Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[AnnaC]

Meredith, your Cinderella cake looks awesome. I would have been thrilled with it at your daughter's age.

Come to think of it, I'd be thrilled now.

gfron1, your lavender pair has tons of visual appeal, and I'm feeling a little happier just imagining the scent & light taste.

[gfron1]

Meredith and Anna,

Thanks for the flowery compliments. M - I was hoping no one would notice the dixie plates since I take so much pride in my dessert dishes...I just didn't have enough of anything else

The lavender was not too strong. I used a French lavender syrup for the mousse and I purposefully held back to make it less strong, and the dried lavender in the shortbread - same thing. Ever since my orange blossom water tiramisu disaster of 2005...I am very careful with essenceful additives

[Domestic Goddess]

Meredith - MOG you made that Cinderella cake? That is awesome! I wish I was 3 again. LOL That is one beautiful cake! I love it!

[meredithla]

Meredith - MOG you made that Cinderella cake? That is awesome! I wish I was 3 again. LOL That is one beautiful cake! I love it!

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Thanks for the cake kudos, everyone!

[Alinka]

Meredithla, thanks!

Emily_R, to be honest, this was not my favorite carrot cake. It was nice but too sweet and not carroty enough to my taste. I'd rather share the recipe of mine that I like next time if you don't mind.

[Becca Porter]

Cook's Illustrated's Fresh Strawberry Pie, the first one was for my grandparents, the second for my husband and I. This pie is truly delicious...

[prasantrin]

Cook's Illustrated's Fresh Strawberry Pie, the first one was for my grandparents, the second for my husband and I. This pie is truly delicious...

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Cripes! That looks good! Now I'll just have to wait until it shows up on the American's Test Kitchen show/site, so I can make it. Hopefully strawberry season won't be over by then! (I think we're at the tail end of it here in Japan.)

[jumanggy]

I just got my medicine degree, and on our last 24-hour duty as interns my friends demanded that I make them something again, so I went with Joe's (DesertCulinary) Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes, since they looked SOO good here. There were a lot of documented firsts for me-- using a pastry bag (I piped the meringue instead of those gorgeous art deco swirls, just to try something new), and making lemon curd among them.

Needless to say, they were a hit, so thanks, Joe! I took pictures with my cellphone but I'm embarrassed to show them because they look just like regular cupcakes as opposed to the wonderful pictures on this thread.

I have some extra curd, so I've been thinking of ways to use it. Hopefully I can post it here in the future.

Becca, that pie is next to the dictionary entry for luscious. Yum!

[GTO]

Pah, regular Cupcakes or not, not many of us can say we have a degree in Medicine, jumanggy. Congratulations!

[sazji]

So if you saw the picture first, you might be thinking "why a garden picture?" What I made yesterday isn't exactly dessert, though it certainly could be used in a dessert. In another forum I came across a reference to red poppy jelly. I'd had rose petal jam and it always seemed much too cloying but poppies have such an odd fragrance that I couldn't let the opportunity pass. I have rather an "invasion" of poppies in the garden this year...

...so I raided them! This was my haul - about 100 gr of petals. (Here is the garden after the raid...next morning brought a hundred or so more.

Luckily mine have very little black on them (where the petals have lots of black, they cut that portion out and I am not so patient...)

I didn't have a recipe so I pretty much winged it.

I added the juice of a lemon and about a cup of sugar at first, and kneaded/crushed the petals. After letting them sit for a couple of hours, I added water and simmered them for around 10 minutes.

I'm sorry I can't give an exact recipe. I strained the poppies, added sugar and a bit more lemon till I got something sweet-tart, but without obscuring the aroma of the poppies. Added pectin (sure-jell, brought by kind friends from the US) and poured it into jars. Here's the finished product:

The flavor is best described as "intriguing." Everyone I have fed it to so far says "oh...that's really different...but it's good!" On the island of Bozcaada/Tenedos (and in various parts of Greece) they make a syrup of red poppies, which is basically the same thing minus the pectin. It's mixed with water as a summer drink, or poured over a white milk pudding. Some also make a jam, leaving the petals in. I'm definitely going to make a few more batches of this!

By the way, if you want to try growing your own field of poppies and make poppy jelly, the seed to by is not the one you put on bread - that's opium poppy (Papaver somniferum)! I don't think the opiates are very concentrated in the petals but depending on where you live, the law might look askance... Look for Papaver rhoeas, alternately known as corn poppy or Flanders poppy. Shirley poppies are the same species but multicolored; they won't give you the deep red color.

[alanamoana]

what a great experiment sazji! thanks for posting the photo of your garden "before" you ravaged it for the jelly

have you had hibiscus? is it anything like that? hibiscus is very tart and often found (dried) around here at mexican/latin american markets.

[sazji]

what a great experiment sazji!  thanks for posting the photo of your garden "before" you ravaged it for the jelly 

have you had hibiscus?  is it anything like that?  hibiscus is very tart and often found (dried) around here at mexican/latin american markets.

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Yeah, it was good timing. We just had two days of rain and some strong winds and half of the poppies got windthrown. (That, and the local male cat population has been holding its gladiator tournaments out there...it's that time of year...)

The petals themselves are actually a bit sweet, not much tartness to speak of. Any tartness in the jelly comes from the added lemon. The poppies have a very intriguing, musky fragrance that is very difficult to describe. It's not sweet/floral. One of the reasons I wanted to try it was that I found myself unable to "mentally mix" their scent with sweetness. In a way I still can't! I suppose if I had to advertise it and needed a slogan, it would be "a little bit of conflict in every bite!"

[Desiderio]

I made a Pecan sour cream coffee cake form the Country cook's magazine

It was delicious and moist as promised.

[jumanggy]

Pah, regular Cupcakes or not, not many of us can say we have a degree in Medicine, jumanggy. Congratulations!

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Thanks, GTO, you're very kind to say so I visited your Flickr gallery and your photos are amazing! I've only now noticed that your avatar's noodles. So much for being Asian. P.S. I'm in love with your country. Wish I could go back for a little while now that I'm a temporary bum.

Anyway, I used the leftover curd and lemons to make Lemon Olive Oil Cake (Gourmet magazine April 2006). I was amazed on how airy and tender it was.

And here's the Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes: I called them "Japanese treats" because the color palette was so sparse (pale yellow and white) and they just looked so cute!

[GTO]

Awesome cake. I always used to get told off by my Mum whenever cake like that was around, because I always used to stroke the top. It's so smooth!

[Tri2Cook]

I made this for a friend years ago and she remembered it and wants me to do it for a smallish (26 people) dinner I'm catering next friday. I'm not thrilled about doing it but she really wants it so she's getting it. I threw one together last night just to be sure it's really what she wants so it's on an ugly plate that was handy at the time. I'm feeling unworthy posting this among all the awesome desserts I've seen in this thread but I wanted to join the fun.

[Kim Shook]

I made this for a friend years ago and she remembered it and wants me to do it for a smallish (26 people) dinner I'm catering next friday. I'm not thrilled about doing it but she really wants it so she's getting it. I threw one together last night just to be sure it's really what she wants so it's on an ugly plate that was handy at the time. I'm feeling unworthy posting this among all the awesome desserts I've seen in this thread but I wanted to join the fun.

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I think that looks really good! What exactly is it? I know chocolate, of course. But what precisely?

Kim

[Tri2Cook]

Thanks! It's a layer of dark chocolate ganache, a layer of milk chocolate whipped ganache and a layer of white chocolate and vanilla bean mousse. I molded it in a mini bundt and filled the well with strawberry sauce. That's just strawberry sauce and whipped cream tinted with a little of the sauce on the plate. I made the dark ganache a little dry and grainy to give the appearance of a pastry or cookie base when you cut into it.

[apronstrings]

That'll be great for my Memorial Day barbecue! Can you share the recipe?

[Tri2Cook]

This one was out of my head, there is no actual recipe, but just use a basic ganache formula that gives a somewhat firm result. I have some plastic mini bundt molds that I layered everything in, when inverted it leaves a well at the top which I filled with the sauce.

dark ganache - I used 64% Schokinag and cream and stirred it occasionally during cooling to get a somewhat grainy texture

milk ganache - I used Callebaut 823 and cream and whipped it just a bit to lighten it, I didn't want it too fluffy and soft

white mousse - I used Callebaut white and cream infused with vanilla bean and folded in some gelatin-stabilized whipped cream

strawberry sauce - These days I usually use the one from "The Cake Bible" (because it's good) unless I have really good fresh berries available, which isn't often here, so I don't know if I'm allowed to post it.

Then I added a little of the sauce to the extra whipped cream just to tint it a bit.

Really simple but it goes over well. One of the ladies that tasted it that night said it was "better than sex". Since I've never had sex with her, that was nice to hear.

[GTO]

Thanks! It's a layer of dark chocolate ganache, a layer of milk chocolate whipped ganache and a layer of white chocolate and vanilla bean mousse. I molded it in a mini bundt and filled the well with strawberry sauce. That's just strawberry sauce and whipped cream tinted with a little of the sauce on the plate. I made the dark ganache a little dry and grainy to give the appearance of a pastry or cookie base when you cut into it.

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I love the idea of moulding it in a mini Bundt cake mould. It's really cool, I'd be more than happy with that if I were this friend.

[apronstrings]

Thanks!

[Desiderio]

They are lovely , great idea

[Domestic Goddess]

Tri2Cook - that's a beautiful dessert! I'd love to taste it!

PMS has made me do this.... Nigella Lawson's Dark Chocolate Fudge Brownies

[LittleIsland]

We enjoyed these lovely fudgy chewy Chocolate Toffee Cookies which I baked today from this recipe.

Next time I will add some cocoa for a more intense chocolate flavour.