Rolling in Dough

Daring Bakers Challenge - Milk Chocolate & Caramel Tart

I had heard they existed. I saw bits about them on other blogs that I admired. A collection of the coolest food bloggers on the web gathering together to bake something that you would not typically undertake on a rainy Saturday afternoon at home. They even have a patron saint, St. Honore, keeper of bakers and pastry chefs. I aspired to join them, to bake as I have never baked before. But I was apprehensive. Would my baking measure up? What if there was a secret handshake? I persevered and decided to undertake the first monthly challenge, the Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart. This is a daunting recipe that includes a crisp chocolate shortbread crust topped by a smooth caramely base, followed by a layer of milk chocolate mousse and finished with crunchy caramel candy bits.

I was leery about starting this. It sounded really sweet and I am not super confident about my caramel making skills. But after three weeks of procrastination, I finally got to work and discovered that my unease was mostly for naught. As I ground nuts and assembled my mise-en-place for the crust, Lovie commented that my set-up looked just "like Alton Brown's". Fortified by this wonderful compliment, I forged ahead. The crust went together easily and while it chilled overnight, I dreamed of the masterpiece I would create come morning.

Ever notice how reality always steps in to make sure that you don't get too cocky? Well, Reality paid me a visit early the next morning. Remember the kitchen gadget that was all the rage a couple of Christmases ago? That cookie sheet-like piece of metal that could thaw frozen meat in 10 minutes flat by magically sucking the cold out of it? Well, this same law of thermodynamics exists in my kitchen. The top of my island baking center is powder coated sheet metal. Great for kneading bread, not so great for pie crusts, sugar cookies or in this case, Chocolate Shortbread Tart Crust. The crust went from chilled to squishy in about three minutes. The more I rolled, the softer it got. I even scraped it off and rechilled it, but to no avail. In the end, after all of the patching, my crust looked more like a puzzle than a tart. But once it was finally in the oven, things began looking up. My caramel melted and darken up beautifully, even using the tricky dry method. I added warm Cream Fraiche, eggs and some flour and my caramel layer was done. The mousse layer went well too, with melted milk chocolate and whipped egg whites. I finished up by making hard caramel candy bits to sprinkle over the top. Finally assembled, I was pretty proud of my tart. It looked great and the tastes I had indulged in during the process were fabulous. I had made a small tart for Lovie and a larger one that was going to be my contribution at a pot luck that evening. I cut Lovie's tart open and had a bite, and another, and another and another. She almost didn't get to try it. It was so good. 

Later at the pot-luck, my tart was a raving success! Set right next to the Velveeta-green bean casserole and the Stouffer's Lasagna, everybody loved it. I got nearly as many compliments as the gal who brought the Velveeta casserole, although no one asked for my recipe. Good thing they didn't - not everybody can  be a DARING BAKER! Bwahahahahahah.....   

And so now that I can proudly claim to be a member of the loving and talented baking community known as the Daring Bakers, I would like to encourage you to check out the blogroll on the sidebar and visit some of my comrades de cuisine. I think you will find some fun and creative cooks to brighten your day and enlighten your cooking.

I shall close with this famous fraternal quote -

"Thank you Sir, may I have another?

Spiced Peach Butter

August is my least favorite month. The first lovely blush of Summer is long since passed, the grass has lost it's softly fresh bright tint and has become a hardened, thirsty dark green and while my garden thrives in the hot sun, I can't summon the energy to keep it weed free. It is hot and dry and all of the motivation that arrives with Spring to replant and landscape has by Late Summer apparently gone on vacation. A few other things I can't find the motivation to begin: cleaning my office, going for a run, turning on the oven or cooking anything more complicated than a cold sandwich. Yes, Late Summer inertia has truly set in. Is it September yet? I'm ready for fall.

With only one week left until September, I finally managed to set down my glass of white wine (I'm ready to drink red wine again), peel my thighs from the lawn chair and spend some quality time with my kitchen this weekend. Ironically, motivation came from Mother Nature. My poor ignored garden, that was thriving on Thursday afternoon, got wiped out by a hailstorm on Thursday night. The pumpkin vines that were threatening to take over the yard with their huge elephant ear shaped leaves were a total loss. The cucumbers didn't fare much better. The sunflowers, once so tall with dazzling starburst centers, are now broken and defeated. I surveyed the damage, salvaging whatever I could. This led to a marathon session of baking, cooking and canning. And actually, after I got started, it was difficult to stop. I baked Ciabatta and Biscotti, brined and canned pickles, picked and dried pumpkin seeds, marinated bell peppers, and inspired by the huge baseball sized peaches now in season, cooked up some Spicy Peach Butter.

More elegantly refined and not as sweet as a jam or jelly, fruit butters show off a fruit's flavor with a pure, deep, concentrated taste of goodness. While Apple Butter is more traditional, Peach Butter is my favorite. It always tastes so fresh and indulgent. What's more, Fruit Butters are super easy to make. A little peeling, pitting and pureeing, followed by some time to let the flavors develop will let you enjoy the fruits of your labor all winter!

Spicy Peach Butter

3 lbs. Fresh Peaches

1 cup packed Brown Sugar

1 teaspoon Cinnamon

1 teaspoon Nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon Ginger

Peel, pit and slice Peaches. Puree until desired smoothness with a stick blender or in a food processor. Pour puree into a medium saucepan and add the brown sugar and spices. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a low simmer until puree is reduced by half, about 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Pour into jars and refrigerate. Makes about 2 cups of Peach Butter. Enjoy daily with muffins, toast, peanut butter sandwiches, warm bread with butter or tea.             

Ciabatta

I've been a bit lax about keeping up my Crust and Crumb and Nickel & Dime Wine postings. Truth is, I've had a string of bread baking disasters, and I haven't found another wine that I really like. There are currently five empty bottles sitting on the counter waiting for me to summon the interest to write about them. I need to recycle them and start again. 

As far as the bread goes, I baked an Irish Brown Bread that I found in Beard on Bread. I liked it's heavy dense and chewy texture well enough, but nobody else in the house was even remotely impressed. When I finally gave in and put it out for the birds, the thick chunks lay forlornly on the lawn for another three days. Guess I won't be making that again. I have also been working on some of the recipes in The Italian Baker, trying to recreate authentic Italian loaves. This has proven more difficult than I had anticipated, but I read somewhere that you can learn more from making one bread twenty times than making twenty different breads once, so I'm trying to put this into practice, working through the uncomfortable bits. Which brings me to Ciabatta. The recipe in The Italian Baker makes a beautiful, smooth, satiny dough that is truly a pleasure to work with. And while I revel in the supple, fragrant ball that is the dough, I have been unable to get the loaves into the oven without deflating them. The directions speak of letting the second rise occur on a sheet of parchment, followed by a quick flip onto the bread stone in the oven. Whatever. It is such a soft dough that it sticks to everything. I have bonded Ciabatta to the cutting board, the parchment, damp tea towels, the bench scraper, oiled plastic wrap and the back of a cookie sheet. Each time I try to unstick it, it deflates, leaving me with flat, uninteresting and unbeautiful Ciabatta. I've destroyed about 20 loaves of bread. Lovie began asking if I was killing bread again every time a string of profanity emanated from the kitchen. There had to be a better way.

Last night I began again. I started a Biga on Friday and let it sit on the counter for 24 hours before I mixed up my dough. The first rise went well enough, creating the soft, puffy fragrant mound of dough that only a starter can produce. As I made the loaves, I set each of them to rise on the peel in their own thick pile of cornmeal. I covered them with waxed paper set on ramekins, so as not to lay it on the dough and held my breath. When the rise was complete and I had puffy dimpled loaves and the oven was hot, I timidly gave them a shake. They didn't stick! Confident now, I pushed them into the oven and set the timer. When it went off, I was waiting with a bread knife and butter dish at the ready. They were beautiful! Golden brown, with a soft tight crumb surrounded by large holes. Finally a bread worth blogging about. I'll keep working on it though, I'm already imagining how much better my Ciabatta will look after another fifteen practice batches.

Ciabatta

Biga

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

1 1/4 plus 2 tablespoons water, room temperature

3 3/4 cups flour

Stir the yeast into the warm water and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the remaining water and the flour 1 cup at a time. Mix with a wooden spoon 3-4 minutes. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 6 to 24 hours. The Biga will have tripled in volume and will be wet and sticky when ready. Makes about 3 1/2 cups.

Dough

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

5 tablespoons warm milk

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons water, room temperature

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cups Biga

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon salt

Stir the yeast into the milk in a mixer bowl and let stand until creamy. Add the water, oil and Biga and mix with the paddle until blended. Mix the flour and salt, add to the bowl, and mix for 2-3 minutes. Change to the dough hook and knead for 2 minutes at low speed, then 2 minutes at medium speed. Spray the inside of the bowl with oil, cover and let rise until doubled 1 1/2 hours. The dough should be full of air bubbles, supple and elastic.

Cut the dough into 4 pieces on a well floured surface. Roll each piece into a cylinder and smooth into a rectangle about 10x4 inches. Make a little bed of corn meal for each loaf and place loaves in it to rise on a peel or the back of a cookie sheet. Dimple the top with your fingers. Cover and let rise until doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Thirty minutes before baking, heat the oven and baking stones to 425 degrees. When hot, slide the loaves onto the stones and bake for 25 minutes. Spray your loaves with water 3 times during the first 10 minutes to create a crisp crust. Cool on wire racks and enjoy warm, slathered with soft butter. Bake and enjoy often.

Hazelnut-Raspberry Tortlets

I love cake, but I wish people would either bake their own, or buy one from a nice bakery, rather than getting one of those store bought sheet cakes with whippy mystery frosting that appear at so many gatherings. It always seems to be served as sort of an afterthought, like they got a cake just because they thought they should have one, but didn't want to put too much effort into it. My mom is hosting a baby shower tomorrow, one of those occasions when the whippy sheet cake afterthought typically makes an appearance. Given my stance on sheet cake and since she is serving lunch, we opted instead for something small, like petit fours. Just a bite or two of something sweet and delicious to finish the lunch with. I volunteered to take on the project. 

I came home and dug out the cookbooks. The only recipe I could find for petit fours was in the Martha Stewart Baking Book. Accompanying the recipe was a picture of her petit fours - spectacular and brilliantly done, and her directions made it all seem so easy (this is, of course, the problem with Martha Stewart. She makes everything look so simple and easy to accomplish, but somehow that never turns out to be the case). I showed Mike the picture. He laughed and wished me well. Hmmm.... Back to the cookbooks.

I came upon a recipe for a hazelnut-raspberry torte in the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library Dessert book. This sounded delicious, looked like something I actually had a shot at duplicating, and would be easy to make into individual servings. I got to work. The cake has a ground hazelnut base, lightened with egg whites. I baked this in a jelly roll pan to create lots of surface area and when it was cooled, I cut out small rounds with a cookie cutter. Early this morning, the kitchen was quiet except for the soothing sound of a cat purring nearby while I sugared raspberries, melted chocolate for the glaze and assembled the tiny cakes. I left them on the counter so the glaze could harden while I took a shower. When I came back to the kitchen, to my horror, one of the other cats was standing in the middle of my tortlets. I lunged for her and she took off across the pan, leaving a trail of smashed cake, raspberries and chocolaty cat prints through the kitchen. I managed to catch the pan before it hit the floor, but the tortlets on it were a total loss - an unkempt pile of chocolate and cake carnage. Unbelievable. Well, I'll take what's left of them. They taste elegant and amazing - moist, light nutty cake topped with a dark chocolate glaze hiding a subtle raspberry flavor and fragrance, finished with a sugared fresh raspberry. Thankfully, there's not even a hint of the trauma their friends suffered, and more importantly, they aren't sporting even a bit of cat hair.

Hazelnut-Raspberry Tortlets

10 oz. Hazelnuts, toasted and skinned, cooled

13 oz. sugar

2 oz.  flour

6 eggs, separated, at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 oz. butter, melted and kept warm

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar   

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 10-15 jelly roll pan, and line the bottom with parchment paper. In a food processor, combine the hazelnuts, 5 oz of the sugar, flour and salt. Process to grind finely. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until blended. Set aside.

In a bowl, beat the eggg whites and cream of tartar on the high speed of a mixer until stiff peaks form. Set aside. Whisk one-third of the nut mixture into the yolks, then fold in one-third of the egg whites. Repeat in two batches. Do not overmix. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake about 20 minuutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack in the pan until completely cool.

Invert on a work surface and peel the parchment paper. Using a cookie cutter, cut out small rounds about 1 1/2 in diameter.

Sugared Raspberries

1 egg white

Superfine sugar

I made these by putting a raspberry on the eraser end of a pencil, and painting it with the egg yolk. I ground sugar in the coffee grinder to make it superfine, sprinkled it on the raspberries and let them dry on a wire rack.

Bittersweet Chocolate-Raspberry Glaze

4 oz. heavy cream

3 oz. seedless raspberry jam

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, combine the cream and jam. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to low. Add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Remove from heat and let stand about 10 minutes, until glaze is thick but pourable. 

Assemble your torlets, pouring some glaze over each one and smoothing it out with a offset spatula so it drips down the sides. Finish each one with a sugared raspberry. Let the tortlets sit for about an hour to let the glaze harden. These can be stored in the fridge in hot weather, but the cool air may dull the glaze. If so, hit them with a blast from a blow dryer just before serving. Keep the cats out of the kitchen.    

Blogging By Mail - Package has Arrived!

It's here! I had been a bit leary of the postman, he brought the package I sent to KJ at A Cracking Good Egg in Australia back to me twice, due to anal retentive postal employees and their interpretation of the policies (Attention USPS - flat rate shipping is supposed to refer to the pricing, not the shape of the package), so seeing him on my doorstep with a package in his hand sent a chill of dread through me. Happily though, he was bringing me a lovely package from London, from the wonderful Abby at Eat The Right Stuff, full of fun British treats! Abby sent me harissa with rose petals, which smells and tastes wonderful. I had it on Red Beans and Rice last night. I have had harissa before and it almost set me on fire, but this is totally different, zingy to be sure, but the rose petals smooth out the rough corners and mellow the heat. The next goodie was Biltong, an African beef jerky that Mike appropriated as soon as I opened the box. Abby, noticing my penchant for cheese, sent some Charcoal Wafer Thins to be enjoyed with an English Cheddar during Happy Hour. Dark and crunchy, they are a terrific accompaniment to a cold beer. My favorite thing in the box is a bag of Tyrell's Naked Chips. Abby wrote that she loves the "cheeky" packaging as much as the chips, I can certainly  see why. Next came two lovely dark bars of chocolate, interestingly flavoured Cherry and Geranium and Orange. The label on the Montezuma's Geranium and Orange bar proclaims their love of creating unique flavor combos, with their standard of measurement being that if half of the population would be willing to climb Mount Everest to eat a bar with frozen hands, and the other half would bungee jump naked off of a bridge to avoid it, they have succeeded. A bold statement to be sure, and I'm happy to report that after tasting it, I am firmly in the Mount Everest crowd. Abby also thoughtfully included some Clipper Ayurvedic Detox Tea to help me relax after enjoying the bounty of my UK goodies. Last, but certainly not least, she sent two bags of gummie candies for Lovie, who was thrilled that she had been included. She has been inhaling the gummies at an alarming rate, and may need a cup of the Detox Tea, too.

Thanks for the goodies, Abby! You made my day! And thank you to The Happy Sorceress at Dispensing Happiness for pulling all of this together. This has been such a treat - Count me in for the next round of Blogging By Mail!