Archive for the 'baking' Category

Daring Bakers: Flourless Chocolate Cake

Published
by
ashley
on February 28, 2009
in baking
. 1 Comment

Alas, I did participate in the Daring Bakers challenge this month, but my pictures were corrupted so I can’t technically prove it. Sigh.

I’ll just tell you about it.

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.

The challenge was a flourless chocolate cake with a homemade ice cream.  I originally had planned to do a white chocolate ice cream, but after eating butterscotch sauce with dessert one night, decided to do a butterscotch ice cream.

I used the recipe from David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop” book, which was pretty easy.  I was concerned about my custard, but my ice cream came out rich and buttery and sweet and creamy - delicious.

The cake, on the other hand, I felt was just a wee bit rich.  I could only manage a few bites before feeling sick of it.  It was very fudgy, rich, chocolately.  It was easy to make, but I’m not a fan of melting chocolate so
I got annoyed at times. I used Trader Joe’s chocolate, a mix between milk and dark because I’m not a fan of dark chocolate.

I was going to make a butterscotch sauce to drizzle over it, but really, it was unnecessary.  Too sweet as it is.

I recommend making the cake, though - it’s really a great easy cake to impress someone.  This was also the first time I used the ice cream maker I got for Christmas, so that was fun.  I’m hoping we have more ice cream recipes!

Daring Bakers: Tuiles

Published
by
ashley
on January 29, 2009
in baking
. 4 Comments

It’s funny, but this month I’ve made a conscious effort to eat healthier things.  This unfortunately fizzled out about halfway through the month when my old roommate Ruth Ann came up to visit before the Inauguration and we ate lots of bad things like Chinese food and delicious cheese pizza and Burger King Whoppers (affectionately called Whippers because that’s what Drunken Lorrie called them).  It was a great time.  I also made brownies this month and pecan pie and I ate the rest of the candy leftover from Christmas (Marques knows the way to my heart is paved with Ritter Sport milk chocolate with cornflakes bars).  It didn’t really turn out to be a good month for me.

However, somehow, I HAVE lost all of the holiday weight I put on and am now back to my normal weight.  Which is still very fat.

So I’ll admit that I was NOT pumped about doing a Daring Bakers challenge this month since I wanted to eat lighter and while I would love to eat a 7 layer cake with delicious buttercream frosting, it’s probably not the best thing for me to eat at this particular point in time.  That’s why when they announced the challenge, I was pretty happy about it.

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.

Tuiles are those little thin, delicate shaped wafer cookies that are often served with fruit, sorbets, ice creams, or puddings.  They’re very light - the recipe is essentially butter, powdered sugar, egg whites and flour.  No chocolate, no caramel, no 6 different kinds of sugar, no egg yolks.

We had to shape our tuiles and serve them with something light.  Mixing the batter was easy, but I did have a difficult time forming my tuile shapes - I either underbaked my tuiles or I overbaked them.  I think the trick was (for me, anyway) to spread them VERY thin, like you can almost see the cookie sheet underneath it thin, and bake them until the edges just start to get brown.

I did two different kinds.  The first, I did a basic tuile U shape and in the center, placed a few rounds of delicious coffee ice cream and drizzled a bit of chocolate sauce over it.

(sidenote: Sorry for the dark pictures, I made my tuiles at 11:00 p.m.)

IMG_1893

The other tuiles were cigar shaped, and I filled those with just a very basic whipped cream, accented with pink sugar sprinkles and dusted with cocoa powder.  Sort of like a fake cannoli.

IMG_1896

So there you have it.  There’s this month’s Daring Bakers.  Full recipe can be yanked from one of the host’s websites up above.  Can’t wait for next month!

This is why I like living with my boyfriend

Published
by
ashley
on January 25, 2009
in baking, i am ridiculous, marques and television
. 1 Comment

I’m in the living room, he’s in the bedroom.  I’ve just finished eating breakfast - this morning I veered from my usual cereal and scrambled myself a couple of eggs with some sharp cheddar, as well as delicious toast with blackberry jam.  I’m trying to figure out what to do for this month’s Daring Bakers challenge as well as figure out how I’m going to bake a pie today, do laundry, shop for a mattress, sweep the floors and make a nice Sunday dinner, all before 9 p.m..

However, from the bedroom, I hear the strains of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” and I immediately realize my boyfriend, lost in a world without Sunday football, has relegated himself to watching the movie Titanic.

What a dork.  I can’t wait to go make fun of him about this.

This is definitely one yule log that should be burned… or eaten

Published
by
ashley
on December 29, 2008
in baking
. 11 Comments

Do you know what’s awesome about Christmas?  Getting presents from the people who know you the best, like your boyfriend and your family and your best friends.

Do you know what’s not awesome about Christmas?  Not having any time during the month of December to write about anything in your life.

It seemed like all of December just flew by this month - Marques and I really did a lot of work this Christmas to get the perfect presents for our families, and thus a lot of time was spent in malls (ick) and Amazon.com.  Also, we had to finish watching the third and fourth seasons of Doctor Who because, well, we’re nerds.  Add that into packing and work and liberal amounts of time lying around in bed moaning about not wanting to get out of bed (I did that a lot this month) and you’ve pretty much got our December.

And baking.  Of course.  For friends and family, I made three varieties of chocolate dipped pretzel sticks with crushed candy canes, white chocolate and crushed peanuts, as well as two kinds of popcorn (cinnamon bun glazed and honey butter crunch), oatmeal cinnamon chip cookies, cocoa snowflake cookies and coconut macaroons.  So much baking.

But it was not as much baking as this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, which I made earlier this month.  It did actually take me all day to make it, and while some parts were stressful (I may never make creme brulee again), it was pretty fun to make and it tasted pretty good too.

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.

It consisted of 6 elements - a creme brulee, an almond dacquoise, a chocolate ganache, a chocolate mousse, a praline insert and an icing.  We could choose what flavors we wanted, so my final yule log consisted of the following:

- almond dacquoise
- white chocolate ganache
- milk chocolate whipped cream (i don’t particularly care for mousse)
- milk chocolate praline insert (made with cornflakes instead of gavottes)
- dark chocolate creme brulee
- white chocolate icing

The most delicious thing, I think, was the praline insert.  You essentially melt a few tablespoons of butter and chocolate over a double boiler, then add praline cream (I used Nutella because I’m poor) and melt it all down and then mix in some kind of crunchiness.  I used cornflakes for two reasons - 1.  Because I didn’t want to buy a box of Rice Krispies and have them go to waste.  2.  I was hoping it would taste like a Ritter Sport Cornflake bar.  It DID.

I also really enjoyed the almond dacquoise, which is a very light and spongy cake made with almond meal and egg whites.  I thought it was pretty delicious though I wouldn’t eat it on its own.

I had a bit of trouble with my creme brulee - it wouldn’t set up.  Finally after it had baked for 90 minutes, it looked a lot less jiggly so I put it out to cool and then stuck it in the freezer.  Unfortunately, it got a bit icy.

Because I used whipped cream instead of mousse, my log was a giant mess.  It essentially collapsed into itself, much like a supernova.  Layers?  Not so much.  Try just big puddle of deliciousness.  Here’s what it looked like:

Would I make it again?  Sure, if I had a bit more experience.  I did actually think it tasted good (except for the icing) but really, it had 5 different kinds of chocolate in it.  I could have probably spit in it and it would’ve tasted good.  I contemplated doing another one but decided if it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t want to punish the recipient with a bowl full of chocolate mush.

You can grab this 17 page recipe from one of the host’s sites. You will also probably see a multitude of perfectly formed logs.  If I was you, I would ignore those and focus on my pile of chocolate mush, as it is a masterpiece of baking.  And if you decide to make a yule log, even if you hate mousse, you should use it because whipped cream doesn’t really provide any sort of structural support for your ingredients.  FOR THE RECORD.

So.  Daring Bakers December challenge is completed.  Looking forward to January.

A list of things that happened to me while I was gone

Published
by
ashley
on December 2, 2008
in baking, family, friends and i am ridiculous
. 3 Comments

1. I fully expected to gain a bit of weight by going home, considering the fact that I ate gravy a lot and my left arm’s weight of mashed potatoes.  Also, for dessert, I baked a Paula Deen gooey pumpkin cake that called for not one, but two sticks of butter.  And I ate like three pieces of that.

So I get home on Sunday night after hours of being stuck in traffic and weigh myself and lo and behold, I’m up SEVEN POUNDS (no, this is not a shameless plug for the new Will Smith movie).  Seven. Pounds.  I died inside.  Is that even physically possible to gain seven pounds in two days?  I know I ate a lot of Little Debbie snack cakes (my weakness for oatmeal cream pies, it is astounding) but I don’t recall eating seven pounds worth.

Thankfully, the next morning, I weighed myself and my weight was back to normal.  Either I had a baby overnight that I didn’t remember or I was hoarding a lot of water in my system.  Either way, I’m thankful that my weakness for gas station food and drinks did not contribute.

2.  I got to see my friends on Saturday night, which was great fun.  We played Monopoly, which is Lorrie’s favorite game to play.  She is all the time trying to get us to play Monopoly and Taboo.  Marques dominated, which was pure luck.  I was out of the game second.  My Monopoly strategy is to buy up the orange and red corner and build it up, and I have a strong fondness for Reading Railroad because I like to read.  Jasmine likes to buy the ghetto purples and build hotels on them.  Lorrie’s fiancee Josh… I don’t know what his strategy was.  Possibly to just buy everything he can.  At one point, Josh and I were down to $35.  We suck.

3.  Last night, while grocery shopping, I came upon a giant stack of marked-down frozen turkeys.  I looked at the price ($5.50) and the former price ($45).  Good Deal Syndrome immediately kicked in.  I have this problem where I cannot resist buying something if I feel like I’m getting a Good Deal out of it.  Buying a twenty-pound turkey for 1/9th of the price is a Good Deal.  I’ve never cooked a turkey in my life, but by goodness, I have a twenty-pound turkey sitting at the bottom of my refrigerator thawing out right now.  I have plans to cook my very first turkey ever on Saturday.  Marques is apprehensive, but if I screw it up, I mean, I’m only out 5 dollars.  You can’t even go see a movie for 5 bucks anymore, but I can damn well buy a twenty-pound turkey.  Pictures and leftovers forthcoming.

4.  I’ve not yet quite gotten into the Christmas spirit yet, but I did buy my first Christmas presents last night - both for my mom.  My mom has gotten it into her head that she needs, wants, has-to-have an iPod Touch this year, even though we had all agreed this Christmas was going to be a low-key, non-expensive Christmas.  This always happens, too - every year we say, “Oh, don’t buy a lot of presents, let’s save money, blah blah” and then what happens on Christmas morning?  We have so many presents under the tree that it’s obscene.  I’m going to make a lot of my gifts this year, especially for my friends.  And for the record, I did NOT buy my mom the ipod touch she wants so much, which makes me feel a little bit like a very bad daughter.

5.  And I did not participate in this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, although I’m sure you’ve seen them all over the internet (it was a caramel cake with caramelized butter frosting).  I had every intention of participating, but when I got to my grandma’s on Thanksgiving day, I just didn’t have it in me to cook in front of my family.  There are certain things I feel weird about doing in front of my family - most grown-up things like cooking and baking and paying bills and cleaning.  Everytime I do something of that nature, it’s like I get a pat on the head.  Like “Good job, Ashley, look at you all grown up” and it just drives me crazy.  For that reason, when I’m home, I regress to the age of 18 and tend to look surly and play video games for much of the time.

Wish me luck on my turkey-cooking.

Bacon-palooza is not approved by your doctor

Published
by
ashley
on October 30, 2008
in baking, friends, life and work
. 2 Comments

I will say this now - I am not that big of a fan of bacon. I don’t like eating it by itself (I don’t like breakfast meats in general) but I love it on pizza and hamburgers.

And, I suppose, now brownies.

This madness started two weeks ago when I posted the link to bacon cinnamon rolls. I was telling my co-worker Scott about them and he got overly excited. He does that and it’s cute. It was a late evening, we were the only ones left in our department. When it’s just us, there’s lots of food talk.

Scott’s reaction to the bacon cinnamon rolls pretty much went like this:

Oh. My. Gosh.

(revered silence as he stares at the picture in awe)

This. Sounds. So. Good.

So we started perusing the Bacon Today website, just checking it out. And I found their post about bacon brownies.

Holy. Crap.

A plan was immediately formed. I would make the bacon brownies and Scott would make the bacon cinnamon rolls. Team Bacon is go!

I did not make homemade brownies. I was tired, I had already made pizza, and my entire apartment smelled like bacon. My best baking sheet had a half-inch thick layer of bacon grease on it. So I pulled a mix out of the pantry. Mixed it right up, poured it in a pan, and crumbled some cooked bacon on top of it.  It looked like this:

Ignore that tiny little unstirred chunk of brownie powder.  Also, this looks kind of disgusting.

I baked them for 30 minutes then took them out to cool.  The bacon pieces had kind of sunk down into the brownies, but you could still see them.  I was hoping the time in the oven would cook the bacon pieces into crunchiness, but unfortunately, they were still kind of chewy.  Here’s what they looked like after baking:

I thought they were okay.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I would’ve used more bacon.  The bacon definitely added a nice salty, smoky taste, but it was odd to eat a brownie and hit…. meat.

Scott really enjoyed the bacon brownies - he ate most of them.  Everyone liked trying them, though, and a lot of people who thought they would be grossed out actually liked them.  So bacon brownies = semi-hit.

This week, Scott made the bacon cinnamon rolls.  He just took a can of refrigerated cinnamon roll dough and rolled some turkey bacon up in it, then baked them.  Scott is clearly more health-conscious than I am because I used thick-cut fatty fatty bacon.  The bacon cinnamon rolls were good, too, even though Scott slightly burned them.  I’m the queen of burning things, so I had no problem there.  The turkey bacon had a lot more bite-give too - if he had used actual pork bacon, I think they would have been really chewy.

I couldn’t take a very good photo of the rolls, but here’s a photo I took on my camera phone:

So bacon-palooza is finished for now.  We might try to make bacon cupcakes, perhaps, but I think we need to give our arteries a good rest first.

The pizza chronicles, or why I should keep track of my oven

Published
by
ashley
on October 29, 2008
in baking
. 11 Comments

It’s been a month since my last Daring Bakers challenge, which means, well, here’s another one.

This month, the challenge was hosted by Rosa, who asked us all to make pizza.  Uh, you don’t have to tell me twice.  I love making pizza - I went through a really big kick last March and April where I made pizza like every week with fun toppings.

However, I never made the dough.  I always bought the dough balls from Trader Joe’s because they were only a dollar.  And when I read the procedure for the pizza dough, I got a little concerned because I don’t have a stand mixer (yet) or a pizza stone.  So I kept putting it off and putting it off until finally, last week, I decided to stop being a baby and suck it up and make some dough.

The dough is supposed to rest in the refrigerator for 24 hours, and then you let it rest at room temperature for 2 hours before you use it.  That’s a lot of time.  So I made the dough late Monday evening after dinner.  It wasn’t too bad - I didn’t knead it for very long (about 5 minutes maybe?) before the dough started coming together.  It was very quick - I think I had my dough mixed, kneaded, and cut into balls in maybe ten or fifteen minutes.  The recipe Rosa gave us said it made 6 balls, but I think those were for personal size pizzas because I got 3 family-sized balls.  I stuck them in the refrigerator and called it a night.

The next day, I planned to make a pizza for our dinner that night.  I had Marques take the dough ball out around 7 p.m. while I was still at work, and when I got home around 9 p.m., I started our favorite kind of pizza - caramelized onion and gorgonzola.  Sometimes I put bacon on it, but I hadn’t planned to for this one EXCEPT my co-worker Scott had challenged me to make bacon brownies that evening, so since I had to cook bacon anyway, I put bacon on the onion/gorgonzola pizza.

Rosa asked us to take pictures of us tossing the dough, but honestly, I didn’t even have to toss it.  I put my ball of dough on my knuckles to spread it out so I could toss it, and it just stretched its way into a pizza shape.  It was very thin in places, too.  I caramelized my onions with a healthy dollop of olive oil and freshly minced garlic and spread that on the dough - the onions were so soft they almost formed a sauce.  Then I sprinkled the top with pieces of thick-cut bacon and chunks of gorgonzola.  I also put a couple of extra onion pieces on, too, just for some crunch.

My kitchen had low-light and my hands were shaky in pizza eating anticipation, so my pictures aren’t the greatest.  I tried to pull the best one:

I left my pizza in there a little too long.  This was a common theme among all three of my pizzas.

The next day, I made two more pizzas - a plain barbecue chicken one for Marques and a tomato, garlic, olive and feta one for me.  Here’s the veggie one before baking:

I actually burnt the crap out of this pizza.  I was eating some of the barbecue pizza because I cooked that one first (also, slightly burnt that one too) and I lost track of time.  One side was completely black.  Good job, Ashley.

All in all, I thought making the dough was fun, though I think I would only do it if I was making a lot of pizzas for a party or something.  Otherwise, it’s really easy and cheap to pick up a ball from Trader Joe’s, especially if I’m running low on time and ideas.  I’m really looking forward to November’s challenge now, and crossing my fingers that it will be something sweet.  Recipes for the dough and toppings are below. Continue reading ‘The pizza chronicles, or why I should keep track of my oven’