29 Jul
DB Filbert Gateau: ‘Twas not meant to be
Posted by Chelle as Daring Bakers | 16 Comments
Ahhh, I so wish this had worked out, because I had visions of a truly beautiful cake. I will make a long story short - I am allergic to all nuts, so I needed to make substitutions since the base of this cake is ground nuts. Going on some recommendations, I attempted to use ground oats. I’m not sure if the texture or weight shifted, but the cake appeared to bake up okay, however upon trying to remove it from the pan, it turned into a crumbly mess. It took me about 3 hours of work to get to that point, and I just honestly did not feel like starting from scratch or going out to buy more ingredients. Plus, I did taste the broken cake and it tasted, well, like oats. I’ll need to do some research on how best to substitute for ground nuts in cake and cookie recipes that are based upon them. Perhaps just flour? If anyone has any suggestions I’d certainly welcome them!
I am happy to say that this failed challenge wasn’t all for naught, for I learned how to make clarified butter! Clarified butter is made by slowly melting butter so that it separates into three parts: milk solids, water, and butter fat. The solids that float to the top are skimmed off, and then the rest of the mixture is strained so that all that remains is pure liquid golden-yellow butterfat. Look how pretty it is!
Looking forward to what August brings!!
29 Jun
Daring Bakers: Danish Braid
Posted by Chelle as Daring Bakers, Pastries, Yeast Breads & Baked Goods | 1 Comment
I did a little dance of joy when I saw what the June challenge would be for Daring Bakers. I have been wanting to make a homemade danish (or really any pastry) for quite some time now, but had never taken the plunge before now. So thank you to this month’s hosts, Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cookin’, for choosing such an awesome challenge! I am not sure what I waited so long for, because this was definitely not as difficult as I envisioned it might be. The process for making the dough was much the same as bread, with the added step of rolling a block of butter into it (the key to the flaky dough that is characteristic of pastries). The results were fabulous! I made this early in the month for a visit by my mom and sister and made three varieties: the apple in the recipe, peach (my mom’s favorite), and cream cheese (MY favorite).
More about the braids, the recipe, and more pictures after the break…
27 Apr
Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops
Posted by Chelle as Candy, Cheesecake, Chocolate, Daring Bakers | 37 Comments
Or, in my case, Cheesecake Truffles.
And squares.
I love cheesecake. It’s my favorite dessert, and I will eat it in just about any form. Rolled in a ball and dipped in chocolate? Bring ‘em on!
More about the challenge, and the recipe, after the break…
29 Mar
Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake
Posted by Chelle as Cakes, Daring Bakers | 63 Comments
And perfect it was. This was no surprise, given that this is a Dorie Greenspan recipe. Thanks to Tuesdays With Dorie I have become a huge Dorie fan, and have found that all of her recipes are nothing short of foolproof.
This month was hosted by Morven at Food Art and Random Thoughts and we were given quite a bit of leeway for this challenge. It was certainly a nice change of pace, so thank you! The original cake recipe calls for lemon zest and extract, but not being the biggest fan of lemon (as was evidenced by giving away my Lemon Meringue Pie in January), I took the advice of my friend Laurie (otherwise known as quirky cupcake), who thought that orange would be a nice complement to the raspberry used in the recipe. Well, isn’t she a smarty pants, because orange tasted fantastic in this recipe!
Aside from that change, the only other modification I made was the icing, as the original recipe calls for a meringue buttercream, but I thought that a cream cheese frosting would be just wonderful with the citrus and fruit flavors in the cake. It turned out to be perfect, although I would like to give the meringue buttercream a shot one of these days as well.
A number of people reported having problems with the cake not rising, but mine seemed to puff up just as Dorie said it would. The recipe gives the option of using the paddle or whisk attachment of the stand mixer, and I opted for the whisk as I figured it would infuse even more air and fluff into the cake, and whether it was the whisk or not, the resulting cake was perfectly moist and fluffy.
The only problem I really had came during assembly. I found it near impossible to spread the frosting on TOP of the raspberry layer. The frosting just kind of slid around, and raspberry jam slid everywhere. In hindsight, I would put the layers prepared with the raspberry jam in the freezer to set somewhat before trying to frost on top of it. Another friend of mine, Amber, also had a great idea - she reversed the layer and put the frosting on first and then the jam on top. She said this worked very well, so that’s another approach to consider next time.
I loved this cake and couldn’t get enough of it. The flavors complemented each other perfectly and the result was an extremely moist and fluffy cake with both a light taste and texture. I couldn’t think of a better cake for a spring or summer special occasion!
This will certainly be a cake recipe that I keep to use as a base for multiple flavor combinations.
29 Feb
Daring Bakers: French Bread ala Julia Child
Posted by Chelle as Daring Bakers, Yeast Breads & Baked Goods | 22 Comments
I was definitely not surprised to see that this month’s challenge was bread, given that Breadchick Mary at The Sour Dough, along with Sara at I Like to Cook, was hosting it. French bread… great, I’ve been wanting to try it! I set out to get an early start on the recipe by printing it out and giving it a couple of thorough reads… but wait… FOURTEEN (as in, 14) pages? This recipe is 14 pages long?! Yowza! Well, that’s okay… I will sit down with my lunch and read through it. I had long finished my sandwich and chips and was only five pages into the recipe. Yikes. This is certainly a “daring” challenge!
I actually never read the recipe from start to finish in one sitting. I couldn’t get through it. And to be honest, I seriously considered just skipping this month. Aside from not even being able to read the entire recipe during the time it takes to watch a primetime drama, this was shaping up to be an all-day event, with an estimated 8 to 10 hour start to finish time. I got together with Laurie over at quirky cupcake and we decided to tackle the recipe “together” (which, in a virtual world, meant that we frantically instant messaged each other throughout the process, doing it at the same time in our respective kitchens). You can thank Laurie for my post, because had it not been for someone keeping me accountable I don’t think I would have mustered the energy to do this. So thank you, Laurie, for forcing me to put my game face on 
Now on to the actual recipe… as I said, this was an insanely long recipe. It is a Julia Child recipe, and I guess another shameful confession is that I’ve never made one of her recipes or have seen one of her shows. This was certainly a way to dive right in. I honestly can’t tell you if I even think I did this correctly. There were a lot of different types of kneading techniques and deflating techniques that I have never encountered before. There were no pictures or diagrams to go by, so I winged it by doing what I thought was correct.
The outcome of the recipe was good. I have never made French bread before (just some variations on white sandwich bread, Italian bread, and sweet rolls), so I have nothing to compare this to other than store-bought French bread I have eaten. This turned out to be about the same - it was good, it tasted like French bread should. I guess since it was an all-day affair with Julia Child I was expecting something out-of-this-world and leagues above anything I had made before. It really didn’t live up to those expectations, although as I said, it was good bread, but not especially remarkable. I just personally don’t really think it was worth the all-day effort. This perhaps may be a result of me not performing certain techniques correctly, as there was no real guide on how to go about them. Either way, we had a couple of good loafs of bread to eat over the course of a week and I got to make my first Julia Child recipe
Thank you again to Mary and Sara for hosting this challenge. If you are interested in seeing the recipe, you can view it at The Sour Dough.
