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

[shain]

This is a cake that is being made in my family for a long time. We simply call it "frozen cake", but I guess it's best described as frozen chocolate pudding. The bottom is vanilla biscuit, dipped in strong coffee, and the top is sweetened whipped cream, flavored with a lot plenty of vanilla. Served straight from the freezer and eaten slowly as it softens on the plate.

[rarerollingobject]

More infernal cupcakes.

 

I do believe I definitively now have the cupcake-piping urge out of my system for awhile.

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

@rarerollingobject,

 

Gorgeous work, as usual!

 

Your intricately worked red and yellow one with tiny green leaves sticking out between the flowers reminds me of this or this one. Your coral and white one reminds me of a hydrangea. Your burnt orange one brings to mind a chrysanthemum. The roses are obvious, of course. Did you have any particular real flowers in mind when you created the others?

 

I know you have some spectacular ones in Australia, like the Sturt's Desert Pea, that might not be familiar to some of us. 

[Anna N]

OK @rarerollingobject

 

 I am delighted that you have got this out of your system. I can admire with every fibre of my being your handiwork but every time I look at these photographs every fibre of my being cries out for some anti nausea medication!  I just cannot imagine eating one of them.    Sorry. 

[rarerollingobject]

3 hours ago, Anna N said:

OK @rarerollingobject

 

 I am delighted that you have got this out of your system. I can admire with every fibre of my being your handiwork but every time I look at these photographs every fibre of my being cries out for some anti nausea medication!  I just cannot imagine eating one of them.    Sorry. 

 

Uh...thanks?

[Anna N]

7 minutes ago, rarerollingobject said:

 

Uh...thanks?

 Please don't take offence I only meant that I could not imagine eating that much icing.   Your creations are absolutely beautiful!   I would wish myself to have a quarter of that talent.   But I might have to find a way to use it with mashed potatoes!

[Jim D.]

13 hours ago, rarerollingobject said:

More infernal cupcakes.

 

I do believe I definitively now have the cupcake-piping urge out of my system for awhile.

 

 

They do look spectacular.  Do you mind telling what sort of frosting you are using and how you get the multi-color effects, such as in the purple with a pink edge?

[Chris Ward]

On 8/9/2016 at 2:13 AM, rarerollingobject said:

And this was Weekend Cooking Project #2; giant, colossal, freaking stupid-huge meringues; pistachio, chocolate chunk, pomegranate syrup and freeze-dried raspberry. Each the size of a baby's head, but tastier!

 

I have all my work team hopped on sugar.

A long time ago the chef patissier I worked with used to sprinkle cocoa powder, cinnamon powder and other goodies on his tiny, delicate meringues; then one day he tried doing the sprinkling before cooking and the results, especially for the cinnamon ones, were fantastic. Obviously this won't work for all the things you've done here (which look absolutely fantastic) but I recommend it especially for spice powders. 

[Chris Ward]

The blackberry tart is the one I made yesterday from blackberries we picked (OK, my wife picked) while we were out walking. The strawberry one is the one I made three years ago, the last time I had the energy/inclination to make one of these crème patissière tarts look pretty.

Full recipe at https://eatsleepcookschool.wordpress.com/2016/08/21/quick-hedgerow-tart/

As always, I am in awe of the skills you folks demonstrate here.

[rarerollingobject]

17 minutes ago, Chris Ward said:

A long time ago the chef patissier I worked with used to sprinkle cocoa powder, cinnamon powder and other goodies on his tiny, delicate meringues; then one day he tried doing the sprinkling before cooking and the results, especially for the cinnamon ones, were fantastic. Obviously this won't work for all the things you've done here (which look absolutely fantastic) but I recommend it especially for spice powders. 

 

Interesting. I did actually try it both ways - sprinkling the pistachios, cocoa and freeze-dried raspberry on the meringues before and after cooking - and the pistachio and cocoa held up just fine during the bake, but the raspberries came out shrivelled and overly dark. So I re-made the raspberry batch and sprinkled them on after cooking and they held just fine.

I can see how the bake would liven up spices like cinnamon though..I might try that, thanks for the idea!

[rarerollingobject]

11 hours ago, Jim D. said:

 

They do look spectacular.  Do you mind telling what sort of frosting you are using and how you get the multi-color effects, such as in the purple with a pink edge?

 

It's just buttercream (but butter only, no Crisco sold in Australia). Couple techniques to the colouring:

 

1. On the white rose with pink tip - use a long skewer dipped in food colouring to paint a line of pink along the seam of the piping bag, fill the bag with white buttercream, and voila

2. On the purple with pinky orange edge - used a skinny palette knife to smear a line of pinky orange buttercream along the seam of the piping bag, fill the rest with purple

3. On the pink flowers with yellow centres - for that one, I smeared an even rectangle of fuchsia frosting over a sheet of cling film, and then set a thick line of yellow down the centre of the rectangle. Then, you use the cling film to wrap it into a sausage, folding each edge of the pink over the yellow. Twist the ends of the cling film, snip off one end, and put the whole thing (still film-wrapped) into the piping bag so that the buttercream squeezes through the tip like that.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

44 minutes ago, rarerollingobject said:

 

It's just buttercream (but butter only, no Crisco sold in Australia). Couple techniques to the colouring:

 

1. On the white rose with pink tip - use a long skewer dipped in food colouring to paint a line of pink along the seam of the piping bag, fill the bag with white buttercream, and voila

2. On the purple with pinky orange edge - used a skinny palette knife to smear a line of pinky orange buttercream along the seam of the piping bag, fill the rest with purple

3. On the pink flowers with yellow centres - for that one, I smeared an even rectangle of fuchsia frosting over a sheet of cling film, and then set a thick line of yellow down the centre of the rectangle. Then, you use the cling film to wrap it into a sausage, folding each edge of the pink over the yellow. Twist the ends of the cling film, snip off one end, and put the whole thing (still film-wrapped) into the piping bag so that the buttercream squeezes through the tip like that.

 

OMG! that is so awesome.

 

I would still like an answer to a question I asked upthread about the flowers you had in mind when you created these awesome things, if you don't mind. You probably missed it, but I'm feeling ignored. (Pout icon)  

 

And yeah, Crisco sucks! Grocery store bakeries here sell cakes that are beautifully decorated, but the icing that they used to use was Crisco and sugar. It tasted like it too. I always scraped it all off before eating a portion at a birthday party or something. EEW! Now that even the powers that be have realized the horrible dangers of trans fats, I don't know what they use now. Cakes are homemade (no Crisco) at get togethers in my family, but we had some Crisco frosting cakes where I used to work. Pretty dang horrible. This country is trying to phase out trans fat, and about time. We are making progress. 

[rarerollingobject]

On 8/21/2016 at 8:47 PM, Thanks for the Crepes said:

 

OMG! that is so awesome.

 

I would still like an answer to a question I asked upthread about the flowers you had in mind when you created these awesome things, if you don't mind. You probably missed it, but I'm feeling ignored. (Pout icon)  

 

And yeah, Crisco sucks! Grocery store bakeries here sell cakes that are beautifully decorated, but the icing that they used to use was Crisco and sugar. It tasted like it too. I always scraped it all off before eating a portion at a birthday party or something. EEW! Now that even the powers that be have realized the horrible dangers of trans fats, I don't know what they use now. Cakes are homemade (no Crisco) at get togethers in my family, but we had some Crisco frosting cakes where I used to work. Pretty dang horrible. This country is trying to phase out trans fat, and about time. We are making progress. 

 

I did miss it, sorry! The roses are roses, the orange-y one was meant to be a chrysanthemum, the pink puffy one was a "I don't know, I'll just play with the shapes I can make with this piping tip" flower, and the small pinky yellow ones with leaves were MEANT to be mini tulips, but came out a bit messily so I could pretend they're either lantana, or yes, a Desert Pea.  

[Chris Ward]

I made pancakes - crêpes - last night, always popular with my daughters.

I think of ‘pancakes’ as being the thick, stodgy affairs my mother cooked on Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras) when I was a kid, or those things served in American diners. Which are fine and which I love with maple syrup and butter and bacon, but crêpes are finer, more delicate.
At catering school we used to compete to see who could make the most from a one-litre batter (that is, a batter made with one litre of milk, not one litre of batter itself). I managed 28 and a half; David, my arch-rival at school, managed 32 but only by cheating – some of his crêpes were undersized and full of holes. So I won.
The recipe is pretty simple: 1 litre of milk, 450g flour, a pinch of salt, 50g of sugar, 6 whole medium eggs and 50g of melted butter.
If you do this properly and your catering school teacher is standing over you, you cream together the sugar and eggs and gradually stir in the flour and salt, and then the milk and butter; if he’s not watching you dump everything in the mixing bowl at once and whisk it all together. I then leave it for half an hour and give it another going over with the electric whisk – until all the lumps are gone.
Next, cooking your crêpes. Many will know the maxim that “the first one always sticks” and has to be thrown away; this is either because your pan isn’t hot enough, or because you didn’t add a little oil to the pan, or both. Basically, get your pan hot – leave it to warm for at least five minutes – and then just before adding the batter wipe it over with a paper towel dipped in your oil/butter/fat of choice. I use a mix of butter and sunflower oil and never have any sticking. I have a 5cl ladle which is the exact size necessary for one crêpe, but don't be afraid to add in a bit too much batter and swirl it around the pan before tipping out the excess - just don't make them too thick or they'll taste claggy.
And then it’s just a question of churning them out. Keep two pans going, more if you have them, and don’t let your attention wander. Also, don’t have your stove too hot – on my electric hob the rings are at 7 on a scale of 1 – 9, which means the crêpes get about two minutes each side.
Stack them up and serve them with, well, whatever you like; Nutella’s a big favourite here as is a sugar/lemon mix; sometimes they go for butter and maple syrup, too.
And chantilly cream, obviously.
This is a half-successful attempt at chantilly cream – it was hot (over 30°C today) and I hadn’t chilled the cream, bowl or whisk as I’d normally do as a matter of course. The problem when it’s hot is that the cream separates quickly into a solid and milky liquid, but it still tastes good albeit a little heavy.
Bon appetit!

[Kerry Beal]

 

Pear Frangiapani tarts in the Cuisinart Steam oven.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

23 hours ago, Chris Ward said:

Many will know the maxim that “the first one always sticks” and has to be thrown away;

 

Great looking crepes, Chris! But thrown out???!  What blasphemy! 

 

The ones that are not perfect are always cook's treat. Mmmm.

 

Seriously, you are right though. When your preheated pan "skitters" a few drops of cold water when thrown onto the surface of the pan before quickly evaporating, you are ready to add fat (I always use all butter about 1/4 teaspoon per crepe) and proceed cooking. "Skitters" means the intact drops of water actually immediately produce enough steam to jump around intact on your pan before evaporating. It is a fun test of the heat of the pan. Okay, I am easily amused.

[Chris Ward]

An old chef's maxim was "Hold your hand on the side of the pan. When you smell burning flesh it's too hot. "

[Kerry Beal]

On August 25, 2016 at 5:44 AM, Chris Ward said:

Next, cooking your crêpes. Many will know the maxim that “the first one always sticks” and has to be thrown away;

 

 

 

Just like the first husband - the pancake husband I called him!

[oli]

On 8/25/2016 at 2:44 AM, Chris Ward said:

I made pancakes - crêpes - last night, always popular with my daughters.

I think of ‘pancakes’ as being the thick, stodgy affairs my mother cooked on Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras) when I was a kid, or those things served in American diners. Which are fine and which I love with maple syrup and butter and bacon, but crêpes are finer, more delicate.
At catering school we used to compete to see who could make the most from a one-litre batter (that is, a batter made with one litre of milk, not one litre of batter itself). I managed 28 and a half; David, my arch-rival at school, managed 32 but only by cheating – some of his crêpes were undersized and full of holes. So I won.
The recipe is pretty simple: 1 litre of milk, 450g flour, a pinch of salt, 50g of sugar, 6 whole medium eggs and 50g of melted butter.
If you do this properly and your catering school teacher is standing over you, you cream together the sugar and eggs and gradually stir in the flour and salt, and then the milk and butter; if he’s not watching you dump everything in the mixing bowl at once and whisk it all together. I then leave it for half an hour and give it another going over with the electric whisk – until all the lumps are gone.
Next, cooking your crêpes. Many will know the maxim that “the first one always sticks” and has to be thrown away; this is either because your pan isn’t hot enough, or because you didn’t add a little oil to the pan, or both. Basically, get your pan hot – leave it to warm for at least five minutes – and then just before adding the batter wipe it over with a paper towel dipped in your oil/butter/fat of choice. I use a mix of butter and sunflower oil and never have any sticking. I have a 5cl ladle which is the exact size necessary for one crêpe, but don't be afraid to add in a bit too much batter and swirl it around the pan before tipping out the excess - just don't make them too thick or they'll taste claggy.
And then it’s just a question of churning them out. Keep two pans going, more if you have them, and don’t let your attention wander. Also, don’t have your stove too hot – on my electric hob the rings are at 7 on a scale of 1 – 9, which means the crêpes get about two minutes each side.
Stack them up and serve them with, well, whatever you like; Nutella’s a big favourite here as is a sugar/lemon mix; sometimes they go for butter and maple syrup, too.
And chantilly cream, obviously.
This is a half-successful attempt at chantilly cream – it was hot (over 30°C today) and I hadn’t chilled the cream, bowl or whisk as I’d normally do as a matter of course. The problem when it’s hot is that the cream separates quickly into a solid and milky liquid, but it still tastes good albeit a little heavy.
Bon appetit!

When I was a kid my mom would make palacsinta for me and my step-father and she would be stuck in the kitchen because we would eat them as fast as she made them.  Thinking back now I think "poor mom, she's stuck making palacsinta and not enough time for her to eat"

Always the first one was thrown away, it just doesn't come out right.

The left over batter was used another day, we  would have to add a little more milk and they ended up being better than first day one.  Everyone has their favourite filling and mine was a mixture of apricot jam and ground walnuts.  Mom liked cottage cheese and sugar.  The ones made in Hungary are so wonderfully yellow because of chicken's environment.

Edited September 4, 2016 by oli (log)

[shain]

3 layer chocolate mousse cake (ATK recipe). I made a few adjustments, most notable are making half a batch in a rectangular shape. Second was adding coffee and vanilla to the otherwise plain white chocolate layer, giving it a much more interesting flavor (and coffee-vanilla is one of my favorite combos to begin with). The bottom is a brownie layer, as per the recipe.

I highly recommend this recipe.

I should've thought of moving the cake to nicer plate before taking a picture...

 

Edited September 2, 2016 by shain
Fixed link (log)

[DianaB]

14 hours ago, shain said:

3 layer chocolate mousse cake (ATK recipe). I made a few adjustments, most notable are making half a batch in a rectangular shape. Second was adding coffee and vanilla to the otherwise plain white chocolate layer, giving it a much more interesting flavor (and coffee-vanilla is one of my favorite combos to begin with). The bottom is a brownie layer, as per the recipe.

I highly recommend this recipe.

I should've thought of moving the cake to nicer plate before taking a picture...

 

 

That looks really good.  Probably due to my lack of skill I couldn't get to the recipe without giving payment details to start a free trial of ATK, after numerous problems with my bank blocking my card I'm reluctant to do that.  So, I'm guessing it is similar to Valrhona's recipe?  I can't find a version in English but basically layers of dark, milk and white chocolate on a praline base.  There's a French version here:

http://www.mercotte.fr/2015/09/23/entremets-3-chocolats-et-premiere-video-de-la-saison-4-du-meilleur-patissier/

 

I have made this many times and it is always a success.  Great because very little effort required and, as you say, any number of variations are possible.  I use Valrhona's Dulcey in place of the top white chocolate layer.  This photo was a first attempt, less than perfect layers but it tasted really good.  Three of these went with my husband to the University where he works on the day prospective students got their exam results a couple of weeks ago.  Staff all attend to deal with the huge volume of telephone calls from candidates wanting places.  Those and a few macarons were intended as sustenance to keep them all going.  

 

 

Macarons were filled with passion fruit and milk chocolate ganache.

[shain]

@DianaB

I haven't looked at Valrhona's recipes, but your cake looks great and I can imagine how great the blond layer tastes. I know ATK has an annoying pay wall, so the link I've posted above (This one) is not to their site, but rather a blog where it was reposted.

Edited September 2, 2016 by shain
Fixed link (log)

[Toliver]

4 hours ago, shain said:

@DianaB

I haven't looked at Valrhona's recipes, but your cake looks great and I can imagine how great the blond layer tastes. I know ATK has an annoying pay wall, so the link I've posted above (This one) is not to their site, but rather a blog where it was reposted.

Still hitting the paywall using that link.

Here (click) is the recipe posted on KCET's web site. So, there, ATK! Nyah!  

[DianaB]

37 minutes ago, Toliver said:

Still hitting the paywall using that link.

Here (click) is the recipe posted on KCET's web site. So, there, ATK! Nyah!  

Looks good, different to the Valrhona version.  We are (very slowly) creating a cooking/gardening etc blog, I'll post my version of the three layer mousse creation on that next time I get chance to make one and remember to take pictures... 

[pastryani]

Nothing as fancy as what's being posted here, but made some blueberry muffins today.