I counted eight different kinds of flour, EIGHT. They are:

All-purpose
Buckwheat
Garbanzo Bean
Almond
Millet
Oat
Chestnut
White rice

And I even own wheat germ which doesn’t actually count as a flour but it needs to be baked rather than eaten.

The bananas in the freezer were also threatening to stage a revolt. Clearly, something needed to happen. I had made a lentil and hot italian sausage soup earlier in the weekend, it’s hot and satisfying and will feed me all week. But then seeing all the overages, I needed to do something. I made banana bread with the last of the dates and a ton of walnuts, pizza dough, and rice pudding with plums and orange peel in the absence of raisins. The new vegetables will undergo a quick prep later, maybe tomorrow. When I complain of not having any food in the house, I need to come back and read this post, even if I needed onions something desperate since I had actually run out.

Now back to reading… even if it isn’t cold enough to really love my time indoors.

Barely made it. I’m posting this the morning of the 27th while making spelt pancakes and coffee.

Since March has been a ridiculous month, I split this up over two days. I made the brioche dough one day, stuck in the fridge to rise until the next day. Then I continued with the recipe and rolled it out the next day. I had been so short of time that I used what was in my pantry to stuff it. I still had a few disks of El Rey dark chocolate. I ran to the corner market and got a little package of black walnuts. I even bought them chopped because I just couldn’t deal with it. I omitted the extra sugar and cinnamon in the filling and put the cinnamon in the dough instead. The egg whites beat quickly (I had them leftover from some other project) and I rolled the whole thing. It came together easily enough.

When still unbaked, it looked a lot like the pictures on Daring Bakers, but when I baked it, it imploded on itself so instead of a ring, it became a disk. The meringue leaked a little but less than I feared. I left it to cool overnight and then sliced it in the morning and packed it away in a tupperware container and took it to work where it was warmly received and devoured.

I had never made brioche before and I think that was the perk of this recipe. I have finally made a brioche-like dough. I may attempt the full thing at some point in our near future.

I’m unlikely to complete the April challenge since I’ll be away for vacation and then there’s Easter. Have to make that gallette du rois!

Now, back to those pancakes…

Honey Panna Cotta with Raspberry Jam

For some reason that’s unfathomable to me, somehow I’ve never had panna cotta. Ever. I know what it is and I frequent all kinds of trendy restaurants where this dish makes a frequent appearance on the dessert menu, usually next to the creme brulee.

So it was killing two birds with one stone for this month. I read the recipe and came across the 3 cups of heavy cream requirement. After I finally managed to shut my mouth, I reasoned I could just cut the recipe. The smallest container I could find easily was 250ml. So I got to subdividing the rest of the ingredients. I made it one Sunday afternoon, just as the ribollita was boiling on the stove and a tray of scones was in the oven.

I generally avoid working with gelatin. I’ve never been able to get it all to melt in without leaving odd, tough particles at the edges of whatever I’m making. I thought I gave it enough time to soften. I thought it heated long enough over the medium heat. I whisked and whisked and whisked, even after taking it off the heat. I thought I had made it as smooth as I possibly could. I took out some little plain glasses I use for gin and tonics in the summer and got two of them filled to nearly the top. I let them set. The next day, Valentine’s Day, I softened some raspberry jam over the stovetop and poured it over the panna cotta to create some contrast. I topped the whole thing with a split almond.

Well, the gelatin did the stupid gelatin thing again. The top was smooth, the middle nearly runny, and the bottom was tough and grainy. What the hell? It tasted good but I usually don’t eat so much cream. I guess it’s not much different from ice cream and ice cream has a lot of sugar in it which this did not.

If I make it again, I may try the other method which is to heat the cream and sugar first and them pour it over the water with gelatin and whisk until smooth. Maybe I didn’t wait long enough to soften it. Maybe I should just do what Nigella Lawson says and get leaf gelatin instead of the grainy stuff. Who knows. Either way, I like creme caramel better.

I didn’t make the cookies. I had buttermilk to get rid of and I made two batches of whole wheat scones for people at work instead. Oats and Nestle don’t seem to go well with panna cotta so I didn’t think I was missing anything. I’m glad I finally made this storied dessert, though.

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book………and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

Dear Frickin’ God, I’m exhausted. And I just ruined my blog (I wrote this on 13 December in case things have gone back to normal in the next ten days… not likely). So, I’ll keep this short because I just can’t take it anymore. I wish I was one of those people who can write haikus because then I’d do that instead, but I’m not.

I made the German cake. The recipe made two huge ones. I should have rolled out the marzipan into a sheet and rolled the bread. But it tasted okay…. but nothing to write home about. I took one to the work Christmas luncheon and the other is in my freezer. It was too much work for very little payback.

The End.

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

The holiday season is around the corner and by the time this post goes live. it would have already begun. I have to admit I dreaded looking at the Daring Bakers site to find out what the challenge would be. Who needs more stress when I’m already dealing with unbelievable timing challenges. But this one was a blessing. What better to lift the blues that stem from the anxiety of a too-full calendar than a classic Italian crostata.

I have my own idea what what pasta frolla should be but since it is a Daring Bakers challenge, I had to follow along at some point, especially given that we could fill it with whatever we wanted. Yes, finally I don’t have to buy cream! There were two versions of the pasta frolla given and I used the second one:

Version 2 of pasta frolla

In this version of pasta frolla, I have played with different kinds of flours, using almond, whole-grain barley and, most recently, coconut flour instead of some of the all-purpose flour. If you want to try a different version of pasta frolla that uses some flours that you wouldn’t normally use, this is a good recipe to try. All the flours listed below (whole-wheat pastry, almond flour, coconut flour and barley flour) are available at health food stores. You may even find them at well-stocked supermarkets.

The preparation for this version of pasta frolla is very similar to the preparation for Version 1.

Ingredients

* 1/3 cup [80 ml, 75 g, 2 2/3 oz.] superfine sugar or 1/2 cup [120ml, 60 g, 2 oz]powdered sugar (see Note 1.)
* 1/2 cup [120 ml, 65 g, 2 3/8 oz.] unbleached all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup [120ml, 65 g. 2 1/4 oz.] whole-wheat pastry flour
* 1/4 cup [60ml, 28 g, 1 oz] almond flour, or almond meal, or coconut flour
* 1/4 cup [60ml, 28 g, 1 oz.] whole-grain barley flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
* a pinch of salt
* 6 tablespoons[90ml, 85 g, 3 oz] cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
* 1 large egg, lightly beaten
* 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (you can also use vanilla sugar; see Note 2.)

Directions:

By hand:

1. Whisk together sugar, flours and salt in a bowl.
2. Rub or cut the butter into the sugar and flour mixture until it has the consistency of coarse crumbs. You can do this in the bowl or on your work surface, using your fingertips or an implement of choice.
3. Make a well in the center of the flour and butter mixture and pour the beaten egg and vanilla extract into it.
4. Use a fork to incorporate the liquid into mixture and then use your fingertips.
5. Knead lightly just until the dough comes together into a ball.
6. Shape the dough into a flat disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Place the dough in the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours. You can refrigerate the dough overnight.

I used almond flour and white unbleached and substituted the 1/4 c. of barley flour for the same weight of buckwheat flour I had sitting in my cupboard from an as yet-unfulfilled need to make breton pastries of various kinds. Oh, yeah, I also bought it because it was at the farmer’s market and it looked cool. I would be way richer if I stopped buying weird things at farmers markets just because I can. Back to the pasta frolla, I made it by hand of course. All you need is a bench scraper and arm strength. I hate washing dishes and even if I owned a full-size food processor I still wouldn’t use it to make a simple shortcrust.

As for the filling, this was my favorite part of the recipe. I had a jar of refrigerated fig jam I made a few months ago and had been dying to use it in some way. This was the excuse, even if I ended up using all of it. My friend has a fig tree and I harassed her until she gave me a few pounds of them. They were beautiful, perfect Black Mission figs and to think they were in her yard doing nothing broke my heart. I don’t usually can.. I never can or preserve anything but these were too good to pass up. I boiled them with some water, lemon juice, and a liquor of some kind (brandy? I forget), and sugar and then used my immersion blender to grind them all up. I gave my poor friend some and the last of it I kept in a jar in the fridge until the opportunity presented itself. Now I think I should have saved it for Christmas but this recipe was too timely and November is starting to run out.

I never make things you have to decorate since my patience doesn’t exist and other things usually precede making decorated food in my daily schedule. But since I’m working on another project that involves Rome and the challenge of a classic Italian recipe, I went for it with images of the beautiful apricot crostate I have eaten all over Rome like the shop near the Pantheon and then my daily bar near Termini by the school I attended…

Sorry, I just had a moment. Anyway, I rolled out the remaining dough and cut it into near-even lengths with I then rolled to hide that they weren’t exactly alike. I made a bold attempt at braiding them the way people with far more skill than myself do. I had forgotten to save some egg wash so I just sprinkled the whole thing with powdered sugar and stuck it in the ready oven. About 15 minutes in, I sprinkled it with sliced almonds and sprinkled more sugar to help the browning process. I don’t know how long it was in the oven (I don’t own a timer) but I went back to get it when I started to smell it while watching Glee. Browned and beautiful, I left it to cool on the stovetop and then covered it for the night.

I had a piece the next morning which is when I took the pictures. Accompanied by a homemade cappuccino, it reminded me, a little, of the Eternal City.

Grazie mille, Simona.

That’s great for Mandy and the unbelievably hard-working members of the Daring Bakers. I didn’t do it this month. Why, you may ask. Here are a few answers: A.) I’m exhausted. B.) I blinked and September went by. C.) I’ve worked so many extra hours I can afford a new fall wardrobe. But most importantly, I just don’t like sugar cookies. Sure, I could dump off the lot to the locusts at work, but why make something I don’t like? Also, I don’t like precious decorations on food, sorry. I am not Ferran Adria nor his countryman Salvador Dali. I don’t paint and I don’t paint with food.

After getting through the month eating mostly cheese plates and omelets because I was too tired and burnt out to make anything else, I finally had a day off today that was dedicated to baking. A coworker is going to do the 3 day walk for breast cancer and still needs to raise money for his team. He’s so well-liked, that people at work have decided to have a bake sale this coming Friday to help him raise the final tally. I used the bake sale as an excuse to go to town. I shopped in the morning and baked slowly, leisurely all afternoon. I ended up making two different cookies and got more than the estimated amount. That never happens. In total, I make 11 dozen cookies. Baci and ditte di mandorle. They’re plain, dry, fine and go beautifully with coffee. My favorite kind.

What I made instead of the sugar cookies.

I haven’t put the baci together yet, so I didn’t photograph them. If I have time, I’ll make the ganache tomorrow and sandwich them. If I don’t, they’ll go plain. They’re good enough as is and I didn’t even have to melt any chocolate.

So, sorry Daring Bakers, for not being part of the club this month, but I just couldn’t. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…

How very retro. Now if I could just get Don Draper to come over to share it with me.

It wasn’t to be, the rendezvous between Don and me, but the Baked Alaska turned out pretty well. I made the Brown Butter Pound Cake as instructed by the recipe Elissa posted, to the letter. Granted, I was rushed on the day I made it thanks to the party I was going to. It could have used a couple more minutes in the oven, I think, but I needed to get it to start cooling so there was a small dip in the middle of lightly undercooked cake. Maybe the undercookedness also contributed to the greasiness I felt in the cake that I’ve never found with any other pound cake I’ve ever made (not like I make it a lot). People liked it, though. I lopped off about a three-inch piece off one side and took the rest to the party where it was eaten and enjoyed. Not my best moment, but we were all a little soused and the fat in the cake helped sop up some of the alcohol.

I measured out out a piece that would fit into a little plastic container I had the next day and stuck in the freezer along with a layer of ice cream. I did not make the vanilla ice cream indicated, for the very simple reason that I’ve been working unbelievable hours and couldn’t bear to have to make a custard. I own The Perfect Scoop and made David’s slightly simpler Fleur de Lait ice cream instead. It’s one of my favorites. I had had it in the freezer poised and simply softened it the next Sunday after the hootnanny to fit over the piece of cake. I wrapped the two in plastic and left it there until the next weekend.

Since I was making a small Baked Alaska, I used only one egg white to make the meringue with rational downgrading of the rest of the ingredients. I covered the little cake in the meringue, froze it for a little while and then stuck it in the oven. I had thought of getting a torch since I didn’t think the oven would be able to brown the meringue just right. I’m glad I didn’t get one. The oven did it, look at the blackened peaks.

It may have looked better with an ice cream that created more contrast between it and the white meringue, but in my semi-delirious state, I just couldn’t be bothered. The Fleur de Lait was already made. It was delicious, but if I had to do it again, I would make that adjustment as well as making a genoise rather than a pound cake. I found the cake to be far too hard. If I let it thaw more, the ice cream would melt. Either way, I think Don would like it.

P.S. That adorable bottle out of focus behind the cake is fig jam I made with the last pound of the heavenly fruit I forced my friend to give me. That color is beautiful.

Finally, a recipe fit for this heat wave… No, wait. A heat wave is like a gust of hot weather that rolls through the warm summer like a tidal wave and leaves sweaty, dehydrated people in its wake. It has a distinct beginning and most importantly, a distinct end. What has been going on here on the Eastern seaboard has no end. The sweltering weather hasn’t broken. All we do is sweat and sweat and sweat. I can’t remember the last time I sat in the park to read. Those who gaffawed about the cold winter “proving that there is no such thing as global warming” have been silenced. Climate studies and political leanings aside, we all agree that it’s goddamn hot and there is no way on Earth I will turn on that oven for something more than a few minutes in this weather. I want nothing interfering with my hard working air conditioning.

Thank God the wise Sunita chose a treat for this mad weather. The only baked thing was the cake. Others posted having difficulties with the cake cracking, I was bound and determined that it would turn out right the first time or not at all. I had to look at that part of the recipe through a magnifier to make sure I got it right. The first problem was the pan size. Since my jelly roll pans measure 15×11, not the 11×9 called for in the recipe, I had to do some hard number crunching to arrive at a recipe that called for amounts that would fit with the pan size (40% larger) without affecting the thickness of the cake or the baking times. I also only made one cake rather than two and used my souffle dish for the final construction. I didn’t make it chocolate since I’m actually kind of chocolated out after the last few challenges.

The cake turned out beautifully. I beat the whites and yolks separately and rolled the cake right out of the oven in a towel and left it to cool. It never split. It was a light, beautiful sponge that provided a nice foil to the trio of iced desserts that went with it. Instead of the plain whipped cream filling suggested in the recipe, I made strawberry frozen yogurt with the last of the fresh berries and used that to fill the roll. I wrapped it and froze it overnight to set.

The next day, I used half a recipe of David Lebovitz’s Fresh Apricot Ice Cream for the topmost layer. While I thank Sunita for the recipe, David Lebovitz is the god of ice creams and I used his fantastic The Perfect Scoop and Ready for Dessert for the ice creams.

I didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of a theme, if you will, I was going for with the dessert. I went more with what was in season and in the markets than some clear idea like German Chocolate Cake theme or something. That being said, it turned out to be a kind of icy Sachertorte with Strawberries. Sunita’s simple chocolate sauce went in the middle. I made it with Valrhona dark chocolate powder and it froze up almost like a chocolate sorbet. The last ice cream was the best, Lebovitz’s Caramel Ice Cream from Ready for Dessert. That ice cream is phenomenal. I’ll have to make it again just to have. The once downside was the caramelized sugar increases the ice cream’s freezing point and it was the first to get soft and melt. You can see it in the second picture above. The cake has scarcely been out of the fridge and that ice cream is already melting all over the cutting board. It made for a weak final layer on the cake. Another minus is that it never freezes too hard and that makes it far too easy to eat straight out of the container with a guilty spoon. But it is delicious and worth every calorie-laden spoonful. It’s better than anything they have at the Franklin Fountain and that’s saying a lot.

I took the cake to work where it was met with rave reviews and nary a crumb was left. Another perk of the challenge is the introduction of swiss rolls into my baking repertoire. Filled with jam and topped with a simple frosting or just a dusting of sugar, they’re a nice easy dessert to have in the freezer for company. Hoo-ray.

The Berry Chocolate Pavlova

Let me get one thing straight. I love chocolate as much as the next person but I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow when I saw the pictures of this month’s challenge. Brown meringue. Brown mousse. No relief in sight. And then I read the recipes. I think I felt some chest pain. Below are the lists of ingredients per section of the challenge:

Recipe 1: Chocolate Meringue (for the chocolate Pavlova):

3 large egg whites
½ cup plus 1 tbsp (110 grams) white granulated sugar
¼ cup (30 grams) confectioner’s (icing) sugar
1/3 cup (30 grams) cocoa powder

Recipe 2: Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse (for the top of the Pavlova base):

1 ½ cups (355 mls) heavy cream (cream with a milk fat content of between 36 and 40 percent)
grated zest of 1 average sized lemon
9 ounces (255 grams) 72% chocolate, chopped
1 2/3 cups (390 mls) mascarpone (don’t forget we made this a few months ago – get the printable .pdf HERE)
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp (30 mls) Grand Marnier (or orange juice)

Recipe 3: Mascarpone Cream (for drizzling):

1 recipe crème anglaise
½ cup (120 mls) mascarpone
2 tbsp (30 mls) Sambucca (optional)
½ cup (120 mls) heavy cream

Recipe 4: Crème Anglaise (a component of the Mascarpone Cream above):

1 cup (235 mls) whole milk
1 cup (235 mls) heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
6 large egg yolks
6 tbsp (75 grams) sugar

See what I mean? I knew it was going to have to make some changes.

I slowly shop for ingredients throughout the month for a Daring Bakers challenge and it lined up so I had everything ready on the 21st, a day boasting of the summer solstice, Spain v. Honduras, and a day of suffocating humidity in the city. I will admit I made the chocolate mousse the day before since it seemed like it would survive refrigeration without any bad side effects. I made 1/3 of the recipe.

The chocolate mousse is underway.

On the 21st, I came home from the gym and took the eggs out of the fridge and then made myself lunch. It didn’t take long for the eggs to warm up and I used two for the meringue since I wasn’t planning on making the whole recipe, but I love meringue so I made a little of of that part of it than the cream products. At the same time, with the two yolks, I made 1/3 of the recipe for the creme anglaise. And then the unthinkable happened. Sit down for the revelation. I broke the cream. I have never ruined a custard. EVER. I blame it on being distracted with the meringue, my goat cheese panino I was making, and washing the dishes. It was find when I added everything back to the pan with the eggs appropriately tempered. It must have boiled too fast. I hate wasting food. It’s an offense that should be punishable by, if not death, then something. I bend over backwards to not throw food away and have become adept at all kinds of Old World ways of saving produce and leftovers etc. But I had to throw this out. It looked like baby vomit and there was no saving it. It broke my heart, but there you have it.

The match was starting and I threw the meringue in the oven for its long, slow bake. Just after David Villa slammed the first goal home, I felt energized enough to try it again. This time, since it was the only food product I was making at the time, it came off without a hitch. I made a 1/6 of that recipe and finished it with some Creme de Cacao since I had no Sambuca and no wherewithal to drag myself to the state store just for that. The heat was positively withering.

My mother has made pavlovas as far back as I can remember and has always topped them with a simple topping of whipped cream and plentiful fruit. I made my pavlova in the spirit of that recipe. Unlike the challenge recipe, I made one and not many small ones. I hate individual servings of things, finding it far too fussy, something akin to doillies or “tablescapes”. Nigella Lawson agrees with me. See her recipe for creme brulee in Domestic Goddess. I also believe in baking but hate washing up and will take all kinds of shortcuts to not use too many dishes. Needless to say, I didn’t go near my piping bag and just freehanded it. I added some chocolate powder to the meringue, but only enough to turn it a light shade of sunkissed, not dark brown. I didn’t measure, I just sprinkled until it looked good to me. Thanks to the humidity, it turned out a little sticky when it was done, but not too bad.

I added a couple of sprinklings of milk to the mousse to soften it up enough to scoop out since it had been in the fridge overnight. It’s a smaller proportion than what the recipe calls for but lighter is better. I topped the pavlova with plentiful raspberries and blueberries, the first of the season. They should be the centerpiece of a pavlova, not the cream. I topped that with the other cream and then topped that with a few smashed brazil nuts. Almonds would have been better but I didn’t have any, so there.

A cross section of the pav.

Verdict: I didn’t like this recipe. I thought it was unnecessarily rich. Heavy cream lightly sweetened and then whipped makes a great contrast to the crunch to the sweet, brittle meringue. The fruit should be the star of the show. The addition of the mascarpone gave it an added richness and thickness I thought was unnecessary and unpleasant, but then this is coming from someone who abhors America-style cheesecake. It’s the summer. It’s hot, humid, merciless, and yet the fruit is starting to pop up in the markets. I wish the recipe chosen for this month would keep some of that in mind. I think I made the right choice by cutting a lot of the creams in amount and increasing the proportion of meringue and fruit. When will someone pick ice cream and a vessel to serve it in? I’d be all over that. As consolation, I made Raspberry Rose Sorbet from the great David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop.

In mere days, the critters will be out of school and all of us will be there as days turn into nights and then back into days, putting all the little broken Humpty-Dumptys back together again. The one upside? free AC as the city suffocates beneath the blanket of humid heat from now until September.

P.S. I finished reading The Big Short last night. I’m disgusted. I didn’t understand it all, all the machinations to make debt out of nothing, but then I think the point of the book is not many people did. They will never be punished for what they did.

P.S.S. I made vegetarian paella yesterday and actually managed to get the rice crispy on the bottom this time. Yay. The only unfortunate thing is I didn’t have a bottle of red Spanish wine to drink with it.

The first paella of the season.

Daring Bakers May Challenge

I’d seen this thing before, never in real life but in passing on the Food Network or something. I never imagined I’d make one. And then this was May’s challenge. We were required to make the pate choux puffs, creme patissiere, and the caramel or chocolate topping or “glue”. The weekend after I got back from San Diego was my last chance to do it and since it was cloudy and I didn’t feel like doing anything else, it was perfect.

Since the creme needed to be chilled and could be made ahead, that was the natural place to start. It came together easily. I’ve never had a problem with creams or custards and this one came together easily. The directions stated we could make whatever flavor of cream we wanted, but I stuck with the tried and true vanilla partly because I didn’t want to leave my neighborhood and could only shop for things at the corner mart and partly because I knew the caramel part would be the hardest. I was kind of stressing out over it. The only change I made to the recipe was I used 2% milk rather than whole since that’s what I had. The corner mart’s milk all had expiry dates within the next week and I didn’t want to purchase more just to have it go bad. I also only made half the recipe. This didn’t look like a dessert that would keep nor did it look easy to transfer to work. Here’s the creme recipe. I made half this so-called “half” batch.

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.

Now for the pate choux puffs. I’d made gougeres before which are based on the same recipe. I think the recipe I used for those, though, called for only yolks. This one required the whole egg. Once again, I only made half of the stated amounts. It’s hard to divide 3/4 of a cup in half, but I guess and figured I could just cook it off for longer if I added too much. Stirring the eggs in took a good amount of energetic mixing with a wooden spoon but eventually they incorporated as stated. The recipe made about 20 small ones and I poured them out with my piping bag. I’m terribly uncoordinated but they turned out more or less the same size. I just patted down the more enthusiastic peaks before baking them. One thing I didn’t do was paint them with an egg wash. I hate egg wash, it’s such a waste of a perfectly good egg. Since this wasn’t for a special occasion, I left them as is. They baked up perfectly and I put them in a plastic container overnight.

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.

The next day after the gym, I made some coffee and organized all my stuff for putting this all together. I had a few tiny Ritters from my Economy Candy raid two weeks ago and so I melted down two of those alongside the sugar and lime juice for the caramel. I had never made or attempted to make spun sugar before. I’d once seen Sherry Yard create ridiculous clouds of spun sugar on Iron Chef before but I never thought I’d be called to try to do the same thing. Clearly, attempting to do anything like Sherry Yard is like asking Michelangelo to teach you to paint, but an attempt was made. I used two forks to create some rudimentary strings and spun them around the little tower of puffs as much as I could. They didn’t all cooperate and there were numerous spots where the caramel was so think that it proved to be a hazard to teeth and fillings everywhere. If I make this again, I think I’ll make a softer caramel with some cream just to keep it more edible.

I used a plastic bag to fill the puffs with the cream and a knife to make a small indentation in the puffs. I only have two nozzles for the pastry bag and both would be too big to fill the puffs that were only about an inch in diameter. I dipped the filled puffs in the caramel and made a little pyramid out of them. I bound them together with the attempted spun sugar and then topped the whole thing with strands of the melted bittersweet chocolate.

It’s delicious, probably the most taste-friendly thing I’ve yet made with the Daring Bakers. There’s nothing like a French classic. It was fun and it’s good to be reminded that choux pastry is really that easy to make. I’ll probably never make a croquembouche again, but I’ll revisit the choux again, that’s for damn sure.

P.S. I find the name “croquembouche” comical because this dessert is such a filling hazard. It may be all nice for Frenchmen with their nationalized health care, but for Americans on their own to foot those bills, it’s downright frightening. I’m an anti-dentite anyway. I’m proceeding with care.

P.P.S. Oh, yeah, I took that first picture using my hot shoe flash unit. I’d never used it before. The creme picture was taken with my phone.

RECIPE SOURCE:

Mascarpone Cheese – Vera’s Recipe (Baking Obsession) for Homemade Mascarpone Cheese.
Savoiardi/ Ladyfinger Biscuits – Recipe from Cordon Bleu At Home
Tiramisu – Carminantonio’s Tiramisu from The Washington Post, July 11 2007

Well, this was so time-consuming that if it hadn’t been for the big snowstorm mid-month, I never would have gotten it done. It also marked the first Daring Bakers challenge that I have had to repeat a part of the process. I don’t love tiramisu and prefer gelato as dessert rather than this rich tourist favorite, but this version has an great cream filling that benefited from some small changes I made to the requirements.

The first part I made were the savoiardi on a night off midweek. I attempted to make them using my pastry bag but it was a disaster and the resulting cookies looked like tortured tree branches. I knew they were fated to be lost in the cream, though, so I wasn’t worried, but their complete ugliness prompted me to attempt to make the recipe again the next week. This time, I used a cut off plastic bag instead of the pastry bag and the results were much more even. Recipe-wise, if I ever make them again, I’ll top them with granulated sugar rather than the confectioner’s called for in the recipe. I doubt I’ll make them again, though. Biscotti are so way funner and taste better.

I have never in my life made cheese. It belongs to that family of foods that defy rhyme or reason why someone would want to make it at home when others do it so much better. But, fathfully, I followed the recipe, I even purchased cheesecloth. I have no idea what went wrong. I thought I had done it right, but the resulting product was just a step away from the original creaminess of the heavy cream itself and a far cry from the mascarpone you buy in the store. Due to the price of whipping cream, I didn’t repeat this recipe, since I was also running out of time to get all the pieces done.

On the day of the forcasted (and as yet unseen Snowicaine), I made the zabaglione and the pastry cream as well as finished the tiramisu. I have made zabaglione before but this time it didn’t turn out quite right. I used coffee instead of marsala since I don’t have marsala in the house and I intended to take this thing to work and not keep it at home. I don’t own a bain marie and usually use a glass bowl over water in a saucepan for melting chocolate. I used the glass bowl setup this time as well and proceeded according to the recipe. After 40 minutes of stirring and no change in the stiffness of the cream, I got desperate and moved it to a smaller saucepan that I set inside the larger one. Glass is a poor heat conductor and less so when you’re counting on it to cook the food in the bowl and not just heat it. A stainless steel bowl has been added to my shopping list for next month.

The pastry cream cooked up like a dream, though and I’ve continued my streak of good luck with custards. I used orange zest both in the pastry cream and the zabaglione instead of lemon zest for a nice twist. Oranges are so in this time of year.

For assembling the final tiramisu, I used a loaf pan for ease of transport to work. The homemade savoiardi just fit a row across end to end at the top to make up for the empty space. I’m glad i remade them so I had cookies that were approximately the same size. Once the three layers were done, the loaf pan was filled all the way to the top. I topped it with chocolate curls rather than powder. I always hate the powder on top of tiramisus and wasn’t going to do the same thing with my own. I have an entire box of chocolate odds and ends and this was as good a time as any to use them.

There is one thing I must vent about. The required 2 cups of espresso is far, far too much. It could be my savoiardi were smaller than average, but given the recipe we were given, I doubt they were that much smaller. Unless I misread or misunderstood the 2 cups to mean 2 demitasse cups of espresso rather than the 500ml I made, it’s a huge, wasteful amount. Not even half a cup of it was used. And i had put Grand Marnier in it instead of rum. What a waste. I feel awful. As I write this, it’s sitting on my stove sadly blinking at me. I hate, hate waste and I hate how I didn’t listen to my common sense on this one.

As far as the finished product is concerned, as of this writing, I have yet to taste it but if the leftovers of the cream were any signal, it’s a good version of the dessert.

Addendum 2.28.2010: I’ve tried the tiramisu. It’s less coffeesque than I’d hoped. Maybe that’s from my using instant espresso powder to make the coffee rather than brewing it. Also, it’s a bit too sweet for me. If I made it again, I’d notch the sugar down. The cream doesn’t keep its form and just sliding down so the layers look like a mudslide in slow motion. I’ll stick with my old recipe if I ever make it again.