Windblown Treat

According to the internets, vol-au-vent means windblown because of the lightness of the puffy pastries. Ours certainly stayed true to their name, although they were simultaneously rich, too (all that butter!).

We baked this month over Labor Day weekend at our friend Emily's beach house in Santa Cruz, CA. It was a lovely, relaxing trip, although we were in an unfamiliar kitchen and had to improvise a few things, including cookie cutters. We used the can pictured above and the top of a container of lip gloss for the smaller circles.

Lots of leftovers, but they made great bread sticks!

Egg wash time... almost ready to go into the oven.

Our fears that they would collapse were unfounded. Each and every one puffed up, though not necessarily evenly... Once filled with our olive tapenade, mozzarella, and tomato filling (yum!!), they looked beautiful, and were a big hit among our friends.

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.

Dobos Torta, Almost

Erica and I have had quite the busy August (she went to Bali! I worked a lot!), so we're not baking until Friday, August 28th. But we don't want to be cut off from blog-checker, so we'll re-post that day!

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

A Mallow Delight

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.


After last month's success with the Bakewell Tart/Pudding/Quiche, we were delighted to find another exciting recipe on this month's challenge. Homemade marshmallows, chocolate and cookie? Sounds like a perfect summer treat.

This summer has flown by for both Erica and me, and we were lucky enough to have a perfect social venue for this month's challenge (between summer jobs, journal responsibilities and vacation, it's been difficult to find time to do much of anything!). But this month, we were having an actual party, and it proved to be a great time to show off our baking skills.

We had originally planned to do both cookies, but our usually plentiful supply of eggs left something to be desired - so the mallows-only it was!

Making the marshmallow provided an opportunity to *finally* use a xmas stocking stuffer - a candy thermometer! I had decided I needed one after the caramel sauce incident, but this was our first time using it.

But despite the fancy thermometer, a bottle of two-buck chuck substituted for a rolling pin.

We had a little bit of stickiness when it came time to make the marshmallows, but some fast spinning on the kitchen aid did the trick.

Piping the marshmallows reminded me of one of my favorite recipes (and food blogs!).

After our first dunk, we realized that they looked rather... well, you can supply the term (and shiny wasn't what I was thinking of).

So we decided to spruce it up a bit, trying the fantastically eighties splatter art featured above, and the oh-so-classy powdered sugar option shown below.


Glad we've gotten back in the groove of things!

~ Sara & Erica

Bakewell... quiche?

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Is it pudding or is it a tart? The consensus last night was that it looked more like quiche. Whatever its name, it was delicious. We were happy to find Daring Baker success again, finally.

We wanted to eat the frangipane with a spoon. Wow!

Perfect crust, no mishaps.

A thin layer of apricot preserves so as not to offend Sara's anti-cooked-fruit sensibilities.

In went the frangipane, though we were sure to reserve a little to make sure it was still good...

When we pulled the pudding-tart-quiche out of the oven, we knew we had a hit. It was beautiful.

Once again, delicious.

[Thanks to Jenna for her helping hands.]

For some there was lasagne....

For others, there was a green pile of goo.

Similar to some other daring bakers, when I think of baking, I don't normally think of lasagna. I mean, yes, it bakes in the oven, but it doesn't strike me as a bakers dish. But, we both like lasagna quite a bit, and had the perfect opportunity to make it.

As second-year law students, we were required to take something called the "Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam," or the MPRE. It's a 60 question multiple-choice test about your ethics. Much like the bar exam, you have to pass it to become a lawyer. The test is surprisingly tricky, but because you can take it as many times as you want until you pass, there's little incentive to study. Erica and I trekked out to Walnut Creek for a morning of fun, and thought to reward ourselves and some of our law school friends with lasagna.

After going back and forth on whether to steam the spinach first (we ultimately did), the dough was beautiful - bright green, pliable, and ready to be rolled. I have a handcrank inherited from my mother (it still has the JC Penny's receipt inside from 1983) that we used for this project.


Look at those flakes of spinach! So beautiful.


As mostly vegetarians (and with a friend who is a strict vegetarian), Erica and I opted for a meatless lasagna courtesy of one of my favorite cooking blogs: 101cookbooks. Her thousand layer lasagna looked simple and likely to show off our homemade pasta.


We threw together some simple tomato sauce to complement the bechamel.


And then we started layering - tomato sauce, bechamel, cheese and pasta. Note that we had two pans - with seven of us eating dinner, we knew we had to make a lot. As you might also note, that pasta looks mighty un-cooked. It was. We figure that boiling the pasta ahead of time was unnecessary - that while in the oven, the pasta would cook. I've made lasagna this way before with hard noodles, and its always turned out just fine. Plus, boiling our big, wide noodles seemed a difficult task. This was a Big Mistake.


Tray one was delectable, or so I hear. Thinking that we had two trays of pasta, I served up four of our guests, and they set in. Complements around. Will, Cat and I waited for the second tray to be done. We waited and waited. I'd stick a knife in and it would come out gooey. Not just gooey with cheese, but gooey like paste. So we stuck it back in, and had some salad.


Sadly, the second tray was not meant to be. We eventually resorted to cooking it in other ways. In a skillet:


On the stove in boiling water (really bad idea, in retrospect, but hey - because we hadn't boiled the pasta, we figured we try it at this step):


And under the broiler:


It all tasted like paste. Why the difference between the trays? No clue - some slightly different tomatoes, and a slightly different tray, but I would have never expected perfect lasagna from one and paste from the other.

Thankfully, we didn't starve. Leftover soup, also courtesy of 101cookbooks, came to the rescue.

I'm hoping for complete success on the next go around....

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.

Tuiles AKA Epic Fail

Oh well... it had to happen eventually...


We were defeated by the Tuiles.

It seemed like it'd be easy. We'd serve these crispy little sweet things with a fruit salad. Piece of cake. We spent the afternoon with some friends and the AFC Championships on a big screen TV, enjoying homemade hot wings, nachos and pizza. Then we went to battle in the kitchen with this recipe, and much like the Ravens--*tear*--we lost. Oh how we lost.

We should've known from the batter. Something wasn't right. As Sara put it, it tasted like slightly sugary paste.


Yet still we persevered. Had we not had batter problems in the past? And in spite of these, had we not produced beautiful DB creations? Lady Luck was not with us in this case, however. As we tried to spread the goop into our butterfly mold, it just didn't cooperate. Our cocoa-flavored "decorations" were similarly disappointing.

Nonetheless, into the oven they went.

And then out the came - thick and tasteless and utterly disappointing. We tried to fold them, and the butterflies slowly broke in half. We tried to roll our circular tuiles with homemade chocolate syrup, and they broke, too.

Of course, we ate them anyway! We (and our friends - what good sports) just slathered them in chocolate syrup so we'd feel a little better than if we'd poured syrup directly from the bottle onto a sheet of parchment paper and then ate it with our fingers. Oh wait - we did that, too!

So in the end, it wasn't so bad... And we hope next month will be better.

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda 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.

French Yule Log

Most often, Erica and I struggle to come up with time to bake - as the name of this blog implies, we're both law students and time where both of us are available to spend extended time in the kitchen is often hard to come by.

We though this month was going to be the same - with studying and finals and far-flung locales for the holiday, it initially seemed like we were going to be taking another month off. I was, in the end, able to convince my brother to stick around the Bay Area for an extra day before heading down to our parents house, and a yule log was made...


Contrary to appearances, this is not a mess on the floor, but the beginning of a delicious Praline Crisp insert. We took the easy way out this time, and used rice krispies instead of the lace, and just ground up some hazelnuts instead of making the full Praline, but the short-cuts worked and the crisp was delicious.

Usually, I would say that Erica and I are pretty precise bakers - we plot out the steps in advance and plan how much time everything is going to take. This felt different - maybe it was the mulled cider, the Christmas movies or the fact that we had just finished finals, but the yule log was surprisingly ad hoc. Aside from the creme brule (which, by the way, was not BRULE at all, much to Erica's disappointment), we mostly made one piece (such as the dacquoise biscuit above or the mousse below) as we felt like it.


Assembly wasn't quite the most beautiful we've seen. Neither of us owned a yule log mold, and once I got over the fact that we really couldn't roll this one, a bread pan it was.

We had ambitious plans to mold some leaves, but in the end, we just raked a fork across and served it up, semi-frozen.


There was some disagreement as to whether the fully frozen variety was better, but I can't say anyone really complained. Again, another daring baker success!

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.
They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.