Chocolate Walnut Toffee Bars

September 5th, 2009  |  18 Comments

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If there’s one thing that makes ladies forget their manners, it’s free clothes. If there’s another, it’s chocolate. Put them in a room together, and you’ve got yourself an every-woman-for-herself swap party.

My friend, Amy, decided to get all us chicks together under one roof to celebrate, oh, just being our great womanly selves. And our love of fashion. She offered a spread of dainty lady foods and the promise of a new wardrobe. All we had to do was clean out our closets of items that have lost their luster to us, or in my case, items that stopped fitting after my last 2 or 3 posts. We’d haul them over, eat our finger sandwiches and unload the goods in a giant pile on the bed. The bartering could begin.

Early on, each of us got a chance to sniff out the inventory. We circled the loot like pumas closing in on their prey. Vegas has never seen so many poker faces. No one wanted to reveal their most coveted items for fear of stirring up “suggestion envy”. This is when an item suddenly becomes enticing to you simply because someone else wants it.

I played it cool, sometimes even going so far as to turn my back to the pile. My face said, “Meh, I see dozens of clothes for the taking all the time, yawn.” But my adrenaline was up. I broke out the toffee bars. I purposefully baked them for this occasion knowing I’d need to distract. If I could lull everyone into a false sense of security, maybe that Milly cami could be mine.

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One Coconut Cookie, Three Personalities

September 1st, 2009  |  36 Comments

Coconut cookie and strawberry ice cream sandwiches

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A big gracias to all of you for your stunning influx of comments about the Dobos. It was overwhelming and really made my día, so thank you.

You may be asking yourself if this has suddenly become a Spanish blog, what with me sprinkling foreign words around like there’s no mañana. Por favor, rest assured, this will continue to be a pastry blog. There is a reason why I’ve suddenly gone spicy. In a few days, Scott and I will be taking a long awaited vacation to Spain.

Though I’m busting out of my skin with excitement, my enthusiasm might double, even triple, if you could help me compile a list of places to visit. If you’ve ever been there or live there and can point me to some spots that you think are worth it, I’d really appreciate it. I’ll be spending a few days in Madrid and a few days in Barcelona and maybe a day trip in their respective vicinities. Whatever comes to your mind—pastry places, arty places, pretty places, out-of-the-way places, delicious places—are all up for consideration. We’ll likely divide our time with sightseeing during the day and bar/restaurant lounging in the evening. Surely my camera will gain 10 pounds from all the pictures I’ll load it up with, but I’ll purge them all here when I return.

Too bad my high school Spanish never stuck because now I have to wax poetic about the coconut cookie in English. You may remember the post on strawberry ice cream and its insistence on being just a tad icy. It occurred to me that a good way to disguise that would be to hide it in cookies. That’s when I heard the call of the ice cream sandwich. The crumbliness of the cookie would make the lacking ice cream texture unnoticable.

Coconut cookie and chocolate ganache sandwiches

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Now’s a good time as any to interject a few thoughts on building interesting dessert plates. When you come across a recipe that is so good you forget your own name, file it away. It could even be just a component of a recipe, like a killer chocolate sauce or a buttercream that makes you fall to your knees. Eventually you’ll build up a repertoire of excellent recipes that you can mix and match to come up with creative combinations.

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Chocolate Dobos Torte and the Daring Bakers

August 26th, 2009  |  61 Comments

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As much as I like to think that I know everything about pastry, the truth is that I only know a small percentage. The amount of available info is bigger than all the sugar crystals in the world. As we speak, delightfully batty pastry chefs are out there, stirring up shenanigans that I couldn’t even conceive of. Can you imagine desserts from the skins of warm milk? Or “electric ice cream”, whatever that is? I could try to cram in as much learnin’ as possible till my dying day, but it will still be just a fraction of what’s out there. It’s more than any one person can know. Yet this realization won’t stop me from trying. It’s a pastry jungle out there, people, and I intend to hack my way through with a dishwasher-safe machete.

One way to keep from getting complacent is to get a swift kick in the butter once in a while. This is where The Daring Bakers come in. Though they sound like a scrappy motorcycle gang, they are a lovely group of bakers that like to challenge themselves. Each month, a different host chooses a dessert that’s supposed to push us outside our comfort zone and hopefully get us to try something new. Whether we succeed or fail, we learn.

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Apparently, they have no mercy. Some of the previous projects were things I’ve never attempted before, like last month’s phyllo dough. That would have definitely given me a run for my money. No further convincing was necessary. I joined the group, and this month is my first foray into the the Daring Bakers’ circle. My inaugural project is the Austrian Dobos Torte. Here is the nitty-gritty:

The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

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Pure Strawberry Ice Cream

August 23rd, 2009  |  23 Comments

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These last couple of weeks I’ve had an inexplicably intense craving for strawberry ice cream. Yes, inexplicable. Get your mind out of the baby gutter. So I guess it’s fair to say that when I saw a recipe for strawberry ice cream in last month’s Gourmet, there was no choice in the matter.

Looking over the ingredients and ratios, I was a little suspicious. I’ve had my share of icy ice cream, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I don’t like it. If you’ve been around the ice cream block a few times, you may have noticed there are two types of ice cream bases—the ones with egg yolks, where the base is cooked in the style of custard (French style, like the type for this ginger ice cream), and the ones with no egg yolks, where the ingredients are just stirred together and churned (Philadelphia style).

This recipe is the eggless type and has plenty of pureed fruit. Fruit has a lot of water and what happens when you freeze water? Icy. Also, yolky ice cream bases give ice creams body and creaminess and I wondered if their exclusion would effect the texture. Then again, yolks impart an undeniable custardy flavor and sometimes you want to cut them loose. What I really wanted was a deep, touch-your-soul strawberry flavor. Could this bare bones recipe deliver?

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The Best Humble Carrot Cake Ever

August 20th, 2009  |  78 Comments

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The gods of Hades are laughing at me. As much as I am an unwavering, single-minded, all-things-food glutton, my boyfriend, Scott, is a man who wishes he could take a pill instead of having to eat. Oh, the irony of it all. And as far as desserts go, forget it.

When we go out to a restaurant (one I make him go to, of course), after dinner I’ll always order dessert. The waiter sets down two pairs of silverware for sharing, and something gooey and irresistible between us. Scott’s spoon remains pristine and unused. I, on the other hand, plow into the plate as though its going to be snatched from my trembling hands. Sometimes we end up in a prix fixe place, where they serve a 3-course menu. I’m only slightly ashamed to eat both of our desserts, all the while wondering how he can be so indifferent. Was his sweet tooth extracted when he was a small child?

He carries on this way all year, every year. At the family Christmas dinner, where many of the guests bring something for the ever-growing dessert buffet, I’m all antsy, barely able to wait to get at everything. If there is conversation going on, I couldn’t tell you what it’s about, thanks to my dizzy distraction. When they ring the dessert bell, it’s like an olympic event, with everyone racing and climbing over each other. Scott sits calmly in a chair, swirling his cocktail, waiting for the frenzy to die down.

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