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…

They gots stuffs in thems!

Recently my mom sent me a couple boxes of some vegetarian gelatin substitute. I’ve been in a very use-up-all-the-little-odds-and-ends mood, so in the spirit of Valentine’s Day I created some  jiggly, romantic little hearts.

Pomegranate yay!

I still had a couple of 16 oz. bottles of Pom Wonderful juice sitting in the fridge, and considering each box of fake gelatin called for 16 oz. of liquid, how could I NOT make pomegranate Jell-O?

Big or little, both were delicious.

I also had a couple of pomegranates sadly getting older in the fridge so I added them for crunchy awesomeness reasons. And for a little romantic mysteriousness, I included a splash of rose water.

Kinda sorta heart-shaped?

The fakey gelatin stuff (which is from Natural Desserts and is vegan, gluten-free and Kosher…here are the ingredients: Vegetable Gum, Adipic Acid, Tapioca Dextrin, Calcium Phosphate, Potassium Citrate) works great and it’s not brittle like agar agar or gummy like pectin. The only real difference is that it had to be added in powdered form while the juice was boiling hot, whisked in and poured into molds immediately. It sets up CRAZY fast and it was actually kind of hard to get the pomegranate arils into some of the small hearts – I had to kind of throw them in to get them to not just sit on the surface.

The recipe below is how you’d make this with real gelatin.

Squooshy & juicy.

Jiggly Pomegranate Hearts

1. 1/4 oz. Knox gelatin
2. 16 oz. (2 cups) Pom Wonderful 100% pomegranate juice, chilled
3. 1/8 tsp rose water
4. 1/4 cup fresh pomegranate arils

Bloom the gelatin in 4 oz. (1/2 cup) of juice. In the meantime, bring the rest of the juice to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the rose water, then whisk in the gelatin mixture until completely dissolved. Pour into heart-shaped molds and/or ramekins and add arils. Chill until set, about 3 hours.

Because there is no added sugar in this recipe, it’s actually quite healthy, and the rose water adds a slight floral sweetness that counteracts the tart pomegranate juice. The arils are beautifully suspended like jewels and the whole thing really is pretty romantic.

It's scooptacular!

Besides, if it’s too cold outside, you can just crank up the heat a bit inside and PRETEND it’s summer. Or put on a sweater or something.

Chunks can be nummy!

It’s actually been nice and warm here in New York the past few days so I had no problem polishing off this awesome ice cream. Though as soon as it was churned and I tasted it, I decided the base flavor would actually be even better in yogurt. Oh well, another time…

Fall is not as good for eating ice cream. A bit better for photographing it though.

My yogurty preferences aside, this ice cream really is (was!) delicious, and I definitely recommend it for those who have a predilection for the flowery things in life.

Taken right before an emergency trip to my mouth.

What is this ice cream, you ask?

Iiiiiiit’s…hibiscus, of course! Hibiscus white chocolate chunk, to be precise.

It's yuuuuummmy.

Hibiscus White Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

1. 2 cups milk
2. 2 cups heavy cream
3. 1 1/2 cups sugar
4. 1/4 cup dried hibiscus
5. 6 egg yolks
6. Pinch salt
7. 2 Tbsp blackberry brandy or similarly flavored liqueur (optional)
8. 5 oz. white chocolate, chopped

Place the milk, cream, sugar and hibiscus in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Allow to just come to a boil, then immediately remove from heat and cover. Let the mixture steep for up to 10 minutes. Whisk together the yolks and salt, then slowly pour the hot cream mixture into the yolks through a strainer, whisking constantly. Return to the saucepan (remove any leftover hibiscus bits) and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon (when you run your finger across the back of the coated spoon, the line should stay – if it fills in the custard is still too runny). Chill over an ice bath, stirring often, or in the refrigerator overnight. Once the mixture is completely chilled, add the brandy, if using, then churn it in an ice cream maker or by hand. Fold in the white chocolate and freeze until hard and scoopable.

It’s a sad state these days as far as white chocolate is concerned, I think. Sure it took me a while to get over my bias against it but it seems to be taking everyone else even longer. Now it’s all about spicy or salty artisan dark chocolate. I still like dark chocolate but lately I have been totally into the milk and white. The only white chocolate I could find for this was speckled with vanilla bean but a little vanilla bean speckling never hurt anything, right? Granted I was shopping at Target but sometimes you just don’t have the time or money to go elsewhere for your chocolatey needs.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

They have FEETS!

This is like the fourth or fifth time I have attempted this particular flavor of macaron, which I haven’t seen anyone do before. Every batch I’ve made up until this one has suffered the same horrible affliction as my “chocolate chip cookies” – no feet.

There are actually more than three, but some got cracky and others got smeary.

Not that these didn’t have their own issues – I actually baked them at too high of a temperature and the ones around the edges of the baking sheet got a little cracked, but the ones in the middle turned out perfect! It took me quite a while to figure out what my problem was, though.

There's more flowery bit on top for maximum flower flavor!

At one point I was SURE that my almond meal was just too cold – I kept it in the freezer and I probably wasn’t bringing it up to room temperature before I mixed everything together. Right?

You can stack 'em up! Sort of!

Wrong. Howeeeever…I did realize that the problem was related to the freezing of the almond meal. Specifically, the freezing and the thawing and the CONDENSATION that resulted. Yup, my almond meal was wet.

What if they build the pyramids out of macarons?...Well, they wouldn't be here anymore, for one.

So I heated my oven just the slightest bit, then turned it off so it was still residually warm. I spread a bunch of the almond meal out on a baking sheet and let it sit in that nice warm oven for a little while, like ten minutes or so. It dried out quite nicely, and I was finally able to make the macarons I’d been trying to make for months.

In the spotlight! Which is actually Bowser's light! Sorry Bowser :(

Hibiscus Macarons with Chocolate Ganache Filling

For the Macarons:

1. 1/4 cup granulated sugar
2. Scant 1 Tbsp dried hibiscus flowers, plus a bit more for sprinkling
3. 1 cup almond flour
4. 1 cup powdered sugar
5. 3 egg whites, aged & room temperature
6. 3 drops red gel food coloring

In a food processor or heavy-duty blender (such as a Vitamix), pulse the granulated sugar and hibiscus until the sugar is a fine powder and the hibiscus is fairly finely ground. The sugar will be slightly magenta-colored. Let the ground sugar settle for a few minutes before attempting to remove the lid. Sift together the almond flour and powdered sugar, set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer, whip the egg whites on medium-high until they turn to foam, then gradually add the ground hibiscus sugar. Whip on high to stiff, glossy peaks, then quickly beat in the food coloring. Fold into the almond flour mixture until completely incorporated and gooey like magma. Using a large round tip or a pastry bag with no tip, pipe the batter onto a parchment-lined baking sheet or two, with circles drawn on the underside of the parchment if you need a guide. Make sure to secure the parchment to the sheets with a dot of batter in each corner before piping the circles. The tops of the circles should flatten out on their own. In a mortar and pestle, roughly grind the remaining hibiscus and sprinkle a couple of tiny pieces on each of the piped circles. Allow to sit for an hour so that s kin can form on top of the macarons. Preheat the oven to 300, then bake for 10-12 minutes. Do not allow to get browned. Cool fully, then pop the macarons off the baking sheet and set aside.

For the Ganache:

1. 1/2 cup heavy cream (you could substitute milk or soy milk for health reasons if you’d like)
2. 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate (around 70% cacao), chopped roughly (I used baking chunks that were already the right size – you shouldn’t use chocolate chips though, they have a shiny coating that will mess with the ganache)

Place the cream in a small saucepan over high heat. Put the chocolate in a medium, heat-proof mixing bowl. When the cream just comes to a boil, remove from heat and immediately pour over the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is completely melted. Let cool until thick and not runny. You can speed up the process in the refrigerator if you wish but keep the ganache safe from drips of condensation – they will cause the emulsion to break.

Once the ganache is thickened, pair the macaron shells up by size. Spread one of each pair with an even, not-too-thick coating of ganache (about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch thick) and gently press the matching shells into place. Let sit in a cool place for the ganache to set fully.

Hibiscus is such a wonderful, tangy, berry-like flavor, and goes well with the intense sweetness of macarons. If I had more time on my hands I would have liked to have filled these with a lemon curd or perhaps with a hibiscus jelly, but ganache is quick, easy and goes wonderfully with the tart little bits of chewy flower in the shells.

I’m also much better at piping now that I’ve had some formal practice and training in class, and it was no problem to get the batter piped correctly without any type of guide. The batter was also much thinner than when I’ve made it before, but I think this is the first time I’ve actually gotten it correct – the tops flattened right out and you can see that I got an even, shiny shell. I’m going to make another batch  – in a different flavor – very soon, so watch out for more macarons!

Well, it's technically BURNED, though not BURNING.

Since I got my challenge done a little late in the month this time around, I was able to observe several other Daring Bakers’ reactions to this recipe before embarking on my own Dobos Quest. One of the things I noticed a lot of people saying was that they didn’t like the top caramel-soaked layer of cake, pretty as it is.

Fun with hot sugar.

So I decided to forego that whole thing entirely, though with the shape my cake ended up taking on there are a lot of interesting patterns I could have made with a top layer like that. BUT, I decided to just play with some caramel on its own for the top.

Seriously, the cake was the exact size and shape of a brick. Tastiest brick ever!

Of course I had the caramel drizzled on the Silpat, THEN I remembered the totally awesome pulled sugar demo Chef did for us in class the other day, which involved pulling and kneading caramelized sugar until it looked like pure gold. If I had thought it out a bit better I could have (maybe) done a gorgeous golden ribbon, but I ended up with splatters that were nowhere near as delicate as what I originally wanted. However they did look quite a bit like flames, so I bent the bottoms to form bases and stuck the shards on top of the cake.

Count 'em! Six!

Since it’s just little old me alone in my apartment right now (and Bowser doesn’t eat cake), I halved the recipe and decided to bake the sponge cake in one large sheet and cut it into whatever shape I ultimately wanted for the cake.

Uhoh, the buttercream is getting melty...*lick*

I considered trying a crescent shape for an extra-fancy little cake but decided to go with a good old rectangle. Besides, neatly frosting the inside of a tiny crescent? No thank you.

Yeah, so they're not the straightest layers ever, but it's not like it matters. It all ends up the same in the end...

I brushed the layers with a little Monin violet syrup, just for fun. The day I made it I couldn’t taste the syrup and everything was a bit too sweet for me, but after a day in the fridge, the cold dulled the sweetness and everything was much yummier! The caramel got a little gummy and melty from the humidity in my wacky fridge, but that just makes it easier to eat I think – not as shattery and sharp.

Agh! Throw it out the window!...Wait, don't!

I really enjoyed this challenge for many reasons – I’ve never made sponge cake before, but I am really a fan of anything that involves whipping egg whites and folding them into something! And I like the texture of it. A lot of people said it was too dry, which it probably would be if I hadn’t brushed it with the syrup, but I did…so…nyah! I also REALLY loved the chocolate buttercream. It was some tasty stuff! I used some really nice super dark chocolate and it turned out yummmmmy.

Thanks to Lorraine and Angela for such a fun and beautiful challenge! Now that I’m done writing about mine I can go check out some of the other lovely cakes out there on the internet today!