Ling

^They give out free hazelnut and chocolate sables sometimes...I agree, they aren't good. But the almond croissant from Le Panier is good (especially hot out of the oven!) I don't buy many other pastries there though. And Abra is right...I definitely have to make a pear and blue cheese tart sometime soon... BTW Klary--I love the picture of you eating outside Dahlia!!

A few slices of leftover caramel sponge and pineapple mousse from some experimentation...

So today was certainly a day of failures! Perhaps I am being unduly hard on myself, given as I don't know exactly how everything has turned out yet, but my stuff is in the fridge and it ain't pretty... I couldn't find frozen cherries in the supermarket today, so I added a tablespoon of kirsch to the pineapple mouse for the cherry component instead. I'm probably going to have to do this dessert over, though, and might leave the cherry out the next time. Actually, the pineapple mousse has chunks of pineapple in it. I bought one of those golden pineapples at the market and although it was the ripest one there, it was still underripe. Not a lot of flavour. Anyway, the mousse was underwhelming. I'm probably going to leave out the pineapple mousse next time...or at least find a different recipe. So right now in the fridge/freezer-- One pineapple mousse bombe, since the mousse recipe was very large, and I couldn't think of another way to use it besides freezing it like a semifreddo. The bombe has the caramel sponge cake as a layer. BTW, I baked another sponge cake today, and lowered the amount of baking soda b/c I could kind of taste it in yesterday's cake. In the fridge is one pineapple mousse mini bombe with 2 slices of caramel sponge as the base. For this dessert, the cake is a distinct separate layer you can see. I also did a few where I pushed the cake into the mousse...just to see which looks better. OK gotta clean the kitchen and get some work done. Tomorrow--maybe the brown sugar ice-cream SwissKaese posted, since I can't find frozen cherries. Then I'm going to leave this project for a few days, as I have to work over the weekend and have a birthday dinner. ETA: Oh, I also made the oven-dried pineapple. I don't think it tastes very good. I baked it until it was a uniform golden brown, and it is very chewy. I'll probably be leaving it out of the final recipe...I want everything to taste good to me, even if it's just a garnish.

Yes, but I was posting at the same time you were doing the Twisp, so I didn't see the Twisp picture until just now. Looks good!

Arghh...so many good ideas! I am frustrated I can't do them all. But perhaps I can do more than one PUDC cake creation in the next week. I can't do jaconde though...I don't have a cake comb.

Such a beautiful picture! And I'm glad it tasted good too. (For BC EGers, it's the Nicola Valley honeycomb you can get at Capers.)

Mmm...the blue cheese tart looks especially good! I'm going to have to get the pork on the rack next time I'm at Golden Szechuan.

^Yeah, but once I was out of whipping cream and used half-and-half instead and it was still rich enough. Great recipe.

^It is out of the way...that's like an hour drive for me in each direction! I can get it down the street from Henry's place at Macrina when I'm in Seattle.

^Sounds simple and tasty. Since my cake has already cooled down, I'll have to make a thick caramel on the stovetop to use as a filling. So tomorrow--I'll make the pineapple mousse and pipe them into the bowls, then put a layer of the caramel sponge roll on the bottom to be inverted as the base. Then this goes into the freezer, and I'll do the cherry ice-cream and brittle on Friday. Also on Friday--oven-dried pineapple ruffle around the base (in place of the chocolate tiles or ruffles you sometimes see on the bottom of bombes.) (I'll probably also need to glaze the pineapple mousse dome before the ruffle goes on.)

The pate sandwich and the double chocolate eclair were my favourite shots thus far. I would eat one of those eclairs everyday if I lived in the area!

I am always a fan of the plate-ups moreso than a full cake. However, it's my birthday on Saturday, and I could use a birthday cake. (This doesn't really have any bearing on the final decision though--I can always bake another birthday cake.) I don't have any demi-sphere molds though...but I can always try to find some tomorrow morning. Or, I'll just use individual bowls and line them with saran wrap. No one "wins" this "pastry-off"....it's more of a challenge than a contest. The current challengee (me) gets to choose the next challengee and come up with a new challenge. Like Kerry mentioned in the first post, I could ask the next person to do a dessert incorporating an animal product besides bacon and lard, for example...

^That would be very cute! I have another idea of slicing the jelly roll and using them to line the bottom of a bowl, then filling the bowl with pineapple mousse and then covering the bottom with a round of cake. Then I can freeze it, invert it, and have a pineapple bombe--that also takes care of the "upside down" part I wanted to work in. What do you guys think... ETA: Actually, the filling could be one layer of pineapple mousse and a thin layer of cherry ice-cream with pieces of brittle mixed into it...? Then anchor a slice of oven-dried pineapple as a garnish? I could still use the cherry and caramel spike idea too...

It's Din Tai Feng...aka supposedly the restaurant that makes the best xiao long bao on earth. I've gotta say though that I've read online that the North American locations are nowhere near as good as the one in Asia, and that the xiao long bao in Richmond is better than the DTF in LA.

^What do you think of the smoked sugar or salt, though, in the dessert? I have to admit I'm lukewarm to the idea....(sorry Chris! )

That's a good idea. If I don't do the ground ginger snap cookies, I could just put the ice-cream on ground brittle for the caramel flavour. This also means that I'll have to wait til bf comes up here with the ice-cream maker on Friday...which means by then, my cake won't be fresh. But that's OK, I can just use this one as a test cake and try filling it with mousse...then bake a fresh cake on Friday.

What crust? Tart crust? The tart crust is no more...I'm doing the jelly roll and pineapple mousse now.

ludja: That's a very creative idea. When I was looking through the Eurodelice book yesterday, I came across something similar where they had an Riesling cake with a cake bottom and three stacked rings of marzipan going up the side, leaving a void in the center for the Riesling cream. Then slices of apple are fanned out around the top. I thought that might be workable for the PUDC interpretation too. But alas, I only have one shot at this! So many great ideas, though... Varmint: I won't be standing up the entire jelly roll vertically, just slicing a piece and laying it flat on the plate. But if I cut a nice thick portion, it will kind of look like a pineapple with the ruffle around it. chrisamirault: I don't have a smoker! And I don't know how to start a bbq grill... So here's the jelly roll! Look! No cracks! I haven't sliced off the ends yet and you can still see the parchment. I have to go to work now, so the rest of the project will have to wait til tomorrow... ETA: The white stuff is dessicated coconut. I just used a little bit because I didn't realize I was out of icing sugar.

^The ice-cream recipe looks great! I have no problem doing ice-cream...I just don't know how to arrange it on the plate so that it looks pretty. Thanks also for the Swiss cake rolls! I will try those recipes soon, but I had to get going on my cake before I start work, so the cake is already baked. I basically combined a standard jelly roll (genoise) recipe with a Julia Child recipe that includes some oil. The entire recipe will be posted in Recipe Gullet, but here are the ingredients I used. I guess you can call it a sponge cake. I had a bit of batter leftover so I baked it in a muffin tin, and the cupcake turned out great--beautiful even crumb, moist, and eggy. Tasty! I'm happy with it. Sponge: -5 eggs, separated -5 tbsp vegetable oil -1 cup of cake flour, sifted -1 tsp. baking soda -1/2 tsp salt -1 tsp vanilla -3/4 cup sugar The cake is in its tea towel (well, actually a clean pillowcase) cooling and I don't think there will be any cracks, but we'll see when it cools and I pull off the pillowcase...

Sorry, May and Rebecca, I'm set on slightly fancying-up the old classic. As much as I want to stay true to the flavours, I couldn't compromise too much and come up with something I think is too easy and boring. Who says the jelly roll and mousse can't be a new classic? I don't think it sounds out of reach for the average home baker. Just because I was a klutz and got discouraged 10 years ago when my jelly roll cracked doesn't mean there aren't plenty of home bakers out there who can't do mighty fine jelly rolls! If the construction sounds too complicated, one could always skip the pineapple carpaccio (which, btw, I've decided this morning should be an oven-dried pineapple ruffle, so it'll be sturdier) and just fill the jelly roll with the mousse and roll. K8--the butter and brown sugar filling sounds interesting. I assume you just cook the two on the stove before brushing it on the jelly roll? That's another option. I still want to include cherries somehow, even if their flavour isn't integral to the cake, because so many people associate the maraschino cherries with this dessert. I might confit some cherries in the spiced port, then skewer them one by one and dip them in caramel, and let the caramel strand harden into a spike, and lean that against the cake. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Got the caramel in there too. I'm scrapping the cherry ice-cream. Still using the oven-dried pineapple, but as the ruffle around the cake.

^I've leafed through it several times. The recipes look good. They also printed three of the recipes in The Vancouver Sun recently, including the recipe for the lamb popsicles in fenugreek curry.

I guess now would be a good time to ask for a tried-and-true jelly roll recipe! I looked at a couple today...one of them has 15 egg yolks and less than a cup of flour...

The iced pastry mooncakes were purchased in Richmond, BC. I don't think you can get them in Seattle, unfortunately! BTW--you can still make the fig tart with your preserves. Just add a layer of fig preserves on the bottom of the tart, then top with almond frangipane. (I used about 1 cup of ground almonds, 2 whole eggs, 2 yolks, 14 tbsp. of Plugra, 3/4 cup of sugar, a tablespoon of rum, and 1 tbsp. of flour. Most recipes use about 1 1/4 cup of sugar for the same amount of frangipane, but I usually cut down the sugar, so 3/4 cup or less might be good if your preserves are sweet already.)

Similar to your idea, I was thinking of wrapping the pineapple carpaccio around the (already baked) slice of jelly roll. This is what I'm envisioning: -a thick slice of jelly roll as the base, with the cherry confit jam stuff as the filling -layer of pineapple mousse -a slice of pineapple carpaccio that's sliced down the middle lengthwise, then wrapped around the cake so the uneven edges are facing up, and the straight edge is touching the plate...I am hoping this will look like a pineapple ruffle -caramel sauce on the plate...or ground brittle? I would like to make the cherry ice-cream and the oven-dried pineapple too, but I can't figure out how to plate it with the cake so they don't look like two separate desserts. If I made a pineapple cup and filled it with cherry ice-cream and set it next to the cake, it would look kind of odd...opinions?

I had some Michel Cluizel chocolate that I'm less than crazy about. It's the "Maralumi" bar. It has very strong cherry notes...in fact, if you told me it was cherry-flavoured chocolate, I'd believe you. Also quite a lot of spice.