petits fours

I've had an urge to make my own petites fours. Why? I keep seeing them for sale on gilt taste, and I can't help but think that while those may be very tasty, I could do that. So I did a little googling, and voila!

I have to say, I'm very pleased. I started with the blog post from bakerella on pound cake and petites fours. Other articles I read said to use a sponge cake, but I think the pound cake was brilliant- it's a very tasty cake in and of itself, and it held up nicely to the cutting. I didn't have any cream cheese so I used a tried-and-true pound cake recipe I had on hand:

Pound cake:
2 3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 c granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream butter and sugar until smooth, beat in eggs one at a time and add vanilla. Slowly beat in flour mixture.

Normally this gets baked in a 10-in bundt pan for over an hour @ 325F. This time I put it in a jelly-roll pan and baked it for about 25 min @ 325F.

I also don't remember where I got this recipe from, or I would give credit where it's due. Normally I add 2 cups of blueberries (fresh or frozen) and some chocolate chips, if I'm feeling like it. And, I don't know how this happened, but last night I completely ran out of granulated sugar. Completely. I made up the difference with brown sugar, it was totally fine. And honestly, probably more flavorful than with white sugar.

Cool the cake, and then cut into 8 sections- I'm rather bad at cutting them into equal-sized portions, but it was ok. Then slice each section in half horizontally. There are some nice pictures on the bakerella blog. She said to apply a small amount of syrup to each piece- I didn't have a spray bottle so I tried just using a spoon. Way, way too much simple syrup. The cake started to fall apart as the liquid soaked through, after I added layers of jam and stacked it. So I skipped the syrup and just layered jam and cake. I used some blueberry rhubarb jam that I made over the summer. I also skipped the marzipan because I didn't have it and also I don't really like it that much.

The jam filling.

I decided to use a chocolate glaze instead of a fondant glaze. 1) because I love chocolate and 2) because I find fondant to be cloyingly sweet. I used a recipe from allrecipes for a shiny chocolate glaze. I doubled the recipe because I didn't want to run out. I think that was for the best, though I probably had a good cup or so of glaze left over. Still trying to decide what to do with that. I melted this over a pot of water on the stove rather than in the microwave, so that I could keep it warm over the water. I just turned off the heat and left the bowl on top of the pot.

I have no photos of the glazing process, because I only have two hands. I ended up with chocolate everywhere, possibly in my hair. But basically, I put the cake piece on a fork, and used a spoon to coat the cake with the glaze. It's pretty thin, making it super easy to pour over while it's hot. I then placed it on the silpat to cool. And then, after all of the cakes were coated, I melted some white chocolate, added some food coloring, and drizzled. :D I need to find a better method to drizzle chocolate (I am currently just using a fork dipped into the chocolate) because it sometimes results in globs of chocolate. And again, chocolate all over the kitchen.

So pretty!

feliz cumpleaños a mi padre

I dunno, I felt like it sounded better in spanish. :)

Vanilla butter sponge cake (a la Julia Child), with an apricot cake filling (I cheated- this was the canned stuff in the baking aisle) and vanilla whipped cream frosting. Wording written with chocolate ganache b/c that's what I had on hand. I topped the cake with the extra apricot filling because (1) it looks pretty and (2) that meant I didn't have to do another layer of frosting to cover the cake crumbs (I should have anyway to cover the sides better, but it was late on Wed and I wanted to go to bed).

I think I may have finally found a good frosting that will set and is not uper sweet. I used this sturdy whipped cream frosting recipe from all recipes, only I used marscapone cheese instead of cream cheese and added about 1/2 packet of unflavored gelatin (dissolved in about 2 tbsp of hot water). This stuff tastes vaguely like the cream filling of tiramisu (it's actually very close, just without the eggs and marsala wine), and I have eaten the leftovers by the spoonful. That's not bad, right? Cream cheese would of course be much more cost-effective than marscapone cheese, but marscapone cheese is actually super easy to make. I would just need (1) time, (2) a store that sells something other than ultrapasturized whipped cream (i.e. not Jewel or Dominicks), and (3) a sieve. When I've made this in the past I've used paper coffee filter rather than the cheesecloth, b/c I found that the cheese mixture just drained right through the cheesecloth and I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen. But I always forget to cool it before pouring it into the cheesecloth, so perhaps that's the problem.

baby brioche

It seems it's either drought or downpour here. Third post in two days. :P

So that brioche dough I made yesterday? I made some baby brioches. Katy very nicely sent me a set of 4 mini-loaf pans for my birthday (back in October). This is the first time I'm using them. The pans are super cute and lovely, but I don't bake a lot of things that need a loaf pan (quick breads are not really my thing, regular breads get just the pizza stone from me). Anyway. Instead of the one regular brioche using 1/2 the batch and one chocolate brioche, I made 2 mini regular brioches and 2 mini chocolate brioches. Let me just say, the chocolate brioche is wonderful and I am cutting myself off for tonight. Haven't tried the plain brioche yet, but I have some plans for brioche french toast in the near future...

up close

mmm, chocolate

I still have half the batch of dough left (I made enough dough for two one-pound loaves). I think I may bake it and then freeze the loaves, and make a brioche bread pudding in the future. I miss the brioche bread pudding from Sarah's Patisserie (well, I miss everything from Sarah's Patisserie, I have not found another bakery that does it quite like Tammy).

it's been a while...

It's been a while since I updated here. So, a quick recap:

December involved a lot of cookies. This was my first time with royal icing. They look a lot better from this distance than they did up close.

I tried being creative with the circles.

gingerbread men made of sugar cookies

sandwich cookies with strawberry-blueberry jam

turtle thumbprints- chocolate cookie, chocolate caramel ganache, pecan garnish

January involved Eugenia's baby shower, I made this baby blanket for her little Nathan (who was born in the middle of a blizzard!)

February was Kristin's baby shower, but I didn't actually get this to her until March. As far as I know, baby's not here yet.

For my mom's birthday, I made her a cake from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." The cake was delicious, but the icing was a bit too sweet. Sometime, I will find a frosting that is not super sweet. I think I'm just going to have to use a whipped cream frosting (so no butter, less sugar) and add some kind of a stabilizer so it doesn't separate. Dad's birthday is coming up in a few weeks, perfect chance to experiment! ;)

orange sponge cake with orange icing

And February was also a bake-off at church. It was a busy month. I made tiramisu. Kevin says this is cheating, because tiramisu doesn't involve baking, but I will have you know that I made the ladyfingers from scratch. I also baked a biscuit jonde for a shell. Thanks to the daring kitchen for the recipe. I am of course completely remiss as a Daring Baker, and haven't done any of the challenge recipes in months. Somehow it's less motivating to bake when you don't have an audience. And then, their recipes are always so involved... I'm getting lazy.

the biscuit jonde. piped out the chocolate pattern, froze, then spread the cake batter over it. 

tiramisu in the springform pan

unmolded in all its glory

I actually wish I had a picture of this sliced, because it had nice layers (from what I saw). Unfortunately, as it was for the church fellowship time, I only saw one person's slice, and most of it ended up rather mutilated. But, even though several people didn't get to try it, I still managed to win the bake-off. ;) My brother told me that I was a baking bully, because everyone else brought cookies. But I didn't know everyone else was going to bring cookies. Tiramisu is one of my go-to recipes though, it's never anything less than amazing, so if that's cheating then I'm sorry.

Finally, tonight I made some blueberry mochi cake. I managed to forget to add the evaporated milk until after I had added both the rice flour and the blueberries, so my batter was shockingly purple. The baking toned it down considerably, but it's still obviously blueberry. These are delicious. They're mini-muffin sized, but I've still eaten about 10 so far, which means... more than I care to think about. I've been meaning to try this for a while and I will have to make them again (this time adding ingredients in the proper order, :P) I'm pretty sure that the original recipe was in regular-sized muffin tins, so I reduced the bake time, but it was still about 25 min total. I made 72 mini mochi cakes. Roughly half are going to my parent's house this weekend, I have the feeling my dad will really like these (don't tell him that butter went into the recipe! shh!! my dad is always on a diet).

I have a baking extravaganza planned. I just threw together a batch of brioche dough, and I'm hoping to bake it tomorrow. I've got my fingers crossed that this brioche recipe works, because I've tried it before and it's been a dismal failure. But I'm using the recipe from Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day. This is the first time I'm trying anything that isn't the basic master recipe in the first few pages of the book. :P Not from anything against other kinds of artisan breads, I just love basic french bread (and this one develops a bit of a sourdough flavor as you let it sit in the fridge) and I'm also lazy (as discussed above). Also, I don't really keep ingredients on hand for everything, despite what you might think. I don't know if that makes me a poor excuse for someone who calls herself a baker, but seriously, how many different kinds of flour does one girl need? In my opinion: one. All-purpose. Haha. This is why I'm not a healthy baker. (Wheat flour is also way too dense for me, but I read somewhere that whole wheat pastry flour is much lighter. My only problem is I'm sure it's also more expensive, and I'm trying to keep expenses down these days.)

Anyway. We shall see how the brioche goes. I've made enough for 2 batches, so I'm going to try regular brioche first, then a chocolate brioche. I'm excited!!

a pick-me-up

Caramel. A bit of sugar + heat. And it turns into this ooey-gooey goodness.

Add a little bit of red wine and it becomes this fantastic, complex but sweet mixture. Then add some chocolate and it's like heaven.

I have this recipe for a toffee apple tart that I'd previously improved by adding red wine to the toffee topping. Tonight I made it that much better by stirring some chocolate into the hot caramel sauce. And it was heaven on a plate.

I have about 1/2 cup of the caramel sauce left over. I could have poured it all over the tart, but then I wouldn't have any left to do things like dip the stickies made with the leftover pie crust and pour it over ice cream (another night). Or just spoon the stuff into my mouth.

My November issue of Food & Wine has a recipe for a caramel croissant bread pudding. Nigella Lawson, you are a genius. Stay tuned. I have frozen croissants waiting in the freezer for such a time as this (thank you, Trader Joe's). And I haven't even gotten to all the Thanksgiving recipes yet. I love the November issue.

Baking makes the world a better place. And it makes the apartment smell good. :)

baby cupcakes, free to a good home ;)

Chocolate cake, orange buttercream, topped with a dried blueberry.

I think I finally found a buttercream recipe that I like. American buttercream from the "Cooking for Engineers" site. Only downside is that the vanilla version is a bit more yellow than I'm used to (because the recipe includes the egg yolks). Can't win it all, I suppose.

please note: delivery not available. Sorry, no refunds.

nutella chocolate chip cookies

I was going to make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, when I realized I didn't really have enough peanut butter. So I made these, kind of making it up as I went along.

1.5 sticks butter (12 tbsps)

1 c brown sugar

1 c white sugar

1 tsp (approx) vanilla

1/2 c (approx) nutella

2 eggs

2 c flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

12 oz chocolate chips

cream first five ingredients until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, blending well after each addition. Mix flour and baking powder, add to sugar/butter/egg mixture and blend. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded teaspoon onto a cookie tray. Bake at 350F for approx 12 minutes. Cool on tray for a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Love.

note: next time, I might cut down the sugar slightly. 2 c of sugar is a LOT of sugar. On the other hand, they spread nicely and were chewy but crunchy all at once...

happy birthday daddy!

Today is my dad's birthday. So I made him a cake. This time the frosting turned out much better than my last sad attempt at a birthday cake.

Vanilla cake, vanilla frosting. I used whipped cream flavored with a bit of green tea powder in the layers, but I still didn't have enough frosting to really cover the outside of the cake.

And that frosting worked better than my attempt in February, but it's so ridiculously sweet it's like a diabetes attack. I used this recipe from Gale Gand at the Food Network. I'm still searching for a good frosting recipe that's smooth and creamy without being uber-sweet. I think I might go for a cream cheese frosting, but replace the cream cheese with marscapone. I would do whipped cream, only whipped cream doesn't stay set long enough for my liking. I don't really want to use gelatin (and I've tried in the past- I must be doing something wrong because it never seemed to work quite right).

The cake was good, and has a very tight crumb, but I kind of prefer a more spongy cake, personally. I used this recipe from an old Daring Baker's challenge, but I replaced the lemon zest/lemon extract with vanilla and it was just fine.

Things to work on include my piping skills and my lettering skills. But my cakes are getting better! I even had enough energy to glaze the fruit on top so it didn't dry out. :)

happy birthday mommy!

My mother's birthday was last Thursday, so I baked her a cake. I think this made up for the fact that both my siblings and I miscalculated her birthday and had convinced each other that her birthday was Friday. (This is the peril of keeping track of your mother's birthday via the lunar calendar- but we've never gotten it wrong before, I'm not entirely sure what happened this year.)

Anyway. It's just a vanilla cake with blueberries and vanilla buttercream. And kiwi and blackberries on top (the strawberries at the grocery store were not fresh at all). It tasted good, but the buttercream sucked. I'm giving up on real buttercream until I get a stand mixer that can handle it and incorporate the butter quickly enough. My hand mixer just doesn't have the horsepower.

See what I mean about the buttercream? It's not supposed to be grainy like this, but it's because the butter wasn't soft enough when I added it and it didn't melt into the meringue quickly enough. Bah. For my dad's birthday I'm going to go with a whipped cream frosting, it's just easier.

tiramisu kisses

I decided to make french-style macarons again today, only I had trouble deciding on a flavor. Then I remembered the instant coffee in the cupboard, along with the marcapone cheese I had made a while back (when I was contemplating making canoli for the Nov Daring Bakers challenge- that never happened, mostly because I was in charge of Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and who has time to fry canoli when all that's going on?).

So I made little tiramisu kisses. Coffee meringue cookies, sandwiched with a white chocolate marcapone filling and some chocolate ganache (because honestly, who doesn't like chocolate ganache?). I used a different macaron recipe from the Oct 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge, this time the one that came in my Dec Food&Wine by François Payard. He uses soft ball stage sugar to make the meringue, and I have a soft spot for Italian meringue after working at Sarah's. I omitted the red food coloring and added 2 tsps of instant coffee to the meringue before folding in the almond/sugar mixture.

The cookies turned out well, only some of them kind of exploded in the oven. The rest puffed beautifully and had the distinctive feet. My personal theory is that the cookies on the bottom tray (that kind of exploded) heated up too quickly and thus exploded.

Marscapone filling:

2 oz white chocolate, melted

8 oz (approx) marscapone cheese, softened.

-combine white chocolate with marscapone, mix well.

The assortment of cookies:

One that kind of 'sploded:

Perfect:

The only thing about french macarons is that they remind me of little hamburgers and thus I always have to remind myself that no, actually, they are sweet and fantastic.

gingerbread house!

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

I finally got around to baking/making this today. Kevin and I were originally going to do some post-Christmas shopping, but then it was snowing and didn't stop. So I baked instead.

Okay. So I tried the recipe from the Scandinavian Baking Book first, but it was way too dry, and then I made the mistake of leaving it in the fridge for way too long and not wrapping it so that it was airtight. So that batch of dough went in the trash (sad). I wasn't feeling like trying that recipe again, and I didn't have the ingredients for the other recipe (I don't keep heavy cream on hand, though maybe I should), and since it was snowing (still) and the snowplows had not come by after they did at about 10:30 am, I used Google and found a recipe by Chris Broberg. This was simple, I had everything I needed, and the cookies tasted great fresh out of the oven. After a few hours, they had hardened up- good for gingerbread house-making, not so good for eating. But still, yummy. Kevin was dipping his gingerbread men in milk (I think it might work better in hot cocoa, since he soaked them for a while to get them soft).

Anyway.

I used a (very rough) hand-drawn template for my house:

Baked gingerbread house pieces:

Next step was the royal icing. I obviously didn't use enough egg whites, because the icing was way too stiff to pipe (at least out of a plastic bag- I'm working on getting some pastry bags and tips- as in, I asked for them for Christmas, but we haven't taken the effort to go out and get them yet. And yes, I realize it's past Christmas at this point). After it started flinging out of the bowl and covered my brother's sweater, I decided we were done. Since it wouldn't pipe, I used my hands. This was definitely a two-person job: I got my fingers sticky with icing as I slathered it all over the joints of the house, and my brother was useful and held the walls together until they could stand up on their own. As far as I know, the thing hasn't fallen apart (but I left it in the kitchen about an hour and a half ago, so who knows what may have happened by now).

Here's a slideshow of (part of) putting the house together. We used Skittles and Starbursts for decorations, mostly because I didn't have the forethought to get any holiday-related candy or food coloring (I keep forgetting we have no food coloring in the house). The Skittles and Starbursts are leftovers from Halloween. Halloween 2008. But Skittles and Starbursts are pretty generic, and it's not like I was planning on eating this house later anyway (I think my brother may have other plans).

What Kevin plans on doing with the gingerbread house when I'm not looking:

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is a rotating view of the house. I tried setting it to music, but it was way to large to upload (since I looped the video 11 times to make it last as long as the song), sadness.

This was a lot of fun. Maybe I'll do it again next year (possibly with icing that pipes properly). :)

vol au vents

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

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I've done homemade puff pastry before, but the cheater version where you grate frozen butter and mix it with flour and a little bit of water, and roll it out like usual. It's easier to incorporate the butter and the rise was pretty similar to the real thing. This one was much harder, and took much longer. I think it was worth the try once, but if I want homemade puff pastry again, I'll probably do the cheater version. Though I probably have about a pound of this stuff sitting in the freezer waiting for inspiration.

I really like puff pastry, but my main issue with it is that very few things you make with puff pastry last more than a day. And I much prefer sweets to not (because who in my house is going to eat not-sweets that I make?), but it was hard to think of anything terribly creative.

So the shells turned out nicely, and I filled them with a simple chocolate cream (really simple- instant pudding mix + milk + heavy cream) and fresh fruit. They were pretty, and yummy, but a lot of work for not very much. I dunno. Maybe someday if I get extremely creative, it will be something to experiment more with.

Vague thoughts about using the rest of the pastry for palmiers or similar cookies, since those last (and are delicious). But only vague thoughts.

I hope next month's challenge is more appealing to me. I guess the problem with this one was- who was going to eat it? I couldn't really transport it because then the pastry would get soggy and gross. I couldn't make a bunch and leave it for a week for my dad to snack on. It had to be consumed within a few hours of assembly, and that just isn't happening with my current schedule.

Anyway. Que sera sera.

cookies and cupcakes

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

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So, I'm at home. And so is my brother. This is the brother who said to me the other day "I'm so glad you love to bake!" And when I asked him why, he replied "because I LOVE to eat!!"

So when time came for this month's baking challenge, I asked him what he wanted, marshmallow cookies or milano cookies. He voted for the marshmallow first. (Then he realized that this would take a while, since the cookies had to bake, the marshmallow had to set, and the glaze had to set. He was mildly annoyed, being one for instant gratification. But he got all the cookies he could eat and then some, so y'know, sometimes patience is its own reward.)

Apparently, homemade marshmallows are little more than an Italian meringue with some gelatin in them. Who knew?

Anyway, these cookies are a not-so-sweet cookie topped with a dollop (that's such a nice word, "dollop", hehe) of marshmallow, dipped in a chocolate glaze. They were pretty good. Real marshmallows stay sticky though, who knew?

Pre-dipping:

a tray of extra marshmallow:

Dipped cookies:

I really wanted some white chocolate or something to drizzle over these, but alas, we had nothing I could think of to use at home. Que sera, they were good anyway.

So, at home, I'm dealing with my mother's oven, which is broken (the oven works fine, it's the door that requires two people to shut it after you open it), so I made these cookies in the toaster oven. It's a nice toaster oven, and fairly large as toaster ovens go, but it's still just a toaster oven (I have to be careful, I might hurt the toaster oven's feelings). And so I only baked about a third of the cookie dough for the first round. Then I got lazy, and made squares instead of circles (easier to cut) and made s'mores. I just cut up the tray of leftover marshmallow and sandwiched them between cookies and orange chocolate ganache (leftover from the milano cookies). They were pretty good, except the cookie part was too thick. I'll have to go thinner next time.

s'mores:

I did eventually make the Milano cookies as well. I love Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. And now I know how to make them. This time I had my brother help me wrestle with the oven, so the cookie baking went much faster, but since the oven door doesn't open well and the glass window needs serious cleaning, I ended up burning a lot of these, how sad. However, they were delicious and tasted pretty similar to the pepperidge farm cookies. My sister was home last week and tried some and was like "huh. this actually tastes like a milano cookie. good job." Actually, I got the same response from everyone in my family. Let's be fair, they don't actually know what I mean when I say "I like to bake" because I got really into baking in grad school. And I don't bake at home as much, mainly because the oven's broken.

A tray of milano cookies:

My brother decided that this would be a good arrangement for the cookies. Hardy-har-har.

And then, I had 8 egg yolks left over (plus a good deal of orange chocolate ganache). So what did I do? I made sponge cake. Or more accurately, sponge cupcakes.

vanilla sponge cake with an orange chocolate ganache topping.

Even my dad likes the cupcakes. And my dad isn't a big sweets fan.

fin.

bakewell tarts

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. Recipes are on the host blogs.

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Alrighty. I think I mentioned that I joined The Daring Kitchen, which has monthly baking challenges and monthly cooking challenges. This was this past month's Daring Baker's Challenge (which I think I was supposed to post yesterday, which was the reveal date, but I totally forgot).

I made mini bakewell tarts. Mostly because things in miniature are awesome (in my opinion). These appear to be pretty similar to the baked tarts they sell at Sarah's, where I was working (my last day was last Thursday, how sad), in terms of pastry crust + fruit (jam here) + almond cream (frangipane). I made these for Bible study snacks for GCF, they disappeared pretty quickly.

I stood in the jam aisle at Wegman's to figure out what to use. I wasn't quite in the mood to make my own jam (though I did do that this past weekend with the roomies, we made strawberry freezer jam but that's another story). I decided for blackberry, plus some canned pears, and some chocolate (not all together, as you'll see in the pictures below). Emily has rubbed off on me, I couldn't just use pear jam (though pear + almond is a pretty delicious combination), because then the whole thing would've been beige.

So, pre-filling:

blackberry jam

blackberry jam + canned pear slices

chocolate chips

Coming out of the oven:

I put an almond slice on the plain blackberry ones- I think this caused some confusion at bible study, cause these were the most that were left.

And a little pear slice on top of the blackberry-pear:

And a little chocolate chip on top of the chocolate ones:

They were, suffice to say, delicious. I will have to make these again sometime. Perhaps a larger tart next time, but I love bite-sized things. They're just that much cuter.

And so pretty inside!

I had a lot of dough but only a little bit of frangipane (the almond cream filling) left, so I made this free-form "large" tart- by large I mean it was probably about 5 inches in diameter. A layer of jam, some pear, and almond filling. Mmm.

I made 1 batch of frangipane but 2 batches of the shortcrust pastry dough, to make 48 mini-tarts. (This makes sense, since when you reduce size, for the same volume [frangipane filling] you'll increase the surface area [pastry crust]. See, some of my education is occasionally useful. Only occasionally.)