I Wanna Be Holiday Edition: Yule Logs and Meringues

My mom and I decided to try and make Yule Log roll cakes. The first attempt is in the picture above. It is the only pic I took because it was the practice one. It looks like a real Yule Log. We we so happy. The only problem came with the roll cake recipe which was just too eggy. 

So we found another recipe for the next try. The one that would go to my mom's office party. The new roll cake recipe worked perfectly. And it used less eggs and more flour than the first one.

Look at that lovely Cake Burrito

I even made mushroom meringue cookies to decorate the Yule log. Side note. I wish I had taken pictures of the assembly process for these meringues. If I make them again I will remember to take pictures because they came out great and taste delicious. 

Maybe I will use them in a Alice in Wonderland themed project.

Now here is where things go wrong!

With the first Yule Log cake we used a semi-sweet ganache. Semi-sweet chocolate chips, heavy whipping cream and a splash of vanilla. It worked perfectly. It covered the cake with an almost fudgey consistency after cooling that could be made to look like the texture of a log. 

With the second cake mom wanted Milk Chocolate ganache. 

Milk Chocolate ganache does really work for this. As you can see it the pictures above and below.

It went everywhere and was too thin.

Oh the chocolate Humanity!

In order to try and hide the massive chocolate spill we put on a lot of mushroom meringues.

Unlike the semi-sweet ganache, the milk chocolate version tried to melt the meringues.

I mean, the mushrooms are held together by the semi-sweet ganache so how could this happen?

Basically don't use milk chocolate as a ganache unless you are making petite fours. 

Christmas Tree Meringues with half a Fail

Since everyone that had the Mushroom Meringues loved them, I wanted to try something more festive. Christmas Tree Meringue cookies sounded ideal.

I made half just plain with only some vanilla extract and the other half flavored with peppermint.

The ones on the right are the plain ones and they are the ones that actually piped up into tree like cookies.

The mint ones had too much liquid and flattened like my hopes and dreams. 

But SPRINKLES!

I think they plain ones look great. Don't they look like little Christmas trees with the little ornaments.

BTW the mint ones look sad but taste amazing.

Maybe not my worst baking fail.

The Yule log take two wins that dubious honor.

I Wanna Be At Mardi Gras: Beignets

I am trying out a new graphic for my "I Wanna Be" food series. I am not the best a graphic designing. Can you tell : )

Next Tuesday is Fat Tuesday otherwise know as Mardi Gras. I have always wanted to go to New Orleans. I guess Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles introduce me to the allure of this city. MTV in the 90's introduced the wildness of Mardi Gras. Since I cannot go to New Orleans anytime soon and I got a deep fryer for Christmas...Beignets! 

I used a recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. Taking into account copyright, I won't write out the recipe here. There are many beignets recipes online. The one in the Joy of Cooking uses yeast, which I believe most of the other recipes do too.

Blending the dough together was a feat of strength. The recipe called for it to be blended together with a large spoon which I took to mean "no electric mixer". This took some time. Then the dough has to rest 12 to 24 hours covered in the refrigerator. 

After more than 12 hours it didn't seem to rise much. This had me worried.

Then the fun part.

Rolling the dough 1/8 inch think and cutting it into small squares. At this point it started to remind me of making sopapillas, which I love.

After that the frying begins.

I use peanut oil in my fryer after having a bit of a disaster with another oil. I foolishly used vegetable oil when I first got the deep fryer without realizing how bad that is. The first clue: if you are anywhere in your house when the oil is heating up and your eyes burn, not good. Just some fyi from my own errors. I'll probably find out peanut oil is bad too : P

Back to the beignets.

These doughnut/fritter/sopapilla creations swell up in the fryer and turn a delightful golden brown. After they have been cooked on both sides, remove from the fryer and cover in powered sugar.

Served warm they are so good. Basically sugar covered fried dough. So bad yet so good. 

I Wanna Be French: Easy Pain au Chocolat

I was flipping through my copy of Joy Of Cooking, looking for a simple sweet recipe, when I saw the Pain au Chocolat recipe and I was taken back to my High School French class. I wanted to make these. It called for making croissant dough from scratch. As much as I like made from scratch baked goods and such, time can be a bitch.

Thus I made a few substitutions for Easy Pain au Chocolat.

Ingredients:

About a cup of chocolate chips

Croissant or Crescent rolls

An egg and water for an egg wash

optional: Plain or Vanilla sugar 

First I chopped the chocolate chips into smaller pieces. I used a knife and a cutting board but it would have been a piece of cake with a chopper.

I then rolled out the can of crescent rolls. The can makes 8 rolls but for this I left two crescent rolls together so they formed a rectangle.

At one end sprinkle a line of the chocolate. Then roll it over and add another line of chocolate. Before rolling it all the way to the end I used an egg wash to make sure it would stay together while baking. 

I also brushed the egg wash over the tops after they were rolled up and added a sprinkle of vanilla sugar. Plain sugar would work fine, I just happened to have vanilla sugar.

The result: A flaky pastry with a gooey chocolate center. 

My mom said they were better cold.

The roll itself seemed a tad too buttery for me but the bit of sugar on top helped to cancel it out.

I believe I would try this again. They looked great and didn't need a lot of ingredients. 

I Wanna Be Harry Potter: Butter Beer

It's Friday. Time for my second Halloween post. Wizards and witches are always a good go to for Halloween goodness and the most beloved wizard of all is Harry Potter (or at least someone in the Harry Potter world)

I have read all of the Harry Potter books, seen all of the movies and I want to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter pretty badly.

One of the things about the Harry Potter books that I really like is the details about their wizard world delicacies.

From Honeydukes' assortments of sweets to Hogwarts Halloween Feast, there are so many strange and yummy sounding things to eat in Harry Potter's world.

One of the most well known is Butterbeer.

There are many variations for Butterbeer. Most of which use actual butter. I really could not see making a drink with real butter. I'm sure made correctly they would be decadent. 

Instead I used a variation of one from WizardingWorldPark. They have a lot of different butter beer recipes.  

Ingredients used: Butter Brickle ice cream, cream soda and butterscotch topping.

Mmmmm butterscotch.

When I say "variation" it means I didn't measure anything.

Basically I just put into the blender what looked good for me. 

And is was good.

Not really a float or a shake.  It had a creamy consistency with a butterscotch flavor. 

It may not be true Butterbeer but it was tasty.

And what is Butterbeer without gummi slugs and chocolate frogs. This would be perfect for a Harry Potter themed Halloween party or if you need a little something sweet while binge watching the movies.

Also a giant Happy Birthday to my mom today!

I Wanna Be British: Eton Mess

I am a major Anglophile.

Most of the TV shows I watch are British. Many of my favorite bands and musicians are from England or are based there.

So what is a better way to show my English love than trying out some recipes.

ETON MESS 

Eton mess is a type of dessert that I have seen around the internet many times and thought: Yum!

I looked at a number of different recipes and adapted them for this experiment. Luckily I had my mom to assist in this culinary venture.

First, the day before we planned to make the actually dessert, I made a batch of meringues.

They do not look perfect but they taste great and anyway they get crumbled.

I used the same recipe that I made for the Les Miserables meringue cookies for the Tony awards. I just didn't use a bag to form them, I just plopped them onto a baking sheet with a spoon. I used this recipe.

After watching CupcakeJemma's Eton Mess video we planned on making a raspberry sauce.

We made the raspberry sauce first so that it would have time to cool

After cooking down the raspberries and sugar the sauce needed to be strained to remove the seeds. I only had this small strainer so it took a little time. Honestly I did not care for the raspberry sauce but my mom loved it. I guess it all depends on what you like if you want to add it to the final dessert or not.

Homemade whipping cream

This is my mom's specialty. It is basically heavy whipping cream, sugar and vanilla whipped together for what seems like ages. She doesn't even need to measure the ingredients which makes it difficult to share her recipe.

The recipes I read online for Eton Mess kept calling for double cream. I have never seen double cream in any store around here so heavy whipping cream seemed like a good substitute. Plus we use the homemade vanilla that we started a few years ago. Its a bottle of Vodka and split vanilla beans that sat in the dark and was shaken once a day for a few months until it became the best vanilla ever.

The other ingredient for Eton Mess is strawberries. Most recipes called for these strawberries to have sugar added and let sit until they became a sugary syrup. Some recipes said to smash the fresh strawberries.

We just bought a container of frozen strawberries already in sugar and called it good. We only had a few hours that she could hang at my house that day so some skimping was required.

Gathering all the ingredients together we started layering them in our glasses. A layer of crumbled meringue, some whipping cream, strawberries and repeat. Mom also added the raspberry sauce where she pleased.

The verdict: Delicious

 I do not know if this would be considered authentic Eton Mess. Regardless they came out so good. Sweet with just a hint of tart from the berries and a satisfying crunch from the meringues. Now I want to try out other recipes. ButterBeer I'm looking at you.