I Did It! Challenge #2 Down

Again, I am proud of myself for rising to the challenge of this month's Daring Bakers recipe. The recipe this month was Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream by Carol Walter. I have to say that this thing pretty much kicked my butt. It was not particularly difficult, just time consuming. I thought I was ahead of the game by doing some of the smaller parts days ahead of time... the praline one night, the glaze another, taking the skins off the hazelnuts another. In any case it still took me another 5-6 hours on Sunday a few weeks ago. Some of that time was inactive waiting for the cake to cool and set up after layering. In any case it turned out great in the end.

This was my second attempt at a genoise and this time worked out much better than the first. I took some things I learned from that first experience and wasn't as afraid this time. My second attempt at a ganache and again with better results. Although I don't think I perfected the technique so I look forward to trying again. I did have issues with the praline paste getting stuck in my decorating tips, but I suppose I could have ground the paste a bit more in the food processor.

I also want to mention that I did not set out to make 4 cakes. I purchased 3 four inch pans thinking this would suffice being that I wanted to half the recipe. But when I filled those pans with batter I still had some left and when ahead and poured it into am 8 inch round. I also ended up torting the small cakes when I decided that stacking them on top of each other might result in too tall of a cake. So, I sliced the small ones for the three layers but the 8 inch only got split once as it was a bit flatter.

In conclusion, I stuck pretty close to the recipe. I used hazlenuts for the nuts, frangelico for my liquor, and blackberry jam for the glaze. I used a different buttercream. Once I got off the Wilton message boards. I was not familiar with the method but after reading more blogs discovered that it was a mousseline (sp?) buttercream. I liked it a lot. Not too buttery and very creamy. I'm not sure if I'd make this cake again. Maybe if I could streamline the process a bit. I did get good feedback from those who tried it. Thanks to Chris at http://melecotte.blogspot.com/ for hosting this month's challenge.

Gosh, there are a few other things I wanted to mention that just came to me while looking at other's masterpieces. I did not use clarified butter as the recipe called for but I didn't seem to have any trouble with that. And I had reserved a cup of plain buttercream (without the added praline) for piping in case I had the problems with the clogged tips (as I did). Oh, and I realize my piping skills could use some help and I did sign up for a Wilton class that starts on Monday. I figured it would help with future challenges and a good way just to learn.

Lacking

Okay, I'm being a slacker as far as blogging goes. But on the other hand I haven't really baked anything since my last post. Except I did make cupcakes from a box mix. I had it on hand and after a particular busy weekend otherwise I just wanted something easy and cupcakes sounded really good. It was a butter pecan cake mix with canned cream cheese icing. Neither of the two tasted like you'd expect them to but somehow still tasted pretty good together. Add a little ice cream with it and it tastes even better. :-)

Last weekend I went to visit a friend in Tallahassee who I hadn't seen in over 3 years. I couldn't believe that much time had past, but we picked right up. It's great to have friends like that and I've been blessed to have quite a few who are now scattered all over and I don't get to see or talk to as often as I'd like but life has a way of passing by. Anyway, I'm getting off track. What I was going to say is that she indulged my sweet tooth and took me to a few bakeries around town. One of them I worked at part time while in college and remembered they had the best petit fours, so I had to get those again. I'm happy to say that they were as good as I remember they were. Those came from Tasty Pastry Bakery. We also tried out Heidi's Bakery and Au Peche Mignon. We tried a few things from each and I'll sadly admit that I don't remember the names of them all at this point. Terrible of me, I know...probably shouldn't even mention it but I was at least trying new things. I do know we got a slice of opera cake and a daquaise from Au Peche Mignon and they were good. I've only had opera cake once before from a bakery in Hollywood, Florida but I enjoy the flavors of the coffee, chocolate and almond together. Of course I really love amaretto coffee so why shouldn't I enjoy this cake? Looks like if I plan to talk about something on here then I need to remember to take notes so I can remember details. :-)

We also went to the farmer's markets, bought some vegetables to grill and I had fresh figs for the first time. Overall, it was a very enjoyable time and I hope it's not another 3 years before she and I get together again.

More Brownies for the Fourth

This weekend went really well. My mom had been visiting for the week so she and I and my friend from down the street cooked out on Friday. I'm really enjoying my little gas grill. We had ribs, hamburgers, and bratwursts this time around. I want to thank Anne from Kitchen Bliss for the tips on making ribs. She has a post about a rub and how to cook them starting in the oven first. They turned out really tasty.

I also baked brownies from a subtle hint from my friend. This time I made the Bittersweet recipe from Alice Medrich. It calls for using an ice bath to cool the brownies. They were delicious. I think I liked them better than the other four I made last month. Very rich and gooey. I used 85% dark chocolate and they were awesome, if I do say so myself. And to top them off I made home made ice cream. I used skim milk and Half and Half which works pretty well. It gets a little icy, and stays in soft serve form but still tastes good and with less fat, so I'll take it. We used a little almond extract in it too. I love my almond extract... (in the picture above, I topped off the ice cream and brownie with homemade hot fudge, another Alice recipe)

My mom had told me a friend of hers had put in a request for peanut butter cookies. The request was not so much for me to make but I made them anyway. I used the School Cafeteria Peanut Butter cookie recipe on Allrecipes.com. I scaled down the recipe to 30 cookies and weighed the measurements on my scale. I had made these before to good reviews so I tried them again. I remember loving the cookies we got at school usually on Friday's along with our pizza. And these do closely resemble my memory, but I've come to the realization that most things never taste as good as we remember them. I felt like I wanted more peanut butter taste. So, after making 32 cookies and still having batter left over, I decided to make a bar cookie with the rest and layer with a peanut butter filling that I found on Cookie Madness and then topped them off with the recipe for peanut butter cups that I've seen on various sites which combine the chocolate and peanut butter together. They were quite messy to lift out of the pan but again tasted really good, and I got the pb flavor I was looking for and the chocolate just added even more decadence to them. I've brought some in to work to share. I shouldn't keep all of these goodies around my house. I will eat them.