Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Croissants!

The Daring Bakers go retro this month!  Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

YUSSS!  I’ve been wanting to make croissants for a long time but needed something to get me motivated to do so.  This is a perfect example of procrastination paying off: “make puff pastry” has been on my list of things to do before turning 30, but that hadn’t even been enough to make me do it yet. Croissant dough is technically puff pastry with yeast and sugar, by the way, so this totally counts.

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Marquise on Meringue!

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt.  They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise.  The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

Are you guys wearing your fancypants??  You’re going to need them for this dessert.  It’s famous, so you don’t want to be under-dressed.  That would be rude. What do your fancypants look like?  If I could design the pair in my mind, they would be purple, sparkly, and with a ruffly butt.  Totally class, right?  For some reason stirrups keep wanting to bombard my vision, but I think I’m going to pass on those.

Right.  So this dessert has kind of a lot of components, each requiring its own set of steps.  It was way overwhelming at first, but after reading over things a few times along with all the questions others were asking/answering in the DB forum, I realized that it wouldn’t be difficult, just time-consuming.  Definitely an exercise in planning, which isn’t really my forte.  But I did it!

I’m guessing the $1,000,000 question right now is: What the #$%^ is a marquise?!  It’s kind of like a chocolate mousse, but a little richer.  After making the base for it, you freeze it which allows you to cut it, coat it in cocoa powder, and place it on the meringue.  When you finally eat it, it’s so dreamy soft….mmmmm.  It’s not overly sweet, especially with the kick from the spices, and you know how I love me some spicy chocolate!

And when there’s also torched meringue, boozy caramel, and spiced nuts, how can it be anything but amazing??  (Answer: it can’t.) 

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro.  She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

Wait, what??  That’s exactly the reaction I had.  We didn’t learn those words in my year of French in college.  An entremet is basically a layered dessert (think trifle) and the biscuit joconde imprime is in this case the part that contains it (edible sponge cake bowl, anyone?).

This is my third month as a Daring Baker, and the first challenge that has really made me shake in my boots, so to speak.   (Note: This Texan is bootless, unfortch.)  As with crostata and Stollen, I had never made an entremet, much less a sponge or even a rolled cake.  That didn’t stop my visions from being lofty, though.  Oh, the ideas I had for the joconde and the top of the entremet…

What actually did happen isn’t bad, especially for the mini/almost disasters that occurred.

Here is how my experience went. 

Ginger and Vanilla Pear Tarte Tatin with Chocolate Puff Pastry

I ain’t gonna lie.  I lost a little sleep over this thing.

That’s part of the challenge with desserts like cakes, pies, and tarts: you can’t sample them to make sure they taste okay!  Wahhh.  It’s probably a good idea to do a test run on them, but when you don’t have much money to spare, that’s not always an option.

That was definitely the case with this tarte tatin, especially because puff pastry is so expensive!  (I am well aware that it’s definitely worth it, though!)  I noticed a few weeks ago that Dufour now makes chocolate (!!!) puff pastry.  Having only heard rave reviews about their original puff pastry, I was very intrigued.  So intrigued, in fact, that I just skipped over the regular stuff and went straight for the chocolate!

Black Forest Frankencake

My dad got me into baking when I was a kid.  He’s not a professional baker, but is good at following directions to a T, which seems to be a good trait in baking. Together we made things like oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, frozen chocolate custard, triple chocolate cheesecake, and Black Forest cake.  Hmm…looking back, I’m definitely noticing a trend!

I’ve always baked desserts for holidays, but this past year started baking things for family birthdays rather than giving gifts.  It’s much more fun to give something that you’ve made yourself!