Daring Bakers May 2008 Challenge

Ta Da!!!

This month's challenge was very satisfying. It is being called an Opera cake (click for pictures of a Google image search) but we had to make it in light colors- no coffee or chocolate. The recipe provided is insanely long- if anyone really wants it- shoot me an email.

The basics of the cake are joconde cake layers with buttercream, mousse and a glaze. The joconde is a sponge type cake made with ground nuts. Robb and I ruminated over flavor possibilities, and bizarrely agreed immediately on pineapple and coconut. As we kept chewing on the idea, we came around to creating what we hoped would be a Thai curry cake. Yes, you read that correctly: Thai curry and cake.

We used peanuts and almonds in the cake layer. Our buttercream was flavored with lime, ideally we would have liked to use lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves- at least that's what we had in mind. Lime juice and zest is a good approximation just to try it out. We can work on perfecting it in the future. The cake layers were brushed with a chile pepper syrup. The top layer was a coconut mousse and it was glazed with a pineapple glaze.

We liked the peanuts, the coconut mousse, the pineapple glaze and the texture and beauty of the cake. The flavors, all together, were really good. We were especially pleased because this was the first cake that we truly experimented with. We were totally winging it making the mousse. We initially tried one with grated coconut and hated it. We ended up using canned coconut milk, with Italian meringue and whipped cream. Who would have thought that Italian meringue would be something we have so readily available in our toolbox of tricks. What a very long way we have come!

We would have liked more chile pepper heat. We wussed out a little bit in soaking the cake layers. Next time, and there may be a next time for this one- we really like it- we will add more chile flavor.

After sitting out last month, this was a very fun challenge.

Janet

White Lily Cake

This is a lovely photo of the White Lily Cake (pg 202)

It consists of 1 recipe White Genoise (pg 127), 1/2 cup Cointreau (we used Grand Marnier, since we had it), 1/2 recipe Orange Fruit Mousseline (pg 245), 1 recipe of Rolled Fondant with orange flower water (page 306), & 1 recipe of Royal Icing.

Really, since we've done this so many times, we're no longer intimidated by the recipes. Well, I still say a quick, silent prayer whenever we have to do any piping work. But, it's a lot like doing hair color: Break it down into its component steps. And, since we know we can make a genoise, a mousseline and a fondant, we can surely put it together. And, I think that we did a fine job of it.

Even the piping turned out nice. They are supposed to look like lilies, and they do!

This was made e asy for a host of reasons. We had made the white genoise a few weeks ago. Frozen, it'll keep 2 months. We just defrosted it and followed the directions. J had the idea to make the cake layers at our last baking session. And, I thank her.

As for the Cointreau, we decided an orange flavored liquor could be substituted with another one, right? So we used the Grand Marnier that we had on hand.

We decided that making Orange Curd was a big waste of time. While we loved the color and the flavor, the runny texture and effort of making it is too big a drawback. We just substituted lemon curd, and added it to the mousseline.

Do you remember the mousseline? Neither could I. It is the one with a syrup of water and sugar, that gets drizzled into egg whites beaten with sugar. You beat this until it's cool, which has never happened in the prescribed time of 2 minutes. Then, you add butter, lots of butter, and beat until smooth. If you want to add liqueur or a flavor variation, you do so now. Yum!

I really don't care for fondant. It never tastes as good as you want it to and I usually pull it off. While I'm slowly lobbing blobs of butter into the kitchen aid full of egg whites, J made the fondant. We only had dark corn syrup. So, you'll notice that there is a lovely light beige tone to the fondant. We liked it quite a bit. The slight color difference made the piping really stand out and look more beautiful. The flavor of the fondant was enha nced with orange flower water. There was a nice fragrance wafting from the cake; a flowery orange aroma followed by the orange flavor of the cake. In tasting our slice, we actually ate the fondant!!

Periodically J and I would stop what we were doing and wander over to the other's station to check on the progress. The fondant starts out a crumbly mess. With some kneading, the gelatin, water, glucose(that's where the corn syrup is substituted), glycerin, solid white shortening and powdered sugar all come together at first, it looks a bit like a very dry biscuit dough. You'll notice how smooth J got it. The cracks seem to happen to us because we are too slow applying it to the cake.

It's come to the point that we've developed almost a short hand and have to constantly check to make sure we've not skipped or doubled up on steps. We each know what the other is going to do and rarely are we wrong about it.

I have to thank J for doing all the pre prep stuff. Sometimes, I feel like a FoodTV chef who's production assistants have done everything so all I have to do is smile for the camera and pour the pre-measured amounts into the stunningly clean Kitchen Aid.

This cake was lovely. We were both so excited, not just by how it looks or just by how good it tasted. For the first time, in a long time, we liked the cake we made! Then, on the first sunny day we've had baking in a long, long while, there we were, all done, sitting outside in the sun, sipping soda and tea and just chattin'

Welcome to Spring.

Robb

Learning Lessons

The Golden Cage (pg 172)

Yes, we are still working our way through the Cake Bible. But, we've decided that it's much more fun to work through it a bit at a time and darnit, we enjoy just hanging out sometimes.

The Golden Cage uses the Golden Genoise (pg 125), Barak Palinka or brandy, Apricot Silk Meringue Buttercream (pg 243) and Gold Dust & Caramel Cage (pg 313)

The Golden Genoise is an incredibly dense cake, made with 12 egg yolks. So, it's rich with a texture that is fine -- RLB says it makes wonderful Madeleines. One of these days were going to have to try this. This cake has such a tight uniform crumb without being dense and heavy. Simply amazing.

After all this baking, I have to be honest, buttercreams still rock! We've done so many variations on this theme (Today's: Apricot Silk Buttercream). The Silk Buttercream, as you may recall, has a couple things happening simultaneously. You make a creme anglaise, you make an italian meringue, you beat the butter, you add the creme anglaise, until smooth, you add the Italian meringue (This is the one with egg whites and a sugar syrup beat into them). There are a ton of steps, but it always seems to turn out for us -- even back in the beginning.

For the caramel cage and dust, you basically do a controlled burn of some sugar with some water. Once you've got it just right (amber colored), you drizzle it over a prepared kugelhupf pan (OK, neither J nor I have one of these, so we used the alternate spring form pan to bake the cake in). For the cage, we improvised and ended up with a few really good pieces that we stuck into the top of the cake, in a caramel version of the Enchanted Broccoli Forest (in college, we had a copy of that cook book on our communal shelf. Full disclosure, I still have a copy on my shelf.)

We learned a couple of things with this recipe. A humid day really does make it tough to work with caramel. It never stops being sticky on a humid day. Although, in this months Gourmet, one of the writers says that they made wonderful meringue in Ireland, I wonder how they fare with caramel? Ours just never stopped being sticky, except when we wanted to get it off the spoon, it stuck like concrete! But it did taste good.

(Notice the strawberry? That was J's suggestion and she was right!)

Second, trimming the dark edges off the edge of the cake layers is a good thing to do. That's what we're doing this project for- to learn and improve and to have fun spending time together of course. I think we have done some improving, and I hope that it is noticeable?

This cake was an amalgam of things that we've learned baking our way through the Cake Bible and taking the class at La Tulipe. Next week's post will have an example of something we probably couldn't have done without some of this last year's worth of practice.

Wow, what a year it has been. I remember the trepidation that I had bringing up the idea of Bake Through to J. Would she think it a colossal waste of time? Would she laugh and politely get out of it? It didn't occur to me that she'd embrace it with even more excitement than I had. That she'd be the one to, more often than not, push to keep us on track so we will some day actually make our way through the book.

So while I take my hat off to Rose for the book, and Chef Maarten for the baking class, I throw it in the air that J and I get to spend this time hanging out. I can't imagine a better baking partner.

Bake through everyone.

Robb

Daring Bakers March Challenge

Creamsicle cake?
ummm mmm!

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was based on a basic white cake and a Swiss meringue buttercream. We were allowed to treat that as our blank slate and take it from there. One suggestion given in the recipe was to flavor it with lemon zest and juice and fill with raspberry and decorate with coconut. That sounds like a great combination, and probably one that we will try sometime. But we figured that when given the chance to follow our own path, we ought to scoop up the opportunity.

There was MUCH discussion about possible flavors. Kevin has actually become quite good at imagining flavor combinations and was really into thinking of some. I suppose I could attribute that to his years with me, seeing the wonderful and creative process I use in coming up with menus for parties and the nearly constant recipe alterations that I make. But, truth be told, he's picked it up while watching Top Chef. I am not a big fan of the reality or competition shows. But I am happy for the side effect of a husband who can join with me in wondering how to make things taste, and what combinations would be good, etc.

We floated the idea of a pear and Chinese 5 spice profile by Robb. He liked it and together we talked about just how to do it. I made a single layer of the cake just to try it out and see if we'd go in that direction. I added 5 spice and almond extract to the basic recipe (below). I also made an adjustment to the fat- I used half cocoa butter and half butter. I was hoping for a richer quality without adding more sweet or changing too much of the recipe (we're supposed to follow the rules after all!). The cake was ok. But you know, it was like spice cake. Duh! I think that this pear 5 spice combo is firmly planted in my mind and I will be experimenting in the future. I want to get it elevated above spice cake that seems like it ought to come in a square pan with tub o' frosting. I think you all know how I feel about that. On to what we actually did...

Back at the drawing board we thought about citrus and orange sounded good. What goes with orange? I suggested orange with toasted hazelnut and a dark chocolate, but Robb talked me out of that, and said that whenever he has to use more than 2 colors on someone's hair, he's trying to fix up a mess and it might be the same with combining flavors. We opted to go with a straightforward pairing of orange and vanilla. Who doesn't love a creamsicle? I dare say it's universally likeable.

We omitted any lemon called for and instead used orange. The filling was orange curd mixed with buttercream- RLB's orange curd recipe with a vanilla bean steeped in the juice. Very interesting and pretty to have tiny black flecks in a sea of orange. To the Swiss meringue buttercream we added some Grand Marnier and orange extract. The addition to the cake layer was orange zest and vanilla extract with a small amount of butter replaced with cocoa butter (3:1). A little drizzle of the pourable orange vanilla curd (it's thin since naval oranges have much less acidity or whatever it is than lemons that helps to set it) on top for the round version and it was done. We served it at an Easter gathering at Robb (& Michael's) house.

The evening before- the day of cake baking- K and I had friends in town from Texas and we served the rectangular version. I used a couple of loaf pans, filled and frosted the same as the round but added some toasted almond slices instead of the orange vanilla curd and voila! I love the shape and will definitely be making rectangular and square cakes in the future.

Happy baking! Janet



The recipe that all us Daring Bakers started with is the perfect party cake, published by Dorie Greenspan.

For the Cake
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups whole milk or buttermilk (I prefer buttermilk with the lemon)
4 large egg whites
1 ½ cups sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 stick (8 tablespoons or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ teaspoon pure lemon extract

For the Buttercream
1 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (from 2 large lemons)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For Finishing
2/3 cup seedless raspberry preserves stirred vigorously or warmed gently until spreadable
About 1 ½ cups sweetened shredded coconut

Getting Ready
Centre a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter two 9 x 2 inch round cake pans and line the bottom of each pan with a round of buttered parchment or wax paper. Put the pans on a baking sheet.

To Make the Cake
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Whisk together the milk and egg whites in a medium bowl.
Put the sugar and lemon zest in a mixer bowl or another large bowl and rub them together with your fingers until the sugar is moist and fragrant.
Add the butter and working with the paddle or whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat at medium speed for a full 3 minutes, until the butter and sugar are very light.
Beat in the extract, then add one third of the flour mixture, still beating on medium speed.
Beat in half of the milk-egg mixture, then beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients until incorporated.
Add the rest of the milk and eggs beating until the batter is homogeneous, then add the last of the dry ingredients.
Finally, give the batter a good 2- minute beating to ensure that it is thoroughly mixed and well aerated.
Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the cakes are well risen and springy to the touch – a thin knife inserted into the centers should come out clean
Transfer the cakes to cooling racks and cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes, unfold them and peel off the paper liners.
Invert and cool to room temperature, right side up (the cooled cake layers can be wrapped airtight and stored at room temperature overnight or frozen for up to two months).

To Make the Buttercream
Put the sugar and egg whites in a mixer bowl or another large heatproof bowl, fit the bowl over a plan of simmering water and whisk constantly, keeping the mixture over the heat, until it feels hot to the touch, about 3 minutes.
The sugar should be dissolved, and the mixture will look like shiny marshmallow cream.
Remove the bowl from the heat.
Working with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer, beat the meringue on medium speed until it is cool, about 5 minutes.
Switch to the paddle attachment if you have one, and add the butter a stick at a time, beating until smooth.
Once all the butter is in, beat in the buttercream on medium-high speed until it is thick and very smooth, 6-10 minutes.
During this time the buttercream may curdle or separate – just keep beating and it will come together again.
On medium speed, gradually beat in the lemon juice, waiting until each addition is absorbed before adding more, and then the vanilla.
You should have a shiny smooth, velvety, pristine white buttercream. Press a piece of plastic against the surface of the buttercream and set aside briefly.

To Assemble the Cake
Using a sharp serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion, slice each layer horizontally in half.
Put one layer cut side up on a cardboard cake round or a cake plate protected by strips of wax or parchment paper.
Spread it with one third of the preserves.
Cover the jam evenly with about one quarter of the buttercream.
Top with another layer, spread with preserves and buttercream and then do the same with a third layer (you’ll have used all the jam and have buttercream leftover).
Place the last layer cut side down on top of the cake and use the remaining buttercream to frost the sides and top.
Press the coconut into the frosting, patting it gently all over the sides and top.

Serving
The cake is ready to serve as soon as it is assembled, but I think it’s best to let it sit and set for a couple of hours in a cool room – not the refrigerator. Whether you wait or slice and enjoy it immediately, the cake should be served at room temperature; it loses all its subtlety when it’s cold. Depending on your audience you can serve the cake with just about anything from milk to sweet or bubbly wine.

Storing
The cake is best the day it is made, but you can refrigerate it, well covered, for up to two days. Bring it to room temperature before serving. If you want to freeze the cake, slide it into the freezer to set, then wrap it really well – it will keep for up to 2 months in the freezer; defrost it, still wrapped overnight in the refrigerator.

Playing Around
Since lemon is such a friendly flavour, feel free to make changes in the preserves: other red preserves – cherry or strawberry – look especially nice, but you can even use plum or blueberry jam.

Fresh Berry Cake
If you will be serving the cake the day it is made, cover each layer of buttercream with fresh berries – use whole raspberries, sliced or halved strawberries or whole blackberries, and match the preserves to the fruit. You can replace the coconut on top of the cake with a crown of berries, or use both coconut and berries. You can also replace the buttercream between the layers with fairly firmly whipped sweetened cream and then either frost the cake with buttercream (the contrast between the lighter whipped cream and the firmer buttercream is nice) or finish it with more whipped cream. If you use whipped cream, you’ll have to store the cake the in the refrigerator – let it sit for about 20 minutes at room temperature before serving.

Project Lila

Robb and I had a wonderful opportunity to make a cake for the 3rd birthday of Lila, the daughter of our friends Geoff and Hillary. Her birthday was on Thursday December 13th, and the celebration continued through that weekend. Lucky girl!

This post has obviously taken some time, but we've had a lot of real life stuff happening, some of it happy and some of it sad, and we are able to get to writing about this really fun time now.

Lila loves princesses and pink. So, castles, tiaras, pink, pink, pink, polka dots, flowers, whimsy, pink, pink, gowns, frills, etc. swam around in our minds as we thought of lots of possibilities. We hoped to include only edible items, this is obviously a big limiting factor for novice decorators, but we were willing to be pushed to (and beyond?) our limits. We considered that cake that is shaped like a gown, with a waist-up barbie sticking out the top. Seemed too predictable... although we did purchase the pan, and some scalloped edge pans that looked like they might be useful: 6 and 8 inch just in case. We also knew that we wanted sparkle and did I mention, pink? We found some pink gel food color (and a zillion other cool colors, too), flaky edible pink glitter, some pink food spray- yes like pink spray paint, also some really cool stuff called lustre. It's a powder that you can brush on and it's really sparkly. We got some of that in dark and light pink, white and pearl. We knew that we wanted the cake to look top notch and that our frosting skills are ok, but not professional looking. We decided that we would have the best luck creating a smooth cake with fondant. We got some pre-made fondant, and also made some (recipe in the CB pg. 307), and discovered in a practice coloring and rolling session (see the Art Deco cake) that they were virtually identical. And easy to work with- really easy! We were so confident, we didn't give the fondant another thought.

Originally, Robb and I had a design that included two tiers: one 9 inch round, topped with one 6 inch scalloped, each with some combination of cake and fillings, and a pointy princess hat on top. The 6 inch layer was to hover over the 9 inch layer by about a 1/2 inch or so. We figured that we could make the pointy princess hat out of caramel, similar in concept to a caramel cage that we've all seen placed over fancy shmancy desserts. For the cone shaped mold we considered foil, but realized that we'd have trouble getting it smooth enough. We ended up making one out of radiator screen. We thought that would be smooth and flexible and could withstand the hot sugar. We also tried a styrofoam cone covered with foil, and hoped the foam wouldn't melt. We planned to get it colored pink or close enough with all manner of the pink items listed above. We tried it out and for a number of reasons, did not get a good result. #1 we overcooked the caramel, #2 the radiator screen mold was too wide and short, #3 the application of caramel wasn't uniform enough to produce a strong enough caramel network to withstand the prying needed to unmold it, and #4 and most problematic for this project, it didn't color very pink with the stuff we had to work with. I think that it could be done, but we made this discovery on the Tuesday before the party. Yikes! So, we relaxed our restriction about edibility and agreed to use a plastic tiara. That was a tough choice, but a pragmatic one.

Funny how in making this cake, the actual cake part wasn't our focus. We were feeling fairly confident in our ability to make tasty cake and had dwelled completely on the look of it. In our batting ideas around stage, we had talked about an almond flavored cake layer with some kind of pink filling. That would have been fine I'm sure, but like a lightening bolt I was struck with the idea of making the inside look like Neapolitan ice cream. Brilliant! We decided on chocolate, raspberry, and vanilla, with raspberry puree between the layers and the wonderful raspberry mousseline buttercream for frosting (see our July 17, 2007 post for our raves). We still had to pick which cake recipes, so we looked back through our notes of butter cakes and decided that we like the Chocolate Domingo and the White Velvet Butter Cake best. We agreed that we could just color some of the white cake pink and call it raspberry, which we did. The only adjustment that was made to the cake recipes aside from coloring one batch pink, was some brown and red food color was added to the chocolate layer. In a practice muffin-sized version, the chocolate layer took on a slightly chalky look once it was cut. The brown and red made it just enough richer- or my imagination said it worked! Lastly, in addition to the cake layers, raspberry puree and yummy buttercream, I thought it would be good to have an almond dacquoise layer to add a bit of nice texture. Robb agreed once he tried the muffin-sized mock up. I think this may have been his favorite part! (It definitely was. A good crunch in a lovely cake!)

So, we come to Friday night, the night before her party and we have tickets to see Paula Poundstone (right here in Peekskill at the wonderful Paramount Center for the Arts) and we get started on assembly and decoration AFTER the show. We at least had the cake layers assembled: chocolate, raspberry puree, dacquoise, pink layer, raspberry puree, dacquoise, white layer, all covered with a thin layer of the raspberry mousseline buttercream, and the same for the 6 inch layer, except that the scalloped edges got lost in the trimming and it turned out to be round. That's ok in the big scheme of things. But, oh boy, we enter murky territory...

We got the fondant colored pink finally- it took a bit of time and a total scrapping of the first attempt. Fuschia isn't really pink, at least not in the way we wanted. Adding more and more of a color that isn't what you want doesn't magically make it the right color- go figure! Lessons learned- color a little bit at a time instead of 4 pounds worth, and use pink food color if you want to end up with pink fondant! (Ok, I'm a hair colorist and I know this, but somehow after seeing Paula Poundstone, it didn't come to me in a blinding flash, until the 4 pounds were already a lovely shade of a too violet fuschia.)

We had a heck of a time getting the fondant on the cake this time. The Art Deco cake was simple, partly because it was very wide and only an inch tall. So much for smooth sailing. Our 6 inch layer was at least 6 inches tall,and we ended up with a LOT of excess fondant on the sides and had a terrible time trying to smooth it. In fact, we took so much time trying to get it sorted out, it got hard. So, we ended up with a sort of bustle of fondant on one side of the cake, and a couple of seams. We were strategic with some fondant ribbon placement and all in all I think the "bustle" area looked suggestive of flowing hair at the back of the tiara. We stuck on some flowers and dusted the whole thing with the fantastic lustre mentioned above. Some princess ribbon on the tiara added to the flowing look.

Given the excitement of the fondant effort on the 6 inch layer, and that it was past midnight, we figured we'd go with buttercream for the bottom layer. We had a terrific polka dot ribbon and I was especially keen to see it wrapped around the base of the cake; minimalist and classy. We topped it off with a small branch of alstroemeria. (I think this small hand-held bouquet is called a tussy mussy or something similar- from Victorian times.) Lila enjoyed the flowers, carrying them around and then later in the day when she was tired, she got to tear them up into very tiny pieces. What a bonus!


We intended to have the layers stacked, but the pinks clashed and the style was quite different for that to make sense. With the overhanging fondant, we did need a pedestal for the smaller layer, so it was perched on some columns with a fluffy cloud of organza ribbon beneath.


The cakes were well received, the taste was great. And despite being mashed into slices with the side of a dull cake server, it held up pretty well. We had a great time thinking and planning for this one! We learned a lot in the process- found some good sources for supplies and interesting products. To some extent executing this one was less fun- there was even a moment for one of us of laying on the kitchen floor and trying not to lose it. But, we're troopers! We made it through and isn't that what this blog project is all about...

Bake through!

Janet

The New Math

Ok, we decided a long time ago to do the all the brioche recipes over December 3 & 4. It seemed like a good thing to do and we put it in our calendars weeks ago. I was afraid if I didn't do it, I'd end up scheduled teaching a class on the Monday and leave J the excitement of roll out, fold, roll out, wait, fold, wait, roll out, place. Truly, since it was on my calendar when I got the email for open days to teach in December, I could honestly not include those days as open.

Well, the week before, we were discussing what we were going to do and realized that about two recipes later, there was a sticky bun recipe that used the brioche as its base. Again, any forethought shown in this blog goes to J. She's the one that finds all these connections. It's times like these that I feel like I'm just along for the ride.

There was this great moment when we were doing three batches of yeasty bread type cakes and rolls, and had doubled one, even though we really could have just tripled it and had two batches to work with since the sticky buns and the struesel brioche start with the very same dough. It was confusing, and it looked like a comic kitchen. I sorta half expected the Three Stooges to come out and poke our proofing yeasty bread type things for fun and hilarity.

We did manage to make three batches, and never had to throw any out and start over, thank you very much. It's really much easier when you double -- if you forget to double you can always add. Halving on the other hand is a bit different. By the time you discover you forgot to halve the leavener, your zucchini bread has exploded out of the pan onto the bottom of the oven- not saying that's ever happened of course.

Just as RLB cautioned, we did find that we were overtaxing the motors on our two food processors when we were making the brioche. We ended up using the Kitchen Aid mixer. The virtue of using the food processor is lost on us, next time we will begin in the stand mixer and just stay there.

Our day started with the La Brioche Cake (CB pg 76) which is used in the Praline Brioche (pg 171). It started with making a sponge the night before. Relatively simple process. Actually nothing we did for any of these recipes was difficult or required a lot of hands on time. While it took about 2 days to make them, we only had to be in attendance on them for about 15 minutes.

I loved the fact that we start on Monday and when we get to cooking on Tuesday, it's only in the oven for 15 minutes!

After all the work, the Praline Brioche wasn't one of our favorites. So much so that we never even took a picture of it after we sliced and soaked and frosted. You are asked to make a cake which is not really a cake, but a giant domed mass of brioche in a 9" springform pan- see below,
then cut away more than half of it to have a crustless 7 1/2" by 1 3/4" disc of brioche. Then into this relatively small amount of cake, you are to let it absorb, practically submerging it, almost 2 cups of rum syrup. Then the the sodden layer gets frosted. All that manhandling -- or should I write person handling as J did quite a bit of that herself? :) -- seemed for naught. The texture was a bit weird, as in wet, and the rum was totally overpowering although the sugar put up quite a fight in that battle. This is one that I might think of making again only because it seems like it should work. It seems unlikely that what we produced could possibly have been near the mark, despite following the instructions explicity. Really, I think it was the fabulous Coffee Caramel Silk Buttercream (pg 242) that makes me such an optimist- what a delicious buttercream.

This is The Holiday Hallelujah Streusel Brioche (CB pg 94) and it was really similar to the previous in process. The recipe states that it freezes well and since we'd been pretty much brioched out, we froze it. J and K brought some over for the holiday party that M and I throw every year. (One of the happier things that took up some of our time this last month). This recipe did hold up well in the freezer. It was a nice addition to the other cloying sweets that we had on our table. It was eaten quickly. With many compliments. The texture was a bit dry to me. But others disagreed, they said it was flaky, which might have seemed a bit odd since it was a yeasty cake, not a pie crust. But a good brioche has a texture that is a cross between flakes of yeasty dough and the crumb of cake.

MMMM sticky buns (CB pg 98) These were very much worth the effort that we made them again for our Carb Fest 2008 (More on that in the next installment).

These start out with the exact same dough for the Streusel Brioche. Then you top (or is it really, bottom) them with butter light brown sugar and pecan halves. This is the most dreamy, melt in your mouth, smells like a home should smell like bit of baking we have done. It comes out all toasty and gooey and if you stop to think about it for any amount of time at all, everyone has beaten you to them and all the sticky buns are gone.


As you can see, these are well worth the work.

Bake through....

Robb