The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

This month for the Daring Bakers challenge, I had originally wanted to make a more traditional crostata, but in the end couldn’t resist the lure of making a key lime curd filling for the tart shell, instead. Having just made lemon curd in my pastry classes a week before, I really wanted to try it at home.

I used a Martha Stewart’s recipe for the curd, and nearly regretted my decision to zest and juice nearly two dozen golf-ball-sized key limes,.. but I think it was worth it in the end.

The pasta frolla made a wonderful tart shell, and I think I will be using it again soon… especially having just bought a tart pan for this challenge.

Pasta Frolla
(Provided by Simona)

1/2 c. minus 1 tablespoon superfine sugar or a scant 3/4 cup of powdered sugar
1 and 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
grated zest of half a lemon (I used the key lime zest)
1 large egg and 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten in a small bow

Whisk together sugar, flour and salt in a bowl.
Rub or cut the butter into the flour until the mixture has the consistency of coarse crumbs. You can do this in the bowl or on your work surface, using your fingertips or an implement of choice.

Make a well in the center of the mounded flour and butter mixture and pour the beaten eggs into it
Add the lemon zest to your flour/butter/egg mixture.
Use a fork to incorporate the liquid into the solid ingredients, and then use your fingertips.
Knead lightly just until the dough comes together into a ball.
Shape the dough into a flat disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Place the dough in the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours. You can refrigerate the dough overnight.

I decorated the top with cookies cut from the leftover pasta frolla, and a few raspberries… Honestly, it was kind of a last-minute idea. I like it, but I wish I would have taken the time to come up with something else. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to make a few other tarts soon.

My husband works at a bookstore and recently brought me home a copy of Baked Explorations. Through some complicated series of deals involving bartered household chores, I wound up having to make him anything he wanted from the book, and this is what he chose. (You’d be amazed at how much of our homelife involves these sorts of deals. He’s currently reading the Harry Potter series because I agreed to make him baked ziti for dinner three months ago.)

The Muddy Mississippi Cake, or Mississippi Mud Pie (B) is a flourless chocolate cake topped with chocolate pudding and whipped cream, layered inside a cookie crust. It’s time-consuming, but pretty simple to make.

This was my first time making homemade pudding, and I’ve used that recipe on its own already… because it’s fantastic. The flourless chocolate cake was pretty similar to the one I’ve made before, and was also quite yummy. However, I just wasn’t into the contrast of the two textures. My husband says he liked it, though… so, it’s probably just me.

I love both of the Baked books. Check them out if you haven’t already.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Doughnuts are one of the things I’ve always wanted to try making at home, but have never gotten around to. (I believe they were in my so-far abandoned 101 in 1001 list.) So, I was super-excited, and maybe a little scared, by this month’s Daring Bakers challenge.

I decided to use a cake doughnut recipe, though I would love to try yeasted doughnuts in the near future.

One of my most recent kitchen purchases was two sets of pastry cutters, in various sizes, which worked out perfectly for cutting the larger doughnuts and doughnut holes. For the mini doughnuts, I used one of the smaller pastry cutters, and punched a hole in the middle with the end of a large spoon, because I’m classy like that.

The hardest part of making the doughnuts was keeping the frying oil at a steady temperature. It often got too hot, and the outside of the doughnuts would get hard and crispy before the inside would have a chance to cook thoroughly. It was particularly hard keeping an eye on the temperature while doing everything else in the kitchen, so it’s nice to have a helper sometimes. (In this case, my husband.)

I ended up coating the entire batch in cinnamon sugar. I’ve never been a fan of glazed or iced doughnuts for some reason. I think iced doughnuts (with sprinkles!) are adorable, but I’ve never met an icing I liked. (Unless, of course, it’s flavored. Like maple. Which would have been fantastic here.)

And now the obligatory “I’m a terrible blogger” speech… I haven’t found a lot of time to bake, outside of school and work. Also, my (other) laptop has been mostly useless for weeks now, and this one (a netbook) can’t handle much photo editing. The first photo and the one below were my husband’s handiwork, while the rest aren’t edited at all.

And, yes… Doughnuts make me very happy.

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

I had a minor catastrophe during this month’s Daring Bakers challenge. After getting tons of pictures of the process of making these sugar cookies – including some of me decorating at the coffee table while watching Doctor Who – I popped the SD card into my laptop to discover that nothing had been saved. I tried running a recovery program, and managed to find pictures that were deleted ages ago, but no such luck for anything cookie-related. I am so bummed.

Cut-out sugar cookies are something I’ve been making since I knew how to work an oven, but this is only the second time I’ve attempted decorating with royal icing. As I said before, royal icing may win out aesthetically (assuming you know what you’re doing, which I haven’t figured out quite yet) but, I prefer to slather them with buttercream, myself.

Honestly, I don’t have a lot of patience for royal icing. It’s something I want to learn, but when presented with a reason to play around with it, I’d rather just get it done and over with. Perhaps I’ll have to challenge myself to do it more often.

The recipe for this month’s challenge was a bit different than what I am used to… I usually use shortening in my cookies, whereas this one uses all butter. The dough was a bit more temperamental, but the results were delicious. I also used the vanilla beans I had leftover from last month’s challenge instead of extract, resulting in a very grown-up version of the sugar cookies I made as a kid.

I also chose to make chocolate sugar cookies, by substituting 1/3 cup dutch-process cocoa for some of the flour, and adding chocolate extract instead of vanilla. I can’t believe I’ve never tried that before… They are amazing.

I’ve developed quite the taste for tea in recent months, and want to share some of my favorites with you, alongside some tea time treats. For my inaugural post, I’ve chosen Assam Harmony from Adagio Teas and butterscotch scones.

Assam Harmony is a black tea from the Assam region of India. I first discovered Assam teas through Adagio’s black tea sampler pack, and they are by far my favorite variety. This one is especially good, though a bit pricier than it’s cohort, Assam Melody. I thought the full-bodied, malty flavor of the tea would pair well with the richness of the butterscotch in these scones.

Butterscotch Scones
Makes 12 scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 egg
1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Cut in butter, with a pastry blender or by hand, until the mixture resembles a coarse cornmeal.
In a separate bowl, lightly beat together the heavy cream and egg.
Add the liquid ingredients to the dry, and mix until just combined.
Add butterscotch chips, and mix until they are evenly distributed.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, divide in half, and flatten each half into a disk. Cut each disk into six even wedges.
Transfer to a parchment lined baking pan, and bake 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

As a side note, I know that there have been very few recipes on this blog. For the most part, I’ve been using recipes found in cookbooks and online, and as a general rule, I don’t post other people’s work without permission. Ever. That being said, as I start adapting basic recipes from my pastry classes, scaling them down to usable quantities, converting the measurements from weight to volume, and choosing my own additions and flavors, I feel comfortable calling them my own, and hope to bring you plenty more in the future.

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.

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.