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

[Pete Fred]

Circling back to a couple of regulars in my repertoire.

 

Tarte au Citron...

 

 

And gâteau Basque...

 

 

 

This was a departure from my usual recipe (which itself is not exactly traditional). I met a friend of a friend who turned out to be Basque herself, and she gave me her amatxi's (grandmother's) recipe, or at least as best she could remember it. I'm not entirely sure her recollection was accurate because the cake element was more like an extra-buttery Breton sablé (cookie). But then again, her memory might be spot-on because it was absolutely delicious.

[AlaMoi]

semi-home made cherry pie . . .

store bought frozen crust, blind baked . . .

Lucky Leaf cherry filled - jazzed up with almond extract

left over struessel/crumb topping

[oli]

Looks yummy

[Pete Fred]

I'm continuing experimenting with my recently gifted waffle maker. This time, Liège waffles...

 

 

 

It's a Pierre Hermé recipe, basically a brioche dough with lots of added pearl sugar. Crispy and caramelised outside, buttery and chewy inside. Rather good.

[OlyveOyl]

Italian purple plum tart, flaked almonds and a pâte sucrée.  A small 6” tart to use up the last of my plums, this makes 3-4 smallish slices, nice with ice cream  or a  dollop of sour cream, we happily had  sour cream with it.

[ElsieD]

23 minutes ago, Pete Fred said:

I'm continuing experimenting with my recently gifted waffle maker. This time, Liège waffles...

 

 

 

It's a Pierre Hermé recipe, basically a brioche dough with lots of added pearl sugar. Crispy and caramelised outside, buttery and chewy inside. Rather good.

 

Is the recipe on-line?  I have both a waffle maker and pearl sugar.

[Pete Fred]

9 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

Is the recipe on-line?

 

Not in English, but I'm sure your browser can lend a hand. Recipe here.

 

Substitute a strong flour. Cassonade is brown sugar.

 

I modified the method slightly, weighing out 80g of the chilled dough and rolling with a pin.

 

Bon chance!

[AlaMoi]

being a waffle lover . . .

 

Liege, aka yeast+pearled sugar  . . . it is different from the usual USA baking powder recipes.

also realize,,, "Liege" waffles implies a variation specific to a region.  originated there?  who knows. 

 

now, baking powder vs. yeast raised is a topic of its own!

perhaps the most singular distinction is the "pearled sugar" - which is basically clumped-up nuggets of granulated white sugar.

done them both.  I like the yeast raise with sugar clumps, but DW finds them 'too soft in the middle'

 

so, if you like your wife/DW, you should keep your wife, and settle for other deep Belgian waffle types . . .

[OlyveOyl]

Made a couple of 4” tarts this morning.  These are Apple walnut streusel tarts and were the perfect size for dessert.  I had a very large apple that  I diced and pressed the cubes along with a little sugar, into the frozen tart shells.  Sprinkled with the walnut streusel and baked for about twenty five minutes , these were lovely warm.

[Pete Fred]

Strawberry spoon cake...

 

 

 

This was featured on a recent list of NYT reader favourites. I wasn't expecting much, given the basic ingredients, but it turned out to be more than the sum of its parts. The strawberries turned a little jammy, and the crusty edges contrasted nicely with the soft sponge. (Even the truly awful frozen strawberries I was forced to use didn't seem to spoil the party.)

 

I had some vanilla baked cream in the fridge so paired it with that...

 

 

Warm cake, cold cream, job done. But I'm now kicking myself having just looked back at the article accompanying the recipe and it mentions a drizzle of balsamic syrup. This would've been an ideal candidate for the real deal that I picked up earlier this summer. Didn't even cross my mind. 🤬 (Having said that, I'll be waiting until next year for much better strawberries.)

[MaryIsobel]

I'm curious about your "vanilla baked cream" Can you share just what that is?

[Pete Fred]

11 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

I'm curious about your "vanilla baked cream" Can you share just what that is?

 

It's simply an egg-white baked custard. I mentioned it here a few months back. There's additional info in the article linked in that post.

 

Anna Higham's original recipe employs a water bath but I don't bother, just going with 90C/195F until set. I guess that might result in a slightly more noticable 'crust' but I quite like the clotted cream feel to it. (BTW, if you have a combi/steam oven she recommends 90C with 60% moisture at fan 3).

 

I go with a ratio of around 20% egg whites to cream (30-35% fat), sweetened with a finger-scoop of sugar (or maple syrup, honey, etc.).

 

So typically that'd be: 70g egg white (2 whites), 375g cream, 20g sugar.

 

 

I like the smooth texture and cream-forward flavour, but often it's just a way of using up a couple surplus of egg whites!

[Shelby]

On 10/15/2024 at 2:46 PM, AlaMoi said:

semi-home made cherry pie . . .

store bought frozen crust, blind baked . . .

Lucky Leaf cherry filled - jazzed up with almond extract

left over struessel/crumb topping

I love almond extract with cherries

[Pete Fred]

A couple of cookies from Jesse Szewczyk's Cookies: The New Classics...

 

 

Lemon Poppyseed Tea Cookies and Vanilla Sumac Cookies. Both were a bit 'meh'.

 

I like the lemon poppyseed combo but didn't much care for his shortbread so I'll just transfer that profile into one of my regular shortbreads. The sumac cookies didn't pop, spicewise, despite using more than the recipe called for; it was just a basic sugar cookie tasting mainly of vanilla.

 

The vast majority of his recipes seem to contain a tablespoon of vanilla extract. He explains, "I believe it's difficult to overdo it with vanilla". I'm all for using vanilla as a seasoning in most cookies, but if I make anything else from this book I'll be a little more circumspect with the quantity.

[AlaMoi]

a repeat on Paula Dean's butter&sugar blueberry muffins - these are just yummy....

[TdeV]

@AlaMoi, those muffins look tremendous! Do you have a recipe for them?

[AlaMoi]

it's a really easy one -

==============

    2 cups all purpose flour
    2 teaspoons baking powder
    1/2 cup / 100g sugar - or more if berries are tart
    1 stick melted unsalted butter
    1 slightly beaten egg
    3/4 cup whole milk - 187g
    1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries - up to 2 cups  (2c=275g)
for sprinkling
    1/2 cup brown or white granulated sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin. << makes 9 in my kitchen....

 

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and sugar.

In another bowl, combine butter, egg, and milk and mix well.

Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and with a spatula, stir until just combined. Do not beat or over mix; it’s okay if there are lumps in the batter. Gently fold the blueberries into the batter.

 

Spoon the batter into the muffin tray, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake for 10 minutes and remove from the oven. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with the granulated brown or white sugar and return the muffins to the oven to bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Cool for about 10 minutes in the pan before turning the muffins out.

==========

[Pete Fred]

I made some Singin' Hinnies, mainly out of historical curiosity and the cute name...

 

 

They were unremarkable. I'll stick with Welsh Cakes for this type of griddlecake (similar, but spiced and sweetened).

[gulfporter]

Safeway had 6 oz fresh blueberries (from Peru) for 99 cents each this week.  Without a sale the 6 oz. containers have been running 4 to 5 bucks this fall in AZ.  I bought 8 packs so far this week!  Mi esposo eats them fresh daily and I used almost 3 packs in this Blueberry Polenta Cake.  

 

 

[OlyveOyl]

Pear hazelnut cake made with almond flour, so gluten free. This was adapted from “ Pardon your French” French almond pear gratin.

I've made this multiple times with various fruit/ nut combinations, all good.

This is a 6x6” version, reduced from an 8x8”.

[Matthew.Taylor]

This doesn’t look as professional as I’d like, but my nephew liked it. Made for his 8th birthday! Vanilla buttermilk cake, with cocoa cream cheese frosting, and homemade marshmallow fondant.

[rotuts]

@Matthew.Taylor

 

love the cake.

 

are those bricks sugar or plastic ?

[Matthew.Taylor]

8 minutes ago, rotuts said:

@Matthew.Taylor

 

love the cake.

 

are those bricks sugar or plastic ?

Thank you! They’re food colored white chocolate.

[Smithy]

5 hours ago, Matthew.Taylor said:

Thank you! They’re food colored white chocolate.

 

That's amazing! I assumed they were Legos. 🙂

Nice job on the cake.

[OlyveOyl]

Apple pie mini tart with a cinnamon bun design top crust. King Arthur has a picture on their website and details on how to achieve it.  A very  simple process of rolling pastry dough into a rectangle, sprinkling with cinnamon sugar, it’s  then rolled into a cylinder.  The cylinder is sliced into same size pieces, the pieces are then formed into a circle . This is flattened and  rolled into the top for your pie.  I was light on the cinnamon as I enjoy the taste of the apples.