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.

When I discovered that December’s Daring Bakers challenge was to make a gingerbread house, I was thrilled!  I’ve wanted to make a gingerbread house for years and I’d actually planned to make one with Lucas this year.  (Admittedly I was going to buy Lucas a kit from IKEA for insant gratification!)

After much admiring of gingerbread houses on flickr I settled on using a pattern from Ultimate Gingerbread.  I splashed out on their Pearl House pattern, purely because it looked like my dream house!  Doesn’t everyone want a house with a turret?!?  Extravagant (and completely unnecessary), I know.  I printed off the pattern pieces and then invested a happy half an hour for sticking them to card and cutting them out.

I chose to use the recipe that Y posted from Scandinavian Baking by Beatrice Ojakangas (recipe available on Y’s site). I own this book, so it was very handy to be able to take a book into the kitchen.  I did modify it ever so slightly by adding 110g of light brown sugar for sweetness as a lot of people had complained it wasn’t tasty, and I also used 2tsp of ground cloves instead of 3tsp.  The dough wasn’t quite as fragrant, but it did mean that it was more kid-friendly. Cloves are quite fierce and I wasn’t sure that Lucas would appreciate them as much as me!

Despite reports of dry, troublesome dough on the Daring Bakers forum, I had no problems with the dough.  All three batches came together easily; it was supple and easy to handle; and it smelled and tasted great.  I chose to roll out the dough between sheets of clingfilm before chilling since it was butter-rich and bound to set up like a rock!  This also sped up cutting out the pieces of the house, all eleventy million of them!

It was only when I started cutting out the pieces that I realised how huge this house was going to be!!  I’d paid scant attention to the measurements when I’d cut out all the template pieces and now it was too late to shrink it down!  I was sorely tempted to downsize but decided to persevere in the end; I could always invite people over to eat it!

The first pieces to be cut and baked were those for the main roof and porch roof.  I then made small cardboard moulds, a bit bigger than the trimmed pieces, and assembled the cap roofs, using a heck of a lot of royal icing that I had left over from the sparkling snowflake cake.  Baking the rest of the pieces took ages.  I was beginning to lose the will to live when I suddenly realised that I was done. Hooray!  I then crushed up an entire bag of Fox’s Glacier Mints and used them to create clear ‘glass’ windows in the house.  The double-baking of the main walls made me feel a lot more comfortable about constructing the house later on!!

Compared to the tedium of baking loads of small pieces, decorating hardly took any time.  I did most of it on Monday when we found ourselves snowed/iced in.

I copied shamelessly from the sample pictures provided by Ultimate Gingerbread and piped pale pink royal icing siding on to my house.  Each window had white frames piped on and an evergreen garland underneath.  Shiny silver balls were dotted on to the upper corners of the frames which looked very pretty.  Finally I piped a gorgeous wreath on the front door and left everything to dry overnight.

Construction day dawned and I procrastinated like mad.  It just seemed too difficult, despite my earlier practice with the IKEA house!  I finally sucked it up and made a batch of white royal icing.

After laying out the main walls on my board (A1 foamcore sheet!), I piped a heavy bead of royal icing all around the bottom edge and the joining sides.  Then I stood up the back wall and propped it upright, inside and out, with a can.  From there, it was easy to get the remaining walls up and stuck properly.  I only left a can against them for five minutes and then they were stuck fast.  I reinforced the seams with plenty more royal icing and then moved on to making the bay window, then the leaning turret, and finally the right extension.  I let it dry overnight before enlisting Dave’s help to get the rooves on.

After all that, it just took an hour to ice the roofs and dress the board.  I wanted to make a little cluster of Christmas trees but I ran out of green royal icing so you can just see last year’s Christmas tree, planted out in the garden by the house’s occupants.  Dessicated coconut sprinkled over a smear of royal icing makes the snow look convincing, and I finished off by piping garlands around the porch supports and using flattened Jelly Tots as a welcome mat on the porch.  (Every gingerbread house needs some sweets, right?)

I want to say a BIG thank-you to Anna and Y for this fantastic challenge!  I had loads of fun making my house and I hope everyone else did too!

When Ivonne and Lis first asked me to host August’s Daring Bakers’ challenge, I was thrilled. Then intimidated.  And then the fun megalomania kicked in.   I could choose anything!  I could be as nice or as evil as I wanted to be!  Bwahahahaha!

Ahem.

I’ve always had a long list of things that I’ve wanted to bake.  Well, things I want to eat, really—so this seemed the perfect time to knock something off that list.  But choosing something that would be appropriate for the Daring Bakers turned out to be harder than I expected.  I was quite gung-ho about strudel, but then the next challenge turned out to be strudel!  And then I thought of making a Fraisier but that particular cake cannot be chilled because of the marzipan on top.  Same problem with the amazing Triumph of Gluttony from Sicily!   I was beginning to run out of ideas—crocquembouche? No, we’d already done eclairs and general fun with choux last year—when I came across a beautifully layered cake with stripes that a zebra would be proud of.  The Dobos Torta.

Whisper-thin layers of sponge, a decadent chocolate buttercream and crisp wedges of caramel on top… this was my kind of cake!  And best of all, it fit with all the very sensible criteria for a Daring Bakers recipe, as well as being daring and thoroughly challenging.

Once I’d settled on what I wanted to make, and quickly checked with Ivonne that no one else was planning to challenge us with it, I started thinking about a co-host.  Very little thought was needed before I asked the lovely Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella if she would like to join me.  Thankfully she said yes, and the rest is (now) history.

I have loved looking at all the wonderful Dobos Torta that the very Daring Bakers have created through August.  Looking at cake upon cake while dieting probably isn’t the best idea, but it’s just been so much fun to see so many different shapes, colours and designs.  I feel like a proud mama when I see another new work of culinary art appear on the DB Forum and I am so, so pleased that everyone has taken on this cake with such gusto.  I really think that The Daring Bakers have outdone themselves this month!  Bravo to you all!

The full recipe is below, and please check out all the amazing Dobos Torta via the Daring Bakers’ blogroll.

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“Nun, meine Kinder,” Frau Mieders said, beaming on them, “today we make the puddings for Mittagessen. And for the puddings , they are Apfelstrudel.”

The girls beamed back at her upon hearing this. Apfelstrudel was a favourite pudding with everyone at school. *

I grew up on a steady diet of school stories, loving their sheer escapism and wishing that my school was more inclusive and accepting.  By far, my favourite was The Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer—now there’s a mouthful of a name for you!  The Chalet School was a wonderful place, full of titbits of knowledge about languages as the girls had to speak English, French and German on alternate days (with Sunday being a ’speak your own’ day), and there were always thrilling adventures around every corner!

One of the most memorable aspects of the Chalet School books was the food.  Oh, how wonderful the food always sounded!  Even the names of mealtimes were different: Frühstück , Mittagssen, Abenssen.  And there were always such vast quantities of food.  When Miss Ferrars joined the Chalet School her first meal consisted of creamy soup sprinkled with herbs, followed by veal in a picquant sauce and then a huge hollow bun stuffed with jam and cream…and that was just for lunch!  Breakfast by contrast was simple with rolls, honey and fruit, all washed down with milk or milky coffee.  I think the coffee was what sealed the deal for me… I wasn’t allowed to drink coffee as a little ‘un, and it seemed so grown-up!  And the girls always, always had afternoon tea or Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cakes) which always sounded luscious!

And so it was that the Chalet School was my first introduction to apple strudel, or apfelstrudel to give it its proper name.  Making my own strudel has always been something that I’ve wanted to do, so imagine my delight when I saw that this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge was to be strudel! The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

The first thing to do when making strudel is to make your dough.  Frau Mieders, the plump and jolly Domestic Science mistress in the Chalet School books, always bade her pupils gather all the necessary ingredients before beginning work.  So, in a bid to be a good Chalet girl—something that was always the “ideal” to strive towards in the books—I followed her wisdom.

In Frau Mieders eyes I undoubtedly fell at the first hurdle by using my food processor to make the strudel dough. She says on a number of occasions that “cookery is not for idle girls”!  however, the food processor is a great way to make strudel dough as it encourages long strands of gluten to form in the dough which is exactly what you want for stretching it out to paper-thinness.

Hopefully I redeemed myself by kneading by hand until all traces of stickiness were gone and the dough was incredibly elastic.  I can highly recommend hurling the dough at the unfloured worktop at least a hundred times!  Not only is it fun, it also develops the gluten further and faster than just kneading alone.

With the dough resting, it was time to gather together the filling ingredients and set to work on that.

“Peel, core and slice the apples,” the mistress said.  “Peel thinly, please and also slice thinly.” [...] And then Frau Miediers caused consternation among them by announcing that she was coming round to see how thinly they were all peeling and slicing.

Frau Miediers would be horrified at my idea of peeling apples!  I absolutely loathe doing it, so I try to get it over and done with quickly and end up with very thick peelings.  Still, it was slightly less arduous than usual as I was so excited at the prospect of strudel!

I made a couple of small tweaks to the filling recipe, which I would probably roll back for next time.  I used challah for the breadcrumbs as I’d baked one a few days previously and the rich crumbs browned awfully fast when I fried them.  Plain white bread would definitely be best, I think.  I also tripled the cinnamon called for, which made the filling mixture awfully brown.  Oh, and as I don’t particularly like walnuts, I used flaked almonds which I adore.

The dough had to be uncovered and placed on the floured cloth and first rolled out and then stretched on the backs of their hands until it was almost wafer-thin and transparent and fitted the cloth exactly.  There must be no breaks in it and this made it worse.

I made a double-batch of the strudel pastry as I was pretty sure that I’d either poke a hole through it, or it would stick fast to the sheet, and I’m really glad I did.  It was still a little sticky when I tried to roll it onto the sheet and then when I resorted to just stretching it out, holes kept appearing until it looked like aged lace.  So I tossed it away and started again with the second half.  What really made a difference was brushing the top of the dough with melted butter and also buttering the rolling pin.  It stretched out like a dream and you could definitely read through it!

“And now,” said the mistress when the apples, sugar, raisins and currants had all been placed on the pastry.  “We roll him into a long, thin sausage—this way!”  And she took two corners of the cloth in each hand and deftly rolled it up.  “Now you try it.”

The less said about the shape of some of those sausages, the better!  Some were twice the size and more of Ruey’s.  Some were thick at one end and thin at the other. Primrose Trevoase cleverly rolled her cloth in with the filling and had to undo it, find a fresh cloth for herself and stand to one side, looking rather silly, while Frau Miediers transferred the remarkable result to the new cloth.

This was the part I was dreading.  Even though I had liberally covered the sheet with flour, I could totally see everything going wrong when I rolled up the strudel.  Interestingly enough, did you know that strudel means whirlpool in old German?  The name comes from the rolling or whirling action when you finally get brave enough to just do it.

And would you believe it? Nothing went wrong!  The pastry was so incredibly thin that you could see each slice of apple ghost-like underneath the layers.  Beautiful.

The last touch was to brush them over with melted butter.  After that, each sausage must be carefully bent in the middle and put on well-greased baking sheets before being slipped into the big ovens to bake till they were golden-brown.

I can’t say that I managed to bend the strudel into quite the right shape, but it all fitted on the baking sheet which was a relief.  My only problem came during baking the strudel…

I liberally daubed the strudel with melted butter, so much so that there were a few little puddles on the baking sheet, which then started to smoke in the oven.  I’d say I was about two minutes away from a flaming strudel.  Whoops!  So after whipping the strudel out of the oven and drying it and the parchment, I bunged it back in and hoped for the best.  Which explains why my strudel is a tad over-browned.

Still, once I stopped grousing about it and actually cut a slice, I felt redeemed.  (Well, I got the third slice.  Lucas was sitting at the dining table waiting for the first slice while I was photographing the whole thing, and then Dave came downstairs for his slice, and *sigh*)  The pastry was so incredibly light and its plainness provided the perfect foil for the gorgeously soft spiced apples.  I served the first few plates Chalet School style with “a positive featherbed of whipped cream” and the remainder was eaten with some vanilla ice-cream.

I’m so pleased that I have finally fulfilled a childhood dream and made my own strudel.  It was definitely worth all the work and I’ll be making plenty more strudels in the future.  (I’m thinking that a savoury one with roasted squash and dolcelatte cheese would be awesome in the autumn….

Thanks so much, Linda and Courtney for this wonderful challenge!

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It’s that time of the month again… Daring Bakers time!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As much as I love seeing what all the hundreds of Daring Bakers can do with exactly the same recipe, I have a real soft spot for our more creative challenges… where we can pretty much do what we like.  They have an exciting, last day of term feel to them.

I make cheesecake quite frequently, so I wanted to try and do something different with the decoration.  (I should probably confess that my idea of decorating a cheesecake is piling a few truffles in the centre!)  Jenny mentioned in her challenge announcement that we should “make it unique, make a showstopper of a dessert” so that’s what I tried to do.

Originally I wanted to wrap a vanilla-bean laced cheesecake with some white chocolate plastic and piling the centre high with fresh and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  But… it isn’t strawberry season yet, and the few berries I’ve pinched from Lucas have been a bit watery, so I just couldn’t.

So, it was time for Plan B, for which we need a little background.

I am a real coffee-lover.  So much so that I have to ration myself.  Case in point: the last time I bought a bag of coffee, I disappeared into a week-long high and drank jugfuls upon jugfuls of cold-filtered coffee.  (If you have slightly more self-control than me, then you can find the method over at Smitten Kitchen.)

But all good things must come to an end, and now our coffee machine sits on top of the larder (no space on the worktops) and apart from that week when I buzzed around like a hummingbird on crack, the only coffee in the house has been the Visitors’ Jar of instant coffee.

Deciding to make a cappuccino cheesecake was therefore a risky move, but if it tasted as wonderful as I expected it to, then it would be totally worth it.  Plus, bouncing off the walls was bound to burn off all the calories from the cheesecake!

To make the cheesecake look even more special, I decided to wrap the cheesecake in chocolate plastic.  This… did not go well.  Maybe I didn’t manage to scrape all the liquid glucose into the melted chocolate, or perhaps I cooked the chocolate too much, but the but instead of ending up with a pliable and slightly sticky ball of chocolate, I got chocolate crumbs.  No matter what I did, I just couldn’t rescue matters, so I wound up wrapping the cheesecake in some chocolate sugarpaste that I had lying around.  It didn’t turn out as whisper-thin as I’d hoped, but it still looked and tasted pretty damn good.

Since I was playing dress-up with the cheesecake, I added some little gold buttons and some seam details before completing the cappuccino effect with a dusting of cocoa powder.  Oh, and because I couldn’t resist gilding the lily, I made some fanciful sugarpaste flowers,

In case you couldn’t tell, I was really pleased with the cheesecake and it tasted almost as good as it looked.  The coffee flavour of the actual cheeesecake was great, and the whipped cream really made the frothy, extravagant cappuccino effect work.  I’ve got to say, this isn’t my favourite cheesecake recipe ever.  I know that lots of Daring Bakers loved it, but I just liked it.  I found myself missing the distinct tang of cream cheese; it felt like the double cream smoothed out the texture and the flavour.  More tang, please!  However, this didn’t stop me from hoovering it down with Dave.  Poor Lucas didn’t get a look in at all; probably a good thing, really.  He bounces off the walls enough already, thanks!!

I think a big thank-you is in order for Jenny, for making me be creative and have fun at the same time!

Don’t forget to check out the other amazing Daring Bakers creations via the blogroll.

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Oh, lasagne… is there anything I won’t do for you?

For you, I would slave over the stove for hours to create the perfect ragu to lovingly spread between your silky layers.  I would whisk furiously to make a voluptuous bechamel to further your perfection.  I would squirrel away the best Parmigiano-Reggiano for you and you alone.  But, I have now come to a terrible realisation, dear lasagne.  All these years, all the stirring, the whisking, the grating, the love, and still I have wronged you.

Until yesterday, I have never made you your very own pasta.

I am so sorry.  You deserve better, lasagne *sniffle*

Fresh lasagna sheets from the supermarket simply won’t cut it any more, now that I’ve made my own and forget about dried, no need to cook lasagna!  My beautiful lasagne absolutely must have freshly rolled, home-made pasta.

Ahem.  I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to some crazy lady talking to her lasagne, so without further ado… on to this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge!  The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

This is the first time that I’ve made a lasagne completely from scratch.  (Well, to be fair. I didn’t mill the flour or make my own cheese, but you get what I mean, right?)  I’ll happily spend hours cossetting a ragu, throw together a great bechamel, but I’d never considered making my own lasagna sheets.  I have no idea why as I make my own ravioli quite a lot; making pasta isn’t difficult, just a little space-consuming in my little kitchen.  However, now that I’ve done it, and relatively successfully, I’ll certainly be making my own lasagna sheets.

I made the ragu and bechamel on Thursday; both straightforward once you get over the milk curdling scarily in the ragu.  Yes, this is normal. Yes, it’ll stop looking weird if you just let it do its thing on the stove.  And yes, you will find youself panicking even though you know it’s going to happen.

On Friday morning, while looking at the Daring Kitchen forums, I belatedly noticed that the posting date had been brought forward by two days.  I hate being late—you wouldn’t think so, considering how often I am late—so gone was my leisurely day of slowly and lovingly making pasta, then assembling the lasagne.  I was in a rush!

Making the pasta dough was fun, if a little messy.  I usually toss it all into the food processor until it reaches the bread-crumb stage, but being a good little Daring Baker, I proceeded to make a big mess on my worktop.  Like I said, fun   I had to add an extra egg and a few teaspoons of water squeezed from the spinach to get the dough to the right consistency, but I almost always have to add extra liquid when I make pasta.

Amazing what a difference kneading makes!

Lucas was fascinated by the creaking noise of the pasta machine and abandoned Peppa Pig for long enough to turn the handle and roll out two pieces of pasta.  I wish I’d been able to geta picture as it was really, really cute. Half-way through he turned round and said, “Mummy, I love making food!” He’s the sweetest little boy ever and was so proud to eat his pasta.

Following a tip on the private forums, I stacked all my sheets of pasta between layers of clingfilm which worked a treat and saved so much space.  I’ll definitely do that again.

I did take space-saving a little too far.  I decided that as my sheets of pasta were paper thin, I wouldn’t bother to blanch them in boiling water.  I just couldn’t picture getting my mountain of pasta drained properly on sheets of kitchen roll before assembling the lasagne.  And it was getting late, and someone else sait it worked out just fine for them… So, in they went, raw.

I think this would have been absolutely fine if I’d had a lot more bechamel.  I had to thin it a few times when reheating it as it just kept thickening even further, and I’m guessing that the lasagne soaked up plenty of the sauce when it was baking.  So, my lasagne didn’t have the gorgeously creamy white topping that it should have done, despite me holding back a really generous amount when I was building it.  It still tasted great, though.

I managed to use all the ragu, and all but three sheets of the spinach pasta, giving me eight layers. Wow!  It was really impressive to cut into it and see all the wonderful layers; the bechamel and ragu melted into the layers making everything was just so rich, voluptious and delicious.  How could it be otherwise?  It was lasagne.

I must thank our lovely hosta Mary, Melinda and Enza for a fantastic challenge.  We all loved the lasagne and I’ll definitely be making it, and variations, in the future.  How awesome would this be with roasted butternut squash?  I have to… after all, I have years of shocking neglect to make up to my lasagne…

Check out the Daring Blogroll to see all the other incredible lasagnes!

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This month’s Daring Bakers challenge, a Chocolate Valentino, was terribly apropos for February, the most romantic month in the calendar.

The Chocolate Valentino is a deceptively simple flourless chocolate cake that only has three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs.  The idea is that you use your favourite chocolate and are gifted in return with a cake that tastes exactly like the chocolate.

I must confess that I didn’t particularly like this cake.  Perhaps I did something wrong as it didn’t taste anywhere near as sweet as the chocolate I used and rather than having fudgy texture in the centre, it felt wet.  (There was some fudginess going on, but the unpleasant wet texture wiped it away.  I don’t think it was under-baked, though.)  Still, Lucas was a big fan, so I had at least one happy camper!  I wonder if I’m going off chocolate?  I seem to be leaning more towards nutty or fruity desserts these days…

I did however adore the ice cream.  As our hosts gave us a free rein on that subject, I took the opportunity to try a recipe I’ve had my eye on for a while: Toasted Almond Gelato from Gina DePalma’s Dolce Italiano, one of my favourite baking books.  The scent of toasted almonds lingered intoxicatingly around the house for several days, making me smile every time I came home.  It was just wonderful, and slightly less calorific than many other ice creams I’ve made in the past.  I couldn’t bear to throw away all of the almonds used to infuse the cream, so I added a few (finely chopped) spoonfuls into the gelato mixture before freezing which gave great texture to the gelato.

Almond and chocolate are a match made in heaven, so it was no surprise to me that the gelato managed to elevate the chocolate cake into something much more pleasant.  I can’t help wondering what I did wrong, and what it should have tasted like.  Divine, I should imagine…

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.

Don’t forget to check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll for other fabulous creations!

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I must admit that I’ve never had much success with tuiles in the past.  They were either too thick or horribly chewy; I never managed to achieve the dizzy heights of thin and crispy goodness.  So, I set them aside and mentally classed them as mere fripperies, never to adorn any of my desserts.

With that in mind, I wasn’t overjoyed to see that January’s Daring Bakers challenge was to make tuiles.  They were just too hard! I procrastinated like mad, and finally gave in last night and decided to have a go.  Plus, since we had to make something ‘light’ to go with them, it was a fantastic excuse for me to make some white chocolate mousse.  If it all went wrong then I could just console myself with some mousse… I am cunning like a fox!

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 Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I opted to make the simplest recipe offered by our lovely challenge hostesses: vanilla tuiles.  The chocolate tuiles looked amazingly delicious, but also far too dangerous to have in the house, and the nougatine looked far too difficult.  Simple seemed like it would have the best chance of working out for me!

Making the batter was very easy.  I followed the recipe and my only problem was that I was 10g short of icing sugar, so I ended up blitzing some caster sugar to a powder.  It wasn’t as perfectly ground as the real stuff, but it seemed to work out.  So far, so good…

I made a very simple stencil out of a paper plate and used a butter knife to spread a thin—almost see-through—of tuile batter onto the baking sheet.  Every time I do something like this I think to myself, “I really must buy an offset spatula.  It would make everything so much easier.”  And it really would have.  If you have one, then I really would recommend that you use it for tuile-making attempts.  This recipe makes a really thick batter, much thicker than my previous attempts, which I think made it much easier to spread a thin layer.  If that makes sense?

And the good times just kept on rolling.  The tuiles baked in the specified time and actually looked like tuiles.  Surely the shaping would be where it all went wrong?  Nope… I lfted the tuiles off the baking sheet and wrapped them round little glass jars where they obediently set into pretty and crispy shapes.

I served my pretty, pretty tuiles with a cube of frozen white chocolate mousse—low fat!—and some raspberry coulis.  They tasted as good as they looked and had a satisfying crunch that was a great contrast to the smooth sweetness of the mousse.  Yum!

So, as you can see, I have somewhat conquered my fear of tuiles. They’re not impossible at all!  I shan’t be knocking them out every week, but as the occasional bit of frippery for a special dessert they’re okay   Thanks for helping me beat my fears, Karen and Zorra!

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As Comic Book Guy would say… Worst. Xmas. Ever.

This buche de Noel is brought to you by three festive doses (in varying strengths) of the flu—proper flu, none of this “I have a bad cold, so I’ll call it flu” crap—two aggrieved prolapsed discs (me), food-allergy triggered blotchiness & swelling (Dave), and a distinct lack of appetite for anything (all of us).  Even for dessert.

It probably goes without saying that I’m a little cranky, too.

At any rate, on to the challenge.  This month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.  They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand

I was so excited about this month’s challenge.  I babbled for days to Lorraine about it, and started it with such enthusiasm.  And then the ‘flu hit.  Now I have zero enthusiasm for the buche or indeed, any form of food.  (I don’t feel any thinner yet, but I’m still hopeful.)

My chosen flavour combinations were a coconut dacquoise, white chocolate ganache insert, mango mousse, ginger creme brulee, and a gorgeously glossy (but very tempermental) white chocolate icing.  I went all Blue Peter and created a mould out of an old plastic bottle, some cardboard and sticky tape.  I’m really happy with how ithe shape turned out and I’d certainly make my own mould again rather than buy a tin that’s only going to be used once a year.

Oh, I should mention that I added some popping candy to the coconut crisp insert and it stayed nicely pop-py, which was quite cool.  It was a shame that I didn’t like the taste of the rest of the layer.  I suspect, that gavottes aren’t quite my thing and I should have just bought a box of Rice Krispies or asked around and begged some from a friend.

On the whole, I did like the buche, but I was by no means blown away or impressed.  Which makes me really sad, considering how excited I was and also that I dragged myself through its creation when I should have been languishing in bed.  But I would like to thank Hilda and Marion for giving us such a wonderful challenge to end 2008 with!

Sparkling royal icing snowflakes adorn the top of the buche.

Caramel is one of my all-time favourite flavours, so when I saw that this month’s Daring Bakers challenge was a sumptuous old-style caramel cake, I was thrilled.  I even clapped my hands with glee.  Really.  Okay, so maybe I was a little tipsy when I read the announcement, but even stone-cold sober the next morning I was still v.excited.

This month, our lovely hosts Dolores, Alex, Jenny and Natalie have chosen Shuna Fish Lydon’s signature caramel cake.  Shuna, of Eggbeater fame, is a San Francisco London based pastry chef with a wonderfully relaxed style of writing.  Shuna has had a glittering career in pastry, having worked at The Gramercy Tavern, The French Laundry and Bouchon.  Wow!

So, with that kind of pedigree in mind, I must admit that I was a little intimidated when I saw that Shuna considered this a difficult cake.  When a pastry chef describes something as difficult, that’s just plain scary to a home cook.  Nevertheless, I happily dived in headfirst.

So, let’s start at the very beginning.  A very good place to start…

The caramel syrup was fairly easy to make, once I sorted out the horrendous crystalisation that occurred halfway through.  I inadvertently knocked some crystals down from the side of the pan while stirring the pale gold caramel—I’ve never seen crystals seed so quickly!  Turning out the heat and mashing the crystals until the syrup felt smooth under the spatula seemed to sort it out, and then I just turned the heat on full again and let the caramel boil until it reached a gorgeous dark amber, almost the colour of treacle.  Because Shuna instructed us to cook the caramel until it was smoking, the house filled with the most gorgeous burnt caramel scent.

Once it was the right colour—and smell—I hurriedly pulled my sleeves down and threw on my oven gloves.  With the heat off, and the pan lid on and slightly adjar, I poured in the extra water to “stop” the caramel from going any further.   I expected the caramel to sieze but it all dissolved into a smooth syrup straight away.  I boiled it for a further three minutes, checked the consistency on a spoon and let it cool to room temperature.  Once cooled, the consistency was somewhere between maple and Golden syrup when it fell from a spoon.  Sweet, slightly bitter, slightly burnt and quite irresistable.

One thing I’ve noted over the last month is that “dark amber” is a really subjective colour.  I’ve seen syrups that are barely blonde in colour, and no one else’s seems to have been as dark as mine!  But, I chose to take the caramel as far as possible until it really did smoke as I figured that it was the primary flavour of the cake so it had to be as intense as possible.  I would have loved to have seen a picture of the syrup as prepared by Shuna, but then I would probably have wondered if my monitor was showing the true colour!  So, yes.  Colour is very subjective.

For the cake, I made certain to follow all of Shuna’s hints and tips.  I even got Dave to adjust the head on my KitchenAid to make sure it was mixing properly—it’s been knocking for a little while, but apparently I’ve been trying to adjust the wrong screw.  Ooops.

I loved trickling the dark, dark syrup into the creamed butter and sugar, changing it in an instant from ivory fluff to a sexy dark gold.  I was so tempted to throw in more and more of the syrup, and I probably would, if not making this for a challenge.  (I’d reduce the milk to compensate, though.)

The batter did break when I was adding the milk, so I stopped, scraped down the sides and then added the next portion of the flour which made it recover nicely.  I went cautiously when adding the remainder of the milk and ended up leaving a couple of tablespoons behind as I felt it just wouldn’t recover if I added the whole amount.  Sometimes you just have to use your intuition when baking, and the amount of milk you’ll need very much depends on the flour you use.

What I should have done, was make a slight well in the centre of the cake batter before baking it.  When I turned it round, half-way through baking, it was very well risen in the centre with a cracked peak, so the oven was most likely too hot.  I gnashed my teeth and tried to ignore it.

But, ignore it, I could not.  It preyed on my mind all night and the next morning found me back in the kitchen whipping up a second cake.  Which came out exactly the same, even though I went off-piste slightly and chose to bake the cake without a sheet pan underneath.  Luckily, I’d been conservative and halved the recipe each time otherwise I could have been quite annoyed.

So, what was meant to be a simple and conservative caramel cake turned into a four layer extravaganza.  I really should have put more frosting between each layer, but I wanted to make the top all swirly and pretty, hence it only looks like a two layer cake until you cut a slice.  I like to think of it as a stealth cake.

Four layers of caramel madness

The caramel flavour was intense, but with an edge to it which I can only attribute to cooking the caramel so dark.  This was not a bad thing—we loved it!  None of us found the cake to be too sweet, which is something I was really worried about after reading comments on the DB forums.

I can’t say enough good things about the frosting.  Using browned butter was an absolute stroke of genius and you could control the thickness of the frosting by leaving the butter more on the liquid side or letting it set up again.  So, glaze or buttercream.  Like I said, genius.  Before I started adding the caramel syrup, I knew this was going to be fabulous and I wasn’t wrong.  To adjust the seasoning I used Maldon sea salt and crushed up the flakes randomly so that there would be the occasional salty hit in there as well as a gloriously slightly salted caramel taste.  This was so incredibly, wonderfully, amazingly good!  I’ll be happily slathering this frosting over pumpkin cupcakes in the future.   I suppose it might be considered excessive to make a big bowl just for my own gluttonous needs?  Shame.  It’s seriously good.

I am so pleased to have finally tried out one of Shuna’s recipes.  This is a wonderful cake that I will happily—oh, so very happily—make again.  Perhaps even for my birthday…

Don’t forget to check out The Daring Bakers Blogroll to see the other amazing caramel creations! (more…)

This month The Daring Bakers are making pizza for the first time.  Yup, that’s right.  This is the first time that we as a group have tossed and twirled dough around to make pizza!

Our host Rosa from Rosa’s Yummy Yums chose Peter Reinhart’s pizza dough recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice—coincidentally, last month’s challenge came from the same book—and left us endless options for toppings.

I did have a bunch of fancy thoughts about toppings—fig and feta over caramelised onions would have been gorgeous—but what with Lucas’s birthday and various other things, I was pushed for time this month.  So, I played it safe (and simple) and made pepperoni pizzas for Dave and I.

The dough was pretty sticky, more like a foccacia than any pizza doughs I’ve made before, but still relatively manageable.  The trouble came when I came to toss the dough…

I tried—oh, how I tried—to toss the pizza dough, but it was impossible.  Within two bounces on my floury little fists it was see-through in the centre and with a further toss it just tore.  I ended up pinching the edges of the holes together and praying that the pizza wouldn’t stick to the baking sheet.  Needless to say, I do not have a picture of my disastrous attempts and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be getting a job in a pizza parlour any time in this lifetime!!

I sauced the pizzas with a little passata, simply seasoned with some dried oregano, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar then piled on a mixture of shredded mozzarella and grated pecorino.  I tried to be restrained with the pepperoni slices, but wound up overlapping and tucking them in wherever I could as it looked so good!  When each pizza came out of the oven I added some freshly torn basil for extra flavour—echoing the herbs in the sauce—and colour.

My pizza was good, but… I have to be honest and say that I didn’t think this was the best pizza crust recipe ever.  It struck me that this was the sort of recipe that needed a furiously hot wood-burning oven—Hi Jeremy!—rather than a domestic oven to cope with the high water content.  It did develop good flavour overnight and it was very, very thin, but it came out doughy rather than crispy despite extra time in the oven.  (And believe me, my oven was very hot!)

I’ll be sticking with my current favourite crust recipe—the lavash crackers from last month’s challenge—for the moment, but I’m glad that I got the chance to try out a new recipe!

Thanks for a fun challenge, Rosa!  And don’t forget to check out the other Daring Bakers pizzas on the blogroll.

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