Daring Bakers December 2008: Murphy's Law Edition

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand. I have few pictures for you this month, mainly due to the fact that this month's challenge was pretty much a complete failure. It seems that this month, my baking mojo left me to fend for myself. Believe me, it was not pretty. After what seemed like the ten-billionth thing to go wrong, I found myself in a ball of tears on the kitchen floor around 9:00 pm on Christmas Eve. But even though this was the challenge that made me want to rip out my kitchen and give up baking forever, I completed it. And it was edible (if not pretty). And this month, that in itself is quite an accomplishment.


A quick preface: A French Yule log is different quite different from what I consider to be the more traditional Yule log. The French version is more of a frozen entrements, or "creamy dessert," as opposed to a cake. It includes a variety of different elements, each surrounded by an insanely rich and delicious dark chocolate mousse. So...without further adieu, here's the story of the dessert that got the best of me.

We were given lots of freedom to play with flavors, and I quickly settled on a chocolate and hazlenut dessert with a hint of coffee. So, I started baking the dacquoise. I decided to use hazlenut meal instead of almond meal. I made my own meal, but ran into trouble when I just couldn't seem to grind my hazlenuts into a fine enough meal. It worked, but my dacquoise was grainer and thinner than I would have liked, partially because the larger pieces of nuts deflated my heavily whipped egg whites, which is what normally would give the biscuit its lift. But, since it tasted fine, I didn't worry too much about it.

Second was the dark chocolate mousse. The mousse recipe involved making a pate a bomb which involved beating egg yolks with a sugar syrup. This gives the mousse added structure to be able to support the other elements of the cake. On my first attempt, I heated the sugar too hot, and when I added the syrup to the beaten egg yolks, it hardened and left a lump of yolk covered rock candy at the bottom of the mixng bowl. (Though the little bits of syrup that hit the whisk as it was mixing turned to cotton candy, so I accidentally made cotton candy with my Kitchen Aid). After cleaning the bowl, I went back for take two. Instead of waiting for the syrup to reach 244 F, I just let it go until it reached the lower limit of the "softball" range indicated on my candy thermometer. This time it worked, and the rest of the mousse came together really well. (Did I mention that it was insanely rich and delicious?)

Next, I made the creme brulee insert, which is what really did me in. When infusing the cream with the vanilla bean, I few in a few coffee beans as well. This was an experiment, and flavor wise, it actually worked out really well. The coffee flavor was more subtle (which I wanted) and the beans didn't discolor the creme brulee, which was also good because I wanted the contrast of the light custard against the dark chocolate of the rest of the dessert. It was in the baking and setting of the custard that I ran into trouble. The recipe said to bake at 210 F degrees, but I read that many daring bakers had trouble getting the creme brulee to set at that temperature, so they increased it. So I started out baing it at 245 F. After an hour, it was still liquid. So, I bumped the temp up to 270 F and baked for another hour. When I pulled it out, I gave it a jiggle, and it seemd "firm on the edges and slightly wobbly in the center." So I covered it and put it in the fridge to continue setting.

The next day, I went about finishing the dessert. I started by making the praline feuillete, or crisp. Knowing my own limits, I knew better than to attempt to make my own praline, and instead decided to use Nutella instead. I'd read that it worked really well for some other DBs, and it went very well with my chocolate-hazlenut flavor. But I did intend to make my own gavottes (very thin lace crepes which are used to make the crisp part). It seems I wasn't able to spread the batter evenly, so while I got nice crisps in some part of the pan, the rest was softer and more crepe like. Unusable. So I tossed those and went to Plan B: Rice Krispies. Not as elegant, but they worked. And really, I discovered that chocolate and Nutella covered Rice Krispies are a treat unto themselves.

It was finally time for me to start assembling my Yule Log. I assembled it upside down in a loaf pan, not having the more traditional half-pipe mold. I put down a layer of the dacquoise and topped with a third of the mousse. So far so good. Then, I went to get my creme brulee, and when I unmolded it to place it in the mousse, I discovered it hadn't set at all. Still runny. And since I unmolded it unto my loaf pan mold, I couldn't take it out. This caused me to turn to Psycling and inform him that it was ruined, and it looked like we wouldn't have dessert for Christmas dinner. But, already having put so much time and effort into this dessert, I soldiered on. So I added the next third of the mousse and my Rice Krispie feuillete, followed by the last of the mousse. Then I put it in the fridge to stay cool while I made the ganache insert.

(Convinced this dessert was totally ruined, I made a back-up dessert, which also totally failed when my cake didn't rise enough, so that ended up in the trash too. It was not a good night.)
When I think of ganache, I think of chocolate melted together with some cream and butter. But this ganache was done differently. I started by making a caramel. When the caramel was just about ready, I realized I hadn't started heating the cream yet, and when I went to go get it started, I bumped the glass and spilled it everywhere. There was cream all over the kitchen floor, under the oven, everywhere. At this point (about 9:00 pm Christmas Eve) that was the last straw. I collapsed in a big pile of tears convinced I would never be able to do anything right agian. Once I had that cleaned up, the sugar caramel was burned, and I had to start over. So,m I threw that out and started over again. This time, I manged to not spill the cream, cooked the caramel to a nice dark amber, (darker than I made it for last month's challenge), and when I whisked them together, and added my chocolate and butter, I got a wonderful smooth ganache with a deeper flavor thanks to the caramelized sugar. I added it to my log, topped with another layer of the dacquoise, and stuck it in the freezer for the night.

The next day, after a nice breakfast, and a quiet and low-key Christmas with Psycling, my mom, my brother, and of course, the Munchkin, I set out to make the glaze. This was the only element that I completed without a hitch. It was a beautiful shiny glaze that set just right.

I ended up bringing this dessert to our Christmas dinner with friends (with a pan of uber-yummy brownies just in case) with the caveat that they might not be edible. When I sliced it open, it wasn't very pretty (more marbled than layered thanks to the runny creme brulee), but it tasted great, and it got lots of compliments. Though to be honest, I didn't particularly enjoy it. It tasted good. But I was so jaded by how much trouble it gave me that I didn't particularly want to eat it.

I'd like to try this again sometime, and get it right. But I think it will take a while before I work up the guts to go for it again.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and that you have a wonderful 2009!

Daring Bakers: Mmmmm...Caramel

I love caramel. I find the sweet, creamy, gooeyness to be irresistible. So it is quite appropriate that I officially end my Daring Bakers maternity leave with Shuna Fish Lydon's signature Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, as published on Bay Area Bites. There was an optional challenge of Alice Medrich's Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Pure Dessert. This month's challenge was co-hosted by Delores, Alex, and Jennny, with Natalie helping out with the gluten-free option.

I have to admit that I was a little intimidated when I read what Shuna had to say about this recipe:

"This is one of those cakes that is truly about baking. It may sound strange because aren't all cakes about baking? What I mean is that getting this cake to bake is about balancing fat with acid and protein JUST RIGHT...It would be very easy to get various other flavours in the caramel cake but what's tricky is making sure the flavour does not screw up the liquid-fat-flour ratio too much...Various flavouring ingredients and agents carry with them their own acidity and moisture contents...But I will say this about flavours: you will hide and lose the subtlety of the caramel flavour in the cake and that's what this cake is about."

I initially was thinking about trying to add a little coffee flavor to this cake, as I LOVE the coffee and caramel flavor combination (my guilty indulgence at Starbuck's is a Caramel Macchiato, and my standard order at Cold Stone involves coffee ice cream and caramel), but after reading Shuna's warning, I decided that this cake would probably pose enough of a challenge as is.


I decided to make this cake for Thanksgiving. I started Wednesday night by making the caramel syrup. It's amazing how just sugar and water (and heat) can turn into such a wonderfully flavored syrup! Following the warning of the DBers who'd already made their cakes, I wore long sleeves and a heavy oven mit to pour in the water to stop the caramelization process. I think this was wise. There was lots of sputtering and spitting of molten hot sugar. The instructions said to cook until "dark amber" which I realized as I was making it is a rather subjective term. In retrospect, I think I could have let the syrup cook a little longer before stopping it, and let it develop a richer caramel flavor.

Does this look "Dark Amber?"

Despite that, the syrup still had a wonderful caramel flavor.

Once the syrup was made and cooled, I got started on the cake. I have to admit that I got a little distracted, and realized as I got into it that I added some of the ingredients in the wrong order. I'd started adding my dry ingredients and milk when I realized that I'd forgotten to add the caramel syrup (only the key ingredient to the cake). So I went ahead and added it as soon as I remembered, but I was a little nervous, as Shuna's warning about this cake was floating around the the back of my head. Fortunately, this little lapse did not affect the final product in any way. (Side Note: One of my favorite kitchen tricks involves the measuring out sticky things like honey, molasses, or caramel syrup. If you spray the measuring spoon or cup with cooking spray before measuring out the sticky stuff, then it slides right out when adding it to whatever you are making. It makes things so much easier!)

I made the Caramelized Butter Frosting on Thursday afternoon. I was quite wary when I saw that the first step in this recipe was to brown the butter. I've always been scared of browned butter as everything I've read is that it's easy to burn. And the recipe did not give much direction as to how to go about it. So, I did what I always do in such situations, and I asked Google. Google provided me with several good links, and after reading through a few web pages, I decided it was time to bit the bullet and conquer my fear of browned butter. (The best tip Google gave me was not to use a dark bottomed pan to brown the butter, because it makes it too difficult to see the color of the butter and the milk fats as it's cooking. So I figured I'd share the love and pass that tip on to you!) My butter browned successfully on the first try. And it was nearly as scary as I'd been making it out to be. Once the browned butter had cooled, I started beating in the powdered sugar, and thinning with cream and caramel syrup as necessary. After frosting the cake, I used some of the left over caramel syrup to decorate the cake.

With all the warnings and sputtering caramel and browning butter, it actually came together really easily for me. It seems that the DBs have all had different experiences with this cake. Some said it was dense like pound cake, others said it was light and airy. Mine was somewhere in between. But it was very moist, and DELICIOUS!! It got rave reviews from everyone at the table. I'd read from the other DBs that this cake, particularly the frosting, were very sweet, and I was worried that they might be a little too sweet for me. But they weren't. It was perfectly balanced. The cake was sweet, but not in the gave-me-a-tummyache-and-sent-me-into-a-sugar-coma kind of way. The subtle yet rich flavor of the caramel was just right. Not over powering, but enough to really infuse the cake with that little something extra. And it was even better the next day, after the flavor of the caramel had time to mellow and deepen.

While I could go on and on about how wonderful this cake was, it boils down to this: simply amazing! Go find it and bookmark it. This is definitely a recipe you want to try!

P.S. I didn't get to the caramels, but those that did raved about them, so I'm going to try to get to them before Christmas.

P.P.S. I've been cooking and even remembering to photograph, but I haven't had time to blog. Hopefully I'll get to some of these backlogged recipes soon. But it's so hard to tear myself away from this:

Black Bean and Butternut Squash "Lasagna"

I got the idea for this dish when I was looking for something fun to do with the butternut squash we got in our CSA bag. As I was browsing through various recipes, I noticed lots of black bean and butternut squash combos. I decided to see what I could do with it. I ended up with a yummy and filling vegetarian entree.

I was planning on doing either tacos or buritos or something along those lines, but this is one of those dishes that just evolved as I was making it, based on the things things I had on hand. I'm glad I made this "lasagna style." It worked really well, and was quite tasty. Psycling and I both went back for seconds. The spiciness of the pepper jack cheese complimented the sweetness of the squash, which was enhanced by the hint of cloves. This lasagna makes for a filling vegetarian main dish, and

Black Bean and Butternut Squash "Lasagna"

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 butternut squash, peeled, seeds scooped out, and cut into ~1/2" pieces
1 tbsp. oregano
1 tbsp. cumin
1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. cloves
1 c. vegetable broth
2 15 oz. cans black beans, rinsed and drained
10-12 small corn tortillas (depending on the size of your dish)
1 1/2 c. grated pepper jack cheese

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and sautee until soft. Add garlic, squash, and spices and cook about 30 seconds.

2.) Add vegetable broth to skillet and cook, covered until liquid has evaporated and squash is tender (add more vegetable broth if needed to get squash to desired softness). Add beans to skillet and cook until heated through.

3.) Grease a baking dish (I used a smaller one, about 8 x 11, but a 9 X 13 would work too) with cooking spray. Cover bottom of dish with tortillas, tearing them if necessary to fit. Spoon half of the bean mixture over tortillas, and sprinkle with 1/2 c. cheese. Place another layer of tortillas on top of this. Add rest of bean mixture, and sprinkle with another 1/2 c. of cheese. Top with another layer of tortillas.

4.) Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake uncovered for another 5 minutes until cheese melts.

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry, no pictures because 1) I'm lazy and 2) the software we use to upload them crashes Psycling's new computer. We're working on fixing that...

Menu Planning Monday -- 10/10/08

Last week, despite my best intentions, we didn't do a very good job of sticking to the menu plan. Here's the week in review:

Monday: Planned -- veggie loaf; Actual -- veggie loaf (YAY!!)
Tuesday: Planned -- sweet potato and squash shepherd's pie; Actual -- pizza for an election night party
Wednesday: Planned -- vegetable soup; Actual -- squash and sweet potato shepherd's pie
Thursday: Planned -- eat out; Actual -- left overs
Friday: Planned -- Squash and black bean quesadillas; Actual -- last minute invite out for dinner

Given that, this week I'll be recycling some of these meals. So here's the plan for this week:

Monday: Left overs (Psycling is working late on a paper deadline)
Tuesday: Vegetable Soup
Wednesday: Squash and black bean quesadillas, turnip greens with chipotle vinaigrette
Thursday: Doggy class -- eat out or left overs
Friday: Stuffed Acorn squash, salad
Saturday: Fried Green Tomato BLTs
Sunday: left overs or something easy I'll throw together.

We'll see if we do a little better this week on sticking to the plan.

Menu Planning Monday

Life is busy. I'm sure that's nothing new, for you or for me. But you know how sometimes, you just have so much going on, and it seems like there's no way you can add yet another thing to the mix. Then something else comes up. And you have a really full plate. And then more stuff comes up, and you wonder how in the world you'll handle it. Then eventually you realize something's gotta give.

That's how things have been around here. There is just too much going on, and I realized that the pace of life as I was living it was unsustainable. And something had to give. That something was my job. So now, I am a full time, stay-at-home-mom to the Munchkin. My new "work" will be very different from the office job that I've been used to, but it was the right decision for me and my family, and I'm looking forward to starting this new chapter in our life.

I'm also hoping that I'll have a little more time to pay attention to this blog. I'm going to start with Menu Planning Monday. This is something I've seen around the blogosphere, and I like the idea. I'm hoping it will also provide the impetus I need to get a little more organized, and get back into the swing of things in the kitchen. So, without further adieu, here is what we'll be eating this week:

Monday: Veggie Loaf, roasted radishes
Tuesday: Sweet Potato & Squash Shepherds Pie, salad
Wednesday: Vegetable Soup
Thursday: Doggy class -- Eat out
Friday: Veggie, Sweet Potato, and Black Bean Quesadillas, turnip greens with Chipotle Chile Vinaigrette
Saturday & Sunday: some combination of winging it, left overs, and/or dinner with family

Our menus are very much planned around the produce we get in our CSA bag every week. Right now, our fridge is bursting with hydroponic lettuce, radishes, sweet potatoes, turnip greens, butternut squash, green beans and broccoli. While I may not stick to this exact schedule (in fact, I very likely won't), I do know that this is what we'll be eating over the next week or so. And I will do my best to blog about some of these recipes, and get back into the swing of things here.

I'm Alive! With a Recipe!

Not that you'd know it from this poor neglected blog, but I am still alive, and I have been cooking. The cooking has been much less time and labor intensive since the arrival of LC, but I'm working on getting back in the groove.

I have been planning our meals around the wonderful produce in our CSA. Since we often get the same things several weeks in a row as they hit their peak harvest, it's forced me to cook outside the box, and find new and creative ways to prepare veggies. Tonight, we we had Margarita Fish Tacos with Chipotle-Lime Mayo to use our arugula, and I wanted to make a side dish with our green beans (It seems like we've been eating green beans for months...and they're still coming!). Regular old steamed green beans can be kinda boring, and I wanted to find some way to tie the green beans in with the rest of the meal. So I did what I do best and I started playing. The resulting Chipotle Green Beens were surprisingly good.


Chipotle Green Beans (all amounts approximate)

1/2 lb green beans, trimmed
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 c. water
1/2 c. cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 tsp. adobo sauce from canned chipotle chilis

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add green beans, and season with salt and pepper, cumin and chili powder. Saute for about a minute. Add water, cover, and steam for about 3 minutes or until crisp tender. Uncover, and cook until water boils off. Add adobo sauce and tomatoes and cook until mixed and tomatoes begin to soften and brown.

As I was making this, I was skeptical. I was planning on giving Psycling my standard disclaimer that this was an experiment and I wouldn't be offended of he didn't like it. But they were actually really good. I like using the saute/steam method for green beans because the sauteing really brings out the flavor, and the steaming gets them to just the right texture. I also really like adding tomatoes to my green beans. The flavors work well together, and they provide a nice visual contrast as well. The cumin (one of my favorite spices), chili powder, and adobo sauce were surprisingly good on the beans, and this made for a perfect side dish to our fish tacos.

Now...I just need to figure out what to do with the billionth bag of green beans we got today. And the arugula. Apparently it's arugula season. Any ideas?

A 9/11 Remembrance: Baking a Little Love into the World

On September 11, 2001 I was 23 years old, one year out of college, and working as an analyst with the Department of Defense just north of Washington DC. I remember that day like it was yesterday -- the intensity of the fear, the profound sadness, the confusion, and the incomprehensibility of what had happened.

I'd gotten into work early that day, by 8:00, which was highly unusual for me. I answered the phone when one of my co-workers (who was on leave that day) called in to say "Turn on CNN, someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center." I remember thinking it must have been an inexperienced pilot who lost control of his little plane when out flying. It NEVER occurred to me that someone had intentionally flown a plane into the WTC with the intent to cause as much death and destruction as possible.

The one TV for our entire office was in my cubicle area, and I went and got someone who knew how to turn it on (with the way it was set up, you practically needed an advanced degree to turn the dang thing on!). When I saw what was really happening, that this was not an unfortunate accident, but rather a terrorist act, my jaw dropped. As word spread around the office, more co-workers trickled into the area, and before long, the entire office was standing around the television watching in a stunned silence, trying to comprehend what was happening.

I remember calling Psycling, who was a grad student at UMD at the time, and I asked him "are you watching the news?" He said he'd been trying to get to the CNN website for his daily news check, but assumed the server was down because the page wasn't loading. Then I told him what was happening. He and his friends found a television and joined the rest of the nation as we watched events unfold.

I remember watching CNN, a journalist reporting live from the Pentagon, when the third plane hit there. I remember hearing the fear and confusion in his voice (his initial assessment was that "a bomb just went off here at the Pentagon"). And I remember the intense fear I felt at that moment. This was not an isolated event in New York City, this was national. And it was happening near me. And they were targeting Defense facilities in the Washington DC area. And there I was, working in a Defense facility in the Washington DC area. It didn't take very long for me to realize "IT COULD HAPPEN HERE!!!" The fear I felt at that realization was deeper and more intense than any other I had ever felt up until then, or since. My legs were shaking, I was feeling nauseous.

At that point I decided to go home. I wasn't getting any work done, and I knew I wouldn't the rest of the day. We were all just standing around the television, and I figured I could do that much more safely from my apartment. After shutting down my computer and locking up my work space, I practically ran out of the building. And then I got outside, where the perfect fall weather seemed so eerily at odds with what was happening in the world. It was warm for September, sunny, with bright blue skies, puffy white clouds, and just a hint of red and yellow dotting the green trees that lined the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

I got home and Psycling arrived not too long afterwards, as did my roommate, who also worked for the DoD. It turns out they evacuated the facility. We were out of work for three days, as the powers that be figured out what was going on, and made sure everything was safe.

The next day, I was so overwhelmed with the death and destruction that I could not bring myself to continue watching the non-stop news coverage; I did not want to be continually bombarded with the image of the planes hitting the towers. As it is, that is something that is seared into my brain forever. Amid all this craziness, sadness, hatred, evil, I needed to do something good; I needed to create, to prove to myself that good can and will triumph over evil, and we will get past this. Not knowing what else to do, I baked. I'd recently been to a wedding where the favors were heart-shaped cookie cutters attached to a recipe for sugar cookies. Hearts represent love, and to me, love was the antithesis of the evil and hatred that perpetuated these terrorist attacks. Baking these heart shaped cookies was my way of saying "F$*K YOU" to the terrorists, of saying that despite this horrible thing that you have done, you HAVE NOT WON!! Because I still have love and soul and passion and those cannot be taken away. And those things will over come in the end.

This year, the 9/11 anniversary has hit me harder than it has in recent years. I had a hard time falling asleep last night, as the images and feelings of that day played through my head like a movie. And I knew what I had to do. I had to make cookies.

I still believe that in the end, love and compassion will win out. I have to believe that. So today was spent doing what I love with the people I love.

When I woke up this morning, Psycling agreed to watch LC while I got busy in the kitchen. I couldn't find my original sugar cookie recipe (I tore through all my folders of recipes looking for it), so I looked for a comparable one, one that uses confectioners sugar instead of granualted sugar, and includes Cream of Tartar. None of my cookbooks had an acceptable recipe, and couldn't find one on Epicurious either. So I turned to my friend Google, and after some searching found this recipe.

These cookies came out really well. They were soft and chewy; sweet but not overly so. In essence, exactly what I wanted in my sugar cookies. I baked these cookies in remembrance and honor of all who lost their lives or their loved ones on 9/11, and as an outward display of my faith that the goodness that is inherent in humanity is stronger than evil and hatred. What better way to demonstrate that than to share the love. So we took the entire batch of cookies into Psycling's lab at school to feed hungry grad students.

I may not be saving the world, but at least I can bake a little love into it.



INGREDIENTS

* 1 cup butter, softened
* 1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
* 1/4 cup granulated sugar for decoration

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and stir in the vanilla and almond extract. Combine the flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; blend into the creamed mixture. Cover and chill for at least two hours.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Divide the dough into two parts. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece of the dough out to 3/16 inch in thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 1/2 inches apart onto greased cookie sheets. Sprinkle cookies with plain or colored granulated sugar.
3. Bake for 8 minutes in the preheated oven, until lightly browned. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.