Like a buttery wall of poofitude, holding back the delicious contents within...

One thing I have noticed during my time in pastry school is that nearly all of the past Daring Bakers challenges are covered in the curriculum. And why not? Many of the challenges are traditional desserts made with classic elements, just like the things we made in school, which are based on a gradual progression of said elements and the different ways they can be assembled together.

Well hello my pretties.

So at the beginning of the month, when I was sitting in the hall at school on my lunch break, checking to see what this month’s challenge was on my phone, I wondered if it was something I had already covered in class. I doubted it was, since I was only a month into the class and had only made a bunch of tarts, cookies, pate a choux and a handful of puff pastry items.

Puffy little cap!

I was actually smack dab in the middle of the puff pastry unit, and was struggling like hell through the insane amounts of rolling (the actual rolling and turning process didn’t bother me, it was the early morning rolling of the pastry that had been chilling overnight that killed me…I’m not so good in the upper body strength department and my lack of height does not give me an awful lot of leverage). I opened the forum and saw the words “get out your rolling pins!”

Who likes figs?

Oh no. Oh nonononono…

Vols-au-vent. Which I had literally made the day before. And failed miserably at, I have to mention. Mine came out flat – they didn’t rise or poof at all. It was EMBARRASSING. I decided to give the challenge another couple of weeks so I could get over my traumatic first experience with these little towers of buttery yumminess. And you know what?

I like figs!

By the time we hit the second week of puff pastry I was doing just fine. It still took me a little longer than everyone else to roll out my pastry, but I was getting better every day and I was able to haul ass and completely catch up by the time we cleaned up for lunch every day. And I got a 96 on my puff pastry practical, with picture-perfect palmiers and a near-flawless pithivier. My speedy vol-au-vents were slightly less than perfect but I didn’t mind. I surprised the chef who had been after me all throughout the unit to catch up and be faster. I proved that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t the quickest at the start – slow and steady, right?

One of my favorite things about making these at home on my own was that I didn’t have to stick to any recipe exactly. I could make whatever filling I liked and even a variation on the pastry itself. Which I did, quite happily.

Beautiful fork, beautiful puffs.

We had made chocolate puff pastry in class, which is made by substituting cocoa powder for a small percentage of the flour by weight. Well, I thought to myself as we mixed the beurrage layer (which was going on the outside since it was an inverse base), I know something I like even better than chocolate that is powdered and pretty to boot!

The color was a great contrast to the horribly gray rainy day we're having.

Matcha puff pastry? Has it ever been done before? I don’t know but it’s unlikely. So I went for it.

I want to live in the little green tower!

I am actually very surprised that the matcha vols-au-vent got as puffy as they did – I had quite a lot of trouble with butter breaking up on the inside of the dough as I rolled it. I gave it a couple of extra turns to tuck the butter chunks on the inside and it clearly worked out fine in the end.

Imagine if I'd actually made the vol-au-vents with that cutter instead of just using it for the insides...sad part is I considered it. For like 2 seconds.

I had slightly different plans for the fillings of both versions. I was originally going to make a homemade mascarpone for the larger plain vols-au-vent, but just couldn’t find the time to ferment the cream. I’ve had a very busy week (and have an even busier one ahead of me – eek). I did have some leftover cream cheese from some semi-failed cupcakes a couple of weeks ago, so I just beat it with some orange blossom honey and a dash of orange blossom water before spreading it in and topping with fat, fresh figs and a drizzle of extra honey (plus some cris-crosses of honey on the plate). I actually panicked last night because I had been saving some figs a bit too long and they’d started to go fuzzy on me. I set out for Chinatown last night to find more – and my supply has completely dried up! I gave in and went to Whole Foods, where I paid a little more but got some delicious, lovely Turkish figs that went beautifully with the tangy cheese, sweet honey and buttery pastry shell.

Yeah, it's tiny.

The matcha vols-au-vent were meant to have a chocolate ganache filling to go with the tangy little pomegranate seeds and grassy, bitter pastry, but I realized a bit too late (on the way home last night) that I didn’t have any good chocolate to use for a ganache. However, I did have quite a bit of cream that was no longer going to be made into cheese, so I whipped it and added some powdered sugar. I thought about adding lemon zest and juice directly for flavor but worried about the cream curdling so I just sprinkled some zest onto the cream after piping it into the pastries, then arranged the pomegranate arils on top.

Sweet, sour, bitter, creamy and buttery - what a tasty combination.

Both versions turned out very tasty but I think I prefer the matcha one – not only is it gorgeous to look at but there are few things I like better than tea, freshly whipped cream and pomegranates. It’s buttery, bitter, sweet, sour and tangy all at once, with the seeds providing a nice crunchiness.

If you’d like to try making flavored puff pastry yourself, you can use any recipe and substitute matcha, cocoa powder or any other powdered flavoring element for 10-20% of the total weight of the flour. I substituted closer to 10% because my matcha is very high quality and quite strong and bitter – I would exercise the same caution with a Dutch process cocoa which is dark and bitter.

Expect to see some tasty palmiers here soon, since I have all the lovely leftover buttery dough hanging out in my freezer!

I just love the way they nestle in there.

You get a slightly unusual but very delicious combination of Italian flavors in a traditional French cookie-cake-thing!

Basil courtesy Luigi, my amazingly alive and thriving basil plant.

I wanted to use up some leftover ricotta and wondered if it might be substituted for some of the melted butter in a madeleine recipe, since I’d had such great success with coconut oil. I decided to just go for it, and be really risky and daring by replacing the OTHER half of the melted butter with olive oil.

I tried to make a basil glaze. You can see the flecks of basil on the madeleines. I'm not including the glaze recipe because it was more like a soaking syrup, is completely unnecessary and I'm short on time.

I also remembered I had some chestnut flour in the fridge that was crying out to be used (after my idea of chestnut flour macarons fell through I think it was sad) so I went for a total Italian flavor profile, adding a little honey to enhance the sweetness of the chestnut flavor. Also, I love honey. And I knew, after double-checking in my favorite book (which is turning a year old this week – yay! Happy birthday Flavor Bible!) that everything would certainly taste deeeeelicious together, despite its untraditional mish-mash of European styles.

And once you're done soaking in the tea, get in my tummy!

I used orange blossom honey since I had some on hand, but you could use wildflower, chestnut or clover honey and it would all be fantastic. The madeleines are sweet and slightly sticky from the honey, though they lose a little of that stickiness if you let them chill out in the fridge in an airtight container. The chestnut flour comes through nicely with an earthy, almost wholesome tone, and the ricotta isn’t really noticeable but does lend a nice fluffiness to the finished product.

Oh madeleines, always so pretty.

Italian Madeleines

1. 3 eggs
2. 2/3 cup sugar
3. 1/2 cup AP flour
4. 1/2 cup chestnut flour
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/8 tsp salt
7. 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
8. 1/4 cup ricotta cheese
9. 1 Tbsp honey

Beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer on medium-high for about 5 minutes, until they are pale in color and tripled in volume. Meanwhile, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt. Sift a small amount of the dry mixture over the egg mixture and fold in completely, then repeat gradually with the rest of the dry. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, ricotta and honey.  Fold the oil and ricotta mixture into the rest of the batter by thirds. Cover with plastic and chill for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375. If your pan is not nonstick, butter and flour it thoroughly (you will have to wash, dry and reapply the butter and flour between batches if you have more batter than your pan(s) can hold in a single batch – for a mini pan with 10 indentations you will need to bake about 4 batches). Spoon batter into each indentation, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for about 10 minutes for miniature madeleines, 15 minutes for regular-sized. They will be browned around the edges when done. To remove from pan, rap the pan sharply against the counter and turn out onto a cooling rack.

I brought some of these in to the chefs who teach my pastry class. They agreed that the glaze idea was unnecessary and told me that there were too many things going on in the madeleines. They said that you shouldn’t use more than three flavors in a single product AT MOST. Boo to that I say! You can’t even taste the ricotta! Perhaps they were just offended that I made madeleines less boring? Don’t let them stop you. I think these are AWESOME.

Something to cushion the blow of summer ending...

I also, however, really adore a lot of things about fall. For instance, the fashion. As a short, relatively curvy lady, I do not care for drapey summer clothes that look frumpy on anyone who’s not a six foot tall beanpole. I also look horrendous in bright, fun summer colors. I can rock a fall outfit, though. Dark greens, purples, grays, fitted jackets and pencil skirts…I can do those.

I will never get tired of pumpkin and chocolate together.

Want to know what else I can do exceptionally well in the fall? EAT PUMPKIN. Preferably in baked goods with lots of spices and a dash of chocolate. Oh yes.

So soft and warm!

I have never participated in Paper Chef before, and hadn’t really heard of it before, but noticed that the always awesome Deeba of Passionate About Baking (and how!) was hosting it this month, and I was really digging her choice of ingredients: ricotta, ginger, dark chocolate, and fall. I originally thought about figs, since I’m trying my best to overdose on them this year (I found a vendor in Chinatown. $2 for one of those little green plastic baskets you usually see holding strawberries. No I won’t tell you where exactly but they are AWESOME) but I’m not quite ready yet to give any up to baking endeavors. I’m still regretting using some on my oatmeal this morning. *sigh*

…Aaaanyway, I wanted to do some kind of baked pudding to encapsulate the warm, comforting feeling of fall foods. So I Googled “ricotta pudding” and came up with…budino.

Huh?

Further investigation revealed it to be Italian baked pudding, and one of the first results I came up with in my initial search was pumpkin-ricotta budino. Yessss. What goes better with ginger and dark chocolate than pumpkin? How about NOTHING.

The recipe I based this off of called for orange zest, but I didn’t have an orange and didn’t feel like buying one so I substituted a few drops of orange blossom water. I don’t think it made a difference; I can never taste that stuff anyway. If you want a little citrus zip feel free to add it back in. I also omitted the pecans and sprinkled cacao nibs on top before baking instead – that’s my “dark chocolate.” It doesn’t get any darker than that!

Look Halloween-ish? You're lucky I restrained myself and didn't use the glittery spider ribbon.

Spiced Pumpkin-Ricotta Budino with Cacao Nibs

1. 4 eggs
2. 8 oz. (1/2 lb.) canned pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling – the plain stuff is what you want here)
3. 8 oz. (1/2 lb.) ricotta (sorry Deeba, I would’ve made my own if I’d had the time! I bow down to your cheesy mastery!)
4. A few drops of orange blossom water (optional)
5. 1 cup sugar (I used half dark brown, half regular granulated, because I would have used all light brown if I had it)
6. 1/4 cup flour
7. 1 tsp ground ginger (less if you don’t like much ginger, but ginger was one of the key ingredients so I amped it up)
8. Generous pinch cinnamon
9. Slightly less generous pinch cloves
10. Finely crushed cacao nibs, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a large or 4-6 small baking receptacles (I used small ramekins). Separate the eggs; set aside. Thoroughly blend the pumpkin and ricotta, then mix in the egg yolks and orange blossom water. Mix in the sugar and spices, making sure to completely crush any lumps of brown sugar, if using. In a separate bowl (use stand mixer or hand mixer), whip the egg whites to stiff but not dry peaks. Plop the whites into the pumpkin-ricotta mixture and fold gently but thoroughly. Pour the batter into the prepared baking receptacles, not quite filling them to the top, so they don’t spill over the edges. Sprinkle with cacao nibs. Bake 30-40 minutes for individual servings, up to an hour for one big budino. You can tell they’re done when you poke them in the middle and they’re firm to the touch. If removing from baking receptacle(s) before serving, let cool a couple minutes first. Serve warm, with cider, tea or coffee.

I actually quartered this recipe when I made it for myself. Z was here this weekend but I made this after he left, since I was already busy all weekend making ginger ice cream for a school event (more on that later). Plus I needed some yummy comfort food to combat the post-boyfriend lonelies. This plus some good, strong black tea definitely hit the spot for quite a while.

I like the random bird on this background.

Peaches (along with most other summerish fruits) are especially delightful right now, and I wanted to make an ice cream that would do them justice. Luckily, I had anticipated this need for cold, peachy goodness way back in early spring, and had an entry in my idea notebook that I was very excited to make real.

Yummmmmm.

It involved fragrant, juicy peaches, caramelized with honey. It also involved LOTS of cinnamon. And, just to make it stand out above all other peach ice creams, it had the word “mascarpone” in it.

The peaches could've been cut a little smaller but I love the way they look in there.

It tastes like peach pie and summertime. It would be perfect with shortbread – perhaps in an ice cream sandwich?

Like a pie!

This ice cream is absolutely delicious and a great summer dessert. The peaches didn’t get as caramelized as I really intended, but if you have a torch or a grill you should totally caramelize some that way. You could also made a cinnamon-sugar swirl instead of using the loose ground cinnamon. Or a caramel swirl. Can you put cinnamon in caramel? If you can, you should. I mean, if you add caramel.

I only made half this recipe, because mascarpone is expensive. I also made it by hand since it was such a small batch and I needed the ice cream maker for another recipe that day.

A bow and some pink makes everything prettier!

Mascarpone Ice Cream with Caramelized Peaches, Cinnamon & Honey

1. 2 cups (16 oz.) mascarpone cheese
2. 1 cup milk
3. 1 cup sugar
4. 2 ripe but still very firm peaches
5. 2-3 Tbsp honey (blueberry, lavender or wildflower would be best; I used blueberry)
6. 1-2 tsp cinnamon
7. 2-3 Tbsp vodka (I actually used light rum because I thought it might work somehow. It does. You could also use peach or cinnamon schnapps for an extra kick of either flavor)

Preheat the oven to 500. If you are not using an ice cream maker, pre-freeze a mixing bowl for the ice cream. In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the mascarpone, milk and sugar on medium until smooth and thick with no discernible lumps of cheese. Refrigerate.

Line a medium shallow baking dish with foil. Cut the peaches in halves and score the flesh like you would for a mango:

Score! Peaches!

Drizzle with 1-2 Tbsp honey and cook under the broiler for 5-10 minutes or so, until the peaches are juicy and slightly caramelized. Remove from oven and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes. You can then slip the peach chunks out of the skin. Place the peachy bits in a bowl and drizzle with any honey-peach syrup left in the baking dish, plus a little extra honey. Sprinkle with cinnamon to taste and toss to coat evenly. Place in refrigerator to chill.

Once the mascarpone mixture and peaches are both nice and cold, churn the mascarpone mixture plus the alcohol in your ice cream maker, adding the peaches at the very end of churning before removing to a freezing receptacle. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can, of course, just follow my directions for making ice cream without a machine. Hooray!

What looks like an ordinary corn muffin...

I told you I’d be doing something fun with that sparkling, juicy blackberry jam, didn’t I?

...when filled with jam...

Ta daaaaa!

...becomes a satisfyingly delicious cupcakey treat!

When I thought about blackberries, a lot of accompanying flavors came to mind: lemon, vanilla, perhaps even violet?

Oh how I love vanilla beans.

I was considering lemon cakes, and remembered I had a little package of instant polenta in the cupboard that I bought a while ago on a whim. I hadn’t used polenta before so I decided to go poking around for a polenta cake recipe.

For a little extra kick of purple.

I ended up finding one here – and by Gina Depalma, no less. Sold!

Hearty, muffin-like cake, sweet blobby jam and smooth cream cheese - you could almost call it breakfast!

I skipped the citrus glaze called for in the original recipe and made a gorgeous vanilla bean cream cheese frosting, which I swirled with some of the jam. Those are the candied violets I made a couple months ago on top. They all come together wonderfully – the cake is more like the best corn muffin ever, the frosting is gorgeous and silky, and the sparkly violet on top hints at the jewel-like jam surprise inside.

Cupcakes!

Lemon Polenta Cupcakes with Blackberry Jam and Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting

First, Make the Cakes:

1. 1 1/2 cups + 1 Tbsp AP flour
2. 3/4 cup instant polenta
3. 2 tsp baking powder
4. 1 tsp kosher salt
5. 4 eggs
6. 1 cup sugar
7. Zest of 1 large lemon
8. 3/4 cup olive oil
9. Up to 1 cup blackberry jam

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375. Whisk together the flour, polenta, baking powder and salt, set aside. In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium-high until pale yellow and tripled in volume (3 or 4 minutes). Beat in the lemon zest. Alternately add the dry mixture and olive oil by thirds, beating each addition until just incorporated. Pour into lined muffin tins and bake 12-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of one of the cupcakes comes out clean. Cool slightly in pan before removing to wire rack to cool completely before filling or frosting.

Once the cupcakes are completely cool, use a sharp knife to cut a deep cone out of each cupcake and trim the bottom of each cone to form a flat lid. Fill each cupcake with jam and cover with the corresponding “lids.”

Then, Make the Frosting

1. 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
2. 4 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
3. Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
4. 4 cups powdered sugar
5. Up to 1/4 cup blackberry jam

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla seeds until fluffy. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat until fully incorporated. Remove half of the frosting from the mixer bowl to a separate medium mixing bowl. With the stand mixer on low, slowly add the jam to the remaining frosting, stopping before it starts to get runny.

To frost the cupcakes, place the two different frostings alternately by thirds in a pastry bag fitted with a large open star tip. Swirl onto cupcakes and top with candied violets.

Our June ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from artists:

• A sweet cupcake ID bracelet by INSANEJELLYFISH, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5021935
• A groovy linocut piece from BLOCKHEAD PRESS http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6108705
  
• a sweet surprise from Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes Cupcakery, http://www.acupcakery.com/
• PLUS, IronCupcake:Earth can not forget our good friend, CAKESPY, http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5243382, who is now going to be doing a piece for our winner each month until further notice – sweet!

Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS, http://www.fiestaproducts.com, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, http://blog.hellocupcakebook.com, JESSIE STEELE APRONS http://www.jessiesteele.com; TASTE OF HOME books, http://www.tasteofhome.com; a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM http://www.upwithcupcakes.com/. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers, http://www.1800flowers.com .