Pete Fred

Steamed Cranberry Pudding... For once, a blogger's hype actually delivered. I don't know what kind of diabolical alchemy is at play here, but it was delicious.

Dorie Greenspan's Pear Tart with Crunchy Almond Topping... I didn't like the look of her pastry so used my own with some ground hazelnuts. I also cooked the pears in more butter, and used Armagnac... because France. It was nice. Next time I'll increase the amount of pears so it fills the tart more generously.

Egg custard tart... This one is made with whole eggs, which means that it definitely tastes 'eggy'; a good thing in my book. I make another one that is really just a crème brûlée mixture in a tart shell; another good thing, just different. (Those striations on the custard, by the way, are where I hesitantly sliced with the knife. I really should be more bold for a clean cut when posting to eGullet!)

I hope I haven't oversold them. At the end of the day they're just a regional variant of amaretti. But they come together in seconds and I find them incredibly moreish. Original recipe here.

Lunch today was a plain cheesecake, zhuzhed up thanks to my stash of sour cherries... I just cooked down their syrup until thickened a little... Earlier in the week I made a gluten-free pain d'epices... After splashing out twenty-bucks a kilo for the chestnut flour I was hoping for more, but the result was decidedly meh. It was sprinkled with a generous quantity of pearl sugar going into the oven but, as you can see, most of it disappeared into the cake. When it comes to spice cakes, I'll be sticking with my beloved Parkin. Brown-butter Oatmeal Raisin Cookes were another bust... The butter was browned with extra milk powder, giving a flavour boost according to the recipe. I was not convinced. Infinitely better were a batch of an old favourite, Pasticcini di Mandorle... These Sicilian almond cookies are ridiculously easy to make and punch well above their weight.

Chocolate hazelnut cake... I made these as small 10cm (4-inch) cakes. The base was gf chocolate hazelnut , and then a baked milk chocolate ganache on top. I should've taken a bit more care with the ganache to avoid the bubbles. It was quite rich; half a cake was plenty for one.

Lemon tart... This is the tarte au citron that was popularised by the Roux brothers in the UK forty-odd years ago, and went on to grace the menus of many fancy restaurants in the following years. Rather than the lemon tarts made with curd (i.e. with butter) that you'll find in every patisserie and bakery in France, this one has a lemon custard that is ethereally light and intensely lemony. Because of the way it's made, there's always a residual bit of pale foam on the surface which looks a little unsightly. The Rouxs dusted theirs with icing sugar to cover it up, and then Marco Pierre White took to brûlée-ing it, which I think looks nicer... I have a neighbour whose favourite is tarte au citron. I'll be interested to see what she makes of this.

I should point out that this is perhaps more of a restaurant tart than the regular bakery kind. It's quite light and creamy. If your memory is of something a little more dense or sticky, then this might not be what you're looking for.

It's a Nathan Outlaw recipe. Be warned: the method is poorly written, but hopefully you can make sense of it. (I scaled up the filling by 1.3333... to fill a 20 x 3.5 cm tart shell.)

My bakes of late seem to be mostly... brown. Treacle tart. I'm not sure anything could be more brown... In an effort to lessen the overwhelming sense of brown, I thought a sprinkling of icing sugar might help... But it was still mostly brown.

Continuing to futz around with la tarte des demoiselles Tatin, I wondered how far I could push the caramelisation. The answer, it would seem, is "too far"... 😬 The lighting makes it look worse than it was, but not by much. It was pretty carbonised and some of the apples caught on the pan. I started this one on the hob, perhaps a little too aggressively... Lesson learned. So I reined myself in somewhat, and was a touch more conservative with the next one... No pan shaking this time; the apples held their shape and released nicely... The black flecks are from homemade vanilla sugar (caster sugar blitzed with spent vanilla pods) and this was an excellent addition. I'll be doing that again. So that's my Tatin curiosity satisfied for the time being. (Although I've never made one with a shortcrust pastry base, so I might see what that's like, just for giggles.)

I thought I was doing an OK job keeping mine clean(ish), but yours is spotless! 😮

It's about 33 (L) x 26 (W) cm (13" x 10"). I can only really do one thing at a time, otherwise the temperature drops too rapidly or the item is too close to the exposed elements for even cooking. So it's one tray of cookies or a 23 cm (9") cake, and no more. But despite its limitations, I'd heartily recommend one to anyone who thinks it might suit their needs.

I couldn't find one designed to fit a smaller oven, so I just took an angle grinder to a regular sized one... But it wasn't particularly successful. The oven's not that powerful so the stone took an age to get hot, and with the current energy prices in Europe I couldn't justify the additional expense of preheating it.

Circumstance dictated that I start using one. Fifty bucks from Lidl... Having never used one before, I thought it was gonna be rubbish. But I was wrong; it does the job admirably. You live and learn.

Staff note: This post and responses to it have been moved from the Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – ) discussion, to maintain topic focus. My oven is just the small, tabletop toaster variety, so it's a constant battle of wills between me and it to get decent results. If you could come up with a theory of how I get a better one, that'd be great. 😉

I was reading a chef's feed recently and he said that when making Tarte Tatin they just assemble it uncooked in the pan and whack it in the oven. Ninety minutes later, job done. I've always started it on the hob first to get the caramel going, so I figured I'd give it a go and see if I could skip a step. There didn't seem much point in making my own puff pastry for a test, so I just used the stuff from the supermarket... I was encouraged. The apples held their shape nicely, but they were far too anaemic for my liking. With Tatins, I prefer mahogany over beechwood. So another trolley-dash for apples and puff, and a couple of oven and timing adjustments later... Better, but still not quite right. I was disappointed that the apples lost their shape in places and turned a bit mushy, but I think that was my fault. I was worried they might stick, so I regularly gave the pan a swirl and a shake to loosen. I think the jiggling made them collapse, and if I'd just left them alone they'd have been fine.

I made a couple of loaves of brioche the other day... One of them got turned into Bostock... It's similar to an almond croissant, a way for bakeries to use up unsold brioche: soak slices with a simple syrup (orange flower water in this instance), spread with almond cream, top with flaked almonds, and bake until golden. It's a combination of crispy, toasty edges, with a soft and cakey topping, and a moist, buttery inside... It's one of my favourite things to make and eat. I don't see it too often in French bakeries. Almond croissants, yes; bostock, no. I suppose I'll just have to carry on making my own.

I took my go-to Cherry Coconut Pistachio Cake to a lunch get-together at the weekend. It was a hit. I was hoping there'd be leftovers, but no such luck. Thankfully, I'd recently stockpiled enough cherries to ride out a nuclear winter... So I elected not to deprive myself... I give most of my bakes away, but this one earns its place in the freezer.

Hmmm, good question. I'm not sure. To me, a mousse contains eggs in some form. In this particular instance, Hervé This' original description of 'chocolate chantilly' seems correct. I think Heston called it a mousse because, as well as the mousse-like texture, English-speakers would know the term, whereas chantilly is a little less familiar.

I've made chocolate chantilly a few times and thought it was quite good. I'm curious why you don't whisk it into a foam, though, as that airiness is what makes it a mousse. You seem to be making a water ganache instead. You may have seen these already, but this and this contain more information. 👍

I had a half bottle of kefir to use up, so swapped it for the buttermilk in the Swirled Jam Cake from Snacking Cakes (Yossy Arefi)... As you can see, the jam mostly sank to the bottom... But it's my own fault. I had similar issues a few months back with another of her cakes and that was fixed by using Greek yoghurt as the substitute (and adding ground almonds). But, hey, can't throw away €1.07 worth of kefir! Anyway, this used my plum and tonka jam, plus a hint of ground cardamom. Overall, it's a nicely textured cake, and I'd make it again with the necessary adjustments. (Although I agree with @Katie Meadowand @ElsieD about the jam stinginess.)

I made the loaf cake version... It was pleasant. In retrospect, it would have been better as a square or round cake so that each mouthful had peanut. Despite most of the peanut butter going into the batter, I couldn't taste it in the actual cake, just cocoa.

I used up the last of my caraway stash on the previously mentioned seed cake... I've never seen caraway in a supermarket here. Hopefully the spice lady at the Saturday market will have some, and I can re-up. 🤞

As the season transitions to Autumn, I made a couple crumbles this week. The first one used up the last dozen or so figs from my tree... The second was apple. I've no idea which variety my trees are, but they were great for eating out-of-hand, and also cooked down nicely... The figs might be finished for another year, but their leaves made another delicious batch of toasted fig leaf ice cream to go with the crumble. I've only recently started making ice cream since picking up a machine for twenty bucks in Lidl, and this week I used a commercial stabiliser for the first time. The results were a bit of a revelation: it really improves the texture and mouthfeel. I was less enamoured of this Apple and Caraway Loaf Cake... The texture wasn't great. Maybe I should've grated the apple more finely. But the distinct lack of apple-y-ness was the most disappointing aspect. It did, however, remind me that caraway seeds are put to much better use in a traditional English seed cake. I've not made one of those in a while, so that's going on the to-do list.