Leftover cake

I had a bunch of cake pieces leftover from Audrey's birthday cake so I decided to try making some cake pops.  Whoa.  Waaaay harder than I anticipated.  The problems I encountered were numerous but I think they mainly stemmed from the consistency of my "batter."   I ended up adding too much frosting.  They weren't cake-y they were more like wet, frosting balls.  Due to this issue the balls fell off in the chocolate coating even after being frozen onto the sticks.  Does anyone know how much frosting Bakerella calls for?  I searched her site and listened to her how to video on YouTube.

Regardless of my troubles I managed to crank out a dozen or so pops.  My girls and nieces each had one and then I threw the rest away (wasteful).  The cake part just had too much frosting.

The strange thing is I'm quite eager to try them again.  I saw another video of a woman who makes her cake pops out of doughnut holes.  Quite clever if you ask me.

Have you tried making cake pops?  Any tips?   Any idea on how much frosting to use?

S is for Success

Not a perfect success, but I'll take it. Since my failed attempt at making macarons I've made 2 more batches (using this tute.) Both of which resulted in something very much like a macaron. Yipeee! I piped the cookies a bit too large and over cooked the second batch, but other that, people I'm making macarons.

My hunch is that aging the egg whites (leaving them out for 1-2days) is what made the difference. In the class I took we were told that the eggs should be room temp. I even asked about aging the egg whites to which the chef replied, no need. Perhaps she is right. But I believe it was the aging that lead to my success.

The other truth that became clear to me is that you really need to have the proper equipment to make macarons - a digital scale, a fine sifter, a piping bag and the proper tip. I also think a stand mixer would be a huge help too. I have a hand mixer. All this makes a difference.

I've since become macaron obsessed! I've read about it happening to many a blogger. It is not about eating them. It really is about making. Perfectly and with ease. I can hardly wait to try again. I'll roll my sleeves up again just as soon as my piping bag, #12 tip, and supply of powder food dye arrives. It is all about the proper equipment.

One question I still have about macarons is how to tell when they are done. Anyone know?

F is for Complete Failure

Friends, it wasn't pretty. I could tell by the meringue. I told myself to dump the meringue and try it again. But naturally I didn't listen to myself so I continued. And they were a joke.

My errors were in the meringue. I broke 2 of the 3 tenets for making a successful meringue -

1) egg whites at room temp. NO, too cold.
2) No yolk pieces in the whites
3) "Stretch" the egg whites* before beating them. My new hand mixer doesn't seem to have a low. Position 1 seems to be the same speed as 6. grrrrr.

*Stretching egg whites means to beat them for a minute on low before turning up the speed. The chef who taught the macaroon class paralleled it to pulling a balloon a few time before blowing it up.

Here is the evidence:

Don't be fooled by this pretty looking meringue. I stood there with my hand mixer for 1o minutes at least! It never got light and had the consistency of marshmallow cream.

Ready to go in the oven. They should have spread out so the tops were smooth. The fact that they still have peaks and lumps is a huge red flag.

Baked. Need I say more?

But today, today I found some success. I'll tell you about it. Check back.

American Macaroning

I bet you thought my posts about macarons were over now that we've landed in America. Think again! Yesterday I took a 2 hour class all about making macarons. It was so fun.

I learned all about the characteristics of a French macaron - the pied (foot), the small frills that form along the bottom of the cookie and the skin; the shiny top of a macaron. Macs are supposed to be crunchy with a slightly chewy middle.

I also learned some new fancy words:

Macaronnage - The technique of mixing flour and meringue to make macarons.

Macaronner - The technique of mixing the batter until it is firm and drips slowly when scooped.

The class was divided into 4 groups. Each group made a different flavor macaron. The instructor made one too. So we had 5 different combinations - mint with rum cream, coffee with vanilla custard, sesame with white chocolate ganache, cassis with blueberry butter cream and coconut with coconut filling. The best? Sesame with white chocolate ganache. A surprising combination that gave a lot of flavor.

I was part of the group that made cassis macs. As you can see we had some trouble with the piping! Much harder than it looks. Due to some old, thick purple dye we ended up over mixing our batter. That made it too runny and also lead to baked macarons that wouldn't come up off of the parchment paper. Don't over mix!

Above all though, I had a really great time. Now I'm about to dash upstairs and try to make some on my own - back tomorrow with results!

A Cake Deconstructed

I pulled it off. I made a buche de noel for Christmas dinner. It was tasty and looked alright. It wasn't as challenging as I anticipated although something did go wrong at every stage. In the end it surprisingly came together. If you'll indulge me, I'll break down this project for you (and me.)

I ended up going with the Martha Stewart recipe. My biggest mistake was not reading the directions thoroughly enough. I didn't allow time for all the chilling required to make this dessert. This caused me to rush through the frosting and decorating part.

I also didn't make meringue mushrooms; I used marzipan instead which easily molded into mushrooms.

The first step was to make the cake. This part gave me the most anxiety - I was worried the cake would break when I tried to roll it. Luckily it didn't. I made this a day in advance and left it in the fridge, rolled. The directions said to roll the "long end." I couldn't decide what was meant by that. I rolled it the way that made it long and thin, but this only gave me 1 roll. Most buche de noels have more rolls which lead me to believe I should have rolled it the other way . . . whatever.

Step 2 was the chocolate mousse. I didn't account for chilling time. I also had whipping issues both with my egg whites and whipping cream. I think my hand mixer doesn't go fast enough.

Next I spread the mousse on the cake and rolled it up. This was tricky as the cake didn't want to unroll. When rolled up I didn't have much of a spiral effect due to the way I rolled up the cake in the first place.

Making the ganache icing for the outside of the cake came next. The directions said to whip the ganache until it had the consistency of soft butter. Mine never transformed even after some intense mixing and remained the consistency of icing. I decided to pour/drizzle it on and let it set in the fridge (only I didn't account for chilling time) but I did it anyway.

Finally I decorated the cake; making faux bois lines with a knife, scattering chocolate shards, placing mushrooms and sprinkling with powdered sugar and cocoa powder.

My family was enthusiastic and supportive of the cake. They even threw out hints suggesting this may become an annual tradition. That makes me so happy. I'm up for the task!

Yule Log Challenge

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Friends, I've assigned myself a challenge this Christmas; to make a Buche de Noel for Christmas dinner. Since I'm not hosting and am only responsible for the dessert, I'll have energy (fingers crossed) to make something very special.

As you know this is the Christmas dessert in Luxembourg. Since we're home now, where this classic French dessert is virtually non existent, I thought it would be fun (in a challenging, potentially frustrating, possibly hair pulling way) to make one.

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So, I'm looking for advice. Chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling? Yellow cake with chocolate butter cream filling? Chocolate coating? Meringue mushrooms? (wishing I had a pack of the red fairy sugar mushrooms that they sell at the grocery stores in Lux. They are on every buche over there!) What do you think?

I looked at Martha Stewart's recipe and it looks a bit complicated. The directions on the Youtube tutorial look pretty good, but I'm sort of settling on the recipe I found at Saveur - unless you have a fail proof one for me to try!

This Year's Christmas Cookies

2011 Christmas Cookies

Peppermint Bark by Orangette

Peppermint Cookie Bark

Gingerbread Trees (there is still dough in the fridge waiting for the girls)

Thumbprints (Audrey has stopped calling them Fingerprints. That was so cute.)

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies (first year making these. They are like little brownies. A friend told me about adding peppermint or espresso powder to these. yes, please.)

What did you bake this year? Leave a comment!

One more Thanksgiving note

The star of our Thanksgiving feast wasn't the turkey, although it was good. It was the pie. I made another salted caramel apple pie only this time I left the caramel sauce on the side. In the original recipe the caramel sauce was poured in between layers of apple. Leaving it on the side was a stroke of genius (if I do say so myself.) The salted caramel flavor was much more obvious. I served the pie room temp and the caramel sauce heated. I finished each serving with a sprinkled of sea salt. Next time I'll heat the pie as well. There will be a next time!

The pie itself also turned out surprisingly well. I'm always so delighted when this happens (so lucky it occurred on Thanksgiving.) I don't make enough pies to feel confident in my final product. Each pie I've made is always a bit different. There were 3 key elements that I believe contributed to this pie's success. 1) I cut the apples very thin 2) As per the recipe I sprinkled the apples with sugar, causing excess juice to be expressed from the apples 3) As per the recipe I sprinkled 1 T of sugar and 1T of flour on the bottom of the pie crust before adding the apples. I also used mostly Granny Smith apples this time. Maybe they really do make a great pie.

My crust, however, could really be improved upon. I used this recipe which I've used before. This time I felt like the crust wasn't as light and flaky as they could be. Any crust suggestions out there?

How were your Thanksgiving desserts? Any winners?

Lazy Baking

Have you ever seen a recipe that you wanted to make immediately? Well, I know I certainly have and it happened to me again last weekend (um, 2 weekends ago now.)  The timing couldn't have been more perfect as Bryce and I were sans kiddo so I was able to indulge this whim before it passed. 


The recipe was for salted caramel apple pie.  You heard me.  I saw it in a NY Times Sunday magazine.  The recipe was created by 2 sisters who opened a pie shop in Brooklyn - Four & Twenty Blackbirds. Could it get any cooler than that?  Really, I'm dying over here.

The whole leisurely process of putting it together was as decadent as the recipe itself.  The kitchen to myself, a beautiful new kitchen at that, music in the background.  Ah, heaven.  Alas, this story turned out to be more about the process than the product.  I didn't bake the pie long enough and the apples ended up rubbery.  Rubbery and under done.  If I hadn't enjoyed the process so much I would have felt terribly disappointed.  


But it's okay.  I'm already fantasizing about making it again.  This time I'm going to try something different with the caramel.  And bake it longer.

Big Brioche

As cute as those mini brioche are they are also quite tedious to make. In addition, with only 12 mini pans I'm left with a whole lot of dough. No problem, though, I used the remaining dough to make one large loaf. This loaf is called - Brioche à tête. The tête (head in English) is the little ball on top. A head is not the first body part I think of when I see this loaf, but maybe that is just me.

Brioche

Ah, brioche. I had so much fun trying out a few recipes and sampling the results. For the recipes I forced myself to actually look through some of our cookbooks. My habit is to jump online and search for recipes while our nice collection of cookbooks collects dust. Do you do that too?

Anyhoo, the first recipe I tried was from What you Knead by Mary Ann Esposito. This is a lovely cookbook with photographs of each step of the bread making process. This is so helpful. Curious about forming a fontana to make your bread dough? She has a photograph of each step. To a bread making novice (me!) this is invaluable. Esposito's recipe made a gorgeous, shiny elastic ball of dough. The ingredients she calls for are very specific - bottled water, King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour, and NO rapid rise yeast. Needless to say I had to use what I could find. Although the end result was very tasty I was curious to try a another recipe.
For my next foray into brioche I followed a recipe in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. This is more than a book of recipes but instead a method of making bread. Essentially what you do is make enough dough at one time for 4 loaves of bread. You freeze or refrigerate the extras until you are ready to use them. The method used in this book is the complete opposite of Esposito's specific, detailed procedures. In the Artisan Bread method there is no kneading or no need to proof the yeast. In fact, they don't even care what kind of yeast you use. The ingredients are chucked into a bowl. As a chucker myself I really like this. But you know what I liked even more? The ease of producing a loaf of fresh, delicious brioche without any mess or hassle - thanks to the balls of dough patiently waiting in the freezer. This method does take more than 5 minutes a day - thaw overnight in fridge, rest for an hour before baking, and then baking time. But still, it is so easy and the bread was delicious.

The truth is I think both recipes are great for different reasons. Esposito's gives you one well loved, pampered and produced loaf of bread. Hertzberg and Francois give you ease and flexibility. Both recipes give you a delicious loaf of brioche.

Have you baked with either of these books? Whaddya think?

Currant Affairs

Our neighbors gave us 2 tubs full of red currants. My mom and I were still on a baking high after making a tarte au citron so we eagerly starting researching currant recipes. Honestly, there isn't much out there other than jam but we did find a currant mini cake recipe and one for currant muffins. We made both.

I was most interested in the mini cake (Petits gâteaux aux groseilles) recipe so we made that first. It used almond flour and egg whites with a handful of currants thrown on top before baking. The cake part was delicious - moist with a light almond flavor. My mom said the cakes would be great with any berry other than currants. They were just too bitter and sour. I actually thought the berries were okay. The cakes are a snap to make. I used ramekins for the pans.

The muffins were easy as well. Guess what my mom said about them. . . would be great with any berry other than currants. The muffins used more currants than the mini cakes so the tart, bitterness was much more noticeable and, yes, unpleasant.

Final verdict: Currants are good for jam. And creme de cassis. And for garnish. That is about it.

What's cooking in your kitchen these days?