Back in the (baking) saddle!

Goodness, covid took over and then a series of other events led to making things work to get through... and baking took a back seat. 

Stay tuned for the last bake of season 2 and then we will jump right into season 3!

Inspiration: a key lime tart I made last week for family dinner, it was topped with whip cream, yum!

Bonus: Yuzu Bars

Prior to this exploration of the lemon turned yuzu bar, I had not had yuzu. I kept hearing about this lovely fruit and how it doesn't taste like anything you can explain. When I shared a bar with a friend, he explained that it was like a journey, first you get the tart lime-ish kind of start, add a little mandarin, and then it finishes in a floral note. This is the best description, it is a literal journey and I can't wait to use it for more things. Serious YUM!

Ingredients

Crust

1 cup of flour

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter

Curd

5 egg yolks

1 3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup yuzu juice

1/3 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Grease and parchment a 9x13 baking pan. You are welcome to use another sized pan, if you want them thicker, use a smaller pan and adjust the baking time.

Stir the flour and sugar for the crust, cut in the butter. Press the crust into the prepared pan. Bake for 14-16 minutes until the edges are just starting to brown. 

While that is baking, whisk the curd ingredients and set aside.

Once the crust is ready, reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees, pour the curd ingredients over the crust and return to the oven. Bake 25-30 minutes, you want the curd to jiggle just slightly in the middle. Pull the bars out and allow to cool. Slice as desired and top with powered sugar. They really are best if you fridge them a few hours before eating them, or wait until the next day. If you are going to be serving at a later time, wait and add the powdered sugar when serving, it will just melt away if you do it too early. YUM!

Bake 2.23: Sachertorte

Technical, curtesy of Mary Berry, the Sachertorte. I used the recipe here. It is a lovely chocolate torte with a layer of apricot jam in the middle, and a ganache. 

If you are Austrian you probably have  feelings about how this cake is famous, but I think that may only be in Austria? Not to burst any bubbles but I thought it was fine. I like my normal chocolate cake recipe better. The apricot was a delightful new combination with the chocolate however, I wasn't sure what to expect there and it lifted the floral nature of the chocolate and balanced nicely. 

It is a simple cake to make and doesn't take too long either, a good shift from more complicated bakes if you want a nice weeknight treat! Yum!

Bonus: Christina Tosi Compost Cookies (with a twist)

A bit ago I received a lovely gift from Rachel, who is an amazing baker and followed her passion to pastry school and now works in a bakery that has the best pie. She has pie skillz. When she handed me the jar of espresso/cacao/vanilla extract the very first thing that popped into my head are Christina Tosi's compost cookies. She shares the recipe on her website here. These cookies have potato chips and pretzels, chocolate and butterscotch chips, they are fun. They call for ground coffee, and I do not enjoy coffee. So I subbed the vanilla in the recipe for 2 teaspoons of the the espresso/cacao/vanilla extract. It was brilliant, still highlights the chocolate but without an overpowering coffee flavor. Perfect for the non-coffee lover in your life! YUM!

 

Bake 2.22: Banoffee Mille-Feuille

This is a fun one! I used 1/2 a recipe of puff pastry but you could use store bought puff pastry too, that would make this a pretty quick dessert that is very impressive. Mille-Feuille which sounds so fancy is layers of pastry and cream, with other things as desired. I was inspired by the classic UK banoffee pie and used caramel pastry cream and bananas in my layers. 

Ingredients
1/2 recipe puff pastry (I prefer this recipe)
3 ripe but not soft bananas

3 cups whole milk

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 corn starch

1 tablespoon flour

4 large egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

4 tablespoons salted butter, room temp

1/3 cup caramel sauce + a drizzle for the top

Start with the pastry cream. Heat 2 1/2 cups milk with the sugar in a saucepan. Whisk together the 1/2 cup remaining milk, corn starch, flour, and egg yolks. Once the sugar has completely dissolved, ladle a small amount into the corn starch mixture to temper. Pour all back into the saucepan and cook until thick, pudding like consistency. Remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla, butter, and caramel sauce. Pour into a dish and cover with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap onto the surface to ensure no skin forms. Put in the fridge to cool!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll the pastry to 11x14 on a silpat or parchment sheet. Slide onto a baking sheet. Prick the dough all over with a fork. Cover with another silpat or parchment sheet and a second baking sheet. This weight causes the pastry to cook flat and crispy, rather than puffing up like with the croissants. Bake for 18-20 minutes, and check the browning around 14 minutes in, you can remove the top sheet if needed to ensure the top browns nicely. Allow to cool. 

Now assembly! Chop 1 of the bananas and set aside. Slice the other two bananas if you want to be fancy and decorate the sides like I did, if not, just chop them and put them in the layers. Standing the slices up along the edges allowed me to put more pastry cream in the middle, just sayin'. 

Carefully cut your large sheet of pastry into three equal rectangles. I eyeballed the first one, then used it to cut the remaining two. Put one piece of pastry on your platter. Line the edges with half slices of bananas all the way around (they are a little sticky on the cut side so actually just stand up there on their own). Fill the center with pastry cream using an offset spatula to gently ease it up to the edges. Top with 1/2 the chopped banana. Add another layer of pastry, again with bananas along the edge, pastry cream in the middle, chopped bananas. Add the last layer of pastry. I decorated with a few remaining bananas slices and a drizzle of caramel. Ideally put it in the fridge for a few minutes before slicing, and then slice gently. YUM! 

Bake 2.21x2: Almond Croissants

To continue to challenge myself I did a second round of laminated dough to see if I could get it through without any cracking. You may remember that my mixer died but thankfully the new one came in the mail and it is ... so clean! You thought I was going to say something else, I know, but it is hard to keep a mixer clean and it will likely never be this clean again! 

So round two for laminated dough. Followed the same recipe, you can see it here. 

For the filling I used a frangipane, an almond cream that is just right for croissants, or a tart, so many options. 

Ingredients
3 tablespoons soft butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup ground almond meal
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract 
1 tablespoon flour 

This is an easy one, cream the butter and sugar, add the almond meal and mix, add the egg and extracts and mix, add the flour and mix. Done. Put that in a pastry bag for ease of assembly. 

You can make your own almond meal if you have almonds and a good processor. We keep almond meal on hand because we use it for recipes often enough. If you have Costco in your neck of the woods that is usually where we buy it and we store it in the freezer so it doesn't spoil before we get through the whole bag. 

Now, we used 1/2 of the puff pastry (laminated dough) recipe for these croissants. 

When it is ready to be rolled into final shape roll out into a 11x 14 rectangle and cut that into 8 smaller rectangles that measure about 5 1/2 x 3 1/2. I definitely measured ... with my eyes. 

Now lay out one of the rectangles. Pipe a line of almond cream near one of the short sides, fold that side over, pipe another length of cream and fold over again. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet with the fold on the under side. Cover with plastic wrap 

Allow to rest on the counter for 1 hour. Then rest in the fridge for 1 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Brush the croissants with a beaten egg + a little milk. Pipe a thin line of almond cream along the top, and press sliced almonds into the cream so they stick. They will toast up nicely in the oven. I used 1/3 cup almonds across all the tops. 

Bake 18-20 minutes, rotating halfway, until golden and delicious! 

Look at those little nuggets before they rested and baked!

Bake Club: Pistachio Pinwheels

To celebrate St Patrick's day we had bake club on Sunday and made Pistachio Pinwheels! We used the recipe in Claire Saffitz' book Dessert Person. Given the snow storm, I used the pistachio's I had on hand which were roasted and not the lovely bright green of the raw ones so I added three drops of green food gel. I should probably have just done 1, but it was too late after I had done three! Reminder to self that gel color is always more intense.

You can see the recipe here, thanks to the New York Times also thinking this was a great recipe.

You can watch Claire make them on YouTube here. I have gone down the rabbit hole of watching her videos and she is lovely, approachable, and easy to follow. I am aiming for less wonky swirl next go round using her tips from the video! YUM!