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.

First Challenge Complete

Yay! I'm a daring baker! For those who don't know Daring Baker's are a group of individuals who challenge themselves to a different recipe each month and then post about it on the same day. This month was laminated dough hosted by Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cooking?.

I had an easy enough time making the dough. Although, I thought I'd use the same orange for the zest and the juice and discovered why naval oranges aren't used for juicing. I did't use the cardamom as that was a bit pricey but I have since found some at a decent price at and Indian grocer that I didn't know existed before. So, I will be trying it soon.

So, I made half the braid one day earlier in the month then froze the rest of the dough and made the rest last week. It was interesting and a bit difficult not to get to talk about it before now. I made the apple filling that we were given and then on the later braid and danish I made a cream cheese filling and a peach amaretto filling. I have to say that I was quite proud of myself with my peach filling. I made up the recipe on my own but with the influence of a jam I had tried. Well, I was proud of myself all the way around really for meeting this challenge and being mostly successful at it. I did have issues with the dough rising. I'm not sure what it is with me and yeast breads or could it be the Florida humidity? I don't know, but it tasted good anyway.

Back to simpler things

I just wanted to quickly update on my baking endeavors. Last week I made some white chocolate chip cookies with amaretto soaked cranberries. The recipe calls for brandy soaked berries but I like amaretto and didn't have any brandy. They still turned out pretty tasty though. I also upped the amount of brown sugar and lowered the white sugar. Next time I'll leave out the extra liqueur because they cookies were a bit flat.

This weekend I did my own little taste test experiment with brownies. I have pretty much always stuck with the boxed mixes. They're easy and still taste good to me. But I'm trying to break from my comfort zone and try new things. Brownies are not difficult to make but the recipes I tried did step up the process a little by involving a double boiler. I tried three different recipes and two types of cocoa with one of them for a total of four types of brownies. I made Alice Medrich's Best Cocoa Brownies one with dutch process cocoa and the other with natural cocoa. I also made Alton Brown's cocoa brownies and then Dorie Greenspan's Bittersweet brownies. I meant to keep everything basic and go by the recipe exactly but I found myself not able to resist adding a tad bit of almond extract to Dorie's recipe. OMG, were they good. I still don't have a favorite yet out of the results. I think I need to do more tastings. Dorie's definitely gets most gooey and I liked the natural cocoa over the dutch process which surprised me because the blackness of the latter really appeals to me.

I also barbecued out again this weekend. My neighbor friend came down to eat with me. I made sangria to go with it all and we had a very enjoyable time. I like throwing things on the grill to see what the outcome is. I tried tomatoes, bell peppers, asparagus and mushrooms this time along with pork chops and chicken. I just have to keep watch because flare ups happen quickly on my little grill and cause the food to get charred more than I'd necessarily like.

So, a more basic weekend with no real problems. Just yumminess.

Chocolate overload

I should have posted sooner about the chocolate party I went to last week, but I just hadn't gotten around to it before now. However, it was a lot of fun and I learned some things about using chocolate molds. The party was at a store called Farris and Fosters http://www.farrisandfosters.com/. They sell chocolates by weight but they also host chocolate parties where you get to participate in creating your own chocolate candies. I had done it once before a few years back but didn't get very creative that time and I wanted to do something different this time. I worked with the molds that I didn't attempt before. I had a bit of a heavy hand when filling so I kept overflowing, so my butterflys had some extra edges to them. I made some flat butterflies to be used in decorating future baked goods, but I also filled some other molds with goodies ranging from reeses pieces, to oreos, to rice krispies. They have quite of a selection to choose from. I also made peanut butter cups and completely covered an Oreo with chocolate. Your session gets you a pound of chocolate and if you go over that amount, you get it at a discounted rate.

As far as baking over the weekend...I made two things. I made Dori's Gooey Chocolate Cakes and zucchini bread. My experience for the cakes was much like others who made them for TWD in that my middle wasn't exactly oozing with 13 minutes of bake time. They did still tast fabulous though. If/ when I make again, I will shorten the bake time. I have a little disclaimer that I was on the phone the whole time I was preparing the batter, so I'm just glad they turned out at all.:-)

The zucchini bread was good also. I took the recipe from Allrecipes.com. I did substitute apple sauce for the oil and it still turned out well. Here is the link to the recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Moms-Zucchini-Bread/Detail.aspx I felt like I had to counter balance the fat in the cakes by leaving it out of the bread. That works right?

Cookies and (attempt at) Macaroons

Well, this weekend I kept up my momentum of baking but thought I was keeping it pretty safe with my choices. That didn't turn out to be the case. I had some cinnamon chips that I wanted to try in a cookie, but wasn't sure which to try. I decided to try the recipe on the bag which was an oatmeal cookie. The cinnamon chips are insane with cinnamon flavor. It's really impressive when first trying them. The cookies turned out pretty well, but the recipe didn't call for any salt and I think in the end it could have used a touch. So, I'll probably do some more searching for another attempt at using these morsels. I know there are some mentions on other blogs about them so I'll have to look out for other ideas.

I attempted macaroons using a recipe from the book I got the genoise recipe from. Again, I didn't have so much luck. I have to figure out this whipping egg whites thing. I second guess it all, like it that a stiff peak, maybe I should beat it a little more but I don't want to beat it too much. So, I'll keep working on that skill. However, the cookie dough was not thick enough but I pressed on and baked them anyway. They ran but I was able to salvage a few for consumption and they still tasted pretty good. Maybe I need to use a different book. I'm 0 for 2 from this one. But then again, it's probably me...more so than the recipes.

I also made shortbread for the first time. I used a recipe from My Sweetest Dreams blog. Around the holidays last year I was out with my mom shopping in the small town she lives in and I grew up in. There aren't many stores to go to but we make our usual rounds. This day we checked out a little thrift store that had some really cool things in it. We found this piece of stoneware that had pretty flower designs in it. I wasn't sure what it was used for but liked it and it was like $2 so we got it. I discovered that it was a shortbread pan. Now, six months later I decided to finally try using it. The recipe was great and they tast awesome. I did have a little trouble getting the cookie loose and away from the pan in one piece, so I'll have to be more careful next time.

All in all I was satisfied with my endeavors this weekend. I also tried my hand at grilling with a little gas grill that I got over a year ago. I bought it as a hurricane supply but we've been lucky since the 2004 ones when I didn't have a grill. So, I finally put it together and cooked up some chicken, shrimp, and burgers. Then last night my neighbor friend had me down for steaks which we cooked on the grill also. They turned out really good.

The weekend didn't go without it's hiccups though. I had an incident Saturday morning. I still don't know how I accomplished this mess, but it was a good one. I some how managed to splatter a half a cup of coffee all over myself, the floor, the refrigerator, wall and cabinets in a 360 degree manner. I didn't know so little liquid could make such a mess. Good thing I had planned on cleaning the floors that morning anyway. :-)