Desserts
Daring Bakers: Macarons
The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s TheLast Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.
Macarons. A word that will simultaneously put joy and fear into the heart of any home baker. I was excited to hear that this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge – I’ve made them before, but lost the pictures before I had a chance to post them. I’ve been looking for another excuse to make them. I chose to make chocolate cookie with a salted caramel filling.
In the US, people often confuse French Macarons with macaroons – a cookie made primarily of coconut. Although macaroons are also delicious, they don’t even begin to compare to the beauty that is a macaron. Macarons are a sandwich cookie made of almond flour that is combines with sugar and egg white. The texture is a combination of crispy and chewy, with a crispy outer shells that gives way to a soft meringue center. The cookies are sandwich together, often with ganache, caramel, or fruit preserves.[....]
Lemon Ricotta Cupcakes with Blackberry Icing
I love fall, but I’ve been a little bummed that summer seemed to come and go so quickly this year — it rained almost every day in July and we really only had about two weeks of really nice weather before it started to get cold outside. I decided that even though they aren’t exactly season-appropriate, I would bake some lemon and blackberry cupcakes to remind myself of the warmer days. I may have spent the past few weeks bundled up in a winter coat and eating apples and squash, but one bite of these cupcakes will transported me right back to summer. [....]
Vols-au-Vent Take Two: Apples and Cream Cheese
I’m really not happy with how the photos of this came out, but I promised you that I would post it today so please believe me when I say that it tasted much better than it looks here.
One of my first ideas when vols-au-vent were announced as this month’s Daring Bakers challenge was to use apples. It’s the perfect time of year for them, and I wanted to highlight their natural sweetness. Instead of using a traditional pastry cream or custard, I used a cream cheese base. The tartness of the cream cheese paired perfectly with the sweet apples and made a delicious dessert that wasn’t too sugary-sweet.
Unless you’re feeling particularly brave or adventurous, I would just just make this with prepared puff pasty. If you do want to take the plunge and make your own though I do have a few tips that I left out of yesterday’s post: The dough is easy t wrk with when its well-chilled, but it becomes a nightmare as it warms up. The refrigerator is your friend! In addition to chilling my dough in between turns, I also found it helpful to chill my rolling pin – I just put it right in the fridge! I also thought it would help to have a cool surface to roll the pastry out on – since I don’t have a marble slab like was recommended, I used two metal cookie sheets. I stuck those right in the fridge too, which kept them cool and prevents the butter from getting too soft while I was working with it. [....]
Layer Cake with Raspberry and Chocolate Buttercream
Ever since I made that delicious dobos tort, I’ve been in the mood to bake cake. I’m usually a chocolate cake kind of a person, but I decided that I wanted to mix it up and make a yellow cake to bring to my parents house this past weekend. Specifically, I wanted to make a yellow cake filled with raspberry and iced with chocolate buttercream. As much as I love chocolate, there’s something wonderful about this combination. [....]
Daring Bakers: Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies
A lot of people have asked me if I eat “this way” all the time. Now you’ll be able to see for yourself – I’ve started a new blog where I plan to document everything that I eat in a day. I can’t promise you that it will be pretty, but you will get to see what else I eat – including some recipe failures that I don’t deem good enough to post on this blog for some reason or another. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some up and coming recipes. Why am I doing this? Honestly, I’ve put on about 5 pounds and I don’t like them! I want them gone before I go on a cruise in September, and I know that my main problem is snacking too much. I hope that posting everything I eat will help keep me accountable, and will really make me think about whether I *really* want more cookies. I hope to see you there!
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Speaking of cookies…. The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.
Since I obviously didn’t need to be eating that many cookies, I decided to make just one of the recipes. It was a tough call: milanos are my favorite, but I’ve also been dying to try making homemade marshmallows. Since this was for Daring Bakers, the marshmallows ultimately won out. [....]
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