Running way behind, but I have CHEESECAKE!

Ok, so I have got a TON of catching up to do!! As you know, I fell off my blog-wagon back in April, with work, life and just WAY too much going on around me, I have stacks of drafts in my little blog-post-storage!! So, it's time I start getting caught up!!



This is actually my DARING BAKERS challenge from APRIL! (can you believe that, totally embarassing!) To keep it honest, I did not complete May's Opera Cake Challange, and I am doing my June goodness THIS weekend, but then I'll be all caught up, in the DB department at least!

These were probably my absolute favorite DARING BAKERS Challenge so far (since joining in December of 2007)



This challenge was chosen by Deborah of TASTE and TELL and Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasmshere are the links to their cheesecake pops, where you can find the recipe and many glorious versions of this super crowd friendly desert! This recipe comes from a must-own book of deliciousness, Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O'Connor.



This was not too difficult, was SO impressive, and will be a go-to party desert for me for the rest of my life!! You can really go in any direction with these as far as decorating them- dark chocolate, milk chocolate, sprinkles, nuts, etc...the possibilities are endless!!

I did end up cooking mine about 15-20 minutes longer than the recipe called for, let it sit for 15 minutes with the oven off and door closed after cooking was complete.
I used straws from the grocery store that I cut with kitchen scisors, and mine are dipped in dark chocolate (some rolled in cut up reeses p.b. cups- but that didn't work too well, but well enough I think I'd just go crushed nuts & sprinkles next time...)

A Tale of Two Cakes; Daring Bakers CELEBRATE!

This truly, is a PERFECT cake. As I have mentioned before, lemon deserts are not my favorites, but OOOooohhh-BOY! This cake may have finally won me over to the dark, lemony side!!! Although, as the title indicates, this perfect cake was ever so delicious, I did have to go two rounds with baking this layered delight. First let me tell you what this cake is all about...



This month's DARING BAKERS challenge comes to us from MORVEN. She made a FABULOUS pick and for our March 2008 challenge, she brought us, "Perfect Party Cake" from Baking: From My Home to Yours, By: Dorie Greenspan. WOOOO-HOOOO! I am familiar with this FANTASTIC book, from my participation in another amazing group, Tuesday's With Dorie. Dorie's recipes, details and writing style make this cookbook a pure delight and an absolute must-own for anyone who finds baking an essential joy of life.



So, that brings us to MY Perfect Party Cake. I made this the Saturday before Easter to take to our family feast. Well, actually what I did was go out to an incredible dinner with Nate on Saturday night. Then I came home and passed out on the couch and if it was not for Nate waking me up and reminding me I was going to be SUPER stressed if I had to do the whole thing before we left to head to our Easter celebration. Begrudgingly, I got up and started making the cake; TAKE ONE.



Fortunately as I mentioned above, I love this book. I find Dorie's recipes, and more importantly they way she words everything makes the instructions easy to follow. I love it, no matter how obvious it may seem, when a recipe will TELL ME HOW LONG TO WHISK THIS THING!! So I stared in on the 2 cake layers. I had heard about other DB'er having trouble with their cake rising. Dorie had suggested it was the TYPE of cake four and recommends if you have a problem with the rising, to substitute the All Purpose Flour/Cake Flour substitute. "1 cup cake flour= 1 cup all purpose flour minus 2 T."



The cake recipe was a breeze and in no time I was pulling them out of the oven. They weren't super-flat, but they weren't risen completely either. But, now it was late, I was sleepy, and I wrapped the 2 cooled layers up and decided I'd "make it work" on Sunday morning before we left.



TAKE TWO: I woke up early enough, and this cake was not 22-steps of crazy to make, so I gave it another go, but using organic cake flour this time (why not, right?)...well, the only difference there, was part of the allure of this PERFECT Party Cake is the beautiful snowy-white cake, frosting and coconut, offset by the yummy bright raspberry filling between layers. What I ended up doing was using two layers of the four-layer cake from the first batch, and two from the second. There was some sticking during the cooling process, and some rough roads during the slicing the layers in half...**I have since learned a slicing layers in half trick that I am looking forward to trying!** This time I used the toothpicks-all-the-way around and a big super-sharp serrated knife. When I got to Easter and was telling the tale of my baking adventure, Mom and Nana said to use dental floss to divide cake layers. Very interesting!!



This was the first recipe I've made where a layer of cake is cut in half to create a beautiful four-layer cake. I only had raspberry preserves that did contain seeds, so I used those, and the buttercream came together beautifully. This buttercream frosting recipe is AWESOME, I think it was some of the best frosting I've ever made!



I didn't run into any problems assembling or decorating this Perfect Party Cake, and even with tons of candy, and a table full of other cakes and deserts, this one still got eaten up!! As Dorie suggests in the forward to this recipe, I will be putting a marker on that page and coming back to Perfect Party Cake time and time again!!



For the Recipe visit
Morven's Blog and if you haven't already, and you love to bake, get this book!
Baking ~ from My Home to Yours By: Dorie Greenspan.

Julia Child's Daring French Bread~

WOW- talk about diving HEAD FIRST into baking bread for my very first time. I have had "bake bread" on my to do list forever. When it came time for this month's Daring Bakers Challenge, I was thrilled to see that Mary of The Sour Dough and Sarah of I Like to Cook chose French Bread....and not just any old bread recipe- but the 18-page tribute to doing it best, Julia Child's French Bread recipe from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume Two by Julia Child and Simone Beck".



So I set aside an entire day to get down and make some bread. I was so excited to tackle this challenge, I can't even put it into words! Deciding what shape to form the bread was hard, so many options, and the very first time to try any one of them! After some debating I decided to form two boules (bread bowls). The instructions/the recipe was a very descriptive one, THANK GOODNESS!!! I really appreciated all the description and was so thankful for the tips from the experience of Sarah and Mary!! To see the full recipe, visit THIS LINK courtesy of Mary. If you are ready to get inspired by some beautiful bread check out the DARING BAKER'S BLOGROLL.


Gettin' ready for the FIRST RISE..


WOO HOO!!!! Now that's RISEN!


Gettin' ready for the SECOND RISE...

Mine could have MOST DEFINITELY been more golden, and more neatly shaped & formed, but I had a blast putting the first notch in my bread-baking belt. Now the ice has been broken and I very much look forward to baking bread again and again and many, many more times after that! This is the whole reason I joined the ranks of the Daring Bakers. I feel that innovation and creativity can truly be taken to new heights by learning and trying things I never made, and whipping up something I may not have been brave enough to make time for before. So far in my 3 months as a member, I have rolled a roll cake, made meringue with confidence and now I'm BAKING BREAD!!! I look forward to this years challenges, and can not wait to see what is up next!

I Dared to try Lemon Meringue Pie

Ok, so this is one of those "all-time-favorite" deserts that my husband loves, and so do my co-workers, but it's not for me. I don't know what my deal is, but lemon deserts of any sort are not up my alley for some reason. That's not to say I didn't have a blast making this pie AND I would definitely make it again!! I want to shout-out a big THANK YOU to JEN at The Canadian Baker for choosing the Lemon Meringue Pie for the January Daring Bakers Challenge, because I did have fun making it and Nate had a blast eating it!! Check out all the BEAUTIFUL pies by visiting the DARING BAKERS BLOGROLL HERE






I started out with the crust, of course, and this was a different recipe from my "usual" for pie crust, and I really liked it. This is a sweet, flaky, delicious crust recipe that I will definitely use again. It was not too difficult to make and I was very happy with how it turned out...This was the first time I used beans in a pie crust to weight it down, and I am not sure if they are supposed to "burrow" a bit, but it didn't affect the taste, and didn't boar any holes through the crust, so I'm not complaining.





Nate came into the kitchen to help out with the filling. I had to explain that he did not get to "add more zest, ADD MORE ZEST!!", he kept wanting to put his spin on the filling, but I told him we can make another pie for improvising and twists soon! We followed the recipe exactly and filled up the crust with the delicious-looking lemon filling, Nate said it tasted fabulous.



Next came the meringue, which I was so excited to make, because I was not afraid of it, having made that part of this recipe before and knowing it was going to be GOOD! I did, however, as usual, jump the gun a little bit and my meringue was ready to rock when I realized the pie was still a teeny bit warm, not quite all the way cooled. So my meringue sat for a little bit and then I spooned it onto the pie- I think next time I'll get a little fancier with the meringue, but at this point Nate was very anxious to eat some pie so I just spooned it on and baked it.



Nate said the pie was totally delicious, I cut a slice for him before I let it fully "set" and it was super mushy, but the we refrigerated it for a bit and it "gel"'d nicely and I didn't run into the wateriness that others did (for the most part).



Visit The Canadian Baker for the full recipe & enjoy!!
Nate said he will be making this again~

HOW DARE YULE! DARING BAKERS YULE LOG

This might get a record for my longest post ever, so bear with me here- it will also be FULLA photos, documenting this momentous occasion.
Where do I even start?!? This post marks SO MANY FIRSTS! First of all it is my FIRST CHALLENGE AS A DARING BAKER! If you don't know about The Daring Bakers, visit the DARING BAKERS BLOGROLL HERE to learn all about and see all the blogs in this FABULOUS GROUP!!
In addition to this being my FIRST challenge as a Daring Baker,(and let me just say, CHALLENGE was the right word.) it is also the first time that I have ROLLED anything! I have never made a pumpkin roll, jelly roll or until now...a YULE LOG also known as a Buche de Noel. On top of all of these firsts there are a few more bonus firsts- I had never made Butter cream Frosting, nor had I ever made marzipan!

I was really excited to see the December challenge was a Buche de Noel because I would get the opportunity to try SO many things I have never done before! I want to thank Lis of La Mia Cucina & Ivonne of Creampuffs in Veince



I started with the buttercream~ It needed to be ready when the cake came out of the oven and just in case my first attempt didn't work out I decided to do that first. One of the best thing I hope to hone in completing these monthly challenges is becoming a more PATIENT person in the kitchen. I did well at heating my egg/sugar whisking project, but didn't let it cool quite enough before adding the butter and the end result was very liquid-y. So I jumped online and found the good advice to use an ice bath (big bowl of ice, set frosting-filled mixer bowl on top of the ice.) I whisked it for about 5 minutes and then it started to separate and look not right- so I pulled it off the ice and whisked it really fast and somehow I got lucky and frosting magically appeared!! The texture was pretty good and I was VERY excited about that!!



Next came the Genoise cake, I opted to go chocolate on that because I love chocolate cake and thought it would be yummy with the espresso buttercream...this time I was MUCH more patient with the whole egg heating process, and the cake mix mixed up very beautifully!!



I spread the batter out on the jelly roll pan...and, here I will have to digress for a moment to 'splain a bit about my oven. It is CRAZY, I've had the gas company look at it, the dial never matches the ACTUAL internal temp and it has a tendency no matter how low the heat is to get SUPER hot and burn the crap out of what ever I am cooking in a VERY short time- so I've got to keep an eye on it... Here is where I went a bit astray with this lil'recipe. I kept testing it with toothpicks, watching the temp and touching it for spring-y-ness, I pulled it out at about 7-8 minutes and it was ALMOST done, in retrospect I would not have put it back in for 1-2 more minutes, I would have just LET IT COOL and I think it would have rocked. What I did instead was put it back in for 1-2 minutes and I think it got a bit dry (ie-cracky when rolling!).... Anyhow, here comes that reminder to LEARN PATIENCE again; The next time I make this I will wait for the cake to COOL ALL THE WAY before flipping it onto fresh parchment...it was sill a weeeee bit warm when I went for it and the cake stuck to the new layer of parchment which made it a TRICKY (and dry/cracky) mutha to roll!!

The good news is it DID roll- kept together with the buttercream & hazelnuts I added to the interior layer of frosting.



So into the fridge it went to chill out for about an hour, I put my frostin in there too to chill out so it didn't get melty...Time passed and I pulled the log and frosting out of the fridge, right away I knew the buttercream was jacked up! It started to separate, becoming curdled and liquidy and pretty freaking gross looking.
I was super bummed, but decided to re-attempt the next day and frost my lil'log.

Then all hades truly broke loose, the next night I came home from work with more butter ready to have a re-match with the frosting, and my sink was filled with black sludge. I could not believe it. As indicated above by the reference to my fabulous oven, the building management here is not striving to impress anyone by any means. My hubby and I bailed the sludge with a bucket until 1am, all day Tuesday we waited for the plumber they promised that never showed and at 6pm Tuesday night when our kitchen completely flooded, we called our own plumber and decided The Man can shove it, we'll deduct the $400 from rent and they'll just have to deal with it- of course there is more fun to it than that, BUT the good news is by Wednesday (and not a moment too soon) it was time for my re-match with the espresso butter-cream. With some fabulous advice from Ivonne, I used MUCH more patience and whipped the hot egg whites and sugar for over 7 minutes with the electric mixer and this time the consistency was beautiful ALL THE WAY! I had thawed my log and when the buttercream was ready I frosted it up. I used a fork to "bark" it and sprinkled it with some cinnamon and powdered sugar to give it a snowy look.





Then it was on to the Marzipan. This went pretty smooth from the get-go, even though I dumped the WHOLE 2 CUPS of powdered sugar into the mixer with the almond paste. I kneaded well, and made up some mushrooms!



I feel so fabulous that I have completed my FIRST DARING BAKERS CHALLENGE (as well as my first roll, first buttercream (and second butter cream), first marzipan and first YULE LOG, I think I will make the Yule Log an annual tradition from now on to commemorate this fabulous challenge and my favorite holiday!!

Recipes~


Chocolate Genoise:

3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
pinch of salt
3/4 cup of sugar
1/3 cup cake flour - spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off (also known as cake & pastry flour)
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup cocoa

one (1) 10 x 15 inch jelly-roll pan that has been buttered and lined with parchment paper and then buttered again

1.Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees F.

2.Half-fill a medium saucepan with water and bring it to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat so the water is simmering.

3.Whisk the eggs, egg yolks, salt and sugar together in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer. Place over the pan of simmering water and whisk gently until the mixture is just lukewarm, about 100 degrees if you have a thermometer (or test with your finger - it should be warm to the touch).

4.Attach the bowl to the mixer and, with the whisk attachment, whip on medium-high speed until the egg mixture is cooled (touch the outside of the bowl to tell) and tripled in volume. The egg foam will be thick and will form a slowly dissolving ribbon falling back onto the bowl of whipped eggs when the whisk is lifted.

5.While the eggs are whipping, stir together the flour and cornstarch.

6.Sift one-third of the flour mixture over the beaten eggs. Use a rubber spatula to fold in the flour mixture, making sure to scrape all the way to the bottom of the bowl on every pass through the batter to prevent the flour mixture from accumulating there and making lumps. Repeat with another third of the flour mixture and finally with the remainder.

7.Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

8.Bake the genoise for about 10 to 12 minutes. Make sure the cake doesn’t overbake and become too dry or it will not roll properly.

9.While the cake is baking, begin making the buttercream.

10.Once the cake is done (a tester will come out clean and if you press the cake lightly it will spring back), remove it from the oven and let it cool on a rack.

Coffee Buttercream:




4 large egg whites
1 cup sugar
24 tablespoons (3 sticks or 1-1/2 cups) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
2 tablespoons rum or brandy

1.Whisk the egg whites and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer. Set the bowl over simmering water and whisk gently until the sugar is dissolved and the egg whites are hot.

2.Attach the bowl to the mixer and whip with the whisk on medium speed until cooled. (about 7-8 minutes) Switch to the paddle and beat in the softened butter and continue beating until the buttercream is smooth. Dissolve the instant coffee in the liquor and beat into the buttercream.

I also chopped 1 cup of hazelnuts in my food processor and spread those over the buttercream in the center of the cake

Marzipan Mushrooms:



8 ounces almond paste
2 cups icing sugar
3 to 5 tablespoons light corn syrup
Cocoa powder

1.To make the marzipan combine the almond paste and 1 cup of the icing sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat with the paddle attachment on low speed until sugar is almost absorbed.

2.Add the remaining 1 cup of sugar and mix until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.

3.Add half the corn syrup, then continue mixing until a bit of the marzipan holds together when squeezed, adding additional corn syrup a little at a time, as necessary: the marzipan in the bowl will still appear crumbly.

4.Transfer the marzipan to a work surface and knead until smooth.

5.Roll one-third of the marzipan into a 6 inches long cylinder and cut into 1-inch lengths.

6.Roll half the lengths into balls. Press the remaining cylindrical lengths (stems) into the balls (caps) to make mushrooms.

7.Smudge with cocoa powder.

Assembling the Yule Log:

1.Run a sharp knife around the edges of the genoise to loosen it from the pan.

2.Turn the genoise layer over (unmolding it from the sheet pan onto a flat surface) and peel away the paper.

3.Carefully invert your genoise onto a fresh piece of parchment paper.

4.Spread with half the coffee buttercream (or whatever filling you’re using). I sprinkled the hazelnuts here

5.Use the parchment paper to help you roll the cake into a tight cylinder.

6.Transfer back to the baking sheet and refrigerate for several hours.

7.Unwrap the cake. Trim the ends on the diagonal, starting the cuts about 2 inches away from each end.

8.Position the larger cut piece on each log about 2/3 across the top.

9.Cover the log with the reserved buttercream, making sure to curve around the protruding stump.

10.Streak the buttercream with a fork or decorating comb to resemble bark.

11.Transfer the log to a platter and decorate with your mushrooms and whatever other decorations you’ve chosen.