The other day, my family went to our awesome local grocery store. My dad likes to bring me with him when he goes because I used to play basketball, and buying produce there requires a lot of the same skills as grabbing a rebound.
"Boxing out"
Just as we were walking through the fruit aisle, a worker came by and unloaded a beautiful, mouth-watering, glowingly fresh batch of apricots on the stand. Chaos ensued.
Considering that several people were shoved out of the way in the name of these apricots, I figured I had better make something extra special out of them!
I didn't take pictures of all the steps that went into making the tart, but it turned out so pretty that I thought I would post some pictures and a link to the recipe I used.
This recipe is for an apricot tart with an almond-flavored custard made with mostly eggs, extracts, and cream. The filling and crust of the tart ended up being pretty sweet, while the apricots added a little sour kick. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly and it turned out beautiful!
Side note: my #1 favorite part about this tart was the crust. The tart slid out of the pan so easily, there was no weakness or sogginess in the bottom, and the crust was delightfully crunchy and even caramel-y.
P.S...I know I haven't posted in forever (shame on me. Life has been crazy lately.) That will (hopefully) be rectified shortly. I'm a few buttons away from finishing a sewing project!
Cake stencils are a really intricate, professional-looking way to decorate your confections quickly and simply. This tutorial is going to teach you how to design and make homemade cake stencils out of stuff you have lying around your house! Getting rid of junk AND beautiful dessert? Win-win ;)
What is a cake stencil?
They're a perforated piece of plastic that you use as a template to paint/sprinkle a design onto your cake. They can get super intricate!
I usually put mine on top of the cake and then sprinkle some sort of powder--like sugar or chocolate--over it, leaving a really beautiful design on the cake!
I took my last final two days ago...I finished my last college app yesterday...it's winter break and I have no more essays to write...
I am now OFFICIALLY a second-semester senior!!!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY (and PHEW!!!)
Time to cook and sew to my heart's content!!!
Yesterday I was so intoxicated by my newfound freedom to do whatever I wanted (as opposed to studying and writing essays bleagh) that when Serious Eats emailed me a recipe for a chocolate-chestnut torte, I was like LET'S GO FOR IT!
I actually ended up adapting a hazelnut-chocolate torte recipe instead, because I like hazelnuts better and I didn't have any chestnuts. Unfortunately, I didn't have any eggs either, which I was so excited to get started that I didn't realize until halfway through making the confection, which led to me running down the street in my slippers to borrow eggs from my angelic neighbor. Thank you Edye!!! I also accidentally added double the sugar I was supposed to at the beginning, so I had to make a batch of cookies instead and start the cake over (you can't let butter and sugar go to waste!). Not my smoothest dessert, clearly. Cut me a break. I'm still getting back in the groove ;)
But eventually all the right ingredients ended up in the mixer together. I think the cake came together quite nicely, don't you?
I decorated the top with powdered sugar using a homemade cake stencil. Within a few days I'll post a tutorial about how to make your own reusable cake stencil from stuff you probably have lying around your house! If you're reading this thinking, "Less art, more eating!", a liberal dusting of powdered sugar would, I'm sure, look just as inviting plus have the added advantage of covering in all the bald spots. Or you could just cut to the chase and slather the thing with Nutella ;)
The cake turned out to be pretty good! It was moist and fudgy and tasted like Nutella. Here's the recipe!
You manage this, and your two hours of hulling produce, reducing caramel, kneading pastry, and trying to improvise an airtight turkey baster will (maybe) be rewarded spectacularly. If you mess it up, not only is your desert ruined, but you're risking everything from the fate of your glass cookware to personal injury.
All you have to do to unlock the (potential) glory of your exquisitely crafted dessert is to upend a heavy cast-iron pan filled with scalding liquid onto a breakable platter wearing padded mittens that wouldn't look out of place on an Eskimo.
But boy is the result worth it.
I present la tarte tatin.
Here's the basic methodology behind a tarte tatin: start by making a simple caramel out of butter and sugar (um, yum) in a stovetop saucepan. You delicately arrange an interlocking starburst of apple slices onto the bottom of the pan and then heap the thing with as many apples as you can physically stack. You cook them into tender submission, basting them in lemon juice and sugar until the entire filling is rendered with delicious caramel. Now here's the interesting part: once the apples are done baking, the pie crust goes on top of the filling; you cover the fruit with a circle of dough and bake the entire production in the oven until the crust browns and hardens. At that point, you flip the entire dessert so that the crust is actually on the bottom of the tart. Prepare for the moment of truth!
According to the fantastical land of error-free modern baking media, the tarte tatin is a masterpiece of foresight wherein the baker meticulously blueprints and lays out her fruit on the base of the pan (the top of the tart, remember?) and the final release is an all-or-nothing revelation of the success of the original vision. Here's an example of what television says an outturned tarte tatin should look like:
According to real life, your carefully organized design of lemon-coated crescents have likely already been prodded aside by your turkey baster, smashed by the adjacent layer of apples, and in all probability glued to the bottom of the pan by that lovely caramel you created.
Here's what a real outturned tarte tatin looks like.
But never fear! With a spatula and a delicate pair of fingers, you can put your tart back together like nothing happened. I promise. If you don't believe me that retroactively reconstituting your tarte tatin is valid baking practice, just ask Julia Child. After watching this chef turn out her own tarte tatin you will feel much better about your own kitchen!
(Thank goodness for Julia Child.)
This was my first time making tarte tatin, and this recipe came out gorgeously. I think the trick is making sure that each component--the caramel, the apples, the crust--are all cooked properly in their turn, even if you have to cook them for longer than strictly called for, and the tart just eventually comes together compliantly.
My mom loves tarte tatin, and by her declaration, this dish was the best tarte tatin she has ever tasted.
(Which is a good thing, because it means I'm allowed to keep buying butter and getting flour all over the kitchen. Phew!)
That's right...this nonintuitive dessert was good enough that I made it again. :D Here's an illustration of how to put it together. You can find the recipe and instructions here. (I seriously recommend.)
Guys, I have to nip this in the bud before I disappoint you too badly.
...I didn't actually take pictures* of how I made this dessert.
I know, I'm sorry! Picture courtesy of kasiawisz.com
*Update 7/5/14: Guess what! I made it again and took pictures!
The reason I didn't take pictures is because I didn't actually think it would be any good (...man, was I pleasantly surprised!)
Making rhubarb pie was not even my idea. I mean, the whole premise seems kind of messed up. You're taking a vegetable that's like a cross between celery and chard, containing it, dousing it, and heaping it with butter and sugar, baking the heck out of it, and calling it dessert. Leaving a final product that is neither healthy like a vegetable, nor appetizing like a dessert that...well, doesn't contain a vegetable.
My grandparents were visiting from Idaho, and it was my grandpa's birthday. I wanted to make him something special for birthday dessert, because baked goods are how I show love <3
My grandpa has this story (that I definitely have heard more than once) in which he was served an extra heaping slice of mud pie "on the house" because the former "didn't look big enough for him". In a moment of original, sentimental inspiration, I decided, how sweet would it be to make him a mud pie for his birthday!
Unfortunately, I soon realized that in its most common form, mud pie is less about "baking" than it is about "assembling". Ground-up Oreo-cookie crust, filled with store-bought coffee ice cream, slathered with jarred ice cream fudge. And maybe some whipped cream.
So began the epic ideological clash between pre-made-cutting-corners nonsense and Anelise's overachieving pastry-snob stubbornness.
First I decided that I would make the Oreo crust without Oreos because I wanted to avoid the chemicals and trans fats that go into them. I ended up having to make the crust twice because the first time I added too much butter and my "crust" looked more like soup than pie dough and I ended up adding eggs and making brownies. :/
I reconciled myself to having to buy some coffee ice cream. First I almost had to start protesting the Ralph's ice cream isle because for all their bizarre flavors I could not find a single carton of standard coffee ice cream. I finally unearthed a couple of absurdly tiny tubs that were so expensive that at that point I might as well go buy a whole mud pie. And then I took them home, and found out that one of them was half-melted, and I had to haul it back to the store and demand a replacement.
When I went to make the fudge for the top, I was sure that the type of mud-pie fudge I liked had a caramel-like texture, so I raked the Internet until I found a chocolate-caramel sauce that I thought would work, and peppered it with some roasted almonds.
It was my brother's birthday last week. In order to understand my brother's birthday dessert, you have to understand my brother.
This is Max.
This is Max's phone case.
This is Max's favorite article of clothing.
This is the opening of Max's favorite movie.
Picture courtesy of australianwargamer.wordpress.com
And this is Max's cake.
:D
I stole this design idea from 17 and baking about three months ago and bookmarked it and waited with bated breath until April drew upon us. And then I scheduled ditching school so I could come home early and make it and have it ready in time for birthday dinner. And I cast my brother from the kitchen for about 4 hours so he couldn't see it going to together so when he cut it open SURPRISE IN ALL ITS PATRIOTIC GLORY!!!
The design of the cake itself is not all that complicated. The only tricky part is the blue square in the corner, which is achieved by replacing the top layer of cake with a blue ring and a red-on-white interior circle (don't worry about trying to picture it right now: full instructions with pictures below!).
Regardless, this cake is kind of a lot of work. It involves a lot of dividing batter, some strategizing, and a lot of mixing food coloring (so much that I have blisters from whisking in the dye. Who gets blisters from making cake?)
And I didn't even THINK about how high-maintenance this cake would be AFTER it was finished.
If the refrigerator light switch is flipped off when the door shuts, but no one is inside the refrigerator to see it, does it really go out?
Uhhh...
That sounds like an injunction to eat with your hands!
...Whoops.
I'll have to console myself that the American flag will be immortalized indefinitely on this blog...because the cake is going to go pretty darn fast!
(That means "I make crème brûlée" in French *nods knowingly*. The present tense is about all I can handle at this point. Freshman French, baby!!!) Most people look at me very strangely when I explain to them that I am taking a second language as an elective; unlike my enlightened readers, they do not understand the personal benefits to be incurred by learning French. After all, Paris is arguably the food and fashion capital of the world. The great majority of the patterns I use have their instructions reprinted in French. And most pressingly, it sort of ruins your credibility as an aspiring chef célèbre if you can't even pronounce a French menu.
That would be me. :/
It's been very interesting gaining a cursory understanding of the language. All though I have to admit that thus far my food-related vocabulary hasn't improved much. The textbook makers apparently thought that us newbie francophones were not equal to actual vocabulary when they wrote the unit on café food, because all the dishes we learned were loanwords in English pronounced with the appropriate accent:
hamburger = OHM-BEHR-GEH
crêpe = CWEP
croissant = CWUH-SAW
But the interesting part is how if you translate something from English to French it immediately becomes fancier. Not because French sounds nicer, but because of actual objective English vocabulary. Frequently the English word for a fancy, luxurious item is just the mundane, boring, French word for the same thing! Case in point: The French don't have chairs; they have les chaises. French T-shirts are technically chemises. Forget your party, I'm checking out that soirée. Wouldn't it sound nice on a college app to say I blog about la cuisine et la couture?
The same basic philosophy holds true when talking about the dessert I made last weekend. Crème brûlée, translated literally, means "burnt cream". Yuuuuuuuuuuuummmmm. See if I told you that I was making me some burnt cream, you would not be tripping to invite yourself over.
Actual Yum
Never fear, though! The name is also quite misleading. You are not (hopefully) burning the cream itself, because the hard crust topping this custardy dessert is actually a layer of torched, melted, caramelized sugar. So really we should really be calling this sucre brûlé sur crème, plus un chalumeau. --Yes, this is an excuse to buy a blowtorch*!
Courtesy of HardlyHousewives.com
Have fun! :D
*For those of you who don't have a blowtorch and for some reason don't want one, I found this cool idea for broiling the top of your desserts in the oven. I haven't tried it, but it's worth a shot!
I don't really have a recipe for you guys today. Just some casual instructions for how to put together the dessert of any child's dreams.
THE ICE CREAM COOKIE CAKE.
I ended up making this dessert because it is birthday season in my house (yes, around here, birthdays last a season), which means I am creating every dessert under the sun. Between my mom's birthday and my brother's birthday and my mom's birthday party and my brother's friend birthday party and my brothers' family birthday party and my other brother's birthday I am dedicating desserts as fast as my poor smoking mixer can produce them.
My brother's birthday was last week, and I asked him what he wanted for his friend-birthday-party cake. Not to be confused with his actual birthday-date-cake, nor his family-birthday-party dessert, which I will be posting shortly (so stay tuned!). I'd already made him a chocolate cake, so he asked for something a little more unconventional.
My amazing family :)
Essentially, this dessert is composed of a slab of ice cream sandwiched between two giant, thick, par-baked cookies. Its size alone--diameter and breadth--commands reverence. It doesn't exude subtlety or elegance, which is good because I was serving a horde of 5th-grade boys. But hey, it's a super-fun dessert. And you can change it up by using different cookie recipes and different flavors of ice cream.
I went to check the freezer the other day, and was confronted by ONE, SOLITARY, MISERABLE POUND OF BUTTER.
You may be looking at me like how can you possibly be planning to use an entire pound of butter?
A statue of Benjamin Franklin made out of butter. Can you tell I've been spending a lot of time studying US History lately?
Picture courtesy of mariasols.com
Um, do you want brownies or not? I have a baking blog. I put butter in EVERYTHING. I have a screensaver that says
Happy people eat dessert, and if you're going to eat dessert, it had better taste good, and if it's going to taste good, you have to add butter or carcinogenic chemicals, and butter is SO much tastier and healthier than chemicals. Therefore BUTTER MAKES YOU HAPPY.
Well I AM REDUCED TO ONE DINGY POUND OF HAPPINESS!
I tell you I do not know how my kitchen arrived at this state. I am used to having I-kid-you-not twenty blocks of reserve butter holed up in my garage (you would be shocked at how quickly we go through it.) Usually my mom stocks up on good-quality butter when it's on sale and we stash it in the freezer for consumption by my baking fanaticism, but I guess we haven't bought any in a while and now due to my negligence our supply has run perilously low.
So I had an unfamiliar experience while preparing to make this recipe, which was calculating if I would have enough butter to make this dessert. It was an unsettling process. Butter is just one thing I don't want to have to worry about while baking. Sort of like how you don't want to wonder if you have enough toilet paper to last you until your next trip to the store.
Thankfully, this recipe only took about half a pound, and boy did it do justice to my half pound of butter! I've escaped the scourge of butterlessness for now...but still living dangerously!
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