February Daring Bakers!

This month's daring bakers challenge was to make a chocolate Valentino cake and Ice cream. What a perfect month for a sweet and simple chocolate dessert.


The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.


The cake was beyond delicious, and even more simple. I served it with chocolate covered strawberries and whipped cream.

So here's the recipe!

Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Mardis Gras!

There are few things in life better than cake. Tonight, after wanting to do it for a long time, I finally made cake balls. I originally got the idea from the wonderful Bakerella. I've wanted to make them since right before I went onto The Martha Stewart Show to talk about her cake balls.


The idea is simple, you take the cake and basically mush it into crumbs. Once its a big pile of crumbs, you mix in frosting. I used my favorite cake recipe, and I used store bought cream cheese frosting. Although this is my favorite cake in the world, the cake came out dry and crumbly, I couldn't even get it out of the pan without it breaking. This lent itself wonderfully to cake balls. Once I realized there would be no cake in it's future, I decided to go ahead and give it a try! I took the mushy frosting cake mixture and formed it into balls and dipped them in chocolate. I decorated them with green, purple and gold sprinkles in honor of Mardis Gras.

They were really one of the best cake experiences I've ever had. I suggest you make them the next time you have spare cake parts.

Crepes

A light, sweet, delicious dessert that's low calorie too!

Crepes filled with cool whip and strawberries topped with chocolate sauce:
Recipe adapted from Alton Brown:

Ingredients:
2 Large eggs
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons melted butter

Method:
Place all ingredients in blender and blend until well combined.
Let rest for one hour in the refrigerator, this allows the bubbles to dissolve, which will make the crepes less likely to tear while cooking.

Heat crepe pan and pour 2 tablespoons of batter into the pan. Rotate pan until thin, even circle is made. Cook crepes until lightly brown, flip and cook for additional minute.
Repeat until all batter is used.

Success!

Daring bakers, take 2

After my tuiles went very poorly, I decided I had to give them another go around. This time I used much less flour than the recipe called for. I had a much thinner batter this time around, and after some googling, I got some tips to help me smooth them into thin rounds easily. The differences in my results were amazing. This time they came out a delicious, light crisp cookie. They were completely delightful. I served them with some strawberry lemon meringue and fresh strawberries.


I was taking pictures of my completed challenge when my sister Jenn and her step daughter Jaclyn came home. Jaclyn is a strawberry fiend, and was dying to try some immediately!

I made Jaclyn her own plate to enjoy.


And enjoy she did. She dug right in! She dipped the strawberries in the meringue and gobbled most of that up, and then ate the cookie.

According to her, they were both a huge success!

Daring Bakers Disaster!!

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x Umruehren Bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angelique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

After checking the challenge early in the month, I decided it was easy and it could wait until a little later in the month. And that would have been a good plan except that this week got a little bit crazy. My cousin is making her Bat Mitzvah this weekend and in helping other family prepare to travel out to Colorado to help her celebrate, I got very busy and forgot all about the challenge. It wasn't until this evening when I got a call from Kristyn, from over at SugarHoot, that I remembered that I had to bake. She told me they were easy, and I'd have no problem doing them tonight...Boy was she wrong.

I think I need to take some more time and really examine the recipe to see where I messed up, I think they were too thick, and I think the batter was too thick. I plan on remaking them tomorrow to
see if i can make it better...


But for now, here are my tuiles!

Smells like Christmas...

If you were to ask my mom, Christmas isn't Christmas without snickerdoodles. These are her favorite cookie, so when I went on my baking adventure 2008, I had to include them for her. I made 7 types of cookies, all with different flavors and textures. The simplest of these was the snickerdoodle. With just a simple coating in cinnamon sugar before baking, they have a subtle sweetness that matches their chewy texture beautifully.

Classic Snickerdoodles

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter; softened
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

• Heat oven to 400 degrees
• Mix sugar, butter, shortening and eggs in a large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.
• Shape dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Mix 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon. Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
• Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Remove from cookie sheet and cool on wire rack.

Cookies cookies everywhere...

These cookies go by many different names Russian tea cookies, pecan balls, or in my family, snowballs. All of the recipes are very similar and they are topped with the unmistakable adornment of crisp white powdered sugar. The look of a powdered doughnut draws in kids and the unmistakable flavor hooks them for life. The cookie is slightly dry, and barely sweet, and definitely not overwhelming. My cousins have been known to eat entire tins before realizing what they were doing, or being caught by their parents!

Grandma's Snowballs
This recipe is written exactly how my grandmother wrote it on her recipe card...Not my style, but it is her recipe after all...

Beat well:
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together:
Egg mixture
1 cup butter or crisco
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar; sifted

Sift together:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Add:
1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Chill 30 Minutes in refrigerator

Form into 1 inch balls

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Bake 8 to 10 minutes

Roll in powdered sugar immediately out of oven; Caution will be hot!!

Cool and roll again in powdered sugar

DB: Caramel Cake!

I know I'm a little bit late with my Caramel Cake post, but Thanksgiving was just crazy!

This month's challenge was Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, by Shuna Fish Lydon. The host this month was Dolores from Culinary Curiosity with help from Alex from Blondie and Brownie, Jenny from Foray into Food, and Natalie from Gluten-a-Go-Go.

I was a little nervous about this month's recipe, simply because in the challenge there was a comment about how this cake it truly about baking. I was excited about that because I obviously like to bake, and I like a challenge, hence joining the group...However, I was nervous as this was the first time I took on a recipe that I thought to be challenging.

The recipe was very detailed with many different steps. We had to make a caramel syrup, brown butter, make frosting, and make a cake. The syrup was the part that I found to be the most difficult. I've made hard candy before, in the form of candy canes, but I had never made caramel. The recipe warned to wear long sleeves when pouring the water into the caramel, I ignored the long sleeves, but poured the water in with an oven mitt on my hand. Oh Boy! I was SO glad I made that decision. It really exploded. It was insane. I whisked it a little, and took it off the burner and let it cool. I read the recipe wrong and accidentally added like a cup of the syrup when it only called for 1/3 of a cup. oops. The cake still tasted pretty good, but it was a little overwhelmingly sweet, but that was to be expected when you mess up the recipe!

I made a 9x9 inch square cake, and it cooked for a relatively short time, like 30 minutes. It smelled delicious! While it was cooking I browned the butter and made the frosting. That part was truly delicious. I loved the brown butter, I thought it was delicious and added a great nuttiness to the frosting which balanced my excessively sweet cake nicely.
I loved the cake, and it would have been truly delicious if I had added the correct amount of syrup.

Have your cake...

After caking the cake decorating classes earlier this year, I have become the official cake maker for all family functions. I love this job, I love trying to think of what everyone will like and seeing their faces after they see my creations, that are hopefully everything they hoped for.
September and October are insanely busy with birthdays and anniversaries in my family, so not everyone got cakes, which made me a little sad, but I wouldn't have left my kitchen between 9/20 and 10/29! There are 20 birthdays/anniversaries in that time!
What I was able to do is make cakes for all my cousins who fall in there, and then a separate one for our September/October birthday celebration that we have.
This was my Grandfather's cake, he turned 76 this year. He is a huge country music fan, and a good old southern boy. He adored the simplicity of it, and also the cowboy hat theme. His cake was one layer of vanilla and one of chocolate, filled with buttercream frosting.

This cake was for my cousin Danielle. I'm really close with both her and her twin sister, Devan. Since I started with the decorating, she had been telling me precisely what she wanted, the doll cake that they make. She wanted it to look like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I didn't have much creative license on this one, as she was very specific, but she was superbly happy with the results. Danielle is a chocolate freak! Her cake was chocolate chocolate chocolate. Topped with a thin layer of vanilla (yellow) buttercream.

Then there is Devan's cake. She had no idea what she wanted. I looked back through my cake pictures then the idea hit me. She loved these two cakes I made way back when I started. Her favorite cake that I've made is actually my first cake. It had star tipped circles on it. Then she liked the cake I made for my own graduation party cake. It was insanely bright colors. Her favorite color is yellow and she is the most energetic 15 year old you'll ever meet. I love that about her, so I tried to make the cake feel like her. I think I was pretty successful, and she really loved it. Her cake was vanilla with vanilla frosting, and covered in mmf.