Daring Bakers tackle Dobos Torte!

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonfulof Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular DobosTorte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: ExquisiteDesserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

Since I'd already made this in cake class just a few months back I was going to sit this challenge out, it wasnt my favourite cake. But I suddenly felt inspired, I had some extra chocolate buttercream in the fridge, and it seemed like a good opportunity to play with my food and give it a try.

Dobos torte is a multi layered cake, composed of a sponge, chocolate buttercream, and a top sponge layer which is covered in caramel. I enjoyed the caramel part, but I find the sponge chewy and not so appetizing. I prefer buttery and crumbly, or oozy and gooey.

It quickly became apparent that making little cakes is harder than it looks! The sponge was easy enough, I halved the recipe, then spread onto a parchment on a baking sheet. It was very quick to stamp out circles with a cookie cutter. It was harder to cleanly spread buttercream onto the little discs, and I didnt have the patience to cleanly smooth it to make for a perfect presentation, so I placed almond slices on the sides of the cake. I then saved some circles, pouring caramel over them and placing them on top of my little cakes.

Please head on over to the daring kitchen for the recipe, or to join in the challenges, and to see how the other daring bakers got on.

Northern California and a new hobby!

I inherited a camera when my lovely husband decided to upgrade, so I had lots of fun snapping away in wine country over the weekend!

Bounty of Oregon

I was contacted by some lovely folks in oregon to ask if I'd like to help to judge their competition. How cool is that?! I love oregon, and I love cheese and chocolate, so it was a winning combination.

Oregon Bounty Cuisinternship Contest started today, a great all espenses paid trip to follow an expert for a week. So if anyone is interested in entering, check the website, and get writing! Even if you dont win the competition, the website has lots of tools to plan a trip.

We had an absolutely lovely wedding anniversary in Portland in 2007 and keep trying to think of excuses to go back, so this was a lovely reminder that its been too long!!

The cheeses included some rogue blue cheese, a delicious goat cheese tapenade, a firm white cheese, and a very oozy brie type of cheese. Our favourite was definitely the Rivers Edge Chevre Tapenade from three ring farm, it was remeniscent of boursin with the garlic, but so much better!!

There was a very quaffable fruity tempranillo wine, which we slightly chilled since it was a warm day.

The chocolates were an interesting mixture, there was a 'hippy crunch' mix of chocolate and rice, which was a good snack. There were a couple of lavendar chocolates, a dagoba lavender dark chocolate, and some fleur de sel caramels which were topped with lavender. I really want to love lavender in desserts, but it just tastes nasty to me, so I'm sure I would have loved them without the lavender! I think my favourite were the berry chocolates which had a lovely berry mixture in them and some nice crunchy seeds.

Real Life

Welcome to the real world, Jennywenny!

I had the opportunity to work at a local bakery as part of the Culinary Program at Grossmont College. It was a fantastic experience. I learned about a million dollars worth of stuff, and although I worked for free, it was well worth it for all the stuff I learned.

The bakery has a few different cake flavors and designs that they generally make, mostly presented with buttercream frosting and simple piping. They have an incredibly sturdy system for making sure that the cake stands up to all manner of abuse and wobbling before the happy couple take their chunk of cake.


It was a little disappointing to find that the buttercream used was a standard 'American Buttercream' made with shortening and sugar and a little butter flavor and vanilla to make it palatable. I generally use swiss meringue buttercream for my cakes and it seems to be really easy to work with, this stuff took a bit of getting used to, and doesnt taste the best. I understand that most bakeries use this, so it wasnt an enormous shock for me.


In my 120 hours of experience, I learned how to torte and cut the cakes to size, then fill a 'dam' of buttercream with a tasty filling, making sure to use lots of flavored syrup to moisten the cake. A 'crumb coat' of buttercream was added, followed by at least two layers of buttercream, then lots of smoothing to get the perfect finish.


I never did get the perfect finish, but I got close! I'm told the secret is dipping the scraper into really hot water and having the cake very well chilled.


I also learned about putting ribbons on cakes, which I've not tried, and about piping, which I got used to.


This is a finished cake that I did, I was very happy with how it turned out, I did get some help with smoothing the buttercream, but I built the cake and did the ribbon and the piping.

It was an invaluable experience, I've read lots about what its like working in the food industry and it was great having this experience. I'm eternally grateful to grossmont college, since I'd worked in their kitchen I had a feeling for how things work in an industrial kitchen so it didnt feel too wierd.

Something I was reminded of was that it will become repetitive pretty quickly. Making cakes for friends is one thing, the cakes are different every time, and its fun, but as a profession, you have to pare things down a little and things get repetitive pretty quickly. Most bakeries have a choice of somewhere around 10 different flavors of cake/filling, and a similar number of designs. It wasnt a long enough period of time to know whether I would be bored out of my mind in a few months.

Boozy black forest trifle

Cherrapino got me all excited about making a black forest trifle. I picked up some beautiful cherries from smit orchards at the farmers market. With all the cakes I've been making, I've always got plenty of cake scraps, so I layered some chocolate fudge cake, drizzled with kirsch, added a layer of chocolate custard, cherry and whipped cream with a little shaved chocolate. Yum!!

Chocolate Custard Dairy Book of Home Cookery

Enough for 4 small trifles

150ml milk

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

2 egg yolks

15g sugar

30g dark chocolate, melted

Whisk together milk, vanilla and eggs. Warm on a low heat until the custard coats the back of a spoon. Add melted chocolate and stir together. Cool before adding to the trifle.

I also made a trifle in a jar for my friend as a surprise!

Daring bakers tackle Chocolate covered marshmallows

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.

What a fun challenge. This month has been totally insane crazy, so I very much appreciated a less technical challenge, but I did try something new with making marshmallows from scratch.

We started with a little cookie, I used my new vietnamese cinnamon in them from KA flour, which gave them quite a kick, very different to the regular cinnamon in the store, cant wait to give it a try in something chocolatey. I divided the recipe by 3 since I didnt have a specific destination for them.

Marshmallows were made by whipping up egg whites and adding a hot syrup that was mixed with gelatin. I found that they didnt set up as much as I expected, so I really worried I'd made a mistake, but in the finished product they were little pillows of soft goodness. They piped very nicely onto the cookies

The cookies were left to set for a couple of hours, then I melted some chocolate with a little coconut oil and then dipped them in.

The verdict on the finished product. Meh. Marshmallows are really not my thing, the cookies were a little soft and cakey. Although they dissapeared very quickly at work, my discerning friend told me they were like chewing on a soggy wagon wheel (a confection he remembers fondly from the UK). Ouch. Always brutally honest, I appreciate his opinion, but sometimes the critique hurts a little, even if its not my own recipe!!

After a few days in the fridge these improved a lot as the cookie had a little more crunch to it.

Thanks for the opportunity to try new things as always, daring bakers, and thanks, Nicole for the perfect bite sized treat! Also thanks to my lovely husband for the photos.

How the other half live!

I was recently lucky enough to be invited to meet some other San Diego food bloggers and go down to Rancho La Puerto in Tecate for the day.
We were treated to a 'Saturday at the spa' where one can get a taste of the spa.

My day started with being met by Aida and Peter from the Spa at Old Town and being driven to the border. We learned about the interesting history of the spa and the various people that were attracted to it, including concientious objectors from Europe in the 2nd World War to Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis training for the movie 'Trapeze' before anyone had dreamed up personal trainers and wheat grass smoothies!

Strangely enough, eating lots of fruit and veggies, getting in the outdoors and exercising, and all that stuff is back in fashion! Maybe it will actually catch on this time. Who knows!

We crossed the border, applied for our Mexican Visas, then it was a new country. Tecate looked like a really cute little town that I hope to return to soon. It was nice to see another side of Mexico after visiting Tijuana a few years ago.

We were welcomed to Rancho La Puerta with juice, muffins and fruit. Taking a look around the ranch, it was enormous, and it extended as far as the eye could see with the majority of it a wilderness. It is apparently the first cross-border wildlife reserve.

Sadly, my pictures of the resort didnt come out very well, although I can assure you it was very picturesque! One of the highlights was coming across some hammocks hidden away in some trees and I felt like I was in a little disney film, watching the little birds at the feeders and the squirrels on the lawn!

I had a pedicure, and then a buffet lunch, followed by a quick swim, then we were whisked away to the farm where all the produce is grown for the ranch. They also have a beautiful kitchen where the cooking lessons are held.

We met Chef Michel Stroot, the former ranch chef, and he took us through the meal for the day.

People split into teams of 2 and chose a station to work on.

I've never made tortillas from scratch, so I decided to choose that station. They were pretty easy to make, if you have a tortilla press! So much tastier!

Our tortillas were a mixture of minced garlic and jalapenos, masa flour and water, very simple.

Our meal started with a delicious corn chowder. It was very rich and you'd never know its not full of cream and butter. Unfortunately it was a very involved process, so I'm not sure I'll be making it at home!

We were then treated to a very pretty moulded quinoa salad with crab and papaya.

My tortillas came out for the main course, where they complemented some tilapia with tomatillo sauce, baby potatoes and green beans

The dessert was a plum apple compote with orange meringue. This was a bit of a shame, the fruit seemed so delicious, I think it might have been nicer just as is with a crispy meringue on the side, the meringue was a little soft for my taste. I thought the edible flower garnish was really pretty, I'll definitely remember that for the future.

The food was all delicious, I think some people were used to a little more salt and much more meat in their cooking, so it was a bit of an adjustment although its the way I like to eat most of the time, so I was very happy!

I really enjoyed the setup of the lesson, it was very relaxed, but it was all hands-on, so I learned a lot. I'm definitely interested in trying lessons like this again, a fun way to spend an afternoon, definitely different from my lessons at college!

Finally, it was time to get back to San Diego, Peter had one more treat in store, churros! We stopped at the churro stand at the side of the road and had a delicious decadent treat. They were so much nicer than any that I've tried before, fried and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon!

I highly recommend visiting Rancho La Puerta. I'm hoping that one day I'll have the time/funds to be able to make it to the ranch, but maybe I'll buy the cookbook so I can dream a little!

I hope to bump into my new foodie friends along the road sometime on my culinary adventures. I was pretty nervous meeting new people, it turned out I didnt need to be, they were all fun, and very friendly and we had something in common straight away that we could discuss. It was particularly good learning more about 'slow food', something I'd like to get more involved in, since it makes me so sad how far away from real food we've got, particularly with cakes!