This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day 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.

We had several options for how to treat this challenge. We could make a traditional tuile — a French almond cookie shaped over a rolling pin to resemble the roof tile for which it is named. We could also make a chocolate cookie version, or a chocolate version that is more like a candy, made of just melted dark chocolate and ground almonds. We needed to choose one of these batters, shape it, and then serve it with “something light.”

I’ve made one version of tuiles on the site previously, which I shaped as cups to serve ice cream. This month, I ran out of time to try one of the true cookie versions of the tuiles, so I decided to go with the simpler chocolate version — just melt some chocolate, mix in some ground almonds, pipe into the desired shape, and then lay over a rolling pin to curl. Inspired by Karen, I thought I’d make them butterfly shaped. I didn’t have the materials to make a stencil like she did, but I thought a butterfly was simple enough I could freehand it. Boy was that a bad idea! Because of the almonds, the batter is a little thick, making it hard for me to pipe or spread it evenly, and I’m not very well-practiced at piping anyway. My plan was to make a butterfly, then let it cool kind of wedged between two glasses so that it’s wings curled up. Well, the few times I could actually get something shaped sort of like a butterfly, I messed it up while I was trying to curl it. In the end, I decided to just make round tuiles and shape them over a rolling pin. They weren’t as pretty as I hoped, but they still tasted good. Hopefully, soon I’ll have some more time and will get a chance to try making some stencils and trying some of the many elegant ways of shaping tuile cookies.

For my “something light” to serve them with, I combined two recipes from La Tartine Gourmande to make a raspberry mousse. This was delicious with the dark chocolate, and definitely something I will try to make again. (Don’t worry, I used frozen raspberries so as not to pay $10 for a half-pint of out of season, low on flavor berries!) I think it was actually relatively light in fat, and it definitely tasted appropriately light (but still delicious!) for cutting back in January!

Before I share the recipes, I must remind you — check out what the other Daring Bakers have been up to this month. And thanks again to our hosts, Karen and Zorra!

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I know it’s January and everyone has New Year’s Resolutions to lighten up and cut back on the sweets.  I know I do too — however, you won’t be able to find whole cranberries much longer.  In fact, it may already be too late!  We were able to find a couple bags of cranberries in the freezer section at the grocery store this weekend, and maybe you will be so lucky, too.  And if so — you should rush out and make this tart, as soon as possible.

Fresh cranberries have a very limited season, and so they are only available around the holidays.  They freeze very well, and in fact will last for months in your freezer.  For some reason though, it’s hard to find them even frozen except in November and December, so if you’re still able to find them, grab as many bags as your freezer will hold, and they’ll last you into next summer!  I forgot to do stash up this year, and was afraid I’d missed them all, so I was very excited to find them when I was buying some other frozen fruit this weekend.

Matt and I made this Cranberry Pecan Frangipane Tart for his family over the holidays.  I’ve mentioned her before, and I’ll do it again — Deb over at the Smitten Kitchen hasn’t led me wrong yet.  I’ve made more of her recipes than I can keep track, and I’ve got an even longer list of things to try.  (Ok, I admit there was one dud — but even that tasted good but was just a pain to cook.)  So why are you still here?  Go on over to Deb’s place and make yourself a cranberry pecan frangipane tart.  And if you can’t find fresh cranberries, grab the ingredients for whatever else you find there — I guarantee you it’ll be delicious!

I thought I posted this a week ago, on time for the challenge, but for some reason it seems that it disappeared for a while.  So here it is again, now very late!

For Thanksgiving this year, we decided to go a little less traditional than usual. There were only four of us — my parents’ and Matt and me — so we realized that if we did our usual cook a turkey plus a whole bunch of side dishes plus two pies, we’d be eating the leftovers for weeks. More details on how we decided to change it up will be coming in the next couple days. But to finish off the meal, I made a pear cranberry pie and this month’s Daring Bakers’ recipe — a caramel cake, with the recipe from Shuna Fish Lydon of eggbeater.

In fact, I had my doubts about this cake. I tend to like cakes with stronger flavors, but this cake is more subtle, with a caramel syrup to flavor the cake itself, and brown butter and more caramel syrup to flavor the frosting. I was also worried that all that caramel might just make the cake overly sweet, and after what I knew would be a big meal, I wasn’t sure we would want something too cloying. Also, there were warnings from Shuna that previous bakers had found this cake tricky — she says that “getting this cake to bake is about balancing fat with acid and protein JUST RIGHT”. And then, when I made the caramel syrup, I reduced it too much, so I’m sure I ended up adding less moisture to the cake than I should’ve, since the syrup was so thick.

However, I needn’t have worried at all. This cake was really delicious! It was sweet enough, but it wasn’t at all cloying as I had feared. The texture is really nice — somewhat dense, with a pretty tight crumb, and also very moist. And the brown butter frosting was delicious. Cooking the butter first really adds subtlety to the flavor of the frosting; I will remember that trick in the future. And I just frosted the cake with a pretty thin layer on the top, so that helped keep it from getting too sweet as well. (Need to think of a use for a bunch of leftover frosting…) This cake was definitely a success and one I would make again.

The only thing I would do differently is in making the caramel syrup. I would cook the sugar a little longer — it didn’t get quite dark enough, but I’m always scared I’m going to burn sugar — and I wouldn’t reduce it as long so that it wasn’t quite so thick. I think if the caramel cooked a little longer, the flavor would be more pronounced in the final cake. Overall, I highly recommend this cake. Despite Shuna’s warnings, this cake came together pretty easily for me, with delicious results!

So enthusiastic thanks to Dolores, Alex, and Jenny for choosing this recipe, and to Shuna for her multitude of advice on making her cake. And check out the blogroll to see everyone else’s caramel cake.

Oh, and go here for the recipe … Don’t leave out the browned butter frosting. You won’t be sorry.

So in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve gotten a bit behind on my blogging events. I missed last month’s Daring Baker’s event (though that Filbert Gateau sounded delicious, I just ran out of time), and I’m several weeks behind on Whisk Wednesdays, too. (I do have several Whisk events that I’ve cooked but haven’t found time to write up yet.) Part of my problem lately has also been that our camera isn’t working right — more on that later, but that’s why the pictures this time are not quite up to par, and why everything was taken with a flash. However, I was very excited to participate in this month’s challenge — Chocolate Eclairs, with a recipe from Pierre Hermé.

From reading the other posts that are up so far, it sounds like quite a few Daring Bakers had previously mastered eclairs and didn’t find this to be too much of a challenge. I’d never made choux paste (pâte à choux) before though, so I was pretty psyched to try it out. For this challenge, we were supposed to use at least Pierre Hermé’s recipe for the choux paste, and then at least one other chocolate element: chocolate pastry cream and/or a chocolate glaze on top. I went with the chocolate glaze, but stuck with a more traditional vanilla pastry cream (custard) filling (recipe from Joy of Cooking), as I thought both chocolate elements might be a bit over the top. (And, honestly, I just didn’t have enough chocolate in my stash — GASP! — and didn’t want to go to the grocery store.) I decided to make mini éclairs, again because I think a whole one can be too rich, so I now have a nice stash of bite-sized éclairs in my freezer, you know, for unexpected guests, or late night chocolate cravings.

As I said, this was my first time making any kind of cream puff dough, so I was thrilled when my éclairs actually puffed up as they should. There might have even been some dancing around the kitchen, though you’ll have to ask Matt about that, as I admit to nothing. Really, the only part about this recipe that was a bit challenging is that I under-filled the bottoms of my éclairs a bit, and so they wouldn’t always keep their tops on (how rude!). Other than that, the filling and the glazing was a bit tedious, but everything was pretty successful, and the finished products were mighty tasty!

Thanks to Tony Tahhan and MeetaK at What’s for Lunch, Honey? for hosting this month. If you want the recipe we used, I’ll link to it on someone else’s blog once a few more posts are up. (Most of it is in the pictures below actually, though if you want to make them you might want a few more details.) And, as always, check out the blogroll to see how everyone else fared!

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When we had Mom and Dad over for dinner last week, I was planning to make this rhubarb ginger galette that Garrett McCord guest authored on Simply Recipes. However, when I started cutting up the rhubarb, I realized that some of it had gone bad, and I didn’t have enough fruit to make it, so I ended up using about 1/3 apricots which Mom had brought us from the tree at her house. I also neglected to buy ginger root, so I substituted a bit of ground ginger instead, which I’m sure wasn’t as gingery, but was still delicious.

A galette is a sort of a pie without the pie pan, so the edges are just folded up to hold in the fruit. (The word galette can also mean a crepe filled with savory filling, and often using a buckwheat dough.) The apricots and rhubarbs were a delicious combination. I know strawberry is the more traditional accompaniment to rhubarb, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually had it, but it’s never appealed to me. It just seems like strawberries would be too sweet to pair with rhubarb. I’m used to the pies my mom always makes my dad on his birthday with just straight rhubarb, nice and tart. However, rhubarb and apricots do make for a nice pair. The apricot is just sweet enough, but with plenty of that great, mouth-puckering rhubarb flavor still shining through. Delicious! As you can see, we gobbled this one up too quickly for me to get any pictures except of the one leftover piece. I ate it for dessert a couple days later, but I must say, it would’ve made an excellent breakfast, too.

What kind of filling do you like in your fruit pies?

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