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Cooking With The Pastry Queen


claire797

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[Moderator's Note: Post edited at member's request.]

The rolls are done! This recipe has ended my bad luck with yeast. :)

After the dough had risen (and boy, did it rise), it was sticky, but easy to work with so long as I kept my hands thoroughly buttered. I didn't put any flour on my hands and didn't need to.

I went ahead and did the tennis ball size blobs of dough so that I could have sandwich size rolls. These rolls would be great for a Cuban sandwich. They have almost the sweetness level of that Hawaiian bread that comes in the orange wrapper, but not quite. The most similar bread I could compare them to would be the dinner rolls you get at Luby's Cafeteria. They taste like giant Luby's dinner rolls......at least mine do.

I totally forgot I added (as suggested in the book) the pinch of cinnamon and had I not known I put it in, would never have even guessed it was there. It adds a subtle nuance.

BTW. I put some of the dough blobs on a lined tray in the freezers. I'm thinking maybe tonight, I'll take some out about 2 hours before dinner, let them thaw and rise, and bake them up fresh.

Here's a picture of the roll.

gallery_5354_457_101845.jpg

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HIP HIP HOORAY!!!!

Those look great. Homemade sandwich rolls would be great to serve this summer with smoked brisket and fixin's. How many did the recipe make?

Edited by Dana (log)

Stop Family Violence

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Dana, to answer your first question re: my flour. I store it in a tighly sealed, opaque tin on the counter, so I don't think it's absorbing moisture. I also use different brands of flour all the time, so I can't pin the problem on a particular brand. Strange problem.

My batch made about 16 big rolls (counting the ones I froze).

And yes, these would be great with brisket.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, here's a picture of the Wild Rice Chickpea Salad. It was REALLY good, but it did have a pretty strong curry flavor. Luckily, we love curry. Longhorngal and I made a few changes. We used prosciutto instead of smoked ham, white wine vinegar instead of red, and we cut the olive oil down to 1 tablespoon.

gallery_5354_457_76143.jpg

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I have talked with Rebecca and she will be joining us here in a few days as we try out her recipes.

I met her here in Dallas at Sur La Table this afternoon. This is her kick-off cooking demo at Sur La Table - part of her book tour. She said she'll be touring Sur La Tables throughout the country and giving similar cooking demos from now until almost Christmas. So if you have a Sur La Table in your town (we don't have any in Florida yet) - see if/when she'll be in your town.

I told her to look at this thread (it's a great ego booster if nothing else :smile: ). She said she had tried - and had encountered some problems logging onto eGullet. I gave her my card - and I told her to email me if she continued to have problems. If I hear from her - I'll let you know.

By the way - the stuff she was making looked wonderful. Those of you who are attending her demo tonight (which is sold out) are in for a treat. Robyn

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Okay, here's a picture of the Wild Rice Chickpea Salad.  It was REALLY good, but it did have a pretty strong curry flavor.  Luckily, we love curry.  Longhorngal and I made a few changes.  We used prosciutto instead of smoked ham, white wine vinegar instead of red, and we cut the olive oil down to 1 tablespoon. 

Thanks for posting the photos. The salad was really tasty. I will note that the leftovers were a bit dry the next day, probably because we cut the oil down. So if you're making this one a day in advance, you might want to use a bit more oil than we did. Or you could do a taste test just before serving and add more than you originally planned.

Oh, one other change - we used dried cranberries in place of some of the raisins. I have a raisin aversion, and Rebecca said in that class that she likes to sub in craisins for things. So we took that to heart!

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Oh, one other change - we used dried cranberries in place of some of the raisins.  I have a raisin aversion, and Rebecca said in that class that she likes to sub in craisins for things.  So we took that to heart!

You took it to heart, I didn't. I love raisins and wanted use even MORE raisins. In the end, we used Craisins, but sprinkled a few raisins on top.

And I agree, the leftovers were a bit dry. Rice just soaks up dressing, I guess.

I think we should switch gears and start in on some more of her cakes. I'm thinking either the carrot cake or the Tuxedo Cake, which I know will be amazing. Does anyone else want to take the lead on this? Has anyone made the carrot or Tuxedo cake?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I think we should switch gears and start in on some more of her cakes.  I'm thinking either the carrot cake or the Tuxedo Cake, which I know will be amazing.  Does anyone else want to take the lead on this?  Has anyone made the carrot or Tuxedo cake?

mmmm... Tuxedo Cake. Rather Sweet, indeed.

C797 made this cake for my birthday. She is a very very very good friend. :wub:

Then she gave me the remainder of the cake to take home. This makes her a very very very bad friend. :biggrin: I got home, stashed the cake in the fridge, and took the dog for a walk. Then I completely destroyed the benefits of the walk by having another piece of cake!

She went all out - 3 thick layers of dense, dark, chocolate cake, coated with sweet bright white whipped cream and a dark drizzly layer of chocolate glaze. 3 layers makes for a very very very tall cake. I can see making this cake even more impressive if the layers were sliced in half creating a 6 layer cake with black and white striping.

The cake wasn't as rich as her Mexican Chocolate Cake, and had a good crumb still. It was denser than a cake-mix cake but not as dense as a pound cake.

The glaze was a bit thin at initial application, but the time spent in the fridge at my house caused it to set up into a carmel-snickers-bar-inside consistency - chewy and almost "stretchy". And I mean stretchy in the best gooey-candy-bar way. That must be from the Lyle's syrup.

I am now wired on sugar :raz::blink::blink: , but luckily I am upstairs and far removed from the temptation to eat more cake. This is a great birthday cake - a special indulgence for a big day.

--LHG

p.s. We also had some sort of salad out of the cookbook. But the cake has wiped out all memory of the name of the salad. But it is a good salad, I swear!

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Glad you enjoyed your birthday cake, LonghornGal.

Here are my thoughts.

It was an impressive cake -- very tall! Imagine 3 full-size 9 inch cakes stacked on top of each other. I knew by the volume of the batter it would be tall, but the picture in the book didn't quite convey the height.

The texture was very firm. It wasn't dry, but it was more solid than some of my more tender, fudgy chocolate cakes. Again, fine. But frosting 3 tall, stacked, firm-textured slippery cakes with whipped cream is not so easy. To get them to stand straight while I was frosting, I stuck a metal skewer down the center to hold them in place.

The whipped cream frosting is simple sweetened whipped cream, but for some reason RR left out the vanilla. Maybe she' doesn't like vanilla in her whipped cream. I like it, so I just threw some in and wouldn't have it any other way.

Now the bugaboo was the ganache. It never set. She says let it rest 10 minutes, no longer or it will get too thick. Ha Ha Ha. Not even close. I had to refrigerate mine and in the end, had to add more chocolate just to get it close to a workable consistency. Next time, I'll start with 6 or 7 ounces of chocolate and maybe 3 tablespoons of Lyle's.

In the end, it made a spectacular presentation. Next time I make it I plan to use a different cake recipe for the cake part, maybe add a little gelatin to the whipped cream to stabilize it, and take special care to use more chocolate and less syrup in the ganache.

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  • 1 month later...

I knew I should've paid more attention to this thread. Let me explain more. I tested a couple of recipes from this book and loved both of them, only it just did not click that the recipes I tested as part of a recipe testing group were from The Pastry Queen. Anyways I was flipping through the book the other day and WOW everything looks amazing including the two recipes I loved (Tuxedo Cake and the Bacon-Cheddar scones). So, my copy of the book is on its way from amazon and I can properly join this thread.

The scones were excellent, almost a complete breakfast in one delicious baked item.

The Tuxedo cake is indeed amazing, and very big. The second time I made it -by request for a b-day- I only made half a recipe and it was still enough for a good 10 people. It truly is very impressive and tastes as good as it looks. The main challenge is frosting it with the whipped cream, which is much softer than regular buttercream and needs much more attention and care. I am thinking about adding some gelatin to it next time to make the frosting more stable. Here is a picture I took of a slice of the first Tuxedo cake I made:

gallery_5404_94_106304.jpg

Elie

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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Eli, thanks for the picture. Your cake looks beautiful and your ganache appears much less runny than mine was.

As for the whipped cream, my whipped cream was pretty thick (though I think gelatin is a great idea!), but the challenge was the act of frosting the cake. I couldn't get the layers to stand still. I solved the problem by stabbing a metal skewer through all 3 layers to hold them in place.

Thanks for bumping up the thread. I've been so overwhelmed with new recipes to try (I just bought Baking in America that I haven't been able to choose. Maybe I'll pull out the Pastry Queen book.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I made a few things o ver the past week from the PQ. I tried the "Peach Jam Scones" for breakfast and I highly recommend them, especially since we have some great peaches right now.

I also made the "Emergency Crostadas" and filled them with nectarines. Simple and also great. the crust is very buttery and almost cookie like. I served them with vanilla ice cream.

gallery_5404_94_126166.jpg

Last but not least I made the Tuxedo cake again for my son's 2nd b-day. As you can see my wife and I took some liberties with the final cake so it can fit the "Thomas the Engine" theme. Everyone loved it! I do not think I have ever recieved so many compliments for a cake, even from "chronic dieters". I did use 1/2 an envelop of gelatin and the frosting was much easier to work with.

gallery_5404_94_24854.jpg

Elie

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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Good looking crostada, Elie. I made them today with apples and with pitted cherries. I put the cherries in the freezer, as Paula Wolfert suggested in a thread on cherry claufuti, but I didn't roll them in sugar first. Nonetheles they did not run much at all. The apple ones turned out true to form, but the cherry ones each had one of the three flaps unflap. It did not occur to me to check in the first couple of minutes. Thus no photos.

I tried baking these on a Silpat, and while they were very good, I think they may do a little better on parchment. Also I served them on a dinner plate with a little cream poured in the space next to the three sides.

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  • 1 month later...

These have to be one of the best cookies I've ever made:

gallery_5404_94_860174.jpg

The "Chock Full of Nuts cookies". I added some chocolate chips to the batter as well. They are amazing, very nutty, rich and delicious. A co-worker ate four of them in one day when I took some to work...and these are large cookies.

Another great success are the "Essence of Orange" muffins. Very good with a lovely texture and a buttery-orange taste.

The same is not true about the "Whole Lemon Muffins", I made those twice and both times the end result is a mess of crumbly very cakey flat muffins that are almost impossible to take out of the mufin pan in one piece. I am not sure how to fix this one.

Another dissapointment were the "jailhouse potato cinnamon rolls". I think the problem is just too much liquid for the flour. Because the dough was very sticky and hard to manage. The rolls lost their shape and texture once baked. If I make those again I wil use 3/4 or less of the required water.

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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  • 11 months later...

i just got this book and am so impressed already by the recipes...and i haven't even tried them yet. they look/sound wonderful. i've never heard of this women until recently and was wondering if anyone has any knowledge of this book and what they thought of the recipes....thanks :smile:

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oh good, someone added my previous post to this old thread, hopefully more people will chime in! i'm making the white-on-white buttermilk cake for my MIL's birthday on thursday, glad to hear it got good reviews. :biggrin:

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