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

[jimb0]

3 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

I was pretty sure an eGullet member had mentioned them but I couldn't remember who.  I just came in from buying the PC brand strawberries and they are delicious.  Can't stop eating them.  Not quite as good as the field grown ones in season but if they have these all the time in the off-season, I'll be a happy camper.  They are my favourite fruit.

Oh great. I’d been relying on the frozen ones, which aren’t bad at all honestly, but these are really nice. And I mean in the winter? Hoo boy. 

[jimb0]

I tried some chocolate chip walnut cookies with 100% whole emmer that I milled. Honestly, very tasty but they cooled to be flaaaaaaat. Which isn’t all that surprising, but still.

[ChocoMom]

With zero time for planning out the cake for a double birthday (oldest kid and youngest kid), and being pretty exhausted from a long work week, managed to throw together a 4 layer cake with candy layers. Ran to the store twice for ingredients as the cake layers were cooling. 

Top two layers are pistachio-vanilla swirl, chocolate diplomat creme filling with chopped twix and MM's in between layers. Bottom two layers are yellow cake with the chocolate diplomat creme filling, Reeses pieces, MMs and chocolate covered pretzels.  Outside is a fluffy vanilla bean buttercream. 

Keto diet be damned. I ate a goodly amount of that frosting.  =) 

 

[kayb]

LOVE IT! I love flamingos. Never thought of decorating a cake with them.

 

[shain]

Chocolate babka (or "yeast cake" as it's called in Hebrew). I had a bit of a chocolate run-of during the shaping of the cake, so it ended up looking quite messy rustic.

The filling is mostly dark chocolate , some milk chocolate and a few chopped hazelnuts.

 

 

[Kim Shook]

5 hours ago, shain said:

Chocolate babka (or "yeast cake" as it's called in Hebrew). I had a bit of a chocolate run-of during the shaping of the cake, so it ended up looking quite messy rustic.

The filling is mostly dark chocolate , some milk chocolate and a few chopped hazelnuts.

 

 

Would it be possible to see a slice???

[shain]

7 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

Would it be possible to see a slice???

 

Sure

 

[rotuts]

@shain

 

your Babka looks like something you'd want to have ' removed ' immediately 

 

with a ' wide margin .'

 

however , the ' section ' does look very tasty 

 

hopefully w lots of butter

 

Edited May 4, 2019 by rotuts (log)

[jimb0]

@shain that looks incredible. 

 

I dunno ‘bout the rest of y’all but the stuff I make to eat myself never looks half as good as the stuff I make to give to others, haha. In that vein, I made some sugar-free peanut butter cookies. Satisfying. 

 

Edited May 4, 2019 by jimb0 (log)

[shain]

4 hours ago, rotuts said:

hopefully w lots of butter

 

And sour cream

[Matthew.Taylor]

Ok, finished this weekend’s big project. And it was a doozy. I made some old style apple strudel. I’m definitely saving this recipe. The filling is two Granny Smith, one honey crisp, and one golden delicious apple. A cup of golden raisins, brown and normal sugar, cinnamon and ginger, and melted butter. I’m not sure if I was supposed to cut the log in two, but it was too long to fit on the sheet by itself.

[oli]

9 hours ago, shain said:

 

Sure

 

Nice job, I've been meaning to make one perhaps with a few nuts to make it healthier.

[jimb0]

Just out of the oven. I can’t call them cream puffs just yet. Simply puffs, maybe. Chouquettes? Regardless. 

 

 

[jimb0]

First batch filled - coffee cream with white chocolate. 

 

 

[jimb0]

Second batch: vanilla cream and milk chocolate. I gave all of the cream puffs away on a neighbourhood FB page  as part of my recent effort to inject a little goodwill to our ‘hood. People are always so happy and appreciative; the neighbours of one lady work at McCormick and gave me a 500mL bottle of vanilla as a thank you!

Edited May 6, 2019 by jimb0 (log)

[shain]

I used the remaining brioche dough to make another mini babka. I prefer to make mini versions so that they won't stale, and so that I can have two fillings. The dough or shaped cake can be kept refrigerated for days.

This one was filled with tahini, silan (date molasses), coconut, cardamom, cinamon (just a tad) and rose water. It was washed with thick syrup after baking, flavored with lemon and rose water. Topped with pistachios.

 

 

I was careful to have no runaway filling this time

 

[Merry Berry]

 

My wife's boss has a surprise birthday party for his wife Saturday and he wants me to cater the food and dessert.  My wife adores the L'Opera cake I make and suggested it to him.  So I quickly threw together one yesterday so he could try it.  One of these days (very soon!!) I need to either get a confectionery frame or figure out how to free hand the layers of buttercream and ganache to be the perfect thickness all the way through.  I have always struggled with that, and cannot seem to devise a roundabout way to make it work.  The cake yesterday did not have to be perfect since it was just a tasting, but I want the one for this weekend to be much better than this.  Any suggestions?

 

I have confectionery bars that I have thought about using and then placing something underneath them as the layers rise.  Not sure if that would work.  I will probably try that if I cannot figure out another way.

 

Either way, I am excited since this will be my first paying catering job!!

[rotuts]

@shain

 

your mini babka looks delicious

 

Im not a pistachio fan for some reason

 

so Ill imagine it w Pecans.

[jmacnaughtan]

2 hours ago, Merry Berry said:

 

 

My wife's boss has a surprise birthday party for his wife Saturday and he wants me to cater the food and dessert.  My wife adores the L'Opera cake I make and suggested it to him.  So I quickly threw together one yesterday so he could try it.  One of these days (very soon!!) I need to either get a confectionery frame or figure out how to free hand the layers of buttercream and ganache to be the perfect thickness all the way through.  I have always struggled with that, and cannot seem to devise a roundabout way to make it work.  The cake yesterday did not have to be perfect since it was just a tasting, but I want the one for this weekend to be much better than this.  Any suggestions?

 

 

Good effort

 

I'd recommend making your layers a lot thinner - it'll make it easier to spread the ganache and buttercream evenly.  You'll also get all the layers you need (around 9 or 10) while keeping it nice and low.

 

Don't forget to soak your layers of joconde, too.  It's almost impossible to over-soak them

[Merry Berry]

Yep, my layers are typically thinner since I usually spread the batter over 2 pans.  This time, I made it just in one.  I like the elegance and look of the thinner layers.  I always brush the coffee syrup on too, but never soak.  Tends to break up the thin spongecake layers and I get plenty of coffee flavor from it and the buttercream anyway.  I do not want it too overpower the other flavors as coffee can tend to do.  My only question is getting the BC and ganache layers even.

[shain]

@Merry Berry the cake looks delicious!

 

@Merry Berry & @jmacnaughtan  - Opera cake was recently added to my to do list, so I'd appreciate recpies and tips from both of you I'd love to have the ratio right so that the cake is more nutty than chocolaty, and I obviously very jucy.

[shain]

7 hours ago, rotuts said:

@shain

 

your mini babka looks delicious

 

Im not a pistachio fan for some reason

 

so Ill imagine it w Pecans.

 

Thanks

Pecans are the superior nut in sweets, that's I agree with.

I actually prefer pistachio in salty applications, however it does complement the Levantine flavor profile I was going for. 

[minas6907]

Hi All,

I normally dont post in the dessert thread, mostly stick to the confections one, but in the past few month I wanted to finally attempt making an entremet. So here are the results! First picture in my first successful attempt at glazing (the very first time will be posted about in another thread), these were just a simple raspberry dessert, not really sure what you'd call it, but it was just a recipe on a card that came with some silikomart molds, but I was just getting a feel for glazing, I wanted to see how it would set up. The second and third pictures are my first entremet. It was a dark chocolate mousse with three layers of sponge cake and blueberry jam. I was just using things I had on hand for the first cake, and it came out ok, layers were sort of weird, I overfilled the mold, but was able to save it, but I think I got the layers more dialed in with the second cake. Pictures four and five are my second entremet. Vanilla mousse, sponge, white chocolate coffee ganache, as well as a dark ganache. The white chocolate ganache was molded in a disk, but was far too soft. so it was spread on the sponge with the dark ganache placed on top. So it was six layers total, and like I said earlier, I think I was finally able to see whats a balanced amount of layers to go into the cake. It cut cleanly and the layers were surprisingly even. Anyways, just wanted to share!

[Kim Shook]

We had Mr. Kim's stepmom and dad over for a belated Mother's Day celebration dinner Wednesday night.  Since there were 3 diabetics at the meal, I made a sugar-free dessert.  A couple of years ago, my niece made SF lava cakes and they we so good, I've made them a few times since.  Just packaged SF brownie mix, tweaked a bit, SF dark chocolate and SF Cool Whip:

 

 

You don't really get the full lava effect with these, but there is still a nice gooey chocolate filling:

[jimb0]

Rum carrot.