Daring Bakers in July: Filbert Gâteau with Praline Buttercream
July 30, 2008 at 4:19 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 49 Comments
When I saw that Chris of Mele Cotte would be taking charge of this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, I had my fingers crossed that she’d chose something sweet with an Italian twist to it. As if reading my mind, she chose Filbert Gâteau with Praline Buttercream–a cake featuring the quintessentially Italian combo of hazelnuts and chocolate (and two funny words, “filbert” and “gâteau”). Mmmm…wonderful.
I made a half recipe, fitting the cake batter into a six-inch pan with high sides. There’s a little bit of citrus in this recipe, but I decided to leave out the lemon zest in the cake batter and replace the Grand Marnier in the soaking syrup and buttercream with Kahlua, which suits my tastes better. As you can see, I kind of copped out and only cut the cake into two layers instead of three.
While I did not to make the praline to add to the buttercream frosting, I did make caramelized whole hazelnuts to use as decoration. I flavored my Swiss meringue buttercream instead with an unsweetened hazelnut butter that I had bought at the health food store awhile back. Buttercream is plenty sweet already, so this gave it a nice balance and a good hazelnut flavor. I realized that I’d have a few more of those caramelized nuts than I’d need to decorate the top of the cake, so I chopped up the extras roughly and sprinkled them over the buttercream before placing on the top layer of cake. That was a nice crunchy touch!
I am wondering if my glaze was a little on the thin side. The top was nice and smooth, but as it dripped down the side of cake, it seemed to get hung up on the little specks of hazelnut in the buttercream crumb coat (which I chose to use instead of apricot glaze). No matter…it was on to the decorating! Chris wanted us to use some of the buttercream in our decoration. Small cakes can easily look look overwhelmed by garnish, so I didn’t want to use too much. Little shells on the bottom border, a few rosettes on top, and that was enough for me. I finished it off with a little gold dust and the candied nuts.
After reading through all that, maybe you wonder what it tasted like. This cake was seriously delicious! We had it for three nights, and I savored every bite. There were a lot of steps to this cake, but the end result was totally worth it. I can hardly believe that I joined the Daring Bakers last July (I can also hardly believe that the group was still in the double digits back then)! I considered this to be my DB one-year anniversary cake!
Check out the DB blogroll! And visit Mele Cotte for the recipe (which was adapted from Great Cakes by Carol Walter).
P.S.: I’m still out of town, but back next week!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Summer Fruit Galette
July 29, 2008 at 5:19 am | Posted in groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 39 Comments
This week, it’s more summer fruit action for TWD, as Michelle from Michelle in Colorado Springs has selected Dorie’s recipe for Summer Fruit Galette. I’m wondering if there are any Southern Hemisphere dwellers coming up in the rotation? Anyone to pick a heavy, wintertime bread pudding, or perhaps a little pumpkin somethin’ somethin’? 
Just kidding…actually, I have something up my sleeve, and it’s one of my absolute favorites. It’s no secret either, because I used it last week— rhubarb.
I so associate rhubarb with spring back in the States, but I mentioned last week that I see it at the farmers’ markets year-round here. Maybe it’s the mild climate or something, I dunno. And I’m talking about thin, red as anything, beautiful stalks, with healthy green leaves (although they’re not healthy to eat–call Mr. Yuck!) still attached. It’s really a veggie, by the way, so perhaps I should call this a “summer vegetable galette”?
A galette is a free-form tart. Less muss and fuss than one baked in a ring, it’s easy to make, and even easier when you have enough of Dorie’s pie dough (left over from my mini Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie) stashed in the freezer to do it. I made two individual-sized galettes. After cutting out the rolled dough into two circles, I smeared the centers with a little strawberry rhubarb jam and sprinkled on some almond cookie crumbs. Then I just piled on a heap of cut rhubarb. Because I really liked the bite of ginger in last week’s cobbler, I chopped up a couple of small hunks of baby stem ginger in syrup that I had in the fridge, and dotted it among the rhubarb pieces…it’s pretty potent stuff, so a little goes along way. I folded the edges of the dough up to form pleats, and the galettes looked oddly similar to a stop sign when viewed from above. I wouldn’t exactly say that rhubarb abounds in natural sweetness, so when I sprinkled the dough with raw sugar before putting the galettes in the oven, I also sprinkled some on the rhubarb.
A few minutes before the galette finishes baking, a “custard” of melted butter, egg, sugar and vanilla gets poured on top. I had initially thought about leaving it out, because the combination of ingredients sounded a little weird to me, frankly. Other TWDers said it really added something, though, so I went ahead with it. And I must say, while it had a strange color (some may say “snot-like”), it was quite tasty and it gave a nice sweetness that seeped all around the rhubarb to fill in the gaps.
To serve, I followed Dorie’s suggestion to simply dust some powdered sugar on top and call it day. We really enjoyed this. It’s a great simple dessert, and I’ll definitely have to try it with some stonefruit in another six months! And I have to say (even though I should not praise that which contains shortening), Dorie’s pie dough is super freakin’ flaky.
Look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Michelle’s post to find the recipe. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 200 other people had to say!
P.S.: So sorry, but I may not be able to make the TWD rounds myself for the next couple weeks. I’ll be on vacation when you read this–twelve days in America’s paradise, and without our laptop. Aloha!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler
July 22, 2008 at 5:55 am | Posted in cobbler/crisp/shorties, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 49 Comments
After a quick chocolate fix last week, TWD’s summer fruit theme picks right back up, with Amanda’s (from Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake) selection of Dorie’s Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler. Interestingly (and luckily), rhubarb doesn’t seem to have a season here, and I can find it all year-round at the growers’ markets. Fresh cherries, however, are out in force at Christmastime and pretty much non-existent right now…so this, my friends, is when I must turn to the glorious bounty of the frozen food aisle if I wanna keep up. Armed with a bunch of fresh rhubarb and a box of frozen sweet cherries, I thought I was all set to take this cobbler on.
Then d’oh! I did hit a snag when I saw that the cobbler topping includes whole wheat flour. Just before we moved into this new apartment, I used up the last of my whole wheat in a pizza crust. For reasons I’ll get into later when things become more definite, I’ve been hoping to avoid buying any new ingredients that I can’t easily use up in a few months time. I definitely wanted to include the whole wheat component, as it’s something unique from the other Dorie cobbler we’ve baked, so I decided to make a “homemade” version rather than buy another big bag. No, I didn’t go out back to the grist mill and grind my own (that thing’s been broken since the mid-1800’s– ha!)…I just subbed half AP flour and half wheat germ, which I did have already, for the amount of whole wheat.
There were a couple of things I really liked about this cobbler: the cute little rounds of wheaten topping (which I’ll use again, for sure), and the kick from the ground ginger in both the topping and the filling. There was something about the fruit itself that I wasn’t so crazy about, and it had to do with the cherries. Maybe I’m just used to sour cherries in cobblers and pies, and don’t care for baked sweet cherries. Or maybe it’s simply that fresh cherries would have been better than frozen. Who knows? I don’t, but maybe I can compare when fresh cherries are in season.
Look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Amanda’s post to find the recipe. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 200 other people had to say!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Pudding
July 15, 2008 at 5:41 am | Posted in groups, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 52 Comments
This week, Melissa from It’s Melissa’s Kitchen put the TWD spotlight on Dorie’s Chocolate Pudding. It may be from the book Baking: From My Home to Yours, but no baking is required for this one, just a little stovetop work.
I love pudding (I was especially nuts for JELL-O’s pistachio flavored mix growing up), but I have an awkward relationship with it. I can eat pudding that I make, but I cannot eat other people’s pudding. No, no…I am not down with OPP. I can pinpoint the exact reason for this, too, which goes back to a childhood visit to my mum’s Aunt R. Aunt R served me something that was more skin than pudding, and it was all I could do not to gag at the table. I need to know that my pudding will have no trace of skin on it…therefore, I must make it myself.
When I first read the instructions for this recipe, I noticed that a lot of ins and outs of the food processor were required. I thought that sounded like a bit of a pain in the butt, but it was really no big deal. And the using the food processor is the best way to get an uber-smooth pudding. You can bet I pressed plastic on the surface straight away before refrigerating it!
I made mine with low-fat (not skim) milk, instead of whole, and I thought it worked great. The chocolate I used was from a dark chocolate bar infused with mint that I had in the pantry. Sorry George Costanza, no pudding skin singles here…just super-smooth, super-chocolatey, sightly minty, totally delicious pudding!
Look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here on Dorie’s blog to find the recipe. Don’t forget to check out Melissa’s post and the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie
July 8, 2008 at 4:47 am | Posted in groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 70 Comments
I may not have had fireworks this Fourth of July, but I still had homemade blueberry pie! As you can tell, I’m back in action in my new kitchen…although the day we moved in, we got some news that makes us wonder if we should bother to unpack, but that’s a different story for a different time…I’m here now to talk about Dorie’s Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie, which Amy from South in Your Mouth selected for TWD. Look at that pie with its little blueberry juice scar–it’s so homely, it’s almost cute!
The recipe for Dorie’s pie dough calls for mostly butter with a small amount of shortening. I’ve actually never made a pie crust with shortening before, but since I do have some the fridge (why, I cannot remember), I decided to give it go. I won’t lie…it’s a great crust. It’s crispy and flaky and all that, but I do generally have the shortening creeps, and will probably stick with my normal all-butter recipe going forward. Due to the fact that fresh blueberries are hard to find here right now, and break-the-bank expensive when you do, I took a gamble and used frozen ones in the filling. I do think, by the way, that fresh blueberries make a noticeably better pie filling, but in a pinch, these were acceptable. Besides the frozen berries and the fact that I made a mini pie, I followed Dorie’s recipe to a tee. I served up our slices with vanilla whipped cream.
Thanks to everyone who left comments here last week! Dorie herself commented on my Apple Cheddar Scones post–I almost choked on my coffee when I saw that! Now, off to the TWD blogroll for all the other pies out there! And check out Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or Amy’s post for the recipe for her Double-Crusted Blueberry Pie.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Apple Cheddar Scones
July 1, 2008 at 5:10 am | Posted in biscuits/scones, breakfast things, groups, tuesdays with dorie | 43 Comments
These are the last treats baked in the oven of my old apartment (sniff). Karina of The Floured Apron has chosen Dorie’s Apple Cheddar Scones for TWD this week. If it weren’t for the group, I probably wouldn’t have made this recipe. Not that doesn’t sound good to me, it actually sounds quite good, but I just know I wouldn’t have gotten around to it. I’m so glad I got the push I needed, because I thought they were fantastic!
Apples and cheddar cheese are a classic combination. I used to think it was a southern thing…then I thought it was a New England thing. I have no idea what kind of thing it is now, except for a good thing. This recipe calls for dried apples, which hold their form well in the scones, and grated cheddar (I used white), which melts into the background. The dried fruit and cheddar cheese, along with apple juice, make for a slightly sweet and salty combo that I love. Cornmeal in the dough makes them bake up golden and gives them texture. If I make them again, I’ll either scoop out the sticky dough in rounds or pat it out a bit fatter, but that’s purely for looks. I served mine with a little honey butter on the side–tasty!
Sorry to keep this so short, but as I write this, I’m still in the midst of packing. A big thanks to Karina for this week’s pick! My internet connection may be down for several days due to the move, so I might not be able to check out the TWD blogroll myself this week, but you should! And check out Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or Karina’s post for the recipe for these Apple Cheddar Scones.
Daring Bakers in June: Danish Braid
June 29, 2008 at 5:48 am | Posted in breakfast things, daring bakers, groups, sweet things, sweet yeast breads | 70 Comments
This month, the Daring Bakers tried our hands at making a laminated dough. Hosts Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cooking? chose a recipe for a Danish braid from Sherry Yard’s book The Secrets of Baking. While I can’t say that I ever feel the urge to have a Danish, I do appreciate tasty homemade breakfast treats, so I was looking forward to this challenge.
Like its sisters, puff pastry and croissant, a Danish is made from a butter-laminated, or layered, dough. This means a block of butter is encased in dough and repeatedly rolled and folded to create layers. Danish dough is sweet and contains a bit of yeast to help it rise (it also makes it a bit more bready than puff or croissant). While this type of dough may initially seem intimidating, it’s not hard to make in small quantities, and Danish dough is a good introduction to the laminating process.
The dough is flavored with cardamom, vanilla and orange. While the cardamom and vanilla were must-have flavors for me, I found the orange to be a bit too pronouned. If I made it again, I’d probably leave out the zest and use only the orange juice. We were allowed to choose our own filling, and I made mine with a center of sweetened quark cheese and cherries. It was great, but I was worried about having a runny filling so I was a little skimpy with the cherries. I wish I’d been a bit more liberal with them. Just about all sweet breakfast pastries should have an icing sugar glaze in my opinion, so I was liberal with that!
The full recipe provided by Kelly and Ben made two braids. I didn’t need that much, so I halved it to make just one. It was beautiful, and big enough for six quite healthy portions. And braiding dough is way easier than braiding hair, let me tell you. If I’d thought about it enough, maybe I would have made a smaller braid and saved aside some dough for other fun shapes like pinwheels…another time.
If you’d like to test your laminating and braiding skills, you can find the recipe in Kelly’s post or Ben’s post. And no need to worry if, even after you look at the zillions of braids on the DB Blogroll, you still feel nervous about trying it yourself. Kelly and Ben also pointed out a great video clip from Julia Child’s Baking with Julia series on PBS. This clip demos a different recipe by Beatrice Ojakangas, but the technique is very similar.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Mixed Berry Cobbler
June 24, 2008 at 5:04 am | Posted in cobbler/crisp/shorties, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 46 Comments
I figure that I’ll have to opt out of a few TWD recipes between the months of June and August. While it’s prime fruit and berry season up in the Northern Hemisphere, a packet of raspberries or blueberries would pretty much bankrupt me here ($15 for skinny plastic packet of raspberries and $11 for blueberries at my local produce shop– ouch!!). Beth of Our Sweet Life may have chosen Mixed Berry Cobbler for this week’s TWD recipe, but I’m not SOL just yet becasue luckily Dorie designed this one to use frozen berries. Those I have plenty of!
Even though my berry fears were assuaged, I was still a little apprehensive about this recipe. Lots of TWDers who made it early in the week thought that the topping was bland and disappointing. Shoot– I didn’t want to be let down, but I was also curious as to what I’d think of it. I will say that I made one change to Dorie’s ingredient list, and I really only did this because we are moving over the weekend. She uses heavy cream to bind the cobbler topping together, but I used sour cream. Even though we’re just moving locally, I’ve been trying hard to use up what I have already, rather than add to the stuff in the fridge. Anyway, it worked really well as a substitution (and probably gave the topping a flavor-boost as well). I also sprinkled a little raw sugar over the topping before I popped in the oven. I like the extra sweetness and bit of crunch it gives, so I almost always do this with pie crusts and cobbler toppings.
Maybe I’m just not that picky, but I really liked the simplicity of this dessert. I’m sure it would great with a hit of vanilla or cinnamon in the topping, but I thought it was good as is, too. The biscuit-style crust is buttery and homey, and my berries were just sweet enough to make the whole thing taste like summer. A little vanilla ice cream doesn’t hurt much either. And you know what else? I think it’s really beautiful with the purpley-pink juices running everywhere!
One last note: I only wanted three portions, so I cut the recipe back to one-third the original size and put it in a small (about six-inch) square ceramic baker. It took just under 40 minutes for the top to be golden and the berries to be bubbly.
Thanks Beth! As always, the recipe’s in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but she also has it here on NPR’s website as part of an interview she did for All Things Considered. And don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Peppermint Cream Puff Ring
June 17, 2008 at 4:16 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 67 Comments
When I saw that Caroline of A Consuming Passion had chosen Dorie’s Peppermint Cream Puff Ring for TWD, my fist thought was that it reminded me of Christmas, but that’s actually quite right for the weather over here. I even had a bunch of mint in the fridge that I was looking to finish off (why is that stuff so hard to use up?)–perfect!
Have I ever told you that I love making pâte à choux, the base for cream puffs, eclairs, profiteroles and the like? This wasn’t always the case though. In culinary school, we had to use all these crazy tests to tell if we had added the “proper” amount of egg to the dough. And for baking–turn the oven up, then down, then off. Argh! Then I went to work in a restaurant and it was like, “just use four eggs and bake them at 375° till they’re done.” Freed of all that egg ambiguity and temperature trickery, choux became really fun and easy!
Dorie calls for the choux paste to be piped out in the shape of a large ring that is later cut in half and filled, similar to a Paris-Brest. Partly because several other TWDers had their choux rings deflate on them, but mostly because a big ring sounded a bit too much for our small household, I decided to pipe individual cream puffs instead. For these cream puffs, I made a half recipe of choux, using two whole eggs. (One tip that Dorie doesn’t mention is to paddle the cooked paste in the mixer for a minute to cool it off a bit before adding the eggs one by one. It should still be warm, but it is good to let some of the steam out before the eggs go in.) This yielded about 24 two-bite puffs (using a 1/2-inch tip to pipe about 1 1/2-inch mounds).
I baked off nine right away and put the rest in the freezer to bake later. Since I was already switching up the shape of Dorie’s choux, I decided to proceed with her baking instructions rather than my one-temperature method. I baked my puffs for 15 minutes at 425°, then about 10 more at 375°. While I was at it, after they were fully baked, I used a pairing knife to put a small slit in the side of each baked puff, and further dried them out in the turned-off oven, which I cracked open with a wooden spoon, for about 30 minutes. This baking process was much less painful than I remembered it in school (but then again, most things are).
The cooled puffs (or ring) were sliced in half and filled with a mint-infused whipped cream. A little sour cream or crème fraîche folded in gave it a bit of tang, but it would have been just as tasty without. Capped off with dark chocolate glaze and toasted almonds, these were perfect little bites. And just for Dorie, I presented my puffs in the form of a (rather dodgy-looking) “ring!”
Thanks Caroline! As always, the recipe’s in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but this time she also has a version of it here on Epicurious. And don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
Tuesdays with Dorie: La Palette’s Strawberry Tart
June 10, 2008 at 5:32 am | Posted in groups, pies & tarts, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 66 Comments
They say that within simplicity lies beauty, and this strawberry tart (our TWD recipe of the week) is a case in point. At its bare bones, it’s just a sablée crust, strawberry jam and fresh berries. It’s delicious as is, and even better tricked out with a couple of Dorie’s minor embellishments. I put a little hazelnut meal into the tart dough and tossed the cut berries in kirsch, a sprinkling of sugar and a hit of black pepper. Dorie recommends serving this with a little crème fraîche or whipped cream, but I had mascarpone in the fridge, so that’s what I used.
I decided to make individual tarts so I could bake the shells off as needed, which is a good idea when there are only two of you, and a great idea when its been so damp all week. I really loved the ultra-crisp crust, although I admit it was a little tricky to cut into. Reminiscent of a linzer cookie, the tart shells are sweet and nutty, and filled with the jam and berries moments before serving. It’s not exactly strawberry season over here, but I did find one lady still selling them at the monthly growers’ market, and happily they were pretty good.
This week’s recipe was chosen by Marie of A Year in Oak Cottage. If you want to read about the inspiration for this tart from the woman herself, look for the recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or on Serious Eats. And don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
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