This one was actually [...]]]> 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.

This one was actually squeaked out over the xmas holidays.  The posting schedule was a little wider than usual, and I actually started to panic a little bit as some of the first posts of beautiful gingerbread houses went up starting on the 23rd.

I had already made one gingerbread house (Twitter themed) as part of a twitter team for our local Habitat for Humanity gingerbread display, but, obviously couldnt count that one in, as :

1. I didn’t make it myself,
2. It used construction gingerbread, which was neither of the recipes given by the Daring Bakers hosts, and while edible, was not delicious, and
3. it relied on the clever use of tree branches, so while the actual house walls were freestanding, it included non-gingerbread elements

Just for a teaser, here’s a pic of that house:

So anyway, onto the Daring Bakers Challenge!

I opted to go with the recipe from Good Housekeeping.  It called for no eggs, only cream to bind it, which sounded intriguing.  As I went, it mixed up all right, until the last bit of flour was incorporated, and then it seemed to get almost sandy in texture — quite dry, and not holding together like I thought it should.  I actually ended up adding at least another 1/4 cup of heavy cream before it achieved what I felt was a workable texture.

It was quite stiff to roll out, and as I read through some other DB recountings, I was skeptical about whether this was going to have enough structural oomph to it!  As it turned out, it baked up just fine!

I decided to go modern in feel rather than traditional gingerbread, and found a modern design on the Interwebz, however, it required a bit of modification, as it included some structural supports inside made out of cardboard.  I simply replaced the cardboard with gingerbread in order to meet the DB requirements.

The other new thing I tried with this gingerbread house was to use the sugar syrup method of adhering the pieces together.  I had read about this a while back, and didn’t try it because … well, because I’ve always used royal icing.  The thing about royal icing, however, is that it takes time to set, and requires precarious propping up of pieces with cans and books etc… while the royal icing sets.

The appealing thing about using the hot sugar syrup is that the set is pretty much instant.  Word of warning though — it is hot, and you will probably burn yourself at least once during assembly!  I have to say (burns aside!) that I really like this method, as the joins are VERY solid.

Finally, the embellishment on this one was very simple, relying only on plain royal icing.

I’m having fun looking at all the gingerbread permutations and combination.  Go check them out over at www.thedaringkitchen.com!

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.

Macarons are one of those things that look so perfect that [...]]]> So another month has gone by, which can mean only one thing… another Daring Bakers Challenge!

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.

Macarons are one of those things that look so perfect that you want to collect one in every conceivable colour and flavour combination.  Essentially just meringue, with some ground almonds, they are deceptively simple, yet require attention to detail in order to have them turn out exactly right.  Macaron shells should be nice and soft on the inside, but have enough structure that they don’t fall apart or shatter.  They should also have the characteristic “feet” at the bottom of each shell.

First, the egg whites need to be brought to room temperature, and whipped to soft peaks before adding sugar and finishing whipping to stiff peaks.

I ended up doing 3 rounds of macaron “trials”. Each time, I used the idea of grinding flavoured teas into powder to add flavour.  For the first trial, I made the receipe exactly as written… not great, not enough mixing, and no feet!

… so round 2, I ended up using the same recipe and assembly method, except I added a couple of extra strokes during the mixing…

… better, but still not the amazing feet that other Daring Bakers were seeing. I filled these anyway — some with strawberry jam and some with chocolate frosting.  Despite the lack of dramatic feet, they were pretty darn tasty, and the whole plate disappeared in short order.
So for round 3, I used the same mixing method, but changed the baking method to Tartlette’s. I let them dry on the counter for about 1 hour, and then baked at 280. Baking at a lower temperature seemed to help them keep their shape while cooling.  These were flavoured with chai tea, and filled with chocolate ganache. Think this is it!

These are pretty addictive, and once you get the bug, you may find yourself thinking up all kinds of flavour combinations.

Here’s the basic recipe:

Ingredients
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.
2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.
5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).
6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.
7. Cool on a rack before filling.

And some tips on making macarons:

David Lebovitz breaks it down: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2008/09/making_french_macarons.htm…
More macaroon 411: http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/10/introduction-to-french-macarons.html
Get inspired by our own Tartlette!: http://www.mytartelette.com/search/label/macarons
Go behind the scenes of Paulette: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXIvX0-CEu0
Watch a pro pipe macaroons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_RfiFoWZKQ&feature=related

Last week, I realized that I had not yet tackled the August challenge [...]]]> “The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.”

Last week, I realized that I had not yet tackled the August challenge for the Daring Bakers, so I set aside a day to make the Dobos Torte.  If you think you might want to try this one, you can find the recipe on the Daring Kitchen website.

At first pass, the recipe looked complicated, but when I actually sat down and read thru the recipe, I realized that each component was fairly straightforward.  This was one that I had not tried before, so I decided to make the recipe as written — no substitutions.  One kind of cool factoid that came along with the recipe was that it was passed on thru the Budapest Confectioners’ and Gingerbread Makers’ Chamber of Industry.  Who knew there was a Chamber of Industry dedicated to confectionery and gingerbread making!!!

Because I had other things to do during the day, I ended up making this in stages, making the cake layers first, then making the the buttercream and icing the cake, and finally tackling the caramel layer.

The cake layers themselves start out much like a genoise, although the whites and yolks are separated.  Here’s an action shot of the yolks!

And the billowy peaks of the whites…

You spread out the cake batter really thin on sheets of parchment, so they only take about 5 minutes apiece to bake.  Even though you have lots of layers to bake, it goes pretty fast.  I like the neutral flavour of the layers, and I really like the versatility of baking the layers on a sheet pan — you can cut to pretty much any size/shape you want.  I see more of these in my future.

The buttercream was interesting to make, as it starts similar to a swiss buttercream, but uses whole eggs rather than egg whites.  I used Callebault chocolate in mine, and it could have used more chocolate in it.  As it was, it was tasty, but next time I will amp up the chocolate factor.  I think the layers would also be very nice with strawberry buttercream.  One thing about this approach to the buttercream, is that it results in a really silky smooth icing — perfect for frosting.  It’s also nice and light, so the individual layers don’t get weighed down with a heavy filling.

Finally, I made the caramel layer.  One cake layer was kept in reserve,  and the caramel drizzled over the top, to make each piece stiff enough to stand up on its own.   The caramel recipe here calls for lemon juice, and in retrospect, I prefer the straightforward taste of caramel.  I also had read of a number of other people who had problems with the caramel setting up too quickly.  I was working with a cake layer at room temperature, so didn’t have any problem, and could have actually let it cool a bit.

Here’s the final product, with a coating of toasted hazelnuts on the side.  Another change I think I would make next time is to marry more hazelnut flavour throughout, perhaps soaking each layer with a bit of Frangelico, so the exterior related a bit better to the overall flavour of the cake.

This cake keeps quite well, as promised, and is actually best served after a period of chilling, to ensure the buttercream is nice and firm.

All in all, I think that this is one to keep in the cake repertoire, as there are a lot of potential jumping off points.  The cake layers would be easy to change the flavour, and would go with a lot of different buttercream options.  I also like the caramel topping as a quick way to jazz up an otherwise plain cake, and the cake layers for this could easily be cut into different shapes.

Thanks to Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella for hosting this month’s challenge.  Stay tuned to see what daring surprise gets baked next month.