Your Daily Sweets: What are you making and baking? (2012–2014)

[Baselerd]

Nice looking cookies!

I recently made little plated dessert: smoked buttermilk sorbet, blackberry cremeux, dulce de leche fluid gel, and cocoa nib crumble:

[Panaderia Canadiense]

A baby shower cake, complete with stork and bundle of joy (I really like my clients sometimes - they ask for such nifty things!)

Bitter chocolate mocha chiffon cake, with mocha ICBM. It disappeared so quickly that I don't have a slice photo!

[emmalish]

I was doing a lot of no-bake cookies over the summer because my kitchen gets HOT (south-facing). I'm really happy to see the weather turning a bit cooler now so I can get back to using my oven. I have tons of recipes bookmarked that I'm dying to try out. I did manage to sneak a few in on some cooler days though.

I made Martha Stewart's Lemon Poppyseed Crisps. These are amazingly lemony, with both zest and reduced lemon juice. Seriously, they have all the flavour of a lemon tart. If you like lemon? Give these a shot.

I also made these Milk Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies. The name is a bit of a fake-out because there's dark chocolate in there too. The nuts are both ground & mixed with the flour, and chopped, so these cookies really taste like macadamia.

I've made a few other things too, but I was having some issues with my website and am behind on posting. Just playing catch-up now.

[pjm333]

chocolate macarons

[Baselerd]

I recently made this recipe - Celery ice cream, Greek yogurt microwave sponge cake, gin gelee, macerated cucumbers, celery-black pepper glass, Greek yogurt. While it sounds strange, it was actually quite good. One of the better microwave sponge cakes I've made. For the glass I used Purcote b790 with some celery juice, fructose, and black pepper (instead of the isomalt tuile in the recipe).

[Katie Meadow]

Nice looking cookies!

I recently made little plated dessert: smoked buttermilk sorbet, blackberry cremeux, dulce de leche fluid gel, and cocoa nib crumble:

Baselard, can you direct me to a recipe for the smoked buttermilk sorbet? Thanks!

[Baselerd]

To make the smoked buttermilk sorbet, I started with the sorbet base as directed from this recipe. I did not have the specific sorbet stabilizer they mention, so I used .25% xanthan gum and .15% bloomed gelatin by weight. Then, I let the base sit overnight in the fridge. To smoke it, I used this stovetop smoker. I put the cold sorbet base inside a shallow baking dish. Within the smoker, i placed 3-4 Tbsp of oak chips off to one side of the smoker and let it warm up on high. I placed a bunch of crushed ice in the inner smoker tray, and then placed the baking dish ontop of the ice. Once the setup started producing smoke, I placed the inner tray with the ice cream inside the smoker and closed it. I let it smoke for 30 minutes on medium-low heat, opening it once half way through to stir and make sure the base wasn't overcooked (it wasn't - the ice was still there too). I think it made a very nice flavor in the end.

120 g sugar

120 g glucose

60 g invert sugar

250 g whole milk

750 g buttermilk

3.25 g xanthan gum

1.95 g gelatin, bloomed

salt

Oak wood (for smoking)

[Genkinaonna]

A friend's husband posted a picture of a cake shaped like a can of Budweiser on Facebook and tagged me in it...some people are SO subtle...lol...

Since I had less than 48 hours from Facebook post to birthday party, I went simple and cut the shape of the bottle out of a sheet cake rather than doing a three dimensional cake. But I was REALLY happy with how the lettering turned out, I did it freehand with a paintbrush. I generally get ALMOST to the end of a lettering project and then mess up the last letter!

Perfectionists will notice that some of the lettering on the label was omitted...I plead lack of time and the fact that my piping skills leave much to be desired...

[janeer]

Never heard of Session but looks great and love the little 47 emblem

[pquinene]

ALFAJORES

I attended a class by Sandra Gutierrez at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, NC. She is the author of the cookbook, "Latin American Street Food." I used the alfajores recipe from her book. I love the cookies, not just because they are delicious, but because they remind me of the roskette cookies we make on Guam. Both goodies use plenty of cornstarch in addition to all-purpose flour. And then of course, there is the coconut -- born and raised on Guam, I love coconut! The filling is dulce de leche.

Edited September 20, 2013 by pquinene (log)

[emmalish]

Paula, that cookie looks amazing! I want one.

[Rozin Abbas]

@Baselerd, do you have a blog? If not, start one and you have one dedicated follower in me. I haven't started digging my heels into plated desserts yet but your stuff is wicked good. I've been looking for a bowl like that everywhere. Where did you get yours from?

Didn't like the turtle cheesecake recipes on the net (oreo crust? What?), so I ran with my own: Pecan-Graham Crust, Chocolate Swirled Cheesecake, Ganache, Salted Caramel, Roasted Pecans, and Chantilly Cream.

Edited September 27, 2013 by Rozin Abbas (log)

[Baselerd]

@Baselerd, do you have a blog? If not, start one and you have one dedicated follower in me. I haven't started digging my heels into plated desserts yet but your stuff is wicked good. I've been looking for a bowl like that everywhere. Where did you get yours from?

Thanks for the compliments - I do put photos of some of my food at this link. I don't really write anything on it though. I actually got those bowls at World Market (link), and they were only $4 each. I like them because you can use them as a plate or bowl, and have a nice modern look to them.

That cheesecake looks great too, btw.

Edited September 27, 2013 by Baselerd (log)

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Cheesecakes and architectural jellies, here.

[prasantrin]

Do you have your recipes up anywhere? While I know whatever I made wouldn't look nearly as delicious, I can hope that it would taste as delicious as that looks!

@Baselerd, do you have a blog? If not, start one and you have one dedicated follower in me. I haven't started digging my heels into plated desserts yet but your stuff is wicked good. I've been looking for a bowl like that everywhere. Where did you get yours from?

Didn't like the turtle cheesecake recipes on the net (oreo crust? What?), so I ran with my own: Pecan-Graham Crust, Chocolate Swirled Cheesecake, Ganache, Salted Caramel, Roasted Pecans, and Chantilly Cream.

[Baselerd]

Me or Rozin?

[Rozin Abbas]

Do you have your recipes up anywhere? While I know whatever I made wouldn't look nearly as delicious, I can hope that it would taste as delicious as that looks!

If you're talking to me then my cheesecake:

http://thesocraticcook.com/2013/09/27/turtle-cheesecake/

I noticed some grammatical errors (ugh!), so excuse those.

If you weren't talking to me ... well, shameless plug.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Rozin Abbas (log)

[teonzo]

This is one of my last experiments, I called it "Hippie Cannon" ("Cannone Hippie" in Italian, "cannone" means both "cannon" and "joint").

I found on sale a package of flour made from cannabis sativa seeds, this flour is legit in Italy because it doesn't have psychotropic effects. So I bought it out of curiosity and thought about making a cannolo / fake joint. Since in Italian they are called "cannoni" they recalled me the hippie saying "put flowers in your cannons", so I decided to fill it with a flower-flavoured cream. I tasted some pairings and rose was the best one. Then I decided to add a sort of "flower field", looking like the cannon is shooting out a flower field. It's made with the "soil" technique using the cannabis sativa flour. Underneath the soil there is a helicrysum jelly, I think it pairs really well with rose and that flour. The garnishes are rose buds, rosemary flowers and some helicrysum branches. I would have liked to put a lot of edible flowers of different colours (just to make a rainbow and insist on the hippie concept), but unfortunately I did not have them on hand.

I have to admit I laughed quite a bit while realizing this dessert, loved the dual joke fake joint / cannon shooting a flower field. Disclaimer: I never smoked in my life and I'm against drugs.

If you think I re-used some ideas from Jordi Roca and Albert Adria then you are totally correct.

Teo

[chefian]

Pretzel and chocolate bread pudding with smoked salt caramel ice cream and chocolat nib tuile

Edited October 1, 2013 by chefian (log)

[Baselerd]

Very cool Teo - how does the "special" flour taste?

[rotuts]

chefian

Oooooooooooo!

Im a student of Bread Pudding.

Id Die for a taste of yours!

would you share the Rx?

[teonzo]

how does the "special" flour taste?

I would say it tastes like a crossing between hay and chicory. I don't know if the taste is similar to the smoked stuff, I don't suppose so since the flour is made from the seeds, while people smoke the leaves. I'll ask to one of my smoking friends next time I'll see him/her.

Teo

[pastrygirl]

Working on a couple of new menu items... favorites today are chevre panna cotta with huckleberry compote, rosemary infused honey, and pecan tuile. Also, dark chocolate cremeaux with Fernet Branca zabaglione and double chocolate cookies. Fernet & dark chocolate - try it!!!

[Baselerd]

Those desserts sound great! I recently put together a dessert: strawberry-goat's milk ice cream, vanilla cremeux, vanila-poached rhubarb (sous vide), vanilla shortbread crumble, basil fluid gel, crispy rhubarb (poached in vanilla syrup sous vide, then roasted at 220F for ~1 hour). The only problem was the transfer of the basil to the ice water bath after blanching - I guess I waited too long and the color faded to dark green. At least it still tasted delicious.

`

Edited October 4, 2013 by Baselerd (log)

[Kim Shook]

emmalish – those lemon-poppy seed cookies look and sound delicious. One of my favorite combinations, too. Thanks for giving the recipe link. I’ve printed it and will give it a try when I can!

A couple of recent desserts – the first is a chocolate éclair cake from Cook’s Country:

This dessert has been a guilty pleasure for years at potlucks and office lunches. This version is made with a from-scratch custard and chocolate glaze and it makes a world of difference in the flavor.

I also did a Blueberry Breakfast Cake:

The recipe is from a friend who got it from Pinterest, I think. We still have a couple of gallons of blueberries that we picked and I stuffed a good 2 cups into this cake! Delicious.

Sunday I made Ruhlman’s angel food cake for a family birthday celebration. It was a special request (angel food cake is Mr. Kim’s traditional family favorite) and just evaporated!

Served with a choice of blueberry sauce or caramel sauce.