Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Breaded chocolate bar. It was experimental, but I'll definitely be making more of them! I suspect, though, that they should be eaten while still warm from the oven.

[Darienne]

My goodness! What sweet sin is this?

What kind of chocolate bar? What kind of bread dough? What exactly are the dimensions of what we are looking at? I think I would like one. Yes, out of the oven, still warm.

PanaCan, you are a wonder!

[Panaderia Canadiense]

The bread dough is my basic honey whole wheat; the chocolate inside is a single stick (about 1/2 oz, give or take) of Universal Superior (the most widely available Ecuadorian bittersweet multipurpose drinking/baking chocolate, about 65-70% cacao), and the dimensions are about 3" long by 1/2" wide by however tall it ended up proofing. On top is black sesame. 20 minutes at 350 F with a mild egg wash.

[Genkinaonna]

And it's whole grain, and dark chocolate, so it's practically health food! Looks like a perfect breakfast to me...

[Panaderia Canadiense]

I'll let you know how that goes - I had dough left over last night after the bagels and loaf of bread, so I have 6 more breaded chocolate bars for brekkie. I shall be scaffling them on the bus on my way to Pelileo....

Oh, and I remeasured. They're closer to 5" long and 1" wide.

[Mette]

Tiramisu - the ultimate use of only 6 ingredients, and it contains the 3 primary food groups: fat, sugar and caffeine

[Genkinaonna]

Don't forget alcohol! It's truly an all in one dessert.

I got hit up (at the last minute, of course!) to make a cake for a baby shower. It's a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I got to use up some random little bits of blue sprinkles I had laying around too, so all in all I'd call it a success.

[Viktoria]

Excellent! And I love those cute onesies!

[LovesGenoise]

Great Tiramisu, one of my favorite desserts! Is it your own recipe or from a book?

Love the baby shower cake, too- you must have had fun with the inscriptions on the onesies

[Genkinaonna]

Oh yeah, I had some other ones too, but I couldn't fit them, my food coloring marker was too thick! My personal favorite was, "all mommy wanted was a backrub!"

[FrogPrincesse]

A very simple tart made with apples that my daughter picked with her grandparents in Julian a few weeks ago. The apples were very small so cutting them took a while. They were very tart which I like.

[Genkinaonna]

Beautiful, Frogprincesse! And very autumnal. I'm thinking of doing something similar for one of my thanksgiving desserts.

I made a birthday cake for a friend's two year old a couple of days ago. It was the vanilla brown butter cake from The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle. I've had the book for a couple of years and never used it. The cake was amazing! Just the smell of the butter browning with the vanilla beans was incredible. I filled the cake with ganache and strawberries and frosted it with vanilla buttercream. And of course, the obligatory disco dust and gumpaste decor...

[Shelby]

Macarons again...

Am really enjoying reading of your baking adventures, Jerry.

Thanks! The experience always feels like less of a beatdown after a 24hr breather...

I'm in awe of you. I tried to make them one time. It was exhausting. I can't bring myself to do it again lol.

P.S. I like the glitter, but I agree, it's not your color lol.

[annabelle]

My cakes are pretty pedestrian affairs after those beauties!

Nice tart tatin, FrogPrincess! I'm pleased to learn that there are still apples in Julian. The year after I had moved to Pennsylvania from San Diego, there was an awful fire there that burned most of the town and surruunding hillside. I'm glad it's been rebuilt.

[FrogPrincesse]

My cakes are pretty pedestrian affairs after those beauties!

Nice tart tatin, FrogPrincess! I'm pleased to learn that there are still apples in Julian. The year after I had moved to Pennsylvania from San Diego, there was an awful fire there that burned most of the town and surruunding hillside. I'm glad it's been rebuilt.

Thanks annabelle! Although Julian was nearly destroyed in the 2003 fires, the downtown area and apple orchards were saved. I will be visiting in a few weeks for Thanksgiving which should be fun.

[annabelle]

Julian is great fun for Christmas shopping. Be sure to bundle up!

[smilingal]

i would love your recipe for those Nanaimo bars - never had them or heard of them and they look very intriguing. thanks!

[Mette]

Great Tiramisu, one of my favorite desserts! Is it your own recipe or from a book?

Mine too. The recipe came from an Italian girl I shared house with as an exchange student in Belfast many moons ago. It is super easy and alcohol free.

250 g sponge fingers

cold, lightly sweetened espresso

3 eggs

3 tbsp sugar (and a bit of vanilla)

250 g mascarpone

cocoa

Whisk egg yolks with sugar until pale, mix in mascarpone. Whip egg whites till stiff and fold into the yolk-mixture. Quickly dip biscuits in coffee one at a time and layer with egg mixture in a flat dish, starting with biscuits and ending with mixture. Sift a thick layer of cocoa on top and refrigerate. Better after having spent the night in the fridge ( a bit of coffee liqueur has been know to sneak into the espresso....)

To help salvage Italy, I recommend Italian mascarpone (although we will all have to eat a lot of tiramisu to fix Berlusconi's mess )

Edited November 9, 2011 by Mette (log)

[Mjx]

Mette's tiramisù had me craving it, so I made one. This is the unchaste version, with cream and alcohol (I'm slipping, though, because my boyfriend noted I could have used significantly more booze).

[LovesGenoise]

Mette, thanks for the recipe.

Mjx, yours looks great, too! Now I have a craving for tiramisu as well...

[Zeemanb]

A brief reprieve from my macaron odyssey...I did do a test batch over the weekend to see what effect freezing/thawing has on them, and sure enough...lopsided batch when I took them out of the oven. The horror.

Anyway, honecrisp apples have been miraculously good this year and I found a version of a Laurent Tourondel recipe for honeycrisp apple upside down cake on the web I wanted to try (and I happened to need SOME dessert recipe for my wife's bday).

Super easy spice cake batter with grated apples- like a good carrot cake. The most labor intensive part of the whole recipe was cooking the apples in the butter/brown sugar mixture (I added some honeycrisp apple cider to add some flavor), and grinding the spices. I'm not the greatest at fanning out the apple slices in the bottom of the pan, but camouflaged that by putting more of the brown sugar goo on top.

Getting the center cooked through as much as I'd like will take some tinkering, but overall this is going to be a great addition to holiday parties. Cupcakes with this batter would be awesome and easier to cook evenly. PLUS, excellent excuse to play with some apple-spice buttercream concoctions....

edited for clarity

Edited November 14, 2011 by Zeemanb (log)

[curls]

This Thanksgiving, baked an apple pie and a pecan pie.

[Darienne]

Now THAT'S an apple pie!

[RWood]

Four of the 25 pies I made for Thanksgiving, I didn't get close-ups of the pumpkin and apple. I used Eddy Van Damme's recipe for no corn syrup pecan pie. They came out looking very nice, but haven't talked to anyone yet on how they tasted. I was shooting for not as sweet, which is what the recipe said.

[Lior]

YUM YUM YUM is all I can say: YUM!