make life sweeter!

I wish I finished this month's Daring Baker's challenge on the day I intended: on Christmas eve. This was the evening I invited family for a Christmas diner. I already did some preparations to make it but just before going to bed on the 23rd I discovered that I wouldn't be able to finish the entremet in time because of lack of time. I didn't register that you had to freeze it overnight in between :( Lucky for me that this dessert was one of the desserts I planned on making so it was no problem from my guests. But I was sad that I didn't have this showstopper to serve along with the rest. In the end it turned out I wouldn't have been able to make it in time anyway even without the overnight freezing. I wasn't going to make this dessert for just the 4 of us so I finished it today to take with us to friends of ours who have recently moved to the US and are back in the Netherlands for the Holidays. We're spending the last days of 2008 with them in a holiday home near Apeldoorn. I don't think there will be an internet connection over there so you'll have to manage with only a picture of the outside. Will provide the inside when we get back on the 31st.
I didn't do extravagant things with the flavours, I left the dark chocolate mousse as the recipe, same for the crème brûlée and crispy chocolate insert. The only things I flavoured differently were the ganache that I flavoured with orange essential oil, yum! Added about 15 drops. For the dacquoise I used 10% bitter almonds to get a stronger almond taste and flavoured it with ½ ts of cinnamon. The end result was just delicious! It tasted like good marzipan flavoured with cinnamon, definitely a keeper! I'm curious how the complete dessert will taste.
So how was the process? A quick recap:

- The crème brûlée took a LOT longer to set, I think it took double the time, besides that it was easy to make (was the first time I made crème brûlée :)

- The crispy chocolate insert was easy, I used a butterscotch chocolate bar (with small pieces of crunchy caramel bits) in addition to the praline.

- I couldn't find glucose of corn syrup (not common in the Netherlands, the shop I knew where to get it was sold out from Thanksgiving and were only able to get a new batch at the end of January!). Instead I used something could corn/malt syrup, someting I found in the health shop. Didn't taste the same but I guessed it more or less had the same qualities. Worked out fine.

- I heated the pâté à bombe in a double boiler after adding the mixing in the sugar syrup because according to my calculations there was no way the egg yolks would be cooked enough to make it pregnant woman and children proof. This also makes the pâté à bombe even more stable. While checking the temperature I ruined my electric thermometer, it got stuck between the whisks of my hand mixer :( The hand mixer is in bad shape too :(

- Mousse worked well, though it was a bit on the bitter side because I used 70% chocolate.

- Ganache was easy and tasted very good (have left-over :)

- Assembly wasn't difficult but I'm curious if the layers will be parallel

- I added an extra layer of crunchy chocolate against the ganache.

- I was distracted during the making of the chocolate icing so it nearly boiled over. Ended up with small lumps too. Removed them when possible after icing.

- Though the icing covered the back of a spoon I think it was still too liquid when I poured it over the mousse. Well better too liquid than too stiff.

- I used marzipan dipped in cocoa for decoration

Like I said, I'm curious about how all components taste together. Also curious about the textures in frozen state. Will update about that on the 31st , together with a picture of the inside.



Update:
I tasted the entremet and thought it was good but like I already said, the mousse was a bit on the bitter and not so sweet side. Would use a chocolate with less cocoa content next time. The orange ganache was a delicious addition. The dacqoise didn't come through like it did on it's own but was still a good base. My layers were pretty level, so I was happy with that. Above the crème brûlée is a not so visible crispy chocolate layer. The picture is not very clear but from the bottom there is almond cinnamon dacqoise, orange ganache, crispy chocolate, chocolate mousse, crème brûlée, chocolate mousse, crispy chocolate, more chocolate mousse and chocolate glaze.
Sorry about the not so clean cut ;)

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

(in case you're wondering half way reading this if I realize that my post is called Mustacudos de muez - Walnut cookies flavoured with cinnamon and orange....I do ;)

I rediscovered some cookbooks that have been on my bookshelves for years and years. Two books on the French kitchen written by Julia Child. Back then I didn't even know who Julia Child was and wasn't very interested in the French kitchen. It was sort of a surprise that I had books by Julia Child on my shelves, never knew it. Anyway, one of the books is on lunch dishes and in this book I found the spinach quiche I wanted to make some time ago. A doesn't like savoury pies and tarts so I haven't made anything of the sorts in over 9 years. Making the dough for this quiche the French way with lots and lots of butter was trickier than I imagined. I thought rolling the dough between baking parchement would help like it does with sweet shortcrust dough but it didn't work that well. I wasn't able to roll it out to the desired thinness of 3 mm and ended up having a much thicker crust. Of course I was pressed for time when I baked it (had to be ready for lunch with the in-laws) so I didn't blind bake it long enough (did I mention that I forgot to prick the bottom with a fork?). If I would have been baking in a more relaxed fashion I would have been smart enough to blind bake it some more to compensate for the thickness. So after blind baking I pricked it with a fork and returned it to the oven. Of course the bottom puffed up enormously. Also the sides puffed up, well not really up, more inward. Looked pretty though in the oven, like a big flower ;) This time I did bake it longer than Julia said. After taking it out of the oven I just pressed the bottom down with a crème brûlée dish. The tart shell didn't look all that pretty, though it did improve when I baked it with the filling (which was really delicious btw). Not being happy with the crust (looks and done-ness) and the lack of time to make pictures I decided not to feature this recipe on my blog. Maybe in the future, who knows. So instead I'm giving you the very last recipe that I made for my Middle Eastern themed birthday party: Walnut cookies with cinnamon and orange. The cookies are very easy to make, naturally gluten-free and delicious :) It's another recipe from Claudia Roden, this time from The Book of Jewish Food. According to Claudia the cookies are made by Turkish Jews, I presume for Passover as they don't have any flour in them.

Mustacudos de muez - Walnut cookies flavoured with cinnamon and orange (from the Dutch version of The book of Jewish food by Claudia Roden)

makes about 16

250 g (9 oz) walnuts
90 g (3 ¼ oz) sugar
1 egg
zest of ¾ orange
1 ts cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Line a baking sheet with baking paper or grease the baking sheet.
Process all ingredients in the food processor until a medium coarse paste. Roll into walnut sized balls with wetted of greased hands.
Bake the balls for about 25 minutes.

The end of the month means another Daring Bakers challenge. This month's challenge is Pierre Hermé's chocolate éclairs, éclairs filled with chocolate pastry cream and topped with a chocolate glaze.
Even though I've made éclairs before (filled with lavender white chocolate mousse) I was still looking forward to making them again. I don't own Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé but I do own her Desserts by Pierre Hermé and the recipe for the chocolate glaze is in that one too. It has been on my to-do list to try out. Usually I make a simpler chocolate glaze but this particular one is said to retain its shine...sounded interesting :) Haven't made it up till now because it's more time consuming than the more regular chocolate glazes.
At first I wanted to play around with the flavours, make a raspberry pastry cream, stick with Hermé's glaze and top with a raspberry. I even made the pastry cream last week but I was not satisfied with the colour and look of the pastry cream. I added raspberry puree for taste but also for colour but instead of pink it turned into a sort of brownish pink colour....not pretty. I didn't want to use artificial colours to masquerade it either. Besides the ugly colour there were tiny bits of egg yolk visible. I guess I should have used the finemeshed sieve. The taste was very good though but I decided not to use it for the éclairs. It was the first component I made so the rest was put on hold until yesterday. By that time I felt like staying true to the recipe and only needed some kind of pretty decoration. Gilded marzipan balls sounded good, only I wasn't able to gild the balls completely so the orange marzipan that was left over from Rein's birthday was showing through. I felt I needed to somehow match that to the éclair and ended up adding some orange essentail oil to the chocolate glaze (I added ¼ ts). That way the orange colour was more part of a whole.
The glaze was easy to make though a bit time consuming with making a chocolate sauce first. At first I wasn't sure the sauce was going to work because the chocolate didn't melt completely. But after heating and stirring for 15 minutes it turned out beautifully. And although I didn't use the same chocolate Hermée using I thought the sauce tasted delicious. For the final glaze we had to make a ganache first. After adding all the chocolate the ganache had difficulties staying emulgated (emulsified?) and looked sort of curdled. This problem was solved after adding the butter and chocolate sauce and I ended up with a beautiful glaze. I chilled it to use today.
Making the chocolate pastry cream went smoothly if you don't count the fact that at the last moment before taking it out of its ice bath some of the ice water got into it. I was able to pour most of it out and had to blend in the little bit that was left. I'm not a fan of chocolate custard but was hoping that maybe this pastry cream with egg yolks, butter and good chocolate instead of cocoa powder would change this. Unfortunately not :( not that I dislike it, I mean, it's sweet and tastes like chocolate but it's still not my favourite.
I wanted to bake the puff dough yesterday evening as well but I discovered that I was out of flour! Well not out of spelt flour, whole wheat flour, self raising flour and quinoa flour but out of the flour I actually needed for this challenge. I didn't feel like going to the supermarket so I postponed making them until today. And today being a busy day I was glad that I managed to make them. I baked about half of the dough, the rest I put in the fridge. Most of the 13 éclairs weren't very pretty, only a about 3 looked good enough to feature in the photograph.
Assembling the chocolate éclairs didn't go smoothly unfortunately. The first thing I ran into was the fact that I didn't have enough pastry cream to fill all of the éclairs. Ok, so I halved the recipe, still I should have had enough to fill 12. I could only fill 7. I used a cookie dough press that also had a nozzle to fill stuff with and never realised how fast it was empty. I started with the ugly ones and never got to fill the pretty ones. So the éclair in the picture only has the chocolate glaze and no filling he he!
When I heated my glaze to the designated temperature it started to separate a little bit :( I hoped it wouldn't be that visible but when I dipped the éclairs it just looked ugly. I didn't cry but it didn't make me happy either. I was pressed for time so that didn't help either. I tried whisking it but that didn't help enough. Than I remember a tip Astrid of La Cerise gave me to save a separated ganache: add a little hot cream and stir. The glaze was sort of ganache-y so I gave it a try: it worked! I was so relieved...at least the glaze would be ok. I didn't have time to photograph the éclairs until after our picknick in the park and after the youngest was in bed. By that time daylight wasn't all that much anymore. The éclair you see in the picture was the only one of the three ok looking ones that also had ok looking glaze. The only problem was that didn't dip it on the top so it tilted when I put it down. I had to insert a toothpick to stabilize it. So maybe it the picture it looks like an ok éclair, in reality it was an empty éclair that needed a toothpick to stay upright ;) Oh well, another challenge done, and in time too...just in time that is ;)
Oh yes, how did it taste? It tasted delicious if you actually like chocolate pastry cream so to me it was just ok. I did like the taste of the glaze, you could really taste the orange taste. I still have some left-over glaze....it might have a second life as truffles, that is if I don't just spoon it out of the bowl :)



You can find the recipe at What's For Lunch Honey? and Tony Tahhan who host this month's challenge.

To see how all the other Daring Bakers did, check out this link.

These cookies are from Gerhard Jenne's Wacky Cakes & Kooky Cookies and have been on my to-do list for forever. Gerhard calls them Bridget Riley cookies but I've looked at her work and I don't think mine look like that ;) Psychedelic pinwheel cookies seemed more appropiate because the basis of the cookies as a pinwheel cookie log. Just for the fun of it I coloured the dough orange and green (I had to resist the urge do do pink and green, my all time favourite). The original is in vanilla and chocolate dough but I thought that would be a little too boring. But in retrospect I think that would have been better.
This was the first time I used icing sugar in cookie dough and I must say that I loved the texture of the cookie (even after kneading for a long time to get the food colouring in), I'm not sure how to describe it other than the type that you would use in a cookie press. Soft but not in a moist way. I liked it a lot!
I like most of the stuff in Jenne's book but I don't think his recipes are very clear. In this recipe it doesn't state if the butter needed to be chilled or not. I used chilled but it took a while before it was mixed. I think leaving it at room temperature for about 20 minutes would be better.

These cookies are my entry to Indigo's Welcome to Wonderland blog party.

Update - I was in a hurry to post this entry to meet the deadline of Welcome to Wonderland and it turned out that the instructions for shaping the cookies was not clear (something I expected ;). English is not my mother tongue so it's always difficult to describe something out of the ordinary. The instructions Gerhard Jenne gives weren't very clear either, and also the instructions don't match the picture. The fact that the instructions were not clear was the reason it took so long to finally make the cookies ;)
I've tried to make the instructions clearer in the recipe...hope it worked ;)
btw I just squeezed the scraps of dough together and shaped into a log and those cookies turned out pretty too :) so don't worry to much about the instructions, you'll get a funny cookie either way :)



Psychedelic pinwheel cookies (adapted from Gerhard Jenne's Wacky Cakes & Kooky Cookies)

makes about 30

175 g (1 ¼ cup) icing sugar
½ ts orange essential oil
1 medium egg yolk
250 g (1 cup + 2 tbs butter), diced
2 ½ cup flour
food colouring
1 egg white mixed with 1 tbs water

Put sugar, essential oil, egg yolk and butter in bowl and mix quickly together with your fingers or a wooden spoon. Add the flour and mix to a firm dough. Divide the dough in two and add some food colouring to each part. Knead in the colouring.
Chill the doughs for 1 hour.
Roll out the first dough between baking paper into a rectangle of about 5 mm (¼ in) thickness. Set aside. Roll out the second dough the same way. Brush one dough with the egg white mixture. Place the second rectangle onto the first. Roll out the two layers until 5 mm (¼ in) thickness. Trim the edges. Brush the top with the egg white mixture.
Starting from the long side, roll up the dough into a log. Cut the log in 3 pieces and then cut each piece lengthwise as well. You'll end up with 6 semi-circular logs. Place 3 of the semi-circular logs more or less in a direct line of each other, cut side down and let them overlap for about 5 cm (2 in). It's best to bend the logs a bit (you'll have to reshape anyway so it doesn't really matter if it looks crooked). Put the 3 remaining semi-circular logs on top of the bottom one in a similar fashion but with the cut side up. Shape the dough with your hands into a rectangular log. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
Cut the log in slices and put them on 2 baking paper lined baking sheets. Bake for about 12 minutes or until starting to brown.

Today is my birthday but I won't be celebrating much today because I have to prepare for my birthday party tomorrow. I thought is was time to celebrate my birthday because it had been about 10 years! since I last did it. In case you're wondering, it's my 36th birthday today :)
Anyway, I made this little (7 cm / 3 in) cakelet a few days ago to test a mousse made with agar-agar instead of gelatin because I need a mousse for my birthday cake. Unfortunately I wasn't completely pleased with using agar-agar (this way). What I did was I boiled some agar-agar in orange juice (plus a little sugar and lemon juice, also added a few drops of orange essential oil after boiling) and waited till it had cooled enough to fold it into whipped cream whipped to soft peaks. Agar-agar already starts to set at 32-40°C (90-105°F) so the orange juice mixture already started to set. Adding it to the cold whipped cream made it set even more. It didn't cause a problem with filling the ring mould because I could use a spatula to make it smooth but I couldn't pour the left-overs in a glass because it was already too stiff. Piping would have been ok though but I was in a hurry so didn't have time to pipe it. I let it set in the fridge till the next day.
The verdict: I liked the consistency of the mousse, it wasn't too stiff and stiff enough to hold it's shape. But I didn't like the way the fat of the cream somehow stuck to my palate, it reminded me of the one time I ate brains :( or when you eat something that is cold and has lots of saturated fats. Also the mousse couldn't retain all of the liquids, it sort of whept. I'm not sure what caused all this (the long time between making and eating? the agar-agar? the use of a tart fruit mixture?) tips are welcome...
So I decided to stick with gelatine for the birthday cake. Agar-agar will still remain on my list of ingredients to experiment with though :)

No recipe today but I used the mousse of the mango mousse mirror cake. I used 200 ml of cream and 200 ml of orange juice/lemon juice and 1/4 ts agar-agar powder. The physalis were left over from that cake too, the dried apricot puree was left over from Middle Eastern sweets I made a few days ago, and the cake base was from a pound cake from A's grandmother that we still had a bit of left in the freezer.

I'm not sure when I'll post my birthday cake because I'm pretty busy the coming days but hopefully soon....hope it turns out something to brag about ;)