Challenging myself

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 had very mixed feelings about this challenge.
I was curious to see what the fuss was all about with macarons, I wanted to see if they were really so hard to make and so delicious to taste.
But I couldn't fight reality, which is that my interest was all rational and I'm not quite attracted to these kind of sweets, so I ended up baking just the last day of the challenge month.

I'm so unfamiliar with them that I don't even know how close to the real deal mine turned out.



Given all this, of course I kept to the basics.
I went with 2/5 of the given recipe and made pinkies with white and dark chocolate ganache.




Next time I have the occasion to taste a professional one I will make sure to do that, to have an idea.

In the meantime, check for some more enthusiastic Daring Bakers in the DK Blogroll

Zol-au-Vent and Vol-au-Rocher

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.

This was a nice challenge, but I had an accidental shortcut to it.
September has been pretty hot here, not exactly the right climate to make puff pastry.
BUT!



I had in the freezer some I had made in late spring. I kept it there as a last resort, waiting until the last moment to see if I had a cold day to document the entire challenge, but the cold day never came (and I can't say I'm sorry for that), so I hope that my word on being the maker of the pastry is valid enough as for the accomplishment of the challenge.
It must be, because if I had bought it, it sure would have risen much better!



Vol-au-vents are tricky to eat: the puff pastry crumbles a lot (at least, you hope it does!) and when they are big you risk The Big Splash Of Content.
That's why I went for bite-size.
Maybe too much, but in my opinion this is a case where smaller is better.

I made an appetizer and a dessert.
The appetizer involves one of my family's all time favourites: gorgonzola, which was paired with pears.



Nothing else: the pears were ripe and juicy enough to give out the right amount of liquid and only a few seconds of heat were needed to melt the zola in order to mix the two.



The dessert was a reinterpretation of a Ferrero Rocher, the puff pastry playing the part of the wafer.



A quick ganache with Nutella and whipped cream, added with ground hazelnuts.

In my intentions, a whole hazelnut was to be in the center of the vol-au-vent, but a whole hazelnut didn't fit in the bitesize structure without pulling the balance with chocolate too much.




I wish my husband took some classes of creative food writing: asking for an opinion and just getting "MMMMHHHH!" for an answer, as much as participated it is, is starting not to be enough for me.

Daring Bakers August 2009 - 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.
You will find the detailed recipe at their blogs.

Boy, you do have to love eggs, when you have this torte!!
Between the dough and the buttercream you will find 10 whole eggs. And little else: this dessert, despite the rich appearance has a lot to do with fluffy stuff and incorporating air.



The fun thing about this cake is that the layers are not cut from a one cake, but are baked separately, oven-pancake style, and then trimmed to the same size and shape to be assembled with the buttercream.
This scared me a lot, every layer has to be baked just a few minutes, so you basically have to stay around the oven for about an hour. Not exactly thrilling when the weather is hot and humid and the thermometer scores 43C/110F! I took advantage of one afternoon when it "chilled" down to 39C/102F and did my duty of Daring Baker.





The weakest link for me in this recipe was the caramel part. I suck at caramelizing, I always seem to miss the right moment (or never get there, that is).
This time it was not so bad. Not perfect, I could have waited a little longer because the sugar was a little too liquid and soaked in the cake instead of building a layer of its own on top, but it's good enough for me!
By the way, I have to thank Angela for the suggestion of cutting the top layer before pouring caramel: as things went, I would have never been able to have those nice triangles!



I hadn't any whole hazelnuts at hand, so I used bits of chocolate as (not quite) hidden support.



The only problem is, my kids are a bit disoriented; they keep asking whose birthday is it, and won't accept a "Nobody's" for an answer.
They have cut about 20 construction paper sheet into confetti, and are waiting for daddy to come home to start the party.

You will find a lot of other Dobos torte and lot of rivisitations at the Daring Kitchen website.

Daring Bakers July 2009 - Marshmallow Cookies

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.


I will send you to her for instructions, because in this moment I'm on vacation, touring Europe on an RV, with little time to spend writing, I'll merely upload the pics of my marshmallow cookies, to show that I met the challenge.
July has been a very busy month, but it was just my luck that the challenge was considered complete with just on kind of cooky baked.

Having no light corn syrup in Italy, I used this recipe for a substitute, as suggested by the almighty Audax Artifex:

* 2 cups granulated sugar
* 3/4 cup Water
* 1/4 tsp. Cream of Tartar
* dash of salt

Directions
Combine all ingredients in a heavy, large pan (stainless). Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and put cover on it for 3 minutes to get sugar crystals off the sides of the pan. Uncover and cook until it reaches soft ball stage, 238 -240 degrees F.

Cool syrup and store in a covered container at room temperature. It will keep for about 2 months.


Also, I substituted two tbsp of rose water for the same amount of cold water in the recipe.

Here we go with the pic parade:















As for the Milano cookies, as I said July has been a very busy month, and I didn't make it.
The funny thing is that Milano is my hometown, and in all the things I did in July, one was to go there to visit my parents.
So I'm posting a couple of pictures of our recently restaurated cathedral, the Duomo, because it's kind of in topic ;-)







Milan's coat of arms, in a mosaic on the floor of our beautiful covered Galleria:

Daring Bakers Challenge June 2009 - Bakewell tart... er... pudding

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.

Make sure to check their blog out for the interesting story of how this dessert was born.

In a nutshell:

1 - a shell of sweet shortcrust pastry
2 - a layer of jam
3 - a layer of frangipane

It was not something completely new for me, I remember my mother making something like this for a few years when I was a teenager, only with a sponge instead of frangipane. That was a bit dry, though.

The Shortcrust



225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Rub the (cold) butter into the flour, mix the dry ingredients, add the liquid ingredients, don't sweat it too much, make a ball, let it rest in the fridge.

The Jam

Posted already

The Frangipane



125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream the butter with sugar, add the eggs (one at a time), the almond extract, then spoon the flours in.

The threesome is ready to be assembled:



Now spread:



Now pour:



Aaaand level:



Bake it at 200°C/400°F for about half an hour.







Serve with creme fraiche.

We had a slice a few hours after baking it, and we had different opinions in the house: while my husband thought the jam was way too tangy and predominant, I thought the exact opposite and could taste only the almonds in the frangipane. Either way, it didn't seem a good pair (the kids just gobbled it down and off they went towards new adventures).
That all went away the day after, and it was even better the third day, when the tastes melted together and rounded off, thus giving a good and well chosen combination.


Inspired by other Daring Bakers, who always try to give a savoury version of a sweet recipe and vice versa, I thought of the classic pairing between gorgonzola and walnuts.



I skipped sugar in both the shortcrust and the frangipane, and substituted walnut flour for the almond's. In the jam's place was a mix of gorgonzola and cream cheese.




Good thing I made tartelettes, because the taste is so strong it saturates all your taste buds in a sec.
I had served it with acacia honey just because I thought it was a cute add, but honey is really essential to balance and dilute the strenght of it.

Daring Bakers Challenge May 2009 - Apple Strudel

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

To complete this challenge, I waited a few weeks on purpose. The reason was that last month I attended a series of pastry classes, so I waited for the teacher to cover the topic before trying.

The dough was indeed very easy to make: mix together 1 1/3 cups (200 g) unbleached flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, 7 tablespoons (105 ml) water, plus more if needed,
2 tablespoons (30 ml) vegetable oil, plus additional for coating the dough,
1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar (instead of vinegar, I used white wine, a couple of tbsp), and work it very hard.
By "very hard" they mean "feel free to use violence!": taking the dough and throwing it on the table as it had provoked me was fun, especially for my kids, who were startled at first, looking at me as if I had gone nuts, and laughing their bellies out when they saw that mom was just playing (?) silly and nobody was getting hurt.
After a good 10 minutes of this workout, put the dough under a hot bowl and let it rest for half an hour.

In the meantime, find yourself a 6yo and a 4yo and when they ask you if they can play with the flour left on the table, tell them yes.
In a few minutes, you should get a similar result:




In the meantime(2), get together what you'll need for the filling.
My teacher was very passionate in saying that a strudel ought to be made only with rennet apples, but it's too hard to find them at this time of the year, so I went with plain golden apples, 2lbs/900gr, diced, and all the portrayed guest stars:



3-4 oz /100-120gr sugar with a spoonful of cinnamon, 1 oz/30gr pine nuts, 2 oz/50gr bread crumbs, 3oz/80-90gr butter, 2 oz/50 gr raisins, 1 oz/30gr crushed nuts.

Toast the pine nuts in some of the butter, think you can do something else in the meantime, burn them, throw them away, take another oz/30 gr pine nuts, toast them properly, set aside.
Toast the bread crumbs in another tablespoon of butter (no burning step needed), set aside.

The dough is really really easy to stretch thin, wine-drunk and beaten up as it is! Of course I didn't bother taking a picture of it (was I clumsy, this time around!!).
Spread all the fillings (what's left of butter should be melted) on all the surface of the less than paper-thin dough, keeping a sort of free frame





Now, only because you were so nice to read this so far, I want to be honest and tell you about the silly mistake I made.
The rolling should be done on the long side of the rectangle you're facing.
Don't ask me why, I started to roll the short side.
I realized my mistake at the first turn, but it was too late already.
So I went on, building the biggest, fattest strudel ever seen.
I left it in the oven 15 minutes more than the recipe required, to cook it evenly, and when it came out it was clear that to have a regular portion I would need to cut a slice in half, or the proportion and size of the serving would be ridicolous.




The taste was great! I can't wait for next autumn, when I'll be able to use rennet apples!

Daring Bakers Challenge April 2009 - Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This was my first Daring Bakers Challenge, and my very first cheesecake to make (I’ve had it once or twice before, though).
The recipe called for graham crackers for the crust, and they are nowhere to be found in Italy, where I live.
So, I checked in my teenage memories, back when my exotic bake researches stretched as far as United Kingdom and Ireland. I remember that cheesecakes there and then were made with a crust of Digestives, and as they have been my favorite cookies for a very long time, it was natural for me to use them.



So I mixed 12 crumbled cookies with 4oz (115gr) of butter and two tablespoons of sugar.



As for the actual cheese part, it went on pretty easily: I just mixed the cream cheese (24 oz/ 720gr) with 1 cup of sugar (200gr), 3 large eggs, 1 cup (240 ml) of heavy cream.
When it came to the flavor, there was no doubt: a few weeks ago I opened a rose water bottle, one that I had found last year in an International Food store in Las Vegas and that I was keeping as a big treasure, being it so difficult to find here.



The point is, how precious can a thing be, if you don’t use and enjoy it? And so now, we smell and taste a lot of rose, in this house!
I skipped the liquor that was in the original recipe, I kept a tablespoon of lemon juice, because lemon scent takes out rose’s one best, and went with 1.5 tbsp of rose water.



The baking was to be made in a water bath, but I didn’t trust my springform pan, so I followed a suggestion by Jill of Jillicious Desserts that I read on the Daring Kitchen forum. I used a normal pan, and after the cake cooled, I froze it. Once the cake was frozen, it was easy to pop it out of the pan (although it was not completely solid, even if it had stayed in the freezer overnight).

As a decoration I used non-treated roses and petals. This was a lot of fun for my kids, for when they saw me spreading petals around, thought that if Mommy was doing it, it must have been the right thing to do and “helped”.
The cake was very good, and the taste of roses was much stronger the day after the baking.

I know that many other Daring Bakers went down the monoportion/cupcakes path. It is a very good idea, and I wish I had it. I’ll keep it in mind for the next times.