Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

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


Chris Hennes

Recommended Posts

Very very nice! Where did you get that recipe? Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

Hafa Adai Minas6907,

That's hello in Chamorro, the native language of Guam.....though I do live in North Carolina.

I've actually been working on this recipe for a month! I am doing trial #18 today; the picture above is very close, but I want to test one more variable. It's a basic meringue recipe with the macs baked in an electric oven (upper and lower heating element). I will post a link to the recipe here. Because it's very detailed it's too long to copy/paste to the forum (details on meringue, macaronage, oven heat). I will post on my website as well, paulaq.com>macaron book.

Edited by pquinene (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Beth – your cakes are lovely and the coconut chiffon sounds especially delicious.

pquinene – your macarons are gorgeous!

merstar – they look wonderful and I LOVE that you made them at 2am!

I tried the Morning Buns from “Cook’s Country” on TV. The pastry is a version of a quick, “easy”, kinda/sorta croissant dough. All rolled and ready for a rest in the fridge:

med_gallery_3331_119_176005.jpg

At this point I was very excited and thought that they looked beautiful. Out of the oven and inside:

med_gallery_3331_119_67978.jpg


med_gallery_3331_119_97483.jpg

They were fairly flakey and tasted wonderful, but didn’t rise nearly as much as they were supposed to. The method of incorporating the butter into the flour/salt/yeast mixture involved placing it all into a large ziplock bag and alternately rolling and shaking it to make flour-coated long butter flakes. My yeast was fresh, so I’m thinking that here was where I must have messed up. Lightly scented with cinnamon and orange and sticky with the warm sugar, they tasted great. Just could have risen a bit and been a little lighter and flakier.
Here is the recipe. If anyone has the time to go and look at it and offer any advice, I’d very much appreciate it.



Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kim - the method of dusting/rolling the flour and yeast over the butter is what's retarding your rise. When working even with very fresh yeasts, if they get encapsulated by fats (butter in this case) they suffocate and die off, leaving you a nice yeasty flavour but doing nothing as far as leavening goes. I had this exact problem when I started to work with yeasted puff pastry, and until I figured it out I'd get the same result you're seeing - tender and flaky and with the yummy yeasty flavour, but not very tall.

Looking at that recipe, I'd hydrate the yeast in the orange juice or make a paste with it and the water, but otherwise proceed as written. That will give the beasties a bit of a head start, and should prevent them from becoming as trapped in the butter. That, in turn, should result in taller, flakier buns.

EDIT - alternately, you could approach that recipe in a very different way. Since you're mixing in the liquids for the dough right at the end of the process, you could try this: rather than mucking about with the ziplock and the rolling pin, cut about 3/4 of the butter into the flour/sugar/salt mixture as though you're making shortcrust. Once it's cut, add the liquids (with the yeast hydrated in the OJ), then roll out as suggested and coat the sheet with the remaining 1/4 of the butter (knead it under cold water to make it flexible enough while keeping it cool - this is a croissant trick). Then roll up and proceed as written. You'll still get flaky pastry that way (and if you're crazy like me, you'll fold the dough a couple of times before you roll it up and chill it, to increase the interleaving), and it should definitely resolve the rise issue since you'll be boosting the yeast with butter puffage.

Edited by Panaderia Canadiense (log)

Elizabeth Campbell, baking 10,000 feet up at 1° South latitude.

My eG Food Blog (2011)My eG Foodblog (2012)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very very nice! Where did you get that recipe? Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

Here is the link to my recipe:

PaulaQ's French Macarons...w/video demonstration

Well, for some reason I can't put a link on here.

Recipe is on my site, www.paulaq.com > macaron book....scroll down for the link.

Edited by pquinene (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very very nice! Where did you get that recipe? Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

Here is the link to my recipe:

PaulaQ's French Macarons...w/video demonstration

Well, for some reason I can't put a link on here.

Recipe is on my site, www.paulaq.com > macaron book....scroll down for the link.

Nice job on the video. The amount of detail is excellent. Will your book describe what didn't work in your trials? Sometimes that's just as important as what does work, i.e., what to avoid doing!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yet another coconut chiffon cake (this one family! I swear....) Above was my grumpy friend Tuny's grumpy cake. This is his grandfather, who is a rabid fan of the Barcelona football team. I'm not sure that it's all that visible in the photo, but his head is photoshopped onto the yellow-jerseyed player's body.

CarlosAlberto-Cake_zps63ff25d2.jpg

Edited because the photo didn't want to show up for some reason....

Edited by Panaderia Canadiense (log)

Elizabeth Campbell, baking 10,000 feet up at 1° South latitude.

My eG Food Blog (2011)My eG Foodblog (2012)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Decided to try the yeasted chocolate cake from the folks at Ideas in Food. Mixed the batter, left it alone for 4 hrs, folded it, left it alone for another 18 hrs...

yeast3_zpse315a106.jpg


...panned it, left it alone for another 1/2 hr and baked...

yeast2_zpsa1f8b753.jpg


...let it cool and cut a small slice...

yeast1_zps405cde50.jpg


...and didn't like it. I really hate saying that. Ideas in Food is one of my all-time favorite food blogs. I've learned a lot, been inspired a lot and have very rarely been less than thrilled with the results of their recipes. This was one of those rare times. The cake is surprisingly light, moist, has a nice crumb and is not overly sweet. I'm just really not enjoying the combo of chocolate and a distinct yeasty sourdough taste at all. I'm entirely sure it's a me thing. I'm guessing there will be plenty of people who will love it and think it crazy that I don't. It was a fun project anyway.

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Decided to try the yeasted chocolate cake from the folks at Ideas in Food. Mixed the batter, left it alone for 4 hrs, folded it, left it alone for another 18 hrs...

yeast3_zpse315a106.jpg

...panned it, left it alone for another 1/2 hr and baked...

yeast2_zpsa1f8b753.jpg

...let it cool and cut a small slice...

yeast1_zps405cde50.jpg

...and didn't like it. I really hate saying that. Ideas in Food is one of my all-time favorite food blogs. I've learned a lot, been inspired a lot and have very rarely been less than thrilled with the results of their recipes. This was one of those rare times. The cake is surprisingly light, moist, has a nice crumb and is not overly sweet. I'm just really not enjoying the combo of chocolate and a distinct yeasty sourdough taste at all. I'm entirely sure it's a me thing. I'm guessing there will be plenty of people who will love it and think it crazy that I don't. It was a fun project anyway.

Perhaps the yeasted vanilla cake might be a better way to go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's strawberry season here in Aus. I've gotten into the habit of buying punnets of overripe berries and extracting their juice low and slow over simmering water. The result is a clear, intense strawberry juice that can be reduced to a syrup. I also wanted to try my hand at a desert where a chocolate shell was cracked to reveal something on the inside.

This was the result: chocolate mud cake, strawberry syrup and cream (a failed vanilla panna cotta!). Fresh home grown strawberries, mint and strawberry popping candy on the side. I'd keep the chocolate cake for a dish with raspberry and focus on the strawberries and panna cotta next time.

20130309-StrawberryChocolate-Sm-1.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps the yeasted vanilla cake might be a better way to go.

Yeah, I considered that possibility and also considered greatly reducing the proofing time on the chocolate version. It does a full proof in the initial 4 hours, I'm pretty sure the other 18 is mainly for flavor development. I just wasn't a fan of the flavor that developed. This one's going to the ravens, I'll have to decide if I want to risk wasting another one or two in the name of experimenting. On a brighter note, I did the peanut butter custard from their book yesterday. The custard is good... so the ravens will be getting their cake plain. :biggrin:

Edited by Tri2Cook (log)

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I recently made a modern (only in plating) tiramisu recipe (link to recipe)- very delicious and not too involved. Includes soaked sponge cake, espresso ice cream, espresso creme anglaise, mascarpone mousse, and Kahlua gelee.

Looks delicious, and definitely sounds doable.

I did have a good chuckle when I checked out the recipe: the components are measured using 3 different measuring systems, LOL.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know good food porn when I see it :wink:, so I added him as a flickr contact a while ago. I think I was looking for a namelaka recipe, and I found one on his blog. His work really is exquisite.

Someone here on eG posted a question about a pic from here: http://instagram.com/tonistpastry

I bookmarked this page as well, and have been drooling over his pics, as well as chef Bachour's, ever since.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ben – all that looks gorgeous and delicious! What are the little log-looking things?

rajoress – I agree with Darienne – those macaroons are lovely!

An item from the cake mix fix up book that I recently bought – Neapolitan cake bars:

med_gallery_3331_119_133884.jpg

These are actually really good. I added some coconut extract to the white cake layer and that emphasized the similarity between these and those Neapolitan candy bars. This book is one of those check-out ‘impulse buy’ items that I somehow can’t seem to resist. The food is not the kind that I usually cook, but something about those little booklets with the easy recipes and bright pictures of each dish just draws me in. I probably have a hundred of them and have probably made 1% of the recipes! :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...