Daring Bakers Sept 2009 - Puff Pastry

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

In Steph's words, "Puff Pastry (aka pâte feuilletée) is something most of us usually buy at the grocery store, but in order to be really daring, we should make our own at least once in awhile, right? Kitchens should be getting cooler in the northern hemisphere, and are hopefully still cool-ish in the southern hemisphere, so I’m hoping you will all join me in making homemade puff pastry from Michel Richard’s recipe, as it appears in the book Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. With our homemade puff we’ll be forming vols-au-vent cases to fill with anything we chose."

Hummm... Puff pastry? I've never given it much thought, but I'm a Daring Baker now so I gave it a whirl. In honor of the first day of Fall (Tuesday September 22), I decided to cut my puffs into the shape of leaves and acorns and fill with cinnamon apples. Welcome Fall.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

I bought Dorie Greenspan's Baking from my home to yours with the intention of joining the "Tuesday with Dorie" group but their once a week baking schedule intimidated me. I'm a lax, lazy, allergic to schedules kinda person; so instead I went through the book and bookmarked all the recipes that looked enticing (there were a lot).

The first bookmark was on page 10, Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins. Hummm. I'm not a big lemon fan, but the photo of Dorie's muffins looked so good I decide to give them a try.

And you know what?

They were good, really, really good. Excellent in fact. Way to go, Dorie.


Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins with Lemon Glaze
adapted from Dorie Greenspan

Makes 12 Muffins

For the Muffins:
3/4 cup sugar
Grated zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 1/2 tablespoons poppy seeds

For the Icing:
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions:

- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray the cups of a regular size muffin pan.

- Place the the sugar and lemon zest in a bowl and using your fingertips rub the sugar and zest together until the sugar is moist and the scent of lemon fills the air.


- Whisk the flour, poppy seeds, baking powder, baking soda and salt together, and then add the sugar/zest mixture.

- In a large bowl, whisk together the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter.

- Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry and with a rubber spatula blend just until the flour is moistened. Lumps are okay. Don't over mix or the muffins will be tough.

- Divide the batter equally between the 12 muffin cups. I used a large ice cream scoop and the batter divided almost perfectly.


- Bake for 18 to 20 minutes until the tops are golden brown. Allow the muffins to cool for five minutes before removing from the pan. Cool the muffins completely before icing them.

(Note: I kinda over baked my muffins. My chihuahua, Peanut, came in from outside covered in heaven-knows-what and I had to give her a quick bath. The scrubbing took longer than normal, (she was soooo disgusting) and the muffins spent 21+ minutes in the oven. Ooops. They were still good, but the edges were a little tougher than I like.)


To make the icing, mix the confectioners' sugar with about 1-1/2 tablespoons lemon juice. Add more lemon juice until a drizzle consistency is achieved. Drizzle or spread the icing over the muffins. Enjoy.

I Heart Faces - Completely Candid

This week's theme at I Heart Faces is "Completely Candid".

The rules state that all photos entered have to be a spur-of-the-moment, completely candid, non-posed capture.



I ask you, what could possibly be be more candid than catching teenage boys cuddling a puppy?!!?

I just love the look on Brad's face.

I can almost hear his thoughts, "Take my picture and you die!"

What's Blooming - Pampas Grass

What's blooming in my garden today - Pampas Grass.

I just love the way the plumes flutter in the wind. It looks so patriotic – like amber waves of grain...

Hot Fudge Brownie Cake

The weather was horrible this past weekend, so I decided I needed chocolate to lift my spirits. I combed through my file of "to-do" recipes and found one I had clipped from Southern Living's January 2009 magazine: Hot Fudge Brownie Cake.

Warm, gooey and chocolaty. The perfect recipe for a dreary Sunday afternoon.



You start with a basic batter that is spread into a greased pan. (Grease the pan really, really well. This stuff is stick-kkkyyyyy.)

Then a simple topping made of sugar and cocoa is sprinkled on top of the batter. I added pecans to my topping, to give it a little crunch.



Next comes the interesting part. You carefully spoon a cup and a half of boiling water over the batter and topping. (It is the water that creates the pudding layer while the cake bakes.) I was a little hesitant about pouring the whole 1-1/2 cups of water. My pecans started floating and it just seemed like an awful lot of liquid to pour on the cake. At the last minute I chickened out and just used 1 cup. But I was sorry in the end because my cake didn't have quite enough fudge goodness. It was fudgy, but not FUDGY.

Note to self: next time use all 1-1/2 cups of boiling water and may be even up it to 1 -3/4 cups!



Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees and then cool for 25 minutes before serving.



Yummm.... Hot Fudge Brownie Cake

Maple Pecan Tarts

Pecan pie is one of the easiest desserts you can bake. Just whisk together all the ingredients, pour into purchased shells and bake. No fuss, no mess, no complicated instructions or time consuming prep. This is my kind of pie. And as an added bonus, it tastes divine.

Yield: 8 mini pies

Ingredients

1 package of 8 frozen mini pie shells
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2 large eggs, lightly whisked
2 tablespoons granulated white sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped, plus 8 perfect pecan halves for garnish.

Preparation

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Remove frozen/unbaked mini pie shells from wrapping and place on a foil lines cookie sheet.
Distribute the chopped pecans between the 8 pie shells.
Whisk together remaining ingredients.
Pour filling into shells and over nuts. Reserve about 2 tablespoons of filling mix.
Place a pecan half in the center of each pie and drizzle the reserved filling over the pecan half.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until the tops are puffy and the crust is golden brown.


Heaven in a butter shell.

Peanut Butter Cookies - Low Carb

For our Labor Day barbecue I baked a lot of family favorites, but I have a nephew who is on a low carb diet so I whipped up some low carb peanut butter cookies just for him.



The cookies were tasty, but I found them very dry and crumbly (although by the second day the cookies were much moister so bake them a day ahead of time). If I make these cookies again I would definitely fiddle with the recipe some: add another egg and possibly some heavy cream or butter to add moisture to the cookies and help hold everything together.

But in the words of dieting my nephew, "I you are low carbing it, dry cookies are a small price to pay for the pure joy of sinking your teeth into a sweet confection that is actually BAKED!"

Click HERE for the recipe I tried.

Beachy Cupcakes

My niece was having a luau theme for her 9th birthday party so I decide to make some beachy cupcakes. I had grand visions of surf boards, tiki huts, volcanoes, and big toothy sharks adorning the tops of my cupcakes, but reality and my lack of time management skills did me in once again. By party time I had only managed to make a few malformed flip flops, a single lei, and some lame beach towels.

Oh well, at least my water and sand looked good (this time).

A few months back I made a Hawaiian themed bridal shower cake and I did learn a few things from that experience.

Lesson #1 - For the mock “sand” it is better to use crushed cookies and not raw sugar. I used sugar the first time and made a huge mess. The grains just wouldn’t stick to the butter cream icing and kept falling off in damp hunks.

Lesson #2 - Dye the icing that goes under the sand a light brown in color. If you leave it white, it shows through the “sand”. I know you think I’m one dumb decorator (cake wrecks here I come), but honestly I didn’t think to dye the icing the first time around. I thought the “sand” would be thick enough to cover all the white icing.



Lesson #3 - Press the crumbled cookies into the icing as soon as you spread it. If you wait too long the buttercream starts to crust and the “sand” won’t stick.

Lesson #4 - When dyeing the water, don’t mix it too much. Stir the icing until it is a swirl of blue and white. This way when you spread the “water” on the cupcakes, you have built in, natural looking white caps.




Happy Birthday, Amanda! I hope you like your cupcakes.

Daring Bakers' August Challenge - Dobos Tarte

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

Here is my version...





I used pecans instead of hazelnuts, and I a boiled fudge frosting for the filling (instead of the listed butter cream). I also had a "slight" problem with the caramel wedges that were supposed to adorn the top of the cake, so I threw on some Pepperidge Farm Geneva cookies just to give it the finished look.

I also took some liberties with the baking directions and just used pans instead of the complicated process of spreading the batter free form into a circular shape and then trimming the edges once it was bake. Say What?? I took convenience to another level and used disposal pans....

And pre-cut 8" parchment rounds. The rounds were just a little too big for my 8" pans, but it didn't seem to cause any problems.



My lazy short-cutting came into play again during the batter mixing. I just dumped the whole eggs into batter and didn't bother with whipping the egg whites separate. I'm such a lazy slug. May be I should change the name of my blog. "The Lazy Baker," I wonder if that name is taken?


Here are the pans waiting to go into the oven...

And the cakes just out of the oven...


Next variation (have you noticed a pattern here) was the frosting. I'm not a big fan of butter cream, so I whipped up a boil fudge icing to use as the filling. You can scrape the butter cream off the sides and top of a cake, but it is kinda hard getting it out from between those little layers.

Here is the fudge at the rapid boil stage...

And the first layer of cake getting a coating of warm fudge filling. Just pour it on and let it do its thing. Yummm...


Here are a few layers in place with some of the filling oozing out. Oh la la.



I put a layer of butter cream over the whole cake and then pressed the chopped pecans into the sides.

Next came the fiasco with the caramel wedges. I had a little stove top fire, so instead of nice wedges of amber caramel, my guests got crispy, chocolaty Geneva cookies.





update: I checked and both "LazyBaker" and "TheLazyBaker" blog names are taken. Bummer.

I Heart Faces - Week 33 - Nostalgia

The theme for this week’s photo challenge at I Heart Faces is “Nostalgia”.



Amanda was always fascinated with our back door and the wild and glorious world she could see through the glass. She loved the flowers, the birds and especially the squirrels that came to eat peanuts I had left on the sill.

This photo's exposure is not the best, but I still love how the afternoon sun bathes her face in a warm glow. And if you look close you can see two different reflections of her face. The obvious one is on the back door, but look above her head and to the right you can see another reflection in the glass door of the curio cabinet.

The picture is nostalgic because on August 29, 2005 the door, garden, animals and even the house were all casualties of Hurricane Katrina. I get a little sentimental every time I look at these old pictures and wistfully wish I could turn back time.