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

[cakewalk]

15 minutes ago, pjm333 said:

cakewalk, 

  Here is my recipe..

Macaroons              300 degree oven / convection preferably 

 

165 grams 10X / confectionery sugar 

145 grams almond flour

1/2 cup egg whites

3/4 cup sugar

color

                            Sift sugar and almond flour, beat whites soft peak & add sugar slowly beat whites stiff peak. Add desired color, fold in dry ingredients in 2 stages then mix with spatula until mixture when lifted flows back into bowl. Pipe onto flexipan if you have, when piping there can be a small point/ nipple on top but should disappear within a couple of seconds but if the point stays there you did not mix the macaroon mixture enough. I bang the sheet pan on the table 2 times then let them rest for 15 minutes.  Convection ovens make better Macaroons but conventional will obviously work, I have a rotating oven at work and they take 8 to 9 minutes. When I touch the tops of the Macaroon the bottom/ feet give just a little, just play with the recipe oven temp etc. 

Patrick

Thanks very much, my recipe is similar but the devil is in the details, of course. And your oven is a bit hotter. (I don't have convection.)

My main question: just let them rest for 15 minutes after piping, not until the tops harden a bit? I've always read to let them rest until the tops will no longer stick to your fingers if you touch them lightly. That can often take up to an hour, sometimes more. Does that mess up the meringue? I bake at home, but I always notice the difference in the feet between home baked macarons and the professional ones, and I've always wondered about that. Thanks, will keep playing around.

[pjm333]

I have not rested and rested for 30 minutes plus, I find the macaroons to be most consistent at 15 minute resting time. Your very welcome !!

[jmacnaughtan]

I wanted to play around with some old bananas, so I made a tart.  I think I need to work on a new style though, all my recent desserts look alike...

 

 

Banana, hazelnut and Golden Grahams tart

 

Hazelnut and Golden Grahams crunch

Banana bread

Banana whipped pastry cream

Decoration, etc.

 

Tasty, but lacking something.  Some citrus or passion fruit would have brightened it up a little.

[Anna N]

 

Classic Brownies from The Artful Baker for my granddaughter to share with her colleagues. This is the second batch she has tasted and declared “the best brownies ever”.  

[rotuts]

@Anna N

 

they really look perfect to me !

[Smokeydoke]

Joy the Baker's Banana Rum Cake with Brown Butter Frosting from Joy the Baker Cookbook (her first one). 

 

Wow, this was good. Joy never fails me, I don't know why I don't cook her entire book, she consistently makes the best stuff.

This was made like a traditional banana bread but with rum, then frosted with a brown butter frosting and more rum. Bananas, brown butter and rum and more rum... can't go wrong with that.

The two 9 inch cakes are placed on top of each other and sprinkled with nuts. I didn't have enough frosting to coat the sides, but I think it looks better naked anyways.

It is very moist, sweet and delicious, the flavors work so well together. I'm not a huge banana-flavored-anything, but I love it here. The banana flavor is slight and it keeps the cake moist and dense.

Love it, 5 stars, definitely a repeater. Looks so pretty too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pjm333]

Rose cookie, dulce de leche cookies, pine nut cream tarts..

[caroled]

Beautiful... all 3!

 

[pjm333]

Thank you Caroled !

 

[kayb]

@pjm333 I believe I may have gained five pounds by just looking at those.

 

The dulce de leche cookies look something like alfajores. I made those a few years back for Christmas cookies. A lot of work, but quite tasty. 

 

I'd love to know more about the pine nut tarts, as I have pine nuts in the freezer.

 

[pjm333]

Kayb,

  Yes they are alfajores..The pine nut tart is just a pine nut pastry cream baked in a raw tart shell. I make like a pine nut praline and add it to the milk for the pastry cream along with toasted pine nuts to steep then strain. Thanks !

Patrick..

[pjm333]

Orange Gateau Basque & 

Momofuk Birthday Cake 

 

[shain]

Lemon, orange, labaneh, olive oil and sumac pound cake.

 

 

It's a variant of this cake that I make every year:

 

[Smithy]

You do beautiful things with pound cake, @shain. This variant looks even prettier than the original!

 

[shain]

11 hours ago, Smithy said:

You do beautiful things with pound cake, @shain. This variant looks even prettier than the original!

 

 

Thanks! 

[DianaB]

Seeing all of the creations posted here over the past 6 months or so has been a very pleasant way to pass a very cold Sunday afternoon.  As always I am stunned by the talent of those posting here, also inspired to try to develop my own baking.

 

While time for cooking has been limited until recently I really wanted to ensure that for once we would consume all of the apples produced by our two small trees last autumn.  In previous years we have tried to store some but without a great deal of success.  As I have written before I hope one day to be in a position to create an apple dessert that looks like an apple.  I’ve made various attempts using half spheres but nothing anywhere near as impressive as @rarerollingobject‘s lemons.  A new apple shaped silicone mould arrived via Amazon too late for this season’s harvest but I look forward to testing that later in 2018.

 

Most of this year’s desserts have been layered.  This first had too much biscuit and not enough fruit:

 

 

The top is Ivoire chocolate ganache with chopped dark chocolate mixed through.

 

Variations on this next attempt tasted good.  The génoise was replaced with a pistachio dacquois, the top is white chocolate with marscapone (if not it is white chocolate mixed with a bavarois cream, I can’t remember which iteration this was)!

 

 

An insufficient amount of pectin in the purée gave a sloppy look to the finished product but it tasted fine.

 

This final version had little inserts of raw apple set in apple juice and frozen in what was bought as a silicon chocolate mould.  I have had no real success in attempting to make moulder chocolates in silicon so the mounds are now usually employed to freeze things in.  Top layer is passion fruit purée set with gelatine.  The middle is half bavarois and half apple purée.  I did try to freeze the raw apple in calvados on one attempt but without success.

 

 

Hopefully I will have more time to experiment this year.

 

 

 

[cakewalk]

Good to see you back @DianaB. 

[shain]

A couple of days late with posting. Birthday. (edit:) This is a Yerushalmi kugel, made with caramel and freshly made noodles, flavored with black pepper and ginger, then baked all night long. It got a strange look due to me using somewhat too large and too many noodles. But I decided that I like the look of it, so I left it upright instead of flipping it.

 

Almost forgot the candle.

Edited February 12, 2018 by shain (log)

[cakewalk]

Well, it certainly does look like a Birthday Keter! (Crown). Is that caramelized like a Yerushalmi Kugel? Or is that chocolate? I never heard of a birthday kugel, but hey, it's your birthday, do what you want. (Mazal tov!)

[HungryChris]

Crème Brulee

HC

[shain]

1 hour ago, cakewalk said:

Well, it certainly does look like a Birthday Keter! (Crown). Is that caramelized like a Yerushalmi Kugel? Or is that chocolate? I never heard of a birthday kugel, but hey, it's your birthday, do what you want. (Mazal tov!)

 

Thanks, that's a Yerushalmi kugel (I'll edit the post to mention this). I never heard of birthday kugel before either, but making one for my birthday has become a tradition. 

Edited February 12, 2018 by shain (log)

[chromedome]

That's the best kind of "traditional."

 

[suzilightning]

Making a dairyless dark chocolate pot de creme for Johnnybird.  I'm going to put it into cups and top with some Amerana cherries and some faux whipped cream.

[ElsieD]

14 minutes ago, suzilightning said:

Making a dairyless dark chocolate pot de creme for Johnnybird.  I'm going to put it into cups and top with some Amerana cherries and some faux whipped cream.

That sounds interesting.  How do you make the pot de creme?

[suzilightning]

36 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

That sounds interesting.  How do you make the pot de creme?

  First I put 8 oz of dark chocolate(pastilles or chips or chopped block) the top of a double boiler with heavily simmering water with 1/4 cup of heated nutmilk into which I have dissolved 1 Tbsp of decaf instant coffee.  Cover and let sit about 10 minutes.  I separate 6 eggs then beat the  yolks with 1/4 cup sugar and a pinch of salt over simmering water until they double in bulk.   I whip the whites  to medium stiff peaks.  Incorporate the melted chocolate into the egg yolks SLOWLY then whisk in about 1/3 of the whites to lighten and fold the remaining whites in.

 

It's a variation on the recipe from Fannie Farmer.

Edited February 14, 2018 by suzilightning (log)