Raspberry White Chocolate Layer Cake

Yesterday was the baby shower for a good friend. Her name starts with an M, as does her yet-to-be-born baby girl. Pink was required, and dragonflies are the nursery theme, so I decided to combine the two. The new mom is a vegetarian, so I had originally planned to make some kind of fabulous non-gelatin strawberry bavarian cream layered masterpiece, but anyone who has read my baking disaster post about agar agar knows I have not yet conquered the sea vegetable beast. When I regrouped and went a different direction, I kept seeing raspberry and white chocolate, since I knew I'd be making white chocolate dragonflies.


The cake is really a combination of 3-4 recipes. The white cake layers come from Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake from Baking: From My Home to Yours, which really is perfect (I've blogged it in March 2008 and July 2009 in various versions I've made). This time I made the cake layers according to the recipe, so they were light and slightly lemony. I wanted white chocolate in the cake as well, so I made the white chocolate whipped cream that is part of the Black and White Chocolate Cake in the same cookbook.


When I assembled the cake, I split the layers, spread each with raspberry jam, topped that with white chocolate whipped cream, and sprinkled that with fresh raspberries. I made the raspberry buttercream from The Modern Baker by Nick Malgieri, and that's the color you see on the cake. No food coloring, just raspberries!

The white chocolate dragonflies are just melted white chocolate discs that I stuck in a ziploc and piped onto parchment paper lining bent to let the wings stand up. Overall, I think the fresh raspberries in between the layers as well as in the icing really clinched the flavor.

Daring Bakers February 2011 - Coconut Panna Cotta with Pomegranate-Strawberry Gelee

Coconut Panna Cotta with Pomegranate-Strawberry Gelee
Originally uploaded by watchjennybake.

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

I am pretty certain I have made florentine cookies before, but I knew I'd never made panna cotta. There is always a subset of bakers who do alternative versions of the recipes, veganizing them, or making them gluten free. I decided this would be the month I would conquer agar agar, a sea vegetable that is often used in place of gelatin in recipes, making it vegetarian where gelatin is not.


Well, it was a great idea. I could not find the agar agar powder anywhere, and figured agar agar flakes were close enough. Well, that's not exactly the case. Agar agar powder can be handled almost exactly the same way as gelatin, sprinkled over water, and so on. The flakes do not dissolve nearly as well. So for my first attempt I made panna cotta based on Giada De Laurentiis's panna cotta recipe, substituting coconut milk for the whole milk and adding a cinnamon stick to the simmering cream. The agar agar flakes just never really dissolved, in either the pomegranate-strawberry gelee or the panna cotta. The fruit mixture had more of a gelled texture, but I imagine that was the pectin naturally in the berries, rather than the agar agar setting anything up. It was a soupy, loose-pudding gloppy mess. The flavor was good, but it was difficult to get past the texture!


Attempts #2 and #3 were even worse. This time I decided to try a chocolate panna cotta recipe from Epicurious.com, cutting back on the sugar as Mallory recommended in the challenge. At this point I had asked for help in the Daring Bakers forums, and Audax, baking genius, had recommended boiling the agar agar flakes in water for 12 minutes or so before adding them to the mixture. I tried this, keeping it at a rolling boil, and a skin of the agar agar would colllect at the sides and top of the mixture. 8 hours later, I had achieved the texture of melted ice cream. I went to the Eden Foods website for more advice, and they recommended the 12-minute trick, also suggesting you could grind the flakes with a coffee grinder before soaking in water. For attempt #3, I soaked the ground up flakes in water for 5 minutes before boiling, and I thought I was getting somewhere, because they soaked up the liquid like gelatin does. I tried combining it with the mixture I'd already made that hadn't set up, but that resulted in the melted ice cream plus gelatinous string mixture you see pictured above. Ugh, I threw it away. I didn't really succeed at my challenge to make this work, but I really want to try finding the powder. It just should not be this difficult. We won't even speak of the coffee gelee I tried to make, which never thickened beyond being very sweet coffee.


At least the Florentine Cookies were good. I didn't have corn syrup in the house, but I did have Golden syrup, so I used that in place of it and it worked just fine. Next time I'd definitely pull back on the sugar a bit, and maybe add some orange zest to the cookie or the chocolate. The recipe the Daring Bakers used was from Nestle, so you can try it too!

Bakery Review - Termini Brothers Bakery - Philadelphia, PA

I was first introduced to sfogliatelle by Alex Guarnaschelli on her show on Food Network called "Alex's Day Off," the Italian Dinner episode. Unfortunately, the Food Network posted for the pastries was severely edited and the reviews are terrible, so I wasn't about to try it, and wouldn't recommend you do either.

In the ChowHound forums, as I prepared my trip to Philadelphia, I kept running across mentions of the Termini Bros. Bakery, a south Philadelphia institution that also has a stand in the Reading Terminal Market, which would be a block or so from my hotel. I saw that they had highly acclaimed pastries, including the elusive sfogliatella, so I added that to my list of things to track down.

I went to the Market three times and never saw the pastry, because by the time I was there for lunch or in the afternoon, they were sold out. The last day I was there, I was in the Market for a committee meeting brunch, and snuck over to the Termini Bros. They had half a tray of sfogliatelle left, so I bought two to take home.

Sfogliatelle (is that plural? I confess my Italian isn't good) are interesting as pastries go. The outside is crisp with a bunch of thin layers, and it is filled with ricotta (the two I bought had a few pieces of citron inside as well). It is filling and not very sweet, but delicious. Definitely a distinct pastry, and I'm glad I got to try it.

My co-workers got to enjoy assorted cookies from Termini Bros., which included fig bars, pignoli, macaroons, and amaretti, all of which smelled delicious. They also had beautiful cakes and torrone in the case. If you end up in the Reading Terminal Market, or near any of their four other locations in Philadelphia and New Jersey, they are definitely worth a visit!

Happy Valentines Day!

Er... it was. I had returned home from Philadelphia the night before, so I asked for an easy Valentines Day. I said I would make dessert, and skimmed through Twitter for inspiration. I came across this post for Berry Brownie Trifle from Two Peas and Their Pod, and knew it was meant to be.

Yes, it was easy. But also tasty! I made brownies from a box (gasp) and added raspberry jam to whipped cream, but at least I whipped it from scratch.

Those mini trifle dishes are deceptively huge inside. We had leftovers for later in the week.

Sometimes, it doesn't have to take all day to make a holiday special. And sometimes, someone else's idea is worth using!

Pear Entremets with Biscuit Joconde Imprime

Better late than never. I had everything purchased to make the January Daring Bakers Challenge, but ended up out for the count with a bad cold for an entire week! I wasn't going to let it all go to waste though, and finally made it over the weekend.

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert. You can read the challenge and original recipe in its entirety on her blog.


I always see pears in the store in January, so I decided to take that flavor and run with it. I found a recipe for Pear Walnut Spice Cake by Gale Gand, topped it with a cinnamon bavarian cream of my own creation, and topped that with a carmelized pear. In my vision of this dessert the carmelized mixture formed its own layer on top, but my bavarian cream was too delicate and the heat melted it. I was lucky to end up with it still looking moderately okay after being thrown into the freezer.


It was a nice flavor combination, although with the joconde it ended up being like double-cake. The pear walnut spice cake was a bit heavy inside, and while it tasted good, this would have been better with a mousse or another bavarian cream. I do think this skill is a useful one, and really enjoyed making the decorative biscuit joconde imprime.

Take Back the Tea Party Trifle

Thursday, January 20, is Take Back the Tea Party Day. It is a holiday that a friend and I came up with, sick of politics, sick of animosity. We decided to take back the tea party, full of deliciousness and elegance.

What better tea party treat than a traditional trifle?

I've actually never made trifle before. And I didn't *exactly* follow a recipe, so I'm not sure how it turned out yet, but I think the picture makes it look like a giant dessert goblet. I looked through hundreds of pictures and recipes and they all seemed to include some kind of cake, some kind of fruit, and some kind of creamy mixture somewhere in between custard, pudding, and whipped cream. Well, those things I can do.


First, I started with pound cake. Since one of my goals for the year was to find a go-to pound cake, I went with the Million Dollar Pound Cake recommended by a friend, Laura G2. I did something wrong, clearly, since it didn't come out of the pan very well. It is a good thing I'd intended it for trifle all along! I trimmed off the top, sliced it up, and sandwiched strawberry jam in between the slices. The slices got diced into 2" cubes.

I made a cooked vanilla pudding, and after it cooled slightly, it was mixed with some fresh whipped cream and a jar of lemon curd. I cooked some frozen cherries and blueberries (mid-winter not being the most seasonal of times to decide to make a trifle!), and used the juice from that to soak the cake layer. I didn't want to use alcohol this time around because of all the pregnant women at work. Nobody wants to be excluded from a tea party!

The fresh fruit I saved for the outward facing layers- strawberries on the bottom and kiwis around the top. I basically layered cake - fruit - cream, repeated, and took it to work to stick in the fridge until tomorrow. It must weigh 25 pounds. I hope there isn't too much liquid inside, but it will probably still taste delicious.

Because that's what tea parties should be... delicious.

Check out the Worldwide Take Back the Tea Party Event, and feel free to join in on the celebration!

Candied Kumquat and Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

Last year, I purchased kumquats and they went bad before I ever did anything with them. This year, I was determined to do at least one thing! I had come across a recipe for orange cheesecake with candied kumquats, which seems to be the go-to kumquat recipe on the web. I've heard other suggestions, like kumquat screwdrivers, which also sound delicious.

Ever since last April when I hosted the Daring Bakers Cheesecake Challenge, I knew I'd want to return to the delicious and creamy cheesecake recipe provided by my good friend Abbey from Tastes Like Burning. While I used the candied kumquat recipe in the original link in this post, I adapted Abbey's cheesecake recipe for this dessert. I candied the fruit first, and then used 2 tbsp of the remaining syrup instead of the lemon juice and liqueur in the cheesecake. Then I took about 1/4 cup of the candied fruit and diced it up, folding it into the cheesecake before baking (I was baking a 6 incher this time around).

Honestly, I felt like the cheesecake was the best part. The candied kumquats on top threw off the balance a little, especially since their flavor was already so present in the cheesecake itself, and the sweet-tart was lovely with the creamy cheesecake.

At least now I know what to do with the mysterious miniature citrus fruit that appear every winter. (Now I just need some ideas for what to do with the candied kumquat syrup! Maybe some kumquat soda is in our future....)

Julia Child's Pound Cake (Le Quatre Quarts)

One of my baking resolutions for 2011 is to find a go-to pound cake recipe!

I got a lot of great recipes from people who read the blog or follow me in Twitter, and I'm excited to try them over the course of a year.

I was thumbing through the second volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child since I got it for the holidays, and stumbled across a cake recipe called "Le Quatre Quarts." I knew that I would have to start with Julia!

It isn't quite exactly pound for pound on the ingredients, and the recipe does have a few interesting quirks. First of all it is only large enough for an 8" round pan, so if I made it again I'd have to work with the ratios to fill a bundt or loaf pan. (It might just need to be doubled). The most interesting thing was how it is mixed - first the eggs, sugar, and citrus zest. Then the flour. Then the butter, which has been whipped into a mayonnaise texture. I was skeptical but followed her exactly, and was pleased with the results.

The best part of the cake didn't end up in the served dessert - it domed up too much and had to be trimmed off, but that part was crackly and sweet. The rest of the cake had a fine crumb but wasn't dry. I made Julia's Creme du Citron from the next page to fill the middle of the cake, and it was like a creamy sweeter lemon curd.

Nursery Cupcakes

We seem to have a lot of babies coming at work (don't drink the water). For today's baby shower, I made little miniature cupckes, some with little faces! Most had little kissy mouths, but some looked like they might be crying or singing. I got the idea from What's New Cupcake? a book with cute ideas that relies a little too heavily on pre-made foods.


With the rest of them, I just did pink swirls and little pearls.

Congratulations to Andrea and Dave!

Baking Resolutions for 2011

I'm all over the blogosphere making resolutions for 2011 today. I've always been a big believer in setting goals, but last year's resolutions were pretty vague or huge, and I didn't do them very well. This year I'm setting resolutions for gardening and cooking as well, because there are some things I want to do!

Picking five baking resolutions was difficult. I want to try the ones I failed this year again, but I've made some of them more specific so I'm more likely to accomplish them. I could use some feedback on #5, and you'll see why!

1. Find a go-to pound cake recipe
Now that I'm a southerner, it is almost blasphemy that I don't have a go-to pound cake. I've been collecting recipes this year from Facebook and blog feeds, and I'm excited to try a few of them out. I don't mind using someone else's recipe as my go-to recipe, but maybe I can tweak one and really make it my own. Most traditional pound cake recipes are passed down, so if you want to pass me yours, please do!

2. Trifle - make one.  
Yeah, this might look familiar since it was an unfulfilled goal for 2010. Poor, lonely, anxious trifle dish. Luckily, this will pair nicely with resolution #1. I also have my "Take Back the Tea Party" event coming up on election day, so that would be more than appropriate!

3. Poured fondant.
Last year I made a pretty nebulous cake resolution. This is one of the ways I've broken it down. I've never made poured fondant, and I want to find a classic recipe to have in my back pocket. I would accept using it on cupcakes or to make petits fours, but at least one of those things. Luckily I have some baby showers coming up that this would be perfect for.

4. Rolled fondant
It's baaaaaack! I have only made the marshmallow variety, and have fully intended to make the classic rolled fondant. I've even had long conversations through blog commenting about it, and know whose recipe I want to try first. I just need to DO it.

5. Savory breads 
This is the one I really need help with. I need to find a way to make it more specific, or quantifiable. I don't want to do multi-day sourdough beast bread yet, maybe in 2012. First I just want to get more comfortable with yeast baking, kneading, rising, the usual. I have Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I have Baking with Julia. I have the Bread Baker's Apprecntice. I have the recipes but don'to know where to start. Any suggestions? I made a similar resolution last year and did nothing!

There it is. Resolutions I rejected but might happen anyway (because once they attach in my brain I can't get rid of them) include the brioche tart that made Julia Child cry, raw cheesecake, and gum paste flowers.

What are your baking goals for 2011?

Happy New Year!

It has been quite the year for baking projects. I just wanted to take a quick moment to wish all of my dedicated readers a happy new year! Pretty soon I'll post my culinary resolutions for 2011, but today is all about celebrating.

For our celebration I decided to make one of the desserts from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. As my readers know, I think she is one of the Goddesses of Baking, and I was really looking forward to this cookbook. It hasn't disappointed me, and I'll review it soon once I've tried more recipes from it.

On to the cake! I chose the recipe for Michael Rostang's Double Chocolate Mousse Cake because she says that it is one of her favorite desserts, and I loved that you could serve it three different ways. The entire cake is made out of chocolate mousse, and first 1/3 of it is baked as a sort of crust. From there you can do three versions - one where you pile the rest of the mousse on top and serve it as is (but chilled), one where you bake the rest of it and serve it warm (still with two layers), and the last, which she said she preferred, where you bake the two layers but then chill it before serving. I wish I'd had the pan the recipe calls for, because I only had a 10 inch springform, so my layers are quite a bit thinner than they should have been. Other than that, I always trust Dorie's judgment, and served it the third way. It was delicious - creamy and rich! I was worried it would taste just like a flourless chocolate cake, but it is a lot lighter than that in texture, and the bittersweet chocolate did not taste too bitter (and I sometimes find that to happen).

I'm not going to provide the recipe here. Around My French Table should go right next to your two volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. :)

What did you make for your holiday?

Checking in with Culinary Resolutions of 2010

Back on January 2nd of 2010, I decided to make culinary resolutions for the year. I figured with the amount of time I spend in the kitchen, and the fact that I love baking, would mean that finally I would be making resolution I could keep!

Wrong! So wrong! Well, at least not all of them. I have listed the original goal in italics and discussed whether or not I followed through, and if so, how.

1. Make the third of the laminate doughs. I have made danish pastry (twice, actually) as well as puff pastry. 2010 will be the year I tackle croissants!
I am proud to say that I actually made croissants in 2010, and they were a huge success! After making puff pastry I swore I never would again, but croissants would be a pleasure. The only problem is, they are best fresh, and a person can only eat so many! And that's more than that person (ahem) should be eating....

2. Bread baking - I was given The Bread Baker's Apprentice for Christmas and I am so excited to get started. Looking back on several Daring Bakers Challenges, I have made his lavash, pizza dough (I make this all the time now!), and sticky buns. I'm looking forward to spending more energy learning about savory, non-sweet, yeast breads.
Other than pizza dough, I failed on this resolution. Pizza dough doesn't count to me because I've made it before for a Daring Baker Challenge, and continue to make that recipe frequently, as it was perfect. Not too long ago I made pizza dough from a different recipe that was the final straw for my mixer. I've made several sweet yeasty things, but that was not the resolution.

3. Cake decorating - I need to buy my own decorating supplies, or get my Mom to send me my old stuff from back when I first took the Wilton classes. I made marshmallow fondant in 2009, but I want to tackle the more standard stuff. I also want to try modeling chocolate. I have no aspirations to become a cake decorator, since technically I used to work as one in a bakery without all the fancy stuff, but I definitely feel I have a lot to learn!
Well, um, my Mom sent me my cake decorating supplies in November, and that is as far as I really got. I did get inspired to do some chocolate work as a cake decoration, a fairly easy technique that I tried again for a baby shower. Otherwise, I seemed to make cakes that didn't need decoration. I made cakes, okay? Just not pretty ones. There was the mocha study day cake, my diva chocolate cake for my birthday, Racines Cake from David Lebovitz's new cookbook, and many others. Full confession - I've had my old cake decorating supplies plus another box of pans of all shapes for two months and they remain unopened. Guess what is going on next year's list!?

4. Trifle. I have a beautiful trifle dish that has never been used. Shameful!
Yeah. Still shameful. I had every intention (even every ingredient) to make pumpkin gingerbread trifle for Christmas, but by the time we got there, after cookies and candy and stollen and birthday cake, I just couldn't face any more sweet stuff. Someday....

5. To be intentional about seasonal ingredients. Horror of horrors - last year I skipped both the peach and apple seasons in my area, which are possibly the best fruits coming out of southern North Carolina and northern South Carolina. Really, no excuse. :)
This year was the first year I had a garden, so I had seasonal ingredients up to my eyeballs, but not a lot to bake with (until I get more into savory baking, see #2).

However I still managed to do a good lot of baking with seasonal ingredients. My rhubarb fling included strawberry rhubarb pie and a rhubarb tart, but my raspberries that started out so promising were completely devoured by Japanese beetles, as were most of my strawberries.

July saw blueberries (some from my own garden) being made into crumb cake and breakfast cake. I did manage to throw my own herbs into a sweet/savory sweet potato pie.

During Apple season, I actually went to two different apple orchards around the Hendersonville, NC region. Part of the trouble is I often repeat recipes I have always made, and didn't photograph everything. I made my Grandma's apple cake recipe, crock pot apple sauce, and then did manage a few new things - caramel apple cake, Nick Malgieri's Breton Apple Pie (so pretty), and a Torta di Mele for the November Daring Bakers Challenge. I did discover in all of this that I have a new favorite baking apple - the mutsu! It is firm like Granny Smith but not as tart, and I adore it. So despite my apparent bypassing of peach season yet again, I feel like I accomplished this culinary resolution fairly well.

Despite my failings, I feel like I kept these in the back of my mind throughout the year. What is a resolution for, after all? I may need to make the cake one more specific or narrow if I want to continue with it, but stay tuned for 2011's culinary resolutions!

Holiday Cinnamon Rolls

One of the luxuries of the holidays, at least for me, is getting to do leisurely baking projects, even if something takes three hours on a morning before we can eat it. Who cares? There is coffee, there are books to be read, and snow to watch.

This year Nathaniel wanted cinnamon rolls for his birthday, and so I went off hunting for a good recipe. I wasn't enamored with the one I made back when I worked at a bakery, as it was rather bland. Sticky buns came up because I made them back in 2007 for another Daring Bakers Challenge, but they destroyed my oven and I wasn't anxious for a repeat of that mess. Plus they really do depend on nuts to balance out the sweet, and I was hoping for something more tender.

I ended up just doing a search for "best cinnamon rolls recipe" in Google and found two contenders - Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls and a Cinnabon Copycat Recipe. When I'm going to make a recipe from an internet site for the first time, I take advantage of the reviews. I knew both of these recipes were probably good because over 300 people had reviewed each of them and they still were five stars, which is always a good sign. But I was seeing some trends in the recipes. There were several comments that Alton's recipe was too dense, that they ended up too hard, too browned. I didn't want to risk it, as I really wanted a tender recipe. The reviews with the other recipe mainly took issue with the directions, which were terrible, not even including information proofing the yeast or a second rise, but said that with the correct steps the recipe itself was good. I also didn't want to use margarine, and thought some of the ingredients needed to be clarified.

(Does anyone out there have their own favorite cinnamon rolls recipe? Leave a comment and let me know!)

So with no further ado, here is the recipe that I used. The ingredients come from the recipe on Food.com, but the directions are mine.

Holiday Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:
* 1 (1/4 ounce) package dry yeast
* 1 cup warm milk
* 1/2 cup granulated sugar
* 1/3 cup butter, melted and cooled slightly
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 eggs, lightly beaten
* 4 cups flour

FILLING
* 1 cup packed brown sugar
* 2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
* 1/3 cup butter, at room temperature (NOT melted)

ICING
* 8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
* 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
* 1/4 cup cream cheese, at room temperature
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
* 1/8 teaspoon salt

1. In a small bowl, heat milk until pleasantly warm, not hot. Sprinkle yeast over and let dissolve, about five minutes. The mixture can be stirred if some of the yeast on top isn't mixing in. You want to see it become a little gooey, maybe with a few bubbles on the sides, to make sure the yeast is working.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and mix briefly. Add in melted butter, milk and yeast mixture, and eggs. Mix with wooden spoon or paddle mixer until incorporated. Switch to kneading hook or remove mixture to a floured surface.

3. Knead dough for 5-8 minutes by hand, or in a mixer at low speed for 5 minutes. Dough should be soft but not sticky, and hold an impression when it is poked.

4. Lightly oil a bowl. Place dough inside, first covering the top in the oil. Cover the bowl lightly and let it rise in a warm, draft-free place for 2 hours, until doubled in size.

5. Punch dough down. Roll out to a rectangle, about 21-24 inches by 16 inches. Spread softened butter out on dough. Cover entire surface. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon mixture, except for the last inch along a long side. It will be pretty thick, use all of it and pat it down evenly.

6. Roll tightly from the long side that has filling to the edge, ending with the piece just with butter, and use that to seal the tube. Rest it on this part to slice.

7. Slice 1-inch rounds, discarding the very ends if desired. Place in greased pans - one 9x13 or 3 cake rounds, leaving room for dough to expand. At this point the dough can be covered and chilled overnight, and taken out for an hour before baking. If you wish to bake immediately, cover and let rise until double or at least poofy, 1.5-2 hours. Remove the covering before baking!

8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Check after 10 minutes. Depending on the thickness of the rolls, you will probably need 5-10 more minutes. I like to take mine out when they are just getting to be golden brown on top and are barely cooked through inside (but not doughy).

9. While they are baking, mix the icing together until smooth. Spread on rolls immediately when they come out of the oven. Serve hot!

Happy Birthday!

Okay, it isn't what you think. This is not a happy birthday Jesus cake. My husband Nathaniel was born on December 24th, several years ago. For years and years, his yearly birthday cake was the chocolate chip mint roll cake from Baskin-Robbins. Back in 2007, I begged him to let me make something better, but that pretty much failed. This year, he had already agreed to let me make his cake before learning that all three Baskin-Robbins in Greenville closed.


I wanted to still pay homage to the chocolate and mint combination, so I used a Mint-Chocolate Roulade recipe from Southern Living for the cake part. I've been obsessed with Charlotte Royale since considering it for the Daring Bakers challenge I hosted (I ended up picking cheesecake), and I often return to this beautiful Charlotte Royale on Axis of Aevil. I didn't even read their directions, just modeled what I was doing after their pictures. I froze the roulade to make it easiest to slice, then lined a random bowl with plastic wrap and then slices of the rolled cake.


Inside are three pints of ice cream. The one at the top is Haagen Daaz Mint Chocolate Chip. In the middle is Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar, and on the bottom is Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. True, I could have really been challenged by making my own ice cream for this, but I wanted it to be good, and I haven't really sorted out the texture in my homemade ice cream yet.

I thought this was terrific! At the end of the day it isn't that time consuming, particularly if you use store-bought ice cream like I did. If I made it again, the one thing I would change is the filling for the roulade. I made whipped cream and it turned pretty icy in the freezer.

After the fact, I realized this was almost exactly what the July Daring Bakers Challenge had been, even though I missed it. To show I was at least trying to do the recipes, here are my required blog-checking lines - The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

Daring Bakers December 2010 - Stollen

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

I enjoyed this challenge! I knew I would need to bake this for people other than the man I married, who refuses to eat fruit in bread. Haha! Luckily my work holiday party was last Friday, so I planned to bring a stollen wreath as my contribution (we do potlucks or pitch-ins now, which works great because we have a lot of great cooks in the library!).


I'm still not a master of yeast breads, but I really enjoyed working with this dough. It had a great feel to it, and I kneaded it by hand. I recently spent $150 getting my KitchenAid repaired and I'm too nervous to have it do any heavy labor. That's okay, because I actually enjoy kneading the dough, and I think I get a better sense of when it is ready when I'm touching it.

The major change I made with the recipe was simply in what fruits I used. I substituted dried cranberries for the raisins, and used dried apricots rather than citrus, although I kept the orange zest in the recipe. I also didn't have rum, so I soaked the fruit in a mixture of Grand Marnier, orange juice, vanilla extract, and almond extract. I also used Oregon hazelnuts, roughly chopped, because I have a bunch to use and I love their flavor!


The picture of the slice is a bit blurry, because I'm still getting used to a new camera. I loved the tenderness of the stollen, and how it could have so much flavor while still being dense and rich. I snagged a bit of the leftover to take home to play with, and it was great toasted!


Then someone in the Daring Kitchen forums mentioned that they were going to make french toast, and I thought that was a great idea! I'm a fan of using what I have on hand, so my custard was made from eggs and Silk nog that I needed to use up, and it made my fruity stollen into amazing french toast!

I talked Nathaniel into trying a bite. I thought it was so delicious, not dried out like some store-bought stollen I've tried, that surely the fruit would be secondary to the sheer beauty of the stollen I had made. Hahaha. He looked like he wanted to scrape his tongue off.

I wanted him to have a good experience with it, and had an idea about infusing extra flavor into the dough during the milk scalding stage, so I pledged to make a version without any fruit or nuts. I also read a bit more in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and Peter Reinhart pointed out that the formula for stollen dough is almost identical to that of panettone, meaning you should be able to use the doughs interchangeably in the various shape options. This sparked another idea, of making little individual panettone with my new dough.


While the milk heated, I added a cinnamon stick, and also added some instant coffee to it before it cooled down. I added about 1/3 cup of chocolate chips and cinnamon chips to the dough while I kneaded it, and these all melted and made ribbons of darkness in the dough. I added an additional 1/3 cup of the chips to the various portions of dough before forming it. I made half into mini-panettone (using Reinhart's idea of just putting them in a muffin tin), and the other half into one typical stollen loaf.

Oh how I wish it had turned out! The coffee and cinnamon were pretty much in the background, and except for in the bites containing chocolate, the dough lacked the richness and moistness of my first stollen. I should have found a way to compensate for the alcohol-soaked fruit. I could tell the dough was too dry, but in my head this translated to it not needing to bake as long. Bummer.

It will still make good french toast....

Orange Nutella Pinwheel Cookies

Over a year ago, I saw a recipe for Orange Nutella Pinwheel Cookies, and bookmarked it for "later." It made such an impression that it was in the back of my mind as I started planning for holiday baking this year, and I went back to look for it (here is another blogger who made them without the orange, and her pictures are stunning).

The dough for these is a little persnickety, but the end result is so good! And the first time you slice your knife into the chilled pinwheels and see how perfect they look, you will know it was worth it.

I changed the recipe a tad by using almond extract (by necessity, I was out of vanilla, but I think it was a nice touch), adding some ground hazelnuts to the batter and decreasing the flour slightly, and sprinkling ground hazelnuts on top of the nutella before rolling up the dough.

I will probably add this to the holiday cookie list. This year, I made two batches instead of making sugar cookies, gingerbread, or wagon wheel cookies!

Gifts for Bakers - Gourmet Cookie Book

I think if I had my way, this cookbook would be called the Gourmet Retro Cookie Book instead of just the Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Recipe from Each Year, 1941-2009". I loved the idea of having one representative recipe from each year for almost seventy years, and it was really interesting to see words change (cooky used to be the preferred spelling, crazy!), recipe layout change, and how technology has made some recipes that used to be complicated so simple.

The recipes are printed as they were printed in Gourmet Magazine through the years, but each one has editorial notes. I found these to be very helpful, often including information on using appliances that didn't exist when the recipe was published to make it easier, as well as hints as to what a step should look like, a shortcut, a substitution, or freezing/bulk suggestions. I definitely followed some of the editorial suggestions in both recipes I made, and they added a lot of clarity to the process.

The pictures in the book are interesting too - everything is an aerial shot, very simple, but it is always nice when a cookbook has a photo for each recipe, and this one does.


The first recipe I made from the Gourmet Cookie Book, was the very first recipe, Cajun Macaroons, from 1941. I'm still not quite sure what makes them "Cajun," exactly, but they appealed to me because I had egg whites in the fridge and almond paste in the pantry, and beyond that they only required three more ingredients.

These cookies were fantastic. They look a little bland, but they have so much flavor, and an interesting texture with a crunchy outside and chewy centers. Super easy in my food processor, and I'd make these again in a heartbeat.


The other recipe I made was from the 1990s, Mocha Cookies. According to the Gourmet Cookie Book, the 90s were the chocolate decade. These are shamelessly rich and super addictive, and I will make these again for sure. My only complaint is that the recipe makes it sound like you should mix them as little as possible (I always assume that with the "fold" word instead of "mix") but I had a few that didn't taste sweet at all because the unsweetened chocolate was the prominent ingredient. So when I make these again, which is going to happen for sure, I'll just mix it all a little better.

I wondered if buying this cookbook was redundant, because so many recipes from Gourmet magazine are traditionally available on Epicurious.com. But from what I can tell, the recipes on that website don't go back this far, and I couldn't find either there. This is a great retrospective cookie recipe collection that I think is a great addition to any kitchen. And honestly, who doesn't feel a little nostalgic about the demise of Gourmet Magazine? Retro... nostalgia... it suits baked goods somehow, especially during the holidays.

And just for full disclosure, I did get access to this title through NetGalley, so thanks to them for letting me take a look!

Daring Bakers November 2010 - Crostata

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.


Earlier in the month I had some Mutsu apples from Justus Orchard in Hendersonville, NC. I'd been wanting to do something interesting, and along came the Daring Bakers Challenge. All it said was that I needed to make the crust recipe provided, in a tart mold, and then I could put pretty much anything I wanted to inside.

I kept finding recipes for Torta di Mele (Apple Tart in Italian!) but most of the recipes were in Italian too. Along the way I kept running across recipes for Alsatian Apple Tarts that looked more along the lines of a crostata type tart - thinly sliced fruit, custard, and a rich crust. I ended up making Dorie's version since I had that cookbook at home, but used the challenge version of the crust.


The recipe was a bit confusing, because I had way more apple than one layer's worth, and other pictures I'd seen of other versions seemed to have multiple layers. So against my instincts I added another layer. This meant the layer on top wasn't covered by the custard and had a much denser texture, and some of the edges browned, and it probably wasn't as picturesque as it could have been. Still, it tasted good!

Gifts for Bakers - As Always, Julia

I was lucky to get a review copy of As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, edited by Joan Reardon, through NetGalley. As if I needed to love Julia Child even more! But seriously, for people who are already fans, reading the letters between Julia and Avis will be a treat. Most of the letters are from the 1950s, when Julia was relocating frequently and working on what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Avis was smack in the middle of the politics and culture of New England.


I was amazed yet again by the sheer number of times Julia would tweak each recipe, including the Reine de Saba, which I made two summers ago for my Julia Child party.

I learned a lot, and laughed a lot. It comes out December 1. You can read my longer review here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Since we don't eat meat, I tend to plan something different every year for Thanksgiving. Last year was Native American food, 2006 was mushroom crepes, 2008 was peanut butter and jelly since we were on the road to a cruise in Florida.

This year I had my heart set on Mexican food, but recipes I hadn't made before. It all started when I came across Post Punk Kitchen's recipe for Butternut Rancheros, which I could tell from her pictures would be fantastic (and was!). But that didn't seem elaborate enough, and I knew this was the time to tackle tamales. Thanks to the loan of a few Bayless cookbooks and some steaming baskets, I was ready to go! (I made the spicy mushroom tamales from Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen, and made the masa recipe from the bag.)

So what do you have for dessert with Mexican food? I had bookmarked a recipe for pumpkin pie flan, but I knew my in-laws were bringing a Deep-Dish Pumpkin Pecan Pie from Strossners. This baker couldn't NOT make a dessert on a holiday, however.


My alternate dessert was Mexican Chocolate Pots de Creme, a recipe from Stephanie Prida at FoodandWine.com. It was simple but so worth it! It takes the flavors of the chalky Mexican chocolate tablet and transforms it into a decadent, smooth dessert. I thought I had overcooked it, but after putting it through a sieve everything seemed just fine.


The other somewhat sweet recipe I made was Spicy Pumpkin Seed and Pecan Brittle, a recipe I picked up from SeriousEats.com. Although I figured out too late that I don't have an actual candy thermometer, merely a thermometer that goes up to 220, I guessed at the 300 and it turned out fine. This candy is an amazing combination of salty, sweet, spicy, and crunchy, and the flavors seemed perfect for this meal and for fall!