A Standing Ovation

This month’s challenge was somewhat odd for me. You see… for the past 7 challenges, I have stayed really close to the recipes, often making them exactly as stated. I would then gaze in awe at the other DBers who had chosen to do wonderfully creative variations that could not be described as anything other than daring. I would then feel somewhat disappointed, feeling like my own productions were kind of plain and boring.

Not this month! I was really excited and inspired by this very elaborate production, but thoroughly uninspired by all the white chocolate components (I have been known to describe white chocolate as sweetened Chap-Stick). I was also pretty disappointed that we couldn’t use dark colors or flavors (chocolate would have been my preference), so I decided to branch out and be creative. I considered keeping my joconde almond (buying packaged almond meal would have been much easier) but decided to go with hazelnut, my favorite kind of nut, and immediately thought of raspberry as a good pairing.

Here came the odd part of the challenge. Since I wasn’t going to keep to the recipes provided, I had to do a fair amount of research to find alternate recipes. This really felt like cheating, although I double-checked and all my modifications were allowed (except maybe for the raspberry mousse recipe… that part was kind of ambiguous, though other DBers also seemed to use their own). In the end, I only used the joconde and syrup recipes provided by the challenge, and used other recipes for the buttercream, mousse, and glaze.

For the joconde, I decided to make my own hazelnut meal. I wasn’t sure how many cups of hazelnuts I would need for 2 cups of meal. As it turns out, I bought maybe twice to three times as much as I needed, which wouldn’t have been a big deal since I love hazelnuts, except that peeling them took FOREVER! It pretty much took a whole afternoon, even with blanching (my peels were really stubborn). And yes, I peeled all of them (at least I didn’t grind them all). Here is the finished product:

The rest of the joconde, flavored with a bit of Frangelico, was pretty uneventful. I baked it in a 17.25x11.5inch baking sheet (it was all I had and was pretty similar in area to the one the recipe called for). I baked the layers one at a time, about 8 minutes each, and they came out fine. I realized while baking the first one that I had forgotten to fold in the butter. I added half the butter to the leftover batter but, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t really tell the difference. The syrup, flavored with Frangelico, was also uneventful, although I didn’t use even half of it. Here is a picture of the joconde cooling:

As for the buttercream, I decided to make it hazelnut flavored too. My past experiences with buttercream have been mixed. For the Perfect Party Cake challenge, my mixer went crazy and the texture never quite got there. For the yule log, the texture was fine but I flavored it with hazelnut syrup (like the one for coffee or Italian soda) and thought the result was too sweet and artificial-tasting. This time around, I decided to use a can of hazelnut praline paste to flavor the buttercream and used the recipe I found on the label, which was just like the Perfect Party Cake one. It came out delicious! My husband said it tasted like real hazelnuts, only better. Here’s a picture:

For the mousse, I used this recipe for raspberry mousse. It was super easy and quite possibly the best part of the cake. I’m usually not a fan of mousses with gelatin but thought that, since it was going to be layered, it really needed the extra structure. This recipe is definitely a keeper. The raspberry glaze came from this recipe, which was also super-easy and tasty. My only variation was that I used all the frozen raspberries from the beginning and strained out all the seeds (the recipe calls for half strained and half whole berries). Here’s a picture of the glazing in progress:

Audience Response:

I served this cake at dinner with some our best friends, gave them some leftovers, and then took the rest to work. After my husband cut the edges, I thought the cake looked very professional. Everyone LOVED it. I got a ton of compliments and several requests for recipes, although when I described the work that went into it, most people withdrew their requests. I got a ton of questions about why it was called an Opera cake, and I did my best to make up a good answer (created for the premiere of an Opera in Paris, the word opera means “work” in Italian, the many layers are like the acts of an Opera, etc.). Overall, it was a show-stopper!

What I learned:

1) Peeling hazelnuts is very time-consuming and a pain in the back (literally, as I could barely stand up after hours of sitting and peeling).

2) Making buttercream is a very stressful endeavor. There is always that point in which the mixture looks curdled and awful and you want to cry. Here is a picture of the “moment of heartbreak”:

Now that I have made it a couple of times, I know I have to suspend disbelief and continue to beat the mixture, and eventually it comes together. Still, very anxiety-provoking!

3) The moment to take pictures of your work is not when your guests are sitting around waiting to eat it! Instead of taking our time and cleaning up the edges and posing everything just right, we just took the pictures quickly. I think they came out a bit sloppy.

The Verdict:

I LOVED the cake and will definitely make it again. It has a definite WOW factor, is very tasty, and if you break up the recipe along a couple of days, not too difficult or overwhelming. Perhaps the next one I make will be a chocolate one. YUM!

Popping out

When I first found out about this month’s challenge, I was ecstatic! I love cheesecake, I love chocolate, and I love bite-size things, so I was thrilled. I was also excited that it was something that I could make for Passover with minor adaptations. Had it been bread, I may not have been able to participate. I did a bit of research and took advantage of the fabulous DAB knowledge about going gluten-free and decided to sub out the flour with half the amount of corn starch. The making of the cheesecake went out without a hitch. I used a 9-inch springform pan (all I had), triple-covered with aluminum foil to prevent water leakage. Here it is during baking. Not sure if the bumps are bubbles or lumps in the batter…

I checked it after 45 minutes of baking and it was still fully liquid. Having read the comments on the forum about baking times and having some previous cheesecake experience, I let it keep baking until it look set. I’m not exactly sure how long that was, but I’d guess it was about 80 minutes. I wasn’t surprised it took that long because a) my oven runs a bit on the cool side, b) I used a smaller pan so it had more depth, and c) I probably let the oven cool down from too much time with the door open (between pictures and putting in the water for the water bath). I took the cheesecake out, let it cool and set it to chill. When I went to make the pops, I noticed that it had developed a thick skin (potentially from slight overbaking) but looked and tasted very creamy. I rolled the balls by hand, which was a messy and sticky endeavor but lots of fun. Here are the balls before getting the lollipop sticks.

Once they were frozen and ready for dipping. I slowly melted the chocolate in the microwave (my method of choice when I don’t care about tempering) and mixed in some hazelnut oil just to thin it out. I had a feeling that with the frozen balls, the chocolate would harden immediately and create too thick a shell. I probably should have added more oil, since it gave the chocolate a nice nutty undertone and it would have been better if it had been a bit thinner. I dipped the balls as quickly as I could, shaking of the excess as much as possible, and then dipped them in candy sprinkles. I had grand plans to do some with white chocolate decorations, but I ran out of time.

The Verdict:

How did they turn out? They were delicious and a big hit at our Seder (Passover dinner), (along with some Chocolate-Covered Matzah Crunch, aka Matzah Crack, the most addictive and delicious Passover treat, pictured below). My only issue was that they were a bit hard to eat. When they were fully frozen, they lost their creaminess and were a bit insipid. When they defrosted a bit, they tasted great but the sticks just popped out of the balls, defeating the whole “pop” point. Also, the balls were a bit bigger than one bite so taking a bite would make the other half fall off the stick, so people had to hold the other half in their hands… not ideal hand-held food. Overall, though, I loved them and would definitely make them again, albeit smaller. They are delicious and have a great wow factor. Thanks to Elle and Deborah for the wonderful recipe and to all the DBers for the help and wonderful inspiration for the future.

Tale of the cursed cake

I have to confess that when I read about this month’s challenge, I wasn’t super excited. My husband is not a cake person at all and, I have to admit, there are MANY things I enjoy more than plain, white, spongy cake. I would always choose dense and rich over light and fluffy. Also, work on my dissertation has really increased all of a sudden (or at least it has to if I’m going to graduate in the near future) and my husband was going to be in Japan for 10 days, so I nearly sat this one out. With nobody to eat the cake and too busy for a party, it seemed like a waste of ingredients. Nonetheless, I spotted a jar of Blenheim apricot jam (from the Hi-Rise bakery in Cambridge, MA… mmm!) and needed an excuse to buy it. I decided to be Daring and bake a cake just because. I had the ingredients on hand anyway (including my brand new beautiful jam!) so, on a break from writing on a Saturday afternoon, I got started on my Lemon-Apricot Perfect Party Cake.

I think my original bad attitude cursed this cake from the start… When I went to print the recipe, I realized that my printer was almost out of ink so the print-out was nearly illegible, requiring me to hand write all the parts that had printed as totally blank. I set out to mix the dry and then the wet ingredients (no issues there, except I used a carton of 100% egg whites, which looked way more liquid and watery than regular egg whites, which kind of freaked me out). I went on to mix the lemon and sugar, only to realize that I didn’t have enough sugar. Off I went to the corner store for sugar. I continued to mix the zest and sugar, and then the butter, and then started adding the other ingredients when, all of a sudden, my mixer goes crazy! It starts going faster and faster, splattering the mixture everywhere, and then shuts off. I briefly freak out, then unplug the mixer, then plug it back in and try again. I put it on the lowest possible setting and the same thing happens: slow, then faster and faster and then off! By this point, I had gone too far to quit, so I finished making the cake by repeatedly turning the mixer on and quickly off to minimize splattering. I poured the batter (which looked fine and tasted amazing) into the pans and put them in the oven. I used a similar on-off procedure to make the buttercream, although I had to make a screen with plastic wrap to shield me from the flying butter. I unfortunately don’t have pictures of this because my husband took both of our cameras on his trip!

By some sort of miracle, the buttercream actually came together eventually, despite the jerky on-off beating. I went to check on the cakes, and they had risen fine (unlike some of the issues other DBers had) but they baked on a slant! My apartment, you see, is in a house that is settling and therefore is not level. This, however, had never happened to me before. I can’t quite explain how a liquid batter ended up rising only on one side! I took the layers out of the oven and tried to put them on the cooling rack, only to notice that the pans were too close to a bag of sliced bread, which melted onto the hot pans! I tried to move them and burnt my wrist. You can see why I think my cake is cursed!

By this point, I was frankly too tired and annoyed to care much about decorating the cake. I let the layers cool, and cut them in half as best I could (pretending that they are not slanted). In the back of my mind, I remembered all the “Ace of Cakes” episodes and Epicurious clips on how to level cakes and cut the sides to make them smooth, how to crumb-coat and then frost a cake, etc. but totally disregarded all that knowledge and just slapped the buttercream on the cake, trying to make it look faintly cake-like (round with straight sides). I also decided to put some dried apricots in between the layers with the (delicious, makes-it-all-worth-it) apricot jam. The end result was, to tell you the truth, not very pretty. I decided to use slivered almonds to give the illusion of actual sides, which worked OK. With the almonds, the cake didn’t look monstrous anymore!

The final chapter of the cursed cake saga occurred when I decided to take the cake to work to share with my colleagues. I put it in a cake-carrier and put it in my car, safely drove it to work, and I went to take it out of the car, the top of the carrier came off and off went the cake all over the passenger seat and floor mat. Almonds, apricots, buttercream, all smeared on the upholstery and mat! Thankfully, I had cut a piece to take a picture, so at least I got to eat that. When I got home, I scraped all the frosting off the cake and tried to figure out whether it was salvageable… but it wasn’t. It ended up in the trash. SO SAD!

Lessons learned:

1) Lessons from TV and the internet don’t magically translate into fantastic cake decorating abilities

2) Using egg whites from a carton may seem freaky but works just fine

3) Any cake-bearing container should be closed and secured before taking it out of the car!

The Verdict:

After all the disasters (burnt wrist, messed up mixer, buttercream-smeared car), the cake was… ok. I have to maintain my opinion about plain white fluffy cake. Not my favorite. The apricot jam was not nearly enough to salvage the cake and I should definitely have added more to make the cake more apricot-y… or perhaps I shouldn’t have added any of the fantastic jam, as the cake ended up in the trash! :o( The lemon buttercream was delicious, but it took some getting used to the fact that it is basically all butter. Overall, I don’t think I’ll make it again.

PS: As soon as my husband came home, the mixer magically fixed itself. I guess it had been missing him as much as I had (though he never uses it).

A Very Long Engagement

I had a hunch that this month’s challenge would be bread, given the wonderful hostesses (Breadchick Mary & Sarah). I was not, however, prepared for a 14 page recipe for French bread straight from Julia Child! While French bread is my favorite kind of bread (the crispy crust and spongy inside… yum!), I had heard that it was impossible to make in a regular oven. I read the recipe a couple of times and was very intimidated and confused, as I’m not the best at getting an accurate visual from a written description. I also watched the Julia Child PBS video online and felt a bit more at ease. Lastly, I read the wonderful reviews and encouragement from other DBers who had completed the challenge, and decided to get started.

I decided to make the dough by machine, and it was very easy. The initial mixture was pretty sticky but with a bit more flour and the 5 minutes of machine kneading it had a lovely soft and springy texture. Here’s my dough at the end of the initial mixture:

I set the dough to rise inside my oven (light on, oven off) and after 3 ½ hours, it had grown to 3 times its size. I deflated it, with lovely popping sounds, and set it to rise yet again, for another 2 hours! Here it is after deflating and before the second rise:

After the second rise, I was ready to cut and shape, the scariest part for me. Here is where the video was very helpful! I was able to figure out what the crazy descriptions meant, having seen them in action. I decided to make 2 batards and 1 boule. Overall, the shaping went OK, although the loaves were not as smooth and perfect as in the video. Here are the shaped loaves ready to rise (again!):

After another 2 hours, the loaves were ready to slash and bake. Here is where I made a slight procedural mistake. Even though I had started the process at 9am, it had gotten pretty late with the crazy rising times. We had invited some friends over for dinner 7:30pm and I had to use the oven for some of the other dishes (oven roasted veggies and chocolate pots de crème). We decided to begin roasting the veggies while the oven preheated, then bake the bread, then bake the custards (which ended up chilling in the freezer for lack of time), and then the veggies again. So, while the oven (with a pizza stone on the top rack and the veggies in the bottom) preheated, I slashed the loaves (not perfect but good enough) and set them on the pizza peel:

When the oven was nearly preheated, out went the veggies and in went a cookie sheet that we used for generating steam. When the oven and cookie sheet were fully hot, in went the bread (on the pizza stone) and some hot water (on the cookie sheet). This generated some steam but not as much as I hoped for. My brilliant husband suggested that maybe using boiling water would work better, and that worked great. After baking, the boule turned out beautiful and the batards looked ok, a bit gimpy and slanted by nicely browned and crusted. Here are the loaves cooling:

Audience Response:

We ended up serving the boule and some of the batards for dinner (after only 30’ of cooling… my bad) with muhammara (a middle-eastern roasted red pepper) and it was delicious! Everyone agreed that it tasted just like bakery baguettes or even better. My husband thought the bread was even better the next day but I though it was the same as before. Overall a big hit!

What I learned/practiced:
1) I love crusty bread (not new info) and can make it at home! The tricks for making our home oven into a bakery one will definitely make a recurrence the next time we make bread.
2) Sometimes a recipe may look long and scary and intimidating and just turn out to be long (not scary or intimidating), and be well worth the wait.

The final verdict:

When I finished the bread, I though I would never make it again. One week later, however, I’m already thinking/dreaming about fresh home-baked baguettes. As it turns out, this recipe was not really difficult at all, just very very time consuming. Also, as my husband put it, bread that only has 4 ingredients should not be this much of a production. I may make this again on a lazy day but not for company (too much stress!). I think I’ll likely use the baking tricks when making other (easier) kinds of bread, although I bet I won’t get the same crusty-yet-spongy result. Otherwise, baguettes from the bakery it is!

Sweet successes and tart failures

After last month’s challenge, which I sat out due to total disorganization (I did the challenge but never got around to posting about it), I was excited to get back into the swing of things. I was thrilled by the prospect of this month’s challenge because a) I love lemon-flavored anything, b) I’ve had some meringue disasters in the past and was happy to build some skills in that area, and c) my sister and her boyfriend were visiting so I had some helpers who really like lemon meringue pie. Since it was just the three of us, I decided to make the tartlets and to do half the recipe (except I didn’t do half eggs because I figured half an extra yolk in the curd and half an extra white in the meringue wouldn’t even be noticed). I started with the crust, which was VERY easy to make in the food processor. Here it is after being baking (yes… sadly, my tarts got a tad too golden):
The curd was also very easy to make. I had worked with tempering egg yolks before, so I avoided any scrambled egg fiascos and ended up with delicious curd. The only issue I had in this step was an error in timing. I made the curd while the dough was chilling the first time, not noticing how much longer I had before the crusts would be read. My curd ended up sitting around for a while and was totally cool and VERY thick by the time I assembled the tartlets.

For the meringue, I made sure my whites were at room temperature and the mixer did the rest. My meringue turned out very stable and thick, perfect for piping.

After reading some suggestions from other DBers, I decided to not to re-bake my tartlets. Instead, I used my kitchen torch to toast the meringue to avoid making the lemon curd too liquid.
The final result was beautiful: toasty but firm, with beautiful ridges and nooks.
Audience/My response (Success, then failure):
We all thought the meringue and lemon curd were DELICIOUS but found the crust to be way too hard… so hard that it was difficult to eat. I’m not sure if this was because I over-baked it or because the curd was fully cooled when I spooned it on or because I torched rather than baked the tartlets the second time. I also had a sinking suspicion that my math was off and I had used the full quantity of sugar rather than just half. Overall, the flavor was good and they were easy to make, so I decided to try them again. This time, I think I got too cocky because the tarts were a total failure! The crusts were again very hard (despite baking them for a shorter time and making sure I really did half of the ingredients), and the meringue was too soft (I didn’t wait for the whites to be at room temperature). I also realized that I didn’t have nearly enough lemons to make the curd so I decided to use a jar of lemon curd I had in my pantry. However, when I opened it, it became perfectly clear that it was way past its time (it smelled like goat cheese, which I like but seemed wrong for the curd). In the end, I had to scrap the whole thing. I tried to salvage the meringue by baking it into suspiros (Ecuadorian baked meringues like the mushrooms from last month’s challenge- the name means sighs) but they turned out super-chewy and had to be tossed too. Sad!

What I learned/practiced:

1) Just because a recipe turns out once doesn’t mean it will be perfect every time, especially when you get careless!

2) The temperature of the egg whites is basic to making meringue. Waiting for the whites to get to room temperature may be a pain but it’s the only way for the meringue to get to the right consistency.

3) The sequence and timing of a multi-component recipe is very important. This is something I really struggle with in all of my cooking. I tend to just make things without looking at how long each component will take and end up with some things overcooked or cold before everything is ready. Clearly, the curd should be made while the crust is baking, not an hour before.

4) Dividing an egg yolk or white in half is a pain and pointless, as putting in the extra half made absolutely no difference in either the curd or meringue. This may not be true for cakes and baked stuff, but for custards and such, I won’t bother with half eggs in the future.

The final verdict:
Overall, I think lemon meringue pie is yummy, easy enough, and very impressive (especially if you torch it table-side!) so I will definitely be making it again. I really loved this lemon curd recipe. It’s definitely a keeper. The meringue is pretty standard, although I did learn my lesson about how to make it properly. The crust, however, was a disappointment and I’ll have to find another recipe for it that is much more tender.

Before I end, I just want to thank my sister for her wonderful photographic assistance. I also want to (shamelessly) sneak in a couple of pictures from my Yule Log, since it was a TON of work and I never got to post about it. Also, I thought it came out beautiful. It was hazelnut-flavored with marzipan holly decorations.

Need to Knead (and add flour too)

After my fist DB challenge last month, I was really excited to see what the next one would be. I checked the website maybe 120 times until I finally saw the next challenge posted- Tender Potato Bread. I was thrilled with the choice because my husband A* is a bread baker (and bread lover) and I’ve helped him make bread before, so I relished the prospect of doing it on my own, with maybe just a little bit of help from him. Also, both A* and his mom spoke of the wonders of potato bread (how soft and delicious it is, with little specks of potato in it). Once I read the actual recipe, it thought it was… interesting. It was kind of Talmudic, having both the canon and commentary all rolled into one. I found it just a little bit confusing but appreciated all the notes and suggestions from someone who had tried the recipe already.

Before I started, A* and I decided that he would be more of a consultant so I could actually learn how to do it on my own. I appreciated having him there for reassurance and support, as well as actual coaching, but I wonder whether having him there made me less daring. For example, he disagreed with the recipe at several points and I had to remind him that I was supposed to follow the recipe as it was (such as not using the sponge method). In the end, I have to admit I ended up going with his deviations a couple of times. My yeast, for example, was very close to its expiration time and A* was surprised by how little yeast the recipe called for, so I ended up putting in more yeast (about 3 tsp) just in case it was weak. Also, I realized at the last minute that I only had salted butter, so A* said it was OK to use that and omit the salt (as it turns out, a mistake). Oh well… I tried to keep to the spirit of the recipe as much as I dared.

The process was a little bit scary for me, but only because I was concerned about the dough being too sticky and how I would knead it. When I saw the first mixture was basically liquid I almost freaked, but A* reminded me to look at the next step in the recipe (add more flour). The stickiness proved to be a problem throughout… I kneaded and kneaded for what felt like hours and every time I felt I was ready, I would call A* over and in the 30 seconds it took him to get to the kitchen, the dough was really sticky again. I swear this cycle happened MANY times. A* kept telling me I was focusing too much on kneading and not enough on incorporating flour, which only kind of made sense to me and proved very hard to implement. I’m not sure what I would have done if I hadn’t had A* there to tell me how long to knead it for. From recipe, it was hard to tell when to stop, and I likely would have stopped too soon (potentially the first time it stopped being sticky before it got sticky again).

FINALLY, I got it to a place where I felt it was not ridiculously sticky and set it to rise. A* suggested oiling the rising container, but that wasn’t in the recipe. I ended up acquiescing because, alas, the dough was getting sticky again, and I’m really glad I did because it was REALLY sticky after the rise. Then came more kneading, more sticking, and more blasted suggestions about incorporating more flour. Finally, I was ready to shape! We decided to do a focaccia and 2 small loaves (I only had small loaf pans). I made the focaccia with dried thyme (no rosemary in my supermarket for several weeks now; I don’t know what that’s about), and after baking it came out pretty if a bit pale.

The loaves got a light oiling and then an egg wash (A*’s suggestion) and came out beautifully golden, with a crisp crust (see picture at the beginning)

Audience Response/My Response:

The audience this time was just A* and me, as we were having a lazy day alone and home. We both thought the texture and look of the bread were perfect and liked the nuttiness of the whole wheat but found it kind of bland. We agreed that it definitely needed more salt. I’m not sure if this was because I decided that adding salted butter was enough (and it actually wasn’t) or if kosher salt (which I used) is less salty per teaspoon than table salt (which I think it is) or if the recipe really needs more salt, or maybe all three. A* noted that too little salt is better than too much because you can add salt to the toppings. We ended up eating the bread dipped in olive oil, balsamic, and lots of kosher salt.

We were also a bit disappointed that there weren’t any actual potato bits, although the crazy kneading probably obliterated them. A* thought the amount of potato was probably too conservative (even though we used 16oz.) because we ended up with barely any potato taste and no chunks.

What I learned/practice:

1) Kneading bread is fun! It’s like playing with A LOT of play-dough at a time. However, apparently you have to remember that it’s not just about the squishing and folding but also about incorporating the flour, which took me forever to learn.

2) Kneading is easier, at least for me with my little hands and short arms, when you use smaller amounts of dough. (Corollary- I may need to start exercising to build some arm strength if I want to knead the whole dough effectively).

3) Pizza stones are awesome for baking bread! That part is definitely going into our permanent baking repertoire. In our past bread baking forays, the bread came out with a very soft crust and I like solid crusts. The pizza stone really helped with that!

4) I’m not sure I can say that I can now make bread totally on my own (I got a lot of coaching) but at least I’m closer!

The final verdict:

I had lots of fun making the bread and it was delicious if a bit bland. Next time I would add more salt, potentially egg wash the focaccia, and come up with some flavorings just to experiment. A* wasn’t too convinced with this recipe, as he thought that it didn’t call for enough yeast, salt, or potatoes and he prefers the sponge method like in the Tassajara Bread Book. All in all, I think the potato bread concept is a keeper, as is using a pizza stone for baking, but we’d probably use a different recipe. We might even start baking bread regularly... but only after I finish my dissertation!