Obviously, December is all about the holidays.

But in the Cream Puff household, it’s also about breakfast.

Because we all tend to be off from work for a good part of the month (I take holidays and my brother is home since the factory usually closes for two weeks), it means lots of lazy mornings where we can all indulge in some long and slow breakfasts.

The stars of the show are usually pancakes, waffles or french toast. If it’s up to me, it would pancakes almost every time.

Much like chocolate chip cookies and granola, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as the “best recipe ever”. There’s always another recipe on the horizon waiting to be tried.

This time around it’s a recipe for Classic Buttermilk Pancakes from Issue 102 of Fine Cooking.

Wow. These were good.

I have a few other buttermilk pancake recipes, which are also very good, but these somehow were just a bit fluffier. I followed the instructions precisely, especially the part about letting the batter rest for a bit. I think this is absolutely key when making pancakes or waffles. Letting the batter rest allows it to thicken as the flour absorbs the liquid and swells. This gives you a pancake that rises more and that is far more fluffy and light.

So I’m going to stop now because my mouth is watering and there’s no way that I can make pancakes right now.

I ate them all up with lots of maple syrup and salted butter.

As always, I’m joined by a few people who have decided to attack that magazine pile. That’s what Magazine Mondays is all about!

Here’s who joined me this week:

Candy Girl made a Tangerine Beef with Scallions from the November 2009 issue of Food Network Magazine.

Di from Di’s Kitchen Notebook used a recipe for Streusel-Topped Chocolate-Cranberry Bread from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appétit as inspiration for a danish braid.

Poppy of Poppyseeds and Tiger Lilies made Chicken & Fontina Quesadillas from a 2008 issue of Food & Wine.

Janie of Panini Girl made Peanut Butter Thumbprint Cookies from the December issue of Sunset magazine.

And with something a little different, Wandering Coyote of ReTorte features her lastest article in Bread & Molasses magazine complete with Cheese Ball recipe!!!

Have a great week, everyone!

Ciao!

Early on in my blog career, I wrote a post about conquering my fear of caramel. I received a very thoughtful and helpful comment to that post from none other than Shuna Fish Lydon, the chef behind one of the most accomplished and informative blogs out there: eggbeater.

When the hosts of the November Daring Bakers’ challenge, Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity; Alex of Blondie and Brownie and Jenny of Foray of Food, announced that they would be venturing into caramel territory, I was so excited!

After embracing my fear of caramel, I’ve come to embrace the joy of making it. Mostly because I love the stuff but also because it’s the essence of a Daring Baker: face your fears in the kitchen!

The recipe they chose is Shuna Fish Lydon’s Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting. As an added element, they invited Daring Bakers to try their hands at Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert.

Before I begin discussing the challenge, I want to first thank Dolores, Alex and Jenny for forcing Daring Bakers everywhere to embrace their inner caramel-maker!

And I want to especially thank Shuna who has been so gracious throughout this challenge, not only for letting us use her recipe, but also for taking the time to answer the many questions that people have had. It’s an honour to have you with us, Shuna!

Every Daring Bakers’ challenge is different. Some have elements that are very new to me and others have methods that might be different from something I’ve tried before.

Some months I feel the need to provide a step-by-step account of what I’ve done and other months I don’t.

In this case, I would have to say that the key is the caramel. While I love caramel, I’m not a fan of dark caramel. I prefer the flavour of a lighter caramel so I didn’t cook mine quite as long as the recipe indicated. This meant that my caramel syrup wasn’t as dark and thick as some others, but that’s okay. The flavour was still gorgeous and I’m enjoying the leftover syrup on everything that I can pour it on!

For me, the best part of this challenge was the icing. This frosting for this cake is made with melted butter! I have never made a frosting with melted butter and to say I was intrigued would be an understatement. And not only is it melted butter, it’s browned butter which has to be one of my favourite flavours. When you brown butter, it takes on a nutty essence that is divine. Everyone adored the frosting! I can’t wait to try it in other recipes.

In deference to the chewy caramels I used to eat as a child, I had to try the recipe for the Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Alice Medrich. I was not able to obtain ground golden vanilla beans so I used pure vanilla extract instead. Because I love caramel and salt, I added a liberal sprinkling of fleur de sel to the finished product. It was like being a kid all over again!

Embrace your inner caramel-maker and be sure to visit all the other daring bakers to see what they made.

Ciao!

Go figure!

For this week’s edition of Magazine Mondays, I’m featuring a recipe that I came this close to dumping in the food waste bin.

When I bought the 2007 April/May issue of Taste Italia, I immediately bookmarked a recipe for Apricot Almond Shortbread (Frollino di albicocca e mandorla).

For starters, the title is slightly misleading. This dessert is a cross between a cake and a pie of sorts. While the photo was very enticing, I disliked the recipe almost as soon as I started making it. To begin with, there are a lot of steps and I found the directions a bit confusing.

The worst part of the recipe for me was the topping, which was disastrous. The topping is a meringue of sorts that you spread on the dessert after baking it a for a bit. You then put it back in the oven to bake the topping. My topping spread all over the place and it just came out of the oven looking like a disaster.

After letting it cool, I took a long look at my creation and thought, “There is no way I can serve this to anyone.” I almost threw it out but then remembered that there were quite a bit of almonds, egg whites and fresh apricots in there and tossing it didn’t seem very cost-effective.

So I let it cook completely, did some damage control to the topping and filled in the top with apricot jam.

Feeling somewhat better, I brought the dessert into work on the same day that I brought in the Peach and Almond Tart from a few weeks ago. I expected everyone to like the peach tart much better but in one of those strange twists, it seemed most people actually preferred the apricot dessert.

Go figure!

To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever be making this one again, but it just goes to show, you never really do know how a dessert may turn out.

Have a great week everyone!

Ciao!

Note: Click here for the recipe for the Apricot Almond Shortbread. This week, I’m joined in my Magazine Mondays post by Oakley Rhodes of the blog Lemonbasil with her gorgeous White Chocolate Panna Cotta with Dark Chocolate Sauce.

If you hear music in the air it’s because Daring Bakers the world around are posting their tribute to one of the world’s great confections: Opéra Cake or L’Opéra as they would say in France.

For the May 2008 Daring Bakers‘ challenge, I have the privilege of hosting with my incredible co-founder Lis and with two of our newer Daring Baker members: Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful.

The challenge chosen is the aforementioned Opéra Cake, but with a twist. We decided that in honour of spring, we’d attempt a lighter version of the cake and by lighter I don’t mean reduced calories. What I mean is we wanted to create cakes that were light in flavour and colour.

While we did our best to research the origins of this cake, we were unable to find out much beyond the fact that the creation of the cake is attributed to a gentleman by the name of Louis Clichy who first presented it in the early 1900s in Paris. Dalloyau, the great Parisian pâtisserie, is also attributed with offering a version of the cake that is considered by many to be the definitive version.

Traditionally, L’Opéra consists of layers of almond-based cake (joconde) that are moistened with syrup and then filled with buttercream. The cake is then topped with a mousse or ganache and followed by a glaze. Usually the flavours tend towards coffee and chocolate.

For our version of the cake, we relied on two sources: Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle’s and Timothy Moriarty’s Chocolate Passion.

The building blocks of this cake, namely the joconde and the soaking syrup, were relatively straightforward. I didn’t have jelly roll pans that were the size required so I ended up using my trusty old sheet pans, which were slightly larger. The resulting joconde was a bit thinner than what the recipe intended but I was extra careful in handling them and cutting them to size so I didn’t have any troubles there.

For the soaking syrup, I decided to flavour it with a lovely liquid called Talea Amaretto Cream Liqueur. I wanted my cake to have a very strong almond flavour (to mirror the almond meal in the joconde) so I chose a liqueur that was very almondy (and delicious!).

Having the joconde and soaking syrup ready, I proceeded with the buttercream. This buttercream begins with a syrup of sugar, water and flavouring (vanilla in my case) that is cooked to a certain stage and then added to a whipped mixture of egg. The trick is to add the syrup very slowly because if it hits the spinning whisk it can create threads and strings that will ruin your buttercream. Once all the syrup is in, you add butter. I also added a liberal amount of almond extract to help with the flavour.

I adored this buttercream! It was silky and buttery. It was rich without eaving a greasy taste in your mouth as buttercream sometimes does. And it was a dream to spread.

While I was anxious to build my cake, I decided not to skip one of the components that is often found in Opéra Cake: the mousse or ganache layer that goes on top of the cake before the glaze is added.

The mousse was basically a mixture of melted white chocolate, heavy cream and more Talea. The heavy cream is whipped to a fluffy consistency and then mixed with the chocolate and refrigerated until ready to use.

Finally, it was time to start building my cake!

I began by cutting the pieces into the appropriate sizes with the first piece being a rectangle. I brushed it liberally with soaking syrup and then topped it with most of the buttercream. I fit two square pieces of joconde over the first layer of buttercream and brushed those with more soaking syrup. I then used the remainder of the buttercream. I ended with the final piece of joconde which I dampened with the remaining syrup.

When I build cakes with many layers, I like to take breaks in between to referigerate the cake. I think letting it get cold helps to stabilize it and it also gives me a break to ensure that I don’t rush and make a mistake or a mess, which is often what I do. Patience is not one of my virtues in the kitchen!

So after letting the cake sit in the fridge for about thirty minutes, I took it out and added the white chocolate mousse layer. I then popped it back in the fridge while I made the glaze.

The white chocolate glaze was simply melted white chocolate mixed with heavy cream. The key is to let the glaze cool so that it’s still spreadable but not too hot (or it will melt your mousse layer).

Of course I got a bit impatient and poured the glaze on a bit too soon. Some of my mousse melted into the glaze (or vice versa) and I ended up with not the prettiest of top layers. To resolve my blunder, I melted some candy coating (in pink) and used it to create a squiggly design on the entire top of my cake. This effectively hid the “ugly melty spots” as I came to call them and gave my cake a very colourful and light look.

I used the remaining melted candy coating to pipe out musical symbols, which was a lot of fun. I let the cake and the symbols chill for several hours before trimming it. As careful as I was, parts of my cake were a bit uneven and I wanted a cake with perfectly even sides. So I trimmed off the uneven bits and thoroughly enjoyed eating them!

The rest of the cake was given a few final touches and photographed. I brought it to work the next day where everyone loved it. While it was sweet, the cake is not meant to be eaten in huge portions. A little goes a very long way.

Overall, I was very happy with my first attempt at Opéra Cake!

The most important thing I can tell you about this month’s challenge is that it’s dedicated to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com. Many of you know may know Barbara from her blog and many of you may also know her for her support and efforts for LiveSTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. As part of her efforts for LiveSTRONG Day, Barbara hosts A Taste of Yellow, which is an event that unites food bloggers everywhere in the fight against cancer.

Barbara was a member of the Daring Bakers for awhile but had to resign for personal reasons. But as Lis so eloquently put it, she’ll always be a Daring Baker because she represents the very qualities that we all work hard for: she’s is strong, she is passionate, she’s a fighter.

Barbara, this cake is for you!

Ciao!

The Daring Bakers’ Opéra Cake
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle’s and Timothy Moriarty’s Chocolate Passion.

For the joconde:

6 large egg whites, at room temperature
2 tbsp. (30 grams) granulated sugar
2 cups (225 grams) ground blanched almonds
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
6 large eggs
½ cup (70 grams) all-purpose flour
3 tbsp. (1½ ounces; 45 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Divide the oven into thirds by positioning a rack in the upper third of the oven and the lower third of the oven.

Preheat the oven to 425◦F. (220◦C).

Line two 12½ x 15½- inch (31 x 39-cm) jelly-roll pans with parchment paper and brush with melted butter.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (or using a handheld mixer), beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Add the granulated sugar and beat until the peaks are stiff and glossy. If you do not have another mixer bowl, gently scrape the meringue into another bowl and set aside.

If you only have one bowl, wash it after removing the egg whites or if you have a second bowl, use that one. Attach the paddle attachment to the stand mixer (or using a handheld mixer again) and beat the almonds, icing sugar and eggs on medium speed until light and voluminous, about 3 minutes.

Add the flour and beat on low speed until the flour is just combined (be very careful not to overmix here!!!).

Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the meringue into the almond mixture and then fold in the melted butter. Divide the batter between the pans and spread it evenly to cover the entire surface of each pan.

Bake the cake layers until they are lightly browned and just springy to the touch. This could take anywhere from 5 to 9 minutes depending on your oven. Place one jelly-roll pan in the middle of the oven and the second jelly-roll pan in the bottom third of the oven.

Put the pans on a heatproof counter and run a sharp knife along the edges of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Cover each with a sheet of parchment or wax paper, turn the pans over, and unmold.

Carefully peel away the parchment, then turn the parchment over and use it to cover the cakes. Let the cakes cool to room temperature.

For the soaking syrup:

½ cup (125 grams) water
⅓ cup (65 grams) granulated sugar
1 to 2 tbsp. of the flavouring of your choice (i.e., vanilla extract, almond extract, cognac, limoncello, coconut cream, honey etc.)

Stir all the syrup ingredients together in the saucepan and bring to a boil.

Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature.

For the buttercream (The recipe for the buttercream that is listed here is based on the original. When testing the buttercream, we tested a slightly modified version that had 2 cups sugar, ½ cup water and 1¾ cups butter. The eggs remained the same. We ended up with a very creamy buttercream. But we don’t want anyone to be afraid of our modified version so you have the option of using the original above or the quantities we’ve listed here in this note):

1 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar (Used to say 2 cups but should be 1 cup)
¼ cup (60 grams) water (Used to say ½ cup but should say ¼ cup)
seeds of one vanilla bean (split a vanilla bean down the middle and scrape out the seeds) or 1 tbsp. pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1¾ sticks (7 ounces; 200 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature (Used to say 1¾ cups of butter but it should be 1¾ sticks).
flavouring of your choice (a tablespoon of an extract, a few tablespoons of melted white chocolate, citrus zest, etc.)

Combine the sugar, water and vanilla bean seeds or extract in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat just until the sugar dissolves.

Continue to cook, without stirring, until the syrup reaches 225◦F (107◦C) (Note: The original recipe instructs to heat the syrup to 255◦F (124◦C). We heated it to 225◦F and it worked just fine. However, if you are concerned, then by all means heat your syrup to 255◦F.) on a candy or instant-read thermometer. Once it reaches that temperature, remove the syrup from the heat.

While the syrup is heating, begin whisking the egg and egg yolk at high speed in the bowl of your mixer using the whisk attachment. Whisk them until they are pale and foamy.

When the sugar syrup reaches the correct temperature and you remove it from the heat, reduce the mixer speed to low speed and begin slowly (very slowly) pouring the syrup down the side of the bowl being very careful not to splatter the syrup into the path of the whisk attachment. Some of the syrup will spin onto the sides of the bowl but don’t worry about this and don’t try to stir it into the mixture as it will harden!

Raise the speed to medium-high and continue beating until the eggs are thick and satiny and the mixture is cool to the touch (about 5 minutes or so).

While the egg mixture is beating, place the softened butter in a bowl and mash it with a spatula until you have a soft creamy mass.

With the mixer on medium speed, begin adding in two-tablespoon chunks. When all the butter has been incorporated, raise the mixer speed to high and beat until the buttercream is thick and shiny.

At this point add in your flavouring and beat for an additional minute or so.

Refrigerate the buttercream, stirring it often, until it’s set enough (firm enough) to spread when topped with a layer of cake (about 20 minutes).

For the ganache/mousse:

7 ounces white chocolate
1 cup plus 3 tbsp. heavy cream (35% cream)
1 tbsp. liquer of your choice (Bailey’s, Amaretto, etc.)

Melt the white chocolate and the 3 tbsp. of heavy cream in a small saucepan.

Stir to ensure that it’s smooth and that the chocolate is melted. Add the tablespoon of liqueur to the chocolate and stir. Set aside to cool completely.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whip the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream until soft peaks form.

Gently fold the whipped cream into the cooled chocolate to form a mousse.

If it’s too thin, refrigerate it for a bit until it’s spreadable.

If you’re not going to use it right away, refrigerate until you’re ready to use.

For the glaze:

14 ounces white chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ cup heavy cream (35% cream)

Melt the white chocolate with the heavy cream. Whisk the mixture gently until smooth.

Let cool for 10 minutes and then pour over the chilled cake. Using a long metal cake spatula, smooth out into an even layer.

Place the cake into the refrigerator for 30 minutes to set.

Enjoy!

For this week’s edition of Magazine Mondays, I bestowed the honour of “Chosen Recipe” on one that actually hasn’t been laying around my house for all that long.

Contrary to my culinary penchant for oohing and aahing over recipes in magazines and then letting them sit there for years before trying them, I actually decided to try a recipe from the May 2008 issue of Martha Stewart Living: Fava Bean Salad with Roasted-Garlic Vinaigrette.

Now Martha and I have had our moments. Some good. Some not-so-good. But when I saw this recipe, I just had a feeling that this one would find a home in the “good thing” pile (pardon the expression).

I’m happy to say I was not wrong. Beside the fact that the recipe is healthy (I usually regard this as a perk), it’s colourful and delicious and boasts what is quite possibly the most delicious vinaigrette I have ever made. DELICIOUS, I tell you. And you know the Cream Puff does not use all caps casually!

Ultimately you could make this salad with a variety of beans in the event you can’t find fava beans and while the corn left something to be desired (it’s obviously not corn season in my neck of the woods), overall the salad was bright and immensely satisfying. Please do try it.

Have a wonderful week, everyone!

Ciao!

Recipe: Fava Bean Salad with Roasted-Garlic Vinaigrette.

Yesterday, I wrote about the start of my annual attempt to tidy up and organize myself for the coming year.

I’ve continued that project today by going through the hundreds of food photos stored on my computer. I have a tendency to download photos and then just forget about them. Many of the photos aren’t very good so I finally went through them all and deleted those that weren’t of use to me. The rest I moved to CDs for storage. I’ve deleted them from my computer and now feel that I’m a bit more organized in that regard.

While going through my photos, I had the opportunity to look back on some memorable posts over the course of 2007.

Making croissants from scratch was pretty cool. I finally got to declare my desire to be Southern and I also declared my love of lemon.

The spring and summer brought with them some work opportunities, Dorie, a new appreciation for tea, a confession of love, blueberries, cupcakes and cheesecake.

September was poetic, October was orange and November was tempting.

December has been so sweet!

But of all the posts that I loved this year, my favourite was the one about the Queen of sweet crepe cakes. For me, it was a real accomplishment.

So my crepe cake is my contribution to the event being hosted by Zorra of Kochtopf and Sandra of Un Tocco di Zenzero. Zorra and Sandra had the idea to ask foodbloggers everywhere to submit their favourite recipe or post of 2007.

What a beautiful way to say farewell to all the indredible food we witnessed this year!

Ciao!

Before you start fretting that this is yet another food blog event, not to worry. Don’t get me wrong, I love food blog events but sometimes I have difficulty keeping track!

Magazine Mondays is more of a self-help tactic than anything else. A few months ago, I wrote about taking a huge step in letting go of so many recipes that I’d had for years and never tried. In my ongoing efforts to actually cook and bake rather than store recipes for all eternity, I came up with Magazine Mondays as a way to do that.

When possible, I’ll post a recipe (always on a Monday) from a magazine. I figure this will help me to actually get into the kitchen and try all those recipes that I’ve bookmarked.

If you’re interested in joining me, please do. This is a completely informal thing that I hope will help me to continue to manage all those magazine purchases!

For my inaugural Magazine Monday, I chose a recipe from the February 2007 issue of Gourmet Traveller. When I saw the cover of the magazine with a beautiful Zucchini and Feta Tart with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, I just had to buy it. And finally … I tried it! It was well worth it, too.

Welcome to Magazine Mondays! Have a great week everyone!

Ciao!

Zucchini and Feta Tart with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
Recipe here.

Technorati tags: magazine mondays, tart, zucchini, feta, cherry tomatoes

My apologies for the lack of posts around here.

It’s not that the Cream Puff has abandoned you or anything. It’s just that in all the recent heat and steam we’ve been experiencing lately, I’ve barely been able to muster the energy to lift a glass of iced tea to my lips.

Yes, it’s been that hot. Yes, it’s been that steamy. So much so that I suspect I may lose my title as honourary Southern Belle based on my inability to deal with it all.

What can I say? I’m a Northern girl at heart. I needs me my ice and snow!

But more than the steamy summer, I haven’t posted of late because, to be quite honest, I’ve had a bit of trouble letting go.

It was hard to let go of July and Lori Longbotham’s Luscious Berry Desserts (my Flavour of the Month for July).

It was hard to let go of sitting under the canopy in the yard as opposed to sitting in the basement in front of a computer.

It was just hard to let go.

And yet, in so many ways, July was about letting go. I hate to be the bearer of bad news to all you summer-lovers, but July’s end means that we’ve let go of the heart of summer. Sure most of August stretches before us and yes summer isn’t technically over until September. But you know once those school bells start ringing, it’s au revoir summer!

On a more personal level, July was the month that I let go of a lot of deadweight in the form of paper. I am embarrassed by the sheaves and sheaves of paper that I have been hoarding away in virtually every corner of my house. In the form of magazines, books, loose papers, they were everywhere! The arrival of my uncle from Italy and the impending arrival of two houseguests in the form of my Aunt D and my sweet cousin A from San Jose meant that it was time to take a serious look in all the cupboards and spooky places that I normally prefer not to look.

Food magazines galore.

Recipes galore.

Newspaper clippings of recipes galore.

All of it over every inch of this house. In every drawer, in every closet, in every cupboard, in every corner.

And the shame of it all is that in most cases, I’d barely even looked at any of these items in years. Case-in-point: last summer when we had the house painted, I packed away a stack of magazines and recipes in a large storage bin and shoehorned it into the closet.

“I’ll go through those as soon as the painting is done.”

Uh huh.

More than a year later, those very magazines and recipes in that very large storage bin remained buried at the bottom of the closet under a million other things.

Unlike other times, where I’ve merely paid lipservice to the act of truly cleaning and simply shuffled some papers here and stacked some more magazines there, it was time to truly take stock.

Why do I keep all these magazines? And why do I have all these loose bits of paper with recipes printed on them flying around my house? What is this all about?

As I sifted through the endless pile, I kept thinking to myself that I couldn’t possibly throw this recipe out or recycle that magazine. This is the 2002 issue of so-and-so that has that perfect recipe for watchamacallit that when I finally get around to making it will be the best thing ever.

And this faded piece of newsprint from 1992 has a recipe for baked you-knows that I’m going to make for whatshername’s party and wow everyone.

Oh, yes and there’s that post-it note with the recipe for that dish on it. It’s written in that horribly faded red ink and I’m probably going to have to hire an Egyptologist to decipher the hieroglyphics otherwise known as the instructions but that’s okay. When I finally do I’m going to cook up the dish of the century!

And so on. And so on. And so on.

A hundred best-chocolate-cakes ever. A thousand mouth-watering sugar cookies. A million mind-blowing apple pies. They were all there. Spread across my house like a trail of breadcrumbs.

And without thinking about it, I picked up all the bits of paper and put them in the recycling bin. I gathered all the magazines and brought them to work for my coworkers.

In one massive act of cleansing, I bid adieu to years worth of printed recipes and magazines.

Just like that. I let them all go.

Crazy of me? Perhaps.

But I think it’s more to do with the fact that it finally occurred to me that the best chocolate cake I will ever make is the one that I actually make. The imagination is delicious, but reality is even moreso.

It occurred to me that it was time to squelch the insecure little baker in me that keeps telling me I can bake a better this or a better that and just get down to the act of baking.

I let it all go.

I just let it all go. And I don’t regret it one bit.

Ciao!

Blueberry Cheesecake
From Luscious Berry Desserts by Lori Longbotham.

Note: My Flavour of the Month for August 2007 is Viana La Place’s lovely My Italian Garden. But before I get to that pretty little book, I had to say one last goodbye to Luscious Berry Desserts. Glory in the season’s most beautiful blueberries with this incredible cheesecake!

For the crust:

2 cups shortbread crumbs (about 20 to 25 shortbread cookies finely crushed)
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Generously butter a 9-inch springform pan.

Combine the shortbread crumbs and the butter in a bowl and mix well.

Pack the crumbs into the pan, making sure to spread them about a quarter of the way up the sides of the pan. Place the crust in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

For the filling:

3 8-ounce packages cream cheese, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups ripe blueberries

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Combine the cream cheese and the sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix at medium speed until smooth and fluffy (4 to 5 minutes).

Beat the eggs and the yolk in one at a time making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally.

Add the heavy cream, the lemon zest and juice, the flour, vanilla and the salt. Mix well.

Using a rubber spatula, carefully mix in the blueberries.

Pour the filling into the prepared pan. Place the pan in the oven for 15 minutes.

Lower the oven temperature to 200 degrees F. and bake for an hour. Once done, turn off the oven and open the door slightly. Leave the cheesecake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake and let it cool completely on a wire rack. Once cool, refrigerate the cheesecake overnight (or for about 8 hours) before serving.

Serve the cheesecake with a fruit sauce like raspberry curd.

Enjoy!

Technorati tags: cheesecake, blueberries

When I went to Miami in April, I had one of the best mojitos ever. It was perfectly limey, perfectly minty, perfectly rummy, perfectly sweet, perfectly tart and generally perfect.

It was so good that as I lay on the beach I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to capture the taste of that perfect mojito in cake form, or cookie form, or muffin form, or pie form, or custard form, or … cupcake form!

Yes!

Suddenly the idea of a mojito cupcake flitted into my head and I was consumed by it.

Until I had another mojito and went out to partake in Miami’s famous nightlife.

Let’s just say the mojito cupcake was quickly forgotten.

But as often happens in the life of an amateur baker, a baking idea lost in one place will be born again somewhere else. And so it was that the mojito cupcake returned to me when I read that Mary of the elegant and lovely Alpineberry had chosen Tropical Paradise as the theme for the 33rd instalment of Sugar High Friday.

The life of my mojito cupcake began with a cake that I have come to adore, as have many of my family members and friends who regularly make this cake. You may already be familiar with it as it made its rounds in blog world a few years ago. I’m talking about the now famous Rum Butter Cakes from the blog Gastronome.

Rather than making one bundt cake, as I usually do, I made 30 mini cupcakes and one cake in a loaf pan. For the cupcakes, I altered the rum syrup by infusing it with lime zest and mint, as both lime and mint are key components of the mojito.

After letting the syrup soak into the warm cupcakes, I let them cool completely, and then topped them with a frosting made of cream cheese, butter, icing sugar, loads of lime zest and a healthy dash of rum.

I could have stopped there but wanted to add another “tropical” angle so I made a batch of macadamia nut crackle from a recipe from Food & Wine. I topped each with cupcake with a bit of the crackle.

Now my mojito cupcakes were ready to meet the world.

My taste testers were some very discerning people, indeed. Included were Mama Cream Puff (back from Italy!), Uncle S, Uncle N, my little cousin D and my neighbour who is one of the very best home bakers that I know.

The reaction was unanimous: the mojito cupcake was spectacularly successful! While it wasn’t quite as boozy as its liquid counterpart, it did a good job of capturing all the flavours of one of my very favourite summer libations.

I’m so excited about this cupcake, that I’m going to add it to my repertoire of baked goods for my burgeoning business experiment. Hopefully the orders for this cupcake will start rolling in.

Ciao!

Mojito Cupcakes with Macadamia Nut Crackle
Adapted from various sources (see above).

Note: This recipe yielded 30 mini cupcakes and one loaf baked in a 9 x 5-inch pan. You can also bake this in a standard 10- or 12-cup Bundt pan, as the original recipe indicates. Of course you can also adapt it to fit whatever pan or vessel you choose.

The frosted cupcakes should be stored in the refrigerator and will keep for a few days. The unfrosted cupcakes or cake can be stored, well-covered, at room temperature and will stay fresh for a few days.

People often ask me where I find the tiny party cups that I use to make mini cupcakes. I buy mine from my local bulk food store, but you should be able to find them at any well-stocked kitchen store, cake decorating supply store or party supply store.

For the cupcakes:

1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 tbsp. dark rum
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Place a rack in the centre of the oven. If you’re making the entire recipe as mini cupcakes, put 60 mini party cups on two baking sheets (30 on each one - you will then have to have two racks in your oven to bake both sheets of cupcakes at the same time. Put one if the top third of the oven and one in the bottom third. Rotate the trays halfway through baking). If you’re only making half the recipe as mini cupcakes, then put 30 mini party cups on a baking sheet and then butter and flour a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan to bake the remainder of the batter as a loaf.

Combine the buttermilk, rum and vanilla extract. Set aside.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Sift and then set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and sugar. Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy (about 4 to 5 minutes).

Reduce the speed to low, and add the eggs one at a time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each addition.

With the mixer still on low speed, add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix well.

Add half of the buttermilk mixture and mix well, scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Mix for a minute or two.

Add another third of the dry ingredients (on low speed) and mix well.

Add the remainder of the buttermilk mixture, once again scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Mix for another minute or two.

Add the remainder of the dry ingredients (on low speed) and mix for a minute or two, until the batter is smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure that all of the flour has been incorporated.

Fill the mini party cupcakes halfway with batter until you’ve used it all up. If you’re only making 30 mini cupcakes, then fill the 30 cups and pour the rest of the batter into the loaf pan.

Bake the mini cupcakes for 25 minutes and then test for doneness by inserting a cake tester into the centre of the cupcakes. If it comes out clean, they’re done. If not, bake for another 5 minutes. In my oven, the mini cupcakes took about 28 minutes.

If you’re also baking the loaf, that will require more time. In my oven, the loaf took about 50 minutes.

Remove the cupcakes from the oven and let cook for 5 minutes before poking holes in them with a skewer or toothpick. Immediately spoon the rum syrup over the warm cupcakes and let them soak it all up. Once they’ve cooled completely, you can ice them with the lime and rum frosting.

For the rum syrup:

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup dark rum
2 or 3 pieces of lime zest
a few sprigs of fresh mint

In a small pot, combine the sugar, water and butter over medium-high heat.

Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring often.

Once the butter has completely melted and the sugar has dissolved, remove from the heat.

Carefully add the rum. The mixture will bubble and spurt so take care not to burn yourself.

Once you’ve mixed in all the rum, add the lime zest and mint and let the syrup infuse for 5 minutes before spooning over the cupcakes.

For the lime and rum frosting (this will frost 30 mini cupcakes - if you’re making 60 then you will have to double the recipe):

1 8-oz. package cream cheese, at room temperature
3/4 cup butter (1-1/2 sticks), at room temperature
1 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp. dark rum
zest of 3 limes

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese and butter at high speed for 5 minutes.

Reduce the speed to low and add the icing sugar. Mix for a minute to incorporate the sugar and then increase the speed to high again and mix for another minute or two. The frosting should be light and fluffy.

Turn off the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the rum and the lime zest and mix at medium speed until well incorporated.

The frosting should be used immediately so make it once your cupcakes have soaked up the syrup and are cool. You can spoon the icing on with an offset spatula or knife, or you can use a piping bag to pipe a pretty design.

For the macadamia nut crackle:

Please follow the directions for this garnish, which is from Food & Wine’s site. The recipe is located here.

Technorati tags: cupcakes, mojito, lime, mint, rum, sugar high friday, shf

It was bound to happen. It was only a matter of time before the Daring Bakers adopted a patron saint.

Saint Honoratus of Amiens was a bishop of the town of Amiens, located in the North of France. He is believed to have died on May 16th, 600 A.D. While it doesn’t appear that Saint Honoratus was into making panna cottas and baking pavlovas, those that followed him did build a church in his name. In 1400, the bakers of Paris created a guild based in the church named after Saint Honoratus. Every May 16th, a feast was held in his honour and to this day, May 16th remains Saint Honoré Day. But perhaps even more than the day, Saint Honoré is known for the cake named for him: Gâteau St. Honoré.

After last month’s crepe cake, the hosting duties for the Daring Baker monthly challenge fell to Helene of Tartelette and Anita of Dessert First, both very accomplished followers of St. Honoré. Accordingly, they chose to challenge the Daring Bakers to bake the very famous gâteau.

When I first learned of the challenge for May, I ran to my room, hid under the covers and immediately began praying to St. Honoré himself for strength. This cake, you must understand, is made of some very lofty elements. To begin with, you have puff pastry.

That’s homemade puff pastry.

The puff pastry is followed by a pastry cream, which is then followed by cream puffs. While pastry cream and cream puffs may not be so bad, did I mention that there’s homemade puff pastry?

Oh, yes. For good measure, throw in a bit of caramel.

But St. Honoré must have felt that I was worthy because he sent some inspiration. Surely, I can do this. I’ve made croissants from scratch for heaven’s sake! So I printed the recipe, read it through, felt better and then promptly forgot about it for three weeks. But Saturday morning, I awoke and immediately began to worry … and pray. A recipe that had seemed straightforward and manageable three weeks earlier, was suddenly quite daunting.

So let’s begin at the beginning.

I started with the puff pastry, which involved making a dough and then preparing a butter packet. I have decided that I very much like butter packets and that if someone wanted to give me the gift of a butter packet, I would consider it a great gift.

But back to the puff pastry.

After enclosing my butter packet in the dough, I began the process of rolling and turning. Turning the puff pastry dough means rolling it out to a certain length and width (20 inches by 9 inches), and then folding the dough up in thirds, the way you would fold a letter. The seam of the letter will be facing you. After refrigerating the dough to let the butter cool down a bit, you remove the dough and begin rolling it out again with the seam facing to the right. That’s called a turn.

After repeating that process five times, I had a rather lovely (if I may say so myself) packet of puff pastry, which I left in the refrigerator overnight.

Before going to bed, I also decided to get a start on the cream filling for the gâteau. Helene and Anita chose what is called Rapid Chiboust or Diplomat Cream. I have no idea why it’s called that but I have to say I found the Rapid Chiboust name very entertaining.

Every time someone asked me what I was doing I barked, “Do not bother me! I’m making Rapid Chiboust!” We Daring Bakers have to amuse ourselves somehow!

Any way, the cream was quite easy to pull together. It involved combining sugar, flour, salt, egg yolks, vanilla extract and whipping cream to which was added unflavoured gelatin. Just before filling the cream puffs and spreading the cream on the gâteau, I added stiffly beaten egg whites.

Allow me to say that this cream was divine! I had a lot left over, which I was sorely tempted to eat with a spoon!

On the morning that I was ready to assemble and bake the gâteau (okay I’m not kidding anyone … it was this morning), I divided my puff pastry packet in half and rolled that half into a 12-inch square. From that 12-inch square I cut out four 6-inch circles. While the circles chilled in the refrigerator, I made the pâte à choux and this is where I encountered my first problem.

Clearly I had angered St. Honoré because I ended up having to throw out my first batch of pâte à choux and make a second one. When I make cream puffs, I’m used to mixing butter, water and salt and letting it come to a boil. I then add flour, all at once, and begin mixing together the ingredients to form the dough. This particular pâte à choux recipe requires that the flour be added slowly. I ended up with a lot of lumps, which I had to try to smush with a wooden spoon.

I hate smushing.

To make matters worse, because the quantity of eggs listed in the ingredients list was shown as “1 cup of eggs or 240 ml of eggs”, against my better judgement I ended up beating eggs and actually measuring out the liquid amount. I was so flustered about this that I didn’t read the instructions properly and poured in all of the liquid at once. The eggs are to be added one at a time, which posed a bit of a problem in that it wasn’t clear how many eggs were required. Needless to say I ended up with a liquidy mushy mess, which I very gladly dumped in the food bin.

After starting again, I decided to add the eggs individually and beat the mixture until it looked like thickened mayonnaise (as the directions indicate). I actually only used 3 eggs and the pâte à choux looked great.

Moving on to the assembly of the gâteau, I piped four rings of pâte à choux onto the puff pastry circles and used the rest to make little cream puffs. This is where I made my second mistake. The recipe indicated that we should pipe four concentric rings on the puff pastry.

Now when the Cream Puff hears the word “concentric”, for some reason she thinks of math and the Cream Puff was never very good at math. From reading other Daring Bakers’ posts, I gather that what I was supposed to do is pipe four rings with pâte à choux leaving a gap between each ring so that the pastry cream could then fall into the gaps. I didn’t do this.

Hey. I wasn’t good at math alright!

I piped the rings so that they touched each other and was left with a border all around the edge of the puff pastry circle. I didn’t realize my error until after the puff pastry and cream puffs were baked so at that point I realized I’d have to do some improvising with either the pastry cream or some whipped cream.

Mistake aside, I was delighted with how the puff pastry circles baked up as well as the cream puffs. While I think I made my cream puffs a bit too small, they were a lovely colour and the puff pastry was, if I may say so myself, just gorgeous!

After letting everything cool down, I filled my cream puffs with the Rapid Chiboust (never get tired of saying that) and then spread as much of it as I could on the puff pastry rounds. Unfortunately because of the way that I piped the pâte à choux on, I couldn’t get a lot of cream on there or it would fall over the sides. This is likely why I had so much pastry cream left over.

Oh, well. Live and learn!

I placed everything in the refrigerator for a few hours and then finally set about the process of gilding the cream puffs with caramel. I’ve made caramel many times before and I’ve always made it the same way. I’ve cooked a bit of water with sugar until a molten liquid develops and it turns the shade that I’m looking for. In this case, the recipe indicated that we should just cook sugar in a pot.

I had some difficulty with this method as it seemed that the sugar turned dark right away. I frantically started stirring it so that it wouldn’t burn but then it clumped up. I had to add a bit of water to help it along. While this was very quick, I disliked not having the control over how dark the caramel turns as I do when I follow my usual method.

All in all, though, the caramel worked out well and dipping the cream puffs in the caramel was fun. Once done, I used the extra caramel to drizzle over the cream puffs and to attempt to make some spun sugar.

To assemble, I began by piping whipped cream sweetened with sugar all around the edge of the puff pastry (that had no pâte à choux on it). I followed this by piping larger rosettes on top of the pastry cream. I set one cream puff in each of the large rosettes. I also piped rosettes around the base of the gâteau. I garnished with more cream puffs and also with raspberries. I dropped a few raspberries into the centre of the gâteau (on the pastry cream) and topped with some of the spun sugar.

I was very happy with the end result, my mistakes notwithstanding. I thought my little cakes looked very elegant. As I stood back and surveyed my work, I felt that all the effort was worth it. I’m already looking forward to trying the gâteau again very soon.

I’d like to thank Helene and Anita for pushing the Daring Bakers to even greater heights this month. This challenge was stressful, tiring and complicated. I had to sand blast my kitchen counter to get rid of the hardened caramel and I somehow managed to get pastry cream into every tile groove and cranny. But it was all worth it.

Clearly my prayers were answered.

Ciao!

Note: Helene and Anita have decided to post a round up of the Daring Bakers’ accomplishments this month. They’ve divided the group so that they will each list links to half of the Daring Baker blogs so be sure to check in with them regularly to see what everyone else has done. For the recipe, you can also visit Helene’s blog as she has kindly listed it.

One more thing, membership for the Daring Bakers is closed for the month of June. So many of you have e-mailed us asking to join that we’ve had to close the doors. But for those of you that do want to join, don’t worry, July membership is open. If you’re interested, send an e-mail to my lovely co-founder Lisa (tesla67@roadrunner.com) of La Mia Cucina or to me (imellozzi@sympatico.ca).

Technorati tags: gateau st. honore, st. honore, puff pastry, cream puffs, caramel, daring bakers