french kissing

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I've never made macarons before. Not to get them confused with macaroons, which are the American version made with coconut. These however, were fantastic. They're made with almond flour or meal (recipe here). And apparently they're really hard. Well- I didn't find them really hard to make yummy, but I did find it difficult to make them pretty. These are delicious- chewy, sweet, and almond. I do think that you have to think carefully about the flavors and filling, because I can easily imagine this becoming sickeningly sweet and therefore not as yummy.

Take 1: Plain almond macarons with an orange dark chocolate ganache filling. Okay, except bumpy and cracked.

Take 2, part 1: Green tea macarons with plain dark chocolate ganache filling. Better, but not as much rise, and still many were cracked. But these are definitely my favorite- not too sweet, and I love the green tea/chocolate/almond combination.

Take 2, part 2: cinnamon apple macarons with plain dark chocolate ganache filling. Almost complete failure. Some of them burned, almost all of them cracked- if not while baking, then while trying to remove them from the sheet. And they were a little on the sweet side.

Someone made a bacon macaron with cream cheese/cheddar filling. I don't know how I feel about that, because the cookie base is mostly egg whites and sugar. But it's intriguing. The one I really really want to try is a pumpkin pie macaron, but the grocery store was out of pumpkin. (I KNOW, right??)

snug as a bug in a rug

Finally finished my rug:

It's about 2.5 ft in diameter, a pretty decent sized rug. Though I sewed the tube together a bit too tight so it kind of curls up unless you pat it down when you pick it up and put it back down again.

My sister was like "why are you making a rug?? you should make something useful!" only seriously, what was I going to do with the colors that went into this rug? I certainly didn't have enough of anything to make anything else, and at least here the colors are supposed to be a little odd.

Projects: mittens for my sister, and possibly Christmas presents for the rest of my family. Not that it's easy to think of something to knit for my parents, because they don't really use any of the stuff I've made them in the past. :P

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.

dobos torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

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This sounded fantastic- chocolate buttercream, thin layers of sponge cake, and hazelnuts. Though it turned out I didn't use that many hazelnuts (12, to be exact), since I didn't put any on the side of the cake.

I went for a square cake. It didn't turn out as prettily as I had envisioned- it never does. :P But it still tasted pretty good.

This was the first time I made a cake where you beat the egg whites and yolks separately, but it was a beautiful, light cake batter.

The cake was baked in layers- thin layers. I got a workout wrestling with the oven door, but I can get it to work with two heavy-duty oven mitts on and a bit of elbow grease.

Mmmm, chocolate buttercream.

The caramel topping was the hardest part, and I probably put way too much caramel on the cake (a cake layer, cut in pieces, with caramel poured over it.) I kept watching it boil, thinking "dontnucleatedontnucleatedontnucleate"- and it didn't. Perhaps the first time I've made a wet caramel where it didn't nucleate or burn. But this one had lemon juice in with the water and sugar, perhaps that helped? And I'm sure using superfine sugar helps too.

Anyway. I put it together, and added some raspberry jam, because who doesn't like chocolate and raspberries? cake-chocolate buttercream-jam-repeat.

I was not very happy with how the caramel pieces looked on top, I should have done triangles and put them around the edge of the cake but didn't think about it until too late. And the caramel was too thick on the cake, so it was difficult to eat. We have a stack of caramel pieces sitting in the fridge (the cake is gone).

I got 8 layers of cake out of the recipe, I think my layers were probably thinner than the recipe intended, but I think it worked pretty well. So my cake was 7 layers, plus the layer that was used for the topping.

On my baking wish-list is a piping bag with a set of pastry tips. I had a little buttercream left, where I could have done some pretty decorations but I don't have the tools. Also on that list is a stand mixer, but I think the piping bag + tips is considerably cheaper.

My torte did taste pretty good, but it wasn't stunning. Maybe the disappointing presentation detracted from the taste for me. Still, my dad liked it a lot (maybe he does have a sweet tooth after all).

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.