Gingerbread Challenge

December Daring Bakers Challenge:

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

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“Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man!” is an earworm from childhood that still remains. So with the daring bakers challenge of making a gingerbread house this month I had to think of what his house might look like.

I made the dough ahead of time and let it mature a couple days in the fridge. This paid off, because it was easy to roll and pliable when the construction time came.

I enlisted the help of my daughter who is a graphic designer, so she was ready for the building and decorating. I learner a new trick from a recent cookie decorating book . The trick is to roll the dough on parchment paper, cut your shapes, then take away the remaining dough rather than trying to move what you want to be the cookie. This works perfectly, no more distortion any more for my cookies.

I looked through some pictures for inspiration, and ended up thinking I would make a light house modeled after the one my aunt and uncle live in on PEI. My final house didn’t look much like the inspiration photo, but I like it anyway.

Inspiration House:

For the icing we used fresh eggwhites because I had given the meringue powder to my daughter, so it was in Toronto, oh well. The icing worked beautifully, and trick is not to beat it too much.

Daring Bakers' October Challenge: French Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I joined Daring Bakers and this month and did my first challenge - French macarons. When I was in France last year I ate real macarons at Laduree, and they were amazing. So, after that I came back and tried several recipes. After a few failures, I found the recipe from Desserts magazine Helen of Tartelette was consistent and gave me the real feet and crisp crust with soft interior. The difference with this recipe is that it uses Italian merangue, which adds a cooked sugar syrup to the beaten egg whites.

So, when I read the recipe from Daring Bakers, it was made with the French method - raw whipped egg whites. I was interested to see if I could get the feet without the bother of the Italian cooked merangue. I tried the recipe 3 times with little success (ie, they had no feet), so then I adapted the recipe to the cooked merangue method and they worked.

For filings, I made chocolate ganache, everyone likes it. I then tried a new caramel filling made with mascarpone and caramelized sugar plus whip cream. It is excellent, but very sweet. I then tried a third filling with mascarpone and whip cream, and added a little caramel filling to it, and it was also quite good.

Macarons can become obsessive, especially the need for feet. I like them once in a while, and love how they look, but they are really sweet, and after these batches I could hardly eat them. I called my husband on one of the afternoons a furnace was being installed, and told him to feed them to the workmen. They liked the caramel the best.

I still have not mastered these in that I cannot make them consistently with feet and shiny tops, but I really enjoyed the challenge of the Daring bakers and reading about all the information on the web about macarons. I tried a fifth batch using a new recipe from the new James Peterson Baking, but they ended up with no feet. He did not even hint that they might be difficult either!!

Anyway, I will try these again but not until I have a break from the sugar rush. I am in san Francisco now visiting my son, so I hope to make it to Paulette's Macarons, she has a shop here with wonderful looking macarons.

Caneles Using Silicone Mold

My second Canele effort was using the new silicone mold I purchased in France. My understanding is that solicone molds vary in quality. The one I used was black, probably a medium quality, and for the large size caneles.

I sprayed the molds with cooking spray, and they cooked for about an hour and a half. They came out easily, were browned, and after sitting developed a crusty exterior. The texture and taste were great. Although the copper molds cook faster and develop a better and thicker crust, the ease of the silicone will probably make me go to it first next time.

Next step - trying a few more recipes, I think the shrinkage was a little too much, so I am going to try a recipe with a little higher proportion of flour next time to see if they shrink less. The recipe on La Tartine Gourmet looks good, and I am also going to try the one from my Bordeaux amie Martine's mother.

My First Canele Effort

These are the Caneles made from the copper molds. For my first try I used the Martha Stewart recipe in her baking book. They came out very browned, and tasted great. I used spray grease on the molds, and used a toothpick to coax them from the molds.
After sitting for the required hour, the outside was crusty, and the inside was suitably creamy. The flavour was delicious vanilla cream. Overall, a success. My only disappointment was that they shrunk so much that they were about the same height and width, and they are supposed to be taller than wide.
Silicone mole next....

Orange Flower Water Madelaines

I wanted to make madelaines today, and to try again with a silicone mold. I used the recipe in Sherry Yard's Pastry Book. They taste great, but I continue to not be very happy with the uneven browning from the silicone mold. This recipe has ground almonds in it, and the orange flower water adds a good taste dimension. They freeze very well, and are a great thing to have in your larder when unexpected or even expected company arrives for tea.

Cooking class in Bordeaux

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Gluten Free Pain D'epices

After fillling the kitchen with the aroma of my latest 2 pain d'epices, I felt sorry for Greg and had to make him a gluten free version. The problem with many gluten free recipes is that they rely on rice flour, which in my opinion doesn't have great taste or texture, and unfortunately Greg is also sensitive to rice, so I have learned to improvise. I have been trying to increase the protein and fiber content, and to improve the flavour in terms of picking flours.

The recipe I have developed here uses several flours, but I'm sure you could just stick to gluten free mix that works for you and your allergy requirements. This came out wonderfully cakey and delicious, and I think anyone eating it would not necessarily know it was gluten free (that is the gold standard of gluten free baking in my mind). Chestnut flour can be found in some Italian grocery stores, I found it in little Italy at a small store nesr Bathurst and College. It has a slightly sweet nutty taste and works well in cake.

Re xanthum and guar gum - I find guar gum makes a cake texture, and xanthum makes a more breadlike texture. I wanted cake texture, but also wanted it to be well bound, which xanthum does best. Use what you want, either will work here.

Gluten Free Pain D'epices
1 3/4 cup gluten free flour mix (I used 1 cup light bean flour (1/3 cup bean flour, 1/3 cup tapioca flour, 1/3 c. arrowroot flour); for the 3/4 I used 1/4 cup amaranth flour, 1/4 cup chestnut flour, 1/4 cup buckwheat flour)
1/2 tsp xanthum gum powder
1 tsp guar gum flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ginger (dried powder)
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg, ground fresh if possible
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp whole anise seeds
1 T soft butter
1 egg
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup honey
1 T brown sugar

Mix the dry ingredients. Mix the wet stuff (you can just melt the butter if you want). Combine and bake at 350 for....depends, about a 1/2 hour - depends on the size loaf pan you use. I now have a convection oven, so I baked it at 325 on convection and it came out light and fluffy.

How Healthy Can You Get?

This little salad is about as healthy as you can get. It is a combo that was not the usual, but it is really delicious. The other bonus is that the apples did not turn brown, the picture is the salad the next day after I made it. I got the idea from a magazine recipe, but of course I changed it. I have made this twice already and love it!! I hope this recipe is specific enough, I feel salad recipes are pretty fluid depending on what the state of your larder and proximity to a grocery store. Enjoy, and this is my first recipe post, I hope to have others. Please comment, I need to know maybe someone is reading my blog!!!

Fennel Salad Inspired by Waldorf
Quantities are approximate, and not really critical anyway!
1 Apple (I used Granny Smith) peeled and chopped up
1 cup fennel (ie, finocchio) sliced thinly (I used a Bereiner slicer, they work great)
1 cup celery
1/2 cup grapes
2 T walnuts, chopped (make sure they are fresh!)
2 T yoghourt (heaping ones) (plain, I used Astro, my favourite)
1 T lemon juice (maybe a little more, taste to see)
1 tsp poppy seeds
2 tsp honey
a few fennel fronds to make it look pretty

This made enough for 2 large servings pour moi.

Playing with Pain D'epices

I started playing around with pain d'epices recipes after reading a recent post on David Lebovitz's blog (see sidebar for link), one of my favourite food blogs for inspiration, and hey, he lives in Paris!
After reading David's recipe, I also checked my ever growing cookbook library, and decided to try the one in Nick Malgieri's A Baker's Tour first. I will call this the "lean" version - it has no fat or eggs, and fewer spices than other recipes. The sweetener is honey and sugar. It is very easy to make, you melt the sugar in water first, then just dump in the dry ingredients. It rose up beautifully, and made two delightful petite loaves in my little half size loaf pans. I cut it the next day after resting. It was a little chewy, but the flavour was very mellow and a little different from other gingerbreaddy stuff we are all used to.

It rose up more than double in the petite loaf pans. After again resting (ok, not as long, I had to taste it before going to bed!) it is very good, sweetened only with honey, and would be good as a sweet, or also with cheese.

My next try was the recipe from Flo Braker adapted by David Lebovitz and the recipe is on his blog. It has more spices, .It had more spices and is more like the flavour of typical gingerbread type of spicing. It also has a softer texture because it has a little butter and an egg. I made 1/2 the recipe, but just used a whole egg because if I try to use half it is impossible, it always manages to slither into the batter anyway! This version, maybe I can call it the "soft" type, turned out great, and was fairly tender.

The smell of this was so good, I had to make a gluten free version, I will post the results.

Fabulous Fondant

My daughter was here this weekend, and she wants to learn more about cake decorating. Both of us thought fondant looked smooth and an open canvas, so we finally tried some.
We made regular cupcakes, and also used a small "muffin top" pan. The muffin tops worked out to be a really nice petite shape, a little mouthful of sumptious sweet cake (See above pic).
Here are our little kitty's!

And some florals.

We were lazy and used premade fondant that I got at McCall's in Toronto - they have everything for cake decorating! It worked perfectly. It comes in a tub that you can just take out what you need and save the rest. Surprisingly, the fondant tastes fairly good, a little chewy and sweet, slightly vanilla flavoured. I was not expecting good taste, let's face it royal icing is just for looks, but this is not bad at all, in fact it might be even better with a little flavouring added.
Next time we will coordinate the colours more, and will try to make the fondant. McCall's is a long drive from here!
So, for our first batch, it won't rival the Hello Cupcake book, but we had a blast.

Banana Walnut Tarte

Here is a tart from Dessert Circus by Jaques Torres. I tried to arrange the filling artistically, inspired by the patisserie shops I saw in France. The crust was gluten free - from the Gluten Free Kitchen. It is one of the best gluten free crusts I have found. This was very good, I cut it up and froze it in pieces for Greg to use on nights when I make a non gluten free dessert pour moi!

French Macarons

On my last day in Paris I wanted to see Pierre Herme's patisserie. I found it, but there was a long line up, and I decided I didn't have time to wait. So, I continued and my good fortune was on the next block in the form of Laduree, which was supposed to also have wonderful macarons. I had read debates on Chowhound board over whether Laduree or Pierre Herme macarons were the best, so I was hopeful. I looked over all of the choices, and finally asked the clerk (who was dressed up very smartly in a suit) which were his favoutires. He said chocolate and caramel, so that's what I bought. I had no idea how much they would be as they are sold by the gram. The total was about 3 euros, about $5. I had tasted other macarons during my travels outside of Paris, and none had been that good, so I was hedging my bets. It was the coldest and windiest day of my trip, and as I left the wind was chilling. I walked half a block and then thought I should taste them before I got too far away in case they were really good. I opened the bag, stood my a wall, looked them over, and took the first bite of the caramel one. It was devine - crisp outside followed by a lucsiously soft inside, then the intense sweetness of the caramel, with a bit of salty flavour as well. I decided to taste the chocolate as well, and it was equally wonderful. After eating these, I was really full, they are very sweet and also the filling is buttery, I do not want o know how many calories!! Because I also was off to try croissants at what I remembered as the best croissant place, I decided not to go back, but I still regret not bring a couple back to Canada. I figured they would get crushed anyway.
I had bought a couple French cookbooks on Macarons, so I was so pleased I had tried what I now considered the true benchmark for a good Macaron.
Upon returning and having time to cook, I proceeded to try to make them. After trying one bartch that tasted ok but did not have the characteristic "foot" they get when they rise, I did some more research and tried a recipe that used Italian cooked merangue as the base. This was in an article on the web Desserts Magazine, an article I highly recommend. So, I was finally successful in getting the feet, and made a chocolate ganache filling. I took my macarons to a Christmas party, they they all disappeared quickly, and several people asked how to make them. When I described my process, no one then pursured the recipe, I think I am the only one crazy enoough to want to pursue this perfection. My macarons were good, but what I learned on this second batch is that you have to be very careful not to overcook them, and also they improve after aging in my cool fruit cellar for a couple days.

Desserts magazone, a free online publicaitons is wonderful, here is the link: http://www.dessertsmag.com