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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Yeah, I’m way behind the curve on this one, but whatever. I’ve been reading for a while about the wonders of macarons (not to be confused with American macaroons). I finally bought some recently at La Baguette, a French cafe at the Stanford Mall. I’m sure they were somewhat (ok, hugely) inferior to the famous ones you find on the streets of Paris, but I thought they were still pretty tasty. They’ve been in the back of my mind for a while now of something I need to try, but they are notoriously difficult to get right. They must be mixed for exactly the right amount of time so that they have a perfectly frilly “foot” at the bottom, but are not too dense. Some say they must be left out for up to a couple hours before cooking to develop a “skin” to help form that beautiful domed shape and ruffled foot, etc., etc.

So when I finally decided to try my hand, I of course carefully looked back at all the detailed directions I had seen of what to do to produce the perfect macaron, right? No, of course not. At 10:00 pm on a recent Saturday, I felt a sudden urge to bake. I was getting started kind of late, so I didn’t want anything that would take too long, but any type of cookie I had made before just didn’t seem exciting enough. I was sure David Lebovitz would have a recipe for macarons, and of course he did. Last time I tried something from his site it turned out pretty well, and I had all the ingredients on hand, so I was good to go. These actually come together pretty quickly, so 45 minutes or so later (including cooling) I had myself some very un-authentic macarons. (Though apparently I should’ve let the flavors meld overnight instead of eating the entire plate that night … I’m only barely exaggerating.)

The good news? Despite my inattention to detail (the tops are peaked, they are too narrow and tall and shaped somewhat like acorns, many of them cracked on top, but miraculously, some of them do have a decent-looking foot) they still taste pretty delicious, even if they don’t look anything like they are “supposed to.” The even better news? I’m sure I’ll be trying these again (perhaps with a more creative flavor), and when I get it right, I’ll fill you in on the results!

If you want some more details on what to do to have adequately-tasting but ridiculous-looking macarons, here’s what I did wrong that I will correct next time:

• Since our freezer is still filled with Honey-Lavender-White Chocolate Opera Cake, I halved the recipe. This meant folding the dry ingredients into only one egg white, which was very difficult to do.
• Fold the ingredients together more thoroughly. I was super-worried about overmixing, but based on these tips, I think my batter was too stiff. (Hence, I ended up with the peaked-top acorn-shaped cookies.) Apparently the batter should “flow like magma”, not hold any shape you pipe it into exactly.
• Pipe out bigger circles. (This could’ve been partly from the too-stiff batter.) I realized after the fact that David says 1″ circles and about a tablespoon for each cookie. (I just read the 1″ part the first time.) I don’t know, maybe when you move to France your definition of an “inch” shifts. At any rate, my 1″ circles were way less than a tablespoon, and I think they should’ve been a bit bigger and also flatter. Though the almost-bite-size result was kind of cute.
• I used leftover ground almonds from the opera cake, which I realized later had a little bit of flour in them. I don’t know as much about baking chemistry as I would like, but my guess is that’s probably not kosher (sorry, I know that’s a terrible pun, I’ve been hanging around Matt too long), so next time I will add a bit of the powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the almonds from turning to butter.
• Let egg whites come to room temperature. I have no idea what effect it did or didn’t have on the end result (in fact I saw one recipe saying to keep the egg whites chilled), but next time I’ll follow what most recipes seem to say and use room temperature eggs.
• Don’t grab unsweetened instead of bittersweet chocolate from the pantry for the filling. (Yep, that’s how little attention I was paying. Amazing, huh?)

Well, it’s time for another Daring Bakers adventure, and what fun this one was! This month’s challenge was hosted by Daring Baker co-founders Ivonne of Cream Puffs In Venice and Lis of La Mia Cucina, with help from Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful. The challenge is dedicated to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com and the Taste of Yellow LiveSTRONG event. In addition to this challenge, this month was also exciting because it brought a new Daring Bakers’ website, including public baking forums which you, dear reader, should go check out.

But enough with the business. You want to hear about cake! This month’s challenge was an Opera Cake. Though Opera cakes are usually flavored with dark ingredients like coffee or chocolate, these Opera Cakes were to choose light spring colors and flavorings. I’d recently been remembering a delicious white chocolate, honey, and lavender terrine I had when Mom and I visited Provence, so I immediately decided those would be the flavors I would pick.

Since Matt was out of town on baking day, Mom came over to our apartment and made the cake with me. I was sure glad — we had a lot of fun, and nothing was that hard, but there were times it was busy and it was good to have two sets of hands. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of how this came out. Aside from not letting the ganache firm up enough so that the glaze melted it a little, the cake looks beautiful, and it tasted delicious as well. Maybe a tad on the sweet side, but what kind of a complaint is that?! I was particularly glad of how much the lavender flavor came out. I thought it might be too subtle, but instead it asserted its presence just enough. Thanks Ivonne, Lis, Fran, and Shea, for a fun and whimsical challenge! Be sure to check out all the other Opera Cakes with the DB blogroll!

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