Daring bakers flying spaghetti monster pavlova!

Wow, I guess my dessert makes a statement. By way of explanation, I plated this super early in the morning, maybe my brain wasnt totally into the game yet!

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard

The pavlova consisted of a chocolate meringue, a marscapone pastry cream, and a marscapone ganache.

I absolutely adore pavlova so I was super excited. My first thought when I saw some pictures was that it looked like dog poo, I was a little un-nerved but I thought 'I can do this'! I think if I had added some seasonal fruit, it would have really improved this dish, I ate the leftovers with figs, and it was wonderful!

Time got the better of me, what with all the stuff going on in my life, so I decided that I would make the components, but it was very last minute.

I was pretty disappointed with this dessert. I was disappointed in the recipe, for instance the pastry cream, which was really supposed to be a drizzle, was supposed to be made with 6 egg yolks, which was just ridiculous, and the whole recipe seemed to be about 3 cups of marscapone, which is pretty out there. I reduced the pavlova recipe by 2/3, the pastry cream to 1/3 and the marscapone ganache to 1/2.

The flavor was also a little disappointing. I overcooked the pavlovas, since I made them as tiny little mini meringues, and the marscapone cream was pretty underwhelming.

After this review, I'm not sure that you would want to give it a try, but do go and check out all the other inventive ways this dish was created on www.thedaringkitchen.com

I really appreciate the opportunity to grow and learn with the daring bakers, this was just one challenge that was underwhelming. I look forward to a new challenge next month!!

Born Round

I recently read the memoir of Frank Bruni, reviewer for the New York Times (amongst other things!). I found it a really interesting read, learning about his wonderful family and dear mother.

Over the entire book his weight fluctuates wildly as he desperately attempts to control his urges around food.

The most poignant episodes to me were times when he ended up baling on dates because he was so disgusted with himself and his weight, it seemed so sad that he gave up on companionship and love because he hated himself and his weight so much.

There were tales of bulimia and all kinds of strategies to keep himself trim and scary binges of pizza, cheesesteaks and ice cream.

It was sad to read about his mothers struggle with her weight, and maybe how she taught him to be wary of food as he grew up.

Learning more about the work of restaurant reviewers is a nice reminder that it really isnt that fun a job, eating out at least 7 nights a week, trying to grab enough willing diners who dont mind sharing their meals with you, and dealing with over-anxious restauranteurs who are desperate for a good review.

The main revelation from the book for me came when he lived in Italy, and he realised that the reason these people were a normal size was because of their portion control. They ate small portions of real food. Just like Marian Nestle and Michael Pollan have been trying to tell us!

It really struck a chord with me since I've always had trouble around food, knowing where to stop. I'm lucky, I'm not horribly obese, but I'm always on the chubby side of normal. I think the problems started as a small child, I was a little overweight and I was encouraged to cut back a little. I've never experienced that intense pleasure that Frank Bruni describes when he binges, and for that I'm very grateful.

Maybe I'm lucky, I generally just have a little more to eat than I need, I exercise as much as possible, and I eat lots of fruit and veg, and wholegrains to keep myself full, so I may even be healthier than some of my skinnier counterparts. I have to be relatively strict, I only eat out once or twice a week, I never go to fast food restaurants, and I avoid most processed food.

It also got me wondering, am I more normal than I thought? I always thought I was a bit strange with my continued thinking of what I'll be eating next, maybe looking forward to something for a whole week. Maybe most people think like that, and constantly have to keep check of their eating to keep themselves at a healthy size?

Its just so sad to me that so many people suffer so much with something that is supposed to be one of lifes greatest pleasures. At no time in history more than now have people been so large, we've somehow lost all proportion of how much, and what we are supposed to eat. Are we beyond saving?

I'd love to hear any/all opinions in the comments section!

Sugar Gardenias

I recently had the enormous pleasure of taking a one-on-one class with the immensely talented Jaqueline Butler of Petalsweet Cakes.

Of course I had a giant list of things to learn, but she knew what we could fit in and even that was very ambitious. We settled on some sugar gardenias. I love these flowers, so I couldnt wait to recreate them in sugar. I also wanted to make sure that it was a fairly quick flower that I had a chance of being able to replicate in a short enough time to be worth my while, and to be something that isnt easy to get fresh.

Jackie is extremely thorough, patient and well organised. She sets everything out carefully before starting and it was a good lesson to me to make sure I have plenty of room and try to work cleanly and neatly.

Of course they were a lot trickier than they look, but we slowly worked and I finished the class with a full flower, two smaller flowers, 3 lovely glossy leaves, and some buds. I also had a huge shopping list of things to buy!

I learned some very important techniques that I can apply to lots of other stuff, using the colors and lustre dusts, the laquer to get glossy leaves, and making and rolling out gumpaste and shaping petals for a realistic flower.

I'm sure Jackie would be more than happy to hear from anyone who would like to take her lessons, she's based in San Diego, so give her a shout if you'd like to learn from her! She also has a facebook page, its always lovely to see her creations.

Smores

I found these little treats so delicious I just had to share! It really is worth making the effort to make your own graham crackers, they are totally addictive!

I took a graham cracker recipe from culinary in the desert, next time I'll probably roll them out a little thinner. It really helped to use a pizza cutter and cut them before they went in the oven, and then again before they cooled to make it easy to separate them.

I then topped with a little chocolate ganache, which is just 1 part boiling cream to 1 part good chocolate, combine then stir occasionally until the chocolate is melted and chill a little until the consistency is thick enough to stay on the crackers. 100g of each should be plenty.

I then topped with home made marshmallow from this recipe on the food network and got my torch out to brown the tops, my favourite thing to do in the kitchen!

These treats are going to round out a dessert platter for a wedding I'm involved with at the beginning of next month. There will be a plate for each table containing lemon tarts, choc chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, these and some mini cupcakes!

The next thing I'd like to try with this recipe is making larger cookies, covering with ganache and decorating with fondant, I think that would be a super delicious and cute party favor! Here are some similar sugar cookies I did, I think graham crackers would be delicious!

Daring Bakers tackle a Croquembouche

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

For the recipes, head on over to the daring kitchen and give it a try!


I really enjoyed this daring bakers challenge. I was so happy that it was something I could accomplish in just under a couple of hours too! I baked off the profiteroles, and whipped up some pastry cream in the evening, then made caramel and constructed the croquembouche the next day.


It felt like a very fancy dessert, the techniques are classic but simple and I'll definitely be trying to perfect my technique by making this again soon!

I did find that the dough was way too runny, you can see my profiteroles just spreading on the baking sheet, I think my eggs must have been bigger than the ones used in the original recipe. I also think that milk is a nice addition instead of water, these were extremely eggy pastries! After reading some of the comments it seems I was not alone. I'll be using another recipe in the future.


The pastry cream came together nice and quick, my only change was omitting the sugar and adding a can of dulce de leche for a delicious spin on classic pastry cream.


The really tricky part was the assembly. I dipped each pastry into the molten caramel to construct and ended up with a few little burns on my finger. Any attempt to use tools resulted in a big mess. I think maybe constructing layer by layer would result in a safer construction, and also a little less caramel, these were difficult to eat with a thick layer of caramel on them!

Thanks so much for the challenge, I will definitely be revisiting this one!

If anyone has any advice for playing with spun sugar, I'd love to hear about it!

Soups Stocks and Sauces, another Grossmont College Class

I just thought I'd talk a little about the class I've been doing every Tuesday evening with chef Kim at Grossmont College. Its called 'Soups, Stocks and Sauces' which sounds a little dry, but it really is the foundation for all other cooking.

It was an extremely enjoyable class, made even more enjoyable by my team, we were all a little older, and really wanted to do our best, so we were always very happy with our dishes.

The class started with a lot of boiling of bones to make stocks. This wasnt so interesting for me as a vegetarian, but it was useful to know the principles in case I do ever plunge back into a truly omnivorous diet again.


We moved onto reductions, vegetable stocks and soups, and then some tomato sauces.



There was an investigation into the fine art of making a roux, and we made white, blond and brown roux and then used it in various applications.

Next were healthy hot and cold soups, some delicious vichysoisse, gazpacho and curried soups.

We explored chowders and bisques.

Then came the tricky hollandaise and beurre blanc. Divine but scary to see the amount of butter in there!

It was really fun to delve so deeply into flavors and seasonings and to test our palletes against other peoples, and to learn these basic techniques. The complete snob in me was excited to be officialy educated in 'the mother sauces' so I can sound all poncy at any chosen occasion!

I will definitely keep some of the things I learned in class close to hand, many of the reductions we made were truly delicious and add a depth of flavor that will be really useful for my cooking, in particular some of the reductions we did.

If anyone is interested in signing up for any classes then pop on over to the Grossmont College website. Classes fill up almost immediately and there are some pre-requisites. This class required you to take 'Basic Culinary' which is another reason why it is so pleasant, everyone in the class had already been through a semester of knife skills, breaking down chickens and general classes.

The last picture is our final exam. We made consomme, beurre blanc, red pepper coulis, a corn chowder and hollandaise sauce and we aced it with an A!

Cupcakes cupcakes!

I thought I'd share some truly delicious cupcakes I've been creating recently. They arent terribly intricate or new recipes but I thought they were truly delicious combinations that I might mention.

The first is a black forest cupcake. I took my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe, from 'Confetti Cakes' by Elise Strauss. Its lovely and moist and rich from the sour cream.

I found some tart morello cherries in a jar at Trader Joes, scooped out the middle of the cupcakes and popped a couple in. A little drizzle of kirsch would probably go well here too. I then whipped some cream with a little sugar and topped the cakes with delicious valhrona pearls, chopped almonds and a sour dried cherry.

I think I'll be using more whipped cream toppings, its a lot lighter than buttercream and I much prefer the flavor. The only down side is its not as durable or long lasting, the cakes really need to be gobbled up in a few hours.

The other delicious cupcake I wanted to share was a chocolate hazelnut praline cupcake, I took the same delicious, moist chocolate cupcake, took a little scoop out, then popped a little nutella in the middle. I then topped with a praline buttercream, which is a little bit of a pain to make, but seriously the most delicious buttercream I've ever tried! The praline buttercream recipe comes from one of our daring bakers challenge from the filbert gateau, which was a truly delicious treat!

With such a decadent filling, I used a little lighter touch to pipe the buttercream with a new technique.

The third cupcake I've made recently is a lighter one too, a guava chiffon cake, I adapted from a strawberry chiffon cake on Jen's website , just subsituting guava for strawberries. I filled with a strawberry and topped with just a little vanilla buttercream for people who want something on the lighter side. With strawberry season upon us, this is a delightful summer treat.