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

[Smithy]

28 minutes ago, FrogPrincesse said:

I also love apricots. Cooking them intensifies their flavor so it makes even mediocre apricots taste good.

I made these individual galettes last weekend. The apricots were a bit tart (I added only a minimal amount of sugar) but I didn't mind.

 

 

 

 

Those are gorgeous!

 

Thanks for the reminder that cooking apricots intensifies their flavor. I'd forgotten that, even though I've used that trick on other stone fruits.

[OlyveOyl]

@FrogPrincesse  beautiful!  Love tart apricots and yes, they are wonderful for baking.  

[OlyveOyl]

@FrogPrincesse Your apricot galettes look so delicious.  Love when they have that tart edge to them. I wish apricots were available for a longer period of time!

Edited June 11 by OlyveOyl (log)

[OlyveOyl]

Today’s dessert is a combination of three strawberry elements, strawberry cake made with sour cream, strawberry gelato and strawberry sauce. I usually  don’t bake with strawberries, but this cake is the exception.  The cake is moist and light and the sauce is a perfect accompaniment to both the cake and gelato. ( cake and sauce adapted from Natasha’s Kitchen)

[Pete Fred]

Pierre Hermé's sablés viennois (Spritz cookies)...

 

 

 

I should make these more often when there's a spare egg white knocking about. Quick to rustle up and tasty.

[OlyveOyl]

Apricot pistachio raspberry sour cream cake, a variation on the strawberry cake up thread. This has a raspberry filling/compote drizzled into the batter which is very complementary to the apricots.

[lemniscate]

It's roadtrip season for us.  I usually make a big batch of beef jerky, and I wanted to make a "sweet" for the road.

I gave an AI a list of stuff I had on hand, with my dessert preferences and parameters.

I ended up greenlighting a recipe it offered.  

Black Walnut & Toffee Blondie Recipe with Cake Flour sprinkled with Maldon Sea Salt.

 

I had an old box of cake flour, some leftover black walnut bits and an elderly Walker's Traditional Nonsuch English Toffee slab as the main "want to use" items.  I also had it scale the recipe to a 10"x10" pan.   I found I didn't have brown sugar on hand, but had blackstrap molasses powder.  It helped use that to make brown sugar.  It suggested browning the butter also.   However, I had to bake it much longer than the AI thought, it said 18-23 min at 350F, it was 35 min in my oven at that temp.   It's got that fudgy texture that I prefer in my blondies.  Nice experiment with the Skynet chef, no Terminator in sight yet.

 

 

 

[Katie Meadow]

Another good treat that travels very well is Panforte. Alice Medrich has a relatively simple recipe for Panforte Nero. It lasted almost a week kept in a tin. Cocoa, nuts, dried fruit; a little spicy, not overly sweet. 

[OlyveOyl]

Biscuits, berries, passionfruit curd and sweetened sour cream. The berries macerated in a little sugar while the biscuits baked. The sour cream was lightly sweetened with Demerara sugar.  When the biscuits cooled just a bit, they were cut open and given a swipe of butter before adding all the toppings. I plan in making these again with with some excellent South Carolina peaches that are  eat  over the sink juicy!

[OlyveOyl]

Peach cobbler using some wonderful peaches from South Carolina. I used the last two peaches for this cobbler as the peaches were too wonderful to cook.  They were of the variety “ eat over the sink”, very sweet and juicy!

[Pete Fred]

I didn't manage to check out the apricots at the market over the weekend, so went rummaging in my to-do folder for something apricot adjacent, and there was Nigella Lawson's Apricot Almond Cake with Rosewater and Cardamom using dried apricots, which I had...

 

 

 

I very rarely make food processor cakes, and I think I significantly over-blitzed it. The crumb was extremely tight, and there was a thin, gummy layer at the top. My bad, perhaps.

 

But that aside, it disappointed in the flavour department, tasting of neither apricots, rosewater or cardamom. It just tasted of 'cake'. Sorry, but it's a "no" from me, Nigella.

 

Feeling melancholy from this fail, I attempted to raise my spirits with a cherry crumble/crisp...

 

 

 

I left the cherry sherbet out to soften a little too long, so by the time I'd finished futzing about taking pictures it was half melted. 

 

But it did the job, and the funk lifted.

[OlyveOyl]

Apricot pistachio almond frangipane tart, brushed with apricot jam, dusted with confectionery sugar.

[curls]

strawberry tart

Pastry base, almond frangipane, vanilla pastry cream, strawberries, and whipped cream. 

Definitely out of practice with plating / presentation. 

Edited yesterday at 02:17 AM by curls (log)

[ElsieD]

57 minutes ago, curls said:

strawberry tart

Pastry base, almond frangipane, vanilla pastry cream, strawberries, and whipped cream. 

Definitely out of practice with plating / presentation. 

I'll be right over!

[Pete Fred]

Basque cheesecake is not something I've made or even had, so time to dip my toe in...

 

 

I resisted the temptation to chase a bronzed top and pulled it at 57C/135F. It carried over to 63C/145F...

 

 

After taking the chill off to serve...

 

 

While the ooze has a certain visual appeal, I'll probably pull it at 60C/140F next time for a slightly firmer set - the creamier part didn't taste as cheesecake-y as the rest.

 

I know Basque cheesecake is having its moment these last few years but I didn't find it anything remarkable, just a nice cheesecake. I liked its simple, rustic charm. Next time I'll do a deeper one.