Daring Bakers: Vols-au-Vent

It’s that time again! The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan. There were many, many creative and interesting twists on this recipe out there in Daring Bakersville this month. Check out the blogroll to see some of what was made.

This was such a fun challenge. From what I’ve read in the Daring Bakers forums, many people were as surprised as I was to find out that puff pastry is actually quite easy and not that time-consuming. The process really only takes 10 minutes start to finish, but because there is resting and chilling involved, you have to commit a few hours to being around the house. Luckily, time stuck in the house is easy to come by when you are a full-time student with readings coming out of your ears, half-written papers lying around, and midterms to study for. Student or not,  I will only be buying puff pastry in a pinch from here on out. Making it yourself is much cheaper and you get the added bonus of knowing how your food was made and what was put into it.

I kept it simple with this challenge and went with a very traditional mushroom filling for my vols-au-vent. I can’t think of a better combination and have been drooling all month just thinking about it. My recipe for this filling, made up on the fly, is the last item in the recipe list found below.

The recipe for the puff pastry made what I would imagine is akin to 3 sheets of the storebought stuff. We only needed 1/3 of it for the vols-au-vent. Consequently, I was left with 2 more recipes worth of puff pastry. I’ll post about what I did with the rest of it in the near future, so come on back!

End of Summer Tomatoes

It’s the official first day of autumn. My favorite season is slowly creeping in. I anticipate this moment all year long and am looking forward to welcoming fall flavors in addition to fall temperatures. With the humidity today, it looks like I’ll have to wait a bit longer, which means I can still savor some summer recipes.

Here in the South this is a transitional culinary period for us. The farmer’s market is beginning to fill up with radishes, greens, beets, green beans, and pumpkins. However, they also have the last of the corn, peppers, and tomatoes. Tomato pie has been all the rage this summer, showing up in magazines and food blogs alike. My first inspiration for it came from Aunt Anne, who was gifted with a beautiful lime green pie dish for her birthday. Grammie gave her the present one night when we were all at the beach. She exclaimed that it would be perfect for Uncle Glenn’s favorite green tomato pie. This immediately piqued my interest. I never got a chance to ask her what the green tomato pie consisted of (Anne? Are you reading this?) but I began searching for recipes when I returned home. I quickly learned that green tomato pie is traditionally made with the same spices as apple pie, and probably has a quite similar taste. Though that thought was intriguing, I decided to put it on hold for the early fall. I then did some searching for a more savory tomato pie.

Chocolate Cake

A few weeks ago I developed an intense craving for a piece of chocolate cake. Not a cupcake, which are too often dry, or a restaurant version, dudded up with flavors and twists. Just a plain old piece of moist, cocoa-ey cake with some chocolate icing on top, served up with a cold glass of milk. I drink milk no more than once a year, so all this made for one awfully strange craving. After a few days of ignoring it, the desire only grew stronger. So I bit the bullet and made a cake.

The problem was that I didn’t have a wealth of time, nor did I have a crowd of people around to help me eat an enormous layer cake. I love to bake, but almost always find that Jeff and I can barely put a dent in a batch of cookies/bread/brownies/muffins before it goes stale. I wanted a cake that I could bake in a single baking dish, so I wouldn’t have the challenge of eating and storing a double-decker layer cake. After spending some time perusing recipes online and in my cookbook collection, I settled on an Ina Garten recipe that received an extraordinary number of rave reviews on the Food Network website. With 1/2 cup oil and 1 cup buttermilk, it seemed to have enough of the right kinds of liquid to keep it moist. I baked it in two 8×8 baking pans so that it would be nice and thick, which would aid in keeping it moist, and topped it with a single layer of frosting. You could also half the recipe quite easily. I enjoyed being able to make two cakes with one recipe. I was able to keep one for myself and give one away – to my best teacher friend Emily, who deserved a sweet treat after bringing home her new baby, Rachel.