The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I was so excited to find out I hadn't been kicked out of the Daring Bakers, even though it has been so long since I last participated. And my last attempt was such a colossal failure (I pride myself on its being the only failure, at least). This month's challenge was something simple enough for me to dip my toes in the pool again. I love yeasted doughs and I saw the potential for flavor variations right away. Also, this wasn't too sweet and decadent, so it was still a good option for a Sunday dish during Lent.

Unfortunately, this post won't be as heavy on photos as others have been, but I hope you will get the idea anyway.



My first change was to use whole wheat pastry flour. We grind most of our flour, and we keep soft white wheat around for pastries and cakes and muffins and cookies. So, I I thought I'd see if I could make this treat with whole wheat, ground some up and added a little gluten to it to help it rise and remain a little more elastic while still being delicate enough in flavor and not making a heavy dough. I added the saffron, as Ria suggested. However, instead of turning toward India, I turned toward the Arabian peninsula.



I did not add the vanilla to the meringue, instead, I used a teaspoon of rosewater. For my filling, I used unsalted pistachios with a little more saffron, some cardamom and increased the sugar a little since I left out the chocolate. I did have a little trouble sealing the ring, but I noticed that other pictures strategically left that part of the coffee cake out of the shot, so I'm assuming others had that difficulty as well. It seemed to work its way out in the second rise and baking, though. I did forget to make the egg wash glaze, but the powdered sugar stuck to the warm bread and meringue quite easily without it. I added a tiny bit of cardamon to the powdered sugar as well.



Thank you Ria and Jamie for a great return to Daring Baker's this month!

Labels: Daring Bakers, Homemaking, Tales from the Kitchen

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

We've had quite the challenging month here, still dealing with house issues, so I am just barely getting in under the wire on this challenge. I was going to try to do something with hazelnut flour, but ended up going with the traditional almond. However, I added a little espresso powder to the cookie and used vanilla sugar for my granulated sugar. I was going to fill them with a dark chocolate ganache. Basically, I was going to make a mocha almond fudge macaron. Since I wasn't sure if we would like these, I made a half batch.

However, I had a colossal failure from start to finish. Because I didn't have time to redo these if I messed up, I had one shot. I started by overbeating the eggwhites. Which I've never done before. In my defense, I was distracted by a very cute three year old helper, who was sick and in need of amusement, since I didn't want to let him out in the wind and sleet with his older siblings.

I thought I could recover from this, but I also could not find the parchment paper, so I had to try to bake them either on a non-stick pan or on a heavily buttered pan. Both failed. I had nice little feet on my macarons, but they are hard to see now that they are completely crumbled from my trying to get them off the pan. The buttered pan batch ended up spread all over the place and with no feet.



So, I made lemonade with my lemons and crumbled them in a bowl and drizzled with the ganache. That, at least, turned out nicely. They tasted good, but they look nothing like they are supposed to look. Nor was I able to make a single sandwich with them. I would have had 14 sandwiches and an extra cookie had I succeeded. I think this is the first Daring Baker's Challenge I have completely and utterly failed on, so that is a little shaming.




I'm not sure I've ever had a traditional macaron, only the American, coconut based version. Honestly, I think I still prefer the coconut based cookie, though these tasted nice, so I don't know that I'll give them another go.



Thank you Amy for what was certainly a challenge for me this month!

Labels: Daring Bakers, Tales from the Kitchen

I was not kicked out of Daring Bakers, for which I am grateful. I think it is because I explained what was going on in our lives. Since we have an oven again, I can participate once more. There are several challenges that I missed this past year which I hope to catch up on for my own edification, but I have no idea on what time frame this will be accomplished and make no promises.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

This is a book I own and I love it. It is still in a box in the garage. The bagel recipe I use comes mostly from this book as well as the Hungarian rhubarb shortbread and about a million other things I've loved. So far, nothing I've tried out of this book has been bad; I highly recommend it.



So, I include this photo in order to show that you, too, can make puff pastry. I am now working in a small, cramped, not completely unpacked, partially remodeled kitchen. I only this past month have had an oven to work with at all. If I could make this on a warm day, with six children running around, so can you.

On top of all of the above, I also couldn't find either my cookie cutters or my parchment paper, so searched the boxes in the garage with Rich while my puff pastry was melting in the 82 degree weather. I ended up using a glass and a medicine cup. I forgot to dock the dough on the first pan that went in the oven and was just praying that the amount of butter in the dough would keep it from sticking to the pan. It did. They rose fine and only one ended up oddly shaped, but I kind of liked it anyway.



We were required to make the dough from the recipe, make at least part of it in the traditional vol au vent shapes and fill it with something either sweet or savory. I have had lemon curd on the brain for a while, someone pointed me to this method of making it, so lemon curd it was. Sprinkled with a touch of powdered sugar, it was perfect. I did take the suggestion in the recipe to reduce the salt if making a sweet filling and brought it down to a third of the amount. Since it was a goal of mine not to have to make any special trips to the store for this, I used a slightly higher protein pastry flour in place of the all purpose flour and cake flour as the recipe directed.



Here was a particularly nice specimen before it was filled.



I ate the little centers straight, made a few other shapes as well, including some twists and Rich and I had a nice treat to share with our children and neighbors.



This was not hard to do, just a little time consuming. I was still able to make all elements of it and serve in about six hours, including taking a break to make and eat dinner. It was completely worth the effort. The texture and flavor of the puff pastry are amazing. I intend to do this again.

Thank you Steph for this fun challenge! The technique is similar to making croissants, which I have done, but I never pushed myself to make puff pastry. I think I will try to see if I can freeze the dough successfully and use it as store bought frozen puff pastry is used.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Homemaking, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

I love cheesecake and make it all the time. I usually stick with vanilla cheesecake with a fruit topping and graham cracker crust or my triple chocolate cheesecake with whipped cream or strawberries or both. It is not often that I make any other variation on cheesecake. This was a great opportunity to break out of that shell.

I was strongly tempted to make this one into a savory cheesecake by removing the sugar and adding some crushed garlic to the filling, making the crust out of pine nuts, using vermouth instead of liqueur and topping with an artichoke heart and hatch chile type dip. Rich thought I should do that, too, but I didn't really have any place to serve it and I don't think we could have eaten it all. Dessert, on the other hand, we could eat through the week after dinner. So, sweet it is.

If you try my savory idea, let me know how it turns out. I will try it when we have a party to attend and are asked to bring something. I would also cook it in a larger than normal pan as well, so the savory cheesecake isn't too thick to eat on bread or too rich to finish.

So anyway, I have strong feelings about how to cook cheesecakes after many years of making them. I don't do the water baths. I've never had it work as it is supposed to and, instead, end up with a soggy crust. So, I baked this for a little longer at a lower temperature, 300 degrees, then cooled in the oven as per the instructions.

I wanted to make a mango ginger topping, I thought it would look really beautiful and taste lovely, but our mangoes didn't taste all that nice, so they are being diced into a tropical fruit salad for dinner later this week. Rich thought I should still do it, just because it would be a nice thing to look at, but I could not compromise the flavor for appearance. So, I made a bananas foster type topping with muscovado sugar, loads of butter, Grand Marnier and Rum. Besides, I was able to flambe, and that is always impressive.


This is the only photo that really showed any flame at all. I ended up redoing it twice to try to get the photo, but we couldn't get a good one. So just take my word on this.

I made an almond crust rather than a standard cookie or graham cracker crust. We were given a choice on what liqueur to use and, as I was using Grand Marnier in the topping, I chose to use Grand Marnier in the filling to repeat that flavor (the recipe for this and the almond crust are included below). I like orange and banana together.



I still think I prefer my old cheesecake ways. Perhaps I am getting old and crotchety. This was a nice distraction from vanilla or chocolate with berries, though, and tasted great. Next time, I think I would reduce the flour in the crust and replace it with more almond meal.

Nut Crust

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup almond meal
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons almonds, finely chopped
12 tablespoons butter, melted

Mix all dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Drizzle with butter and stir to combine. Press into the bottom and sides of a springform pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes, until the crust is slightly browned. Set aside to cool on a rack until ready to fill.


Banana Topping

1/2 cup butter
1 cup muscovado sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup Grand Marnier
4 bananas, sliced
1/4 cup dark rum

Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a skillet. Place the pan over low heat either on top of the stove, and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the Grand Marnier, then place the bananas in the pan. When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully add the rum. Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum. When the flames subside, spoon the topping over the cheesecake and serve immediately.



Thank you Jenny for this fun challenge! It forced me out of my cheesecake rut and gave me even more ideas to play with another time.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was skeptical about this really counting as a baking challenge. It does involve dough and it was baked, but pasta isn't what comes to my mind when I think of baked goods.

I thought this one had me beaten. We were supposed to make, by hand, spinach lasagna noodles and put together a homemade lasagna in the style of Emilia-Romagna with a bechamel sauce and meat sauce. The sauces were no problem. It was the pasta that nearly got me down.

If you have made pasta before, you know about the mountain of flour with the eggy crater in the middle. I cleaned my surface, mounded my flour and prepared to put the eggs and spinach into the crater. Eggs immediately started running down the flour like a golden lava-ed volcano. I didn't get a picture because my hands were already encrusted from trying to stem the tide and Rich hadn't come home yet. I did remember to take off my wedding ring before I began mixing the dough, though. Did I mention that I planned to start this whole process at 2:00 and didn't get on it until 4:30? We ate dinner at 10:00 that night.

So, back to the dough. The instructions told us that it would be a rough mass, but that after vigorous kneading, it would become more elastic. I'm not sure that word means what they think it means. I have never kneaded dough this tough. I gave up after half an hour and beating it up with the rolling pin to vent my frustration. Then I wrapped it and let it rest. While I rested.

Rich got home in the middle of my kneading workout. He started calling out "Five more, four more!" like those awful aerobics instructors that you always wanted to strangle for thinking you didn't know how to count when they snuck in a 10 more after you were already down to four. Eventually, I got so that I was grunting with each stroke as I kneaded the dough. I sounded like those tennis players in Wimbledon. Or a woman in labor, as it triggered memories of delivering our first two children and Rich started telling me to breathe through it. He thought with the c-sections we have to have now, he'd never use that skill again.

When Rich walked in the kitchen, he immediately took stock of the situation and made hot dogs for the children. And asked me what he could do to help. He grated cheese for me and corralled children and got them in bed while I fought with pasta dough. I will never complain about the price of handmade pasta again. I will pay a lot of money not to have to do this again.



I did get it rolled out, and it was easier to work with the longer it rested. It never got elastic, though. We were supposed to roll it so thin that you could see color through it. I could see the pinkiness of my hand, and I decided that was color enough. I did roll each individual noodle out a little more, because I was worried it wasn't thin enough.



Alexander was amazed that I was making pasta from scratch. He exclaimed to Amira that "Mama is making pasta!" To which she replied "So." He said, "No, she's making it from flour!" That made her a little more interested. She didn't seem to think that boiling a pot of salted water was anything to get worked up about.



The children were so excited to eat this dinner, and then they found out they were getting hot dogs. That was a blow. We promised them that they could have it for lunch the next day, and it turned out there was enough left that they had it for dinner the next night as well, with us, and we still had enough to send home with our cleaning lady to her family's restaurant, where she shared with all the kitchen and wait staff, as well as Rich taking some for him and his assistant for lunch the next day. It was a 20 pound lasagna.



So, the things I did to make it larger and more difficult. I made one and a half times the pasta recipe. I doubled the bechamel. I replaced about a third of the flour with semolina. Fortunately for all of us, it tasted good. I did have a back up of scrapping the pasta ordeal and using pasta sheets from the pantry if I completely botched the pasta. We did not have to do that. The first layer of pasta was my thickest set of noodles, but the rest worked out very well and we were all happy with it.

Since this process took me about five and a half hours from start to finish, I cheated a little. I did not boil pasta. I figured it was fresh pasta, and we should use it as such. We liked that. I didn't dry the pasta. Again, I figured, if I was getting my workout for the week, I was going to use it fresh and soft. So there.

The highlight was the meat sauce. I used my own recipe, which I did out of my own brain, even. I took the skeleton of the recipe I normally use for lasagna meat sauce, added some elements from a vegetarian lasagna I make and blended it together into the most perfect sauce in the universe. Look on it and marvel:



Meat Sauce

1/4 cup olive oil
2 pounds Italian sausage (I used bulk sweet)
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 large onion, diced
10 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound chopped, mixed peppers
2 cups red wine
1 1/2 cups roughly chopped kalamata olives
1/2 cup drained capers
1 28 ounce can of tomato sauce
2 28 ounce cans of diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon basil

Brown the sausage in the olive oil in a large sauce pot. Add the pepper flakes (I did this because I normally use hot sausage, and we only had sweet), the onion, the garlic and stir it all until the fat starts to render out of the sausage and the onions turn transparent. Toss in the peppers (I used a bag of frozen ones) and cook until the liquid starts to evaporate.

Add the red wine and cook on medium-high until it is reduced by more than half. Add the olives, capers, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and herbs. Bring to a low boil and reduce heat to simmer for two hours.

Thank you again to Mary, Melinda and Enza. This was most certainly a challenge! I don't know that I will brave any more pasta, besides gnocchi, for a long time, though.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Homemaking, Tales from the Kitchen

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Since I had already made ice cream for last month's challenge, and we were given the option of using whipped cream, I used vanilla whipped cream on my Valentino instead of the vanilla ice cream. Also, since I knew Lent was right around the corner, I didn't want to have vanilla ice cream in our freezer getting more and more icy. I'll have to do it again with homemade vanilla ice cream.

I really wanted to make this with a chocolate that had chile in it. Though I thought that would be an interesting flavor combination, I knew that Rich only tolerated chiles in chocolate, and this was supposed to be for both of us. I ended up using all bittersweet chocolate, which I really liked with the sweetened cream and raspberries, but Rich thought it could have used a touch of semi-sweet for the sugar.

Initially I wanted to use candied rose petals to decorate our cakes, but was unable to find either unsprayed roses at this time of year or packaged candied rose petals. These are raspberries we froze last summer and they were a perfect foil to the cream and bittersweet chocolate.



Thank you Dharm and Wendy! This is the first challenge I've done that had no complications or difficulties. I make a flourless chocolate cake for my birthday about every other year, so I really have the method down on this. It was a slightly different recipe than what I use, but wasn't too dissimilar in technique. We already owned the heart cake pans, so I didn't even have to buy any equipment for this.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Tales from the Kitchen

After missing two months in a row, I am back in the game. At some point, I would like to do a make up on November and December's challenges, I do not know when.

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I chose to make my tuiles all chocolate, since there is little that cannot be improved with more chocolate. As we were to pair them with something soft, I made pomegranate gelato to go with these. Pomegranate and chocolate are wonderful together, which we have recently discovered in our home.



I thought of making lovely little butterflies as were the examples, but decided on the slightly more plebeian bowls. I have experience making fortune cookies, and this dough wasn't that different to work, so I thought I had an advantage there. However, I had a much harder time shaping this dough than I do with the fortune cookies. My first batch of two were far too thin, and were instantly crisp. I couldn't shape them at all. The second batch was too thick, and never crisped up at all. I ended up making them one at a time, adjusting the baking time and the thickness in the hopes of getting just two bowls that would work. There were four bowls that work, though I wasn't that thrilled with them.

The flavor is great, but the texture isn't what I wanted. I don't know if it is the addition of the cocoa powder, and the fat that comes with it, that changed it, but they never really got crisp. So, although they went well with the gelato and tasted fine, they got soggier than I would have liked.

Pomegranate Gelato
I don't know if you can really call this gelato with this much cream in it, but there you are. I looked at a few recipes, combined techniques and altered ingredients and this is what I came up with in the end.

1 1/2 cups pomegranate juice (bottled or fresh)
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 cups half and half
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tablespoons PAMA liqueur

In a microwave safe glass bowl, I use one of those measuring cup/pourer/bowl deals, heat the pomegranate juice and sugar about two minutes to fully dissolve the sugar into the juice. Stir in the lemon juice. Add the half and half and cream and whisk well. Whisk in the PAMA liqueur. Cover and chill at least four hours, or overnight.

Give mixture a stir to make sure everything is evenly distributed and put in an ice cream maker and freeze according to the directions for your machine. Remove gelato from machine. It is fine to eat straight out of the machine, but will be soft. For firmer gelato that is easier to work with, put in a sealed container and freeze for about two hours.



We had the opportunity to make a savory tuile as well, and I took that opportunity to use some ingredients from my heritage. I used za'atar to flavor the tuile and made a dip out of feta, olive oil, harissa and mint.



See the sad, empty platter? The dough is made for this, but I didn't have time to bake them in time to post today, so that picture will come later tonight (I hope).



Thank you for a fun challenge! We definitely enjoyed these treats, even though they weren't exactly what I expected. The only thing I have left to do now is to decide whether to make custard with the remaining egg yolks or if I should just add them to our next breakfast of scrambled eggs.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Homemaking, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen

Imagine, if you will, a pizza with a creamy, garlicky ricotta-basil base, with marinated shrimp and zucchini scattered over it and covered with shredded mozzarella. Now, imagine that my ricotta had gone bad in the fridge, our basil plant finally died and there was only really expensive farmed shrimp at the store. What would you do?



If you had any memory left, you would make the gruyere, ham and onion pizza that you've been meaning to make for over a year. Or perhaps, inspired by the pineapple, peppers and onions you want to use anyway, you'd make some sort of sweet and sour sauce and make a Chinese take-out inspired pizza. Not I. I made garlic, pepperoni and olive for our main pizza. Then I made a pineapple, pepper, onion and olive pizza for me (and the children). A third pizza was half of each.

Our challenge was to take Peter Reinhart's recipe for pizza dough, use it exactly as written, and attempt to hand toss at least one of the pizzas. Rich got some video of me kneading, but only stills of me tossing. I fully expected to have some pictures of me picking dough out of my hair. Instead, it actually worked!



This is probably baking heresy, but I'm not all the way sold on the dough recipe, though it was a good one. We still really like my recipe, but this was good. I was skeptical about the method, and how well the dough would handle, but it was beautiful, soft and pliable, and worked perfectly. So, I think I will try the cold water and refrigerator rise using my recipe and see if it improves the texture at all.

The dough recipe said that it made six pizzas (9-12"), people were saying how much dough this made, so I expected to be putting some dough away for later. When I saw that the recipe used only 4 1/2 cups of flour, I knew it would just be dinner. We made three normal sized pizzas which left two small pieces after our family of seven eaters dug in. Yasmina got her share in her milk that night. I made the sauce out of canned diced tomatoes, garlic, dried oregano, dried thyme, some salt and red pepper. I used the stick blender to puree it. We shredded some fresh mozzarella (from frozen) and parmesan for the cheese topping.

Since I have a pizza peel, I used that to get the pizzas into the oven and onto the stone, rather than the back of a jelly roll pan. It seemed to work fine that way. I made sure there was enough cornmeal on the peel and just shook it off onto the stone.

All in all we were satisfied. It was tasty, the crust crisped nicely, especially using our round stone in a 500 degree oven. The timing was just about perfect on the baking, too.

Rich was certainly happy. He's a pizza lover, and I had been planning on making this as a surprise for him when he returned from a trip Saturday night (he knew I was making it this month, but not when), instead it was dinner Monday night. He's been excitedly waiting for this challenge to be completed since I told him what my task was this month. He even helped put the toppings on them.



Thank you to Rosa from Rosa's Yummy Yums for hosting this month! This was a fun and tasty challenge and has given me great ideas for how to make other pizzas at home. We make most of our pizzas, so it was a good exercise for me.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Family, Homemaking, Tales from the Kitchen

Well, this month's challenge was something I've been wanting to make for a while: Crackers. Lavash, specifically. We had the choice of doing these as per normal or making them gluten free. I double checked to make sure corn products were gluten free and planned to try to make two batches, one gluten free and one normal. However, I discovered I am a moron.

Now, I know a lot about food and cooking. I've been doing it a long time, have had great teachers and am a natural at it. If you have a food question or obscure ingredient, chances are I can help you out. That doesn't mean I know it all, though. I cook with semolina all the time. One of our favorite breads I make is a sesame semolina bread. Semolina, though? It comes from wheat. Not corn as I have thought for over 20 years!

I'm glad I checked a food dictionary before I went ahead and made my "gluten free" version. Boy, wouldn't I have looked like an idiot! Now, I only look slightly less idiotic.

I still used semolina (for 1/2 a cup of the flour). I was going to use za'atar, in honor of my people, with olive oil for my topping, but someone else came up with that, and I didn't want to duplicate. Then, I went ahead and used the most obvious topping possible. Sesame seeds.

I had great plans to make a few batches, all different, and to make these lovely dips, but our month was crazy, so I ended up making it tonight and one topping out of one of our red tomatoes from the garden and a few of our yellow pear tomatoes with fresh basil from the herb garden, salt, pepper, kalamata olive oil and champagne vinegar. The dip/topping had to be vegan and gluten free. I make all sorts of vegan dips, but all of a sudden when I was thinking of what to make, all I could come up with were things that required cheese or yogurt or sour cream. I wanted to make hummus, because mine is so good, but I thought that was a little too obvious. I decided on a tomato based relish/bruschetta type thing and came up with this.

Even though it was incredibly foolish to try these tonight, I did anyway. It tasted great and I am so glad I made it. Also, I didn't want the tomatoes to be all soft and wilty the first time I tasted it. Since I kind of copped out on the gluten free business, this really wasn't that hard, although I think I could have rolled the dough out thinner. It took me twice the time to get it browned and even remotely crisp. I forgot to split the dough in two and roll each half out, so I would try it that way next time I make these. And there will be a next time.



Thank you to Natalie from Gluten A Go Go and Shel, of Musings From the Fishbowl for hosting this month!

Labels: Daring Bakers, Homemaking, Tales from the Kitchen

This is my first Daring Bakers Challenge. I was excited to find out it was eclairs, because 1. I like them, 2. I can make pate a choux in my sleep, 3. I'd never made eclairs before. We used Pierre Herme's recipe for chocolate eclairs from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme and the challenge was set up so that we had to use the choux recipe exactly as written, and use either the exact same chocolate pastry cream filling or the exact chocolate glaze.

Well, I knew right off that I wanted to use raspberries in mine, and the logical place to put them was the filling, so I made a raspberry puree, added a couple teaspoons of Chambord and sweetened it.



Then, I added most of it to the chocolate pastry cream. I added a little extra chocolate to the pastry cream as well, to try to thicken it a little since I knew the raspberry sauce would thin it. I think I needed either a lot more chocolate or a little less raspberry. It wouldn't hold its shape nicely when I piped it into the eclairs.



Proof that you don't need a chinois. I used a sieve and a wooden spoon to make the puree.



See how red those raspberries are:



The recipe had a lot of fiddly steps, and there are a lot of things I would do differently if/when I make these again. The pate a choux was far too eggy for my taste. I would cut the five eggs to three whole eggs and two egg whites. I would also use bread flour to try to keep them crisp longer.

One sheet of my shells deflated instantaneously when I opened the oven. They still worked for the recipe, but they didn't look as nice. The baking instructions for these had you vent the oven part way through, and other people said they had better results skipping that, and then letting them cool all the way in the oven with the door open and the racks partly pulled out. Some said that piercing the eclair shells immediately to allow steam to escape also helped.

Also, although the glaze was lovely and dark, bittersweet chocolate, it didn't really taste different than any other ganache would, so I would skip the separate chocolate sauce recipe and addition, and just use a good ganache.

The pastry cream was wonderful, though, and except for the issues I brought on myself, I wouldn't change it at all. I kept spooning it into my mouth, and there was a ton of it left over. The recipe said it would make between 20 and 24 eclairs, and I found that I could squeeze about 18 out of the dough, there was just enough glaze and about twice as much pastry cream as necessary.

I used them as Jerome's birthday dessert, and everyone loved them.



We made up for the egginess by piling on the pastry cream.



I couldn't post about them earlier, because I couldn't give away the surprise. Overall, I enjoyed making these. I liked the challenge of following the rules and coming up with my own interpretation to these at the same time. Thank you Tony and Meeta for this month's challenge. I look forward to trying next month's.

Labels: Daring Bakers, Homemaking, Tales from the Kitchen