Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2016 – 2017)

[rajoress]

@shain - those babkas are beautiful!

 

I've been on a cookies kick as I got Dorie Greenspan's cookie book for Hanukkah. Three of her sables - vanilla, chocolate, and jammers and funfetti cookies from smitten kitchen. Thanks for looking!

Ruth

[Stu Jordan]

On 8/01/2017 at 10:40 PM, quiet1 said:

 

What recipe would you use for something like the raspberry layer?

If I wanted a nice tart layer, I might make a coulis and firm it up with some pectin. Or I could do a light raspberry mousse.  A ganache might be too heavy for the cake. Not sure what original poster used in that cake but gosh it looks nice!

[shain]

So I made this cake using half of the remaining babka dough. The filling is ricotta, dark chocolate (70% cocoa), toasted almonds and apricot kernels (tastes like bitter almond, but not bitter...), a little of the candied orange peels I made a couple of months ago, amaretto, cinnamon and a little sugar.

 

 

Next time I'll up the ricotta to mixins ratio (as in more ricotta), and I might also try using marzipan instead of almonds, I expected it's crispness to be a welcomed extra texture, but I found it to be distracting.

 

Edited January 19, 2017 by shain (log)

[Franci]

Shell of puff pastry, very thin layer of sponge soaked in simple syrup flavored with limoncello, pastry cream and cubed soaked sponge cake.

 

 

[shain]

Last of the yeast dough. This cake is filled with ricotta and farmer cheese, flavored with plenty of lemon zest, poppy seeds, vanilla, and cognac soaked raisins.

[RWood]

Macarons, little monsters . Bourbon pecan, pistachio, raspberry and espresso.

[rarerollingobject]

The beginning of very good things..I like anything that gives me a reason to use a half kilo of fresh roasted pistachios, very ripe apricots, brandy, and a good dollop of the beautiful Iranian pistachio paste I bought at G. Detou in Paris. 

 

(Shortbread base, pistachio and brandy frangipane filling, ripe slices apricots nestled in top until they bake up to jammy, caramelly deliciousness)

[teonzo]

Pistachio + apricots = UBER WIN

 

 

 

Teo

 

[rotuts]

@rarerollingobject  

 

what is the container you are baking the above in ?  it looks very deep

[rarerollingobject]

11 hours ago, teonzo said:

Pistachio + apricots = UBER WIN

 

 

 

Teo

 

 

Yes, and I always crack open the apricot kernel to get at the sweet kernel and grind it in with the pistachios. Not enough to make anyone, like, sick or anything but just enough to impart that very particular taste..

[rarerollingobject]

11 hours ago, rotuts said:

@rarerollingobject  

 

what is the container you are baking the above in ?  it looks very deep

 

It's an 8 by 8 inch baking tin. It's not terribly deep - maybe 4 inches. Springform would probably work easier but the two overlapping strips of baking paper did ok (and I held the tabs in place with little bulldog clips, not shown!)

[shain]

Lemon and mandarin cake. With labneh and olive oil. Zest from lemon and mandarine. A little candied orange peel. Soaked with lemon juice syrup.

 

Recipe here.

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by shain (log)

[Katie Meadow]

Shain,

 

Did you double the recipe for the long loaf pan? And what are the dimensions of your loaf pan? Thanks.

[shain]

@Katie Meadow I made a single batch of this recipe, and used the same type of pan as noted in it - 10x2.5 inch. 

[teonzo]

 

Panicio

"Panicio" is a play on words between "panettone" and "radicio" (dialect term for "radicchio", the place where I live is the home of the best radicchio in Italy, we are quite proud of this).

Dough is made replacing half water with reduced (30%) radicchio juice. I added candied pumpkin in place of the usual candied orange peels / raisins. For the glaze I used amaretti (the traditional cookies made with bitter almonds).

This is a first try made at home. Esthetically it came ugly, making panettone at home is a huge PITA, especially when your oven it totally unbalanced (top side is 40°C hotter than bottom side). I tried a new recipe for the glaze, I don't like the traditional glazes because they break in pieces during cooking, I'm aiming for a glaze that gives a "smooth" surface, I think I'm on the correct road, but I need to make a test with a decent oven, with this one I get horrible results even with the traditional recipe.

I'm happy about how it tastes, it's balanced and reflects the autumn produce of this land. I hope it will sell well when I'll open my shop.

 

 

 

 

Pationkin

"Pationkin" is a play on words between "panettone", "Tonka" and "Kotiomkin". It comes from a cult scene in Il secondo tragico Fantozzi, which is now part of pop culture here in Italy (if you say "Kotiomkin" to an Italian then he immediately thinks about that scene). It's almost impossible to explain if you haven't seen the movie.

Dough is almost the same as traditional panettone, I replaced vanilla with Tonka beans, then replaced the usual candied orange peels and raisins with candied clementine peels (which pair better, in my opinion, with Tonka beans). Glaze is white chocolate with some Tonka beans, then the circles are candied clementine peels (the look is chosen to recall that movie scene).

I'm happy with this too, final taste is not that far from the traditional panettone, pretty enjoyable. I always laugh when I think about it, this is a plus in my book.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Jim D.]

@teonzo, I can't wrap my head around the sweet ingredients in the panicio (such as the wonderful-sounding candied pumpkin) and the slight bitterness of radicchio in a single item. Can you describe the taste? How much vegetable bitterness comes through?

[rarerollingobject]

Vanilla cupcakes, with a bit of the innards cored out and filled with raspberry curd and then topped with toasted meringue/marshmallow frosting and sprinkled with freeze-dried raspberries.

 

And a lemon curd version, filled with an 8 egg yolk lemon curd, frosted with marshmallow and sprinkled with edible gold dust.

 

And then in case my friend's kids think the curdy ones are too sour and do not like, some of my boring traditional floral cupcakes, which are nothing but vanilla cake and pedestrian buttercream - because nothing says "I love you, friend" like hopping her 6 year old and her toddler up on massive hits of sugar and food colouring at the start of a long weekend. 

 

[pjm333]

 Ube Ice cream, bread pudding, apple fritters, beignets 

[teonzo]

1 hour ago, Jim D. said:

@teonzo, I can't wrap my head around the sweet ingredients in the panicio (such as the wonderful-sounding candied pumpkin) and the slight bitterness of radicchio in a single item. Can you describe the taste? How much vegetable bitterness comes through?

 

Radicchio's bitterness is present but not overwhelming. You can definetely taste it, but the overall effect is not that strange if you don't know what you are going to taste. I don't know if you ever tasted amaretti cookies, you get a similar balance: the base recipe is pretty sweet in both cases, the bitter component (bitter almonds in amaretti, radicchio in my experiment) cuts through and counterbalance the sweetness. It's a game of contrasts, where bitterness does not have to be too strong.

People raise an eyebrow when hearing about this kind of stuff mostly due to food conventions (vegetables in savory, fruits in sweet), but if you think about it those are just conventions. Cacao is definetely bitter, not sweet, but chocolate is the most popular sweet thing in the world. Similar for coffee, it's a given in sweets because it became traditional. Chestnut honey is another case. You just need to avoid getting bitterness as the frontal kick, which is relatively easy when you start from a really sweet recipe (panettone has a lot of sugar).

 

 

 

Teo

 

[ChocoMom]

Well, this isn't even close to being GORGEOUS like @rarerollingobject darling cupcakes/masterpieces, but it is, no less, what I made and baked this afternoon:  Rieska aka Slingshot Bread.

 

[Anna N]

 Well I do admit that I have never heard of this before. A quick Google brought many different recipes for rieska but slingshot I did not find under bread at all.  It certainly seems quite intriguing and quite inclined to start an argument between those who think it is a flat bread and those who think it is something quite different. I found a recipe on the King Arthur site that intrigues me enough that I may attempt it later today.  Thanks for making my morning so interesting.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Anna N (log)

[chromedome]

Describing it as "slingshot bread" made me envision Ellie Mae hurling biscuits at Jethro. 

[Toliver]

20 hours ago, rarerollingobject said:

....because nothing says "I love you, friend" like hopping her 6 year old and her toddler up on massive hits of sugar and food colouring at the start of a long weekend. 

The anticipatory "schadenfreude" from leaving the little sugar-high tots behind for their parents to deal with makes this all the more fun. 

 

edited to add: Beautiful cupcakes, by the way!

Edited January 27, 2017 by Toliver (log)

[chromedome]

21 hours ago, Toliver said:

The anticipatory "schadenfreude" from leaving the little sugar-high tots behind for their parents to deal with makes this all the more fun. 

 

edited to add: Beautiful cupcakes, by the way!

 

It's the essence of grandparenting, as well.

[rarerollingobject]

Others things I make for my colleagues; an enormous trifle, with two layers of pistachio and marzipan gateaux, raspberry curd and raspberry coulis, creme diplomat (creme patissier folded into softly-whipped cream), jelly I made myself with 3kg of raspberries, caramelised pistachio praline and edible silver leaf.

 

Edited January 30, 2017 by rarerollingobject (log)