Promised Puffs

About a month ago I told my mother I should bake some cream puffs for her office. She too thought it was an excellent idea, but then life interfered. I can make them Monday night and fill them for you in the morning! Or so I thought. Well, this being the same week I'm baking cakes for intermission at the play I'm also acting in... I didn't get around to it. So then next week. Nope. Week after? Maybe Monday and even Tuesday too are bad days to do it, I realize.

All of a sudden, I decide that asking what day would work best for them would... well... work best. So Friday I decide. Sadly when this was decided we left for Utah to visit family for a week. Sometime around then it occurs to me, I have no clue what the Daring Bakers challenge is this month. AND ITS ALMOST OVER! Eep! Less then a week, and I'm not even in my own kitchen till 4 days before it goes up! AND I'm leaving for Portland 2 days after I get back! And one of those is spent going to Idaho for a dentist appointment! And then I decide its also my only chance to bake some apricots fresh of my grandmother's tree.

Good thing it turns out to be Eclairs! I made them before I packed, the day I was leaving. I filled some with a caramel laced filling, and some with Splenda sweetened whipped cream for Val, who's diabetic.

And a chocolate glaze. (I mean look at it! Shiny Chocolate Deliciousness!)

Oh... and the folks we were staying with didn't have internet so I ended up not being able to post anyway.
-_- Forgive my repeated procrastination and lateness....

Under Cover Of Darkness

Crazy week... but I got it done! Daring Bakers challenge number three! Whoo!

And whats on the menu you might ask? (That is if you really hadn't seen everyone else's yet...)

Charol Walters Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream

This is where things get difficult. Do I post the recipe, which is huge, or leave it up to you to blog sleuth it, or buy Charols Great Cakes book? Seeing as the latter is definitely easier for me, your on your own for that. I'll give you the basics though, just because I'm so nice.


There were several elements to this cake.

Filbert Genoise (or hazelnut)
Basically a egg leavened cake with hazelnut meal used more than flour. Pretty dry on its own... though if you have the time and the guts to try it out (failure is a definite possibility with these) kind of a fun challenge. My wonderful mother helped me sift and sprinkle in all of the dry ingredients while I delicately folded them into the pillowy eggs, praying for them not to fall flat… and what do you know? They didn’t!

sugar syrup, flavored with dark rum – Sadly dark rum, or liqueur, spirit, or what have you, isn’t something I have on hand. That whole being a minor thing… So to make up for lost flavor, I tried caramelizing the sugar before adding all the water. I burnt it a bit though so it wasn’t as tasty as I was hoping.

Praline Buttercream – Two steps on this one. Making the praline was difficult. I got distracted and cremated the dry sugar twice before I achieved success. And the success was hard won. Tossing in the hazelnuts cools down the sugar which results in hardening… which results in them all being stuck together in one massive hard clump of hazelnut sugar glass! Luckily I did flatten it out, but it could have been bad.

After grinding this up (a scary thing in my oh so delicate Hamilton Beach pocessor) you mix it into a sort of meringue butter cream. I strayed from the exact Swiss butter cream recipe on technique. Instead of whipping first then heating and whipping… (which I did try and had trouble with) I mixed the sugar with the unwhipped eggs, and then warmed them, gently wisking, to 160. Its amazing to think you can heat egg whites that hot and have them not cook! So THEN I whipped them and added butter. And then into its pillowy whiteness I folded some praline paste.

This would have been wonderful with the cake… but… I added an extra ¼ C sugar, cuz I like my butter cream sweet. Sadly EVERYTHING was pretty sweet in the cake assembled… so it was a bit much.

>

½ cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks – I… excluded this bit, but did add some cream to my syrup.

Apricot Glaze – to smooth up the cake for the ganashe
Ganache Glaze – Which I got wonderfully thin, and the only thing that wasn’t WAY to sweet.

The over all? This cake was an insane amount of steps. Heck, even the butter had to be clarified, and the flower sifted and the… it goes on. It was pretty fine, but I’ll stick to something a lil less touchy for my go to.

So… bake on!

Lets Bake It And Say We Didn't

Yes, as I'm approaching the reveal of the July Daring Bakers challenge, I feel it the appropriate time to post last month's challenge. I did it. Finished it up the day after the reveal, and never got around to posting it. It really was a shame too because it was hands down the best danish filling I have ever conceived. The best fillings I've ever concieved being... vanilla pastry creme and chocolate smear. I'm stumped when it comes to good fillings, so the chocolate smear was a huge jump at the time! Well the challenge inspired me. "Use something in season!" they say. Alright. Nothing is in season in this lil sweltering frost pocket (at the time of the challenge) but the valley next over sent us some smashing black sweet cherries. And almond extract needs no season and so...

VOILA!

Black Cherry and Almond Creme Danish

The ultimate tasty delisiousness. And it was georgous too. Neither did I record nor remember what magic I worked to achieve this, into measurements anyway, so I'll approximate.

Cherry Filling

Wonderful Sweet Black Cherries
Lil bit of water
Sugar
Pectin? or geletin to get it to thicken some. Fine tapioca may work from what I hear...

Pitted the cherries, boiled them some to get em all soft and cook some of the extra water out. Thicken it to. Sweeten if it needs any... and then, because I despise deformed flavorless globs of cooked cherries, I blended it all together in my... blender. Go figure.Almond Pastry Creme
I made a egg/starch pastry cream and added a tsp or so of almond extract and some vanilla bean paste. (If any one knows of a pastry cream that doesnt tast or mouth feel starchy, clue me in. All the egg/starch ones AND the egg ones dont have the texture I'm looking for... slick and smooth.)

I prepped the danish dough, spread on the pastry cream(coulda been thicker) and topped it with some cherry goo, (also coulda been thicker). Baked it with some turbinado sugar sprinkled on top. Only complaint? The braid held not nearly enough of the "coulda been thicker" filling.The remedy to that? Make the left over dough into tart-bowls. Best danish ever. Safeway bakery... its over. Forever. Beyond forgiveness.

Everythings Better With Cream

Tis the season for crazy produce sales. Over a pound of Oregon grown blueberries for 5$. And even more strawberries to match. Theres only one thing to do with the natures fruity bounty - first batch anyway - set it swimming in sweet sweet cream. The perfect breakfast.

Baking Up A Burning Ring Of Fire

If one were not a creature or habit... If one didn't prefer round cakes... If one would pause to read the instructions, nay, if one would only pause to think, one would realize that a 13x9 cake mix would have difficulty fiting into a less than 2 inch tall 9 inch cake pan. That one, dear friends, would not be me.

Caramely batter bubbling over and oozing between oven rungs outline my pan on the bottom of the oven. So close to the heat sourse they quickly burn and smoke profusely. Every time I make this cake.

Much panic has been caused by this mistake. Perhaps next time I shall remember to remedy it. The day my sister got married, we dined on the Blue Birds rather famous turtle cake. The day being as it was (wishes for a blog to link to) I didn't get to fully appreciate it, but only remembered the bit I did try longingly. Cool and moist lightly flavored chocolate cake filled, with little pockets of cool slick caramel and... well thats most of what I rememberd. And it was fantastic. And I live 6 hours away or so. Realizing this I knew something had to be done.

Enter wonderful amazing food unmasking skills! Well I dont have those very well developed. I got as far as, "I bet devils food cake..." and "maybe they piped the caramel in?" and was out of ideas. Luckily I stumbled upona recipe in a Betty Crocker mini magazine/cookbook at the checkout. Chocolate turtle cake! And I was right about the devils food cake part!

Basically you whip up some nice caramel sauce about honey consistancy...

1 C sugar
1/4 C water (maybe a lil extra I'm not sure)
1 T corn syrup (because it helps prevent crystals and I'm afraid to mess it up)
1/2 - 1 C cream warmed (depends on the consistancy desired. For this I start at 3/4 C)
vanilla and 2 T butter (cuz why the heck not?!)

Sugar and water (and corn syrup) in a medium saucepan, stir till about dissolved. Let boil (no stirring) for about 7 minutes. About this time the bubbles start looking different than they have been before, and eventually it will start to brown. Swirl the pan to get an even color, I look for a medium amber. I burn it frequently though going to dark and then its all bitter.... Once you get it to the desired color remove it from heat and ad in the hot cream. It will bubble and sputter... and then I stir it with a wisk so it all turns into the right consistancy. I add more cream if its not as thin as I want (note it does thicken while it cools) and add the butter and vanilla and call it good.

Its great on brownies by the way. Warm with some cold thick cream for contrast.... But I digress. For a small round pan I like to use almost this whole recipe, the more the better. So for the actual 9x13 pan I think I'd double it... or make separate batches twice to be safe.

Now for the cake...

1 box -9x13 devils food cake mix with ingredients to prepare (eggs, oil, water)
Caramel sauce (lots and safe some for garnish)
1 C or so - pecans (toasted chopped and maybe some whole for garnish)

Make a 9x13 cake mix to the directions. (One day I will make my own scratch batter and try it out) Pour half of the batter into a prepared cake pan, (parchment and greased for easy removal) and bake for about 20 to 22 minutes. Take it out, pour on the caramel (save some for topping though), sprinkle on some toasted pecans(save some for topping here too) and pour on the rest of the batter. Bake for another 25 minutes. Let it cool for a bit, about 15-20 and then I invert it, drizzle on some extra carmel and top with pecans.

Tasty dang stuff. Caramel saturating the top half gooey and delicious.

Gotta Blog Gotta Blog Gotta Blog Right Now

Shwooo. I'm back. Maybe. For a little bit. And by back I mean that this is the first non required post I've actually completed in a few months. Where have I been you might wonder? A sudden onset of obsessive compulsive gardening for a couple months and then off to the land of lazy. Have a tasty garden a growing complete with heirloom tomatoes, squash and gourmet peppers, and the rest of the usuals. The currant bush planted and 6 wonderful blueberry bushes a starting out.

But I digress. For the last month I’ve just been lazy lazy lazy. Even my few good dinner forays have been neglected, (though photo evidence does exist...). Well today I change... some of this. I break my silence and bake some dinner! That was the plan anyway. Bout an hour to dinner it occurred to me that the dough I had rising was at least 3 hours away from the oven, let alone the 30 minute cooling time. So we had pizza, and here I am at one o’clock finishing the rolls.

Kaiser rolls that is. A wonderful hearty sandwich roll From Peter Reinheart's amazingly detailed and thorough book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I'm going to make some turkey burgers and wanted a bun that tempted the palate in place of the foamy bits they sell at the store.

And as the smoke billows from the oven and I fan the smoke alarm, praying it wont go off as everyone’s in bed, I'm pretty sure they (and the dang chocolate turtle cake that overflowed earlier (hence the smoke)) are/were totally worth it. Just look at em.

Taste of Springly Opera

Now I'm not one to habitually bag on myself. I'm actually usually the first to admit I'm totally awesome. That being the case, all the rest of the Daring Bakers kicked my butt royally last challenge. Not even comparing mine to the neatly prepared masterpieces, I realize they look like they may have fallen down the stairs a couple times. So kudo's to you all!

And in the proud tradition of scapegoats and blame shifting, it was the chocolate chips fault. Shoulda used bars. Secondly... I seriously procrastinated. Its bringing my own style to the daring bakers! Thats how I roll *dramatic gansta pose with wisk and rolling pin* Staying up late into the wee hours of the morning to finish whatever I need done the next day... and then ariving two hours late regardless.

Well this month I'm trying a slightly new style. Ya know... the one where I don't fall flat on my face. And so, a week to show time, I prepared the buttercream! Yes yes! I know its shocking.


Trying or not, it still wasn't done till my birthday... A.K.A today!

So here's how it went down.

Light flavors I like... Lemon was out. I really don't like most lemon flavored things. So spring... light... blog... Lavender! And so it was. Lavender buttercream. I sort of made a tea using the water for the buttercream sugar syrup flavored with lavender flowers. And to cut some of the sweetness, I tossed in a sprig or two of rosemary(from my recent pruning). They went so wonderfully together, a sweet but peppery herbal flavor.

The buttercream looked so beautiful. The creamy white speckled with little black vanilla bean... And when I mixed some jell dye with some to color the rest, the contrast was even prettier.


As for the jocond bit, Date Line ruined it. I had originally planned to do cardamon with orange zest flavoring, with a touch of vanilla to round it out. Well there was a dateline special on that I was a bit more interested in that than my egg whipping... Luckily the actual egg whipping turned out fine, I just spaced the flavoring all together. Guess thats where the sugar syrup came in.My very first acceptable idea for a taste of spring(lemon being rejected) was lemon balm. A minty herbal flavor with just a springly taste similar, but wonderfully not, lemon. The difficulty, my lemon balm is 2 inches tall at this point in the year, two short to risk a heavy harvest(I would need all the plant there...). I did end up swiping a couple leaves for the syrup though. Once again I made a sort of tea with the sugar with Lavender, almond extract, rosemary, lemon balm, and black pepper corns. I'm not sure if you could taste all the elements, but I thought it was fun.
I put it all together, (tricky since my jelly role pans are huge, 13x17. I rigged the parchment with folds and rolls of tinfoil to cut the size some.) Cake syrup buttercream, repeat. Cake. syrup, mouse n' glaze. Sprinkle with lavender and set. I trimmed the edges square (resulting in that spiffy cake canyon) and was done.
I was amazed at how nice it turned out. I really really really wanted to produce something of comparable beauty to the rest of the daring bakers works. And it worked! This one didn't look like it fell down the stairs, and I am proud.