Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[Tri2Cook]

That's really cool jumanggy. Looks great and I bet it tastes awesome.

Thanks for the compliment. My inspiration was a song title. The band NoFX did a punk-ish, rocked up version of the song "All of Me" and titled it "Olive Me". I always thought that was kinda cool. The candied olives are just sliced black olives that I soaked overnight in sugar syrup and oven dried. They have a crunchy but not hard texture and taste sweet with a light olive flavor and a distinct background licorice/anise taste that I didn't expect to find. I did the cake like a pineapple upside down cake but used a lemon-olive oil cake and candied olive slices instead of pineapple and plated it with a bit of olive oil. The nibs are just chopped up candied olives. The mousse, I shaped into "olives" then drizzled with olive oil and a bit of sea salt.

[fanny_the_fairy]

here are some delicious florentins i recently made

just honey, caramel and almonds over a pate sucrée base

no peels or chocolate!

x fanny

[John DePaula]

here are some delicious florentins i recently made

just honey, caramel and almonds over a pate sucrée base

no peels or chocolate!

x fanny

←

Really gorgeous, Fanny! Mmmmmm.... Where's that 'Drool' emoticon?

[Lior]

Tri2cook- your Olive me is amazing! Absolutely gorgeous! And Jumanggy your plated dessert is art! I wish I could taste it-ohhhh!! It is my style!! Fanny, your floretins are just lovely! They are so perfect!! If I could live my life over I would become a pastry chef!! The beauty of all your desserts really does something to me. I could just look and look!! (well if I could I would eat and eat!!)

[fanny_the_fairy]

Olive Me:

lemon-olive oil cake w/ candied olives

olive oil ice cream

candied olive nibs

chocolate-olive oil mousse

←

Tri2Cook, that is such an inspiration. I love olive oil in my desserts and that ice cream looks very tempting.

Fanny, your floretins are just lovely! They are so perfect!! If I could live my life over I would become a pastry chef!! The beauty of all your desserts really does something to me. I could just look and look!! (well if I could I would eat and eat!!)

←

I so wish I were a pastry chef too. Maybe one day... Who knows?

[gfron1]

Wow - what a run on great work! All of it looks so amazing.

T2C - what olive oils did you use?

Jumanggy - when are you going to give the photography lessons to us all (same with you Fanny!)

[K8memphis]

...Here's my first attempt at a plated dessert and also my first attempt at an entremet. I called it a "Maya Gold", inspired by the organic chocolate bar that I wanted to play with.

That's orange creme brulee with dark chocolate orange mousse and fudge brownie base (if I had tons of money, I would've added Grand Marnier in there somewhere to drive the point home), then glazed. Decor is candied orange peel and caramel, uh, thingies. Just to keep with the pyramid-jewel-theme. Bitten through:

I'm really tired!

←

First attempt ? First smashing success, wipe the green with envy drool off the keyboard. Wowzers. How you gonna follow that one up. Whe-ew.

Fanny, that close up is killer!

Tri2Cook, umm, candied olives? Could you, without revealing state secrets, talk about those a bit?

Edited to add>> Tri2, I found your description

The candied olives are just sliced black olives that I soaked overnight in sugar syrup and oven dried. They have a crunchy but not hard texture and taste sweet with a light olive flavor and a distinct background licorice/anise taste that I didn't expect to find.

Wow again.

Edited January 12, 2008 by K8memphis (log)

[jumanggy]

Tri2Cook - I hope you don't mind if I take a cue from Rob and abbreviate your name to T2C if for no other reason than the fact that you're no longer "trying" if you're excelling!

K8 - After months of going over these forums, I picked up a little something I guess Imagine my horror when Chef Dean (chiantiglace) mentions here that no plated dessert can be simpler than his biscuit-mousse-creme brulee creation, hahaha! Well, gotta start somewhere. I've been reading Tish Boyle's Grand Finales (Neoclassic view of plated desserts) in the bookstore (it costs $73-- to much for me) and I've picked up some new inspiration, I only hope I can pull through. It's very intimidating for me! As T2C mentions above, the olives are soaked overnight in syrup and oven-dried.

I've been wanting to open a topic about dessert professional-oriented websites (either here in P&B or in Food on the Internet), but I'm more afraid of criticism for some reason (that website is crap, the recipes are bad, it hinders imagination, it's a rip-off, etc). So I'll wait till one asks..

Fanny - I read your blog post too, I've never had a Florentine but now I'm very curious (just for yours-- they look very classy). Pierre Herme does his square and half-dipped in chocolate with orange peel, right? What do you think of those?

Rob - haha, it is more a triumph of styling than anything else, and even then, during the plating I don't think a dessert has ever been told "F***!!" more times in human history (though many P&B regulars might step up and claim otherwise). GTO's given me a lot of tips.

[GTO]

Yeah, it was really all my doing. If it weren't for me, nothing Mark did would ever make it to the screen.

I'm joking, I'm not that big of a Douchebag.

[Kim Shook]

Some gorgeous stuff, y'all! I am totally humbled. Now that I finally have a working camera and have figured out how to re-size my images so that I can post them here(thanks, Chris), I thought I'd just use this thread to post all of the stuff that I made for the holidays:

Iced Almonds - amazingly easy and really, really good - I added hot sauce to one of the batches and topped with coarsely ground sea salt:

The dessert spread on Christmas Eve:

Calipoutine's Magic Brownies:

Oatmeal Raisinettes and Chocolate Chocolate Chips:

Lemon Chess Tarts & Mince Tarts (Ted Fairhead made the mince tarts):

Three kinds of fudge:

Peanut Butter Cookies & Pecan Turtles:

Sugar Cookies:

Candied Pecans:

I still have some of most of this in the freezer! Items are going every day to work with us to be finished up by someone else !

Kim

[Mota]

@ Kim Shook

When can I expect an invitation to your next party?

Fabulous desserts

[Mota]

Florida Pie from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Taken with my "high quality" cameraphone

Delicious, but, quite rich...

This is something that should be made on special occasions only as I'm sure I sent my relatives home with at least 5 extra pounds

[gfron1]

hey Mota - since I'm the only person in the universe who doesn't have that book - what is the filling? It looks really, really good.

[Mota]

hey Mota - since I'm the only person in the universe who doesn't have that book - what is the filling?  It looks really, really good.

←

Don't feel too bad, I borrowed it from the library

The filling contains 1/2 c Lime Juice(key lime if it is available), a 14 oz can of Condensed milk, and 4 egg yolks

[maggiethecat]

Here's a rotten picture of a lovely tart we made Saturday night: pate sable, creme patissiere with almonds, blackberries and blueberries. Our guests growled.

[Tri2Cook]

Really awesome stuff everybody. Fanny, you can send a box of those my way if you need to get rid of them.

Inspired by following the adventures of Kerry, Rob and Verjuice in the Silver City Culinary Extravaganza thread...

Tres Amigos

nopales and new mexico chile sorbet

prickly pear foa... errr... froth! (that was close, I almost said "foam")

mole paper

passion fruit pearls

mole soil

[gfron1]

That is out of control! You have to post recipes for some of those components. What is the paper - a thin tuile?

[Kerry Beal]

T2C you have outdone yourself. That looks fabulous.

[Tri2Cook]

Thanks! It sounded like you were all having a huge amount of fun and it inspired me to play with some southwest flavors.

nopales and new mexico chile sorbet:

pureed and strained nopales (unfortunately, from a jar), new mexico chile powder (I would have prefered to use fire roasted new mexico puree but no fresh new mexicos available here), agave nectar, a bit of lemon and a pinch of salt

prickly pear foa... errr... froth:

prickly pear juice, xanthan gum, methylcellulose

mole paper:

wonton skin painted with a mixture of ancho and poblano chile oil, cocoa, melted chocolate and a bit of cinnamon, baked until crispy

passion fruit pearls:

used the oil spherification technique for these, just passion fruit juice and agar dripped into freezing cold oil

mole soil:

the paint for the "paper" powdered with tapioca maltodextrin

[jumanggy]

WOW! Out of control indeed. I had to look up "nopales" I've never heard of it.

Most of the processes are inaccessible to me, but that mole paper is just inspired. Well done.

[Pille]

Chocolate Walnut Brownies:

[Renka]

I have such a backlog of things I've baked the last while, that I hope you don't mind if I post up some "recent" bakes.

Eggless Chocolate Cake with Coconut Buttercream Frosting

Banana Coconut Bread

Gluten- & Dairy-free Peanut Butter Cookies

Pierre Hermé's Suzy's Cake

Emily Luchetti's Black Forest Brownies with Mocha Ganache

[Renka]

More of those baked treats...

Chocolate cupcakes filled with surprises (aka a chunk of bubbly chocolate or fruit & nut chocolate) topped with chocolate, peanut butter or coconut buttercream

A personal fave:

Perfect Blueberry Scone from Cook's Illustrated

... and a look inside that scone.

Sesame Cookies

Flo Braker's S'More Squares

And my annual holiday (or any day) bake from La Pâtisserie de Pierre Hermé: Pierre Hermé's Sables Florentins

Edited January 16, 2008 by Renka (log)

[Renka]

Some of the sweets from the holiday parties/packages a few weeks back:

Not pictured here are some tartlets that were filled with caramel, covered with 72% chocolate and topped with a peg of candied orange peel

Fig-Orange & Amaretti Tartlet with Pine Nuts (I used the amarretti I purchased from Pasticceria Marchini from my trip to Venice and Dalmatia's Fig Spread with Orange)

Coconut & Chestnut Cream Tartlet

Swiss Bettinas (walnut and caramel)

Chocolate-Macadamia Nut Clusters

Boxed:

The final packages that were ready to go (after a week devoted to baking 85 dozen minature sweets) :

[prasantrin]

I have such a backlog of things I've baked the last while, that I hope you don't mind if I post up some "recent" bakes.

Why of course I mind! I mind that you didn't share any of those delicious sweets with me! And I'm sure you have more pictures in your backlog--post those, too!

Emily Luchetti's Black Forest Brownies with Mocha Ganache

←

Even though I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, this one really speaks to me! It forced me to look up the recipe on the internet (I'm a big fan of Emily Luchetti recipes--I've never tried one that hasn't been a success--but I have none of her books!), and now that I have it...

Where did you get your cherries for this recipe at this time of year? I don't even think I could get frozen cherries in Japan right now (though if I could, do you think I could use those if I drained them well?). Do you think some sort of dried cherry substitution would work for the brownie? I could soak them in kirsch to plump them up if I had to. No cherry garnish, though.