make life sweeter!

Sometimes you have a great idea for a recipe but when you make it, it doesn't turn out completely how you wanted...completely being an understatement here.
When I saw that this month's WTSIM was all about terrines I made a little (mental) joy jump because I couldn't participate in the HHDD terrine edition despite the fact I had a great idea. So now I had a new chance to try out the great idea (something which btw never would have happened if the deadline wasn't postponed till the end of the month instead of the 22nd, thanks Johanna!). The great idea wat that I was going to make terrine not with straight layers but with diagonal layers...I at least think that it was a great idea ;)
I didn't really have of lot of time to make it so I made pretty simple puddings. Not too simple by only adding corn flour as a thickener because I accidentaly read that corn flour on its own doesn't retain water for more than x hours and since I usually make my desserts in the evening so they're ready to be photographed the next afternoon, corn flour would be a bad choice. To bypass the corn flour problem you should reduce the amount of corn flour and add eggs (or egg yolks) to the pudding. Another way of making the puddings would be to use gelatine as a thickener but it always kind of scares me to use gelatine (did use it once when I made Muscat jelly and it went ok though).
What I did was adapt a recipe from my Haagse kookboek, the standard for very, very basic Dutch cooking. For the coffee pudding I used added dark brown sugar and added instant espresso powder and ground vanilla beans (those are the brown dots, not coffee). I forgot to increase the amount of sugar to compensate for the bitterness of the espresso powder (it is added in the recipe below btw). The coconut pudding has all the coconut taste but not the 'shreds'. I didn't want the little pieces of coconut to disturb my pudding experience so instead of just adding the coconut I only let is steep in the simmering milk for about 20 minutes and strained the milk. I wasn't sure how much I needed to add turned out I guessed pretty well. The coconut taste was not too in your face and not too subtle either.
I'm not sure if coffee and coconut is a common combination but I can tell you it's a very good one!
You probably already saw in the picture that the amount of eggs and corn flour was not sufficient to make a good stiff sliceable terrine. I checked my cookbook just now and at the beginning of the chapter it says that the eggs should be large eggs...stupid book, should have put that in the recipe. Next time I will use gelatine because using corn flour (and eggs) makes the pudding go thick before you pour it in the tin and that was the reason the crooked line between the colours. I only realised this when I was pouring the first pudding into the loaf tin....
If you like coffee pudding or coconut pudding try one of the recipes but I'd advise against layering them because the result will not look pretty. But on the other hand, they do taste wonderful together!

Will give your the recipes for one bigger pudding. I halved them both to make one terrine.



Coffee pudding (adapted from Het Nieuwe Haagse Kookboek by F.M. Stoll & W.H. de Groot)

750 ml (3 cups) milk
250 ml (1 cup) whipping cream
¼ ts ground vanilla beans
100 g (3 ½ oz) dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
60 g (2 ¼ oz) corn flour
2 ts instant espresso powder
sugar

Fill a pudding mould with cold water.
Mix the milk with the cream. Bring 750 ml (3 cups) of the milk and cream mixture with the vanilla to a boil and let the vanilla steep for 5 minutes. Mix the sugar with the eggs. Add the corn flour and mix until smooth. Add the espresso powder and the remaining 250 ml (1 cup) milk and cream mixture powder.
Whilst stirring add this mixture to the hot milk and continue cooking and stirring until the mixture is thick enough so you can see the bottom of the pan when you scrape it with a wooden spoon.
Pour the water out of the pudding mould and pour the pudding in the mould. Sprinkle with sugar to avoid the forming of a skin.

Coconut pudding (adapted from Het Nieuwe Haagse Kookboek by F.M. Stoll & W.H. de Groot)

750 ml (3 cups) milk
250 ml (1 cup) whipping cream
1 cup shredded coconut
75 g (2 ¾ oz) sugar
2 large eggs
60 g (2 ¼ oz) corn flour
sugar

Fill a pudding mould with cold water.
Mix the milk with the cream. Bring 750 ml (3 cups) of the milk and cream mixture with the coconut to a boil and let the coconut steep for 20 minutes. Mix the sugar with the eggs. Add the corn flour and mix until smooth. Add the remaining 250 ml (1 cup) milk and cream mixture.
Strain the milk into a heat-proof measuring cup. Add milk until you have 750 ml (3 cups) again. Pour the milk and cream mixture in a clean pan and put it back on the heat.
Whilst stirring add the egg mixture to the hot milk and continue cooking and stirring until the mixture is thick enough so you can see the bottom of the pan when you scrape it with a wooden spoon.
Pour the water out of the pudding mould and pour the pudding in the mould. Sprinkle with sugar to avoid the forming of a skin.

This month's Daring Baker's challenge was lemon meringue pie, a challenge from The Canadian Baker.
I'm a bit feverish so I'll keep this post a little short.
When I read the recipe I did have a few reservations about the crust and filling, both involved water. The recipe for the crust called for ⅓ cup of water which seemed like a lot to me. I checked the recipe to see if it said something about adding water until it comes together but no such thing. So I just did exactly what the recipe said which resulted in a fairly wet and flexibel dough. After chilling it somewhat longer than the recipe suggested (½ hour instead of 20 minutes) it was manageable though. Not as manageable as Donna Hay's shortcrust recipe that I usually use though. When I cut away the overhanging dough it looked pretty strange. Because of it being so wet and flexible I suspect it was more a combination of cutting and tearing (even though I used a sharp knife). I put it in the fridge and went grocery shopping so it chilled for over an hour instead of the suggested 30 minutes. After blind baking the crusts (I made two smaller ones and used springform baking tins) it turned out that the dough did not behave the way my usual dough behaves. One of the crusts kind of slided a bit down at two points. The other seemed ok but it did shrank in the sense that it went below the top of the springform. Nothing a little meringue couldn't conceil ;)
The water in the lemon filling was my other reservation, it seemed like so much. Turned out the filling tasted really great, in fact it was delicious! The texture was great too. At least at this time I was sure the lemon meringue pie would be delicious.
It was fun to see how the water turned into thick wall paper adhesive. Had been afraid to add the corn flour directly into the water so I let the water cool down for a couple of more minutes. But it worked well...learned something here. I had to make the pie in steps so I chilled the filling and hoped for the best the next morning. It firmed up beautifully except, I needed it to be more liquid to fill the crusts. I microwaved it 20 seconds at a time, everytime whisking it until it was smooth. Took about 3 x 20 seconds and 1 x 10 seconds.
I filled the crusts and started whipping the meringue. Meringue is not something I make a lot and usually I make Swiss meringue (heating the sugar and egg whites before whipping them) and up till now that usually works well for me. The times that I made regular meringue I usually underwhipped it because I was afraid to overwhip it. This time I thought to myself that I wouldn't let that happen...result: OVERwhipped meringue. I only noticed after I piped the meringue onto the pie, it looked more like whipped cream from a pressurized container. Still I didn't really get it so I thought I'd just make it spiky with a palet knife....well, that doesn't work with OVERwhipped meringue. It just looks ugly :( Oh well, sometimes that happens.
At least the slice of cake looked ok enough if you don't look at the top too much. I had to be very careful cutting the (chilled) pie to not ruin the slice. The meringue kind of moved around on the filling and the crust was pretty hard (maybe I overworked the dough?)
Oh, and did I mention that the meringue wept? It wept.
Would I make it again? I would because it was delicious but I'd use a different crust...I think....but on the other hand, even after more than 24 hours it was still not soggy!
That's it for this month's challenge, can't wait till the next :) And now I'm going to bed...



Check out all the other Daring Bakers.
For the recipe check out The Canadian Baker.

When I say Ivonne's entry to HHDD #17 I remembered that I forgot something...not making my entry for HHDD but posting about it. So here in the nick of time is at least a picture of my entry. Will update this post tomorrow evening...

Ok, this is tomorrow night....about the pizza. I like sweet so a sweet pizza it had to be for this month's HHDD hosted by 80 Breakfasts. The crust is made of brioche dough instead of regular pizza dough. Making brioche has been on my to-do list for a while so this seemed like a good opportunity to make it. The most important thing I learned when making the dough for the brioche was that I don't only want (and deserve :) a KitchenAid, I need one too! Up till last week I was very happy with my Braun Multisystem K1000 food processor most of the times. But making brioche dough didn't go that well. The mixing bowl has a lid which traps in the heat and heat is generated by kneading the dough. I had the same problem when I made Swiss meringue a while back. I have to admit that the dough had a pretty high temperature when I started kneading it in the machine but it kept on getting hotter and hotter. I had to stop kneading because I was afraid to kill the yeast (turned out I was time). Because of the heat the butter in the dough was very soft so the dough was very hard to handle. After the second rise in the fridge it was much more manageble luckily. But as I said, it would probably have been even better with a KitchenAid ;) so now I'm hoping that my Braun will break down and I can buy a KitchenAid without feeling guilty.
The brioche was very most and buttery. The strawberry jam and white chocolate were perfect toppings for it. I would say this is a perfect Sunday morning breakfast type of pizza. You could even bake it just before breakfast and spread everything on while it was still hot. I didn't have time to do that so I composed my pizza in parts. Baked and froze the brioche crust and spread the jam and grated the chocolate when I had an opportunity to shoot some pictures of it.
The brioche recipe is from Sherry Yard's book, the Secrets of Baking which has become a real favorite. It contains lots of what Sherry calls 'master recipes' the basic recipe for a whole group of recipes that are derived from this recipe. Medium fat brioche eg is the master recipe and others that are derived from this recipe are eg challah, panettone and coffee cake. What I especially like about the book is the fact that she explains a lot about the processes that occur in baking. I haven't made a lot from it yet so I can't tell if all the recipes are good but the ones I made were. The only down side for me is that it's not in metric but maybe that's just because I'm a metric girl ;)



Brioche pizza with strawberry jam and white chocolate (from The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard)

makes one 'pizza crust'

for the sponge
1 1/4 ts active dry yeast
1/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
2 tbs sugar
1/4 cup bread flour or all-purpose flour

for the dough
1 1/2 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour
1/2 + 1/8 ts salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 pound butter, softened but still cool

Topping
6 tbs strawberry jam
1/2 tbs water
a few squares of white chocolate, grated

Sponge
Combine the yeast and milk in the bowl of a standing mixer (ideally a KitchenAid ;) fitted with a paddle attachement and whisk until the yeast is dissolved. Stir in the sugar and flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 to 45 minutes in a warm environment or until bubbles will form.

Dough
Add the flour and salt to the sponge, then add the eggs. Mix on low speed for 2 minutes or until the eggs are absorbed. Increase the speed to medium and knead the dough for 5 minutes. The dough will start to slap around and pull away from the sides. Then it will form a ball on the paddle. Finally it will relax and reach back out to the sides of the bowl. At this point, it will be shiny and satiny looking.
On medium speed, add the butter, 2 tbs at the time. Knead until the dough is shiny and smooth, about 5 minutes.
Place the dough in an oiled bowl and turn it over so that the top is also coated with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, about 2 hours.
Deflate the dough by pressing down on it, folding one half into the other. Fold two or three times. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight or at least 4 hours.
Turn out the dough on a lightlyfloured surface and shape it into a circle. Dust the dough lightly with flour. Roll out the dough till 1 1/2 cm (1/2 in) thickness. Transfer to a baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap. Let it rise at room temperature until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F). Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown and an internal temperature of at least 180 F. Let it cool on the baking sheet.
Mix the jam with the water and microwave for about 30 seconds. Stir until smooth. Spread over the brioche. Sprinkle grated white chocolate over the jam.

I thought it would be a good idea to let my oldest son show the cookie crown with candy that I made for this month's SHF which is hosted by CandyRecapper this month. While the idea seemed a good one at the time, in practice it was difficult to take a flash-less picture of a tired and slightly hungry 2 ½ year old holding a cookie on top of his head. He kept on moving all the time. He wanted to look at the cookie but I kept on saying, no honey, hold it on your head, no not like that, like this. Meanwhile he was touching the little pearls on the cookie, which in turn fell to the ground one after the other which in turn made him want to jump up and go after them. So after trying to get a good and focused picture I just gave up on the idea and let him eat the little pearls and a piece of the cookie (I didn't allow him to eat the entire cookie because we were just about to have lunch...in case you were wondering why he could eat the entire cookie ;)



Before I continue with the making of the cookie I'd like to have your attention for the following...
Maybe some of you have already seen the logo of Adopt a blogger in my sidebar, maybe some of you have even clicked on the link. For people who don't know what I'm talking about, Adopt a blogger is an event launched by Kristen at Dine and Dish. Read all about it here.
After mixing and matching veteran and newbie bloggers I was matched with newbie food blogger Nikki of Crazy Delicious. I was very happy to see I was matched with a fellow baker, a fellow Daring Baker even! But we have more in common, we are both Croatian...both only in part but still :) Check out what Nikki blogs about here.

And now for the cookies...I made the cookies from the dough I had left-over from the cashew nuts, honey & vanilla pie. It's a great dough to use for cut-out cookies. I cut a crown out of paper and used it to cut out the cookies. I cut out some small rounds that I filled with crushed hard candy halfway through the baking time. If like me, you don't own such a small cutter you can use an unskrewed ballpoint pen instead, that's what I did :)



For the cookies

cookie dough
some hard candy
a little bit of white chocolate
edible balls, pearls or other sprinkles

Roll out the chilled (but not too hard) dough between 2 sheets of baking paper. Pull off the baking paper from both sides but let the dough lie on on of them.
Cut out crowns. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Cut out several small rounds were you see fit. Bake the cookies for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile crush a few hard candies.
Take the baking sheet out of the oven and fill the small rounds with crushed candy. Continue baking for 5-10 minutes or until the cookies start to brown on the edges.
Allow to cool completely on the baking sheets.
Melt a tiny bit of white chocolate and use this to glue whatever balls, pearls or sprinkles you like.

I came across a recipe of a walnut and honey filled pie in an old issue of Elle Eten (the Dutch food version of Elle magazine) the other day. It looked so good that I had to try it. I changed the walnuts to cashew nuts because I had plenty of unsalted cashewnuts lying around begging for me to use them. Besides the honey I added some vanilla to the filling too. Instead of the dough in the original recipe I used the apple pie dough my mum uses. Turned out that the flower I used to decorate not only looked cute, it was helpful too because I could cut between the petals and create 6 really equal slices :)



Even though it was a delicious pie, I was disappointed about the lack of cashew nut taste. The taste of the honey and crust overwhelmed it. I guess I never realised that cashew nuts have such a delicate taste. Next time I'll make it with either walnuts or hazelnuts.
I used a springform pan to make the pie because I don't have a pie pan/dish. I thought it was very useful because that way I could cut out the bottom by placing the greased bottom of the spring onto the rolled out dough and just cut around it with a sharp knife. If you carefully turn it around (and if you're lucky) it will stick to the bottom so you just attach the top part of the springform with the bottom part of the dough already in place. (it does take a little practice to place to close the thing in an orderly fashion I should add!) To make the disk that went on top I opened the upper part of the springform and used that to cut a round out of the other part of the rolled out dough. This made it a little bigger than the first round so that it would easily cover the filling and still have enough dough to reach the sides of the springform.



Cashew nut, honey & vanilla pie (adapted from Elle Eten)

serves 6

crust:
250 g (8 ¾ oz) flour
150 g (5 ¼ oz) butter, cold and cut into cubes
125 g (4 ½ oz) caster sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
1 egg

filling:
25 g (1 oz) butter
3 TBS honey
½ ts vanilla
100 g (3 ½ oz) cashew nuts, chopped

egg wash:
1 egg
1 TBS water
pinch of salt

Rub the flour and butter between your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and lemon rind and stir it in. Stir in the egg. Knead briefly to combine and to let it come together. Form into two disks and chill for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a 15-18 cm (6-7 in) springform or pie pan.
Roll out each disk between 2 sheets of baking paper to a thickness of about 4 mm (1/6 in). Cut out a round that will fit the bottom of the pan (for a tip, see the text above). Cut out a slightly larger round to cover the filling. Cut out a flower and a small round with a cookie cutter.
Place round no. 1 into the springform. Spread the filling on top of it, leaving a 1½ cm (½ in) border at the sides. Place round no. 2 on top. Press the borders onto each other. Put the flower in the middle and the small round in the middle of the flower. Brush with egg wash. Bake about 40 minutes or until golden brown.