You win some, you lose some

Daring Bakers January 2009 Challenge: Tuiles

Recipe from: “The Chocolate Book” by Angélique Schmeinck

I apparently had trouble understanding the recipe for this month’s challenge. I mixed the ingredients as listed – this part was easy – and did the necessary chilling steps, exactly as described. Then I set out to create the cookie shapes. This was where the misunderstanding occurred. The recipe said: “Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as the butterfly. Press the stencil on the baking sheet and use an off sided spatula to spread batter. Leave some room in between your shapes.” Now, I don't think it's just me -- it never says how to actually make a shape! Maybe it is obvious to someone who has made tuiles before, but I was thoroughly confused how you use a stencil to make a cookie. I decided I would spread out the batter on the inside of a heart shaped cookie cutter. I spooned a small amount of batter into the heart, and then spread it around with a knife until the entire inside of the cookie cutter was filled with a thin layer of batter. I tried to make it as thin as possible.

I baked at 350. I peaked in at them after just a few minutes, and to my horror, discovered this:

I had used all of the batter and was expected at a baby shower with the tuiles in less than 30 minutes, so I had to make the most of what I had. I cut the giant cookie into reasonable sizes and then draped the irregular shapes on rolling pins to cool and solidify.

The collection of twisted polygons looked more like bad potato chips than the beautiful tuiles I had seen online, but they still tasted sweet and had acceptable crunch.

I took them, along with fresh whipped cream dyed pink with a few drops of red food coloring (the soon-to-be baby is a girl) and a bowl of blackberries and strawberries to the baby shower. I can’t say introducing these mutated tuiles to the group was my proudest moment, but I’ve done worse. We all enjoyed them.

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.

Pizza Pizza

Daring Bakers October 2008 Challenge: Pizza Dough

(Basic Pizza Dough Recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart)

I’m going to let the pictures tell most of the story this month. The task was to make pizza dough from scratch, actually toss it to stretch it into shape, and then to top it with both a sauce and toppings. I have to be honest – my dough didn’t turn out very well. I had a hard time getting it to the right consistency to begin with, and then it simply did not rise in the oven. So the five people I invited over for a pizza dinner and I ate delicious toppings off cracker-like crust. I think the biggest hit was the dessert pizza I made at the end with a puff pastry crust! But here they are, one by one, in all their non-rising glory….

Pizza 1 -- Sauce: Olive Oil; Toppings: Herbes de Provence and Garlic

Pizza 2 -- Sauce: Pesto; Toppings: Mozzarella and Spinach

Pizza 3 -- Sauce: Tomato Sauce; Toppings: Pepperoni, Artichoke Hearts, Mushrooms, Mozzarella

Pizza 4 -- Sauce: Caramelized Onions; Toppings: Pear, Gorgonzola, Walnuts


Pizza 5 -- Sauce: Tomato Sauce; Toppings: Breaded Chicken Cutlets, Tomatoes, Mozzarella

Pizza 6 -- Sauce: Caramelized Onions; Toppings: Portobello Mushrooms, Goat Cheese




"Pizza" 7 -- Crust: Puff Pastry; Sauce: Whipped Cream; Toppings: Raspberries and Strawberries

Once Upon a Tart....

Provençal Tart with Gruyère and Herbes de Provence

This tart is awesome. AWESOME. And it comes from a cookbook that makes me think everything in it might be just as good. This is my first recipe from Frank Mentesana and Jerome Audureau's Once Upon a Tart... and I guarantee it won't be my last. The Herbes de Provence weren't exactly cheap (~$15/jar), but I think you can avoid the price hike of having them imported from France by buying the individual spices (basil, fennel seed, lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, summer savory and thyme) and mixing them yourself. Wow, I'm getting hungry just thinking about how delicious this tart was...

A Tasty Cracker, but a Cracker Nonetheless

Daring Bakers September 2008 Challenge: Lavash Crackers and Vegan Spread

(Lavash Cracker recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart)

I did actually complete September’s challenge in September, but now it is half-way through October and I am only posting about it now. This could be because I prefer cooking to writing, so if I have a free hour it’s more likely that I’ll be making a new recipe than blogging about an old one. It is also possible that is this particular case, there was nothing particularly thrilling to write about. It was a perfectly fine challenge, new to me, relatively quick, tasty, but it was neither a smashing success nor harrowing failure. I mean, it was a cracker.

But on with the story. I made the cracker recipe as described and added dehydrated onion and garlic, sea salt, poppy seeds and sesame seeds. I tried to add them in stripes, but this ended up not being noticeable once I broke up the sheet into individual crackers.

The cracker sheet baked slightly unevenly, and bubbled in one spot, but neiher of those were a deal breaker. I cracked the cooked sheet into pieces and it was done. I was not happy with how much of the seasoning fell off during handling, but enough stayed on to serve the purpose.

The vegan dip is really where the excitement was this month. I decided to make caponata, which is sort of like a concentrated ratatouille. I used vegetables from the farmers market and the following recipe from The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash (my vegetable bible):

2 lb eggplant

Salt

3/4 plus 2 Tb olive oil (but I recommend you use less)

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup peeled, seeded, and chopped tomatoes

1/2 cup pitted, halved green olives

1/4 cup rinsed and drained capers

1 Tb pine nuts

1/3 cup red wine vinegar

1 Tb sugar

Ground pepper

Peel eggplant and cut into 3/4 inch pieces. Salt and let drain for 30 minutes. Fry eggplant in oil until golden, about 6-10 minutes (this can be done in 2 batches if your frying pan isn't large enough). Transfer to strainer and let drain. Fry onions and celery until just tender, then add tomatoes. Cover pan and cook 4-5 minutes, uncover, and cook 5 minutes longer. Add eggplant, capers, olives, and pine nuts. Heat vinegar in a separate dish, and dissolve in the sugar. Pour over vegetables. Simmer, covered for 5-10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and cool. Serve room temperature or cold.

It was a bit oily but delicious. My tasters raved.

I have to add, I served these crackers and the caponata as an appetizer that I followed with a tomato tart, greens, and roasted fingerling potatoes. See my next post for pics of the tart!

Baked Alaska

To me, birthday cake is baked alaska. So this year when my birthday rolled around, there was no decision about which cake I would make. (Some people tease me for making my own birthday cake, but honestly, why would I want someone else to have all the fun?)


I use an easy baked alaska recipe:

(1) boxed white cake mix prepared in two 8 or 9" rounds
(2) vanilla ice cream from a rectangular gallon box, sliced into 2 inch thick slabs
(3) simple meringue: 6 egg whites + 3/4 tsp cream of tartar, beaten. Add 2 tbls sugar. Whip until peaks form.

I cook the cake the night before to allow it fully cool before continuing. The next day, I layer the ice cream between cake layers, wrap with foil, and freeze the whole stack.


Just before I want to serve it I make the meringue, spread it over of the entire frozen cake, made peaks on the top, and then pop it into a pre-heated 400 degree oven. Somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes later, the meringue is browned and the cake is done. Served with strawberries it's always a crowd pleaser! Be careful of candles, though. They tend to melt onto the hot meringue (see top pic!).


Okay, not the most glamorous photos of food I've ever taken (I was busy enjoying my party!), but you get the idea!

Heaven in a Pastry

August 2008 Daring Bakers Challenge: Éclairs

(Recipe from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme by Dorie Greenspan)

This was my favorite Daring Bakers Challenge yet. Fun, easy, quick, delicious and impressive: this is my kind of dessert. Don’t get me wrong – I not always looking for a quickie – I was just particularly impressed by the incredibly low input to output ratio of this recipe. I also learned quite a bit in the process.

Our requirement was to have one chocolate component in the éclairs, but did not have to do both the suggested chocolate custard and chocolate glaze. I chose to do a vanilla custard instead, and used a recipe from The French Chef by Julia Child:

6 egg yolks

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup all-purpose flour

2 cups hot milk

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Mix egg yolks and sugar in a 2 ½ quart saucepan with a wisk until thick and pale yellow, several minutes. It should form a ribbon. Beat in flour, then beat in hot milk in a thin stream (slowly at first with vigorous beating to prevent egg scrambling!). Set over moderate heat and stir slowly and continuously with the wisk until it thickens. When lumps form, beat to eliminate them. Lower the heat and cook slowly, stirring all the time, to thicken the cream. Remove from heat, place saucepan in ice water water, and beat in the butter and vanilla. Film the top of the cream with ½ tablespoon milk to prevent from crusting. Chill.

I had never made custard before, but was thrilled to find that this recipe actually works, and the texture is excellent.

I made the pate a choux as described, but found it a little bit of a pain to work with. I don’t have a tip for my pastry bag as big as the recipe called for, so I used no tip at all, just the circular piece that should screw on the tip. This worked okay, but still felt a bit narrow. I made tubes back and forth for a few of them that came out particularly narrow, instead of leaving it as just one top to bottom squeeze. I also gave up towards the end and just used a spatula to shape a lump of dough. Surprising, all of these methods worked perfectly well, and when they came out of the oven I had a hard time figuring out which were which!

The chocolate sauce was easy and delicious. I dipped the tops of my éclairs right into the pan I melted the chocolate in. I then spooned the custard into the bottom half, and boom! the masterpieces were complete. It helped to refridgerate them for about 30 minutes before serving to allow the chocolate to completely harden.

I also reserved about half of the baked éclairs for a different filling. For these, I skipped the chocolate sauce on top, but added a line of fresh blueberries to the custard inside each éclair. I then added the tops and sprinkled generously with cinnamon and powdered sugar. These were fantastic! I had quite a few tasters who actually preferred these to the traditional chocolate and vanilla. As for me, I liked both.

Another tip: the next night I filled shot glasses with the left-over custard, spread the leftover chocolate sauce on top, and served them as mini-deserts. These were excellent, but it was key to keep them small – without the dough of the éclair to balance the custard it seemed much richer!

Yum.

Best Cobbler Ever

So I was only going to use this space to write about my Daring Bakers challenges, but I had to make an exception. I find that there are few recipes involving fruit that manage to make the fruit taste even better than it did fresh, but this is one of them. This cobbler is one of the best things I've ever tasted. Seriously. I'm going to go to the fridge and take another bite right now.

From the NYT magazine, June 18 1995, discovered and perfected by my mom.

Filling:
4 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp all purpose flour

Dough:
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt (but regular is okay too)
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
6 tbsp cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch peices
3/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 375. Mix filling. Mix dry ingredients of dough in a food processor, then cut in butter until a coarse meal. Add cream and barely mix with a fork. Transfer filling to baking 1 1/2 qt. baking dish. Gently press dough into 6 patties, each 2 inches in diameter and 1/2 inch thick. (the more gentle you are the flakier the biscuits will be!) Add patties on top of berries, okay if touching. Bake until filling is bubbling and dough is light brown, about 35-40 min. Cool briefly and serve hot with ice cream.



By the way, can you believe how not-blue the inside of a blueberry is??