Daring Baker's Tuiles!

Chocolate Tuiles

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day! and Zorra of 1x umrühren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Here's my mom measuring out the almonds... she was promoted to daring sous chef.. but soon demoted when we discovered that the first toasting of almonds was rather black! haha just kidding!

Here's another action shot of my mom spreading the tuiles out. We just used a silicon baking sheet and that went fine.

After a busy week of wedding dress shopping, I've just managed to squeeze in making these Tuiles. Keeping that in mind, I choose the chocolate ones, as the 15 min cooking time really appealed. They were nice but basically still a chocolate bar with toasted almond.

Barefoot Bloggers: Bananna sour cream pancakes

Bananna Sour Cream Pancakes!

Karen of Something Sweet by Karen has chosen Banana Sour Cream Pancakes. I realized that I've posted in the wrong order this month! oh well i suppose that mixed up is better than not at all!

These were pretty easy to put together and made a very tasty lemony/vanilla batter that bubbled up nicely in my christmas present (to myself) orange pouring/mixing bowl. I had earmarked this precisely for pancakes so it was pretty cool to break it in with these special pancakes as opposed to the usual bisquick.

I found this great griddle with cheater pancake rings so I buttered it up and got ready. These were really easy to make and while I'm not a huge fan of bananna I did really like the addition of lemon zest and vanilla

YUM!

TWD:Berry Surprise Cake

Berry Surprise Cake

Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen chose Berry Surprise Cake. I choose it because I'm entertaining ideas of making my own wedding cake and since that means some practice with chocolate cake it nixed making next weeks chocoalte gingerbread which was really really enticing.

A lot of people had troubles with the batter as Genoise cake is basically some sort of play on whole egg meraingue. and trust me i was pretty nervious about the whole folding thing as i seem to always whip up some great stuff then mess it up with my bad folding skills!

The only thing i can think might make a difference is fresh eggs. Since we have our own hens the eggs are rarely older than 7 days maximum (depending on how many omlets we've been eating!)

I made this in a 9" springform as I didn't have the 8" required. As you can see it still baked up pretty tall. I was lucky as well in that the top sliced off nicely so all I had to do was put it back together and ice!

While not the prettiest thing when cut it was a lovely cake (perhaps better suited to summer/spring as at this time of year i used thawed frozen berries which i was not about to try and display on top of the cake!)

Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD bakers efforts and if you're looking for nice cake reminescent of strawberry shortcake and oh so light try this one!

Barefoot Bloggers: Easy Sticky Buns

Posting a bit behind for this recipe- but I'm glad i did get around to it, as these were very easy to make and pretty tasty as well!

Its really as easy as the picture shows; unroll some puff pastry sprinkle sugar, cinammon and raisins; roll up and cut and bake

and then eat!

TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper muffins

This weeks recipe was choosen by another blogger that I often read and follow with excitement, Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake. These muffins barely got made in time for me.. but a quick trip to the store had me sorted out. These are fantastic.. spicy and light. I must admit I did cut the sugar in half as I don't like

sweet with my hot and spicy!

Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD blogroll!

World Peace for New Year

World Peace Cookies

Yes.. what better thing then some optomistic, positive baking to ring in the New Year... so I choose this recipe from Baking with Dorie. they have been oh so blogged about many a time and I was really curious to see how they would rock my tastebuds.. i must admit, i didn't get it, perhaps I had the wrong salt size? i dunno but they just tasted like chocolate, chocolate chip cookies to me (albeit it damn good ones!)







Here is the recipe
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ tsp baking soda
155g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp fleur de sel or ¼ tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
140g bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous ¾ cup mini chocolate chips

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder together.Beat the butter until soft and creamy.Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.
Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until the flour disappears into the dough- for the best texture, work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added, and don’t be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly.
Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.Turn the dough out onto t a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half.Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 4cm in diameter.
Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before making- bake for 1 minute longer.)

Preheat oven to 160˚C.Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.Using a sharp knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1 cm thick. Yikes.. don't slice it on your silicone mat, or you'll have a shreded mat!

(The rounds are likely to crack as you’re cutting them- don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.)Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 3cm between them.Bake the cookies on sheet at a time for 12 minutes- they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s just the way they should be.Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature.

STORING: Packed airtight, the cookies will keep at room temperature for up to 3 days; they can be frozen for up to 2 months.

Daring Bakers: Yule Log!

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
Now let me tell you i have always wanted to make a yule log.. however i had no idea there was more than one (aka the rolled up cake one). So yes seeing this recipe which has no fewer that 6 subparts seemed like a lot of faffing about.. and a hell of alot of chocolate.. and i love chcoclate, so i choose to make my final icing white and my fuiellet.. aka rice crispies with white chocolate too! All in all it was a great success, minus the pate a bomb sugar syurp burn on my hand! here is the photo progression...

First the Daquaise.. i made the regular almond meal variety

Then the Creme Brulee.. wow what a difference a vanilla pod makes.. first time using one they are amazing!

Here's my pate a bomb.. i m always worried about these, i'm not too comfortable with sugar syrup yet and think there was still some stuck to the side of the bowl, but it managed to get pretty fluffy.. (we have our own hens, so the yolks are so vibrant they are really hard to make white!

Ouch! my burn from a drop of sugar syrup on my hand...

Here's the log ready for its icing! in hindsight I'd probably even off the sides to make the icing have an easier time.
Finally the finished Yule Log! It was delicious, though next time I'd make more layers not chocolate as it could be over powering that mousse! I'd also probably run the rice krispies through a food processor as my layer was pretty much un cuttable!

Also 30 min. in the fridge was not nearly long enough to thaw this out.. the creme brulee layer still tasted icy. (even after an hour at room temp) i left the leftovers in the fridge overnight and had after lunch and then all the layers were perfect!