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

[David Ross]

3 hours ago, JohnT said:

Your "crisp" is basically my "crumble" - 1:1:1 ratio of sugar, flour and butter. However, I have always used standard granulated white sugar but see you use brown, which, to tell the honest truth, has never crossed my mind. I have always just done it the way I was taught. Is your brown sugar plain granulated brown (light brown) or one of the brown sugars that contain some molasses?

 

Thanks.  Sometimes I do use regular white granulated sugar, but for rhubarb I happen to like dark brown sugar (with molasses added) because it gives a bit more texture to the crumb topping and I like the flavor of brown sugar melting with the rhubarb juices.

[sartoric]

9 hours ago, chromedome said:

I have a lot of the thin, flexible plastic sheet-style cutting "boards," which I find ideal for that task. They slide easily between the cake and the cooling rack, and provide enough support (with a careful hand under the middle, of course) to easy shift the cake to a plate or cake board. 

 

Derr, I'm such a dummy sometimes. That yellow thing underneath the whole cake is a flexible chopping board. 

[chromedome]

Just now, sartoric said:

Derr, I'm such a dummy sometimes. 

Everyone gets a turn. Life is very democratic, that way.

[sartoric]

9 hours ago, cakewalk said:

Chocolate and pear is such a nice combination, and it looks great with that ice cream on top. Have you ever made anything else in that pan? The pears make it a very heavy, and also uneven, cake. I think that might have something to do with the difficulties you mentioned, and I'm wondering if the same thing happens with cakes that don't contain chunks of fruit. With some cakes, I find it is better to leave them in the pan. This might be one of them. 

This was the first use of the pan, I might try something else before giving it away. Thanks !

[blue_dolphin]

This is the espresso walnut loaf cake with burnt butter & coffee icing from Diana Henry's Simple.  Nice coffee flavor.  Recipe available online here.

 

I baked this up in four 5 3/4 in x 3 1/4 in foil baby loaf pans instead of one 9 x 5 in pan.  Two went into the freezer w/o icing.

After tasting a slice, I found icing a bit much so I thinned it down with a little more coffee to make a thinner glaze for the second loaf. 

Had to add a little melted bitter chocolate to re-emulsify when it threatened to break.  Oops!

 

[andiesenji]

On 5/1/2017 at 1:36 PM, sartoric said:

This was the first use of the pan, I might try something else before giving it away. Thanks !

Why don't you use parchment lining.  I use parchment in all my pans - except for the disposable ones - which I use almost exclusively now.

I do have a couple of odd-shaped and sized pans that I still line with parchment.

I have a long, deep loaf pan that I use to bake fruited yeast breads and I line it with parchment.

[Anna N]

3 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

This is the espresso walnut loaf cake with burnt butter & coffee icing from Diana Henry's Simple.  Nice coffee

 

 Looks fabulous and making little loaves is perfect for somebody who is also a singleton. Two questions if I may:

Were you able to source some malted brown flour or what did you use instead?

Do you think it would be good without the icing at all?  I'm not a fan of icing.  

 

Her mention of Camps brought back so many memories of elevensies with a Victoria sponge and café au lait made with Camps and passed over the back fence from my aunt's to my grandma's back garden. 

[andiesenji]

3 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

This is the espresso walnut loaf cake with burnt butter & coffee icing from Diana Henry's Simple.  Nice coffee flavor.  Recipe available online here.

 

 

I baked this up in four 5 3/4 in x 3 1/4 in foil baby loaf pans instead of one 9 x 5 in pan.  Two went into the freezer w/o icing.

After tasting a slice, I found icing a bit much so I thinned it down with a little more coffee to make a thinner glaze for the second loaf. 

Had to add a little melted bitter chocolate to re-emulsify when it threatened to break.  Oops!

 

I would also skip the icing.  

I'm Type II Diabetic and I can cut the sugar content in many cakes and breads but icing is almost pure sugar.  

I have made an espresso syrup - with agave syrup - and perhaps a drizzle of that would be nice.

I have printed out the recipe.

[sartoric]

3 hours ago, andiesenji said:

Why don't you use parchment lining.  I use parchment in all my pans - except for the disposable ones - which I use almost exclusively now.

I do have a couple of odd-shaped and sized pans that I still line with parchment.

I have a long, deep loaf pan that I use to bake fruited yeast breads and I line it with parchment.

I do use parchment in metal pans and it works well.

This is a silicon pan, so parchment kind of defeats the purpose. The bulge just below where the silicon meets the metal is the problem, I can't see how parchment would change that. Happy to be corrected if wrong.

[blue_dolphin]

3 hours ago, Anna N said:

Were you able to source some malted brown flour or what did you use instead?

I didn't find any malted brown flour.  I went ahead with whole wheat flour (Bob's Red Mill).  There may be something missing but it seemed fine to me.

The batter seemed very wet and heavy to me with the brown sugar first dissolved in the butter, coffee, maple syrup mixture. Adding the beaten eggs and coffee extract resulted in a good sized pitcher of liquid to be added to the flour and nuts.  But it worked.  Baking time was ~ 40 min in my oven w/convection vs the 75 min time in the recipe.

 

3 hours ago, Anna N said:

Do you think it would be good without the icing at all?

Yes, I think it would still be good.  I don't plan to use it for the loaves I froze unless I decide to give them to someone with a sweet tooth.  I'm not an icing fan either but wanted to try it.  I ended up leaving most of it on my plate but from the small amount of icing I ate, I can tell that it adds both sweetness and additional coffee flavor so the espresso syrup that @andiesenji mentioned might be a nice substitute.  A member of the cookbook club I've been following added some chopped chocolate to the batter, skipped the frosting and gave that a good review.  She also said she thought slices might be nice toasted with butter but didn't actually try that.

[Anna N]

Thank you. 

[andiesenji]

16 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

I didn't find any malted brown flour.  I went ahead with whole wheat flour (Bob's Red Mill).  There may be something missing but it seemed fine to me.

The batter seemed very wet and heavy to me with the brown sugar first dissolved in the butter, coffee, maple syrup mixture. Adding the beaten eggs and coffee extract resulted in a good sized pitcher of liquid to be added to the flour and nuts.  But it worked.  Baking time was ~ 40 min in my oven w/convection vs the 75 min time in the recipe.

 

I have a couple of recipes that call for the malted brown flour and I used to order the Hovis Malted Brown Granary Flour from England - the shipping costs were brutal.  And it had to be kept in the freezer because it goes rancid rapidly.

Then a friend, who used to own a tea shop in Dingle, Ireland suggested that I get some Odlums Wholemeal flour and add "malt syrup" to the recipe.  However, once I got it from Food Ireland, I tried adding some Diastatic Malt Powder (half a tablespoon per cup of flour) and my recipes turned out lovely.  Had that malty-sweet with a tiny hint of bitter aftertaste one associates with burnt sugar.

I had already been using Odlums Self-Raising flour and Odlums Cream flour (absolutely perfect for cakes or scones or pie pastry or anything that you want to remain tender and not develop gluten.  

Since the wholemeal is rather coarse, I take HALF the flour, after measuring and process it in a food processor or blender (or my Thermomix) until it is fine and then mix the two together.  This approximates the consistency of the Hovis product.  

 

Edited May 4, 2017 by andiesenji (log)

[blue_dolphin]

Thank you, @andiesenji!  This was very, very helpful.  I'm pretty good at substituting when I know the original ingredient but I was very much in the dark with this one!

[andiesenji]

17 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

Thank you, @andiesenji!  This was very, very helpful.  I'm pretty good at substituting when I know the original ingredient but I was very much in the dark with this one!

I will warn you that you may get hooked on Odlums flours once you start using them. 

I was skeptical about them when my friend first recommended them - I figured she is from Ireland and is partial to Irish brands.

It's been about 9 years since I first began using them and I order regularly because in my opinion, there is no substitute. 

We used to have good "soft wheat" flours here in the U.S. but once the big conglomerates bought White Lily, Martha Washington and Red Band, the quality deteriorated.  

I am also very partial to the Irish bacon Food Ireland sells and I just ordered a 4-pound value pack.  

[Kasia]

Today I would like to share with you the recipe which is very simple and where the main ingredients are just apples. All cakes with apples I know involve cutting and stewing the apples. Here not. For this cake you should add pieces of fresh and fragrant fruit cut in half. This time the recipe for this cake is not mine - it comes from the Polish page http://moniamieszaigotuje.blogspot.com. 

Ingredients:

dough:
6 apples
280g of flour
200g of butter
1.5 tablespoons of caster sugar
1 tablespoon of vanilla sugar
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1 egg
125g of vanilla fromage frails

icing:
1 tablespoon of 18% cream
120g of caster sugar

Heat the oven up to 180C.
Peel the apples, cut them in half and remove the cores. Mix together the dry ingredients: the flour, caster sugar, vanilla sugar, and baking powder. Add the egg, vanilla fromage frais and butter. Knead the dough. Divide it in half. Cover a baking pan with one of the halves. Arrange the apples on top of it. Roll out the rest of the dough and cover the apples with it. Bake for 40 minutes. Make the icing with the cream and caster sugar. Cover the baked hot cake with it. Leave to cool down.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by Kasia (log)

[JohnT]

That sounds like a simple but tasty dessert! I had to google "vanilla fromage frais". We have "smooth cottage cheese" here that I am sure can be doctored with some vanilla to get about the same product. Thanks for posting.

[Kasia]

1 hour ago, JohnT said:

That sounds like a simple but tasty dessert! I had to google "vanilla fromage frais". We have "smooth cottage cheese" here that I am sure can be doctored with some vanilla to get about the same product. Thanks for posting.

 

@JohnT I think it should be ok however this cottage cheese should not be too dense 

Edited May 5, 2017 by Kasia (log)

[JohnT]

@Kasia - when you say "not dense", do you mean smooth as in no curds, similar to cream cheese but a little softer?

[Kasia]

10 minutes ago, JohnT said:

@Kasia - when you say "not dense", do you mean smooth as in no curds, similar to cream cheese but a little softer?

 

@JohnT it is always difficult to assess properly all these products while they have very often a different structure in all countries, but I would take a risk and answer "yes" in this case 

[ElsieD]

I don't know if this is the right place for this.  If not, please delete but in my defense I did bake today and what I made is the reason for this post.

 

I'm having a family party here next Saturday and so I don't get the last minute frazzles, I have been making things up ahead of time and freezing them.  Today I made date squares and Nanaimo bars. When I cut the Nanaimo bars, the chocolate topping cracked and a lot of it, especially around the edges splintered.  They are now not much to look at save for maybe 6 or 8 pieces.  What can i do to fix these?  Add more chocolate to sort of "glue" things over?  Take the chocolate off and apply new chocolate?   Or are they not salvageable?

[DianaB]

9 hours ago, ElsieD said:

I don't know if this is the right place for this.  If not, please delete but in my defense I did bake today and what I made is the reason for this post.

 

I'm having a family party here next Saturday and so I don't get the last minute frazzles, I have been making things up ahead of time and freezing them.  Today I made date squares and Nanaimo bars. When I cut the Nanaimo bars, the chocolate topping cracked and a lot of it, especially around the edges splintered.  They are now not much to look at save for maybe 6 or 8 pieces.  What can i do to fix these?  Add more chocolate to sort of "glue" things over?  Take the chocolate off and apply new chocolate?   Or are they not salvageable?

 

It must be a day for questions, I came here to post one as well (see below),. ElsieD I am no expert in chocolate and am sure the chocolatiers will help you in due course.  Reading your description of the cracked tops to your bars made me remember similar experiences.  If I had your problem I would take off the remnants of chocolate, if you can get them off 'clean' the chocolate can be reused.  I build anything with a flat chocolate top in reverse so I would temper some chocolate and pour that onto a flat tray lined with parchment, an acetate sheet (make sure it will take the heat if you use acetate, the sheets made for writing on look exactly like those sold for food use). You might want to block an area of your surface roughly equal to the total size you will need to recover your bars, a cake frame would work but you can improvise with anything to hand.

 

Because your bars are already made I would wait until the chocolate begins to solidify, a few minutes in the fridge can help, the place the bars, top side down, onto the setting chocolate.  Once you are happy that the chocolate is all but set take a large knife, preferably with a blade longer than your sheet of bars, carefully slide it between the cake part of the bars and then push it through the chocolate so that each bar will have its own chocolate top when turned over.

 

When you are happy that the chocolate is really set you need to turn the bars over and peel off your parchment or acetate.  With a bit of luck you will have nice smooth tops for your cakes.

 

I'm not sure what a Nanaimo bar is but this technique works well with anything that can be built up in reverse.  Thinking logically I should have Googled your recipe.  I didn't and I've typed this on my iPad so am reluctant to delete!  If the technique doesn't work for you this time it might be useful for something else.

 

You can use tempered chocolate as 'glue' if you want to try fixing what you have.

 

My original reason for visiting here was to ask if anyone can point me towards a recipe for a ganache that incorporates marscapone?  I want to make it to use as a filling for macarons.  I've searched here and generally but I haven't found anything chocolate based.  There are variations on a tiramisu theme but most are based on a butter cream idea or whipped cream.  I'm thinking a ganache with Valrhona Ivoire for the chocolate might hold up better once the macarons are filled.

 

I posted here because I thought the recipe will have applications more general than macarons.

 

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

[Anna N]

14 hours ago, ElsieD said:

I don't know if this is the right place for this.  If not, please delete but in my defense I did bake today and what I made is the reason for this post.

 

I'm having a family party here next Saturday and so I don't get the last minute frazzles, I have been making things up ahead of time and freezing them.  Today I made date squares and Nanaimo bars. When I cut the Nanaimo bars, the chocolate topping cracked and a lot of it, especially around the edges splintered.  They are now not much to look at save for maybe 6 or 8 pieces.  What can i do to fix these?  Add more chocolate to sort of "glue" things over?  Take the chocolate off and apply new chocolate?   Or are they not salvageable?

 A bit late this time but it might come in useful in the future.  How to cut nanaimo bars:

 

Click

[Kerry Beal]

22 hours ago, ElsieD said:

I don't know if this is the right place for this.  If not, please delete but in my defense I did bake today and what I made is the reason for this post.

 

I'm having a family party here next Saturday and so I don't get the last minute frazzles, I have been making things up ahead of time and freezing them.  Today I made date squares and Nanaimo bars. When I cut the Nanaimo bars, the chocolate topping cracked and a lot of it, especially around the edges splintered.  They are now not much to look at save for maybe 6 or 8 pieces.  What can i do to fix these?  Add more chocolate to sort of "glue" things over?  Take the chocolate off and apply new chocolate?   Or are they not salvageable?

What are the ingredients in your chocolate layer?

 

[ElsieD]

I used Kirkland brand chocolate chips, 4 oz.worth melted with 1 tablespoon butter.  The chips are labeled 51%cacao and the ingredient list says unsweetened chocolate, sugar, soy lecithin, vanilla.

[Kerry Beal]

33 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

I used Kirkland brand chocolate chips, 4 oz.worth melted with 1 tablespoon butter.  The chips are labeled 51%cacao and the ingredient list says unsweetened chocolate, sugar, soy lecithin, vanilla.

So the addition of the butter should help soften the chocolate - but I'd probably still score the chocolate topping to the size I want before putting them in the fridge. If you can pick the chocolate off, add another layer and score before refrigerating - these Nanaimo bars might be salvageable if it isn't too late.