Hello hello, I have not fallen off the face of the earth, I got married, which is pretty much the same thing for most people, but not for me oh no. There was just a very dynamic set of events leading up to it and following it, along with a definite measure of uncertainty as to whether it was actually going to happen all the way until a couple of days before it did happen...(I'd tell you all about it, but really, you don't want to know). But it's all done now, and I have eighty million new things to deal with at the moment, still between continents, countries, houses, etc... but I wanted to come back here -my little interwebs home- and say hello, and tell you all that I miss you and that I miss baking (and cooking too, but really I'm just a closet baker, and luckily for me, A. aka the hubby, loves to cook every day, and even more luckily, is a really good cook) and to let you know that I will be around a little more from now on, at least I hope, in between every other thing.
For now I'll just leave you with this date cake recipe because I love dates, and I love cake, and this is actually a very light cake because it's basically a yogurt cake with dates and a honey coulis. It's gone pretty quickly every time I make it because it feels totally guilt-free.
Françaises, Français -Cette recette est une fiche-cuisine de ELLE (numéro 3193), honteusement arrachée dans la salle d'attente du médecin, mais je n'ai aucun remords... (Titre de la fiche - biscuit dattes et sésame, coulis de miel).
Pour le Gateau/For the Cake:
- 100g de dattes moelleuse/ 3.5oz fresh dates
Les dattes peuvent être remplacées par des cranberries ou des raisins secs / cranberries or raisins can be substituted for the dates
- 3 oeufs / 3 eggs
- 150g de sucre semoule / 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 yaourt au lais de brebis / 1 ewe's milk yogurt (or whatever you want to use)
- 200g de farine / 1 2/3 cup flour
- 1 sachet de levure chimique / 1 packet baking powder (usually this is 11g in France meaning it would be just a little less than 2 1/2 tsp or just over 3/4 tbsp)
- 2 cuillerées à soupe de graines de sésame noir et blanc / 2 tbsp black and white sesame seeds
- 4 cuillerées à soupe d'huile d'olive peu fruitée / 4 tbsp lightly flavored olive oil
Pour le Coulis/For the Coulis:
- 100g de miel / 1/3 cup honey
- 5cl de jus de citron / 3 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
- 5cl d'eau / 3 1/2 tbsp water
- 1 cuillerée à soupe de graines de sésame doré / 1 tbsp golden sesame seeds
1. Allumez le four à 175°C (th. 5). Beurrez un moule à manqué de 22cm de diamètre. Dénoyautez les dattes et coupez-les en petits morceaux.
Turn the oven on to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch cake pan. Remove the pits from the dates and chop the dates into little pieces.
2. Cassez les oeufs dans une terrine et ajoutez le sucre. Battez rapidement au fouet à main afin que le mélange blanchisse. Ajoutez l'huile et le yaourt, sans cessez de fouetter.
Break the eggs into a bowl and add the sugar. Beat quickly with a hand beater so that the batter whitens and thickens. Add the olive oil and the yogurt while beating.
3. Tamisez la farine et la levure au-dessus de la terrine. Mélangez, puis ajouter les dattes et les graines de sésame noir et blanc.
Sift the flour and baking powder into the batter. Mix together, then add the dates and the black and white sesame seeds.
4. Versez la préparation dans le moule. Glissez au four et laissez cuire 30-35mn, jusqu'à ce que le biscuit soit blond.
Pour the batter into the pan. Put in the oven and let bake for 30-35mn, until the cake is golden.
5. Préparez le coulis: versez le miel dans une casserole, laissez-le légèrement caraméliser, puis ajoutez le jus de citron et autant d'eau. Mélangez et ajoutez les graines de sésame doré.
Prepare the coulis: pour the honey into a small saucepan, let it slightly caramelize, then add the lemon juice and the water. Mix together and add the golden sesame seeds.
6. Laissez reposer le biscuit 5mn, puis démoulez-le. Servez-le tiède ou froid, nappé de coulis.
Let the cake rest for 5mn out of the oven, then unmold it. Serve lukewarm or cold, drizzled with coulis.
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!
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.
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 11th 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!
