TWD - June Preview and first Macarons try

And here we have five more weeks of tempting, challenging, diverse recipes for the next Tuesdays with Dorie-month.

In the weeks to come I will try my luck with

White Chocolate Brownies, picked byMarthe of Culinary Delights,

Tender Shortcakes, chosen by Cathy of The Tortefeasor,

Raisin Swirl Bread, selected by Susan of Food.Baby,

Dressy Chocolate Loafcake, named by Amy of Amy Ruth Bakes, and

Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes determinded by Wendy of Pink Stripes.

I am extremely excited about the White Chocolate Brownies, not only because one special TWD'er will be specially happy with this special pick :o] I adore Brownies and they are oh so easy to transfer to the office. And they are also oh so easily to be shared. I am craving for those for a long time.

The Tender Shortcakes will be an experiment: I have no idea what this should be. Shortcakes are new to me, I have never seen or eaten one: So lets see if I arrive to create something similar to what it should be. The picture in the book looks extremely promising, just as I like my desserts. Additionally, it is made with berries, and therefore a perfect pick for this time of the year.

I love anything made of brioche, so hooray for Raisin Swirl Bread! The only fly in the ointment is that you gotta have brioche before you can head over to making the actual recipe And brioche means "take your time". Anyways, I learnt to like making brioche dough, so I am looking forward to this week!


And then we have a chocolate-vanilla-combo for the last two weeks of June. I am not so sure about the Dressy Chocolate Loafcake, as up to now I am not such a big fan of the similar TWD-recipes we made so far (like the Cocoa-Nana Bread). But lets see. At least, a loafcake is something not too laborious, but easy to transport and share. And the Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes - perfect occasion to take some of my mini-molds out of the mothballs! Wonderful!

Finally, something completely different:
In a delusion of grandeur I tried to make Macarons. I had eggwhites over and over from the last TWD-weeks, so I thought "why not? why should I not be able to do Macarons?"
Well, maybe because other bake-bloggers who are far, far, far better bakers than me had difficulties. And phrases like "this is not about the actual recipe, but about mastering the technique" would have been a good hint for me to keep my hands off.

I don't know how I mastered the shells turned from "too soft and almost liquid" to "burnt, so smoke comes out the oven" in a second or so. Like that, my shells (all, all and every single of it), were dark and black. The filling was really good, and I even had the guts to try some of these little black anythings. If it would not have been for the edges, they weren't that bad. But "not that bad" is not even the ugly little sibling of "good".
On the other side, the preparation does not take long and making the batter is really easy, so maybe I am going to re-try it soon.

Here David Lebovitz' recipes for my fail:
French Cocolate Macarons with Chocolate Filling and Prune Filling

 

If you have never seen Macarons, here is what they should look like. See the difference? :o]

TWD: Apple-Apple Bread Pudding

I know "pudding" in english and in german isn't the same. But despite some british Christmas Pudding, which I have to say I am not a particular fan of, I never had or saw one. So I thought all puddings are like that. But when I read this recipe I thought, well, that all sounds familiar. Very familiar. And after some net-search for pictures of this recipe I was sure: Bread pudding, or at least Apple-Apple Bread Pudding, is very, very well-known in Austria - just with another name, for sure.

"Scheiterhaufen" (what translates to "stake" - yes, stake, no lost in translation...) is a very common dish, especially with school cafeterias. It's considered to be a smash-up meal, although I think in fact it isn't anymore, but I guess it used to, as it is a way to use old white bread, and apples are to be found en masse everywhere. So it also was kind of a cheap dish. And very often, in schools and at universities it is served on Fridays instead of fish. (Austria has a very catholic tradition, and despite it doesn't really influence most people's life - at least much less than in the States!! - but some habits never dissappear...)

 (unfortunately, not a picture of my Apple Bread Pudding, but a Scheiterhaufen by www.lebensmittelfotos.com - looks familiar, huh?)

TWD: Quick Classic Berry Tart

For this TWD-week Cristine of Cooking with Cristine picked the Quick Classic Berry Tart - go to her page or have a look at Dorie's book on page 377 for the recipe.

This was a great choice for the first weeks of May. I opted for a pure strawberry tart because I found some really good tasting ones (which is not that easy...).

I had the feeling that this classic tart as you see it on the left could use some more colour besides the vanilla of the pastry cream (I used vanilla milk instead of ordinary whole milk, so my pastry cream was alreayd very, very vanilla-coloured), and the red of the strawberries and the strawberry-glazé.
First I thought pistacchios, but I ran out. And then my look fell on the basil at my kitchen sill. Strawberries naturally match with savory tastes like red pepper or chilis in chocolate, or old Balsamico (or a Balsamico reduction) on the plain fruits. And I am generally a big fan of combining sweet and savory.
So I candied some basil leaves to sprinkle them over the finished tart, and mixed the glazé with a tiny little bit of Balsamico.

I love this tart!
My crust didn't burn for the first time (it was a bit dark, but still alright - but I made a nut crust, so it should be darker than a normal one), I managed to handle the pastry cream, and the final product did look well. Usually, nobody complains about the taste when I bake, but the looks of my desserts are improvable.

Here, it turned out exactly as I intended it.
Honestly spoken, I am pretty proud on me. :o]

 

(and, most importantly, my co-workers and me were excited, excited, excited about it)

P.S.: For candying basil it is better not to use the usual sugar-water-mix as for fruits - this might be too heavy. It's better to first put the leaves in egg-whites and then sprinkle it with sugar, as you do with edible flowers.

TWD: Burnt Sugar Icecream

 (I'm sorry, but the pictures of the Burnt Sugar Ice Cream are not very impressive, so I have to bother you with some of my Paris-pictures.)

Since I spent some month in Paris last year and discovered David Lebovitz' blog (funnily, not even because I was looking for a recipe or a restaurant recommendation, but on the search for yoga classes in Paris...) I was curious for making icecream. I tried some before, but it more turned out as fruit sorbets (can live with that ...), and frozen mousse au chocolate (can definitely live with that...). The fact that I have no icecream machine didn't improve the situation. But when I came back to Vienna last autumn I started following David's recommendations. And I loved it right from the start. A definite highlight has been the Matcha Icecream with Red Bean Sauce so far. (incredible!)

The procedure is easy, just needs some time, because you have to stir and check your mix several times. You can find a step-by-step introduction here. Also very helpful are his hints for making icecream (with or without machine) softer.

But this is about recipes by Dorie Greenspan and not David Lebovitz, although I am pretty sure she won't be offended being named in the same blog as him when it comes to icecream.

Burnt sugar is a nicer name for caramel. I was very much looking forward to it, because I didn't make icecream for some time. So credits go out to Becky of Project Domestication, who has chosen icecream for a quick-start into the summer! You can find the recipe at her blog or on p. 432 in Dorie's book.

 

The procedure is easy-peasy. I didn't use ordinary sugar but caramel-sugar because I thought of it as a very clever idea. The problem was, that the already caramelized sugar was dark right from the start, so I wasn't able to see when the colour of the caramel was right. Maybe that was the reason why my mix didn't really freeze. Normally, I wait for two hours before stirring it up the first time and then continue to do so every 30-45 mins. I made the icecream-mix at noon, and mixed it up the last time before I went to bed, and it was not frozen by that time. (No, I don't go to bed that early; that was not the reason :o])

Anyhow, the next moning the texture was perfect. I had the feeling it could use some add-in. I couldn't imagine serving the icecream with cookies or brownies, as the Burnt Sugar Icecream itself is already sweet enough. I thought about a fruity side-dish, but had to use all my strawberries for something else. Dried apricots also came to my mind, but I used them in the Chockablock Cookies last week, and don't like to repeat myself too often.

So, what's left? As I came home late yesterday, I flipped through David's icecream book, looking for something fast and easy, and ended up with pralined almonds. I didn't taste the complete icecream so far. But I can't imagine how this can go wrong. Caramel and nuts - what more can you ask for?

(Maybe for reading the recipe properly, and not using one cup water instead of 1/4 cup... - but after a long, long time and adding more and more nuts and more and more sugar I somehow managed to rescue the nuts)

Cardinal Slices (Kardinalschnitte)

On the special wish of a colleague (in detail, she said: "Can't you make something like THAT???") and because I had some eggwhites (due to icercream-making for TWD), I tried my luck with Cardinal Slices (possibly the correct translation is Viennese Cardinal). I used to like this cake when I was a child very, very much. I mostly go for the classic version. The ones with chocolate, heavy raspberry-cream or cappucino or not my cup of tea.

To me, despite most recipes are classfied as "easy" the procedure sounds difficult: Pipe alternating stripes of beaten egg whites and an egg-sugar-flour-mix, bake for about 20 minutes, cut in half, so you get six stripes, spread jam on the top of two stripes, then put some whipped cream (I mixed mine with some strawberries) on the layers, again the same with the second layer, and top it with the third one. Nevertheless, what I got is anything but Cardinal Slices. I will have a look if I can rescue them. Maybe with white chocolate ganache.

The "merengue" did not turn out fluffy and light as it should, but chewy, dense and sunken. The egg-mix was much too liquid. I alreday thought so when I poured it in between the eggwhite stripes. The two textures suddenly mixed, what should definitely not happen.

Lucky me, most of the few people possibly reading this have never been to Austria, so I guess they don't know what Cardinal Slices should look like.
But, as I am an honest person, this is the original, and a picture of a variation with raspberries and I guess coffee:

TWD: Chockablock Cookies

This last TWD-month was a month of incredible simpliness and fastness. All the recipe where to be completed in less time than the one the week before. "Comes together in a snap" must have been one of the most often cited phrases by TWD'ers. Some even reported that their ovens had not even finished preheating by the time the dough was ready to be baked. But when I learnt anything about baking in the last months since I stepped into the big gloomy world of pastry, cakes and brownies, it is that the simpliest things never are that simple. Easiness also shows your limits, as with these recipes it is not so much the mere procedure itself that is challenging, but perfecting it.

And I'm lousy when it comes to perfection. Maybe that's one reason why I have "chosen" baking as a new hobby - I need this challenge. I need a task that is a bit demanding.

In this respect, the Chockablock Cookies, chosen by Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet where you can also find the recipe (or, even better, buy the book and have a look at page 86) are a perfect April-recipe.
The real question for these cookies is: What did you use? It is not exactly like with Composte/Amnesty Cookies, that are made of almost anything you can find in your kitchen. But even though mostly more than 100 people are participating in TWD weekly, I guess we won't see many identical cookies. There is the nut-question (you are free to use any sort - me, I took the easy way with a nut mix), and the dried-fruit-question (again: anything possible; I decided on dried apricots). I thought about including raisins and figues, because I ADORE figues, but ended up with the decision that it's better not to overload them in taste.
 
But: I heavily doubted the amount of chocolate. I used less (100g/3 ounces of 86% chocolate and 30g/1 ounce milk chocolate - instead of 180 g/6 ounces in total, as I made only half the recipe). And I'm glad I did, because there was much too much chocolate even with the cut back .

I don't know what went wrong. I read and re-read the recipe, but the chocolate amount was rigth. My cookies just ran out. They didn't really firm. The chocolate ran to the bottom of the cookies, where it almost burnt. Transferring them to a cooling rack was a complete mess.

Sure, taste beats looks. And my colleagues didn't seem to mind at all. But they didn't look a tad as cookies should.

I am obviously physically not able to produce proper specimens of cookies. Project Perfection goes on...
Sigh.




(And now - up to a new TWD-month full of less-fast recipes, where my unableness to perfection doesn't stand out that much ;o])

TWD: Sweet Cream Biscuits

During Lenten Season I became almost an expert for baking scones and biscuits, as they can mostly be made without sugar. So when I read that Melissa of Love At First Bite chose Sweet Cream Biscuits (p. 23 in Dories book) for this weeks TWD-session, I was excited  on the one side ("Juhu, something I CAN do! Something I am not a complete novice about!"), but a bit dissappointed on the other side ("Oh no, not biscuits - again. I made soooo many of them the weeks between Mardi Gras and Easter").
After considering all the ups and downs I decided that in the end I do love baking savory things, I do love eating biscuits, and I enjoyed the routine I was going through during Lenten Season (waking up, jogging for 50-60 mins, bathroom, baking, having a big, big breakfast/brunch with fresh baked quick breads). So - hooray for this pick!!

The category "quick breads" is more than appropriate. Because you use heavy cream instead of butter, you don't even have to think about cutting and freezing the fat (what I usually would do for about half an hour to make sure the butter is really, really cold). Just mix the few ingredienst, and you are ready to go!

As I made so many breakfast treats recently, I was in the mood for playing around. I have a lot of ramson because it is the season for it and whole Vienna (or at least its parks and gardens) smells for it. And the restaurants will use it in the weeks to come in so many variants, that in the end, no matter how much you like it, we will all be completely fed up with it and glad the season is over, so we get a whole year to recover. For sure, before next February ends, most Viennese will crave for their ramson risotto, ramson sauces of all kinds, ramson patties ...
I really love it, and as I am allergic to garlic, this is a perfect substitute. (For the allergy: Very long, very sad story... I used to like garlic a lot and didn't find out until some years ago. Well, let's face it, there are worse allergies than this. It's in my own hands to avoid it. But I very often forget to ask in restaurants, and sometimes don't recognize it, when it is not too dominant. And then the rest of the day/evening is to be forgotten, and it's best to go home....)
(Btw.: Is ramson really the right word? It is a herb that smells like garlic, but is botanically something completely different. I also found the translation "bears garlic" or "wild garlic", what might be wrong because what I am talking about has nothing do to with garlic?)

Since I made my first biscuits I found out what biscuit cutters are, but as they are not to be found round here, I just used high cookie cutters shaped like stars.
Additionally to some finely chopped ramson I mixed in a tiny little bit of Parmesan. I have no idea how much I used, I just went with my intuition.

For the ramson - I am a big fan! The parmesan would maybe not have been necessary, but after all I didn't really taste it anyways.
The ramson makes the biscuits look very pretty on the plate (on the pictures below you can indeed only see the little test piece with ramson and one of the plain Sweet Cream Biscuits), and the taste is wonderful.

Sure, this only works if you don't eat your biscuits with jam or other sweet spreads :o]

 

(Breakfast as I like it most - mixed vegetable salad, ham, some excellent cheese (buffalo brie), the newspaper - and homemade, still slightly warm biscuits)

TWD rewind and May preview - Dulche de Leche Duos

I still have to catch up with some of the group's recipes I tweaked during Lenten season. As everybody was so excited about the Dulche de Leche Duos and I was so excited about the possibility of making it yourself I went for it some weeks ago. I didn't find enough time to bake the cookies themselves, but the DDLcan be stored for up to two month. Well, I didn't wait that long. But recently I got fed up with having a bowl of DDL in my fridge. I need the space. I need the bowl. I don't like to have left-overs for a long time. (I am still kind of in "lenten-mode": Before Easter, I start cleaning my stocks and cupboards).

So. Dulche de Leche Duos. Honestly, during making them I constantly thought "Never. Again. Ne-ver".

My kitchen was a mess. I had a hard time measuring the needed amount of DDL. Additionally, I was not well prepared. When I was ready to measure out the needed flour, I already had the DDL in my cup-measure, so I couldn't use it anymore. When I was ready to toss in the baking soda, I found out that I ran out of it. When I had mixed the dry ingredients in the only bowl actually available in my kitchen, I saw that I would have needed this one for beating the butter. I needed three tours for baking away all the batter (and I even made only the half amount), because I have only one baking sheet. So it took much longer to make the cookies than planed. And I thought about the long, long time for baking the DDL. I have no quick or rice cooker, condensed milk doesn't come in cans in Austria, and I know only one store where they sell DDL. An extremely, extremely high-end pricey shop. So, doing it myself the David-Labovitz-way was the only option.

But once they cooled down, and I tried a cookie, I was taken. Still, I am not sure if I will do them again because I know me - I am a lazy little person. But I hope when Christmas time comes, I remember how tasty these little caramel cookies are, and that they are a welcome change to all the chocolate and gingerbread. I can also imagine them to be a wonderful base for icecream-sandwich. Mabye with some caramel icecream?

(You know what I like most about these pictures? It's not that you can follow the DDL running down. It's the twin that is mirrored in the plate :o])

And that brings me to the other topic today - the May-TWD-preview is here!!

Four great bakers have opted for four great recipes with icecream and fresh fruits:

Burnt Sugar Ice Cream  chosen by Becky of Project Domestication

Quick Classic Berry Tart May picked by Cristine of Cooking with Cristine 

Apple-Apple Bread Pudding elected by Elizabeth of Cake or Death?, and finally

Spike of spikebakes decided on the Banana Coconut Ice Cream Pie.

I am excited about the Icecream. I love doing icecream since I got "The perfect scoop". I have no machine, but David Lebovitz gives great directions about how to make icrecream by hand. I just decided to fridge some of the Dulche de Leche Duos-cookies and make DDL/Caramel Icecream Sandwiches with them!

The Berry Tarte is perfect for the season and I am so much looking forward to buying fresh berries on the market that week.

I have some brioche left from the Easter brunch, and planned to used it for a recipe proposed by Isa of  Les Gourmandises d'Isa (Apple and Pear Brioche Pudding), but in the very last moment I saw the May preview and the apple-bread pudding is a welcome use for the brioche.

The only thing troubling me is the Pie. Don't get me wrong - this sounds great. This sounds terrific. This sounds like a Pie I could slurp in one piece. But how the heck can I bring that to work? How can I store it there until afternoon? Usually, my co-workers scuff by the kitchen whenever during the day they feel like needing some sugar. I don't see how the icecream could survive that...
But lets see. Maybe I will have a better idea than bringing it to work, because - let's get serious. Icecream, coconut, bananas - I HAVE to try that!

TWD: Swedish Visiting Cake

When I was at university I took a swedish class for a year. I was interested in the language because I generally think of Sweden as a very interesting country. I mostly like how things are run there, and always thought that we can learn a lot from them. I like that politicians and top-managers are never seen as irreplaceable and VIPs. You can bump into them on Friday evening when they are at the movies with their friends and family. (Unfortunately, this also leeds to unwanted consequences, as things like this or that would not be possible in most other countries, due to big security entourages.)  like their way dealing with female participation in the workforce and the involvement of fathers in child-raising and homework-duties. And I am convinced that their open-mindness towards income and wealth transparency is a role-model.

And I think that it sounds funny when Swedish people speak. :o]

So I learned Swedish, but by chance, after the summer-holidays that year I went to Strasbourg, France, for an exchange semester, that ultimately became an exchange year and the basis of my love of France (which was the complete opposite before - my mother's a french teacher. You can imagine all the rest about teenage rebellion against parents...).

But the topic here is Sweden. So, to make it short, I forgot all my Swedish (read: the little bit Swedish I lernt in this one year), and almost all I can say is "min mor är en kassörska", what means "my mother is a till girl" - what is not even true (I seriously have  no idea why I did remind that!), and the most simple things like hello, good bye and thanks.

Amnesty Cookies a.k.a. Compost Cookies

There are these projects, I am sure everybody knows them, that pend above your head since ages. This is one of mine. The idea sounds too tempting not to make them:

Take 1,5 cups of all the baking rest that did amass over time in your cupboard. If you have more (I bet you do!), just take your favourites.
Then, take 1,5 cups of savory snacks, preferably also rests and leftovers you want to get rid of.
Mix a very simple cookie dough (butter, sugar, eggs - the classics), chop the mentioned leftovers  in. Cool the dough, put them in the oven and that's it.
The recipe can be found here. Originally, they are Momofuku's Compost Cookies. David L. calls them Amnesty Cookies - and idea I find hilarious.

I halfed the recipe, and found out that I had to limit myself indeed. 3/4 leftovers are not that much at all. In the end, I mixed up some chocolates (a very small piece milk chocolate, a very small piece white lemon chocolate, some pure white chocolate, some mini milk-chocolate-nougat easter eggs, a bit of dark ginger chocolate), mascarpone nougat, shredded coconut, and a little piece of merengue that was left from icecream-making last week. I didn't really have savory snacks at home, so I tricked a bit and took cookie crumbles from various projects (at least I can claim that some of them came from vary salty batches...), which I filled up with pumkin seeds and sesame, and I was very liberal with the amount of salt.