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

[jmacnaughtan]

It's been a while since I made a cake, so I went back to an old favourite for a dinner last night.

 

Squash, orange and ginger tart

 

 

Speculoos base

Squash and orange crémeux

Crystallised ginger

 

The base was a bit of a cheat - just crushed Speculoos biscuits, roasted hazelnuts and candied ginger, held together with butter and white chocolate and seasoned with orange zest and flaky sea salt.  Not even any baking

 

Tasty though.

[joiei]

I'm working on a dessert for a competition.  I started with a chocolate tart, then added some almond flour to the crust.  Then I though why not add a stuffing of dulce de leche.  Sorry there is no picture, it didn't last too long when I took it to my old job and ask for opinions.  I will be redoing it this week on another practice bake to make sure it works twice before submitting it for the competition.  

 

[Shelby]

So this is probably not a revelation to anyone but me.  

 

Grape pie.

 

I have had some green and two different kinds of purple grapes in the fridge for a while now.  I snack on them, but I wasn't making much of a dent and I didn't want them to go to waste.  My mother-in-law makes a raisin pie (which is one of the few raisin products that I like)...which led me to wonder if I could make a grape pie.  Google led me to a lot of pies made with Concord grapes but not many with green and whatever you call the purple ones that I had.  So I winged it a bit.  I put the grapes in a pot along with a cup of sugar, 1/4 Grand Marnier, 1/4 of honey and tsp. of nutmeg.  Brought it to a slow boil and then added salt and cornstarch to thicken.  Dumped it in the crust and baked it.  OMG.  I am in love.

 

[rotuts]

"  Grand Marnier + Flaky Pie Crust  "

 

would make any filling taste good !

 

well , maybe not cat food ....

Edited October 23, 2017 by rotuts (log)

[MelissaH]

19 minutes ago, Shelby said:

So this is probably not a revelation to anyone but me.  

 

Grape pie.

 

I have had some green and two different kinds of purple grapes in the fridge for a while now.  I snack on them, but I wasn't making much of a dent and I didn't want them to go to waste.  My mother-in-law makes a raisin pie (which is one of the few raisin products that I like)...which led me to wonder if I could make a grape pie.  Google led me to a lot of pies made with Concord grapes but not many with green and whatever you call the purple ones that I had.  So I winged it a bit.  I put the grapes in a pot along with a cup of sugar, 1/4 Grand Marnier, 1/4 of honey and tsp. of nutmeg.  Brought it to a slow boil and then added salt and cornstarch to thicken.  Dumped it in the crust and baked it.  OMG.  I am in love.

Beautiful pie!

 

Did your grapes have seeds? I'm not overly fond of eating grape seeds, and have wondered for a while how to best deal with them in an application such as this that requires the grapes to be left whole, rather than run through a food mill to get rid of the seeds.

[Shelby]

1 minute ago, MelissaH said:

Beautiful pie!

 

Did your grapes have seeds? I'm not overly fond of eating grape seeds, and have wondered for a while how to best deal with them in an application such as this that requires the grapes to be left whole, rather than run through a food mill to get rid of the seeds.

Thank you!

 

No, no seeds.  I don't like grape seeds either.

[blbst36]

I made pound cake for the first time.  And from a recipe older than me!  It was good, but short.  My pans are slightly bigger than called for, so I was expecting it.  If I make them in the same pans, I would probably adjust the cooking time to about 10 mins less.  The outer edges of the loaves were a little dry.  I don't have pictures at the moment, but I can add them later.

 

 

Also, I need to loo for a tutorial on how to line a loaf pan with parchment paper

 

[kayb]

1 hour ago, MelissaH said:

Beautiful pie!

 

Did your grapes have seeds? I'm not overly fond of eating grape seeds, and have wondered for a while how to best deal with them in an application such as this that requires the grapes to be left whole, rather than run through a food mill to get rid of the seeds.

I made a muscadine pie yesterday. Per the way my mama did it, I popped the pulp loose, tossed the hulls (which are thicker than grape skins/hulls) into a pot, put the pulp/seeds into a food mill and used it to get the juice and pulp separated from seeds. Juice and pulp went in pot with hulls, sugar and lemon juice to cook until hulls were tender (some 40 minutes). Then into a pair of small cobblers, which I put in the oven and promptly forgot.

 

For about five hours. Muscadine bricks, which went into the trash as soon as they cooled enough to do so. I wept.

 

[Tri2Cook]

3 hours ago, kayb said:

I made a muscadine pie yesterday. Per the way my mama did it, I popped the pulp loose, tossed the hulls (which are thicker than grape skins/hulls) into a pot, put the pulp/seeds into a food mill and used it to get the juice and pulp separated from seeds. Juice and pulp went in pot with hulls, sugar and lemon juice to cook until hulls were tender (some 40 minutes). Then into a pair of small cobblers, which I put in the oven and promptly forgot.

 

For about five hours. Muscadine bricks, which went into the trash as soon as they cooled enough to do so. I wept.

 

That's worthy of a few tears... wild muscadines are one of the treasures of the southeastern United States. Muscadine jelly on a hot buttered biscuit is hard to beat. 

[rarerollingobject]

I am mega stressed lately, so I do things like get out of bed and bake at 3am to try to chillax -  this is a three layer devil’s food chocolate cake, glazed in ginger syrup, filled with dark chocolate ganache into which I’d steeped 8 Kaffir lime leaves and 4 Thai birdseye chillies, coated the cake in Italian meringue buttercream spiked with a tablespoonful of Thai green curry paste (gasp!), and garnished with pistachios candied with white pepper and smoked salt, and Thai rose petals.

 

Strange flavour cake; strangely compelling.

 

[joiei]

58 minutes ago, rarerollingobject said:

I am mega stressed lately, so I do things like get out of bed and bake at 3am to try to chillax -  this is a three layer devil’s food chocolate cake, glazed in ginger syrup, filled with dark chocolate ganache into which I’d steeped 8 Kaffir lime leaves and 4 Thai birdseye chillies, coated the cake in Italian meringue buttercream spiked with a tablespoonful of Thai green curry paste (gasp!), and garnished with pistachios candied with white pepper and smoked salt, and Thai rose petals.

 

Strange flavour cake; strangely compelling.

 

I'm sorry, I do not get this.  Too many conflicting flavors.  Definitely interesting but not something I would look forward to tasting.  Definitely interesting flavors.  But all at once, how do you keep them from competing against each other.  The slice looks inviting.  How well does the smoked fit into the profile?   You are challenging me.  

[Tri2Cook]

1 hour ago, rarerollingobject said:

I am mega stressed lately, so I do things like get out of bed and bake at 3am to try to chillax -  this is a three layer devil’s food chocolate cake, glazed in ginger syrup, filled with dark chocolate ganache into which I’d steeped 8 Kaffir lime leaves and 4 Thai birdseye chillies, coated the cake in Italian meringue buttercream spiked with a tablespoonful of Thai green curry paste (gasp!), and garnished with pistachios candied with white pepper and smoked salt, and Thai rose petals.

 

Strange flavour cake; strangely compelling.

 

Sounds good to me. I'm curious about the green curry buttercream. Were you able to get a good balance with it? I'm asking because several years ago, just as an idea test, I made a Thai red curry sweet potato ice cream and all of my attempts to get a result I was happy with were thwarted by my wish that I couldn't taste the fish sauce and shrimp paste in the curry paste. The idea to make a curry paste sans or greatly reduced in fish sauce and shrimp paste did occur to me... but never happened.

[rarerollingobject]

5 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Sounds good to me. I'm curious about the green curry buttercream. Were you able to get a good balance with it? I'm asking because several years ago, just as an idea test, I made a Thai red curry sweet potato ice cream and all of my attempts to get a result I was happy with were thwarted by my wish that I couldn't taste the fish sauce and shrimp paste in the curry paste. The idea to make a curry paste sans or greatly reduced in fish sauce and shrimp paste did occur to me... but never happened.

 

I specifically searched out a brand with no shrimp paste - Maesri. Ingredients: 

Fresh Chilli, Garlic, Fingerroot, Shallot, Lemongrass, Salt, Sweet Basil, Kaffir Lime, Sugar, Spices, Galangal.

[rarerollingobject]

18 minutes ago, joiei said:

I'm sorry, I do not get this.  Too many conflicting flavors.  Definitely interesting but not something I would look forward to tasting.  Definitely interesting flavors.  But all at once, how do you keep them from competing against each other.  The slice looks inviting.  How well does the smoked fit into the profile?   You are challenging me.  

 

Well, the unexamined life is not worth living! 

 

[pjm333]

Mallomars & Carrot Souffle !

[joiei]

23 hours ago, rarerollingobject said:

 

Well, the unexamined life is not worth living! 

 

Maybe I am just too old.  Putting together all the flavors is a challenge.  I think that is part of my problem.  I am always up for new.  I think what throws it for me is the curry.  I love curry but have never experimented with that flavor as a dessert.  New challenge.   

[RWood]

BoooooOOOOOOK!  Finally got this out of my system. Didn't happen last year like I planned. 

Eye is made of isomalt, fondant for all the other details. Cake is red velvet with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. 

[Shelby]

1 hour ago, RWood said:

BoooooOOOOOOK!  Finally got this out of my system. Didn't happen last year like I planned. 

Eye is made of isomalt, fondant for all the other details. Cake is red velvet with cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. 

That is super amazing!!!  Very scary.

[Okanagancook]

Yikes, the book cake is phenomenal.

May I ask how long it took to make?

[RWood]

4 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

Yikes, the book cake is phenomenal.

May I ask how long it took to make?

Well I made the snakes and clasp last weekend, and the eye a couple of days before. I did all the outside details yesterday after work. That's was probably 3-4 hours. The stitches took the longest, probably an hour for just those.

[pjm333]

Apple Mousse !

[kayb]

7 hours ago, pjm333 said:

Apple Mousse !

That's very cool-looking!

 

[pjm333]

Kayb - Thank you !!

[rarerollingobject]

Probably the most rustic-looking thing I’ve ever made, but I’m sure they taste OK; fig, Armagnac and pistachio frangipane tartlets. And a rhubarb version, for the fig-haters. 

 

Or a fig version, for the rhubarb-haters.

 

[Okanagancook]

On 2017-10-29 at 2:16 PM, RWood said:

Well I made the snakes and clasp last weekend, and the eye a couple of days before. I did all the outside details yesterday after work. That's was probably 3-4 hours. The stitches took the longest, probably an hour for just those.

That's very fast.  I was imagining several hours...well, at least, that's what it would take me if I were to attempt it.  Great job.