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

[Smithy]

More sweet rolls from a can: our household tests continue. Although I wrote here about getting a better product with the Rhodes AnyTime! brand, I returned to the Pillsbury whomp biscuits this time because of a sale. I bought several varieties. This was the first time trying the orange rolls in my adult llife.

 

 

They cooked up beautifully. I think I'm finally getting the correct pan and oven figured out.

 

My husband, who until recently disclaimed having a sweet tooth, thinks they're great. I don't think he's met a sweet roll he doesn't like since he gave his sweet tooth free rein.

 

I think the icing is not as tooth-achingly sweet as the sweet rolls with cream cheese icing, or the caramel rolls that we've tried. That said, there's a flavor that I can't quite identify that I find objectionable. I can best describe it as powdery. Is it the rolls, the icing, or both? It might be simply that, having had yeasted rolls (with thanks to @ElsieD for pointing out the difference here) I don't like the taste of the baking powder leavening. The texture is fine, though.

[Pete Fred]

I was reading a chef's feed recently and he said that when making Tarte Tatin they just assemble it uncooked in the pan and whack it in the oven. Ninety minutes later, job done.

 

I've always started it on the hob first to get the caramel going, so I figured I'd give it a go and see if I could skip a step.

 

There didn't seem much point in making my own puff pastry for a test, so I just used the stuff from the supermarket...

 

 

 

I was encouraged. The apples held their shape nicely, but they were far too anaemic for my liking. With Tatins, I prefer mahogany over beechwood.

 

So another trolley-dash for apples and puff, and a couple of oven and timing adjustments later...

 

 

 

Better, but still not quite right. I was disappointed that the apples lost their shape in places and turned a bit mushy, but I think that was my fault. I was worried they might stick, so I regularly gave the pan a swirl and a shake to loosen. I think the jiggling made them collapse, and if I'd just left them alone they'd have been fine.

[rotuts]

@Pete Fred 

 

impressive 

 

maybe position the pan lower in the oven , for more heat on the bottom ?

 

consider starting lower , w a hight initial oven temp

 

when you the turn down when you put the tartin in ?

 

a Pizza stone ?

 

Im more or less a theoretician these days

 

and Id be very happy to sample any of your efforts

 

for theoretical feed back , of course.

Edited October 22, 2023 by rotuts (log)

[RWood]

Got a few Halloween cookies done. 

[Smithy]

I continue with testing ready-to-bake sweet rolls. I bought several varieties of Pillsbury / Cinnabon "whomp" package rolls. This week it's the Cream Cheese Icing variety. 

 

 

These have better flavor and texture than the Orange Icing rolls I did last week. I suspect the texture improvement is mostly because I finally have the baking time, temperature and dish dialed in. The icing, however, is better: not quite as tooth-achingly sweet as the other varieties i've tried. The rolls and icing don't have the powdery flavor / sensation I noted in last week's batch. My husband agrees they may be the best of the Pillsbury bunch so far.

 

That said, it's still wildly sweeter and more sugary than I'm used to. I had half of one. Now I need to go brush my teeth, then either go for a walk in the rain or have a bit of a lie-down. Not a good way to start my day!

[lindag]

Have you tried Rhodes' sweet rolls?  I haven't but I keep looking at them.

I do like their bread products quite a lot.

[Darienne]

16 minutes ago, Smithy said:

I continue with testing ready-to-bake sweet rolls. I bought several varieties of Pillsbury / Cinnabon "whomp" package rolls. This week it's the Cream Cheese Icing variety. 

 

These have better flavor and texture than the Orange Icing rolls I did last week. I suspect the texture improvement is mostly because I finally have the baking time, temperature and dish dialed in. The icing, however, is better: not quite as tooth-achingly sweet as the other varieties i've tried. The rolls and icing don't have the powdery flavor / sensation I noted in last week's batch. My husband agrees they may be the best of the Pillsbury bunch so far.

 

That said, it's still wildly sweeter and more sugary than I'm used to. I had half of one. Now I need to go brush my teeth, then either go for a walk in the rain or have a bit of a lie-down. Not a good way to start my day!

Reading Smithy's  testing of various ready-to-bake rolls, I am sorely tempted to get Ed to buy a few different ones.  They sound like fun with some useful possibilities.  Thanks for the posts, @Smithy. 
 

[Smithy]

11 hours ago, lindag said:

Have you tried Rhodes' sweet rolls?  I haven't but I keep looking at them.

I do like their bread products quite a lot.

 

Yes, I wrote about them here (their cinnamon rolls, first encounter with Rhodes) and here (their caramel rolls). They're good. They may be better than the whomp rolls although they're more expensive. (They're also easier: unwrap the package, distribute the rolls, throw into a cold oven, set the oven temp, go away for about 40 minutes. None of this unwrapping and separating nonsense. OTOH you don't get the fun of whomping the package.)

 

I thought I'd settled on Rhodes as the better product, but the price and a special sale wooed me back to the Pillsbury rolls for another try. 

[Darienne]

10 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

Yes, I wrote about them here (their cinnamon rolls, first encounter with Rhodes) and here (their caramel rolls). They're good. They may be better than the whomp rolls although they're more expensive. (They're also easier: unwrap the package, distribute the rolls, throw into a cold oven, set the oven temp, go away for about 40 minutes. None of this unwrapping and separating nonsense. OTOH you don't get the fun of whomping the package.)

 

I thought I'd settled on Rhodes as the better product, but the price and a special sale wooed me back to the Pillsbury rolls for another try. 

The 'whomp rolls'.  I like that.  

[lindag]

I find it curious that Rhodes doesn't make any whole wheat products.

[Pete Fred]

Continuing to futz around with la tarte des demoiselles Tatin, I wondered how far I could push the caramelisation. The answer, it would seem, is "too far"... 😬

 

 

The lighting makes it look worse than it was, but not by much. It was pretty carbonised and some of the apples caught on the pan. I started this one on the hob, perhaps a little too aggressively...

 

 

Lesson learned.

 

So I reined myself in somewhat, and was a touch more conservative with the next one...

 

 

No pan shaking this time; the apples held their shape and released nicely...

 

 

The black flecks are from homemade vanilla sugar (caster sugar blitzed with spent vanilla pods) and this was an excellent addition. I'll be doing that again.

 

So that's my Tatin curiosity satisfied for the time being. (Although I've never made one with a shortcrust pastry base, so I might see what that's like, just for giggles.)

[Pete Fred]

My bakes of late seem to be mostly... brown.

 

 

Treacle tart. I'm not sure anything could be more brown...

 

 

In an effort to lessen the overwhelming sense of brown, I thought a sprinkling of icing sugar might help...

 

 

But it was still mostly brown.

[Amy D.]

3 hours ago, Pete Fred said:

My bakes of late seem to be mostly... brown.

 

 

Treacle tart. I'm not sure anything could be more brown...

 

 

In an effort to lessen the overwhelming sense of brown, I thought a sprinkling of icing sugar might help...

 

 

But it was still mostly brown

I'll take a slice of the pure brown tart. Looks like a perfect treacle tart. I used to buy mini ones this colour from a small local bakers that was only open for a couple of months, but this coincided with being pregnant with my second child so I ate a fair few tarts those few months, and have dreamt about them ever since. Can you please share the recipe/source.

[Pete Fred]

43 minutes ago, Amy D. said:

Looks like a perfect treacle tart. Can you please share the recipe/source.

 

It's a Nathan Outlaw recipe. Be warned: the method is poorly written, but hopefully you can make sense of it. (I scaled up the filling by 1.3333... to fill a 20 x 3.5 cm tart shell.)

[Amy D.]

On 11/9/2023 at 10:02 PM, Pete Fred said:

 

It's a Nathan Outlaw recipe. Be warned: the method is poorly written, but hopefully you can make sense of it. (I scaled up the filling by 1.3333... to fill a 20 x 3.5 cm tart shell.)

Thank you, I'll have to give it a go

[Pete Fred]

2 hours ago, Amy D. said:

Thank you, I'll have to give it a go

 

On 11/9/2023 at 10:11 PM, Amy D. said:

I used to buy mini ones this colour from a small local bakers

 

I should point out that this is perhaps more of a restaurant tart than the regular bakery kind. It's quite light and creamy. If your memory is of something a little more dense or sticky, then this might not be what you're looking for.

[Pete Fred]

Lemon tart...

 

 

 

This is the tarte au citron that was popularised by the Roux brothers in the UK forty-odd years ago, and went on to grace the menus of many fancy restaurants in the following years.

 

Rather than the lemon tarts made with curd (i.e. with butter) that you'll find in every patisserie and bakery in France, this one has a lemon custard that is ethereally light and intensely lemony.

 

Because of the way it's made, there's always a residual bit of pale foam on the surface which looks a little unsightly. The Rouxs dusted theirs with icing sugar to cover it up, and then Marco Pierre White took to brûlée-ing it, which I think looks nicer...

 

 

I have a neighbour whose favourite is tarte au citron. I'll be interested to see what she makes of this.

[curls]

Baked some brownies today. Had some leftover raspberry ganache that I added to the base recipe, very happy with how they turned out. Nice fudgy brownie with a hint of raspberry.

 

[heidih]

13 minutes ago, curls said:

Baked some brownies today. Had some leftover raspberry ganache that I added to the base recipe, very happy with how they turned out. Nice fudgy brownie with a hint of raspberry.

 

That is a combination I like. Mom used to make a brownie type snack cake with sour cherry marmalade. So I once swirled some raspberry marmalade - yes nowhere near sour cherry- into a box brownie mix and took to a neighborhood gathering. It became a requested item. May have been a dash of Anagostura bitters too.

[MaryIsobel]

 I made this a couple of days ago - two 8"x8" pans, one for us and one for a friend who just had a hip replacement. It was great - really light cake with lots of apple chunks. I just dusted with powdered sugar and it was plenty sweet but not too sweet.https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/apple-cake/

[ElsieD]

17 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

 I made this a couple of days ago - two 8"x8" pans, one for us and one for a friend who just had a hip replacement. It was great - really light cake with lots of apple chunks. I just dusted with powdered sugar and it was plenty sweet but not too sweet.https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/apple-cake/

 

Thanks!  I've copied the recipe for a future bake.

[blue_dolphin]

The other day I was in a mood for something a little sweet to go with my coffee so I decided to make a half recipe of Mexican wedding cookies, aka snowballs, Russian tea cakes and a million other names.  I used the recipe in Zingerman's Bakeshop Celebrate Every Day which calls them Nutty Butterball Cookies. 

 

Nothing earth shattering here but I learned a couple of things. First, I burned overtoasted the pecans and prepared to chuck them but noticed the recipe specifically says to get some deep color on the nuts and not to undertoast or the nut flavor will be too mild.  OK, I gave 'em a try and they worked fine!  You can see from the photo that they're a bit darker than the usual but also very flavorful.

Second, instead of finely chopping the nuts with a knife and folding them in at the end, this recipe puts them into the food processor along with the flour. Since I was only making a half batch, I was able to use the mini processor attachment for my immersion blender.  Easy peasy and the nuts are evenly incorporated in the dough as soon as it's mixed. 

Third, I forgot how nice these are.  My cousin always includes them in the plate of Christmas cookies she gives me. She makes them ahead and freezes them.  They're fine but they're a lot nicer without the months in the freezer!  And a little half-batch (30 cookies) is easy to whip up so I may treat myself more often 🙃

 

 

 

[Pete Fred]

Chocolate hazelnut cake...

 

 

 

I made these as small 10cm (4-inch) cakes. The base was gf chocolate hazelnut , and then a baked milk chocolate ganache on top. I should've taken a bit more care with the ganache to avoid the bubbles. It was quite rich; half a cake was plenty for one.

[Kim Shook]

@Smithy – I have to say that those exact whomp sweet rolls are our family tradition.  The orange ones were the only kind my mother ever made, and they are the ones that I still use to make the silly Christmas breakfast “tree” every year:

😁

 

@Pete Fred – a couple of things:  the texture of that lemon tart is amazing. If I could make something that looked like that, I’d just quit doing anything but those.  And yet, everything you make is rather astounding looking, so maybe not 😉.  Also, that brioche loaf is my idea of a perfect bread.  And making it into Bostock is genius. 

 

Our church had a table at a local neighborhood’s holiday market and I made goodies to sell.  Chocolate Crinkles:

This was a Tik-Tok recipe I saw.  Crazy busy week and I was looking for EASY.  These were a cake mix, an egg, Cool Whip, and 10X.  Pretty and fairly tasty.  I also did mini muffins from Krusteaz mixes that I zhushed up a bit.  Banana pecan:

Just added pecans and each got a sliver of dried banana chip on top.  The blueberry muffins just got some sprinkles:

These were surprisingly good, but I think would have benefitted from the addition of some dried blueberries.  I also made orange cranberry with the addition of dried cranberries, but I forgot to take a picture.

[MaryIsobel]

57 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

@Smithy – I have to say that those exact whomp sweet rolls are our family tradition.  The orange ones were the only kind my mother ever made, and they are the ones that I still use to make the silly Christmas breakfast “tree” every year:

😁

 

@Pete Fred – a couple of things:  the texture of that lemon tart is amazing. If I could make something that looked like that, I’d just quit doing anything but those.  And yet, everything you make is rather astounding looking, so maybe not 😉.  Also, that brioche loaf is my idea of a perfect bread.  And making it into Bostock is genius. 

 

Our church had a table at a local neighborhood’s holiday market and I made goodies to sell.  Chocolate Crinkles:

This was a Tik-Tok recipe I saw.  Crazy busy week and I was looking for EASY.  These were a cake mix, an egg, Cool Whip, and 10X.  Pretty and fairly tasty.  I also did mini muffins from Krusteaz mixes that I zhushed up a bit.  Banana pecan:

Just added pecans and each got a sliver of dried banana chip on top.  The blueberry muffins just got some sprinkles:

These were surprisingly good, but I think would have benefitted from the addition of some dried blueberries.  I also made orange cranberry with the addition of dried cranberries, but I forgot to take a picture.

I have tried to pare down my Christmas baking in the last few years - I just make everyone's favourite and one of my daughters' favourites is Chocolate Crinkles with a "secret" ingredient - sambuca! It was my Mom's recipe and she worried that my toddler daughter might get drunk from eating them! She didn't but we refer to them as L's Boozy Cookies.