Daring Bakers Challenge

This months Challenge was hosted by MeetaK of What's for Lunch Honey & Tony, who kindly choose Chocolate Eclairs! I'm a big fan, so I was excited about this challenge to say the least. 

I decided to wait until all of my family was having our annual end of summer gathering, mainly so that I wouldn't eat them all myself. The recipe we used comes from Pierre Herme, a famous French baker. Well as luck would have it, my brother-in-law has actually eaten Chocolate Eclairs in Paris at Pierre Herme's patisserie ! Why does this always happen to me? When we were making Dorie Greenspans Perfect Party Cake, which requires a French Meringue Buttercream icing, a family friend who just happens to also be a French pastry chef (!) stopped by that day! I mean really, can't a girl get a break! 

So I made the Pate a Choux which turned out wonderfully, and was remarkably easy as far as I am concerned. My eclairs baked up perfectly, but they required more time than the recipe called for, which always seems to happen to me. I decided to make a typical vanilla pastry cream, which I adore, and to top them with the traditional chocolate sauce. 

I enjoyed making the eclairs a lot, and I'm thankful to Meeta & Tony for picking such a great recipe so that I could test my baking skills yet again! Check out Meeta's blog for the recipe! 

Addtion: I was doing too many things yesterday while posting my challenge, and I totally forgot to put in that my brother-in-law loved my eclairs! He said they were just as good as any others that he has had, even in Paris - but I think he was just being nice!!  

Daring Bakers

My Daring bakers June challenge will be posted shortly! I am on vacation and trying to stay as far away from my computer as possible! I promise to post my disaster in the next few days! Check back soon! 

Here is a sneak peak of my "braid." My sister Rebecca says it looks "rustic" and delicious. I'm still deciding whether or not I'm offended! 

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Lovely Cheesecake Lollis!

So I'm super late on my Daring Bakers Challenge! I was out of town for a family funeral on the reveal day, and I'm just now getting around to posting! Sorry to my fellow DB's! 

This month's challenge of Cheesecake Pops was hosted by Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell. Visit both of their blogs to see what they came up with, as well as for the recipe! The original recipe comes from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Goey by Jill O'Connor. I decided to bake them for my boyfriend because he loves cheesecake! 

A 10 inch pan is the recommended pan size, but after spending so much money on 5 bricks of cream cheese, I wasn't about to go out and buy a new pan. So I bought an aluminum cheapy from the grocery store, and hoped it would do. The pan ended up insanely full, but luckily it didn't rise all the way out of the pan! 

Some fellow DBer's had trouble with the bake time, and I did as well. The recipe said it would bake from 35-45 minutes, but mine took over an hour to brown and set up. But it ended up tasting yummy, so that's all that counts. 

I had purchased a scoop for this challenge, and was worried when I heard that others had to actually roll the balls out, but was still hopeful that my scooper would work. I was wrong! 

I love cheesecake, but it’s not something I particularly wanted to wear. My hands were on the verge of suffocating as every inch of my skin was plastered in cheesecake! I found that washing my hands in between every 7 or 8 balls made them easier to roll, but of course then my soap was covered in cheesecake greasiness that I wasn't sure how I was going get off. How does one clean soap? Is it even possible? I figured that was existential question I would leave for another time when I was not covered in cheesecake and debating on just covering myself in chocolate for my boyfriend.

After chilling the rolled buddies, I melted my wafer chocolate and started dipping. I used milk chocolate, and in hindsight I should have gone with dark chocolate. They were just too sweet with the milk chocolate, but they still tasted delicious! I decided just to drizzle colored chocolate on top to give them a little color and decoration. 

I think they turned out cute and they tasted great, so I'm happy with them! I would make them again, but I would let them chill a lot longer before coating them in chocolate, because the sticks started to come loose after a while. 

Cheesecake Detritus

Before the oven

After the oven!

Chocolate me please!

Alright, alright, I'll dip you in chocolate, calm down!

Decorate me please!

Alright, alright, I'll decorate you! Sheesh!

Yummy!

And more yummy! 

All Rights Reserved 2008 © Books and Bakes

Perfect Party Cake

I've been haunting the Daring Bakers for a few months now, and finally got the chance to join this March! How lucky for me that my first challenge was a cake, as I'm a big fan of layer cakes! This months challenge was hosted by Morven at Food, Art and Random Thoughts and I'm really thankful to her for choosing a Dorie Greenspan recipe because I hadn't been introduced to Dorie's baking before. I bought the great book Baking From My Home to Yours and have already made pudding and cookies from her along with this cake! 

The recipe uses egg whites only, which produces a really white cake. The cake has lemon extract and juice in the icing and batter, as well as raspberry preserves between the layers. Dorie and Morven both agree that playing around with this cake is a great idea. So since creativity was allowed, I switched it up as many of my fellow Daring Bakers did. 

Yum Yum Kiwi

I decided to use lime instead of lemon in both the icing and batter, and used fresh kiwi as the fruit between the layers. The original recipe also alludes to using fresh whipped cream instead of the meringue buttercream in between the layers so I went with a variation of that as well. 

Have fun in there pans!

I decided to make a mini cake because I didn't want to waste the ingredients on a cake that would loose its deliciousness before it could get finished. So I cut the recipe directly in half and it worked out perfectly. 

Making the meringue buttercream was definitely more involved than any other icing I have made, but it is now officially my favorite frosting. I was expecting it to be heavy, and too sweet, but I loved it and probably could have eaten a bowl full. 

Of course the day I decide to complete the challenge happened to be the day that a family friend and his wife decided to drop by my house. 'How perfect' you might think, someone to feed the lovely cake too! Well, when your family friend happens to be a French born pastry chef who specializes in cakes, the tension level rises a few notches! After I made the meringue buttercream, I gave him a taste, and much to my surprise he was very impressed! He said he was going to change his own recipe to include the lime juice because he liked it so much. What a compliment! 

So after baking the cake and slicing the cooled layers in half I began to assemble my mini masterpiece. I made some homemade whipped cream, and then folded in some yummy lime curd to go along with my lime flavoring in the cake and buttercream. The first layer got topped off with the lime whipped cream, and then the next got a layer of buttercream and lots of kiwi. Another whipped cream filled layer and then the whole cake was iced with the buttercream. 

In hindsight I wish I had put kiwi in between all the layers, and since the whipped cream and buttercream both had a lime flavor, I could have omitted the whipped cream and just used buttercream. But it still tasted delicious! 

I will definitely make this cake again, and again, and I've already thought up several other flavor combinations that I'm going to try out. 

All Rights Reserved 2008 © Books and Bakes