter in my food processor instead, making sure to pulse as little as possible to avoid overbeating it.
I first made a single test-tuile by simply smearing some batter on my silpat with a spoon, trying to keep it thin and even, and pulling it out of the oven when the edges were just starting to brown. I shaped it over my rolling pin for simplicity’s sake, and although it came out a little spongy, eventually it did harden into a little cookie-taco thing. I would definitely recommend doing test-rounds, because the recipe was not very specific about how thick the batter should be, and with such delicate wafers, the difference between a soft cookie and a burned one could be a matter of seconds since every oven bakes in its own time.
While the cookie sheet cooled down, I decided to make a quick stencil for my next batch of tuiles, realizing how much easier that would make spreading the batter thinly and uniformly. I didn’t really have time to get creative with the shaping, since Nolan’s interest in the egg yolks was flagging, so I cut out long strips to shape into curls, and a wider rectangle to make cigars. I would have loved to make ice cream cones for the sorbet, but lacking any sort of cone shaper, that will have to wait for another time, maybe this summer. For the stencils, I just cut my shapes out of a piece of cardboard salvaged from a Costco-sized box of Mini-Wheats, slightly more sturdy than your average cereal box, but still less than a millimeter thick. The batter spread easily over it with my new off-set spatula.
I curled the strips around #13 straight knitting needles to make my corkscrews. It took a few rounds to get the right balance of baking time (6 minutes in my oven was ideal for the stenciled shapes) and shaping speed. I think I burned a few of my fingers a little in the process—those cookies are HOT while they are malleable!—but eventually I got a few decent curls, and I even played around with decorating my batter as the recipe suggested.
This photo shows my learning curve. I had definitely improved by the time I ran out of batter, but I could really use more practice. I can understand how people could really get into the creative aspect of making tuiles: they are incredibly fun and versatile, with thousands of options for shapes and flavors and whimsical decorations. Having made these, I now want to try making Parmesan salad cups and almond-butterscotch lace ice cream cups and fortune cookies and tuile flowers and butterflies and all number of things.
I had to photograph the sorbet fresh from the churn so it started melting really quickly, and I wasn’t able to get a very good photo of it. I’ll have to try again once it’s ripened in the freezer for a bit. It tasted great with the tuiles, however; they made delicious little scoops that tasted just like fortune cookies. I was surprised at the rather small yield of the batch, and under my present circumstances, it did seem like kind of a lot of work for the outcome, since they require rapt and immediate attention that doesn’t combine well with the demands of a 10-month old. But it was still fun to try, and whetted my appetite to play with tuiles again in the future.
The recipes are available at our hosts’ websites, and be sure to check out the wild creativity of all the other Daring Bakers at our blogroll!
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01.01.09
Posted in Cake, Chocolate, Cookies & Candies, Cuisines, Dessert, Foodblog Events, French at 12:01 pm by julie
The cake was a big hit at the party. I sliced it almost straight from the freezer, and it could have benefitted from a few more minutes of thawing. A large sharp knife for better leverage, warmed with hot water, helped make the slicing easier. Everyone seemed to like how it tasted too, but it’s hard to go wrong with so much cream, sugar and chocolate! I was pleased to note that the finished cake wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. The milk chocolate mousse was pretty darn sweet on its own and in the little parfaits I made up with the leftover cake scraps and coconut crisp. But in its frozen state, surrounded with dark chocolate icing and ganache, it all seemed pretty well balanced.
As I mentioned above, I had leftovers of many of the elements. I made four little mousse parfaits, and the next day I used my leftover ganache to make truffles, rolled in coconut crisp crumbs.
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12.30.08
Posted in Chocolate, Cuisines, Dessert, Foodblog Events, French at 9:34 pm by julie
As you may have guessed, I have not been doing much cooking lately, at least of the variety that anyone would care to read about. December was an especially lean month for us financially, and I’ve not even been to a proper grocery store since Thanksgiving. Then we had over a week of snow and ice storms leading up to Christmas, a nearly unheard-of phenomenon in Oregon: it left us housebound, and I had to do some seriously creative pantry-diving to come up with meals for Christmas, sans onions and potatoes. We had chicken piccata over couscous for Christmas Eve, with no-bake cookies for dessert so that I could save my last three eggs for Belgian waffles in the morning. Our wafflemaker disagreed with that plan, however; it died on the first attempt, and I ended up using the batter for pancakes instead. Christmas dinner was an Asian-inspired beef stew made with two small tri-tip steaks and all my remaining root vegetables: 2 tiny carrots, a huge shallot, and a daikon radish. I seasoned it with soy, garlic, sesame oil, and 5-spice, and it was actually very good; I didn’t miss the potatoes at all.
Anyhow, we got rain on Christmas Day that washed away most of the snow, so the next day we finally ventured out into the wide world again to pick up a few essentials. In my case, that meant ingredients for this month’s Daring Bakers recipe, which I was determined not to miss out on. This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand, a rather more stylized variety than last year’s traditional genoise-and-buttercream sculptures. These consist of several different layers—dacquoise, ganache, crisp, and creme brulee—all frozen together interlaced with mousse and coated with a chocolate glaze. We were given a range of flavoring options to choose from for each layer, and I decided to go with an Almond Joy theme maximizing the bits and bobs of dark, milk, and white chocolate I had in supply. My cake is still in the works, as it will be the centerpiece for a New Year’s Eve get-together at our home, but I’ll do a supplemental write-up with photos of the sliced cake after the fact.
I started on Sunday with the creme brulee. In keeping with the Almond Joy theme, I decided to flavor my cream with toasted almonds, which I chopped and steeped in the hot cream for an hour. While it infused, I kept myself busy toasting unsweetened coconut and making the lace crepes for the coconut feuillete (crisp) layer. I’ve never had authentic French gavottes, and mine certainly didn’t look like the photos provided, but they were crisp and lacy, so I think they fit the bill, generally speaking. I used a rolling pin to press the feuillete mixture as thin as possible between waxed paper and my Silpat, but it was still a fairly solid slab of about 1/4″ thickness, so I ended up chopping it into crumbles for easier slicing in the finished product.
My creme brulee layer mixed up very easily, but took much longer in the oven than the recipe indicated. After an hour in a water bath at 210F, it had not set at all, and I ended up raising the temp to about 250F and adding half an hour or so to the cooking time. In the end, I may have overcooked it a bit, but I was concerned about it liquidizing in the completed yule log, so I wanted to err on the cautious side. The cream also seeped around the edges of my parchment and stuck to the loaf pan a bit; once it was frozen and ready to be layered, I had to do quite a bit of prying with a hot knife to release it from the pan, but it came out intact.
The next day I made the milk chocolate chantilly cream for my mousse layer, and a coconut-almond dacquoise, using equal parts almond meal and unsweetened coconut. I used a loaf pan as my mold, and decided to try lining it with dacquoise, since the sheet pan I used turned out to have the exact measurements I needed. My cake was a little sticky releasing from the parchment, and required a little finessing to insert into the loaf pan intact (especially since I lined the mold with parchment that kept shifting about). I didn’t bother with piping my mousse—a spoon seemed to work out just fine and cleaned up much more quickly. I did have to trim one edge of the brulee layer to get it to fit, but the rest of the layers filled up the mold just right. Then I wrapped my remaining dacquoise cap while the layered portion chilled in the freezer, and made little layered desserts with the cake scraps and leftover chantilly and coconut crisp.
This morning, before Nolan woke up, I made the dark chocolate ganache to finish assembling my log. I’ve never made ganache that incorporated caramel before, and it came out shiny and silky smooth with a nicely complex flavor. Then I gave the finished cake several more hours to freeze before attempting the glaze and decorations this evening.
For my decorations, I decided to go fairly simple and use chocolate leaves, which I’ve never made before. They were incredibly easy to make: wash some fresh camelia leaves from my front yard, paint their undersides with melted chocolate, and pop them in the fridge to harden. The only remotely tricky part of the operation was removing the leaves from the delicate chocolate without melting it all over my warm fingers.
I chose to make the dark chocolate glaze, but found that the recipe did not make remotely enough to cover my entire log. I spread it around as well as I could, but the ends were still totally bare, so I threw it back in the freezer and made a second batch of glaze. If I make this again, I will certainly double the glaze recipe from the start. Because my glaze went on in two applications, it was rather lumpy and dull, but nothing a liberal application of sliced almonds and chocolate leaves couldn’t fix.
I’ll amend with a few more photos of the sliced cake on New Year’s, to show the layers and give our verdict on how it tastes, so check back! In the meantime, be sure to look at all the other French yule logs on the Daring Bakers’ blogroll.
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