Daring Bakers challenge

Just a quick post... more about the daring bakers group shortly... we have departed from the Cake Bible on this one.

The Yule log, or Buche de Noel as some of us might call it was a great success. It is a basic yellow genoise and a very yummy coffee buttercream For the filling, we chose cranberry, which turned out to be a very good selection. It was pretty simple: cranberries, a left over can of cranberry sauce that never got used at Thanksgiving, and a LOT of ground cloves, some apple cider vinegar, and so on. It was a chutney really, and modeled after one we recently enjoyed from Trader Joe's. It wasn't so sweet which worked out very well becasue the cake itslef was really sweet, too sweet actually. The contrast of tart cranberry, spice, and coffee buttercream is pretty darn good.

The mushrooms are marzipan, and were a treat to make, the evergreen bough is rosemary that was still hanging in there in the snow covered garden. I'm very pleased with the festive look.

Like I said, more about what the daring bakers are next time- back to holiday guests and fun.

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

"mare ing gay" is what goes through my head as I type that

Ok....confession time..sorta...the title comes from an email J sent to me when I couldn't remember how to spell meringue. Somehow it helped.

My real confession is I'm having a heck of a time writing the blogs in a timely manner. You've probably all figured that out as you get them almost a week late. Please, if you've been sitting on the edge of your seat with anticipation -- I always think of Rocky Horror Picture show -- and "An-Tissa-Pay-Shun". Here's a photo to bring back the memory.....







(of course I chose the one with the buff guy in trunks who usually grunts and doesn't say much -- please don't read anything into that. M is extremely conversant when he wants to be.)

But anyway, if you've been waiting for the blog and you've gotten mad at no postings on Tuesday or Wednesday, blame me. Not J, she's completely innocent in this matter -- there may be others where she's not innocent, but I'm not gonna tell. She'll kill me if do.

So, you ask, what have you two baked this time?
Well, let me tell you:

1 Chocolate Espresso Pecan Pie.
2 Lemon Meringue Pies and
1 Pumpkin Walnut Ring

So, we were very, very busy....

As you may have figured out J and I are a bit obsessive. And, a little compulsive. Need I mention the "screening of nuts" incident? I think not, too.

This time, it's J who's got the compare and contrast bug. Jessica, One of J's clients from her dog sitting business, (she does it along with her husband obviously as you can't really hide dogs in a house and not have the other homeowner not notice, can you?) The link is posted at right for those of you in the area who want to avail yourself of her and K's services, feel free.

Where was I going with this?....oh right....

Jessica was headed to Oregon..nice, right?....



Anyway, Jessica asked J if there was anything she wanted her to bring back from the west coast and J said, yes, C & H Golden Brown Sugar, because for some reason Fine Cooking magazine mentions that when you make a meringue with C & H Brown Sugar it tastes different than the Domino's Brown Sugar those of us from the Eastern half of the US are used to.

We figured since Jessica had brought the Brown Sugar, she should be a part of the baking of the meringues. She made it (yea!) and hung out with us and it was a great time. Hopefully, she'll come back on many other occasions. Look, C & H has a very catchy jingle as both Jessica and K (the husband) sang it during our baking time.

So, there is the compare and contrast. We made two Lemon Meringue Pies each with different meringues and crusts. We really went for the gold here. The hands down best pie crust -- there were three (remember the Chocolate Espresso Pecan Pie?) -- was the Pate Brisee from the Silver Palate Cookbook (we strongly recommend this recipe and the entire cookbook, especially the 25th anniversary edition with color pictures.)

Which meringue did people like? We had 6 tasters once we included the husbands of the three bakers- see below for how that unfolded. Mostly people liked the one that they didn't grow up with. Which shocked both of us entirely. I tried to make up some lame rationale for why it was so, but after reflecting on it, I have no idea why people would like the one that "mom made". So that's 2 for Domino (Kev and Jessica, the west coaster's in the bunch) and 4 of us for C&H (the mostly east coaster's in the bunch). Go figure.

Here is the link to the Fine Cooking Lemon Meringue Recipe that we used which is originally from the baker at Mustard's Grill in Napa Valley. Search the Fine Cooking website for Lemon Meringue Pie. (Or, you can copy this hyperlink into your search engine: http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/articles/lemon-meringue-pie-technique.aspx?collection=72318. For some reason, I can't get the link to work. Sorry :(

The Pecan Pie is the recipe for the cover of the latest Fine Cooking. Honestly, I don't like Pecan Pie, but this looked really good. And, it was. The chocolate and espresso rounded out the usually cloying sweetness of a pecan pie, making this more of a grown up desert than the children's version I was used to.

I made my own pie dough this time. Really, it's my 6th time, and according to J it wasn't too bad. I was extremely flaky, even before baking and when it was blind baked, you could make it evaporate by walking by it. Actually, I didn't think it was too bad. Again, search Fine Cooking for the Chocolate Espresso Pecan Pie. (Here is the link to this recipe to cut and paste: http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes/chocolate-espresso-pecan-pie.aspx?nterms=52314&ac=ts&ra=fp)

The Cake Bible baking we did was the Pumpkin Walnut Ring (pg 71). This was quite rocking. It was, if I'm not mistaken, the first cake we did without using any butter! RLB uses safflower oil and walnut oil. We baked ours in a bundt pan and it turned out to be perfect. This was moist, with a great crumb. It had a heady, earthy -- think holidays at your grandparents house, or think of Autumn. The cinnamon, clove and nutmeg always say Thanksgiving or Holiday to me. And it was topped off with a chocolate glaze which sounds like it might have overwhelmed the pumpkin and spice, but it actually complimented the cake quite well. The glaze was simple enough too, chocolate melted with walnut oil. Try it.

And, really who doesn't love a reason to use pumpkin?


Michael and I had dinner with J & K that night -- the meringue pies had to chill for 4 hours before you could meringue them....So, all four of us tasted all 4 of them all together.

After dinner, I was in no condition to traipse all over northern Westchester (Janet chose a kick butt red wine -- I liked it so much I left my hat at J & K's place.) So she delivered them to the usual culprits for tasting. J & K made it to Jessica's house and shared the pies with her and her husband. So, while Jessica had to leave before the pies were completely ready in the afternoon, she did get to try them after all. Schlepping the sugar 3000 miles paid off!

For those of you who are interested....Fruit Cakes haven't been forgotten, we've just decided that we'll make fruit cake cupcakes and they don't have to cure at all. Now, thanks to Barbara in NJ who suggested the King Arthur Flour Company, all we have to do now is put in the order for the candied fruit.

Bake through....

robb