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

[Matthew.Taylor]

3 hours ago, pjm333 said:

 

To each his own I guess, I sell over 100 of these a week at $15.00 each.

 

Dang! Nice! Grats Man.

[Pete Fred]

A slab of Dana Cree's Nutterbutters (although I think they're now known as Nutterbuddys).

 

 

The base is peanut butter and chocolate, with cocoa nibs and feuilletine for texture. The top is white chocolate caramel ganache (oh the bubbles! 😭).

 

Very moreish. Highly recommended. Recipe here. (And a bit more backstory here, if you like that sort of thing).

[patris]

58 minutes ago, Pete Fred said:

A slab of Dana Cree's Nutterbutters (although I think they're now known as Nutterbuddys).

 

 

The base is peanut butter and chocolate, with cocoa nibs and feuilletine for texture. The top is white chocolate caramel ganache (oh the bubbles! 😭).

 

Very moreish. Highly recommended. Recipe here. (And a bit more backstory here, if you like that sort of thing).

 

These look fantastic! I have developed a habit over the last year of always having a bin of some confection or other sitting on my desk for my colleagues to enjoy - my job is fairly solitary so it encourages people to stop by my office to chat and often results in some good collaborative work - and I think I now know what the next treat will be. I imagine they will be delicious dipped in chocolate.

 

[EmmMax]

Made this riff on King Cake for Fat Tuesday. My kids loved the sprinkles, me not so much 😂

[chromedome]

22 hours ago, Pete Fred said:

A slab of Dana Cree's Nutterbutters (although I think they're now known as Nutterbuddys).

 

 

The base is peanut butter and chocolate, with cocoa nibs and feuilletine for texture. The top is white chocolate caramel ganache (oh the bubbles! 😭).

 

Very moreish. Highly recommended. Recipe here. (And a bit more backstory here, if you like that sort of thing).

 

At some point one of the major cookie-makers had a peanut butter cookie called the Nutterbutter, so I suspect that's why the name got changed.

[Pete Fred]

Another bite-size treat from Dana Cree... Coconut Haystack Cookies.

 

 

I have no idea if I made them correctly. The method is a new one on me: make a butter/sugar emulsion, incorporate whole egg and (dessicated) coconut, cook the mixture on the hob, chill the dough, roll into balls (10g for me), bake. There was plenty of guesswork on my part as to how each step should look or feel.

 

 

Anyway, I really liked them. Best served warm, I think. Initially very buttery, with caramel notes from the bottoms, then finishing strongly with coconut. Quite different from your regular macaroon. Once cooled, they're more dense and chewy, the butteriness somewhat lessened.

 

 

 

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Pete Fred said:

There was plenty of guesswork on my part as to how each step should look or feel.

This most definitely calls for a video so one can more easily grasp the consistency one is aiming for at each step.  

 After reading the recipe I’m impressed with your fearlessness.  For now, though,  I think I will stick with much easier coconut macaroons.

[kayb]

I love macaroons, but this intrigues me.

 

[pjm333]

Pop Tarts

1. Chocolate Cream Cheese

2. Nutella Cream Cheese

3. Raspberry Cream Cheese

[pjm333]

Birthday Cake / Cake Truffles !

[jmacnaughtan]

Apparently on Friday it was the Hungarian Independence Day, so it's only natural to break out one of the great Austro-Hungarian classics

 

Dobostorte

 

 

Almond crunch

Biscuits à la cuillère (lady's fingers?) soaked in apricot schnapps

Milk chocolate and caramel chantilly

Crispy crepe

Almonds

 

It's a cake I used to make a lot when I first starting baking, but it's been seven or eight years since the last one.  Traditionally, you would use chocolate butter cream, no crunch layer and at least six layers of sponge, but I prefer something a bit lighter now.

 

I still haven't figured out how to make the mandatory fan pattern look elegant, though.  Traditionally, it's another layer of biscuit covered in hard caramel, but it's a bit unwieldy and not very pleasant to eat.  A quick Google image search will show you what I mean.  I though a crepe might work, but it's lacking something - and while a chocolate décor may look OK and fit the cake, I'm against them in principle.

 

I'll go back to the drawing board with this one.

[teonzo]

An old restaurant adage says "when in doubt, put a tuile". Probably it can be applied to your case.

(I love dobos torte and think it should be much more present in pastry showcases)

 

 

 

Teo

 

[heidih]

Now you have sent me down the rabbit hole to find mom's recipe. Love it! Somewhere in this house...

[jmacnaughtan]

9 hours ago, teonzo said:

An old restaurant adage says "when in doubt, put a tuile". Probably it can be applied to your case.

(I love dobos torte and think it should be much more present in pastry showcases)

 

 

 

I have since thought about a tuile, but I think you'd run into the same issue as with the caramel or the crepe - humidity.

 

The ideal, I think, would be some kind of caramel opaline tuile to refer back to the classic, but coated with cocoa butter to keep it crisp.  I don't think I have the resources to do that elegantly, though.

 

Do you know whether Florentines are badly affected by humidity?  If not, they might have the finesse, crunch and flavour profile for the cake.

[teonzo]

7 hours ago, jmacnaughtan said:

I have since thought about a tuile, but I think you'd run into the same issue as with the caramel or the crepe - humidity.

 

The ideal, I think, would be some kind of caramel opaline tuile to refer back to the classic, but coated with cocoa butter to keep it crisp.  I don't think I have the resources to do that elegantly, though.

 

Do you know whether Florentines are badly affected by humidity?  If not, they might have the finesse, crunch and flavour profile for the cake.

 

I can't think about something that would remain crispy (without absorbing humidity) and does not involve chocolate...

Florentines have the same trouble, you should be forced to coat the bottom side in chocolate.

 

I would suggest you to use the tuile nougatine / orange tuile / lace tuile family. I never understood if this family has a coded name in French pastry, I always found it described with a boatload of different names (Ducasse calls it tuile nougatine in his pastry book, but I'm sure I've seen it with different names in other French books), so I don't think there is one. I mean the kind of tuiles you can see in this photo and in this other photo. In my opinion it would fit dobos torte much better than a tuile made with pâte à tulipe: the lace effect is really elegant; it gets a good caramel flavour; it's really thin and easy to bite (contrary to the traditional caramel). It cuts neatly while warm, so you can cook a big tuile that covers the cake, cut the round shape and then the segments. Unless you are as quick as Flash it will harden before being able to cut all the pieces, you just need to put it back in the oven for some seconds. You must coat it with cocoa butter, but you don't need an air compressor, just sift some Mycryo on both sides, not a big effort that asks for equipment you don't have, unless you want to be "traditional" in the techniques you use.

The basic tuile nougatine recipe is pretty eclectic: you can add cocoa powder or instant coffee or spices to the batter; you can add chopped nuts / seeds; you can use whatever honey you like; you can sub the orange juice with other fruit juices, or just with water. Plenty of ways to change taste/color and add crispness, while maintaning the lace effect and the thinness.

EDIT: never cut tuiles on a hot silpat, unless you want to destroy the silpat (it cuts as butter while hot). Always use parchment paper for this use. I'm sure you know this since you are a professional, but it's better to point this out if some reader wants to try it.

 

 

 

Teo

 

Edited March 18, 2019 by teonzo (log)

[jmacnaughtan]

1 hour ago, teonzo said:

I would suggest you to use the tuile nougatine / orange tuile / lace tuile family.

 

Thanks for the tip.  This is not something I do a lot of - do you have a reliable recipe?

 

I've generally tended to avoid tuiles since having to stand and roll them for hours in front of a roaring bread oven... 😓

[teonzo]

I'm a donkey, I forgot to write the recipe, sorry.

 

-------------------

 

Here is the last one I used:

 

50 g        butter
125 g     sugar
50 g       orange juice
35 g       flour (low gluten, the one used for cookies)
120 g     ground almonds

 

Mix butter (soft), sugar and orange juice just enough to combine. Add flour and ground almonds, mix just enough to combine.

Deposit on a pan lined with parchment paper, cook at 160° C for about 8-10 minutes (don't trust the timer, trust your eyes since the cooking time can vary a lot from case to case). You can adjust oven temperature and cooking time to get the color you want (they can range from light brown to dark brown, as for caramel).

This batter freezes great: I freeze it after rolling it in a log (spread the batter on a sheet of parchment paper, then roll the log by hand keeping it inside the paper, at room temperature this batter is really soft), then cut thin slices from the frozen log. Otherwise you can use a scoop to deposit it.

Beware it spreads a lot while cooking, especially if you deposit it with a scoop. If you need a large circle like in this case, then I suggest to cut many thin and small slices, then depositing them at a distance on the pan (about 2 cm one from each other, this depends on how big the slices are). Slices will spread and merge during cooking. Avoid depositing a big mound, it will cook unevenly giving poor results.

 

You can sub sugar with honey. You can sub orange juice with whatever liquid you want. You can sub part of the flour with cocoa powder (on average I'd say 10 g cocoa powder and 25 g flour). You can sub the ground almonds with whatever dry ingredient you like (nuts, seeds...).

 

 

-------------------

 

Here is the one by Ducasse:

 

100 g      sugar

100 g      glucose syrup

100 g      butter

100 g      ground almonds

 

Put sugar, glucose syrup and butter in a pan, bring to the boil. Turn off the heat, add the ground almonds. Deposit on a pan, cook at 180° C until they are colored.

 

 

-------------------

 

 

 

Teo

 

[jmacnaughtan]

Ace, thanks @teonzo 

 

I'll give that a try the next time I do a Dobostorte.  Hopefully it'll work better than last time.

[Pete Fred]

Dorie Greenspan's Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies.

 

They look quite pretty but I don't think I'll be bothering again. Couldn't taste the citrus (lemon zest, orange blossom) and the texture was quite dry and cakey. I have no idea how the NYT could describe them as "moist and rich". Each to their own, I guess.

 

 

I asked myself what would a Moroccan do in this instance, and ended up dunking them in a cup of tea, which improved matters no end.

 

Edited March 21, 2019 by Pete Fred
Spelling. Oops. (log)

[Toliver]

1 hour ago, Pete Fred said:

Dorie Greenspan's Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies.

 

They look quite pretty but I don't think I'll be bothering again. Couldn't taste the citrus (lemon zest, orange blossom) and the texture was quite dry and cakey. I have no idea how the NYT could describe them as "moist and rich". Each to their own, I guess.

 

 

I asked myself what would a Moroccan do in this instance, and ended up dunking them in a cup of tea, which improved matters no end.

 

 

This is usually when I pipe up with my typical response: "Well, you always make a trifle from them." 

They do look quite nice. 

[pjm333]

Red Wine Gummies !

[Kerry Beal]

20 minutes ago, pjm333 said:

Red Wine Gummies !

You could call them Identification Gummies!

[eugenep]

 The choux pastries For eclairs and the chocolate custard From the book the art of French pastry. There’s a chocolate fondant coating which I don’t think I’m going to do because it’s not made from scratch.  But it doesn’t taste good. I don’t think I’ll be doing anymore Choux  pastries in the future. Just because fermented bread and piecrust has so much more flavor than choux

[jmacnaughtan]

19 hours ago, eugenep said:

Just because fermented bread and piecrust has so much more flavor than choux

 

You can't really compare bread, pie pastry and choux - they're completely different preparations, for completely different purposes.

 

Try making a Paris Brest with bread or pie crust, and you'll see.

[eugenep]

3 hours ago, jmacnaughtan said:

 

You can't really compare bread, pie pastry and choux - they're completely different preparations, for completely different purposes.

 

Try making a Paris Brest with bread or pie crust, and you'll see.

thanks for the info and it's nice to hear a Parisian's take on it. 

 

I did think about it and the choux creates this air pocket in the center that allows a cream custard center filling that bread and pie crust can't offer. 

 

And I know that the choux tastes really different when fully put together with a crunch caramel coating (salambos). 

 

So I end up with a contrast of textures - crunch on the outside, airy-ness from the chox, and then a soft cream caramel in the center. 

 

This contrast of different textures all in one bite is unique to choux and the experience is good 

 

It's not..hard to make..but I don't think it's as popular in American home kitchen's because it a lot of work without that much flavor 

 

The flavor seems to come from sugar (where it's fermentation in the case of bread) 

 

But the texture's great in choux pastries. I guess preference depends more on what you care more about - texture or flavor 

 

I'm a flavor guy so not for moi my Parisian amigo 

Edited March 24, 2019 by eugenep (log)