August Daring Bakers: Swans!

So, every month you see the "Mandatory blog checking lines" somewhere in my Daring Bakers posts.  The lines that follow the statement are used by the Daring Bakers coinstabualry to make sure we've completed teh challlenge each month.  The lines are composed by Lis of the Daring Bakers.  She's our chief baker and wonderwoman extraoridinaire.

Check out this month's Mandatory blog checking lines:

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

Gulp.

Deep. Breath.

Gulp.

 

Yep.  I was this month's host.  How crazy is that?  Hosts are usually the elitest of the elite of the Daring Bakers.  It's not something I ever wanted to do, but I was called to do it so I jumped right in.  Luckily, there are a lot of safety nets!  Thanks, Lis, Audax, Scooney, and all the other bloggers who helped me out this month.

On top of the challenge, Mr Boom and I actually boarded a plane and flew to Hawaii to our niece's wedding.  In the seventeen years we've been married, Mr Boom and I have been on a plane exactly twice.  This was his first time flying over water.  Lis had to post the challenge for me since we were gone on August first, the day the post goes up. Oh, and and top of that?  BIG fires all around us this month.  Several friends lost homes, pets, and livestock.  We had foster animals at our house, and then were a few hours away from having to evacuate ourselves.

Interesting month.  Needed friends.  Had friends.  Was a friend.  It's all good.

Anyway, swans!

I've wanted to make pate a choux swans since I was in third grade.  Thirty two years later, I'm finally getting around to it.  What I found to be even more exciting than my own sense of accomplishment, was the thrill of seeing other bakers' amazing creations.  We had ladybugs, crabs, sharks...we had chocolate, vanilla, berry....we had it all and we had a lot of fun.

Here's the challenge as presented.  I hope you'll try it out!

Daring Bakers June challenge: Battenberg cakes

The June Daring Bakers challenge was so yummy, and was one of the challenges that showcased individual bakers' kitchen personalities to the hilt.  Choose a flavor, choose a color, choose a shape...

Blog-checking lines:
Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

Battenberg cakes are essentially a charming combination of two or more types of cake, presented in a neat little checkerboard pattern, with a choice of filling and a firm covering wrapped around. For my first attempt, I made a pink and yellow Battenberg, covered with my first attempt ever at making a fondant.  The cake was so pretty, and the apricot glaze between the layers was super tasty in combination with the almond and vanilla cakes.

My second attempt was a chocolate and coconut rendition of an Almond Joy candy bar.  I simply altered the original recipe by adding some unsweetened toasted coconut to the cake batter, and then adding some unsweetened cocoa powder to one half of the batter.
Yum.

This post has taken just short of three hours to put up. It was due a month ago, but I had do many problems I gave up.  Since I'm hosting Daring Bakers in August, I decided I'd better get caught up. This has been just short of hell.

I'm not in love with Blogger. 

I am in love with Daring Bakers and Battenberg Cakes!

February Daring Bakers Challenge: Panna Cotta and Florentine Cookies

First off, thanks for the kind e~mails and support you've shown regarding this.  Things are progressing okay, although we found out on Saturday evening that the sister apparently died from cancer about five months ago.  Her husband didn't seem to think that was news worth sharing.  Like I said--a tight knit family...

 
Moving on!

The February Daring Bakers challenge was a canvas calling for all sorts of self-expression.  I thought that after last month's challenge, no challenge to come could ever come close to calling for the creativity inspired by the joconde imprime.  I. Was. Wrong.  Furthermore, I'm really happy to wrong!  How often is that the case?  Not very, even though I'm wrong a good deal of the time. 

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

The first part of the challenge, the panna cotta, is a gelatin dessert made with dairy instead of fruit juice.  Think jello, but creamy.  The flavor can be sweet, savory, or anywhere in between.  Like I said before, a blank canvas begging the cook to be creative.  I went with the original version as provided by our hostess with the mostest, and intended to make several more varieties.  I'm not sure what happened, though, but February has ended without me playing with this recipe any further. 

Don't walk away from the stove when heating the cream, or you'll get to do some really fun scrubbing afterward!

The second part of the challenge, the Florentine cookies, was a tasty revelation.  Fast, easy, eminently edible either as dough or as a baked good....mmmmmm!  Seriously, I've thought on more than one occasion over the past month how easy it would be to just make a little pot of the cookie batter and squirrel it away all for myself. 

Butter, oats, sugar, and flour.  What could be better?

Warning, they spread quite a bit when baking!

Chocolate drizzle, baby....

Florentines on panna cotta. Delicious, comforting, and not too difficult!

The recipes are here, so you can see for yourself what a satisfying project this is.

I want to do another with butterscotch schnapps, and another with Kahlua.

Maybe you can test is out and let me know how it goes?

PS Happy 16th elope-a-versary, Mr. Boom.  Go take a look in the shop...there's a brand new little something for you out there on your workbench.  I hope you like it!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mr. Boom outdid himself this year.

Theoretically, I don't believe in Valentine's Day.  It's a real trap of a day, which can so easily turn into a crap of a day.  Expectations are raised, attempts are made, hopes and dreams are dashed.  I was once married to a guy who pulled out all the stops on the big days of the year.  Our (three short) anniversaries were epic and public demonstrations of his fiery love for me.  The other days of the year were pretty much hell.  I would have traded the restaurant-full of patrons and staff toasting our love for a couple of turns vacuuming or doing dishes, or at least a little nod of appreciation for me engaging in those activities.

Oh wait, where was I?  Mr. Boom!!!! There for every single little day of the year and pulling out the stops on the big days of the year, too.

Last night, he ran to the grocery store, ostensibly to buy milk.  When he returned, I found he also had brought home flowers and espresso beans.  This morning, he woke me up with a handmade card that he started LAST SPRING!!!!  The piece de resistance?  Four little miniature spring form pans.  How freaking cute!

Obviously, I had to make his favorite dessert, french silk pie.  Miniaturized!  Chirp chirp cut out the little hearts to decorate the tops with.  We forgot to put them on the three we ate, but she remembered in time for the hearts to go on the fourth.

With or without hearts, this dessert is just as sweet.  Which is just nowhere near as sweet as Mr. Boom himself.  I love that man!

January Daring Bakers: Biscuit Joconde Imprime Entremets

Don't worry, you don't have to be able to pronounce the name in order to enjoy the beauty and taste of this month's Daring Bakers Challenge.  It's french, and the french know their desserts, so smile and nod and dig right in!

But, first things first.  I had no reason to be nervous about my interview with the Master Gardeners selection committee on Tuesday.  The panel was kind and wonderful...and they let me in!  Hooray!!! I now have about 200 hours of training to go through, two years as an intern, and then I'll have earned my way into the program.  I am so excited, and can't wait to get started.  The first class isn't until the end of February, so I'll have to contain my excitement for a little while longer, so let's just move on to the cake.

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

 A biscuit joconde imprime is sponge cake with a design baked right into the cake itself. Two separate batters are made, each with it's own flavor and/or color.  The first batter is either piped or spread onto the sil-pat into any type of pattern desired. I used my decorating bag and piped out a crazy swirl of blue batter on the sil-pat, then added polka dots, and then stopped myself before things swerved too much further out of control.

After the first design is frozen, a second layer of batter is spread over top the first layer. 

This the joconde imprime is then baked, and strips are cut out to line a springform pan.

In hindsight, I should have put the bottom layer upside down.

The joconde imprime was the required part of the challenge.

How to fill the dessert was left up to each Daring Baker...and, since this was my own birthday cake, I felt really free to put whatever flavors of filling I wanted to on the interior.

For the bottom layer, I made a raspberry/blueberry mousse.

Atop this layer, I spread a layer of rosewater gelee.  Unfortunately, the mylanta pink liquid seeped through the joconde imprime, leaving unsightly botches on the outside. 

However, it was my own cake and I chose not to feel too bad about it!

Atop the gelee, I glopped on a layer of orange water infused stabilized whipped cream.

The final layer was a blueberry rosewater sauce.

I loved making this challenge, and I loved the result.  The rest of the family just about gagged on the rosewater flavoring, but I relished the new flavor.  This challenge really brought out the best of so many other Daring Bakers.  The artistry of the imprime was astounding, and the flavor combinations that people came up with were mind blowing as well.

Someday soon I'm going to have to try the chocolate version of the joconde recipe, maybe filled with chocolate mousse and topped with caramel?  What about marshmallow fluff and peanut butter?  Perhaps the world's fanciest strawberry shortcake?  The sky is the limit with this dessert! 

Even if I still can't pronounce it exactly right...

FFwD: Michel Rostang's double chocolate mousse

This week's French Friday's with Dorie challenge was a perfect treat for a post-holiday family get-together.  Everyone wants something yummy for dessert, but we're all a bit sick of the heavy December desserts.

The dessert isn't really a cake, and it isn't really a torte.  It's mousse that's baked, and in this case, baked twice.  I've heard of baked potatoes and twice baked potatoes.  But I'd never heard of baked mousse, and certainly not twice baked mousse!

On the day the dessert is made, the taste is something like a brownie that you spent WAY too much time making.  But on the second day? 

Oh. My.

As you're probably sick of hearing me say, we're requested not to share the recipes for these challenges on our websites, but from the photo you can see that this is one treat you won't have to run to the store to find your ingredients. 

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler...

Add the sugar, half the salt (I accidentally added it all),

the butter, and the egg yolks.

I was tempted to stop at this point and just eat the bowlful of warm chocolate goodness.

Fold in the whipped-up egg whites very carefully. 

The mousse needs to remain as thick as possible.

If you don't have an 8" ring, you can use a springform pan without the bottom.  I had a significant gap in places, as my ring (like so much of my world) was warped.  I tied some sturdy string around the pan to hold the ring down tight.  There was still a bit of a gap, so I tightened up the strings by twisting a toothpick round and round until the string was taught.  I poured in 1/3rd of the mousse and put it in the oven to bake.

The contraption still leaked, but this was not a problem.  This was a planned event...so that I'd be able to taste the baked mousse prior to continuing on with the process.

After thoroughly chilling the base, I scooped the remaining mousse onto the top, and then re-baked.

The mousse broke into several pieces during the transition from pan to plate, but the cocoa powder helped hide some of the more minor cracks.

I served this for dessert, and everyone really liked it.  But the next evening, after the baked mousse had chilled for 24 hours (instead of the 4 called for in the recipe), the dessert took on a whole 'nother personality.  It tasted somehow lighter, and fluffier, and silkier...

It went from a brownie to a gift from the gods...or at least from Dorie Greenspan and Michel Rostang!

To see how other bakers' double chocolate mousse (or mousses?) turned out, look here!

Darling Clementine

My Grandpa Fred, toward the end of his life, would sing quite a lot.  I loved his singing.  The old-man timbre of his voice still rings in my memory, loud and clear.  One of his favorites was the old standard "Darling Clementine."    As a young boy, he lived on a cattle ranch in southern California.  He died not too many miles away from where he was born, and lived the entirety of his life between those two points.  Growing up with cowboys and cattle drives, he learned some pretty bawdy songs, none of which I ever heard until his later stages of Alzheimer's disease set in.  Similarly, there were verses in the Clementine song I never heard until his last years, either.  What a shock it was, and what a laugh it gave me!

Anyway, to this very day, I can't look at Clementines and not hear my Grandpa Fred's voice crooning on about Clementine's sister!  OH my!

Prior to Christmas this year, I stocked up on Clementines as a sort of lip service to having something healthy on hand for snacks.  So my house looked like this: bowl of caramels, plate of fudge,  pile of clementines.  Platter of Nanaimo bars, platter of fudge, pile of clementines.  See?  Healthy!

(Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine...)

My sister-in-law brought her family and another HUGE bag of clementines.  She left, but the clementines stayed .

(How I missed her, how I missed her, how I missed my Clementine...)

Mr. Boom, Chirp-chirp, and I ate as many as we possibly could, but we still had about a ton. 

What to do?

Thanks to Foodgawker, I found a Ceramic Canvas recipe for Clementine and Ginger Gelatins. Calling for two dozen or so clementines, this dessert seemed like the very thing!  I *think* I can even get away with calling it healthy, not that I care so much, but maybe you do?    Served up in a martini glass, it's also festive and easy to make ahead.  I'm thinking that if any of you are having a New Year's Eve soiree, this dessert would be awesome to serve and celebrate with.

First, squeeze enough little clementines (or tangerines or mandarins) to yield approximately two cups of juice.  I was a little short when I took this photo, but the photo with the full amount came out quite blurry. 

Pour the juice into a little pan and bring to a simmer.  You can filter the juice through 

a sieve if you want, but  I don't think I'll bother next time.

The original recipe called for a mere 1/4 teaspoon of ginger. 

I like ginger, so I put in thiiiis much.

Toss it in and let it steep.

Meanwhile...

Squeeze another half cup of juice, and add 1/4 oz of gelatin.

Stir until the gelatine has dissolved.

(Or don't quite dissolve it all, then remelt everything the next day

and be thankful that it worked!)

To the warm mixture, add the tiniest bit of vanilla,

and about 1/4 cup of sugar.

Combine the two mixtures, stir well to incorporate, and pour into

a dish, little glasses, a shoe, or whatever else you feel like serving it in.

I'm a bit ashamed, but yes, that's cool-whip.

Pretend it isn't, please.  Wipe the image from your head.

Easy recipe, isn't it?  I hope you make it and I hope you like it.

('Til I kissed her little sister, oh my darling, Clementine....)

FFwD: Caramel-topped Semolina Cake

Like the Vietnamese soup we made last month, this week's French Friday's with Dorie recipe is a recipe I wouldn't have ever tried unless dared to. I wasn't a bit scared this week, though, since that soup was the best soup I've ever made. If you haven't made it yet for yourself, would you please go out and buy Dorie's book and make that soup? Thank you.

Essentially, a semolina cake is a cross between a flan and something else--maybe a bread pudding as someone else suggested? It's moist and it's eggy, and just the tiniest bit rubbery.

Or maybe that was just mine. This dessert was not a stellar success. As much as I love Dorie, and as much time as I've spent captivated by this book, I'm beginning to notice the flaws. Now, don't get me wrong! Flaws are the mother of uniqueness, and there isn't anything creepier in my mind than an air-brushed makeup model in bigger-than-life size on the back of a magazine. I relish the flaws in my life--maybe even more-so than the perfections at times. But, that doesn't mean they don't exasperate me as well!

So, the instructions for this recipe call for the addition of Cream of Wheat cereal to hot milk, and cooking until thickened. Anyone knows, or at least anyone who's ever made cooked cereal knows, that the process starts as a liquid and can be taken all the way to a solid.

So.

At what point is it "thickened?" I wish the book contained more clarity in its instructions, especially in recipes that are most likely unfamiliar with her audience. Do I stop cooking the cereal when it still pours off the spoon, or when it sticks to the spoon, or when the cereal will support the spoon standing straight up out of the pot?

Here's where I stopped:


This cake has a caramel top. Rather, this cake has a caramel bottom. Wait. This cake is baked with caramel on the bottom, but is flipped over for presentation, so the top is caramel.

Duck's Ditty! How'd that go? Ducks' tails, drakes' tails, yellow feet a quiver, yellow bills all out of sight, busy in the river... Something like that? Good ol' Grahame!

To ease the dispersal of the caramel evenly over the entire bottom of the pan, the pan is first heated in the oven. This idea is so brilliant. I could have used this idea before, and will definitely use it again.

(Sticky buns, I'm talking to you!)

The batter is dumped over-top the caramel, and the whole mess baked about a half hour.

Not the most stellar-looking dessert ever... and not the tastiest dessert ever.

Somehow, though, I'm a bit inspired to try it again. I'd like to see the difference between the regular sugar version and a brown sugar version. I also think a bit of orange flavor would help a lot. I see this recipe heading in a lot of directions, but the first stop ought to be a re-write of it's own directions.

Next week's challenge is Potato Gratin. A dish I'm more familiar with, a dish where the vagaries are old friends. I can't wait!

FFwD: Marie Helene's Apple Cake

This week's French Fridays with Dorie challenge was Marie Helen's Apple Cake.

I can't tell you how wonderful my house smells right now....

Three features set this cake apart from any I've tried before.

First, there are no spices in this cake. At. All. How can you have an apple *anything* without cinnamon and cloves? Seriously, what gives?!

Second, the recipe call for rum. Due to a night in college taking care of a friend who had drunk too much rum, and therefore had rum coming out of every orifice with great velocity, I just can't get anywhere near the stuff. I substituted cognac, with sublime results.

Third, the ratio of batter to apple was disproportionate minute compared to other apple cake recipes I've used. In fact, due to having a plethora of teensy leetle apples, and my inherent laziness when it comes to peeling and coring apples, I think I used a smaller amount of apples overall than the recipe called for. Still, it was a lot of apple to a little batter.

As the cake cooked, my kitchen was filled with a deep, flavorful, soul-stirring aroma. Sans spices, so go figure!



I ate my piece outside, enjoying a little bit of late-autumn sun.

I love autumn. And this cake.

Yeah, okay. Especially this cake!

For the recipe, please buy Dorie's Book, Around My French Table. Per her request, members of the challenge decline from posting the recipe online.

Lemon meringue pie

I know, I know.

It's autumn and I should be reveling in all things appley or spicey, gingerbready or molassesey.

But you know what? I really wanted a lemon meringue pie. And since company's coming to dinner, I just went for it.

Maybe it's the peaks. They remind me of the scenery last night from the trailcam retrieval adventure.

See? more peaks!
(I wonder if there are any bears in this shot?!)

August Daring Bakers: Baked Alaska!

Blog-checking lines: The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

It's been a long haul this past two weeks!

The good news is, I get to keep my hand! The bad news is that I only started being able to use it, and cautiously at that, starting today. I still have some numbness and lots of swelling, but I'm out of the tunnel and definitely in the light. If you want to get truly disgusted, just do a little Google search on Infectious Flexor Tenosynovitis, but you might want to wait until after you've looked at the yummy food pictures below!

So starting today, I was finally able to type and I was also able(finally!!)to get back in the kitchen and do some cooking. Just in the nick of time, too, since today is the August Daring Bakers reveal date. Baked Alaska was this month's challenge, and I have to say it made a wonderful cake to celebrate the day with!


The first part of a Baked Alaska is a cake base--in this case we made a brown butter pound cake. How good was this? The batter was divine licked straight off the beaters, and cake is pretty great as well. Think pound cake, but with a sort of nutty caramel tweak. Yeah. Good. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the cake before I leveled it. Also, see the myriad of little holes? That's a combination of hurrying and trying to figure out how to hold spatula in a hand that's not working right.


The second part of the cake is ice cream. I followed (loosely, verryyyy loosely) the recipe for fresh strawberry ice cream that came with my ice cream maker. Instead of strawberries, I used a mixture of raspberries and blueberries. Along with vanilla, I added a nice little shot of Chambourd. Macerating the fruit? Who has the TIME for that???? And finally, instead of adding half the berries here and half the berries there, I just dumped the whole lot of them in at once.

So, you know, about as good as I ever follow any recipe!

The final layer of a Baked Alaska is the meringue. I love meringue. A. Lot. So, I was really glad to have a ton of egg whites left over that have been hanging out in the freezer for a few weeks. I thawed those and discovered to my dismay (naah, utter delight!) that I had approximately 50% too many for the recipe. I made it all up and I used it all up! Yay for meringue!


I was really scared when it came time to assemble the whole cake. My ice cream hadn't had time to freeze solid, so I was really concerned that the cake guts would melt before the skin was bronzed. No worries, though. I had plenty of time to use my kitchen torch and take plenty of pictures, too!


This brief interruption brought to you be gratitude. Hey Bet?! How long ago was it you gave me the torch for Christmas? Still one of my favorite gifts ever!!!! Thank you!!!!!!

Okay, back to business.

The business here being trying to get the cats off the table so I can take photos! Move your furry hind-end, Sky! Hurry, the sun is going down!

What, you too?

That's it! I'm going back to bed!