The Daring Bakers make baklava!

I know what you're thinking: rolling chopped nuts in packaged phyllo is not much of a challenge. Well, you should know by now how the Daring Bakers works. We had to make our own phyllo from scratch and roll, roll, roll. It sounds daunting, but the dough was so silky and easy to work with that it wasn't difficult, just time-consuming. From a tennis ball sized lump of dough, I was able to get about 25 sheets.

My failed baklava tower!

The best baklava I have ever had was made by the aunt of one of my Turkish students years ago. I had never cared much for baklava before the day he brought it to class. Unlike the baklavas I had tried before this was super fresh, moist but not drippy, and filled with bright green pistachios from Turkey. I love pistachios, so I tried to recreate that amazing baklava for this challenge. As I did with these pistachio brownies, and this pistachio panna cotta, I shelled, blanched and peeled a lot of pistachios.  The bright green colour and buttery flavour are worth the investment of time. And I can do while I'm watching Wimbledon. I used almonds for the top layer. Both fillings were scented with cardamom, and I brushed the layers of phyllo with browned butter. After baking, I doused the hot pastries, a bit too liberally, with a lime and sugar syrup. It was a delicious, but very sweet treat.

The next morning, I took all the off-cuts from my baklava and tried to roll them again. It was possible, but the dough was much tougher to roll out. I made a couple of nightingale's nests with the leftover dough and pistachio filling. These weren't as sweet as the baklava triangles, but not as tender as those made with fresh dough. Were mine as good as that long ago baklava? No, but they were pretty good for a first try.

Thanks to Erica for a great challenge! I look forward to making this dough again and making strudel out of it later this summer. Check out the slideshow at the Daring Kitchen to see all the kinds of baklava the Daring Bakers made this month. Download the printable challenge PDF with recipes, here.

I wish I had waited to cut and taste the baklava:
2 days after making, it was at its best. Moist throughout,
and it held together well.

Blog-checking lines: Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

The Daring Bakers make meringue filled coffee cake

I haven't got a lot of time today, but I wanted to share these pictures with you. When I first looked at the challenge, I wasn't so sure about it. I love making yeast breads, but the idea of putting a meringue inside one wasn't all that appealing. So, I went on to bake other things, and only remembered about the challenge with a week to go. One of my friends reminded me. Friends and family take a very healthy interest in these challenges!

Apricot in the front, lemon at back. 

Last Sunday morning I made the dough, and it was as silky and easy to work with as promised. I made a half recipe and divided into two small loaves. For fillings, I made one with the meringue and lemon curd and roasted almonds. Rolling this mixture up was a bit like trying to change a squirming baby. There were slips and leaks galore. The second one I filled with apricot leather from Syria, called amardeen. It's tart and tangy, but not very flexible, so rolling the dough around this and the meringue, chopped bittersweet almonds, whole cardamom seeds and more roasted almonds was another challenge.

The lemon curd coffee cake, before I attempted to roll it

In the end, both loaves were tasty, but the apricot one was the clear favourite. The amardeen softened up to a firm, jelly-like texture which, combined with the dark chocolate, crunchy almonds and surprise bits of cardamom was perfect in every way. It didn't rise as much as the lemon one, I think because the amardeen did not stretch or give, but it didn't matter one bit. The lemon one was good, and stayed moist for at least 4 days, but the nuts softened up and it just wasn't as interesting as the other one.
Filling:
amardeen, cut (with scissors) to 1"/2.5cm smaller than the rolled out dough
chopped bittersweet chocolate and chopped toasted almonds, enough to generously cover the meringue
cardamom seeds from 2 pods (use 4 if making a full recipe)

The amardeen, before adding more meringue, chocolate and nuts.

Spread dough with a thin layer of meringue and centre amardeen on it. Cover with remaining meringue and sprinkle nuts, chocolate and cardamom over. Roll, making sure you are holding one edge of the amardeen, as it is reluctant to roll. Seal bottom and lay on parchment lined baking sheet. Slash every inch or so, using a very sharp knife and making sure you cut the amardeen as well as the dough. Let rise and bake as directed. See challenge PDF here for recipe.
Thanks very much to Ria and Jamie for a great challenge. I'll be making this again and I have more filling ideas. I always have ideas, and just need to work on finding time and more hungry mouths to feed!

Blog-checking lines: The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Cardamom crème caramel

Simple, sweet and soothing, this is like a favourite childhood dessert, though not one from my childhood. We were more likely to have baked rice pudding or stovetop tapioca pudding, both of which I also love. This is my first foray into baking after yet another illness. It seems that I have caught every bug going around this winter. I visit many elementary schools, so I have plenty of opportunities to pick up germs, but this is getting ridiculous. This time it was a fever that stole my entire weekend, keeping me in bed for all but a few hours over 3 days. Once I woke up and started eating again I ate toast and tea, along with rice and orange juice. French toast was the next step, and today, I decided that I was ready for some dessert. Tomorrow it's back to germ warfare, sadly.
This recipe is from a wonderful book called My Bombay Kitchen, by Niloufer Ichaporia King. All the recipes sound delicious, but I haven't gotten any further than the desserts chapter. It might as well be called the cardamom chapter, as it is full of amazing-sounding sweets, spiced with that fragrant green pod. More on those other recipes later, but now I think you need to get yourself into the kitchen to make this. I used egg yolks rather than whole eggs, giving me a silky, pale yellow custard with the sharp flavour of very fresh cardamom. Don't even think about using pre-ground cardamom: you won't get any appreciable flavour from it.

Cardamom caramel custard
From My Bombay Kitchen, by Niloufer Ichaporia King
⅓ cup plus ½ cup sugar
2 cups half-and-half (I used some half-and-half and some milk)
1½ teaspoons cardamom seeds, pounded in a mortar (measure the sticky black seeds, not the green pods)
4 large eggs (I used 5 yolks and 1 egg)
pinch of salt

1. Combine ⅓ cup of the sugar, the half-and-half, and the cardamom in a saucepan. Bring to a boil; remove from the heat and set aside for at least an hour to let the cardamom flavour develop. 
2. To make the caramel: over medium heat, stir together the remaining ½ cup sugar in a small heavy saucepan with 2 tablespoons water until it melts. Keep stirring until it darkens to dark brown (I don't like my caramel that dark, so pull it off the heat when it's a dark amber). Add a splash of water and quickly pour into a 4-cup baking dish, or into 6 small (½ cup) ramekins. Set them aside until you're ready to make the custard.
3. Preheat the oven to 350℉. (I went with 300℉, as I prefer a lower temperature for baked custards)
4. Lightly beat the eggs with the salt, and continue whisking as you pour in the cardamom-infused cream. Strain it into the caramel-lined dish.
5. Set the baking dish or ramekins into a larger baking dish. Pour in enough hot water to come halfway up the sides of the dish. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 35 minutes, until a knife inserted an inch from the centre still looks wet. The custard will thicken and firm up as it cools. Remove from the water bath.
6. Cool to room temperature and then chill thoroughly, several hours or overnight. The longer you chill it, the more the caramel will melt into a sauce. Run a knife around the custard and turn it out onto a deep plate.

Cardamom crumb cake

I was so excited when I saw this cake appear on the December recipes list, thanks to Jill of Jill's Blog. However, with work, a nasty bug and general holiday craziness, I didn't get much time to spend on this. The one night I was able to bake this I discovered that I didn't have enough cardamom for both the cake and the crumbs. I put what I had in the cake, as I'm not usually a fan of crumb toppings and figured I'd be picking it off anyway. I know many people who prefer the crumb topping to the actual cake, but I am definitely not one of them. Other changes I made were to use slivered almonds instead of walnuts and I omitted the orange, as I wasn't convinced that it would work with both the coffee and cardamom. In the end, I didn't much like this cake, but I think it was probably my own fault. I found it tasted more of coffee than cardamom, and the texture was a bit coarse, like those boxed snack cake mixes my mother would occasionally buy when I was a child. Oh, and no surprise, but I didn't like the crumb topping. One good thing about it was that it kept very well: it sat around for about a week before I took a photo of it, and it was still perfectly fresh-tasting. Please don't let my poor results deter you--this was a well-liked cake by the rest of the TWD bakers. You can find the recipe here. I do have my eye on another cardamom cake recipe, so hopefully I'll be more successful next time. 

Cardamom sablés

If you love cardamom and butter, this is the cookie for you. I made a batch of these for a friend's birthday and mailed them off, and they arrived safe, sound and delicious. These are a buttery shortbread style cookie, and the variations are endless. This recipe is from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my Home to Yours, and I first made it last Christmas, just before I joined the Tuesdays with Dorie group. This week is a rewind week, where instead of all of us making one recipe, we choose one we missed or would like to revisit. So, if you want to see a variety of recipes, click your way over to the TWD site. 

Sablés

Makes about 50

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature, plus 1 large egg yolk, for brushing the logs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cardamom, preferably freshly ground
coarse sugar (I used raw sugar)


You can use a hand or stand mixer for this, or make them by hand. I made them by hand this time. Using a wooden spoon, beat the butter until smooth and very creamy. Add the sugars, cardamom and salt and beat until well blended, about 1 minute. The mixture should be smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy. Beat in 2 of the egg yolks, again beating until the mixture is homogeneous.
Add the flour, and mix gently to combine, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. The dough will not clean the sides of the bowl, nor will it come together in a ball -- and it shouldn't. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you're aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy (rather than smooth) dough. Pinch it, and it will feel a little like Play-Doh.

Scrape the dough out onto a smooth work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long: it's easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form the log. Wrap the logs well and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours, preferably longer. (The dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months).

GETTING READY TO BAKE: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
Remove a log of dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it and place it on a piece of parchment or wax paper. Whisk the remaining egg yolk until it is smooth, and brush some of the yolk all over the sides of the dough -- this is the glue -- then sprinkle the entire surface of the log with decorating sugar.
Trim the ends of the roll if they're ragged, and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies. (You can make these as thick as 1/2 inch or as thin as -- but no thinner than -- 1/4 inch.) Place the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving an inch of space between them.
Bake one sheet at a time for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the midway point. When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top; they may feel tender when you touch the top gently, and that's fine. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest a minute or two before carefully lifting them onto a rack with a wide metal spatula to cool to room temperature.

Repeat with the remaining log of dough, making sure the baking sheets are cool before you bake the second batch.
These keep well in a tin for about 5 days or so, and can even be frozen if you haven't sugared the edges.

Gevulde Speculaas (Spice cake with almond paste)

This is an autumn cake from the Netherlands, and if you like spices and almonds it's the perfect treat for you. If not, well, I've got a chocolate version in the works--stay tuned. It's quite rich, so it's best served in small slices. Don't worry--you can always go back for seconds! I definitely did. It's actually more like a cookie than a cake, as the dough is dry enough to roll out. The resulting confection is firm, sweet, spicy and crumbly, and perfect with tea or coffee. This is another recipe from Warm Bread and Honey Cake, my favourite new baking book in ages. I want to make almost everything from this book, as the writing and photos are wonderful.
Spice mixture*
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
¼ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon aniseed
¼ teaspoon cloves
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon mace
9 oz/1⅔ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
7 oz/1 cup brown sugar
6 oz/¾ cup unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
1 egg, well beaten
Filling
10½ oz coarse almond paste (I made my own, see below)
about ½-¾ of a beaten egg (reserve the rest for glazing)

1. Combine spices, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and pulse until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the beaten egg and run the food processor until the dough comes together. Try not to eat all the dough. Divide the dough into ⅓ and ⅔ portions, shape in discs, wrap separately in plastic and refrigerate. Chill for one hour. It can be made the day before, but will need to warm up before rolling to prevent it from breaking up.
2. Preheat oven to 340℉/170℃  and grease a 9" cake pan.
3. Mix the coarse almond paste with enough beaten egg to make a fairly soft, spreadable filling. Set aside. Roll out the larger portion of dough between 2 pieces of plastic wrap to an 11" circle. Make sure there are no creases in the plastic wrap. Use this piece of dough to line the pan, pressing it to the sides of the pan so it doesn't fall inward. Spread the almond paste evenly over the dough and fold in the dough edges so they rest on the almond paste. Reuse the plastic wrap to roll the smaller piece of dough into an 8½" circle. It should be slightly smaller than the cake pan. Trim it so the edges are neat. Moisten the edges of the dough in the pan and lay the smaller circle on top. Press the edges gently together to seal. Brush with the leftover beaten egg and prick with a fork in several places. I forgot to glaze it and it was fine. 
4. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Leave to cool in the pan, then transfer carefully to a serving plate. If you can stand it, wrap this and let it sit for a day or two before serving for best flavour.

*I reduced the cinnamon, upped the cardamom and ginger, and left out the cloves and aniseed. Use what you have, making up any missing spices by increasing one of the first 3. This is the place for fresh and freshly ground spices, as you can really taste them. I also halved this recipe and made it in a 6" pan, which still made 16 slices. It freezes well, too. 

Coarse almond paste:
My new neighbourhood has a fantastic store for buying very fresh nuts, so I have given up on store-bought almond paste. They do not sell blanched almonds there, but the almonds were huge and very fresh, so I did it myself by covering them with boiling water and letting them sit for a minute or two, till the skins wrinkled. I then rinsed them in cold water and squeezed the almonds out of their skins.
8 oz blanched almonds
5 oz icing sugar
1 egg white
lemon zest (optional)
almond extract (taste first to see if it's necessary--I didn't add any)
Grind almonds in food processor until coarsely ground. Add icing sugar and egg white and process until it comes together. Best made a few days in advance and refrigerated. Can also be frozen.

The Daring Bakers make doughnuts!

As soon as this challenge, chosen by Lori of Butter Me Up, was announced, many of her fellow Canadian members of the Daring Bakers came out of the woodwork and enthusiastically talked doughnuts. My favourite childhood doughnut memory is of pulling out my mother's deep fryer and making a batch of nutmeg scented cake doughnuts after school with my brother. We would roll and cut out a few, then give up and fling blobs of dough into the fryer. They were usually too big and uncooked in the centre, but we didn't care. We just tried to make and eat as many as possible before my parents got home. I'm sure they had nightmares about us burning the house down.

Ode to Tim Horton's: maple brown butter glazed cruller

Many folks also talked about Tim Horton's, and how they miss it when they're away from Canada. Tim Horton's is ubiquitous here, with outlets from coast to coast (but not coast to coast to coast, like the CBC), selling doughnuts, coffee, soup and sandwiches. You can actually plan your journey across Canada and map out all the Timmy's. Weird. Many people look down on Timmy's, but I have been known to have a cruller and a coffee. In fact, I had done just that the day this challenge was announced. My strangest encounter with this Canadian icon was walking down the road in Belfast a few years ago and seeing a giant Tim Horton's ad. Turns out that some gas stations there sell plastic-wrapped doughnuts and frothy 'cappuccino' out of an automated machine, kind of like what you'd see in a hospital waiting room. Well, not in a Canadian hospital, because they all have Timmy's outlets. :)

That irresistible custardy interior!

I really wanted to make crullers, as they are my favourite kind of doughnut, so I made these on Thanksgiving morning. They are made with the same dough used to make cream puffs, and they came together really quickly and easily. They did not hold their ridged shape when fried, but that was my fault, as I didn't let the dough cool enough. I am famously patient in my family, but not that day! I glazed them with a mixture of brown butter, maple syrup and icing sugar, and they were fantastic. I took a plate to my brother and his family, and my 2-year-old nephew ate 2 and started zooming around, yelling 'YUM!' and rubbing his and everyone else's tummies. Then he refused to have a nap. That's what aunts are for, right? Anyway, the cruller recipe was not one of the challenge ones, so I had another date with the deep fryer.

The amazing spherical doughnut!

I invited a couple of friends over for brunch and made the yeast doughnuts from the challenge. Marcellina had made some gorgeous cardamom doughnuts filled with raspberry jam, and I wanted some, but she lives in Australia, so I made my own half recipe and replaced the nutmeg in the recipe with cardamom. For the filling, I used the plum jam I had made for a Daring Cooks' challenge. Rather than inject the jam in the fried doughnuts, I rolled the dough thinly, cut it with a 2½" cutter, filled with a teaspoon of jam, covered with another round of dough, and cut the filled doughnut with a 2" cutter. I then left them to rise while I prepared the rest of the brunch. They didn't rise that much, but when I put them in the oil they puffed right up, becoming this bobbing ball of energy that was impossible to corral and turn over (kind of like my nephew on doughnuts). Anyway, cooking these was a team effort, and lots of fun. We let them cool while we ate brunch, being a bit wary of eating super-hot jam.

I kept taking bites, looking for the perfect shot. I never got it,
but this one looks kind of happy, and I got to eat 2 more doughnuts.

These were good too! They were a touch warm and not too sweet (mostly because I wasn't running the sugar shaker), and not greasy at all. Being an Ottawan, I really really wanted to make Beavertails, but I just didn't get around to it. I'll try to do one come winter, when I can do a full post on it and show you how to make a perfect Killaloe Sunrise. Check out the Daring Kitchen main page to see a slideshow of everyone's doughnuts. 

Blog-checking lines: The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Recipes and full challenge PDF after the jump

Plum and cardamom sweet bread

Do you have a recipe that you return to every year? This is my September cake. That's when Italian plums are available here and I look forward to this recipe for the other 11 months. I've never tried it with the imported plums that are available all year round, and I don't intend to. This is so good that it's worth the wait. I've made it twice this month already, and may try to make it again before the local plums disappear. When you are putting the thick batter in the pan, it will seem like the heaviest cake ever, but the cake bakes up sweet, with a soft crumb and pockets of tart fruit.

This cake has cardamom, and I think cardamom and plums are the best match ever. I may be biased, though, because my friend Judy says I think cardamom goes with everything. It does. It goes with everything I like, so there! I made a small loaf and a few large cupcakes with the first batch, and a 9" cake with the second batch. As you can see, I didn't get much fruit in the cupcakes, but the loaf had lots.

Okay, there are only 10 days of September left--go make this cake! Here's the recipe:

Plum and Cardamom Sweet Bread

from In the Sweet Kitchen, by Regan Daley

Makes one 9”x5” loaf

¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

¾ cup tightly packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground cardamom

¾ cup full-fat sour cream

2 cups diced Italian/prune plums

1.     Preheat the oven to 350℉, grease the loaf pan and line it with parchment. I have also made this in a smaller loaf pan, with a few extra cupcakes, or in a 9” round pan.  Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla.

2.     Reserve 2 tablespoons of the flour and sift the remaining with the baking powder, soda, salt and cardamom. Add this mixture to the creamed mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the sour cream in two additions. Toss the plums with the reserved flour and fold them into the batter, mixing only until the plums are evenly distributed. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

3.     Bake the loaf in the centre of the oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until a wooden skewer poked into the centre comes out clean. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then remove it and cool completely. This cake keeps well at room temperature for a few days, but I doubt it’ll last that long.

Oatmeal breakfast bread

Yup, that's the best I could do this week. I was not having a very good baking day the day I made this (and a number of other things that didn't quite work). This recipe, chosen by Natalie of Oven Love certainly looked simple enough. I used figs for the dried fruit and replaced all the spices with cardamom. It mixed up quickly, and I put it into a loaf pan I knew was too tall, too narrow and too small and hoped for the best. With topping, it was only 1 cm below the top of the pan. Luckily it didn't overflow, but it did rise enough that most of the almonds and brown sugar were pushed off the top of the loaf and onto the floor of the oven. 

It smelled fantastic as it was baking, and tested done at only 50 minutes, but I left it for a few more minutes and tested again. Still done. So, I cooled it on a rack for a few minutes, as directed, and then attempted to turn it out of the loaf pan. It seemed to be going okay, until this happened:

Yes, that is a gaping hole full of uncooked batter. Apparently the baking gods don't like it when I try to replace butter with applesauce and oil. Point taken. There wasn't much I could do to salvage it, as it was too hot and fragile to get back in the pan. So, I let it cool and trimmed off the cooked bits and gave the rest to the birds. I must say that the edges were quite tasty, if a bit stodgy, but that's my fault. I wish I had made it into muffins like Valerie and Jill. Thanks for the pick, Natalie, and check out the TWD blogroll for more aesthetically pleasing results.

:)

Daring Cooks explore the world of pierogi!

This month's challenge was to make pierogi dough and fillings from scratch, using local ingredients when possible. I made 2 savoury varieties and  1 sweet one, though I didn't get any pictures of the sweet one. All in all, I made 72 pierogies, and it took a long time, rolling and cutting, filling and sealing each one by hand. I would much rather fuss over something sweet, though these were delicious.

This picture shows the rolled out dough with its filling of mashed potatoes, cheese curds, sauteed onion, butter, salt and pepper. You can see the cheese curds in the bottom left corner of the first picture. They are bits of fresh cheddar, before pressing, and are fresh, mild, salty and squeaky. When I was a child, they were the ubiquitous road trip snack, and it is all too easy to eat about a pound of them. Look out for them if you have a cheese factory in your area. I garnished the boiled pierogies with lardons of my uncle's smoked bacon and more sauteed onions. The dough I chose, from the Gourmet cookbook (the yellow one), was easy to work with, but the pierogies needed to be boiled for 15 minutes and they were still a bit chewy. 

This is the second savoury filling: ground pork sauteed with onions and mixed with an equal amount of fresh sauerkraut, seasoned with fresh thyme and pepper. There is a local store that makes wonderful barrel sauerkraut, which is so much better than the stuff from a can or jar. After boiling, I turned these in a pan with browned butter and fresh dill.

As a reward for making 71 of these, I made myself a treat: one large pierogi filled with German plum butter (from a can, found at the sauerkraut store) and cardamom. I love plums and cardamom together. After boiling I fried it with some butter and sugar and ate it with a big blob of mascarpone on top. Can you understand why I didn't get any pictures? Here's a gratuitous flower picture from the backyard instead.

This was a fun challenge, and while I have eaten many pierogies, I had only made them once before. It was a lot of work, but these were so much better than the ones you can buy frozen at the supermarket. Head over to The Daring Kitchen to check out the slideshow of all the other takes on this challenge. 

Oh, and even though I don't love potatoes, they were my favourite, well, after the cardamom-plum one. Maybe wrapping them in dough is the trick. After making the pierogies, I made a kind of shepherd's pie with the leftover fillings. It was delicious!

Blog-checking lines:
The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

PDF of challenge and recipes after the jump!

Strawberry wedding cake

It still amazes me that anyone would ask me to make their wedding cake. Sure, it would probably taste good, but would I finish on time? I'm happy to say that I finished this cake with 6 minutes to spare. Yeah, 6 minutes didn't leave much time for piping, hence the rather rustic coat of whipped cream on it. Oh, and it tasted good! Sadly I didn't get a photo of the cut cake, which had a lovely pink filling, but I was so relieved by then that it hadn't collapsed that I just sat down and ate some. In fact, this is the only picture I got of the finished cake.

This cake was for my friends M and D, and it was the most relaxed wedding ever. Nobody could be further from being a Bridezilla than M. In fact, her only requirement was 'cardamom', and we did discuss berries, and there was a definite preference for whipped cream rather than buttercream, but that was it. And D, well I think he'll eat anything. I got pretty stressed out by this cake, which is unusual, especially when it comes to baking. I usually throw things together without too much of a plan, and because I have enough experience, it usually works. However, I wasn't willing to have a big, slumping, melting mess of a cake unveiled in front of lots of people I didn't know, and some that I do. So, I thought about it a lot. I read books and looked at websites and forums.  I bought new pans and lots of accessories. I stole a dozen straws from Starbucks. Not exactly stole: I paid $3.25 for a latte, and took them in lieu of sugar.

Those of you who have seen my kitchen are probably wondering how I did it. There are 6 layers of cake, all made on my 16" (40 cm) of counter space, and baked in my apartment-size oven. No worries, I have a breakfast table that's 13.5' (4.1 m) from said counter. Did I mention that I am moving? I am, on Monday, meaning that the space between counter and table is littered with half packed boxes, and requires hopping, turning sideways and taking a very circuitous route. Needless to say, it was a tight squeeze, and I broke 3 plates in the process, including my lovely old cake plate. I was upset about that one, as good cake plates are hard to find, but, as for the other two plates: less to pack. I also managed to drop a full container of cornstarch off the kitchen counter and discovered that it can fly all the way to the breakfast table, and even stick to the curtains. I came home the other day to discover a set of white footprints leading from my apartment to the elevator. I keep thinking I've got it all cleaned up, but it's hard with all the boxes in the way.

Anyway, back to the cake. All the recipes were from The Cake Bible, by Rose Levy Berenbaum. No recipes, as I've already packed the book. I made the génoise classique in 6", 8" and 10", with 2 layers of each. This took 22 eggs, but less than 200 grams of butter! It was a light sponge cake, spiced with freshly ground cardamom, soaked with a rum syrup and filled with a strawberry-white chocolate mousse. This mousse was a combination of Rose's strawberry cloud cream and white ganache. I frosted it with sweetened whipped cream flavoured with vanilla and stabilized with cornstarch. There was more than 2 litres of whipping cream in the cake, more than making up for the lack of butter, I think.

I baked the cakes on Thursday evening, syruped and put the layers together on Friday night (after the civil service and a great Chinese dinner), meaning I finished at 3 am. On Saturday morning, I woke up at 9 and thought I had better find a box to transport it in, and pick up some strawberries to garnish it. As you can see, I went a bit overboard with the strawberries, buying a flat (12 pints). I finally finished them yesterday. :) I got the tiers put together, using those straws to support them, and got the whipped cream on at 1:24 pm. My ride was arriving at 1:30. All I needed to do was get dressed. I was really worried about the cream melting, so I ripped a rack out of my fridge by force, and jammed the cake in.

When my ride arrived, I got the cake in its box and got it in the car, but sat in the backseat with it, as I was really worried. It was then I noticed I was wearing my house flip-flops, which did not match my dress at all. Oh well. Even though I had pushed a wooden dowel down the centre (a long cooking chopstick, actually), I could envision it sliding apart. Sure enough, on a corner that T took like an F1 driver, the whole thing tilted dramatically. Once I saw that it was okay, I relaxed. A bit too much, apparently, because as we took off from a stoplight, the box and cake lurched backward, smearing on the back of the box. Luckily it wasn't too bad, and I fixed what I could and put that side against the wall. I put the strawberries on at the venue, and watched the cake through the whole dinner, as I was really worried about it melting, or just collapsing entirely. It seemed the time to eat it would never arrive, to both me and the four year old at our table. He kept asking, "Is it time for cake yet?"

Well, it's always time for cake, in my world, but I think I'll stick to simpler things for the next little while. See you Tuesday!

TWD: Coconut tea cake

I was so excited about this cake that I made it more than a week early. Yup, you read that right. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am never early for anything, but it seems like we've been making lots of cookies and tarts at TWD, and cake is my favourite thing to bake and eat. I even went hunting in my mother's basement to find a bundt cake pan. Unfortunately when I was turning the cake out I saw that it was recommended for microwave use. Oops. Guess that's why the outside of the cake was a bit too brown in spots. It didn't melt, but that was probably just luck. I think this pan dates from the 80s, when my parents bought their first microwave--a behemoth Panasonic Genius. My mother still has it, and she can have the pan back too.
:)

I used fresh coconut both inside and on top of the cake. I also added 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom, but the flavour wasn't that strong, so I'd add more next time. Interestingly, in the TWD P&Q forum (that's problems and questions), some found that the optional cardamom overpowered, but I have been taste-tasting the cake for days (it's a good keeper), and I still can't taste it. Instead of rum and vanilla, I added some of my homemade extrait antillais: a mixture of rum, vanilla beans, mace, tonka beans and sapote. It smells like heaven, even though I only made it a couple of weeks ago and it needs longer to get really strong. I tried to get a photo, but it looks like alien parts in a bottle, so just use your imagination. I also glazed the cake with some cream cheese icing that I thinned with the leftover coconut milk and more rum.

I usually don't like bundt cakes much, but this was nice: the coconut added a nice texture, and it was lighter than I expected, and very moist. Again in the P&Q some found this a bit dry, but I think the fresh coconut helped. The cake lasted 4 or 5 days, and kept very well. This week's recipe was selected by Carmen of Carmen Cooks, so she's got the recipe. Thanks for a fantastic pick Carmen!