Search the Community

After a delightful brunch at Koslow's Sqirl restaurant in Los Angeles, I've decided to attempt to cook through her cookbook. I'll post my results here. Please follow along and join in, if you're so inclined. Her food is wonderful, but I will surmise that her true deliciousness comes from using the best and freshest ingredients. I'll do my best to recreate the magic I felt at Sqirl. Here's the link to her book at Eat Your Books.

I used my homemade toffee in a cookie recipe hoping that the toffee will add a crunch to the cookie... it didn't turn out well as the toffee melted and didn't keep its hardened crunch form. How can I prevent my toffee from melting in my cookie recipe?

Hey there, i hope to find some help in the wise hands of yours. after some research i am still having some problems concerning glazing: For a party i would like to make some cubes and rounded savoury cakes and foams out of silicone forms that have a ready bottom and a colour glazing. Somehow i just do not manage to find a steady glazing ( one that does not run ) and is for texture reasons preferably hard or crisp that does not include sugar or syrup. can you help me or lead my way in a certain direction? thanks very much!

BANOFFE - MY DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY CAKE This year, mischievous nature tried to upset my daughter's birthday plans. Spending your birthday in bed with a thermometer isn't an excellent idea ¬– even for an adult. For a teenager it is a drama comparable to cancelled holidays. My daughter told me that you are thirteen only once. And she was right. Literally and figuratively. I wanted to sugar the pill for her on this day and cheer her up for a bit, so I prepared a caramel cake with bananas – banoffee in the form of a small birthday cake. My sweet magic and the dinner from her favourite restaurant worked, and in the end her birthday was quite nice. Ingredients (17cm cake tin): 150g of biscuits 75g of butter 200ml of 30% sweet cream 250g of mascarpone cheese 2 tablespoons of caster sugar 2 bananas 300g of fudge 1 teaspoon of dark cocoa Break the biscuits into very small pieces or blend them. Melt the butter and mix it up with the biscuits until you have dough like wet sand. Put it into a cake tin and form the base. It is worth rolling it flat with a glass. Leave it in the fridge for one hour. Spread the biscuit layer with fudge and arrange the sliced bananas on top. Whisk the chilled sweet cream with the caster sugar. Add the mascarpone cheese and mix it in. Put the mixture onto the bananas and make it even. Sprinkle with the dark cocoa and decorate as you like. Leave it in the fridge for a few hours (best for the whole night). Enjoy your meal!

I have heard over the years of bakers using beetroot in chocolate cakes to "enrich" them. I have never done this and I am not too fond of beetroot in its various forms (a childhood "thing"). However, I have been requested to bake a chocolate cake using "beetroot juice" in the recipe - the person requesting the cake even supplied me with the recipe! Right, this is a first time for me doing this and I need to make a sample cake to make sure it results in an edible cake. The recipe calls for 250ml (a metric cup) beetroot juice. So my question is, how would I produce a cup of this beetroot juice? Just wiz a few raw beets in a blender and strain out the juice? Do I boil the beets first or use them raw? Ignorance is sometimes bliss - but sometimes not. Help with this dilemma would be appreciated for this beet ignorant sod in "Darkest Africa". John.

COURGETTE MUFFINS WITH LEMON Since I found the recipe for courgette muffins with lemon on the Polish blog gotujzcukiereczkiem I decided to prepare them. My children looked at the ingredients with surprise. Courgette and cakes don't go together well. The argument that they add caster sugar to the courgette pancakes didn't convince them. The muffins reminded my husband of the lemon cake his grandma used to prepare many years ago. I just liked them. They were short lived, because they disappeared in no time, slightly lemony, moist and not too sweet. They were perfect. If I didn't know they had courgette in them, I would never believe it. Try it, because it is worth it. Ingredients (for 12 muffins) muffins 200g of flour a pinch of salt half a teaspoon of baking soda half a teaspoon of baking powder 150g of sugar peel from one lemon a tablespoon of lemon juice 2 eggs 150ml of oil a teaspoon of vanilla essence a teaspoon of lemon essence 210g of grated courgette icing: 3 tablespoons of milk 10 tablespoons of caster sugar 1 teaspoon of lemon essence Heat the oven up to 170C. Put some paper muffin moulds into the "dimples" of a baking pan for muffins. Mix together the dry ingredients of the muffins: flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Mix together the sugar and lemon peel in a separate bowl. Add the eggs, oil, lemon juice and both essences. Mix them in. Add the dry ingredients and mix them in. Grate the unpeeled courgette, don't squeeze and don't pour away the liquid. Add the courgette to the dough and mix it in. Put the dough into some paper muffin moulds. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Now prepare the icing. Mix the milk with the caster sugar and lemon essence. Decorate the muffins with the lemon icing. Enjoy your meal!

SWIFT HOMEMADE NAPOLEON Sometimes we have days – may there be as few as possible – when nothing works out. I can even burn the water for tea. I have two ways of dealing with such days. The first is to sit in a corner and wait it out – maybe it will sort itself out. I can only do this when I'm alone. When I have a hungry family I have to look for another way. My second way is to use only well-known recipes and stick to them irregardless of how well I know them. Any experiments in this situation will end in failure. Last weekend was just difficult. My husband helped me prepare dinner, but the dessert was my problem alone. Following the rules, I used a recipe for napoleon that is so simple there is no way you could fail. I recommend it to anyone struggling with creative impotence or who likes glamourous results after not too much effort in the kitchen. Ingredients (for 9 napoleons) 1 pack of chilled French pastry 500ml of milk 6 tablespoons of sugar 1 packet of powdered blancmange 50g of butter 2 egg yolks 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence 1 tablespoons of potato flour 2 tablespoons of flour caster sugar Heat the oven up to 180C. Cover a baking tray with some baking paper. Cut the French pastry in half. Bake one half for 20 minutes. Remove it from the tray. Cut the second part into 9 squares. A cake prepared in this way is easier to divide into portions. Put them on the paper and bake for 20 minutes. Now prepare the crème. Boil 400ml of the milk with the sugar, vanilla essence and butter. Mix the rest of the milk with the powdered blancmange, flour and potato flour and egg yolks. When the milk has boiled, take it off the heat and add it to the mixture, stirring constantly. Put it on the heat and boil, stirring until the mixture is coagulated. Take the pot off the heat. Put the warm mixture on the whole part of the French pasty and then cover it with the sliced part of the pastry. Cover the dessert with aluminium foil and leave in the fridge for a few hours. Cut and sprinkle with the caster sugar before serving.

CRANBERRY-APPLE CAKE The worst thing about my cranberry-apple cake is the way it looks. It didn't look impressive, but it was so yummy it disappeared from the baking pan before it had completely cooled down. My children said that it was a colourful apple pie, and it really was something like that. Apples with cinnamon are the basis of apple pie – one of my favourite cakes. However, the sour cranberries make it more fresh and interesting. The crumble topping was, for my son, the most important part of the cake. I had to drive him away, because otherwise the cake would have been deprived of its crunchy top. Ingredients (18×26cm cake tin ):dough 200g of flour 150g of butter 3 eggs 1 packet of powdered vanilla blancmange 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence 200g of sugar 1 teaspoon of baking powder pinch of saltfruit 250g of fresh cranberries 1 apple 3 tablespoons of brown sugar 1 teaspoon of cinnamoncrumble topping 5 tablespoons of brown sugar 100g of butter 150g of flour First make the crumble topping. Put the cool butter, flour and sugar in a bowl. Knead them until you have small lumps. Leave it in the fridge. Heat the oven up to 180C. Cover a cake tin with some baking paper. Mix the flour with the baking powder and salt. Cream the butter with the sugar. Add egg after egg to the butter, stirring constantly. Add the flour, vanilla essence and powdered vanilla blancmange. Mix it together until you have a smooth dough. Put the dough into the cake tin. Wash the apple, remove the apple core and cube it. Mix the cranberries, apple, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Put the fruit on top of the dough. Cover the fruit with the crumble topping. Bake for 50 minutes. Enjoy your meal!

We have a local Italian bakery my mom loves, but they are very expensive and hard for her to get to. She also really likes cookbooks (she reads them even if she never cooks from them ) so I was thinking for her birthday I could get her a cookbook that has similar cookies and cakes, and offer to make a few things for her on request also. I'll obviously look myself, but eGullet is always well informed about the quality of cookbooks so I wanted to know if anyone has any recommendations. The thing about the Italian bakery is that the stuff they make seems to me to be not as sweet as classic American recipes, and often have more complex flavors and also are usually on the light end for whatever the item is. (Like even something that's intended to be dense doesn't have a very heavy sensation in the mouth.)

One of my friends is leaving for Spain next week, and I’m planning to surprise her with a party before she leaves. Since she’s a huge lover of sweets, I decided to buy her a cake. I don’t know where to start looking, but my brother suggested that I buy from this online provider of custom cakes. I checked their website, and I think they have cakes that my friend will love. I haven’t bought anything yet because I want to be 100% sure that their cakes are truly excellent. Do you have any idea how I should examine cakes through the Internet? What are the things that I must take into consideration? Thanks!

Pumpkin muffins with chocolate Today I would like to share with you the recipe for a dessert which was made with internet inspiration and the combination of two other recipes: carrot cake and pumpkin muffins with fruit stew. These muffins were an immediate hit at my Halloween party last year. I had to use baked and blended pumpkin for them. This time I used raw, grated pumpkin. I prepare carrot cake in exactly the same way. One of the ingredients in both desserts is cinnamon. It gives baked goods a slight taste of gingerbread. Thanks to the juicy vegetables, the muffins are moist and yummy even the next day. Ingredients (for 24 muffins) 210g of grated pumpkin 2 eggs 200g of flour 180ml of oil 180ml of milk 130g of brown sugar 1 teaspoon of baking powder 1 teaspoon of cinnamon 100g of chopped dark chocolate 150g of white chocolate Heat the oven up to 180C. Put some paper muffin moulds into the "dimples" of a baking pan for muffins. Mix together the dry ingredients of the muffins: flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon. Mix together the grated pumpkin, oil, milk and egg in a separate bowl. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix them in. Put the dough into some paper muffin moulds. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Melt the white chocolate in a bain-marie. Decorate the muffins with the chocolate.

Today I would like to share with you the recipe for swift autumn cookies with French pastry and a sweet ginger-cinnamon-pear stuffing. Served with afternoon coffee they warm us up brilliantly and dispel the foul autumn weather. Ingredients (8 cookies) 1 pack of chilled French pastry 1 big pear 1 flat teaspoon of cinnamon 1 teaspoon of fresh grated ginger 2 tablespoons of brown sugar 1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar 2 tablespoons of milk Heat the oven up to 190C. Cover a baking sheet with some baking paper. Wash the pear, peel and cube it. Add the grated ginger, cinnamon, vanilla sugar and one tablespoon of the brown sugar. Mix them in. Cut 8 circles out of the French pastry. Cut half of every circle into parallel strips. Put the pear stuffing onto the other half of each circle. Roll up the cookies starting from the edges with the stuffing. Put them onto the baking paper and make them into cones. Smooth the top of the pastry with the milk and sprinkle with brown sugar. bake for 20-22 minutes. Enjoy your meal!

Sweet beginning of the autumn – pumpkin tart There are some products which are housewives' allies. In my opinion, courgette, French pastry, beetroots and cheese belong to this group. I always have them in my fridge, because they allow me to prepare any dish in a crisis situation. Today they were joined by the pumpkin. Usually, I use pumpkin to make crumpets, salads or soups. Today I would like to share with you the recipe for a sweet version of a dish with pumpkin. I made it by following Jamie Oliver's recipe. So, I invite you to a good, because it is sweet, beginning of the autumn, with the pumpkin – the queen of the autumn vegetables – in the lead role. This shortbread tart with a creamy pumpkin stuffing has a beautiful autumnal colour and a slight taste of caramel. It should really be a decoration for the Sunday table and is an interesting proposal for a Halloween party. Ingredients (25cm cake tin)dough 200g of flour 35g of caster sugar 100g of butter 1 egg 1 tablespoon of milkpumpkin stuffing 400g of peeled pumpkin 400ml of milk 150g of brown sugar 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence 2 eggs Mix together the flour and sugar. Cut up the butter add it to the mixture and mash it with a fork until you have the consistency of wet sand. Add the egg and milk and quickly knead into a smooth dough. Cover with a plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for half an hour. Smooth the cake tin with butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Cover a cake tin with the dough, and leave in the fridge for half an hour. Cut up the pumpkin. Put the milk, sugar, vanilla essence and pumpkin into a pan. Boil until the pumpkin is soft. Blend it and leave to cool down. Heat the oven up to 180C. Cover the dough with some baking paper, weigh it down with ceramic balls and bake for 12 minutes. Remove the paper and balls and bake for another 12-15 minutes. Take out the cake from the oven. Turn down the heat to 160C. Add the eggs to the pumpkin and stir. Put the stuffing onto the cake. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Enjoy your meal!

Chocolate cake with plums The first cake I ever dared to bake by myself was a chocolate cake. I have since baked it many times, always using the same recipe, and many times I have spoiled it at the beginning of preparation. It is necessary to cool down the chocolate mixture before adding the rest of the ingredients. On a hot summer day this process is very long, so I accelerated it by putting the pot with the mixture into some cold water in the kitchen sink. Many times, by mistake, I turned on the tap and poured water onto the cooling mixture. In hindsight these situations were amusing, but at the time it wasn't funny. This chocolate cake is excellent without any additives. You can enrich it with your favourite nuts or butter icing. Today I added some plums to the top of the cake. It was great and its sweet chocolate-plum aroma lingered long in my home. Ingredients (25cm cake tin): 200g of flour 150g of butter 3 tablespoons of cocoa 120g of brown sugar 15ml of almond milk 100g of dark chocolate 1 egg 1 teaspoon of baking powder plums Heat the oven up to 180C. Smooth the cake tin with the butter and sprinkle with dark cocoa. Put the butter, milk, sugar, cocoa and chocolate into the pan. Heat it until the chocolate is melted and all the ingredients have blended together well. Leave the mixture to cool down. Add the egg, flour and baking soda and mix them in. Put the dough into the cake tin. Wash the plums, cut them in half and remove the stones. Arrange the plum halves skin side down on top of the cake. Bake for 50 minutes. Sprinkle with caster sugar before serving. Enjoy your meal!