Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2015 – 2016)

[Smithy]

@Kim Shook. I love the look of that cake, and I agree that using cocoa as a dusting powder rather than flour looks like sheer genius!  When I see cakes like that I think "maybe I should spring for one of those fancy bundt pans!" and then remember that I have a garden-variety bundt pan that's never used.  Bake on, please - and @Thanks for the Crepes, I eagerly await a report on your new panas well.  

[gfron1]

@Kim ShookJust seeing the picture raises my blood pressure thinking about getting that cake out without sticking. Great job!

[con delight]

Just made delicious 4 ingredients no butter and vegan Hamantaschen cookies

[shain]

Baklava with pistachios, walnut, tahini paste, butter, honey, lemon peel, anise seeds, cinnamon, rose water. I much less syrup then common, as I find most baklava to be too sweet and sticky to my taste. Those have very nice toasted nutty flavor with floral spice aroma. The lemon, anise and rosewater works well together and compliment the nuts. They are also extra crispy thanks to the moderate amount of syrup.

 

[cakewalk]

That baklava looks great. How did you use the tehina? And how much of it? (I'm assuming it was mixed in with the nuts, etc.) Is the flavor noticeable? Tehina is one of my all-time favorite foods, and I've always loved the combination of tehina and honey. Never would have thought of adding it to baklava, but now that you mention it ...

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Death by chocolate cake for a super-thrilled 3-year old.

 

[shain]

18 hours ago, cakewalk said:

That baklava looks great. How did you use the tehina? And how much of it? (I'm assuming it was mixed in with the nuts, etc.) Is the flavor noticeable? Tehina is one of my all-time favorite foods, and I've always loved the combination of tehina and honey. Never would have thought of adding it to baklava, but now that you mention it ...

 

Tahini is a favorite of mine as well, I usally eat it in savory context, but I do enjoy it sweet as well. I really enjoy it on toast with carob "honey" (actually a syrup) or date "honey".

 

Iv'e indeed added it to the nut mixture (though Iv'e once seen an intriguing recipe that called for tahini between the phyllo sheets). I used 20g of tahini for every 100g of mixed nuts. It's flavor is subtle in the final outcome, having a mostly nutty flavor, it's supposed to enhance the nuts, rather then really add a new flavor. The advantage of tahini comes from being finely ground, so it's flavor is quick to release on the tongue. It also works as a binding agent and improves mouth feel thanks to being creamy, in contrast to the crunchy nuts.

 

Edited February 21, 2016 by shain (log)

[cakewalk]

36 minutes ago, shain said:

Iv'e once seen an intriguing recipe that called for tahini between the phyllo sheets...

 

Ooooh. Very nice.

 

There was once a recipe on egullet (I still have it somewhere) for a cake that called for greasing the sides of the pan with tehina instead of butter. I haven't made it (or thought of it, actually) in ages, but I remember how nice it was.

[Franci]

Cannot really call it zabaglione because the zabaglione is whipped. Let's say it's a cream with moscato d'asti (and cream), cooked SV. it's to die for!

 

 

 

 

 

[con delight]

Addictive chocolate chip cookies

[Franci]

For those who read about this in the what's cooking sous vide today thread...no water in the jars and my bonet tastes really great. I'm loving it!

 

[Kerry Beal]

Been doing some eclair formula testing - this is a variation of Migoya's formula that uses cake flour. The first batch using his formula I screwed up and turned the oven on convection without even thinking - had more flattened ones - pretty soft - but nice texture for eating immediately.

 

This one has about 10% bread flour in with the cake flour, a bit more salt to strengthen the protein and a bit more milk powder again to up the protein a bit. Baked under the correct conditions (at least as correct as you can get with a home oven instead of a deck oven). Much less cracking but not quite as nice a texture. 

 

[curls]

@Kerry Beal have you tried Pichet Ong's choux recipe? I remember that there were a few people on eGullet who really liked it.

 

[Kerry Beal]

3 minutes ago, curls said:

@Kerry Beal have you tried Pichet Ong's choux recipe? I remember that there were a few people on eGullet who really liked it.

 

Yes I have - didn't even think to dig that one out for the trials - tomorrow! But I'll need it by weight as it's in cups etc in my cookbook.

 

 

 

Edited February 27, 2016 by Kerry Beal (log)

[curls]

4 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Yes I have - didn't even think to dig that one out for the trials - tomorrow! But I'll need it by weight as it's in cups etc in my cookbook.

 

 

 

I'll PM it to you, it is by weight in his cookbook.

[Kerry Beal]

Thanks to curls I have the Pichet Ong recipe by weight - so this is a single batch (125 grams of flour) part piped in eclair shape, a few rounds with craquelin on board and the remainder with the addition of a bit of dijon and some cheddar to make gougère. 

 

 

Wonderfully tender choux.  

[Tri2Cook]

I don't have Pichet's book but Michael Laiskonis discussed choux in a post on his old blog and, if I remember correctly, he attributed the recipe to him. I've never been disappointed with the results. This is the recipe Michael used, does it look pretty similar?

180g water
120g whole milk
120g unsalted butter
30g sweetened condensed milk
2g salt
150g all purpose flour
4 large eggs

[Kerry Beal]

A bit different - here's the amounts I used -

 

• water, 140g
• whole milk, 110g
• butter, cut into pieces, 113g
• sweetened condensed milk, 2T (48g)
• salt, 1/2t
• AP flour, 125g
• large eggs, 4 (more may be needed) - I used 225 grams of egg 

[Panaderia Canadiense]

A few simpler cakes from the past few weeks.

 

For Valentine's Day, celebrated in Ecuador as Day of Love and Friendship, a Death by Chocolate filled with Manjar de Leche, and a Coconut Chiffon filled with Bing Cherry Preserves.

 

Just because, an Orange-Spice filled and covered with orange-amaretto bittersweet cream ganache

 

A Tiramisu 3-layer cake

 

And finally, les pieces-de-resistance: Raspberry Cream Cheesecake and Baileys-Moccaccino Cheesecake.

Those are mocha buttercream filled semisweet bonbons.

[excv_]

Chocolate crinkle cookies.

I was slightly short on powdered sugar for coating so I used a mixture of cocoa and powdered sugar for the coating as suggested by google- I was a bit unsure at first thinking it would hurt the classic contrasted pattern, but I actually really like how the finished cookies look. The outside being more chocolate-y and less cloyingly sweet was also a plus.

[Franci]

Excv_ your cookies look fantastic!

 

My experiment with sous vide puddings goes on. There is an old recipe of pannacotta that is made with no gelatin. I really like the texture. I made the recipe tons of times in the past but never sousvide before

 

 

[rotuts]

@con delight   

 

do those CCC's have brown sugar in them for that wonderful color ?

 

would you share the Rx ?

[rotuts]

are you happy with the SV puddings ?

 

Flan is one of my favorite desserts.  I might look into some containers and try it SV

 

for  'ease of cooking'

 

what do you make of these Rx's"

 

https://www.google.com/?client=safari#q=flan+sous+vide

Edited February 28, 2016 by rotuts (log)

[Franci]

Rotuts, very happy with SV puddinds. I'm just testing recipes now and when I move to a commercial kitchen I can think of selling them.

[rotuts]

""  when I move to a commercial kitchen ""

 

Invites all around ?  weather and snow and NYC politics aside ?

 

Id bet its going to be outstanding.

 

not so much the Pistachios .....