Golden, pretty and rhubarby!

I wasn’t terribly excited about this challenge at first, and didn’t bother with the whole suet thing, choosing instead to substitute butter (of course). But once I got the idea to use rhubarb, just about the only local-ish source of pastry inspiration that’s in season at the moment, I started to get a little more interested in it. And in spite of the tempting steamed rhubarb pie concept, I decided to go with a much easier sponge pudding.

I love the girly pinkishness of rhubarb.

At first I wasn’t really sure how I’d rig up a steamer system, but I ended up just using one Pyrex container inside of another, with my oven on a low temperature. This worked beautifully and I ended up with a very moist, sponge-like cakey thing, studded with crags of lovely pink rhubarb.

No roses actually came into play in this recipe...they just looked pretty.

It reminded me of tea parties and little girls’ birthday parties, so I fancied it up with some dried rosebuds for pictures. But the recipe itself I kept simple, only adding a bit of vanilla extract to flavor it.

I didn’t have regular breadcrumbs, only Panko, so I crushed it in a plastic bag and it worked just fine, even though I couldn’t get it crushed uniformly.

How lovely.

Since I was making a spongy pudding, I decided to use my second rhubarb stalk to make a nice sauce to pour over the cake. I just cut it up into small pieces and tossed them with a few tablespoons of sugar, then added just enough water to cover and brought to a boil, then simmered on low until the rhubarb disintegrated into the sauce.

I love the golden edge.

I wanted to play up the bright tartness of rhubarb in the sauce so I added a couple pinches of crushed dried hibiscus to the rhubarb before cooking. They added even more vibrant pink flavor and chewy little bursts of acidic sourness.

Nice and warm and moist.

With both the cake and the sauce served warmed through, I found the entire thing to be both springy and comforting. Not too sweet; a very simple, humble little cake. I’m really glad I participated this month.

So craggy and perfectly spongy.

This cake would be just as lovely with nothing added in the batter, as a base for any kind of cooked fruit. Any berry would be amazing slightly stewed and poured over a thick slice of this sponge, as would stewed stone fruits or really anything juicy and summery.

Nomtastical!

Rhubarb Pudding

1. 100g AP flour
2. 1/4 tsp salt
3. 1/2 tsp baking powder
4. 100g breadcrumbs
5. 75g sugar
6. 75g butter
7. 1 egg
8. 7 Tbsp cold milk
9. 1 tsp vanilla extract
10. 1 medium rhubarb stalk, chopped into small pieces, tossed with enough sugar to coat

Generously butter a 4 quart Pyrex dish and place inside a larger, more shallow Pyrex dish. Preheat the oven to 250F.

Sift together the first three ingredients. Add the breadcrumbs, sugar and butter and beat to a thick paste. Add the egg, milk and vanilla and beat to a soft batter, then gently mix in the rhubarb. Turn out into the buttered dish and cover it tightly with aluminum foil. Boil some water and pour it into the larger dish, around the smaller one, being careful not to splash any water into the batter. Steam in the oven for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until the top edges are golden but not browned. Cool for a few minutes before inverting onto a plate. Serve warm (this reheats in the microwave beautifully).

I’m really glad I participated in this challenge. I had been wanting to experiment with steamed cakes after eating cloudlike eggy cupcakes from a bakery (steamery?) in Chinatown and noting that some of the desserts at work are steamed to make things extra moist. Stay tuned for more steamy adventures…

Because changing the fruit on top just wasn't enough.

I’ve totally been slacking on the Daring Bakers front lately. It’s partially my schedule and partially a lack of inspiration – as much as I would’ve liked to have participated last month, I make a big batch of tiramisu every Saturday night at work and just wasn’t feeling the love for that particular dessert when it came down to it. But orange tian? I’d never even heard of it before!

So much prettier than oranges, don't you think?

Since we were given the ok to change the fruit and flavor the cream and sablee however we liked, I went for an Asian twist and used gorgeous two-toned grapefruit with black sesame whipped cream and matcha sablee. I was excited to finally have an excuse to buy some black sesame paste and very happy to bake something with matcha again.

Matcha is still awesome.

Flavorings aside, I changed up the recipe quite a bit. The marmalade in the original recipe calls for pectin and I personally feel that putting extra pectin in marmalade is a little silly. Citrus gels up quite fine on its own. I also had to use a different base recipe for it, though, since I was using grapefruit and no matter how long you cook it, the tough membranes between segments are no fun to eat. I also had to look up how to do the stabilized whipped cream with powdered gelatin, since that’s all I can really afford to use at home.

Bitter, sweet and oh so good!

I really like how this dessert came out. The marmalade is shockingly sweet but provides a great balance between the bitter matcha and nutty sesame cream, which isn’t really sweet at all. The grapefruit on top is predictably tart but the caramel sauce adds another nice dimension of sweetness. Overall the dessert is not very sweet, beautiful to look at and quite fun to put together. And the endless possibilities for matching citrus with cream and cookie flavors are an extra sweet bonus.

This was breakfast...

Grapefruit Tian with Matcha & Black Sesame

Matcha Sablee

1. 500g AP flour
2. 40g matcha
3. 1/4 tsp salt
4. 5g baking powder
5. 125g butter (cubed & chilled but not frozen)
6. 125g sugar
7. 1 egg
8. 25 mL cold water

Combine the flour, matcha, salt and baking powder in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the butter and mix until incorporated (it will look sandy). Whisk together the sugar, egg and water, gradually add until incorporated. The dough will still be quite crumbly but should clump together if you squeeze it in your hand. If it’s not clumping, slowly add a little more water but not until it’s a wet or even cohesive dough. Wrap tightly in plastic and chill at least 30 minutes or overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350F and roll the dough to 1/4″ thick. Cut out circles in desired sizes and bake on a lined cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes, rotating halfway through. Don’t let the edges take on much, if any, color, but make sure that the undersides are fully baked. Cool fully before attempting to assemble tians.

Any leftover dough can be rolled into a log, brushed with water, rolled in sugar and sliced into cookies of desired size and thickness.

Grapefruit Marmalade

1. 1 grapefruit
2. 1/2 lemon
3. 400g sugar

Segment (supreme) the fruits, reserving the peels. Set the segments aside and chop the peel into very small pieces. Place in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the grapefruit peel is translucent and orange all the way through. Let the blanched peel cool overnight, covered, in the water.

Drain the cooled blanched peels, reserving the water. Add enough water to measure 1 cup and combine in a saucepan with the peels, segmented fruit and sugar. Bring to a low boil and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half. Transfer to a heat-proof container and chill.

Grapefruit Segments

1. 5-6 large grapefruits

Segment the grapefruits, place segments into a heat-proof container and set aside while you make the caramel sauce.

Grapefruit Caramel

1. 225g sugar
2. 300g fresh grapefruit juice

Place the sugar in a saucepan and heat until it begins to foam and caramelize. Gradually pour in the grapefruit juice. Once it’s all in, cook over medium heat until any crystals have melted. While hot, pour half of the sauce over the segmented grapefruits. Reserve the other half for plating.

Black Sesame Whipped Cream

1. 2 Tbsp cold water
2. 1 tsp (4.1g) powdered gelatin
3. 1 cup cream
4. 1 Tbsp powdered sugar
5. 1 Tbsp black sesame paste

Place the cold water in a medium mixing bowl and add the gelatin. In a stand mixer, start whipping the cream with the sugar on medium speed. Once the gelatin is saturated, place it over a simmering double boiler and melt into a liquid. Pour into the center of the whipping cream (it should be thick but not forming peaks at this stage), then add the sesame paste and whip to medium peaks.

Assembly

1. Ring molds
2. Plastic wrap
3. Grapefruit segments, drained on paper towel
4. Black sesame whipped cream
5. Matcha sablee in corresponding size(s)
6. Marmalade

Wrap one end of the ring mold tightly in plastic, forming a drum-like seal. Invert and arrange the segments on the plastic. Fill the molds with whipped cream to 1/4″ of the top of the mold. Spread marmalade on the sablee discs and invert them into the molds. Freeze immediately for at least 10 minutes before unmolding.

Walk up the chocolatey front walk...

I chose a gingerbread house for the challenge because, well, it hasn’t been done yet and I haven’t made one since I was a kid. I know they’re not necessarily the tastiest treats but they’re a lot of fun to make and allow for an almost endless range of creativity.

Oh look! Pumpkin pals!

You may be curious as to why my house appears a little spooky for December. Well, when you host a challenge, you have to make it somewhat in advance to work out any kinks in the recipe and get all organized and stuff, so I made mine back in the beginning of November. And I bought candy in October. Which meant that I bought Halloween candy. But it’s ok because I like Halloween better than Christmas, and I hope it reinforces my interpretation that a gingerbread house can be any kind of structure, not necessarily a house decked out for Christmas.

What's in the coffin?

There was originally supposed to be a little gingerbread Dracula in the coffin but he fell over on himself in the oven. I should have made him more like a tuile but didn’t think of it. He tasted pretty good though.

I don't know why I put sanding sugar on the cross. I just never find an excuse to use it I guess.

I decided to fill the coffin with one of my favorite basic candies, gummi worms. Creepy and delicious!

Wormy-snakey-gummy things! Yum!

I sure do love my chewy, fruity candythings.

That coffin was kind of a pain to build. I should have actually measured the dimensions or something but the sides kept falling off. I probably held it together for an hour. But, in the end, it held together and you can tell what it is, and that’s all it takes to make me happy.

I very specifically wanted the little Hershey bars.

I made a smoked salt-cacao nib streusel to use as dirt, which was cute and tasty. I also used royal icing to glue little fun-sized Hershey bars down as a path, which came to me when I first envisioned this little house.

Note the "dirt"...the delicious, chocolatey, salty dirt.

I’m no decorative piping master but I can pipe a straight line (sometimes). I would have liked to have piped something a little fancier but my royal icing came out really thick. Like, so thick you might want to decrease the amount listed in the recipe. Oops.

Spooky wreath?

I think the star of this particular house, though, is the spooky candy and not the fancy piping.

More pumpkins, this time of the marshmallowy variety.

If I had more time I’d gladly have thrown together a smaller, fancier house too but time is not a thing I’ve had for a while now.

I had them shingled at first but it was toooo heavy (or so I feared).

I would have also liked to have had the time to test out more than one recipe, but luckily for me I somehow managed to convince the totally awesome Y of Lemonpi to co-host with me, so there were two recipes for our fellow bakers to choose from. (And apologies to the gluten-free/vegan factions, we would have LOVED to have had enough time to test specifically for you guys but we are both mega-busy little bakers these days and it just didn’t happen…we knew you guys would handle things awesomely on your own though.)

So that's who lives here!

I’m off to go look at the (hopefully) hundreds of other houses floating around the merry internet now. Unseasonal or not I am pretty happy with mine – I would definitely actually measure my sides next time so they don’t overlap in weird places, but it was easy enough that I would, in fact, consider a next time. After all, it’s easier than building a chocolate Kitchenaid or a sugar fireplace!

Well hi there!

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Anna’s Notes: If you don’t have an awful lot of time, the doughs can easily be frozen and then thawed when you are ready to roll it. The baked pieces can also be tightly wrapped in plastic and frozen for assembly later.

Y’s Notes: I found this slideshow very helpful: http://www.bonappetit.com/tipstools/slideshows/2008/12/gingerbread_house…

Variations: You are welcome to use either recipe we tested, depending on your taste or what is available where you are.

Obviously, you are also allowed to use any sort of candy or sugar decorations you wish. You can even make your own candy to decorate the house! You may give your house any theme you’d like – you don’t have to stick to the traditional Christmas house. We are providing a rough template but feel free to find or make your own (there are a lot of great books out there with tons of fun blueprints and ideas). Some books you may want to check out:

Gingerbread: Things to Make and Bake by Teresa Layman http://www.amazon.com/Gingerbread-Things-Make-Teresa-Layman/dp/081093367…

How to Build a Gingerbread House: A Step-by-Step Guide to Sweet Results by Christina Banner http://www.amazon.com/Build-Gingerbread-House-Step-Step/dp/0981580610/re…

Gingerbread Houses by Christa Currie http://www.amazon.com/Gingerbread-Houses-Christa-Currie/dp/0385472676/re…

The Gingerbread Architect: Recipes and Blueprints for Twelve Classic American Homes by Susan Matheson and Lauren Chattman http://www.amazon.com/Gingerbread-Architect-Recipes-Blueprints-American/…

Gingerbread Houses: Baking and Building Memories by Nonnie Cargas http://www.amazon.com/Gingerbread-Houses-Baking-Building-Memories/dp/087…

Your house can be as big or as small as you’d like, but it MUST meet these requirements:

1. Everything needs to be edible – no glue or inner non-food supports allowed.

2. You must bake the gingerbread yourself, whichever recipe you choose. No graham cracker houses please!

3. You must use some sort of template. If you don’t use ours, take a picture or link to what you do use in your final post. It doesn’t have to be super technical – Anna didn’t even measure hers, she just cut out shapes from parchment and made sure the edges matched up.

See?

4. Your house must be able to stand on its own. If you want to go adding balconies with candy stick buttresses or whatever go right ahead, but the main house itself must be free-standing.

We feel that by having these simple ground rules in place but giving you the freedom to run with the challenge otherwise, anyone with a few hours of free time this month can tackle this. And if you have a bigger chunk of time, you can REALLY tackle it.

Preparation Time for Anna’s Recipe: 10 minutes to mix the dough, 4-8 hours at least to chill it, then 5 minutes to roll, 10 to rest, and 10 to cut. Another 30 minutes to rest, if necessary. 25-30 minutes to bake, depending on the size of the pieces. I would estimate 2-4 hours to decorate, depending on how ornate you want to make everything. It could certainly take longer if you are doing a lot of intricate royal icing designs or making your own candies. Altogether, this will take 7-13 hours, including chilling time. But, as noted above, you can break this up over several days or even a couple weeks if the freezer is utilized.

Equipment Needed:

1. Stand or handheld electric mixer (not required but it will make mixing the dough a lot easier and faster)
2. Plastic wrap
3. Rolling pin
4. Parchment paper
5. Baking sheets
6. Cardboard cake board or sheet of thick cardboard
7. Foil, if desired
8. Small saucepan
9. Small pastry brush (optional)
10. Piping bag with small round tip, or paper cornets if you’re comfortable with them

Anna’s Recipe:
Spicy Gingerbread Dough (from Good Housekeeping) http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder/spicy-gingerbread-dough-157…

1. 2 1/2 cups (500g) packed dark brown sugar
2. 1 1/2 cups (360mL) heavy cream or whipping cream
3. 1 1/4 cups (425g) molasses
4. 9 1/2 cups (1663g) all-purpose flour
5. 2 tablespoon(s) baking soda
6. 1 tablespoon(s) ground ginger

Directions

1. In very large bowl, with wire whisk (or with an electric mixer), beat brown sugar, cream, and molasses until sugar lumps dissolve and mixture is smooth. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and ginger. With spoon, stir flour mixture into cream mixture in 3 additions until dough is too stiff to stir, then knead with hands until flour is incorporated and dough is smooth.

2. Divide dough into 4 equal portions; flatten each into a disk to speed chilling. Wrap each disk well with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight, until dough is firm enough to roll.

3. Grease and flour large cookie sheets (17-inch by 14-inch/43x36cm)

4. Roll out dough, 1 disk at a time on each cookie sheet to about 3/16-inch thickness. (Placing 3/16-inch dowels or rulers on either side of dough to use as a guide will help roll dough to uniform thickness.)

5. Trim excess dough from cookie sheet; wrap and reserve in refrigerator. Chill rolled dough on cookie sheet in refrigerator or freezer at least 10 minutes or until firm enough to cut easily.

6. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (149C)

7. Use chilled rolled dough, floured poster board patterns, and sharp paring knife to cut all house pieces on cookie sheet, making sure to leave at least 1 1/4 inches between pieces because dough will expand slightly during baking. Wrap and reserve trimmings in refrigerator. Combine and use trimmings as necessary to complete house and other decorative pieces. Cut and bake large pieces and small pieces separately.

8. Chill for 10 minutes before baking if the dough seems really soft after you cut it. This will discourage too much spreading/warping of the shapes you cut.

9. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, until pieces are firm to the touch. Do not overbake; pieces will be too crisp to trim to proper size.

10. Remove cookie sheet from oven. While house pieces are still warm, place poster-board patterns on top and use them as guides to trim shapes to match if necessary. Cool pieces completely before attempting to assemble the house.

Royal Icing:

1. 1 large egg white
2. 3 cups (330g) powdered sugar
3. 1 teaspoon white vinegar
4. 1 teaspoon almond extract

Beat all ingredients until smooth, adding the powdered sugar gradually to get the desired consistency. Pipe on pieces and allow to dry before assembling. If you aren’t using it all at once you can keep it in a small bowl, loosely covered with a damp towel for a few hours until ready to use. You may have to beat it slightly to get it an even consistency if the top sets up a bit. Piped on the house, this will set up hard over time.

Simple Syrup:

1. 2 cups (400g) sugar

Place in a small saucepan and heat until just boiling and the sugar dissolves. Dredge or brush the edges of the pieces to glue them together. If the syrup crystallizes, remake it.

Guess what flavor I made?

If you follow me (or any other Daring Baker) on Twitter, you’ll already know that many of us did not care for this recipe. It flat out did not work for most of us (including myself). I tried it. It didn’t work. I could see many reasons it wold not work as I was making it but went ahead anyway. And then I wished I had just saved the time and ingredients.

The marshmallows may be a little thick, but, then again, there's really no such thing as too thick a marshmallow.

So why are there pictures of somewhat-successful macarons here? After tossing the completely failed macarons into the trash, I started over. With my school’s recipe (which I will not be sharing, since I’m not really supposed to do that I think…it is VERY close to the one I’ve used in the past though). I still didn’t have complete success but they came out MUCH better and I was able to put a few together – and some even came out well enough to take pictures!

How'd I get them to stick in there? GANACHE!

Of course this was all after I’d already thrown a fit about wasting my entire Sunday on something that was only barely successful. If I were the type of person to get embarrassed, I would be. Horribly. But I don’t really do embarrassed. I move on and set up a few shots anyway.

It's imposing.

If you still can’t tell what flavor they are, they’re hot chocolate macarons with vanilla bean marshmallows in the middle. I put hot chocolate mix in the shells (substituting it for 10 grams each of almond flour and powdered sugar), spread ganache on the insides to up the chocolate flavor and anchor the marshmallows in place, and dusted them with a little extra mix right before serving. I also served them WITH hot chocolate and marshmallows.

Extra marshmallows means more hot chocolatey times for me!

If they’re not chocolatey enough for ya, just dunk them in the hot chocolate. It worked for me!

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!