Where's the Beet?

We continued our tradition of baking on our annual Tahoe trip this year. Of course, we forgot that it gets tricky baking at altitude but everything turned out OK.

For our recipe we chose Nigel Slater's Extremely Moist Chocolate Beet Cake, which is pretty much fancy red velvet cake. It required us to boil a beet and then, once it was cooled, stick it in a blender. Definitely a novel way to add that red color.

 

At some point I said to Sara, wow, this cake is almost healthy, with the beet, and not too much sugar or flour. Then she pointed to the pile of butter that went into it. OK. Not so healthy after all. But delicious!

Of course the other delicious element was all of the chocolate that went into it -- both dark chocolate chips as well as cocoa powder. And then you had to power a quarter cup of hot espresso over the just melted chips. Even yummier.

Neither Sara nor I were very hopeful about the part of the recipe that required us to beat egg whites to stiff peaks once we found out that the rental house did not have anything electrical to do that for us. In fact, it didn't even have a proper whisk, so I lazily beat the eggs with the most whisk-like contraption we could find.

Do you even know what this thing is? We didn't.

Fortunately our friends Emily and Rachel came to the rescue and, taking turns, managed to beat the eggs to pretty much the right consistency in short order. Amazing!

And the cake turned out perfectly. We opted not to serve it with creme fraiche and poppy seeds, as suggested, but instead with good old vanilla ice cream. The color of the batter was a richer red, very beautiful, but the baked cake was also a lovely red-brown color.

It was a perfect dessert after a hard day of skiing and was well complemented by a glass of champagne.

While Sara and I have no trouble eating vegetables not hidden in sweets, we had a lot of fun with this challenge. Thank you, Daring Bakers!


Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

"Cheezy" Crackers

Well, folks, Erica and I have reached a new low in terms of food photography motivation. All we have for you this time around is this spectacular shot. Why yes, that is a shark eating a goldfish. But of course!

Our lack of motivation might be explained by the general level of un-enthusiasm we felt toward this month's challenge. No offense to our delightful hosts, but making crackers wasn't quite daring enough the third time around. You see, we've already tested the limits of this skill set with the lavash (way back when we were 2Ls, interviewing for summer jobs!), and more recently with the crackers challenge just last July.

To make it a little more of a challenge (and to satisfy my month-long foray into vegan-ness), we decided to try our hand at some vegan baking, complete with nutritional yeast. To our delight, these crackers did approximate the not-so-vegan goldfish crackers we all know and love. However, when compared to the rest of the spread that Erica and I prepared for the super bowl (including Erica's Baltimore Berger Cookies and my Buffalo Girls), the crackers weren't the biggest hit.

So after nearly six years and over fifty challenges in the Daring Bakers community, Erica and I will be modifying our monthly baking just slightly. If the monthly challenge is something we're keen to try, we'll stick with the group - we hope this will be the case!! But if it's something we've done already or just aren't feeling challenged by, we'll pick a different recipe to share with our readers. I promise, both Erica and I have quite the stockpile of baking recipes to try! We hope you'll stick with us in this new phase of adventure....

Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie was our February 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to use our creativity in making our own Crisp Flatbreads and Crackers!

Spectacular Spicy Speculaas

Sara was excited for this month's challenge because she really likes speculaas. On the other hand, I hadn't heard of them. Or I thought I hadn't, until I realized that another variation from the one we baked--Speculaasjes, speculaas cookies or "windmill cookies"--were something I enjoyed as a kid. My friend in elementary school, whose Mom was Dutch, would get windmill cookies in her lunch, and if I was lucky, she would share.

But even before I realized that, I knew the recipe looked delicious and was full of things I liked--almonds, lots of spices, and butter. And gevulde speculaas, or "speculaas stuffed with almond paste," were new to both of us Baking JDs. 

Sara and I were happy to have found a weekend within our busy schedules where we could get together to bake these (er, unlike December's challenge) and enjoy the series finale of Gossip Girl, our shared guilty pleasure. I made the dough and almond paste a day ahead of time, and confirmed the recipe's deliciousness with repeated tastings of both. After a quick brunch of scrambled eggs and toast, Sara rolled both out, and I made us some coffee. 

While the speculaas baked, we enjoyed the terrible terrible, television show that we had come to love, or at least like a lot, most of the time. Although we were eagerly awaiting the speculaas in the oven, we both were very sad not to be enjoying some macarons from Lauduree in tribute to Blair Waldorf. 

In the end, we were extremely pleased with our results. Wow. Seriously delicious, and really not all that hard to make.

I think it's safe to say that this is one for the recipe box. We both said we'd like to make (and eat) Gevulde Speculaas again.

Thank you, Daring Bakers, for starting off 2013 right with such a tasty challenge.

Francijn of Koken in de Brouwerij was our January 2013 Daring Bakers’ Hostess and she challenged us to make the traditional Dutch pastry, Gevulde Speculaas from scratch! That includes making our own spice mix, almond paste and dough! Delicious!

A sleuth of bears

 

If being late ever works out, this was certainly one of those time. Erica and I couldn't find a time to meet up before the posting date, but who wants to have Christmas cookies before Thanksgiving anyway? The week after seemed much more appropriate. 

 

This challenge was also a reminder for me about trying to do too much in the kitchen. We selected to make these chocolate-hazelnut crinkle cookies, which require an over-night chill. Since I was hosting this month, I set out to make the dough the night before. It's been a busy couple of months, so whenever I get a free night in the kitchen, I feel like I have to really use it for all its worth. This is a recipe for staying up far past my bedtime. 

So in addition to the dough, I planned to make this double-broccoli quinoa recipe for dinner. While I was at it, I need to make some dinner for the cookie baking, but instead of something simple, I got it into my head that I absolutely needed to recreate this amazing lasagna my brother-in-law had made for post-thanksgiving enjoyment. And of course I would make the noodles from scratch, yes of course. 

Oh, and why not just whip up a loaf of bread too? (This bread is divine. No joke, make it today. You can see it above, and it makes your house smell amazing. I am powerless to resist baking it once I get it in my head that I need to eat it). Totally reasonable, right? 

And then I realized we were having a pantry staples crisis, so mid-cooking, I had to run to the corner store for: butter, sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla. 

My husband came home to find that I had dirtied every appliance, pot, and bowl that we owned. Thankfully he does the dishes around here. :-)

So in comparison, a few foaming cookies were nothing.

We were hoping for something a little more exiting when we added the baking soda concoction to the hot pot. (I must also confess that these left us feeling a bit whelmed. As Erica and I concluded, they were good with tea or coffee, but just missing a little zing).

Best part about the foaming cookies? How silky smooth the dough was to work with, and our friend Emily's collection of cookie cutters.

This is a slueth of bears. Or a sloth. Your choice. Unless they're polar bears, in which case it's just a pack.

These chocolate balls, on the other hand, and the cookies they made, were delicious. I have a new cookie to add to my repertoire.

I just loved how they cracked on the outside. Hat tip to the daring baker's comment that suggested rolling in granulated sugar first. Our were super crackly, with an excellent texture on the teeth.

Grrar!! I'm a T-Rex! Or a crow...

Cookies to Come!

For this month's challenge:

Holiday season is the time for sharing and Peta of Peta Eats is sharing a dozen cookies, some classics and some of her own, from all over the world with us.

Holiday season is also the time for way too busy schedules. Erica and I struggled to find a day to bake this month, but we'll be cooking up some treats on Nov. 29. Post to follow!

Napoleon Conquers Mexico

 

Erica and I took our baking show on the road this month. As part of a group birthday celebration (hence the candles on our "cake"), we headed down to Baja California for a relaxing vacation in the tiny town of Todos Santos with some of our other law school friends (and regular consumers of our baked treats). Knowing that this vacation was the only time in October we'd have to bake together, we came prepared to tackle the Napoleon.  

 Baking in new locations always has its particular challenges. For instance, though our beautiful vacation rental was well equipped with not one, but three, different coffee makers, it lacked true measuring cups, spoons, and a rolling pin. An improvised half-cup measure was all we had to work with. 

Fortunately, the ingrediants for this recipe were mostly simple enough to find (though more on that qualification to come). We brought cornstarch (see the plastic baggie in the photo above, which bears an unfortunate resemblance to illicit drugs) and vanilla, and picked up most of the other essentials at the local market. 

The Napoleon, like other puff-pastry deserts, involves a shocking amount of butter. Lucky for us, the butter we found in Mexico was delicious, with a creamy, yellow consistency and a divine smell. We left it to soften on the counter, while lounging by the pool you can barely make out in the background. Tough life.

Perhaps it was our wacky measuring equipment, but we had a bit of a challenge with the puff pastry dough. First, I wasn't sure why we added butter to the flour dough, and flour to the beurrage (the large pat of butter you fold in to make the layers) - I've never seen that done before, and it seemed unnecessarily difficult. Our flour dough was also extremely wet. We ended up adding in about an extra cup of flour before achieving the right consistency.  

At this point in our baking careers, I will say it is immensely satisfying to know by instinct when something just isn't coming together right, and the ways in which to fix it - usually, the answer is either (a) add more flour or (b) to hell with it, just keep going. 

 The next day we set out to assemble the layers. You can see our improvised wrapping techniques below - the flour dough ended up in a kitchen towel, while the beurrage ended up in a trash bag (a clean one, but not exactly right for the job).

Given the warm temperatures, we ended up needing to refrigerate the dough far more frequently between folds, to prevent the delicious butter from oozing out the sides. Eventually it all came together though - you can see our fancy rolling pin in the pic below. 

After some assistance with a tricky pilot light and broken oven door hinge, we got the puff pastry baked. We did not go through the extra step of weighing down our dough, but I think it turned out quite well - even, puffy layers with just enough loft. And that butter baking smell - there's nothing quite like it. 

Of course, a baking adventure in a foreign land would not be complete without a story of near disaster and redemption. The original recipe called for an uncooked, egg-white-based icing. Given that we weren't sure of the egg pasteurization requirements in Mexico, we decided to swap out that icing for whipped cream. So with four spanish-speakers in the car, I (who knows only French) was somehow selected to run into the market. I knew the word for cream was the obvious "crema" and that "vaca" meant cow. So when I saw a container labeled "crema de vaca acidificata," and no other crema in sight, I ignored that last pesky word and made my purchase. But of course - acidificata means sour. I had mistakenly purchased a container of sour cream. 

While I thought that we would just dump a bunch of chocolate on top and call it a day, Erica sent out to remedy this dilemma by mixing the sour cream with confectioners sugar. And what a brilliant strategy this turned out to be! We ended up with a delightful tangy glaze, vaguely reminiscent of cream cheese frosting. If your ever in a pinch (or even if you're not), I highly recommend trying this out!

A final shot of our completed Napoleon. Not bad for improvisation!

 Good-bye Todos Santos! We hope to visit again soon.

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

Attack of the Giant Empanada (for reals this time!)

I haven't spent much time in Spain (save for a Madrid long weekend in college where we mainly ate bread and manchengo cheese), so I've never encountered the giant empanada before - also known as Empanada Gallega. Unlike its smaller counterpart, this empanada is baked rather than fried, and one empanada can serve five hungry members of a book club, plus leftovers. 

 

We weren't quite sure what to put in the filling. We wanted something vegetarian, and frankly, some of the options presented to us in the recipe sounded a bit scary (um, Tuna Fish? eek). So Erica came up with something akin to veggie pot pie - gracefully incorporating my demands for sweet potatoes and black beans. I wish I could share the recipe, because it really worked well, but I think it was largely slap dash - mushrooms, corn, peppers, sweet potatoes, black beans, onion, etc.   

 

I think both Erica and I were quite proud of how this turned out - both in taste and aesthetics. We had some extra dough at the end, so we braided it up and laid it on top. While it ended up being hard to cut through, the braid added a nice decorative element.

  We did forget completely to add the cheese and the hard boiled egg to the filling, which would have made it more traditional (or so I'm told). So we added it to a tossed salad instead - just as tasty. [Apologies for these pictures - we were using the fancy macro lens, but decided to wing it without the tripod. Ill advised.]

In the end, the empanada gallenga reminded me quite a bit of a calzone. It has that same, bready crust and warm, mushy innards. Quite delicious, and something I'd happily make again!