October 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge: Doughnuts!

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.

I used to be so on top of the Daring Bakers challenges, so I am a little disappointed with myself for waiting until the 31st of the month to make, let alone post, my challenge results. It was only with mild excitement that I greeted the announcement that doughnuts were the monthly assignment. I had made them once before and found that between the rising and the frying, it could be a laborious effort. It also pretty much guarantees a huge mess in the kitchen.

I started with a grand plan of making pumpkin doughnuts with a variety of different glazes. As the month quickly passed, I downgraded my plans to plain yeasted doughnuts with maple glaze or a dusting of sugar. On the last day of the month, I decided to settle for cake doughnuts in powdered sugar and very low levels of enthusiasm. The Daring Bakers were kind enough to present 4 different recipes for us to choose from. I settled on the "Old Fashioned Buttermilk Doughnuts", or cake doughnuts by Nancy Silverton.

I had only been exposed to Silverton's bread recipes, and was quite shocked to see that she dabbled in doughnuts as well. Her bread recipes are very fussy, to say the least. I am sure if followed properly, they yield some of the most delicious bread you can bake, but who has time or patience to monitor changes of 1 to 2 degrees in temperature in your dough... or to precisely adjust the rising time to the temperature in your kitchen? A friend gifted me a copy of her La Brea bread book which looked like an exercise in masochism for the home baker. I am just not convinced that I would really be able to detect the differences between a loaf I baked with my own short cuts and a loaf I baked with her perfect execution. Go ahead, call me a fraud.

Based on my knowledge of her through that book, doughnuts just seemed a little sloppy for her; the recipe looked too simple and friendly. It also yielded some of the softest, fluffiest, most flavorful doughnuts I have ever tasted. The secret ingredients seem to be a bit of yeast, which produces more rise than baking powder and baking soda alone, as well as fresh nutmeg which adds some depth to the flavor.

I waited until after I had made the dough and cut it into rings before I began to heat the oil. I just didn't believe that I would be able to finish mixing the batter and shaping the doughnuts before the oil reached the proper temperature. This was a big mistake! Apparently it can take almost half an hour for oil to become hot enough for deep frying while it only takes about 15 minutes to prepare the dough. So my doughnuts sat on the counter, rising slowly, while Aaron complained impatiently about how they were rapidly becoming more of a lunch than breakfast. 

Once in the oil, it took no time for them to cook. The soft dough froze in shape the instant I dropped it into the pot, turning to a golden brown within about 30 to 40 seconds. I allowed them to cool for a few minutes on a baking rack covered in paper towels and then dredged them in a mixture of powdered sugar and cinnamon, moving quickly to ensure they were still warm when served. 

All in all, the recipe was pretty simple and I think I will be making these again! If I had realized just how simple and flavorful they would be, my attitude towards this challenge probably would have been quite different. Next time I am hoping that with a little planning I might have time to try some different flavors and glazes to spice things up... if I ever get around to it. 

Recipe after the jump! 

The Daring Bakers Challenge, March 2010: Blood Orange Tian with Honey, Saffron and Cinnamon

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

I was pretty excited when I saw the reveal for the March challenge. Tian. I had no idea what a tian was... and I still don't really understand what it is. Consulting various online food dictionaries indicated that tians are commonly considered to be some sort of mixed vegetable casserole, a definition that did not match the challenge recipe. Our hostess, Jennifer, selected a recipe for what was called an "orange tian". The desert comprised of thin pate sable crust, covered in a thick layer of whipped cream, topped with a final layer of citrus segments and drizzled with caramel sauce.

Definitions aside, this was yummy, and I think I will definitely be making it again... or at least I will be making this type of tian again. I am embarrassed to admit how much of the dessert (and dessert components!) I inhaled before A made it home. It took him just minutes to polish off the leftovers when he did arrive.

As part of the challenge, Jennifer required that we stick to citrus and attempt to supreme said citrus. It was a little messy, but definitely a skill I needed to master. Sadly, the perfectionist in me has now decided that citrus for salads will no longer be quickly chopped... going forward only cleanly supremed segments would suffice.

I deviated from the original recipe a bit. I am a little burned out on oranges (my husband eats about 9 of them a day meaning that there is always an orangey scent in our home), but lemons and limes aren't really my thing. Grapefruit - too winterey. Blood oranges were the only solution as they offered a sweet flavor and striking color for my dessert. With some help from the Flavor Bible, I opted to add honey, cinnamon and saffron to the blood oranges to give the dish a little something extra.

Pate sable is really just a giant sugar cookie. In fact, in the end I decided not to mold all four of my tians in favor of eating the crusts like cookies. For this dessert, any old pate sable recipe will do. Just roll the dough out before you cook it and cut it into rounds with the mold you plan to use for building your tian. The dough should be fully baked before constructing the tian.

Assembling the tian can be a little tricky, particularly since the ring mold has a tendency to slide around as you arrange the citrus layer on the bottom. The citrus slices are particularly juicy, as it is best to allow them to soak in their juices (and a bit of caramel sauce) overnight after they have been supremed. I placed my orange segments in a circular pattern, starting from the edge of the mold and spiraling inward until the entire bottom layer was covered.

When you have finished arranging the citrus, spoon a thick layer of stabilized whipped cream on top until the cream reaches the edge of the mold taking care to ensure that the cream is spread evenly. (Note: to stabilize whipped cream, mix a small amount of dissolved gelatin into the cream as it is being whipped) Take a one of the pate sable rounds and spread thin layer of marmalade on the top. Place the round on top of the mold, marmalade side down, pressing gently to secure.

Once all of the tians have been constructed on the sheet, move the sheet to the refrigerator and chill the desserts for several hours or until the cream has had time to grow firm. (My kitchen was hot, so I had to move mine to the freezer. When you are ready to serve the desserts, remove them from the refrigerator, place them crust side down on a plate and gently remove the mold. (Full disclosure: easier said than done!) Drizzle with orange caramel sauce and enjoy!

Of course in the end, if you have trouble with assembly, it makes a lovely trifle. Just crumble up the crust, and fill a glass with alternating layers of crust, cream, citrus sections and marmalade. Garnish with a slide of orange.

After reading through this post, I don't think I have done a good job at all of describing this dessert. Recipes for a few of the components are posted below. For the rest, ask if you have questions... or... as this is a Daring Baker's challenge and not my own creation, I am sure that others have posted better descriptions on their sites.

Marmalade recipe and orange caramel sauce recipe can be found after the jump!

Daring Bakers Follow-Up: Ladyfingers, or Savoiardi

Making the ladyfingers was by far my favorite part of the February tiramisu challenge. I enjoyed it so much that I thought it merited a separate post. I don't really have anything special to say about them, other than a recommendation that if you ever need ladyfingers, you make them yourself instead of purchasing them. 

The recipe required by the Daring Bakers comes from Cordon Bleu at Home. I did think that the cookies tasted just slightly eggy (is that a word?), especially after they had sat out for a while. Fresh out of the oven however, they are deliciously soft and sweet. In the summer, I could imagine serving them as an alternative to tuiles on ice cream. 

The recipe struck me as very similar to macarons, only with egg yolks added and regular flour instead of almond meal. The technique is similar - whip up a stiff meringue and break it down carefully when you add the dry ingredients. Too make ladyfingers, you need the following: 

3 eggs, seperated

6 tablespoons/75gms granulated sugar

3/4 cup all purpose flour

2 tbsp corn starch

6 tablespoons confectioner's sugar

Start by whipping the egg whites into a meringue. Once soft peaks begin to form, gradually add the granulated sugar, and continue to beat the whites until they are stiff. Next fold in the egg yolks until the mixture is blended and pale yellow. 

In a separate bowl, blend the cornstarch and flour. Then sift the flour into the eggs and gently fold it in, being careful not to deflate the mixture too much (just like macarons!). The mixture will be shiny, but not smooth, and quite frankly kind of gross looking when its ready. 

Transfer the batter to a piping bag and pipe out into strips about 3-4 inches long. Sprinkle the piped batter generously with about half of the powdered sugar and allow to sit for about 5 minutes. Then sprinkle with the remaining powdered sugar and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes on a baking sheet covered in either a silpat or greased parchment paper. 

Though the recipe says that these will keep for a few weeks in an air tight container, as I mentioned above, they definitely taste the best straight out of the oven. While still good after they have been sitting for awhile, I would not recommend eating them without some sort of accompaniment at that point. 

The Daring Bakers Challenge, February 2010: Tiramisu

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

I haven't been baking as much lately. It has been a little strange, but I think I just don't "need" to as much as before. My new job is keeping me pretty occupied, and most importantly, making me think again. In fact, I find myself excited enough about upcoming work related challenges that I don't feel as much of a strong need to channel my productive energy into flour and sugar. It actually took quite a bit of effort for me to motivate myself to get started with the February challenge. 

This was actually quite the laborious task. I had always wanted to make tiramisu, but it just seemed like a little too much work for something that the Italian bakery down the street already does quite well. Going forward, I think I am going to leave the tiramisu to the bakery. While it was quite satisfying to pull of such a complicated dessert in my own kitchen, I am not sure that mine will ever taste as good as their's. Each component that I made tasted good on its own, but when put together I felt that the dessert lacked that rich coffee flavor that is so prominent in the best tiramisus. 

The interesting thing about tiramisu, is that none of the individual components are particularly difficult. You need pastry cream, whipped cream, some mascarpone and lady fingers, espresso and zabaglione. Simple right? It's simple when you only need to make one or two of those items. Making all of them for a simple dessert means that tiramisu prep can take days. 

A few days before I planned to assemble the tiramisu I prepared the lady fingers and the mascarpone cheese. I think that home made mascarpone is quickly becoming one of my favorites. I took the leftovers that did not make it into the tiramisu and whipped them in my stand mixer with a handful of chives. Voila - home made chive cream cheese for bagels! 

The pastry cream, whipped cream, mascarpone and zabaglione come together very easily with a rubber spatula. My mixture was a creamy white color with a very runny, soupy texture. I think the heat in my kitchen caused it to liquefy some. The mixture did firm up some when spread into my pan and cooled in the fridge, but melted again pretty quickly when removed from the fridge for serving. 

I selected some three inch spring form pans to assemble my tiramisu(s). The pans were only deep enough for two layers of ladyfingers and cream, so I had a lot of ingredients left over. To assemble, prepare a mixture of warm espresso and rum extract. Quickly dip the lady fingers into the espresso mixture and then use them to line the bottom of the pan. Cover the layer of lady fingers with the pastry cream/mascarpone mixture. Repeat with another layer of lady fingers and pastry cream. 

Once assembled, the tiramisus to the fridge to chill overnight. This step is necessary for the desserts to firm up enough to cut. Once tiramisus have hardened enough, remove them from the fridge, garnish them with some cocoa powder, slice, and serve!

Recipes after the jump!

The Daring Bakers December 2009 Challenge: Gingerbread Houses

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.

I really should have opted out of this month's challenge. Gingerbread houses?? More arts and crafts than baking. December has been such a busy month, between changing jobs and preparing for the holiday party in Salem... the last thing I needed to do was spend hours slaving away over an edible house. So what did I do? I decided to invite my friends over for a Gingerbread House party... because when you don't have time to make one house, you should make three or four. What a mess. The party itself was fun, but this challenge was so labor intensive that I am going to have to opt out of future decorating-focused challenges. Much to my embarrassment, this challenge kicked my butt.

For the gingerbread, I opted to use the recipe from Good Housekeeping. I had all of the ingredients on hand, and the lack of butter and eggs made it feel like a cheaper option. I doubled the recipe and had enough dough to make four houses and some accessories. I was too tired to make the accessories or the fourth house - but if I had wanted to, there would have been enough dough.

The gingerbread dough was pretty stiff and difficult to roll out right when it was pulled out of the fridge. I had better results (and my wrists were much happier) with the chilled dough that had sat out of the fridge long enough to return to room temperature. A number of daring bakers complained that shrinkage during baking was a problem. Once I had rolled out my dough, I chilled it in the fridge for 30 minutes before baking and did not really have any problems with shrinking. Problems with the dough itself? That is a whole other story.

I don't know if it was an error in the Good Housekeeping recipe or the weight conversions that our hostess used when reprinting the recipe, but my dough was a mess. A crumbly, dry mess. It took about a half cup of water and several tablespoons of cream to get it moist enough for rolling... and at that point the dough had been kneading so much that it was nearly unworkable. At about 2am the night before the gingerbread party, I had to call it quits... sweaty and tired with wrist cramps... I just could not roll out any more cookies.

Instead of making my own template, I borrowed a basic one from Martha Stewart. I chose the template because it had a pattern for a chimney, which set it apart from other patterns I found on the internet. After two days of rolling out and baking gingerbread, I decided not to make the chimney. So much for the cute pattern.

In terms of mortar or cement, I stuck with royal icing and passed on the simple syrup glue. For royal icing, I used a basic recipe - 3 egg whites beaten to a medium meringue. 1 1/2 pounds of powdered sugar were gradually mixed into the meringue and beaten until the mixture was stiff and fluffy, stiff being the operative word. When I first started to think about how I would attack this challenge, I had visions of beautifully decorated homes dancing around in my mind - homes with perfectly piped icing, precisely placed candies, and possibly even some fancy marzipan or fondant modeling. Yeah. Right. The icing was a mess. Thick... heavy... and not pipe-able. It squeezed slowly out of the tip in thick globs that were so messy that after a few tries, I resorted to slopping it on the house with my fingers.

On top of all of that, our gingerbread houses also had structural issues. Somehow I put them together incorrectly which meant that the roofs were too small. We had to resort to an elaborate support system (using chewed gum as cement) to get the roofs to stay up. Ugh.

And voila - our gingerbread village. I wish I could say that a small child decorated mine, but alas, it is my own clumsy icing work. I can ice a cupcake with my eyes closed, but gingerbread houses are just not for me.

My recap of operation gingerbread makes it sound like I slacked off on this challenge. The sad thing is, that could not be further from the truth. I WISH I had slacked off. Instead, I spent WAY too much time on this with little to show for it. I told A that if our unborn children wish to build holiday gingerbread houses, they will have to visit a friend. This is the first, and last time that I would be doing anything like this.

Here's to hoping that the January challenge is more up my alley.

The 2009 November Daring Bakers Challenge: Cannoli!

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.


I honestly had no idea what to expect from the November challenge. Thinking about what I usually bake in November, I had vague expectations of something involving pumpkin... or maybe apples... or cloves... something Thanksgiving-y. Imagine my surprise when I saw that I would be learning to make cannolis this month! I often forget that the rest of the world doesn't equate November with pumpkin pie and turkey!

So cannolis are both easy and difficult at the same time. I only tried the recipe once and had no trouble. I ended up with mediocre cannolis. (A loved them... but maybe just because I made them?) That said, in testing my results and working through the recipe, I think that a few simple changes would have yielded a much better final product.


The shells were crisp enough and the flavor was good, but I did not get the light, flaky, blistery texture that you find in the shells at good Italian bakeries. I think I may not have rolled my dough out enough, but if anyone has any other ideas, I would welcome them.


Here are a few things I learned while making the shells:

1. This is a very stiff dough. I read that you can use a pasta machine to roll it out thinly enough, but this did not work for me. I may not have put enough liquid into the dough, as it started to crumble and fall apart after the first run through the pasta machine. I switched to a rolling pin, but at this point the dough had gotten so stiff that I had trouble getting it to stay where I rolled it - the gluten kept snapping back.

2. I think the marsala wine and cinnamon combination is the key to the shell's flavor. I know that you can use other wines, but I was very pleased with the way the marsala tasted and would recommend sticking with it.

3. These shells fry quickly! If you don't pay attention, they will burn. My first four shells were black when I pulled them out of the fryer. I cooked them in canola oil because it is what I had on hand. Maybe another type of oil would be better?


4. Try to pull the shells off of the cannoli forms immediately. The faster the better, because if you let them sit for too long, they stick.

For the filling, I decided to make a standard ricotta based cannoli cream with some pistachio paste and mini-chocolate chips mixed in for additional flavor. The filling was a piece of cake - mix the ingredients together and simply pipe it into the cannoli shell.

A loved the enough that he insisted they should be added to the menu for the Salem holiday party. I will be making cannoli again. Thanks again to the Daring Bakers for picking a great recipe and forcing me out of my baking comfort zone!

The 2009 October Daring Bakers' Challenge: Macarons

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.

Imagine my excitement when I learned that my first Daring Bakers' challenge would be macarons! After a month or so of fussing with these finicky cookies, I couldn't wait to try a new recipe and learn some tips and tricks from other members. Here is the recipe Ami selected:

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.

Needless to say, I did not find success with this recipe either. Following the recipe with meticulous attention to detail yielded flat, dried out looking cookies that had nice flavor but did not even come close to resembling a proper macaron:



I could tell from the moment that I began to fold the dry ingredients into the meringue that something was off. The batter felt bubbly, and even after a half hour resting on the stove, the uncooked macarons would not dry out. Several other Daring Bakers suggested that the recipe is too light on the sugar. Three attempts later, I decided that this recipe was just not for me.

I was not ready to give up on macarons however. I think my favorite thing about The Daring Bakers is how eager the seasoned pastry vets are to help out novices like myself. For weeks, Audax and Tartelette have graciously provided endless advice, tips and tricks for how to coax the batter into a fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth macaron with both feet and a delicate shell.

After sifting through their comments and recommendations, I found a number of issues with my technique that had led to past failures:

1. Egg whites should be whipped until stiff. I was so paranoid about "over-mixing" that I think I stopped whipping at soft to medium peaks a few times. You will know they are ready when you can turn the bowl upside-down and the meringue does not move. (A gave me a very curious look the first time he saw me doing this)

2. Mix the dry ingredient in about 1/2 to 1/3 at a time - otherwise you will never get everything to mix together.

3. Once the dry ingredients are in, gentle does it. It is so easy to overmix at this point, and it seems that it is better to undermix than overmix, as spooning the batter into the piping bag mixes things up a little more.

4. Once the shells are piped onto the cookie sheet, let them dry at least 30 minutes, though the amount of time you need will vary based on the humidity where you live. I discovered that less time yields brittle shells, while more time yields macarons that are too crisp.

5. Even though many recipes say to cook them for 8-10 minutes, mine always took at least 15 to bake.

6. Once your macarons are done baking, turn the heat off in your oven and crack the door, leaving the macarons inside for about 20 to 30 minutes. This will make it easier to remove them from the sheet.

Though my latest batch was still not perfect, following these rules and using a recipe based on Tartelette's formula produced something near perfect. Seventh try is the charm, right? At Audax's suggestion, I have started using ratios for my recipe - a perfect solution to random amounts of extra egg whites.

The shells came out beautifully - nice, puffy and round on top with perfect little feet on the bottom. Since I had expected another failure, I did not have anything exciting to fill them with, so I mixed some cinnamon into leftover cream cheese frosting.



Voila, cinnamon macarons with cinnamon cream cheese icing:



While this batch looked perfect, the interior of the cookies did not rise enough, leaving an air pocket inside, which makes the cookie crumble when you bite into it. I am hoping that trouble-shooting oven temperatures will fix this issue.

I dare say that baking the perfect macaron has become a bit of an obsession for me. I ordered Pierre Herme's macaron cook book yesterday from Amazon.fr, with hopes that it will provide additional insight into how I can perfect my technique.

More to come!

The Daring Bakers & Holiday Parties

Once again travel pulled me away, this time for a wedding in LA, making this blog less and less of a routine for me. I hope I can get back into the grove with this.

I don't really have a whole lot to report at the moment. I recently joined The Daring Bakers, and have spent most of my baking time plugging through my first challenge. Results will be posted at the end of the month.



Until then... what else should I bake this weekend?

As a Christmas gift to her (clearly she means a gift for me, right?), my mother-in-law has asked me to "cater" a dessert party at her home in Salem over the holidays. I have only about two months to come up with a menu and test recipes, which is stressing me out a little. I am stressing about the menu, making sure people like everything and making sure I can cook everything on time in someone else's kitchen(!). Then, when I am finished stressing about that, I start stressing that I will never become a professional if I am this worried about a single, small event. Ugh. Being a perfectionist sucks.

At any rate, as the menu solidifies, I will start posting what I have chosen, not chosen, and of course, the results of my experimenting.