alpineberry

Another Attempt at Macarons

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 05:00:00 +0000

I mentioned in my burger macaron post that I was going to abandon the French meringue method of making Parisian macarons and try the Italian meringue method instead, but I think I might have been a bit hasty. I really don't want to use an Italian meringue based recipe. I don’t want to deal with making the caramel and digging out my candy thermometer. I also have a tendency to get those sugar threads all over the place when I am pouring the syrup into the egg whites. I know I'm supposed to pour the molten hot syrup onto the side of the bowl and not onto the whisk, but I somehow manage to get it on my Kitchen Aid whisk attachment anyway.

So after reading Ms. Humble's many macaron experiments (where she used both French and Italian meringues), I decided to give the French meringue method one more try using Ms. Humble's macaron recipe.

The thing about macarons is that there is not one single recipe that will work for everyone. The brand of ingredients, folding method, oven, pan liner (silicone or parchment), thickness of baking sheet, weather/humidity, and the list goes on. I've been trying to find that one recipe that will consistently work for me in my kitchen with the brands of ingredients I use and the equipment I own. I thought that since Ms. Humble lives in Seattle and the weather up there is similar to San Francisco's I might have a better shot at success using her ratio of egg white to almonds to sugar.

I also decided to beat the heck out of my meringue per Mardi's instructions until my whites looked like this:

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Chocolate Mint Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:35:00 +0000

I was not a Girl Scout and I didn’t know anyone who was a Girl Scout while I was growing up either. I knew that Girl Scout cookies existed, but I never saw or tasted one until I got to college. The one cookie I knew I had to try first was the famed Thin Mints, a minty chocolate wafer coated in chocolate.

It's Girl Scout cookie season right now and you may already have enough Thin Mints stored away in your freezer to last you until the next season rolls around. But if you aren't so lucky, try your hand at making these chocolate mint cookies. When the logs of cookie dough are cut into wafer thin slices of approximately 1/8-inch, baked and then completely enrobed in chocolate, they are a pretty good homemade copycat.
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Quick and Daring

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:30:00 +0000

The Daring Bakers' February 2012 host was DB co-founder Lisa. The lovely Lisa asked us to make a quick bread. What is a quick bread? Well, it's basically bread that is quick to make since it requires no fermentation/rise and no kneading. Quick bread is leavened not by a starter or yeast, but by baking soda, baking powder, and/or eggs.

I was fourteen when I made my first quick bread. My best friend showed me how to make zucchini bread and it was an eye-opening experience. I was amazed that zucchini could be used to make bread. I was equally amazed that putting it all together was so quick and easy.

For the challenge we were free to make any quick bread loaf, muffin or popover as long as it doesn't take more than 90 minutes to prepare and bake through. I decided to make soda bread which is pretty much "textbook" as far as quick breads are concerned. The most basic version of soda bread contains only flour, salt, buttermilk, and baking soda (hence the name). Baking soda, a base, reacts with the buttermilk, an acid, to create carbon dioxide and your loaf rises.
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Coffee, Beer, and Beer Coffee Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:55:00 +0000

I am quite taken by the treats in the pastry case at Blue Bottle Coffee. It seems that their pastries are meant to be paired with coffee. I guess third wave coffee places take into account "coffee pairing". It's similar to pairing wine or beer with food, but I think there is a bit more leeway when pairing food* with coffee.

Blue Bottle has olive oil rosemary shortbread, St. George Spirit's absinthe biscotti regina, and saffron snickerdoodles just to name a few. And there are the modern art inspired desserts at the SFMOMA location. But the most intriguing of the pastries is the stout coffee cake topped with pecan and caraway streusel. So in honor of SF Beer Week, a 10-day long festival that celebrates the amazing beers from Northern Californian breweries, I offer you this coffee cake recipe.

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Nutella Rugelach Bar Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:51:00 +0000

February 5th is World Nutella Day. American bloggers in Italy, Sara and Michelle, began the holiday in 2007 to celebrate and eat that wonderful chocolate hazelnut spread called Nutella.

I participated in that very first World Nutella Day in February 2007 by baking Nutella Cheesecake Brownies and again in 2008 with my Valentine's Day inspired heart-shaped Hazelnut Nutella Sandwich Cookies.

It's been far too long since I've used Nutella. So for this 6th annual World Nutella Day I am showing some chocolate hazelnut spread love with these Nutella-filled rugelach bar cookies. I found the recipe on Hungry Rabbit and he calls them "rugetella" since it's a combination of rugelach and Nutella.

I'm not sure what my problem is but I always have trouble rolling out and making the traditional crescent shapes when making rugelach. I mean, I can do it, but I seem to always end up with some very irregular shapes and sizes. So baking the cookies in a pan and cutting them into fingers/rectangles was so much easier for me. Same great taste and less work!

Since it's supposed to be all about Nutella, a chocolate HAZELNUT spread, I embarrassingly admit that I didn't have any hazelnuts and substituted walnuts in my cookie. It was a decent last minute substitution, but next time I will definitely use hazelnuts. My sincerest apologies to Nutella for this little faux pas.

All that cream cheese and butter definitely makes a very rich and extremely flaky dough. That's the beauty of rugelach dough. And it was a great showcase for Nutella, but I can see that a sour cherry jam or bitter orange marmalade would be great as well.

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Chocolate Malt Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:00:00 +0000

I absolutely loved reading Christina Tosi's Milk Bar cookbook. I loved reading about the development of her recipes as well as the process of creation through necessity. I will use much of the information as inspiration for my own experiments in the kitchen.

The book was like a glimpse into the mind of a sugar-fueled pastry savant. I actually read this cookbook from cover to cover. I read the forward and introduction. I read all the head notes, side notes and foot notes. I read through a lot of the recipes too. The book is organized into sections based on what Tosi calls "mother recipes".

Even though the mother recipes are not complicated, the sheer number of different components that can go into making any final completed dessert can be a bit overwhelming.

This chocolate malt cake is a perfect example of using multiple components to create a final product. Making milk crumbs to go into the berry and cream cookies was just one tiny step beyond making cookies without the milk crumbs. Making the oatmeal cookies from scratch to grind for the crack pie crust was just one tiny step beyond using commercial cookies to grind for the crust.

This chocolate malt cake has many tiny steps. Chocolate brownie-like cake layers are soaked with malted chocolate syrup, and then layered with a malt-fudge sauce, milk crumbs and toasted miniature marshmallows to create an over-the-top mess of sweetness. Thank goodness Tosi is fine with store-bought commercial marshmallows otherwise I would've made marshmallows from scratch too.

I made this cake (all the components and the assembly too) in one afternoon which may have contributed to feeling overwhelmed. But many components can be made ahead of time which is what I should have done. I forgot to add the Ovaltine to the milk crumbs so they are a bit pale. My cake layers sunk in the middle and it was hard to cut my finished cake into neat slices. But most of Tosi's desserts are not about the way they look. It's about the taste and a childlike sugar addiction!

This cake was sweet. And chocolaty. And malty. And totally excessive which can be a good or bad thing. I actually felt a little gross after eating a small slice. But I tend to get that way when having too much Ovaltine or other malted milk products. But if you're into this kind of thing (the sweet-chocolaty-malty-excessive part not the feeling gross part) then I suggest trying it out.

Alpineberry note: I actually made this cake using a recipe on the Bon Appetit magazine website before the Milk Bar cookbook was released. So the recipe below varies from the one in the Milk Bar cookbook.

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Bourbon Chocolate Bundt Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Today is National Bundt Day. November 15th was first designated as such 5 years ago by Nordic Ware, a U.S.-based kitchenware company best know for their Bundt ™ pan. For the past 3 years Mary, The Food Librarian, has celebrated by making 30 bundts in the 30 days leading up to National Bundt Day. It's an impressive feat and I am amazed by how many different bundt-shaped pans she owns. It's quite a collection!

She asked her readers to join the fun by making a bundt of our very own. I decided to booze it up and make a bourbon-soaked chocolate bundt cake using a recipe I found in the New York Times. The recipe calls for 1 cup (250 ml) of bourbon or any other whiskey. That seems like a lot of alcohol and you can definitely taste it, but I don't think it's too much. I'm not at all a drinker and I thought it was the perfect amount of bourbon to go with the dark chocolate cake.

And what makes bourbon even better? Luxardo cherries of course! I jazzed up the cake up by drizzling it with a Luxardo cherry glaze. This cake is not quite breakfast food. Some people at the office were still drunk at lunch time. I'm only slightly kidding. :)

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Berry and Cream Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:23:00 +0000

I guess I've been in a Christina Tosi mood lately. She's the pastry chef at Momofuku's Milk Bar in New York City and her Milk Bar cook book was just released in late October. I made Milk Bar's amazing crack pie recently (using the LA Times' version of her recipe not the recipe in the Milk Bar book which is slightly different) and her kitchen sink cookie, the compost cookie, remains one of my favorite go-to recipes. Then I saw Christina Tosi's blueberry and cream cookie recipe on Martha Stewart's site and I had to bake some right away. (BTW, the blueberry and cream cookie recipe in the Milk Bar book is different from the Martha Stewart one I used here.)

Tosi was inspired to make a cookie that tasted like a blueberry muffin and I have to agree that the dried blueberry version really does taste like the top of a blueberry muffin. The muffin top is the best part of the muffin, don’t you think? I think it's the addition of the milk crumbs. Even though the extra step of making the milk crumb streusel seems fussy, I think it's really the key to making this cookie taste like a muffin.

I've made these cookies using only dried blueberries and another batch using a mix of dried blueberries, cherries and strawberries. All photos in this post are from the mixed berry batch.

Instead of making 14 very large cookies like the recipe states, I usually make about 4 dozen small cookies since I have a lot of mouths to feed. It's all about portion control. I might have assumed that 14 very large cookies would have encouraged people to share since a single cookie is quite large, but they still take one whole cookie. If it's big, they take one. If it's small, they take one or maybe two. Even if they took two cookies there would still be 24 servings instead just 14.

If you have fewer mouths to feed or if you keep company with people who like to share, I recommend making them super large like the recipe states especially if you want cookies that have soft centers and crisp edges. It's hard to get that texture when the cookies are portioned out into 48 small ones. Even so, the small cookies are still really, really good.

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Povitica

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:08:00 +0000

I love making yeasted enriched breads. Even though most enriched breads are more bread than pastry, the fact that they are enriched with milk, eggs and butter makes them seem more like dessert. For this month's Daring Bakers' challenge hostess Jenni asked us to make povitica, an Eastern European dessert bread. It can also be known as potica, nutroll, kolachi, or strudia.

I went old school and put away my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The dough came together quickly and easily using a wooden spoon and a big mixing bowl. It was a sticky dough so I had to knead it for some time before it came together for the initial rise.

Then came the fun part - rolling and stretching. I covered my work surface with a large sheet of cheesecloth and started rolling out the dough with a rolling pin. The dough was really easy to work with and never stuck to the cheesecloth. When it got to about 18 x 18-inches, I lifted the dough off the cloth and started stretching it using the back of my hands and arms. The goal was to get it thin enough that I could read through it.

Dough so thin that I can read through it!

Jenni suggested that we try the traditional walnut filling, but I wanted to use poppy seeds. I used a poppy seed honey filling recipe that I normally use for filling hamentaschen. As you can see I didn't have enough filling to spread over all the edges, but it still turned out just fine. (In hindsight I should have spread the poppy seed filling thinner so that it covered more of the dough. The sliced loaf would have been prettier with evenly spaced layers of dough-filling-dough-filling. Oh well! Live and learn. )

Then I folded the rolled up poppy seed filled dough like a snake into my prepared loaf pan. For my other loaf, I spread the stretched dough with some apricot jam, a light sprinkle of finely ground almonds and some dried cranberries. I rolled it and then twisted the roll into the pan.

When the loaves came out of the oven I couldn't wait to slice into them. The smell was amazing. There really is nothing quite like the scent of freshly baked bread still hot from the oven. After patiently letting it cool in the pan for 30 minutes, I turned them out onto a wire rack.

They tasted as good as they looked. The dough had a hint of sweetness and was very moist. Both flavors were delicious, but my favorite one was the cranberry. Even though I am on a self-imposed low-carb diet, I had a slice a day until the cranberry loaf was all gone!

Who knew something so pretty would be so easy to make? A big thanks to Jenni for the recipe and please visit the Daring Kitchen for a slideshow of other bakers' poviticas.

The fine print:
The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

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Crack Pie

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:21:00 +0000

If you follow the food media, then you know about crack pie. I mean, Crack Pie ™. Yup, I believe that Momofuku has trademarked the name. I did not have a chance to visit Momofuku's Milk Bar during my last visit to New York City, but I will definitely go to Milk Bar during my next trip to NYC. And I will try Christina Tosi's Crack Pie ™. If the real thing tastes anything like the pie I baked today, then I will gladly pay $44 for the pie. Although, if the real thing does taste anything like the pie I baked today, then I actually don't need to buy the pie ever again since I can do it myself.

When I first set out to make the crack pie, I wasn't sure which recipe to use. Searching the internet resulted in 2 or 3 "official" recipes from Tosi. Her Milk Bar cook book is coming out this month and it will probably have yet another version of the recipe. I decided to go with the recipe published in the LA Times.

The recipe yields two 10-inch pies. I don't have any 10-inch pie pans, so I used one 9-inch pie pan (1-inch deep) and one 10-inch tart pan (3/4-inch deep). My pie version had a lower crust to filling ratio. The bottom crust was less distinct and melded into the thick and gooey layer of filling. My tart version had a higher crust to filling ratio. The crust stayed distinct and crisp. The thin layer of filling was less gooey and a tad more set than the filling in the pie version.

I had a hard time deciding which version I liked more. If I had to pick only one then I choose the tart version. I really liked how crisp the salty and sweet toasted oatmeal cookie crust was in the tart. It had a perfect amount of the sweet, buttery filling. Not too much and not too little.

^tart version^

^pie version^

The pie version was delicious too, but most of the bottom crust was slightly softened with the yummy filling and was not crisp enough for me. The side crust stayed crisp, but I wanted more crispy crust with every bite of my slice and not just at the edge. A 10-inch pie pan would actually result in the perfect ratio of filling to crust and just the right crispiness which is probably why the recipe says to use 10-inch pie pans (duh!). I will be running out soon to buy a couple pans since I will definitely be making this pie again.

There is an incredible amount of hype surrounding this pie. Many swoon over it. But there are just as many haters. Many of the dissenters have tried the pie at Milk Bar and were less than impressed. They tried the real thing and felt it was just so-so and would never pay to eat it again. I have no problem with that. But even more of the dissenters are people who have not tasted the Milk Bar Crack Pie ™ and have only tasted their own homemade version made using one of those "official" recipes. A lot of people are flabbergasted that anyone would have the nerve to charge $44 (or whatever price) for a simple pie and criticize a pie's cost instead of the taste of said pie. A more fair criticism would be that they would never pay $44 for the pie they made.

[BTW...Yes, I know we're in a recession and $44 for any pie in any economic climate can be considered excessive, but this is a luxury item not unlike $5 lattes or $100,000 cars.]

Initially I was a little worried about serving my crack pie since it's quite cosmetically challenged. It's very brown. Even the dusting of powdered sugar didn’t help dress it up. It was hard to slice and get out of the pan cleanly. When I set the pie out to serve, I wasn't sure what to call it. Should I just say it's a chess pie with a salty, toasted oatmeal cookie crust? Would it be presumptuous to label it "crack" pie? What if people didn't get the name? Or even worse, what if they did get it and didn't agree that it was as addictive as crack? My worries were totally unfounded. Everyone who tried my pie absolutely loved it and said it totally lived up to its name. Someone told me that butter is her favorite food group.

Crack Pie
(Recipe from LA Times February 11, 2010)
Makes two 10-inch pies

LA Times Note: Adapted from Momofuku. This pie calls for two 10-inch pie tins. You can substitute two 9-inch pie tins, but note that the pies will require additional baking time, about 5 minutes, due to the increased thickness of the filling.

Alpineberry Notes:

-- Instead of a 9x13 pan to bake the oatmeal cookies, I used a half-sheet pan and spread the batter out to about 9x13.

-- Instead of two 10-inch pie pans, I used one 9-inch pie pan and one 10-inch tart pan.

-- My baking time for the pies was different from what is stated in the LA Times recipe. My total baking time was 40 minutes (350F for 20 minutes and then 325F for 20 minutes).

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Cocoa Oatmeal Muffins

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:41:00 +0000

I totally wanted to dust off my rolling pin and participate in this month's Daring Bakers' croissant challenge, but I just couldn't find enough time to fit it in before the posting deadline. Croissants have been on my baking to-do list forever and I don't think I will be marking it off anytime soon.

I've been baking less since I've been trying to eat less sugar lately. I don't like using sugar substitutes like stevia (Truvia), sucralose (Splenda) or aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet). They all have a funny aftertaste. And those sugar substitutes don't do well in most baked goods anyway since real sugar not only adds sweetness but aerates, moistens and adds structure to the baked good. Sugar substitutes can only add sweetness.

This cocoa oatmeal muffin is by no means health food and is definitely not low in sugar or fat. It is seemingly healthy due to the oatmeal. I love the deep, rich flavor of the unsweetened cocoa powder. And as strange as this might sound, it tastes just like a bowl of oatmeal (but with chocolate!).

Cocoa Oatmeal Muffins
(makes 15-18 muffins)

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cooking)
2 cups buttermilk (low fat is okay)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (natural not Dutch-processed)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil (like canola or grapeseed)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 15-18 standard-sized muffin wells with cupcake liners.

Combine rolled oats and buttermilk in a large mixing bowl. Let mixture sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In another bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt to combine. Set aside the dry ingredients.

Add eggs to the oats-buttermilk mixture and mix well. Add sugar and mix well. Then add oil and vanilla extract and mix well.

Add the flour-cocoa mixture to the wet ingredients and fold until the dry ingredients are just incorporated. Gently fold in chopped chocolate (if using). Do not over mix. The batter should still be slightly lumpy.

Fill your muffin wells about 3/4 full. Bake at 350 F until muffin tops have risen slightly and a cake tester inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean (a few crumbs are okay), about 20-25 minutes.

Baklava

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 04:08:00 +0000

Whenever I think of fresh handmade phyllo I always think about Shaharazad Bakery, a little shop in the Sunset district of San Francisco. The shop has been closed for years now, but from what I remember, the owner made excellent phyllo. A true artisan. I think he was the only person in San Francisco who sold fresh phyllo dough made by hand. He had a table in the back room that was just the right size for pulling out the dough. Sadly the shop closed when he retired.

For this month's Daring Bakers' challenge, host Erica asked us to make our own phyllo dough. It's so much easier to grab a box from the freezer section at the market, but making phyllo isn't that hard. The recipe Erica provided was the exact same recipe as the strudel dough recipe we used for the May 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge. The only difference was the rolling method. For the strudel, we rolled and stretched the dough into one big sheet. For the phyllo, we cut off small balls of dough and rolled each ball into a thin sheet. Rick Rodger's recipe is a really good one and it's so easy to handle.

Erica also wanted us to use our phyllo to make baklava. Baklava is a dessert made of layers of buttered phyllo and nuts. After it's baked, you pour a hot sugar or honey syrup all over and allow it to soak in. It's not difficult to make since most of the work is just assembling the layers. Oh, but then there's the waiting. It needs to sit in that syrup for a few hours to soak up all that sweet liquid goodness before you can eat it. If you want instant gratification, then you need to look elsewhere.

I'm not sure what nuts make a baklava an authentic one. The internet has a lot of "traditional" or "authentic" baklava recipes using all kinds of nuts. So for my nut filling, I used whatever I had in the house - walnuts, almonds and white sesame seeds. My husband thought the sesame seeds gave the baklava a vaguely Asian flavor that he found a bit overwhelming, but I really liked the sesame flavor. I've always found baklava too sweet which is why I never make or eat it, but I think that sweetness is the appeal of baklava for most people. So if you like 'em syrupy sweet, then this baklava recipe is for you. But I'm a girl who can eat her pancakes without maple syrup or butter so I won't be making baklava again any time soon.

The fine print:
Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.
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Burger Macarons

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:59:00 +0000

For months I have been obsessed with the idea of a Parisian macaron (gerbet) that looks like a burger. I finally got around to making some just in time to celebrate the upcoming Father's Day, a day typically associated with the outdoors and firing up the grill, on June 19th. And what is more father- and grill- friendly than burgers?

The macarons that I make always seem to look like little burgers. So instead of fighting my macaron's burger-like quality, I decided to embrace it fully with these whimsical "burger" macarons. I sprinkled some sesame seeds on my macaron shells before baking them so that they would look like burger buns.

For the burger patty, I felt a ganache or buttercream would be too smooth. I wanted something that had the texture of a real burger. So I made a chunky sesame butter by grinding sesame seeds with a bit of oil and salt. I combined that with some melted milk chocolate. I used milk instead of semisweet or bittersweet since its mild chocolate flavor would not overwhelm that of the sesame. I formed the chocolate sesame mixture into patties.

To complete the burger theme I had to come up with a couple garnishes. I didn't want to use colored fondant since that would be just for looks and not flavor. I wanted to use ingredients that would complement the milk chocolate and sesame filling as well as the almond shell. I like the combination of sesame with coconut, so I tinted some dried, shredded coconut with a tiny bit of green food dye. Voila - lettuce! And for those that like a little tomato on their burger, I thinly sliced sour cherries.

I haven't quite gotten the hang of making a good looking macaron shell yet. I keep trying but my shell is not correct. It's always smooth but very tissue thin instead of delicately sturdy. But at least my shells are not wrinkled. And I still haven't eliminated that air pocket under the shell. Oh, and that foot. The ruffled foot is never quite right. It sticks out beyond the border of the shell.

I've been using the French meringue method where the granulated sugar is beaten in with the egg whites. After so many not quite successful attempts using the French meringue method, I think I should explore other ones like the Italian meringue method where a hot sugar syrup is added to the egg whites. All in due time.

But in the meantime, please enjoy the cuteness of my "burger" macarons.

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Maple Mousse

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:12:00 +0000

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Evelyne who asked us to make a maple mousse. Evelyne is from Quebec where spring typically begins with a pilgrimage to a sugar shack ("Cabane a Sucre"). The party continues with a feast of eggs, ham, peas, pork rinds, beans, pancakes, bacon and pies - all served with maple syrup.

The maple mousse recipe she gave us makes a mousse that is silky smooth with a pure maple flavor. There's really no substitute for the flavor of real maple. I had a couple different bottles of maple syrup in my pantry, but since this challenge was about the sugar shack tradition I used the syrup from Canada.

She also asked us to make an "edible container" to fill with our maple mousse. Her suggestion was to make a bacon cup, but she gave us the freedom to make any vessel for the mousse as long as it was edible. And even though the Daring Kitchen was having a contest for the most creative container, I was feeling very uncreative. I ultimately made tart shells from desiccated coconut and maple syrup.

I really liked the flavor of the maple mousse with the coconut tart shell. The shell had a toasted nutty flavor that complemented the maple mousse. The coconut shell was very much a like a crispier version of a coconut macaroon. The only problem I encountered was trying to get the shells out of my muffin tin without breaking.

Since both the maple syrup mousse and coconut shells were on the very sweet side, I decided to add some chocolate to half of my tarts. I had some bittersweet chocolate ganache leftover from another baking project so I added a layer of ganache to the coconut shells before layering on the maple mousse. It's a strange idea to add chocolate to cut the overall sweetness of the tart, but it really did tame it since the chocolate was on the dark side (85% cacao). I liked the addition of chocolate, but felt that it overpowered the maple mousse. I think Evelyne was right to suggest bacon as an accompaniment. The savory bacon would have went nicely with and cut the sweetness of the mousse without hiding the maple flavor.

Thanks to Evelyne for a fun challenge. That's another notch on my Daring Bakers' belt. This is the 43rd challenge I've participated in since joining the group in February 2007! Check out the other DB creations at the Daring Kitchen and be sure to vote for your favorite edible container.

Blog-checking lines: The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!
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Snickerdoodle Blondies

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:43:00 +0000

I don’t know how I came across the snickerdoodle blondie. I was most likely food porn gawking taste spotting photo grazing when I spied a photograph of them. The cinnamon flecked crackly sugar crust atop the moist blondie base was so inviting that I could practically smell the vanilla cinnamon scent that's so characteristic of snickerdoodles. I could not wait to whip up a batch.

After some link hopping I found Julia's blog Dozen Flours and the recipe for this genius creation. Generally speaking, the name blondie means that it's a brownie without chocolate (and therefore blond instead of brunette). And, believe me; you will not miss the chocolate since the cinnamon sugar topping makes these blondies wipe-the-drool- from-your-face-insanely delicious.

I felt like I had died and gone to heaven when I took my first bite of the still warm from the oven snickerdoodle blondie. For a brief moment heaven was a playground covered in cinnamon sugar sand. I hope you feel the same way.

Other goodies you might like:
Snickerdoodle cupcakes
Snickerdoodle cookies
Cardamom cupcakes with chai frosting

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Meringue Coffee Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 04:04:00 +0000

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Even though it's called a coffee cake it does not contain any coffee (unless you want to use coffee as a flavoring then it would be a coffee coffee cake). It's also less of a cake than it is a bread. But if a bread contains enough butter, eggs, milk or sugar, I guess it can be called a cake. Regardless of its name, you can call it delicious.

The yeasted dough was a breeze to handle. After kneading, it was smooth and not at all sticky. After it had risen and was ready to be filled, the dough offered no resistance to the rolling pin. In fact, I didn’t even use a rolling pin for the second half of my dough. I just patted it out into a rectangle.

At first the meringue seemed like an unusual addition, but the meringue acted like a neutral binding layer between the dough and the ingredients in the filling. Upon baking, the meringue had melted and soaked into the bread leaving behind a hint of sweetness and allowed the filling to shine through. I filled mine with five spice powder, walnuts and chocolate chips.

The only tricky part was to roll it up jelly roll style and then into a ring without squeezing out any of the filling and meringue. I also needed to be sure the seams were well pinched so all the filling and meringue stayed inside.

For my first ring I cut slits in the shaped dough after the dough's second rise, but the cutting seemed to deflate it a bit. So for my second ring, I cut the slits immediately after I had filled and shaped it and let it do its second rise already cut. No deflation here.

As much as I like the sweet filled bread, after tasting it I knew that this dough would be equally good in a savory application. After my office's weight loss challenge ends next month and I can allow myself to indulge a bit every once in a while, I am definitely going to use this dough with ingredients like cheese or pork.

From the feedback I received, it seemed that this cake had a nostalgic quality to it. Quite a few tasters mentioned that it reminded them of something their grandmothers baked. That's the best compliment that I could receive.

Thanks to Jamie and Ria for a lovely and versatile recipe. Please check out what the other Daring Bakers created by heading over to our kitchen.

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Dreaming

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:03:00 +0000

I realized that I was pretty cranky when I wrote my previous post. I blame it on my diet. I'm participating in a New Year's weight loss challenge at the office. We're in week 8 right now and even though I'm doing fairly well - there are 20 participants and I am currently in the top 3 overall "losers" - I am constantly dreaming about food. In the beginning I was dreaming about pizza from Flour+Water, but now I am dreaming about dessert.

Being on a diet and living in one of the best food cities in the country has been tough, but I guess dieting is tough no matter where you live. Over the past two months I've learned to adjust my eating habits. I've always had fairly decent habits. I eat lots of vegetables and fruits, very little processed/packaged foods, and 98% of the time my drink of choice is plain water. I always bring my lunch to work and my husband and I only eat dinner out 2 or 3 times a month. But my portion size was out of control and desserts were hard for me to pass up. So instead of changing what I eat, I've just changed how much I eat. Before I put any food in my mouth, I always stop and ask myself if it's worth using my limited daily allotment of calories on it.

I can still have a 4505 Meats cheddar bratwurst when I go to the Ferry Building, but instead of eating the whole thing, I will eat a third of the bratwurst and none of that delicious bread that it comes nestled in. On the bright side, I can have all the sauerkraut I want. And that 4505 sauerkraut is definitely yummy enough to make me almost forget the other two-thirds of the bratwurst. I've survived Chinese New Year celebrations, fried chicken and cream biscuits at Prospect, and a pasta tasting at Perbacco.

You would think that I could make things easier on myself if I stopped baking during the weight loss challenge. But asking me to stop baking is like asking me to stop breathing. I just cannot survive without it. And I have been baking a lot lately. Most of it's been tempting, but not blog worthy. I've been able to resist the florentine cookies and lemon mousse cake I made for the Daring Bakers' challenges as well as the chocolate cake I made for Valentine's Day. I usually take one or two bites of what I make just for quality control purposes. Have you ever had just one bite of chocolate cake? It's really, really hard to stop after just one bite. But I did. And that's how it's been for weeks.

But my resolve is starting to wane. And it's all because of these damned pumpkin donut muffins. Damn the internet for bringing these to my attention. Damn Martha Stewart. Damn. Damn. Damn.

These baked pumpkin donut muffins are so hard to resist. They are insanely good. Baking them in a miniature muffin pan gives them the appearance of donut holes which adds to their appeal. They are moist and spicy with that lovely crackly sugar coating.

One bite and I was hooked. I could not stop at just one bite. One bite turned into 2 into 4 into 10. I ended up eating two whole mini muffins. And, yeah, I know, those calories are not going to hurt me, but in the long run every calorie adds up. I guess it just means that I have to stay on that treadmill a little bit longer.

Although I am now constantly dreaming about these pumpkin donut muffins, they are way too dangerous for me to make again. However, the recipe is too good to keep to myself. So bake 'em at your own risk.
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Creamy Not Dreamy

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:08:00 +0000

I've always been on the fence about panna cotta. I've eaten both sweet and savory panna cottas quite a few times, but only when it's part of a restaurant's tasting menu or as an amuse bouche. My most recent one was a savory cauliflower panna cotta with caviar. I would never actually order panna cotta if I had a choice. It's not something I gravitate towards. And I'm not a fan Giada de Laurentis and the Food Network either, but they came together for this month's Daring Bakers' challenge.

Hostess Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen asked us to make Giada's panna cotta from the Food Network website. And since making the panna cotta didn’t involve any baking, Mallory randomly threw in a cookie recipe for us to try too. I really wanted to skip this month, but I felt that I should participate since I had the time and both recipes were pretty easy.

Panna cotta is an eggless custard. The most basic sweet version is cream and milk cooked with some kind of sweetener (like sugar or honey) and then some gelatin is added to stiffen it up. If you plan to serve the panna cotta in a cup or goblet, then you can get away with less gelatin. If you want to unmold the panna cotta onto a plate and expect it to somewhat hold its shape, then a tad more is needed. But panna cotta should never be stiff enough to "wiggle and jiggle" like Jell-O.

I desperately wanted to like this month's panna cotta. I tried to stack the deck in the panna cotta's favor by using some great ingredients - Tahitian vanilla bean, orange blossom honey, Strauss Family Creamery heavy cream and milk. I plated my panna cotta with a sauce I made with bitter orange marmalade and homemade citrus simple syrup (that I had left over from making candied citrus peels). The sauce went really well with the sweet, creamy panna cotta. Sadly I was not converted. It was a waste of good ingredients. My panna cotta turned out very smooth and creamy, but I guess I just don't like panna cotta. Now I finally know what side of the fence I am firmly planted.

chocolate glazed oatmeal florentine cookie sitting next to the panna cotta

I liked that the florentine cookie recipe that Mallory chose for us was a simple one bowl recipe that came together quickly. And even though the cookies were not really in line with my own personal preferences, I will most likely make the cookies again in the future. The florentine cookie tasted fine on its own, but I thought it was a strange addition to the panna cotta. They did not pair well together at all.

Can you tell that I was not excited about this month's challenge? I know, I know. That's not the Daring Bakers' spirit that I should be exhibiting. Maybe it was too hard to top the grandeur of last month's jaconde imprime wrapped entremets challenge?

My own preferences (or should I say prejudices?) aside, people seemed to enjoy the dessert. I got quite a few requests for the panna cotta recipe so it must have been pretty good. So don't let my dislike of panna cotta turn you off. Try it and decide for yourself.

Blog-checking lines: The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

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Lemon Mousse Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:01:00 +0000

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She challenged us to make a biscuit joconde imprime to wrap around an entremets dessert. A joconde imprime is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts/torts/entremets/ formed in ring molds. Entremets is an ornate dessert with different layers of cake and pastry creams in a mold. The joconde imprime is the outside cake wrapper of the entremets dessert.

The only requirement this month was to learn the technique of the joconde imprime. We could make any size or shape entremets and we were allowed to fill our entremets with anything we liked. When the challenge was revealed to us in the DB private forum, I was quite excited to try my hand at something so beautiful. Those fancy decorated cake-wrapped desserts in patisseries have always fascinated me. I just assumed that it was difficult and best left to the professionals.

At first glance making an entremets seems intimidating. And I won't lie. There are many steps. But each step was not difficult at all.

The cake wrapper is made of two different cake batters - the decor paste and a sponge. The decor paste is spread thinly (or piped out) onto a silicone lined sheet pan and a design is made in the paste. I made diagonal stripes using a cocoa decor paste. The lines are a little crooked and unevenly spaced since I was doing it free hand.

To make sure the design isn't disturbed, the designed paste is placed in the freezer to harden a bit before pouring the sponge cake batter over it. Gently spread out the sponge cake batter evenly without disturbing the decor paste design.

After it has baked and cooled slightly, turn it out of the pan. Let it cool with the decorated side up. My cake is sitting on a powdered sugar dusted sheet of parchment paper on a wire rack. The powdered sugar helps prevent the undecorated side of the cake from sticking to the parchment and the parchment keeps it from sticking to the wire rack.

Determine how much cake you will need to create the wrapper. (The formula for the circumference of a circle comes in handy.) I cut some strips of parchment paper as a template and fit them inside my 8-inch diameter ring mold to make sure it was correct. Then I used those strips of parchment as a template for cutting out two strips of decorated cake.

Fit the decorated cake strips around the inside of the ring mold (decorated side out). Make sure the strips and the bottom cake round fit snugly in the mold. I used an 8-inch cake pan with a removable bottom as my mold. Now it's ready to be filled.

I made a lemon mousse to fill my entremets. The mousse was a combination of homemade lemon curd (a great way to use up some of the egg yolks leftover from making the joconde) and whipped heavy cream. And it was all fortified with a bit of gelatin. The cake strips and rounds were soaked with a tart and sweet lemon syrup. Then I topped it all off with a thin layer of gelatinized lemon curd.

As you can see from the photo below, for the middle cake round I just pieced together an 8-inch diameter round from whatever cake I had leftover after cutting out strips of the decorated joconde. I didn't want to waste or make more cake than I needed.

I think I did a decent job for my first try at a joconde imprime and entremets. The finished cake was so pretty. The joconde sponge cake was delicious, moist and very easy to work with. The mousse was light and lemony. And the lemon curd topping really gave the dessert a big lemon zing.

This was a great challenge. I would have never tried this on my own. Now that I know how simple it is to do I plan on making entremets of all flavors. Thanks to the host Astheroshe and all the Daring Bakers!

Blog-checking lines: The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

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My New Favorite

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 05:08:00 +0000

When I was in London in October I made sure we had time to have lunch at Ottolenghi. Ottolenghi is everything I want in a food shop. Huge platters and bowls of the most colorful and delicious salads. I'm not talking about sad wilted lettuce greens with a couple of chunks of pale tomatoes. I'm talking about grilled broccolini with mild red chili peppers and toasted garlic or roasted potatoes with sunchokes, olives, lemon and sage or red rice and quinoa with orange, pistachios and arugula.

But Ottolenghi is really known for their lovely pastries, cakes and cookies piled high on cake stands and trays. From obscenely large multicolored, multiflavored meringues to perfectly precious cupcakes, muffins and teacakes and bow tied cellophane bags of cheese straws or cookies, their abundant display of baked goods beckons you inside.

I find the place stylish yet unpretentious. It isn't frou-frou or fancy. Just great imaginative food done well with quality ingredients. Even though San Francisco is a food mecca, I have yet to find someplace similar.

I first tasted these amaretti at Ottolenghi's Islington location. Like most things in London, they were not cheap. 5.50 GBP for a bag of 7 cookies. Since it's basically lightly whipped egg whites stirred into ground almonds, I could easily make them at home. Armed with my copy of the Ottolenghi cookbook, I cranked out a batch of the amaretti. Two days later I baked another batch. And yet another batch.

This amaretti is now my new favorite cookie. I used dried apricots, bergamot orange zest and orange blossom honey in the ones pictured. But this recipe is so versatile that any dried fruit and citrus zest you like can be used. I like dried cherries with orange zest, dried blueberries with lemon zest or dried cranberries with lime zest. You can use any honey you like or even agave nectar.

My amaretti always seem to turn out a bit softer than the ones sold by Ottolenghi, but I'm not complaining. They have a wonderful almond flavor that is given a spark by the citrus zest. I love the jewel like nuggets of apricots. I think the powdered sugar coating is non-negotiable but the cookies will taste just as lovely without it.

Amaretti
(adapted from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook)
(makes 20 biscuits/cookies)

180 grams ground blanched almonds
120 grams sugar (granulated, superfine or caster)
1 tablespoon finely grated citrus zest
a pinch of kosher salt
2 large egg whites
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 tsp pure natural almond extract
60 g dried fruit, roughly chopped
powdered or icing sugar for rolling

[Note: For this recipe I always weigh my almonds and sugar so I cannot vouch for the volume measurements. According to joyofbaking.com, 180 grams finely ground almonds = 1 3/4 cups and 120 grams granulated sugar = 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons.]

Preheat your oven to 170C/340F. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the ground almonds, sugar, citrus zest and salt. Rub everything together with your fingertips to disperse the zest evenly. Alternatively, give it quick whirl in a food processor.

Using a stand or hand mixer, whip the egg whites and honey until medium peaks form. Fold the meringue and almond extract into the almond and sugar mixture. Add dried fruit. Your dough should be a soft but malleable paste.

With your hands, roll the dough into 20 balls or logs or whatever irregular shape you desire. Roll them in powdered sugar. (I like to use a small ice cream disher to scoop out 20 balls of dough. Then I shape each ball into a flattened log and roll them in powdered sugar.)

Place on a baking sheet tray lined with parchment paper and bake at 170C/340F for about 12 minutes. They should turn a very light golden color, but stay relatively pale and chewy in the center.

Cardamom Cupcakes with Masala Chai Frosting

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:47:00 +0000

This truly autumnal cupcake is chocked full of warm spices like cinnamon, ginger, clove and cardamom. I topped it with a masala chai frosting to complement the spices in the cupcake.

Chai is the generic word for tea in many South Asian countries. So when you hear someone say "chai tea" they are actually saying "tea tea" without realizing it. In America chai usually means masala chai which is a brewed tea with spices, some kind of sweetener and milk.

For my frosting I began by making a custard. That may sound a bit strange, but it's something I've been trying out lately when making frosting. I steep warm milk with a healthy dose of my desired flavoring (like tea or coffee) to create a fragrant and flavorful brew. I combine it with egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch and cook it until it becomes slightly thickened. Then I beat the custard until it cools down before adding the butter.

I have used this custard method frosting with loose tea leaves, coffee beans or fresh herbs like mint and thyme. This time I took a short cut by using spiced black tea bags instead of using loose black tea leaves and whole spices and it worked pretty well.

chai custard

The tea custard base makes for a very rich and silky buttercream frosting that has a lovely spicy tea flavor and isn't too sweet. This frosting might be a bit too soft to hold its shape after piping so if you're hoping to do that, you can always leave out the 2 tablespoons of honey and mix in 3 or 4 tablespoons (or more if you like) powdered sugar to help stiffen up the frosting.

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Looks Like A Donut

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 04:05:00 +0000

Hostess Lori of "Butter Me Up" gave us not one, but four donut recipes to use for this month's Daring Bakers' challenge. And she let us play with any flavors we wanted. With so much freedom you'd think that I could've completed the challenge as asked. But I did not.

Yes, I made donuts. But instead of deep frying my donuts, I baked my donuts. My baked donuts looked like donuts, but they didn't really taste like donuts. I mean, they tasted good, but they were not donuts. I really don't think you can call it a donut unless it's been fried. And for my baked donuts I didn't even use one of the four DB recipes provided. I used a recipe from the back of the baked donut pan that I bought. I'm a bad Daring Baker.

fully baked but super pale on top

But I had an excuse. I just got back from a 10-day trip to the United Kingdom and I didn’t want to deal with deep frying anything in a vat of hot oil. I just wanted to eat a huge flavorful carne asada burrito at my favorite taqueria. I just wanted to go to the farmers' market and get some much needed vegetables and fruit. I just wanted to cuddle with my cat and get over the jet-lag. I just wanted to watch the SF Giants make it to the World Series. :) That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Blog-checking lines: The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

To see the recipes provided by Lori for the challenge, just click here.

BAKED DONUTS
(adapted from the recipe that came with the Wilton donut pan)
(makes 12 donuts)

2 cups cake flour, sifted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

Preheat oven to 425°F. Spray Wilton donut pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In large mixing bowl, sift together cake flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. Add buttermilk, eggs and butter and beat until just combined. Fill each donut cup of the Wilton donut pan approximately 2/3 full.

Bake 7–9 minutes or until the top of the donuts spring back when touched. Let cool in pan for 4–5 minutes before removing. Finish donuts with glaze. Donuts are best served fresh.

Maple Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar
3 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In small bowl, stir together sugar, maple syrup and vanilla extract until sugar is completely dissolved. If glaze is too thick, mix in a few drops of water until the consistency is to your liking. Use immediately to glaze donuts.

Apples and Plums

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 06:57:00 +0000

Apples

The local apple season typically begins with the floral and crisp Gravenstein apples showing up at the farmers' market around mid-August. Four weeks later the Gravensteins are all gone, but that's when the season really kicks into high gear. Every Saturday at the Ferry Building farmers' market during apple season, I can find no less than 25 different varieties of just harvested apples. Most are heirloom varieties. Every characteristic you would want in an apple can be found: tart, sweet, floral, spicy, herbaceous, winy, tropical, good for baking, cooking and eating out of hand.

Last weekend I picked up all kinds: Spitzenburg, Bramley Seedling, Cinnamon Spice, Connell red, Mutsu, Hawaiian, Winesap, Kino's Orange Red, Idared. I wish I could've brought home more, but my husband and I can only eat so many apples in a week.

My original intention was to make some applesauce with my bounty, but the apples were all too fresh and delicious to not grab and eat. So I didn't have any left to make my applesauce, but that didn't stop me from making this applesauce quick bread. Whether you use store bought applesauce (like I did this time) or make your own batch of homemade goodness (like I had originally intended), this quick bread, like the name implies, is so simple and easy to make.

Plums

It's a little strange to be writing about plums and apples in the same post since plums are typically a late summer fruit and apples are definitely an autumnal treat. I am quite sad that the summer stone fruit season is over, but I am very happy that autumn and the apple season is here.

When I was at the farmers' market a couple weeks ago, I found some tiny blue damson plums. Damson plums are normally used for making jam but I decided to use them in a "tart/cookie". For my "crust" I used the sugar cookie dough that I had leftover from the last Daring Bakers' challenge since the sugar cookie dough that we used was pretty much a pate sablee (sweet tart dough).

I cut my rolled cookie dough into 3-inch rounds and fanned out slices of the damson plums. I sprinkled them with some turbinado sugar and then baked them at 350 until the edges were lightly golden brown. It was a lovely way to use up the rest of the cookie dough and to celebrate the last of the summer plums.

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Decorated Sugar Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:54:00 +0000

For September's Daring Bakers' challenge hostess Mandy of "What the Fruitcake" asked everyone to make decorated sugar cookies. I've never been a fan of rolled sugar cookies. Maybe because I suck at rolling out anything at all. Whether it's a pie crust or cookie dough, I'm just not good at it. I'm an even lesser fan of decorated sugar cookies. Maybe it's because I suck at decorating especially when it involves piping. And for the record, I am also not a fan of those "ace-of-cakes-cake-boss" cakes.

Mandy chose a sugar cookie recipe from Peggy Porschen. I had no idea who she is so I had to Google her. She is the pastry chef/proprietor of a bespoke cake business in the UK. After checking out her website I realized that her work seemed familiar to me. It turns out that the publishing house Clarkson Potter had sent me a courtesy copy of her book "Simple Spectacular Cakes". Her work with cakes and cookies is absolutely stunning, but I still wouldn't want to waste my calories on a decorated sugar cookie. I always find sugar cookies way too sweet. And when you add the icing on top, well, that's just a toothache waiting to happen.

Mandy also wanted our cookies to showcase what September means to us. September has always meant back to school. But it also means that the California apple season is in full swing. So I decided to decorate my sugar cookies like apples.

I decorated my cookies using the using the "flooding" method. “Flooding” a cookie is a technique used when covering a cookie with royal icing. First, using the royal icing, I outlined the area I want to flood. The outline acts as a dam. Then I filled or flooded inside the outlined area. My flooding did not go as well as I hoped. To get a good flood of icing, the icing must be at the correct consistency. I thought that my icing was fluid enough to fill the area that I had outlined, but it was still too thick. So to cover the surface I had to spread the icing using the tip of the pastry bag. And while I was spreading it around with the pastry tip, more icing was flowing out of the pastry bag onto the surface. So my cookies ended up with a pretty thick layer of icing.

I'm not very good at decorating so I thought my apple cookies just seemed a bit sad and pathetic. So I came up with a plan to sandwich the apples cookies with a salted caramel filling and shove a stick in it. Ta-dah! Caramel apples on a stick!

I made the salted caramel filling by making a caramel sauce and adding a healthy pinch of Maldon sea salt. When the sauce cooled down I added a little bit of room temperature butter and some powdered sugar until I liked the consistency.

The finished cookies were still way too sweet for me and a little difficult to eat on a stick, but they were way more interesting than what I had before.

The fine print:
The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of "What the Fruitcake?!" Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

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Baked Alaska

noreply@blogger.com (Alpineberry Mary) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:02:00 +0000

For this month's Daring Bakers' challenge, hostess Elissa asked us to use beurre noisette (more commonly known as browned butter) to make a cake. But there is nothing common about browned butter. It's butter that has been heated until its milk solids turn brown. The browned milk solids impart that toasty, nutty flavor and scent that is characteristic of beurre noisette.

Elissa wanted us to use the browned butter cake in one or two ways: baked Alaska and ice cream petit fours. Baked Alaska is basically a disc of cake topped with ice cream, covered in meringue which is then lightly toasted with a flame. The ice cream petit fours are tiny ice cream sandwiches covered in ganache. We could use any flavor of ice cream as long as it's homemade from scratch and the cake part of the dessert must be the browned butter cake. I decided to just make the baked Alaska.

Even before I made the browned butter cake I knew that it would be super-duper rich since there are almost 1o ounces of butter in this one 9x9-inch cake. That's a whole lot of rich. To combat the richness I decided to combine it with tart ice cream. The super lemon ice cream from David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop" sounded just perfect. It was super lemony as the name promised, but since it was an eggless recipe, it wasn't as creamy as the custard based ice creams I am used to. But of course the dessert would not remain eggless for long. The sweet and fluffy meringue would soon join the party.

I've always associated browned butter with the colder months. Summer is not the season for browned butter. Or so I thought. The cake was practically (well, figuratively) dripping with butterfat. But it's so delicious that I didn't care about the season or the calories.

The only issue with the cake being all about the butter is that it wasn't the right cake to use in a frozen dessert. Cold butter is solid so a cake chocked full of butter would be quite solid when chilled. And normally that wouldn't be a problem. Just take the cake out of the cold and let it come to room temperature before serving. But this was not an option with the baked Alaska since it was topped with ice cream. The ice cream would've been a puddle if I waited for the cake base to come to temperature. So we thought the frozen cake actually tasted like a stick of butter.

My husband said the only way to enjoy the baked Alaska was to eat it in parts. So we first ate the lemon ice cream and the meringue off the cake base. Then we popped the cake base into the microwave for a few seconds to warm it up. Whatever lemon ice cream was still clinging to the cake had melted and soaked into the now warm disc of cake. It was freakin' delicious! So even though we had to deconstruct the baked Alaska to work around the texture issue, it worked out nicely in the end.

Blog-checking lines: The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.
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