April's Cheesecake Popsicles! by Les Daring Bakers

As promised yesterday...
The Daring Bakers' Cheesecake Popsicles.
This delicious treat is proudly brought to you by Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms (whose blog has a lovely fable about the whole experience), Deborah of Taste and Tell and the letter Q.
Check out one of their blogs for the recipe.
Désolée les filles, je n'ai pas le temps de traduire en Français cette fois-ci. Raison (en Anglais) à la fin de ce billet.

I'll let you guess the makeup of these little treats. Hint: if you say cheesecake and chocolate you're smokin' hot. It's Vanilla-flavored cheesecake (I didn't have time to be original this time, reason unveiled at the end of this post). This is a fantastic recipe, much better than most cheesecakes I've had. I may try it with a tad less sugar and half light cream cheese next time just as a cheesecake.
I think this is a perfect kind of party treat for kids' parties. The next time I have one to plan for, I will definitely make some of these.

The only thing I didn't do was add vegetable shortening to the chocolate so it set pretty fast which meant I had to move pretty quickly. Oh and I couldn't find lollipop sticks so at first I used cut straws, which were clearly not sturdy enough once capped by a cheesecake ball, so there are cut bamboo skewers inside the straws to stabilize the whole thing. Thanks to A. for saving me on that one by showing up with bamboo skewers just as I pulled them out of the freezer to coat them in chocolate.
And yes, what you see beading on them is water unfortunately, that was quicker than I expected. Sorry the pictures don't look so great because of it.

Decorations were whatever I had handy in the kitchen so mini crunchy chocolate balls, mini white chocolate chips, chocolate flakes, multi chocolate sprinkles, party bead sprinkles, and at the end I ran out of chocolate coating so I swirled it as decoratively as I could on the remaining cheesecake balls (if there be tasters who did not want chocolate coating, 'twould be perfect for them).
And now my dear friends, I must run off. Um, I'm getting married at the end of next month, that's the reason why I'm not around these days and have to be so short. In fact, I may just be able to post one more time before it happens and I probably won't be doing the DB Challenge next month. You understand don't you... Thanks for stopping by as always and check out the other Daring Bakers' Popsicle posts!

Perfect Party Cake - Le Parfait Gâteau de Fête

Hello hello, I know I am absent these days, but one thing still entices me enough to come out of my hiding place, and that would of course be the monthly Daring Bakers' Challenge. This month it was Dorie Greenspan's (I am not worthy) Perfect Party Cake from her book Baking: From my Home to Yours and was hosted by Morven of Food Art and Random Thoughts (you can see the full recipe on her website). I have to say I'm very grateful to Morven because she allowed us to pick whatever flavors we wanted this cake to be. The original recipe calls for it to be a lemon-raspberry cake and for a while I toyed with the idea of making it a chocolate-orange cake, but in the end, if you say lemon to me, I say blueberry. (This will come as no surprise to those of you who have read this blog before).

FR: Bonjour Bonjour, je sais que je suis absente ces jours-ci, mais quelque chose arrive encore à me faire sortir de ma tannière, et cela évidemment est le Défi mensuel des Pâtissiers Téméraires. Ce mois-ci c'était le Parfait Gâteau de Fête du livre Baking: From my Home to Yours de Dorie Greenspan et nôtre hôtesse était Morven du blog Food Art and Random Thoughts (Vous pouvez voir la recette entière sur son site). Je suis très reconnaissante à Morven de nous avoir laissé libre de choisir les parfums que nous voulions donner au gâteau. La recette originale fait appel à un gâteau au citron et à la framboise, et pendant un petit moment j'ai pensé à faire un gâteau au chocolat et à l'orange, mais en fin de compte, si on me dit citron, je réponds myrtille. (Ceci ne surprendra pas ceux d'entre vous qui ont déjà lu ce blog).

It's fairly straightforward. You make cake. You slice the cake horizontally. You make buttercream. You layer cake, preserves, buttercream, and finish it all off with more buttercream for the frosting (you can add chopped coconut on top of the frosting but I opted not to). Since the ever so wonderful Dorie talks about adding fresh fruit and substituting whipped cream for buttercream in the Playing Around section of the recipe, I decided to layer lemon cake with blueberry preserves, whipped cream instead of buttercream, and fresh blueberries, then frost the whole thing with her lemon buttercream, which is a brilliant recipe by the way, my favorite so far and lighter somehow than the buttercream recipe for the Yule Log we did in December.

FR: C'est assez simple. On fait du gâteau. On coupe le gâteau en tranches horizontales. On fait de la crème au beurre. On superpose des couches de gâteau, de confiture, et de crème au beurre, et on finit le tout en glaçant le gâteau avec de la crème au beurre (on peut ajouter de la noix de coco sur la crème au beurre mais j'ai décidé de ne pas le faire). Puisque la merveilleuse Dorie suggère d'ajouter des fruits frais et de remplacer la crème au beurre par de la crème fouettée dans sa section sur comment jouer avec la confection de ce gâteau, j'ai décidé de superposer du gâteau au citron avec de la confiture de myrtilles, de la crème fouettée plutôt que de la crème au beurre, des myrtilles fraîches, et de glacer le tout avec de la crème au beurre parfumée au citron, dont la recette est brillante d'ailleurs, et que je préfère à la recette de crème au beurre que nous avons utilisé dans nôtre bûche de Noël.

Hitches: For those of you who know my crazy oven saga from the French Bread we made last month, well it turns out that this time the oven was too hot and my cake did not rise as much as it should have but domed and cracked a little at the top. Although I beat the batter quite sufficiently for it to be as light and airy as it should have been, since it was not, I think perhaps next time I might try beating the egg whites until they are quite fluffy before folding in the buttermilk, which should hopefully help to attain the sponge-cake like texture I was seeking (this time I just had to make twice the batter). No matter, A. said he actually preferred the crumb the way it was, that is quite a bit denser than it should have been.

Problèmes: Pour ceux d'entre vous qui connaissez l'histoire de mon four farfelu durant le dernier défi du pain à la Française, et bien ce mois-ci mon four a décidé d'être trop chaud et mes gâteaux n'ont pas gonflé autant qu'ils auraient du et étaient craquelés à la surface. En dépit du fait que j'ai battu l'appareil bien suffisamment pour qu'il soit léger et mousseux, puisque les gâteaux n'étaient pas très légers, je crois que la prochaine fois je battrais les blancs en neige pas ferme avant d'ajouter le babeurre, ce qui devrait je l'espère rendre le gâteau prôche de la texture d'une génoise (cette fois-ci j'ai fait deux fois plus de pâte). Ce n'était pas grave, A. m'a dit qu'il préférait le gâteau un peu plus dense comme celui-ci l'était.

I cut the cake in half before taking pictures of it so that the layers would be apparent. Anyway my decoration was so simple that it's quite easy to imagine what the whole cake looked like. The little sugar lion was an Easter gift from a dear friend and seemed appropriate to denote the lemon flavor in the cake.

FR: J'ai coupé le gâteau en deux avant de prendre des photos pour que les couches soient apparentes. D'ailleurs ma décoration était tellement simple que c'est très facile d'imaginer l'apparence du gâteau entier. Le petit lion en sucre était un cadeau de Pâques d'une très bonne amie et était de la bonne couleur pour noter le parfum citronné du gâteau.

If any of you know how to slather buttercream on a cake so that it is perfectly smooth-looking (I'm looking at some of your cakes, OTHER DARING BAKERS), would you give me tips on how to achieve that?

For more Perfect Party Cake Deliciousness, visit the other Daring Bakers here.

FR: Si l'un d'entre vous sait comment étaler la crème au beurre pour qu'elle ait une apparence parfaitement lisse (je regarde certains de vos gâteaux, VOUS AUTRES PATISSIERS TEMERAIRES), pourriez-vous me donner des astuces pour cela?

Pour d'autres Parfait Gâteau de Fête, allez voir les autres Pâtissiers Téméraires ici.

11th Hour Bread - Le Pain de la 11eme Heure

As this happened live in English, I think it's best if I just leave it that way for the sake of authenticity...

BILLY: Well here we are Lauren! The red carpet at the February 2008 Daring Bakers’ Challenge! The bakers are arriving as we speak, brandishing their baguettes, batards, boules and other French bread forms in the air!

LAUREN: I’m sure Joan will have lots to say about these various shapes tomorrow in the fashion rundown. This is very exciting! Some of these breads have sandwich fixings or various types of cheeses accompanying them. How do you think the Bakers decided what to pair with their bread, Billy?

BILLY: I don’t know Lauren, let’s grab one of these guys or gals and ask them what went into their choices!

Pulls random Daring Baker out of the crowd. Unfortunately , she’s looking a little dishevelled and not quite as nice as the batards she’s holding in her arms. She doesn’t appear to have any accompaniments to her bread either. But they have to shove someone in front of the camera so they go with it.

BILLY: Hello! Nice to see you here with us! Tell us who you are and what you made!

HILDA: Uh..Hi, I’m Hilda and I chose to make the three batards out of the options available to us this month.

LAUREN: A lot of the other bakers seem to have foods to accompany their breads but you don’t, do you want to tell us about that?

HILDA: Well...I made these at the very last minute, the 11^th hour, as it were, so I didn’t really have time to think about what to accompany them with. But my boyfriend suggested we slice them up, dry them in the oven and make bruschettas out of them. So that’s probably what we’ll do when I get home from here.

BILLY (without the slightest hint of sincerity): That sounds fantastic!! I’d love to get my hands on some of those! Can I go home with you?!

Hilda gives him a strange look right around then and he hands the questioning over to Lauren.

LAUREN: Tell us Hilda, what goes into the making of Julia Child’s French Bread?

HILDA: Well, I could give you the fourteen page recipe, or do you want me to give you a rough breakdown of what I did?

LAUREN: Fourteen pages! Oh dear! Why don’t you just tell us what you did.

HILDA: OK, you mix the flour, yeast, water and salt together, which was pretty simple, except I think there’s a little too much salt in this recipe, and probably because mine didn’t puff up a lot, the taste of yeast was very present too. I probably did something wrong though. And then I’m not sure if I added too little or too much flour to get it to the right consistency before letting it rise. The first rise went fine but you know how when you get dough out of a recipient, you can have that moment where you’re not sure if the dough is still too sticky and maybe you did something wrong and should have added more flour?

Lauren stares back at her blankly. No, she hasn’t had that moment. Hilda stares back and decides to go on.

HILDA: Anyway, the clincher for me in this recipe was really how to do the kneading and the shaping of the bread. I had to go look at these PBS Videos of this woman named Danielle Forestier making French Bread with Julia Child and she said that we had to knead the dough, this particular way I’d never seen before, 850 times—

LAUREN (interrupting): --850 times! Did you knead this bread 850 times?!

HILDA: Yes Lauren, I did. I kneaded this bread 850 TIMES. Let me say that again for all the viewers out there, I KNEADED THIS BREAD 850 TIMES.

LAUREN: You must have thought your arms were going to fall off.

HILDA: Yes, as a matter of fact, I did think my arms were going to fall off when I KNEADED THIS BREAD 850 TIMES. But on the other hand, I figured if the bread ended up failing completely, I wouldn’t be able to think it was because I hadn’t kneaded it 850 times, because... I did...KNEAD IT 850 TIMES. Anyway, I watched the videos for the shaping too and that went pretty well, and then I let them rise under a cloth, but before I shaped them I think I let the dough rise too long the second time because of the disaster.

LAUREN: Disaster?

HILDA: Yes, see we just moved into a new house with really old crummy appliances, so the kitchen’s being entirely redone, so I was cooking in the house we were in temporarily while we were waiting to move into the new one, and I realized that the oven wasn’t heating up beyond 340°F and you need to cook the bread at 450°F. And this is in the middle of the night because I started my bread so late in the day.

LAUREN: What did you do?

HILDA: I panicked. And then I realized that the broiler heated up more , even though my oven thermometer had just decided to stop working so I couldn’t figure out what temperature it was at, but at least I knew from my digital meat thermometer that it was hotter than the maximum measurement the digital thermometer could go to which is 400°F. So I decided to wing it with the broiler, and this is the result. I dumped water in the bottom of the broiler and brushed the bread like the recipe said to, and hoped for the best.

LAUREN (trying to sound sincere): What an exciting story! And here you are, they look ok.

HILDA: They turned out ok I think, they didn’t really develop the big air bubbles they were supposed to and they were a little dense, but then again once I’d shaped them they didn’t really rise to three times their size either before I baked them. I think when I was running around measuring oven temperatures and looking for a solution to my oven issue, I left them to rise too long before shaping them. I don’t know, it’s all a mystery really. They’re a little too yeasty and salty tasting but that’s probably because I did something wrong, but I’m just glad I tried to do it anyway, in the spirit of being a Daring Baker.

LAUREN (totally insincere now): We’re so happy you did too! Another Daring Baker here at the ceremony tonight!

HILDA: Yeah, I recommend looking for our co-hosts Breadchick Mary of the blog The Sour Dough and Sara of the blog I like to Cook because I’m sure their bread is brilliant, but you should also really look around at all the other Daring Bakers here tonight because everyone who participates does a fabulous job.

LAUREN: Thank you for your time Hilda! Enjoy the Ceremony tonight! Turns to the camera: When we come back, we’ll be taking a look at our instant and rapid rise yeast nominees and interviewing some bakers with very unusually shaped bread this evening. All that and more when we return to the February 2008 Daring Bakers' Challenge! Stay tuned!

Tarte au Citron Meringuée aka LMP - DB January

I know I know... I haven't been posting. Mea Culpa. Life is a little crazy ridiculous right now with all sorts of developments that would take so long to explain here that I simply don't. But one thing never changes, and that is the Daring Bakers' monthly challenge. This month, Jen of The Canadian Baker challenged us to make a Lemon Meringue Pie with the pie portion of the recipe courtesy of Wanda's Pie in the Sky by Wanda Beaver, 2002, and the Tartlet recipe courtesy of Ripe for Dessert, 2003 by our favorite web chef David Lebovitz. You can see the full recipe on Jen's website.
Actually, you've already seen me make lemon tartlets without meringue on top, so for me this recipe was primarily a variation on the methods I normally use. I didn't want to get butter and/or sugar on my camera so I didn't take any pictures while I was making the dough; then I was afraid of pouring water or something else on it while making the filling, so the camera didn't appear in the kitchen until all the elements were ready for assembly.

Le French: Je sais je sais... je n'ai pas écrit de billet depuis un moment. Mea Culpa. Mon existence est un peu folle et dans tous les sens en ce moment et ça mettrait trop longtemps à expliquer ici alors je n'explique pas. Mais une chose ne change pas, c'est le défi mensuel des Pâtissiers Téméraires. Ce mois-ci, Jen de The Canadian Baker nous a défié de faire une tarte au citron meringuée avec les recettes suivantes: La recette pour la garniture de Wanda's Pie in the Sky de Wanda Beaver, 2002, et la recette de la pâte à tarte de Ripe for Dessert, 2003 par le chef pâtissier David Lebovitz. Vous pouvez voir la recette sur le site de Jen.
En fait vous m'avez déjà vu faire de la tartelette au citron sans meringue, donc cette recette pour moi était sûrtout une variante sur les méthodes que j'utilise normalement. Je ne voulais pas mettre du beurre et du sucre partout sur mon appareil photo alors je n'ai pas pris de photos pendant que je faisais la pâte; puis j'avais peur de verser de l'eau ou quelque chose d'autre dessus en préparant la garniture, alors l'appareil n'est apparu dans la cuisine que quand les éléments étaient prêts à être assemblés.

As you can tell, I made tartlets with molds, free-form tartlets, and mini-tartlets. David Lebovitz's dough tasted good but I found it harder to roll out to fit the molds and that it had more of a tendency to become gluten-ish and elastic than my fetish dough recipe, that of my boyfriend Pierre Hermé (don't tell A.).

FR: Comme vous pouvez le voir, j'ai fait des tartelettes avec des moules, des tartelettes sans forme particulière et des mini-tartelettes. La pâte de David Lebovitz avait bon goût mais je l'ai trouvé moins facile à étaler dans les moules et ayant plutôt tendance à devenir rapidement élastique et épaisse que ma pâte fétiche, celle de mon boyfriend Pierre Hermé (ne le dites pas à A.).

The lemon filling was pretty easy to prepare. It was the first time I was preparing a lemon cream that was primarily made up of water, lots of egg yolks, corn starch and very little butter. Generally, I make PH's lemon cream, which is essentially made up of butter and lemon. I know, I'm obsessed.

FR: La garniture a été assez facile à préparer. C'était la première fois que je préparais de la crème au citron essentiellement composée d'eau, avec beaucoup de jaunes d'oeufs, de la maizena et très peu de beurre. Généralement, je fais la crème au citron de PH, qui est sûrtout composée de beurre et de citron. Je sais, je suis obsédée.

Perhaps because I haven't made any French meringue recently, having made only Swiss meringue since the yule log, the meringue didn't appear very stiff to me; maybe I beat it too much, or maybe not enough, I'm not exactly sure. But I still had a good time decorating the tartlets.
The best part of the whole process was using my brand new mini-blowtorch which is, as I said to Meeta, my new favorite kitchen gadget.

FR: La meringue, peut-être parce que je n'ai pas fait de meringue française depuis un moment, n'ayant fait que des meringues suisses depuis la bûche, ne me semblait pas très ferme; peut-être l'ai-je trop battu, ou peut-être pas assez, je ne sais pas exactement. Mais je me suis quand même bien amusée à décorer les tartelettes.
Le clou de l'opération a été l'usage de ma nouvelle mini-torche de cuisine qui est, comme je l'ai dit à Meeta, mon nouveau gadget de cuisine préféré.

Overall, I found the dough to be pretty good but I still prefer PH's recipe with almond meal, an egg, icing sugar, a little more butter, a little less flour, etc...
The lemon cream was good too, particularly because it was pretty tart but, I know you already know what I'm going to say, I still prefer the coronary available to me with PH's lemon cream recipe, which tastes better in my opinion.
And I think that next time I'll make a Swiss meringue so that it's stiffer and that the egg whites are cooked.
In any case, it all disappeared very quickly, which is always a good sign...
I hope you'll visit the other Daring Bakers daring creations.

FR: En tout, j'ai trouvé que la pâte était pas mal mais je préfère la recette de PH avec de la poudre d'amandes, un oeuf, du sucre glace, un peu plus de beurre, un peu moins de farine, etc...
La crème au citron était bonne elle aussi, en particulier parce qu'elle était assez acide mais, je sais que vous savez déjà ce que je vais dire, je préfère la crise cardiaque disponible avec la crème au citron de PH, qui a plus de goût en ce qui me concerne.
Et je pense que je ferais une meringue suisse la prochaine fois pour qu'elle soit plus ferme et que les blancs d'oeufs soient cuits.
En tout cas, tout est parti très vite, ce qui est bon signe...
J'espère que vous rendrez visite aux autres Pâtissiers Téméraires pour voir leurs créations.

Bonne Année! - Happy New Year!

Chers ami(e)s,

Ceci juste pour vous remercier d'être passés me voir de temps en temps cette année 2007 et des nombreux gentils mots que vous m'avez laissé ici. J'ai créé ce blog il y a 6 mois pas forcément convaincue que je serai encore en train de l'écrire maintenant, mais les rencontres que j'ai fait grâce à ce blog, et les contacts humains permis par un mode qui parait être complètement impersonnel, continuent à me convaincre de ne pas arrêter.
Je voulais simplement vous remercier pour vôtre temps, car je sais qu'il est précieux, et vous souhaiter une très bonne année 2008 pleine de bonnes choses pour vous et vos proches.




Dear Friends,

This is just a little note to thank you all for stopping by from time to time during 2007 and for all the nice comments that you've left me here. I started this blog 6 months ago not totally convinced that I would still be writing it now, but the people I've met through this blog, and the human contacts I've made through what would appear to be a completely impersonal mode of communication, continue to convince to keep going.
So I just wanted to thank you for your time, which I know is precious, and to wish you a very Happy New Year 2008 full of good things for you and your loved ones.