This is going to be short and sweet! Meeta from the blog What's for Lunch Honey and Tony Tahhan, chose Pierre Herme's eclairs for the challenge this month. Eclairs are in the same family as cream puffs and gougeres as they come from the same incarnation of pate a choux. I did not have a pastry tip large enough to pipe the eclairs so I just snipped the tip of my pastry bag. I am curious why my first tray of eclairs did not have a pocket and the second did and they were from the same batter! Maybe my oven was not preheated enough the first time and I should have cooked the first tray longer?

Anyway, for me the chocolate pastry cream was the best I've tasted and will be including it in my repertoire. I was afraid I would have eaten all of it before I could fill my eclairs.

So Meeta , thanks for this fantastic challenge from our Sugar Daddy!

Also, I'm putting the Test Kitchen on hiatus for the month of June. There are some stuff I need to turn my attention to – some projects are exciting and some are just plain dreary.

See you all in a month!

At least that was what happened to my challenge for this month which is hosted by my dear friend Mary of the The Sourdough and Sara of I like to cook. The theme was French bread and just not any French bread but the recipe by the French Chef herself – the lovable Julia Child!

           The making of the bread itself was not hard – especially since I used my trusty kitchen aid -and  no I did not drop the whisk into it this time. But it does take a while to complete so you need to plan your day around it. For example, I made my dough early in the morning and went shopping afterwards – how neat is that? When I came back with a couple of bags from Sur La Table, I deflated my growing blob and got it ready for its second rise. Then I started dinner which was chicken bouillabaisse (okay I know you purists are going to slam me) and also prepared some garlic aioli (watch for the recipes in my next post- my hubby was happy that real food was back on the table.)

I did run into a problem with shaping the dough. There was no way I could form baguettes with it – it kept springing back. What did I do wrong, Mary? Too much gluten?

Anyway, when I was partitioning my dough I was fresh from a bout with the whisk trying to make aioli the second time – so I was bit tired and frustrated (never make aoili and french bread on the same day). And as I shaped my bread I knew that I made them in different sizes as in small, medium , large!

Oh well. The bread tasted yummy specially smeared with the garlic aioli and dipped in some of the saffron scented broth of the bouillabaisse and that was all that mattered!

I strongly recommend that you go visit the great aroma of bread wafting from my other co-daring bakers blogs.

And my thanks to Mary and Sarah for this great challenge!

I have so neglected my blog lately. I couldn’t even think of a creative title for this month’s Daring Baker’s Challenge hosted by Jen of The Canadian Baker . I was quite busy at work as well as on an exciting project which I shall reveal in my next post. I really did not think I would be able to complete this month’s challenge but I have Helen to thank for the encouragement she gave me to give it a shot. She said I could knock it out in one night… and guess what – she was right! I did have to finish the meringue the next morning for photography purposes . The pie needs to be eaten within 6 hours because the bottom crust will start to get soggy.

I did have my doubts at first about the recipe because of the amount of  cornstarch involved. The crust was on the wet side and I was afraid I measured the ingredients wrong but in the end it did not present much of a problem. The highlight was in making the lemon curd. I was stirring along quite nonchalantly when suddenly the mixture thickened alarmingly fast. However, after I mixed it with the egg yolks it regained a bit of fluidity.

The pie was quite delicious and though it did not compare to an all yolk curd in creaminess, it was a great recipe to try. I was glad I made minis so to exercise automatic portion control . Don’t forget to check out the other renditions of the other Daring Bakers , link on the side bar.

       I’m late. Time does get away from you during this Holiday season rush. I can’t believe its Christmas Eve already. Was it not too long ago that it was the first of December? I’ve lost my perception of time and mailed the last Christmas packages this Saturday. There were still some long lines at the post office so I was glad I was not alone in my tardiness.

This month’s challenge was one I have wanted to try for the longest time: Buche de Noel.  First time I have seen this made was in one of Julia Child’s French Chef DVDs.

       Part of the recipe we used was from Nick Malgieri who I had the opportunity to watch in action 2 years ago at a Sur la Table Chocolate class. He was the consummate teacher and was a hoot to watch. In fact he demoed a Praline roll and taught us how to handle and roll it. Wish I took notes…that time he made it look so easy which was not the case when I made mine.

      First, I was not sure what side I was supposed to put my pastry cream filling on – and the printout of the instructions mysteriously disappeared. So I picked one side, rolled it using parchment paper and was horrified to see my log crack on both sides. Okaay! Guess I need that buttercream to cover this snafu.

        I finally found my instructions and it said to refrigerate the cake for several hours. I already made my coffee buttercream which was so damn tasty – even the hubby who never liked this type of icing thought it was delicious. I had him brew me a concentrated espresso which I mixed with Jamaican rum and that combination gave the buttercream a true coffee taste – almost like espresso ice cream. Since I was afraid that the buttercream was going to melt while I waited for the roll to be ready, I refrigerated it and figured I would just beat it up if it gets too hard.

         Well time came to use it. I let it warm up a little and beat it with the Kitchen Aid. I couldn’t believe my eyes as the buttercream curdled and the espresso-rum puddled in the bottom of the bowl.

         WTF?!

         Frustration was etched on my face as I stomped off to the refrigerator to check if I had any butter left to make the buttercream again. The “Hungry” Hubby said maybe it was too cold and needed to warm up as he surveyed the ugly mess in the mixer bowl. Hmm… he might be on to something. As hopeless as my mixture looked I do recall that when I made Sherry Yard’s Swiss buttercream sometime ago she mentioned that if it curdled to just continue whisking it and it would eventually smoothen out. She used the whisk attachment of the KA in her recipe though, so I decided to use that to see if I could rescue my frosting.

         With nothing to lose, I gave it a try. At first it looked like the buttercream was a lost cause spinning around with the puddle of espresso-rum slapping against the bowl. After about 10 minutes, I saw the buttercream begin to come together and in like 15 minutes it was back to form although a bit greasier than its original incarnation. Yipee! We were back in business! What would I do without the HH in his infinite wisdom?

         I had the most fun making the meringue mushrooms. It definitely is better to attach the caps to the stems as soon as possible. I left some of them to attach after dinner and the caps cracked too easily – I lost a lot of those sugar fungi.

        And of course I had to decorate my Yule log with some Christmas macarons – it would never be complete without my new found obsession!

        Thank you Lis and Ivonne for choosing this wonderful challenge! And to Helen who is the pastry guru of the group, you did an amazing job keeping everyone sane by providing such timely answers to our baking questions.

         And most of all have a Merry Christmas everyone and feast your eyes on more Yule Logs here.

The dough was pretty sticky but that was expected. I really enjoyed the kneading process – quite therapeautic really. It was also a soft type of dough which I found hard to shape into dinner rolls which kinda explained my flattish ones as seen below.

My resulting bread had a thick crisp crust with a soft tasty interior. I found the bread quite heavy, I could only eat one slice at a time. I do really like the idea of adding potato to bread. I think this is an awesome idea that could be applied to different types of bread like brioche maybe.

My thanks to Tanna for a great challenge. I needed to work on my bread-making skills and this provided the much needed practice. Besides, I was able to use the "proof" mode in my oven for the first time!

Please visit the other creative interpretations by my fellow Daring Bakers, I’m sure they have wonderful stories to tell.

            The Daring Bakers are at it again! This time the event is hosted by my lovely friend Mary of Alpineberry. The theme for the month is “Bostini Cream Pie” – nope no typo there. I have a weakness for stirred custards – I think they make the most luscious desserts!

            I cut the recipe in two and it worked out quite well and for the first time I had no disaster to speak of. Of course, I was doubtful at first because my custard never set so the plating I envisioned never took place. As a fix, I poured the custard into a glass and cut circles in the chiffon cake to fit over it. Then I poured a warm chocolate glaze all over the top which was the perfect finishing touch.

            I loved the flavor and texture of the chiffon cake. In fact I was snacking on leftover pieces after I cut out the circles I needed. The custard had a bit of “flourly” taste to it that I felt detracted from its over all creaminess and taste – I wonder if this meant I did not cook the egg mixture enough. The chocolate glaze was perfect; I believe the taste of this largely depends on the quality of chocolate you will use.

            My thanks to Mary for this wonderful exercise in the different components of baking: custards, chiffon cake and chocolate. The recipe is on her blog.  Please check the different interpretations of my fellow Daring Bakers here.

        It’s time again for our monthly Daring Baker’s challenge! This time it’s hosted by Peabody of the delectable blog, Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. I was really excited to make this challenge because I’ve never made a Strawberry Mirror cake much less a sponge cake. There was one foreseeable obstacle though. Harry Potter. My copy arrived last Wednesday and the only time I could make the mirror was that following Saturday.

            Okay, let’s see. If I started reading right away and stayed up late all the nights leading up to the weekend, I could probably finish the book by then. So Wednesday night, I had read three chapters, Thursday I was more than halfway through the book. Speed reading took on a new meaning and no I did not peek at the ending. By Friday, I knew I would be done reading the book. Yehey! Now let’s just hope no hexes and spells fall upon my mirror cake!

            I did encounter several problems in the making of the cake, but most of them could have been avoided. First, I overwhipped my egg whites. I was eager to use the new Kitchenaid 11-wire whisk but I was not used to its superior whisking power and ended up with slightly broken egg whites. This was probably why my cake did not rise much because I had squeezed all the air out of the whites. Second, I nearly used the pulp of the puree instead of the strained material; this would have made my cream full of strawberry bits without the flavor. It was a good thing I realized my mistake and had extra strawberries to redo the puree – still those were really good strawberries inadvertently dumped down the drain. Third, I forgot to apply oil on my springform-pan which made it difficult to unmold the cake.

            I took immense pleasure in making the Bavarian cream. It was so good and the aroma of the strawberries so spellbinding I kept dragging the “Hungry” hubby to take a whiff of the heavenly mixture. “Here smell this…it is soo good!,” I would exclaim. I started to assemble the cake, pouring a layer of delicious cream on the top and the sides. Of course I couldn’t help licking the spatula and leftover cream from the bowl. It almost tasted like strawberry soft-served ice cream!

            As I waited for my cake to set, I re-read some highlights of “The Deathly Hallows”. HH kept on interrogating me about who lived and who perished. I was tempted to keep him in suspense and make him read the book instead, but I relented and told him what he wanted to know. After going thru  “The Missing Mirror” chapter, I thought I’d better prepare my own mirror – namely the strawberry mirror.  What a fitting book to read together with this challenge. Harry Potter had encountered his own share of reflective surfaces. For example, the mirror of Erised was a mystical mirror that shows one’s utmost desperate desires. Well, what my heart desires most right now was to complete this challenge, I thought.            

            I think I poured too much food coloring than what I intended into the strawberry juice because it turned a really deep scarlet shade. When it cooled down to a syrupy consistency I poured it on top of the set cake. There were bubbles that settled on the surface so I used a spoon gently to coax the bubbles to the side and scooped that up.

            When the time finally came to sample my creation, I knew after the first bite that this cake was a keeper; one you can take to parties and potlucks and be a hit. I say this because the hubby, who dislikes cakes and whipped cream with a passion, finished an entire slice on his own. That in itself was a miracle. He said he liked it because it was not too sweet, very light and the flavor of the strawberries came through cleanly. 

            I served mine with strawberries, blackberries, and a side of Harry Potter trivia.

My thanks to Peabody who picked this challenge; this fabulous recipe is on her blog.  Please go and check out the different renditions of my fellow Daring Bakers, the link to the blog roll is at my sidebar.

I did not have much time to complete this month’s Daring Bakers challenge having just come back from a grueling week of (cooking) boot camp. Flight cancellations also made matters worse by wasting an entire Saturday, a day I would have used to recover.

            This month’s task: Bagels! It is hosted by Jenny of All Things Edible and Freya of Writing at the Kitchen Table.

            I have never made bread before except no-knead bread which happens to be a very wet dough and not, I suspect, your typical bread dough. I made half of the bagel recipe, the flour that was required was anywhere between 3-4 cups, which should potentially yield 7 bagels. The dough looked fine up to this point although I did not know how to tell when enough flour was added. The mixture ended up quite sticky and poofy. After the first rise, I had 6 oddly-shaped disks. No problem, I thought, just let them rise a second time and stick them in the simmering water. Well, when I picked them up, they uh… stuck to the parchment paper. I had to yank them out and reshape them; this action kind of deflated the dough.  The first three turned out fine – flat, but quite together. The second batch of three morphed into a dough monster. They became gooey and expanded into each other… they almost had a mind of their own like The Blob. I had difficulty getting them out of the water, and as I laid them on the towel I knew I had casualties.

I ended up with three very flat bagels. I doubt if they even qualify as bagels. I did not have corn meal so I used flax seed meal. Despite their non-bagel-ness, they had very good flavor. They did end up very chewy the next day, so I guess they would qualify as teething bread for babies .

So what went wrong? Not enough flour, not enough rise and maybe not enough heat from my simmering water (especially for my second batch, I think the temperature dropped a lot after I put in the first batch). All of my bagels were floaters so that should say something about their constitution.

That said I wouldn’t mind trying this recipe again once I figure out what went wrong. I would really like to see what the other Daring Bakers ended up with and so should you (links are at the sidebar).

I’m still on blogging vacation. I just popped in to post my crepe cake, which is this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge, hosted by Brilynn of Jumbo Empanadas. Let me tell you that this cake seriously kicked my a**. In fact I had so many casualties when I flipped the crepe I ended up with half the height of what I was suppose to have. And since my crepes turned out uneven, I squared it out which fortunately turned out okay or I would have thrown the whole thing out and called the whole thing a "crap" cake instead of crepe.

       Also, I had no candied hazelnuts to show for. I was so tired at the end of the day I just did not have the energy to do this finishing touch. All in all, the cake was okay but the taste did not justify the effort I put into it.

       So please check out the other creations of my fellow Daring Bakers. The link to their site is on my side bar. I am sure they have great stories to tell J.