Cookie Lynn

Finally back on top of Daring Bakers. This month, all I have to say is; HOW HAVE I NEVER MADE BROWN BUTTER BEFORE? Seriously, I want to marry it, have its babies, then eat the babies.

I’ll admit that my sole experience with Baked Alaska is that my Sims have been burning down the house while making it for two generations of the game now. I had only a vague idea what it was, but I was still excited to try it. I mean… ice cream, cake, and fire? Come on.

I actually went out an bought an ice cream maker and a torch for this challenge. It was a lovely excuse, and being a pastry student, I don’t think purchasing a few kitchen gadgets with my student loan refund is stretching the rules. Much.

The three main components of the cake were a brown butter cake, homemade vanilla ice cream, and meringue.

The cake was amazing, but I think the butter could have been browned a bit more. Using a black-bottomed pan, it was hard to judge color as I was cooking it, but the smell was sort of toasty and caramelized, so I think it was good enough, if not quite right.

The ice cream recipe is a custard-style vanilla bean variety… my favorite. I bought bourbon vanilla beans, and it was wonderful. My new ice cream maker and I have started a beautiful friendship.

I’m not a huge fan of meringue, but it wasn’t as bad as I remember it. Plus, there is just something about toasting it with a pastry torch that makes it a bit more satisfying.

Mmm… pointy.

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

Saturday was my husband’s birthday, and I thought I would finally try a black forest cake.

I used this Martha Stewart “Haunted Black Forest Cake” with a few alterations, because nowhere in my ever-growing collection of baking and cake books could I find a black forest recipe. (There is a tasty-looking raspberry version in Chocolate Cakes, but the husband doesn’t like raspberries.)

The cake was a “secret” chocolate buttermilk recipe I’ve been using a lot lately. The genoise called for might have held up a bit better, but I’d had a few requests for “that chocolate cake” from the family, and I didn’t want to disappoint.

For the cherry sauce, I had to substitute the kirsch with regular brandy, as my choices at the store were a $6 “wild cherry” flavored brandy and a bottle of Paul Masson. It did start to taste a bit grapey after the sauce had sat awhile, but I still think I made the right choice.

The whipped cream and chocolate ganache were very basic. Martha’s version calls for an espresso whipped cream, which sounds delicious, but I thought I’d go plain jane this time around.

Happy birthday to my husband, and a thumbs up to my first black forest cake.

Things have been quiet around here since I’ve been on break from school. Later this month, I’ll be starting Pastry I and Baking II, and hopefully I’ll have some things to share with you.

I took these cookies over to my parents’ house this week for my dad’s 59th birthday. The chocolate ones are ‘Grammie’s Cookies’ from Martha Stewart’s Cookies, and were very popular with my husband. I replaced the vanilla with chocolate extract for an extra-chocolatey boost.

The others are ‘Icebox Butter Cookies’ from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. They taste just like the Danish cookies we’d get in a tin every Christmas, and are super-easy to throw together and keep on hand in the freezer. I’ve made them several times now, and want to try adding nuts or herbs to the mix soon.

My third and final project for my Cake Decorating class this semester was to create an 8-inch fondant-covered cake, with gum paste flowers and leaves. A few of us decided to tackle tiered cakes as well, adding a 6-inch cake to the top.

I chose daisies because they are my favorite flower, my birth flower… and I have no shame in quoting You’ve Got Mail when I call them “the friendliest flower.” The concept of this cake came to me pretty quickly after choosing my flowers, and I’m pretty happy with the design, even if the execution needs a little work.

I used chocolate buttermilk cake recipe that my chef-instructor developed herself while working at a popular local bakehouse, Zingerman’s. It’s sort of a super-secret deal, and she said she’d only recently given the recipe to her brother after he’d nearly convinced her that she may die any day now without having passed the recipe on to the family. So, I cannot divulge the recipe, but I will say that it was fantastic, paired with a chocolate butter cream filling.

The fondant and the royal icing were made in class from scratch, so the only purchased component here was the gum paste used for the flowers. Hopefully the whole process won’t seem quite so laborious once I get a little more practice in.

The instructor for this class is looking into starting an Advanced Cake Design course, which I would be very interested in taking, even if I finish my program before it comes to light.

I’ve just completed my second semester of school. I wish I could have gotten a few more pictures along the way… but, I think my classmates started to think I was a bit weird for obsessively whipping out my camera long after our required portfolios were done. I guess even in the culinary world, we food bloggers are a rare sort.

Here is a small sampling of my last weeks in Baking I and Cake Decorating…

Apple, sweet potato, and chocolate cream pies.

Sweet Potato pie with whipped cream. (Can you believe I’d never eaten sweet potato pie until I tried this? It was delicious, though.)

Kneading bread dough.

Italian bread.

Biscuits.

Gum paste daisies.

Gum paste carnations. I really wanted to love these, but they just weren’t working for me. It’s not really clear in this picture, but the bottoms are all… wonky. Not carnation-like at all.

“Filler flowers.” Had I considered how hard these would be to photograph against the white Styrofoam, I would have made them a different color.