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!

Buttermilk Pudding with Fresh Berries

This weekend I had to set aside some time to test recipes for the holiday party. Though much it has not been written about on this blog, the past few weeks have been a flurry of selecting and testing recipes as I assemble the final menu. A, who usually loves my baking, is actually starting to get burned out on the volume of sweets coming out of the kitchen. I keep promising him that once the holidays are over, I will make an effort to cut down on the sweets.

For much of the menu, I plan to rely a few of my most reliable recipes - marzipan cupcakes, cheesecakes, apple tarts, etc, because they all have a "comfort food" feel that should fit the New England cold. They also tend to be a little "heavy" if you eat to much at once. I needed something light and fruity to round things out. Panna cotta felt like a good place to start. Internet research led me to a recipe for berries and buttermilk pudding on Epicurious. Though not exactly panna cotta, it looked close enough.

I had never made panna cotta/pudding from scratch before. If I had known just how easy it would be, I think it would have been part of my standard repertoire. THe entire recipe, from start to finish, took less than half an hour. If you are pressed for time, you can prepare the pudding a day ahead of time, and then cook the strawberry sauce the day you plan to serve it. The Epicurious recipe claimed two be 4 servings, but I thought it was better broken down into 8 servings. For the topping, any fresh berries will do.

The pudding itself has a very light texture with a slightly tangy flavor. It should make a nice complement for the rich sweets that I plan to serve on the dessert bar.

Bagels, Homemade Mascarpone, and Olive Tapenade

Early last week, I think maybe Monday or Tuesday night, A and I had a conversation that went something like this:

A: You know, we haven't had bagels in a really long time. Maybe we should do bagels next week.
Me: I didn't know that you like bagels. I eat them all the time, but never bring them home.
A: I love bagels!
Me: Okay, I'm sure I can make bagels. I will make you some next weekend.

A paused for a moment, looking at me a little strangely.

Me: Wait, you didn't think we would buy bagels from a store did you?
A: Well... kind of?
Me: How long have we been married? You think I would buy something that I could bake and pass up the opportunity to try a new recipe?
A: I wasn't sure. Maybe?
Me: Ugh, don't worry. I won't make a mess of the kitchen.

And with that, the matter was settled. Bagels would be made for Sunday brunch.

Of course bagels alone wouldn't be enough - I needed to prepare something to put on them. It was another traveling week for A, so during the week I was left alone to play in the kitchen. Lately I have been looking into making home-made cheese (more on that in a later post) and found some easy instructions for home-made mascarpone. Perfect! Who needs Philadelphia when you can make your own Italian version.

A craving for olives helped me finish the menu. Olive tapenade would be the perfect compliment to the mascarpone and is super easy to make. Wolfgang Puck's black and green olive tapenade is my go-to recipe. It is simple and flexible. The recipe specifies picholine and Nicoise olives, but the recipe tastes just as good with any other marinated olive. I have used Kalamata and Manzanilla olives with good results. Leftover tapenade can also be turned into a puttanesca sauce... just add a sauteed onion and some canned diced tomatoes.

I turned to the Bread Baker's Apprentice for my bagel recipe. I had never baked bagels before, so I thought that Peter Reinhart's almost fool-proof recipes would be a good place to start. He provides a formula for a chewy, "New York" style bagel that is boiled first, then baked. He claims that the secret to getting the flavor right is to "alkalize" the water with baking soda before boiling the bagels.


Since it was my first try, I stuck with plain bagels. I figured I should master the plain recipe first so that I don't waste toppings and inedible product. Overall, my first bagels were a success. A enjoyed them, and told me he would never consider purchasing bagels again. I was almost satisfied (being a perfectionist can suck at times!). The internal texture and flavor was good, but the outside of the bagel was a little chewier than I would have liked. I think more research on perfecting the bagel is needed!

Meyer Lemon Macarons

I have never really been crazy about citrus flavors; orange is okay, but lemon and lime are flavors that I usually pass on when served alone. When it comes to candy, I will pick out the reds, leaving anything yellow and green behind. I am one of those red swedish fish people.

As I get older, I find myself more tolerant of the flavors. Though still not my favorite, I am willing to taste lemon or lime flavored things and even occasionally experiment with the flavors myself. I am not sure if my palette is changing, or if maybe I am making an effort since lemon and lime are two of A's favorite flavors. He has been known to polish off an entire key lime pie on his own if given the opportunity.

Over the weekend while grocery shopping, I saw meyer lemons for sale at the produce exchange. Now normally I wouldn't have noticed the lemons, or any of the citrus for that matter, as I only tend to grab the occasional lemon or lime demanded by a recipe. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed a lot of information popping up about meyer lemons on various blogs I frequent, so I have kept an eye out for them. After learning that they are sweeter and less acidic than regular lemons, I hoped that they could be the answer to my citrus aversion. Four made it into my basket, with A announcing that meyer lemon sorbet was just what he was craving. I quickly squashed those dreams and announced that meyer lemon curd would make a perfect macaron filling and that he would have to wait until another day for sorbet.

Honestly, I think my quest for the perfect macaron is making me a little nuts. I have noticed that I now judge food purely on how it might taste inside a macaron!



For the macarons, I used Tartelette's recipe, which you can find here.

I used a lemon curd recipe from Fine Cooking. I followed their recipe exactly, other than substituting 4 meyer lemons for the lemon juice they call for. Lemon curd has proven a challenge for me in the past, but this recipe seems fail proof. For some reason creaming the butter, sugar and eggs before mixing in the lemon juice seems to produce a smooth and creamy curd.

Place a dab of whipped cream on a shell followed by a dab of lemon cream. Gently sandwich the two cookies together. If you really can't wait, you can eat the macarons immediately, but I thought they tasted better after a day in the fridge.



Yum! While I don't think that meyer lemon will be a flavor I make often, I did enjoy it. A did too, though he is still grumbling about the sorbet.

This batch of macaron shells was a vast improvement over past executions. They melted in your mouth. I still had problems with air-pockets despite lowering the baking temperature to 310F. Next weekend I will try them at 300F.

Perhaps even more exciting than the macarons I baked was the arrival of my Pierre Herme cook book! Enfin! I think it only took two weeks for the book to arrive from France, but I feel like I have been waiting for ages. Maybe next weekend could be my first attempt at the "Italian" method for making macarons that he recommends... and maybe I should rename this the macaron blog!

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 first menu item: Apple Tartelettes

The weekend went by all too quickly in a rush of bad weather and errands. On top of that, I've been sick with a winter cold. A WINTER COLD!! Yes, it is October and it really feels almost like winter has arrived. I feel incredibly cheated by all of the global warming cassandras. Here I was looking forward to balmy fall weather and instead I am getting highs of 45.

In addition to annoying me in general, the cold weather also makes me feel like Christmas is just around the corner. Yes, the Christmas Creep has hit our household. No... I haven't decorated or anything, but I am in full planning mode for my mother-in-law's dessert party. This weekend I was finally able to test my first recipe.

Last Christmas A gave me some miniature tart pans for Christmas so I plan to serve two different types of mini-tarts at the event. I am hoping the tarts will save me some time since many components, such as the crusts, can be prepared days, or even weeks ahead of time.

After scouring the Internet for recipes, I found a finally found a winner on Tartelette's blog - her recipe for her grandmother's apple tartelettes. I liked this recipe because it reminded me of apple pie with a twist. The tartelette featured a baked apple filling with pie spices like cardamom, but called for baked apples for the top instead of a lattice or second pie crust. The lemon sugar, vanilla bean, and crushed almonds added unexpected depth to the flavor.

Instead of baking them in medium tart pans as Tartelette did, I used my minis. A half recipe produced enough filling for 9 mini-pans which was great news. A single full recipe should do it for the party.

The prep work was quick and the flavors delicious. I presented them nervously to A, who wanted to know why I couldn't just make plain old apple pie (one of his favorite desserts). A single bite later, I was instructed that the recipe was a winner and apple pie would not be needed.



WOOHOO! One menu item down. Only 8 to go.

I still need to play with the crust for this recipe a little. In my first attempt, the crust stuck to the pans making it difficult to remove the tartelettes without damaging them. This is a problem that I will troubleshoot in the coming weeks.

And of course, this week's posting would not be complete without my weekly bread, a sourdough loaf. I will write about bread in future weeks.

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.