TWD: Tender Shortcakes

Only one day late this week. Getting better, right? Right.
This week's Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Cathy of The Tortefeasor. She chose Tender Shortcakes. I liked this pick, because we had a lot of options for fillings (fill with berries and whipped cream, eat like biscuits, etc....).
The shortcakes were really quick to make. I heard people say that theirs came out huge, so I made 4 cakes out of 1/3 of the recipe. I could have made five, because mine were still really big. The dough was very crumbly, so I sort of patted it together on the baking sheet, but once they came out of the oven they held together well.
It was easier than I thought to cut them in half. For the filling, I defrosted some frozen mixed berries (we didn't have any fresh and I didn't want to go out and get them :D ). I sprinkled on some sugar and let them sit for a while. I then put the berries on the bottom half of the shortcakes (with plenty of their juice) and topped them with sweetened whipped cream and the top of the shortcakes.
These were quick and easy to make, and I will make them again. They were so delicious! These would be great for a BBQ/ other summer party. If you want the recipe, you can find it here or in THE BOOK. Enjoy!

I'm Back!

And so sorry. I have been super busy these past few weeks. I've been baking, but just haven't had time to post. I'll be back on time next week! Let's start from the beginning, shall we?


Apple Apple Bread Pudding, a TWD pick from several weeks ago. This was quite easy and fun to make, and so delicious! Thanks to Elizabeth at Cake or Death for this great pick! You can find the recipe here.



The next TWD pick was Banana Coconut Ice Cream Pie. I didn't have time to make this one, but I have a rewind for you: Brown Sugar Pecan Shortbread! These were so yummy and flaky (in a good way). They have a unique but delicious taste. You can find the recipe here.



Next up: THIS week's TWD. It was white chocolate brownies, which I have been looking forward to for a long time. I think it was due to my egg whites still being cold and maybe my not beating them enough (?), but the meringue sort of melted into the brownies. So there is a very thin layer of meringue. The brownies are sort of dense but they are delicious and I will definitely be trying them again! Thanks to Marthe of Culinary Delights for this yummy pick. You can find the recipe here.



Finally, May's Daring Bakers challenge, a few days late.
The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.
Croquembouche is basically a tower of cream puffs, held together by either chocolate or caramel. I chose to do chocolate. This was my first time making cream puffs, and I am so happy with the result. The tower was delicious! I will post the recipe below, but beware that the recipe for cream will not fill all of the puffs. Please make these - they are not as time-consuming as they look!

Croquembouche (May 2010 DB challenge)

For the Vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.

Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.
Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.
Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.

Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.
As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes.
It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.

Piping:
Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.

Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.
Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.

Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.
Can be stored in an air-tight container overnight.

illing:
When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.

Use one of these to top your choux and assemble your piece montée.

Chocolate Glaze:
8 ounces/200 g. finely chopped chocolate (use the finest quality you can afford as the taste will be quite pronounced; I recommend semi-sweet)

Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.

Assembly of your Piece Montée:
You may want to lay out your unfilled, unglazed choux in a practice design to get a feel for how to assemble the final dessert. For example, if making a conical shape, trace a circle (no bigger than 8 inches) on a piece of parchment to use as a pattern. Then take some of the larger choux and assemble them in the circle for the bottom layer. Practice seeing which pieces fit together best.

Once you are ready to assemble your piece montée, dip the top of each choux in your glaze (careful it may be still hot!), and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up. (You may want to use toothpicks to hold them in place – see video #4 below).

When you have finished the design of your piece montée, you may drizzle with remaining glaze or use ribbons, sugar cookie cut-outs, almonds, flowers, etc. to decorate. Have fun and enjoy! Bon appétit!

Enjoy!

Lots of Tuesdays

Well, I've been gone a long time! I have four recipes for you guys. First up: this week's TWD.

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Cristine of Cooking with Cristine. She chose the Quick Classic Berry Tart. It is a simple tart crust, vanilla (or in my case, almond) pastry cream, and fresh berries. I used raspberries and blackberries. This tart is definitely a classic, but I wouldn't call it quick!
We loved it, and I will definitely be making it again! You can find the recipe in the book or here.


Next up: last week's recipe.


I had zero time to post last week's recipe, but it was Burnt Sugar Ice Cream, selected by Becky of Project Domestication. This was fairly quick to make, except for the time it took to churn (I love my ice cream machine!) and then freeze. We ate it the first time when it had been churned and frozen for two hours, and it was still very soft and melted quickly. But the next day, it was like store-bought ice cream. I liked the flavor, but thought it was a bit too sweet. Even so, I might make it again and am excited to try other recipes from Dorie's book. You can find the recipe here.

Next up: a rewind.


Perfect Party Cake! This cake is a lemon cake, layered with a lemon meringue buttercream and raspberry jam. I wasn't able to get the perfect layers of jam and icing like in the picture in the book (in fact, the cake was quite crumbly and hard to layer), but everything was covered up with the icing. We loved loved loved this cake! It was an interesting but perfect combo of flavors. I will definitely be making this one again!

Finally: another rewind.


The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart. This is made using Dorie and Pierre's citrus pastry cream (which is like a curd, only the butter is beat in at the end to achieve the "texture of lemon cream dreams"). Last time I made this, I cut down the butter by a stick, but had no need to this time. It was delicious!!!!! I loved it and will be making it again (like pretty much everything else in this post). You can find the recipe here.

Enjoy!

so sorry

I haven't had any time to post this week's Tuesdays With Dorie, but will be back on Tuesday with last week's, this week's, and a couple of rewinds. Come back Tuesday!

TWD Rewind: French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze

Do you ever make a recipe with really high expectations, but it ends up just not working out for you? It's not that it's BAD, it's just not great, and you know you'll never make it again. That's what happened with this cake(s). The batter is simple to put together. it uses yogurt and lemon zest, but since I didn't have any lemons, I used some lemon yogurt. It also uses some almond meal, which you can definitely taste in the end result (in a good way). This recipe makes one 9x5" loaf cake, but I made it into twelve pretty big cupcakes. After they cooled, it was time for the glaze. It is a simple glaze made of marmalade heated with a little bit of water. I used orange marmalade instead of lemon, because that was what I had. It took FOREVER to strain, though, so I ended up not using that much of it.
All in all, these cakes were just okay. I didn't love them, but they were tasty. I won't be making them again, but I can cross them off my TWD Rewinds list! If you want to try them for yourself, you can buy the book or find the recipe here. Enjoy!

TWD Rewind: Quintuple Chocolate Brownies

Last weekend, I had some spare time and wanted to do another Tuesdays with Dorie rewind. I decided on these Quintuple Chocolate Brownies. They have five types of chocolate:



White chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, unsweetened cocoa powder, milk chocolate, and semisweet chocolate (yes, we are one of those crazy families that buys the 72 oz. packages of chocolate chips at Costco).
The batter is fairly easy, but a bit time-consuming. Into the oven it goes! Once the brownies were cool (okay, mostly. we were hungry.), you melt white chocolate with cream and spread it on top of the brownies. Dorie says to take the brownies out of the pan before you put on the glaze. I did that, but the glaze wasn't very thick and dripped. Although I put the brownies (with the glaze on) in the fridge for 20 minutes, it still dripped (as you can see below). But they were delicious nonetheless.



These are very rich brownies, but also very delicious. They are decadent, but trust me, you won't want to eat one after the other (unless you want to be up all night with a stomach ache). I recommend these! If you want the recipe, you can find it here or in the book (which you REALLY should have by now). Enjoy!

Daring Bakers: Traditional British Pudding

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

Okay, so here's the deal. I'm vegetarian. That means I don't come near suet (although even before I was vegetarian, I had issues with the idea of using parts of an animal besides the meat). So I decided that I wanted to use shortening or butter instead. The recipe in the DB forum didn't look so interesting to me, but Esther posted a link to another recipe that looked really yummy. It was for a rhubarb steamed pudding (part of the challenge was to steam or boil the pudding). This challenge ended up being two firsts for me - the first time I made a steamed British pudding (and the first time I even heard of one!), and the first time I baked/cooked with rhubarb.



This pudding starts off with cooked rhubarb (cooked in sugar and ginger). Then it gets put in the pudding bowl (I decided to use four small ones instead - I should have used five, because they overflowed).




The rhubarb gets topped with a cake batter made of butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and self-rising flour. Then you steam the puddings. I used the slow cooker, but the water wouldn't simmer, so it took longer than it was supposed to.




You take them out when they spring back when touched. Mine were barely springing back, but it was late and I was getting impatient, so I took them out.
They tasted fine. The contrast of the sour rhubarb and sweet cake was good, but the cake itself tasted a bit too much like butter and eggs and wasn't cooked enough (although the cooking part was my fault). All in all, it was a fun experience, but I won't be making this recipe again. However, I might try other steamed pudding recipes. If you want to try it for yourself, the recipe I used is below. Enjoy!


Rhubarb Steamed Pudding

350g fresh rhubarb , cut into 4cm lengths
200g caster sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
125g unsalted butter
few drops natural vanilla extract
2 medium eggs , beaten
175g self-raising flour


Cook the rhubarb with 75g/2¾oz of the sugar and the ginger over a gentle heat for 2-3 mins until just starting to soften. Remove from heat.
Grease a 900ml pudding basin. Put butter and remaining sugar in a bowl and cream together. Stir in vanilla extract, then beat in eggs, a little at a time. Sift in flour and carefully fold into the mixture.
Spoon rhubarb into the bottom of the basin, then spoon the sponge mixture on top and level off surface.
Butter a piece of greaseproof paper slightly bigger than the top of the pudding basin. Make a pleat in the centre and secure over the top of basin. Repeat with a piece of foil, then secure the whole thing with string. Place in a pan half filled with simmering water. Cover and cook for 1½ hrs, checking regularly that the pan does not boil dry. Remove cover, invert the pudding onto a plate, then carefully lift off the pudding basin. Serve with crème fraîche or single cream.