Daring Bakers: Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Wow – what a deceptively difficult challenge! For a short & sweet recipe, with a mere 4 ingredients, it sure was a doozy. The discussion board was ablaze with chatter about the finer points of baking macarons. Should the egg whites be aged? Double up on baking trays? How best to dry the macarons? And most importantly – just HOW does one achieve the elusive feet?

I guess I should back up. I’ve never eaten a macaron, but I have certainly seen my fair share of them in pastry shops and on other folks’ food blogs. I always assumed I wouldn’t like them because I had the impression they tasted like meringue, which isn’t my cup of tea. But due to their growing popularity, I’d all but decided to give them a try when, bam, this challenge arrived. I knew these little buggers were reputed to be tricky, so I readied myself for a fight. Though I love the really complex Daring Bakers challenges, I also find some of the most valuable ones to be those that require us to hone in on and perfect a particular technique.

The main challenge here was getting the consistency of the macarons just right. They should have crisp outer shells but remain chewy on the inside. Most importantly, they should develop feet – a distinctive puff around the bottom of the shell. I baked 3 trays of macarons and only got about 1/10 of them to turn out as they should. For some reason there were two rows (on two different trays) that developed feet and a shiny, crack-free shell. The rest of them… not so much. Since they were all from the same batch of batter, my theory is as follows: the ones closest to the heat source did the best. Perhaps my oven temperature needs adjusting. Or maybe I shouldn’t have chosen chocolate macarons for my first go-round. If they’d been a lighter color I probably could have gauged doneness better. Also, they seemed to benefit from sitting out on the counter a bit after they’d been piped. I couldn’t fit all three trays in the oven at once, so I baked one, then the other two. The second two trays were the ones that had the” good” macarons. Interesting…

Luckily, the failures are just as delicious as the successes. We shared some with friends last night and have been munching away on them since then. I couldn’t resist making them a little Halloween-themed. I sifted 2 tbsp. cocoa powder in with the almond flour and confectioner’s sugar. A little orange food coloring in the vanilla icing and tada! Halloween macarons.

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.

Brown Butter Raspberry Tart

It is a constant disappointment to me that I do not live a raspberry-growing climate. I am so jealous of folks who can get raspberries at their local farmer’s markets, through their CSAs, at u-pick farms, or even in their own backyards. But, because I am deprived of this pleasure, I make an effort to enjoy raspberries with relish during the season when we can get good ones in our grocery stores. I also love brown butter, cultivated by regular consumption of my favorite brown butter gnocchi sauce. So when I saw this recipe in the June Bon Appetit, I immediately began dreaming about how it would taste.

Daring Bakers: Mallow Cookies

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This post is dedicated to my Grandpa Z, who loves anything marshmallow, especially Peeps & Mallowmars. I thought our fabulous hostess Nicole had a great idea here – trying a homemade version of one’s favorite storebought things. Though not as big a fan of marshmallow as my grandpa, I decided to make the mallowmars first. The idea of piping marshmallow piqued my interest. I intended to follow up with milanos with a twist- chocolate cookies with a chocolate mint filling. However, I seriously underestimated the number of cookies I would end up with after trying the first recipe. Even after taking at least a dozen to my friend Emily, whose sweet baby Rachel decided to make an appearance 6 weeks early (!), I still had at least 50 cookies left. My next step is to give some to my brother. College students have a way of putting lots of homemade sweets away. In any case, the milanos will have to wait for another time.

I thought these cookies were good but not incredible. The cookie part is rather biscuit-like. I found it a bit too crumbly. The marshmallow was good and even though I thought I’d piped generously, I wished there was more of it on each cookie. I made my glaze with bittersweet chocolate and it came together nicely, though it needed to be refrigerated in order to harden, which the recipe does not mention.

Mint Chocolate Swirl Ice Cream

A love for ice cream is required in my family. My grandpa Z can never resist a milkshake or sundae. My grandma Carol lives for chocolate on chocolate Haagen Dazs bars. My Uncle Lee has been known to make ice cream a main meal. And as I recently discovered, my cousins who live in Germany eagerly anticipate trips to the US, where the quality and price make ice cream a daily treat.

In my family, we’ve always had something for mint. My mom has a huge electric ice cream churn that uses rock salt and ice. Something like this but much larger. She stores it at the mountain house and we have spent many a summer’s night ignoring its rather loud buzzing sound as it works its magic on the back deck. Mint chocolate chip has almost always been the flavor found inside its massive metal canister. At some point, I began to claim that I did not like mint chocolate chip ice cream. This is not actually true. I do like it, but I tend to tire quickly of the same flavor of anything, particularly ice cream. I have many half-eaten pints in the freezer simply because I grew bored of one and decided to purchase another. However, when I pulled out my ice cream maker this summer, I decided that maybe I was overdue for an old favorite flavor.

Daring Bakers: Bakewell Tarts

The June Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart… er… pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800’s in England.

Like most of you, I had no clue what a bakewell tart was before beginning this challenge and had certainly never tasted one before. Basically, it is a tart that consists of 3 layers, a crust, a layer of jam/curd, and a layer of frangipane (spongy almond cake). This challenge came together quite easily and lent itself to lots of experimentation. Like many other Daring Bakers, I made tartlets so I could try many different fillings instead of sticking to one. Jasmine & Annemarie urged us to make our own jam or curd rather than using storebought. So in two tartlets I used blackberry jam left over from the oodles and oodles my mom and I made for the wedding. I also made a berry curd using some past-their-prime berries I had in the fridge.

Soy Banana Pudding

When I’m looking for a recipe for a classic dish, my first stop is always Joy of Cooking. Being enormous and timeless, it has a basic recipe for just about anything I can imagine cooking. I particularly love the vegetable section, which contains lengthy descriptions of each veggie and basic ways to prepare it, followed by several recipes per veggie. The many other sections also offer this same informative tone combined with an exhaustive list of recipes.

Around these parts, banana pudding is one such classic dish. Found on dessert menus everywhere, from barbeque joints to diners to the best restaurants in town, it holds a special place in the hearts of Southerners. Though only a semi-Southerner myself, I share with Jeff, a true-blood, a love for this homey dessert. Sadly, Jeff thought his banana pudding eating days were over due to dietary constraints. However, I’ve learned that in many milk-based dishes like puddings, soy milk can be substituted quite easily for cow’s milk. If you like soy milk for its health benefits, its gentleness on your stomach, or its taste, this recipe is for you. Besides swapping out the milk, I decreased the sugar a bit, took out the vanilla extract in favor of vanilla-flavored soy milk, and increased the cornstarch a bit to compensate for the lack of milkfat in soy milk. Curling up at the end of a long day with a bowl of this pudding is as comforting as it gets!

Daring Bakers Strudel

I can’t believe May is already coming to an end! This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was an apple strudel. I’ve been looking forward to this challenge all month because I like trying new types of pastry and could think of lots of filling ideas. However, I didn’t have the right setup at our house for this kind of project. The dough needs to be rolled out in the shape of a 2×3 rectangle and you need to be able to reach it from at least three sides. Our rectangular table has tiling that would have made the rolling impossible. Our other table has curved edges. Spatially challenged folks (me!) need clear boundary lines if we’re given such specific measurements. We were in the mountains this weekend, where there’s a large wooden table with plenty of space to walk around it. I decided it would make a good lazy afternoon project up there.

Though the kitchen is incredibly well stocked for being no larger than a closet, there is no stand mixer so I kneaded the dough by hand according to Linda’s directions. I tend to underknead and my dough kept sticking so I went longer than the 5 minutes she suggested – more like 8. I filled it with a cream cheese mixture (8 oz. blended with an egg, 1/3 cup sugar, and a splash of vanilla), some sliced almonds, a layer of raspberry jam, and a sprinkling of fresh raspberries. I was afraid too many fresh raspberries would make the pastry soggy and I didn’t have any cornstarch, hence the jam.