White chocolate cupcakes with raspberry cream cheese icing

The more astute of you will have noticed* that raspberry cream cheese icing is not part of this week's Alpha Baker recipe for White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Mousseline. This week's baking adventure is a tale of shortcuts, go-arounds and straight out laziness. I had a lot of trouble finding the energy to make these, this week. Although I was spurred on by the thought of white chocolate and raspberry - one of my favourite flavour combinations. In the end I decided I could do the little cakes or the mousseline but not both. And since the mousseline is not a lot of use without cake to put it on, cake it was. [Actually, who I am kidding, I just didn't want to bother with all that sugar syrup palaver.]

My favourite icing is cream cheese icing which is incredibly quick and easy to make. I wondered (to google) whether I could make it in raspberry flavour and, lo and behold, other people had thought of it before me. With that stumbling block removed, I suddenly had the energy to whip up the little cakes. 

In theory, with a simplified icing, these little cakes should have been quick and easy. I botched a few things which made it a little less than Q & E but they did turn out to be delicious. As long as they were eaten quickly, before the icing melted.

*That'll sort the sheep from the goats.

The cakes were simple to mix up in the standmixer, with Rose's usual method of mixing most of the wet ingredients first and adding to the dry. After 2 years cooking with Rose, I now usually measure the weight of the eggs rather than just going with the  number specified. I often find that my eggs are bigger than the recipe's estimation.  I forgot to do that this time with the egg whites and I think my mixture might have been a bit more liquid than it should have been. 

I was too miserly to buy more than one block of white chocolate so I added a little bit of dark chocolate I had in the fridge. This made the cakes a funny tan colour but they still tasted white chocolatey.

The cakes came out all right (I don't seem to have any photographic evidence of this) although they took a long time to bake. This is possibly due to the thicker cardboard cases I used. I didn't even consider that when I bought them*. Ho hum. 

*I was looking at their racey red stripes.

I made the raspberry sauce early in the week. I started off on the right track but after 10 minutes I found that I just couldn't be mucking around with raspberries and sieves, and separate cooking of syrup, and blending of raspberries etc. So I put all the ingredients in the pan and simmered it for a while, then sieved it all. Probably not the perfect product that Rose's would be, but raspberry puree all the same. And it left me with a modicum of sanity.

Which I then completely lost on the cream cheese icing that was meant to be easy. I ran out of icing sugar (late last night) so had to make some in the processor. Still, I didn't do a very good job and the icing tasted a bit sugary to me, so I added some more raspberry puree, and then it seemed too liquid, so I added some more badly made icing sugar, then some more cream cheese and...you get the picture. In the end it tasted nice but was still a bit runny. It just held together enough for me to pipe it, after a night in the fridge. 

To me, piping is just an invitation to slather icing or cake mixture up your right arm, this being the common result for me of any attempt at piping. However this time I secured the icing bag with one of those Ikea bag clip things which kept it more under control. I wasn't unhappy with my efforts, given the heat of the room and the runniness of the icing. Most of the attraction of these little cakes was in the beautiful pink icing so it was good to be able to replicate this is in some small way.

I'm planning to take these to Misia's 3rd birthday on the weekend. Misia is a cocker spaniel and will not be eating the cakes (if I have anything to say about it). And to solve the heat (it's VERY hot and humid here at the moment) and the already runny icing problems, I'm planning to serve them frozen. We Alpha Bakers are very resourceful and resilient.

Next (and the penultimate) week for the Alpha Baker's bake-through of The Baking Bible is Luxury Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee.

Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Meringue Pie

I was wondering what the chiffon referred to in Rose's Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Meringue Pie but realised (as I was eating a piece) it's the mousse filling. Always such fancy names. 

To be honest, if I had seen this recipe without the benefit of a bake-through group, I doubt I would have considered making it. To my mind, a meringue pie crust is an odd concept, and filling it with mousse straight out eccentricity.

However, I would have been completely wrong. This is a really surprising (for me and those of my ilk) flavour and design winner. The meringue swirls at the rim of the pie (see The Baking Bible for a photo of a properly executed version) are a clever and pretty way to show off the pink mousse filling. The pomegranate flavoured filling is a really lovely, fresh flavour that goes well with the sweet meringue. Rose always uses lemon so effectively and the little teaspoon of lemon juice to the filling makes all the difference. 

Of course, that's the theory and then there's my execution. It was pretty disastrous despite the picture of apparent success below*. 

*Apologies for the photos which make it look like I live in a cave. I don't. I think it's time to invest in some lighting doodad.

This is my attempt to follow Roses's instructions (on her blog) about the best way to grease the pie dish to allow the meringue crust to release. It's not the picture of evenly sieved cornflour that I envisioned (you can't but admire the scratchings where I tried to redistribute the thick piles of cornflour). Even so, it might have worked if other things hadn't gone wrong...

A vision of loveliness... Even the blobby piping around the rim wasn't too bad (yes, that's right, I piped). I forgot about the heat and its effect on the meringue, so the definition from the star shape is not great.

The real issue I had with the meringue crust was in the baking. It may have been a bit marshmallowy when I took it out of the oven, when it should have been dry right the way through. This wouldn't have been a big problem if I hadn't had to leave it in the fridge an extra day before filling it with the mousse. Unfortunately after a day and a half in the fridge it kept leaking fluid into the bottom of the pie dish. I could see the tide rising through the glass pie dish. But having started I thought I'd keep going and make the mousse. What else could go wrong...?

The mousse, like the meringue, was a pretty straightforward concoction of flavouring (pomegranate juice), structure and volume (more meringuey egg whites beaten with sugar) and airiness (whipped cream). Not difficult. However. I ran out of sugar and had to use a mix of demerera and icing sugar. The juice and gelatin was cold but not set at all when I was ready to mix it with the whipped cream and the meringue. Hmmm. What to do? No time or energy to wait. I decided to mix the juice into the whipped cream. Hmmm, juicy blobs. I'll just have to whisk it with the hand mixer. Creamy juice, no air. Hmmm. I'll just fold the meringue and creamy juice together. Creamy juicy blobs. More whisking. Creamy, meringuey juice. Great. Perfect. I poured it into the dodgy meringue crust and carefully placed it into the fridge. It would have been merciful if I'd tripped and dropped it on the floor but the gods of clumsiness were not feeling kind.

All bakers know that sinking feeling where you've 'finished' but you know things are not as they should be. That was my experience, and it was confirmed when I cut the pie this morning to find a nice mousse layer on top of a marshmallow layer, under which ran a stream of pinky, gelatiny liquid. I know a few of our projects have looked like an accident scene but this one looked like a science experiment. The taste (of the first two layers), despite everything, was lovely and light and fresh. I didn't take it to work and I don't have any chickens or squirrels so this one might have to go to the big fridge in the sky.

If I was to compose this type of dessert myself, instead of a meringue crust, I might try two or three meringue discs pasted together with the mousse. It would avoid all the issues with the pie crust, although I'm sure 'me and my ilk' could find some other issues...

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making White Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Mousseline.

Brandy, little bit of snap, no cannoli

What makes this brandy snap a cannoli? I ask myself and the cat. Flossie has no interest in pastries so, not surprisingly, has nothing to offer on the subject. Reading through Rose's recipe for Brandy Snap Cannoli I come to the conclusion that the cannoli part springs from the style of the filling. 

The pastry cream-based filling did sound lovely but I chose to go cannoli-free this week simply because I knew that I wouldn't have any rolls to fill. This is the hottest, most humid time of the year in Darwin and there was not a hope in hell of persuading a brandy snap to curl on command. So I decided this was a perfect excuse to buy some ice-cream. Merely as a vehicle over which I could drape my brandy snaps, you understand. Plus, as I told Flossie, the cold of the ice-cream would also cause the snaps to get bit snappier.

This innovation meant that I didn't have to make the cannoli filling or undertake any piping of said filling which made this week's Alpha Baker homework very easy. It was also delicious. The brandy snaps never really hardened properly but eaten with ice-cream, or on their own, they were still lovely.

I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but Rose's instructions for cooking the brandy snap mixture before adding the flour were a bit minimal. I was a bit uncertain about the time it needed to boil. It's possible I didn't read it properly, of course. Like the instructions for spacing the dobs of brandy snap mixture on the tray.

Do you think these brandy snaps-to-be are too close?

Err, waaaay too close! I call this the 'wreath of snap'.

I wasn't a complete piker. I did make an attempt to make a rolled snap. It never hardened and I found myself eating it as I put the others in a container for the fridge. They are in shapes unknown to geometry, and (minus the snappy effect of ice-cream) are soft and a bit greasy, but they do look very golden and pretty.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Monkey Dunkey Bread! Cue little happy dance (on the inside).

Giant pain in the neck jam cookie

I'll say upfront that this giant jam cookie is delicious. And also that the biscuit dough is easy to whiz up in the food processor. But, other than that, it's just a big pain in the neck to make. 

I think the problem stems mainly from the fact that, when it comes to roll out the biscuit dough, it goes from fridge cold to a warm glue-like substance in the blink of an eye. Although I also have to mention the other significant challenge in this recipe, which is that the instructions have multiple descriptions of inverting dough onto trays and then re-inverting on to other trays and so on. Eventually I lost sense of whether we were left to bake two rounds of dough or two trays stuck together. 

This is not the recipe for the impatient, intolerant and generally irritable baker, but it will definitely suit those bakers who like nothing better than fiddling around with decorating biscuits or little cakes. And good luck to them.

For the most part I ignored the instructions and just tried to cut out two biscuit dough rounds and stick them together. Unfortunately the extremely sticky dough made it a less straightforward enterprise than I had hoped. The 'round' pictured below stuck unmercifully to the bowl I used to cut out the shape. Even a couple of sojourns in the freezer couldn't loosen the dough from its death grip on the bowl edge and eventually I had to scrape it off and stick it back together. 

I was a bit cannier when cutting out the second round and left the gladwrap on the top of the dough when I cut the shape. 

I could not have been more surprised when, after many trips to and from the freezer, I managed to get the two rounds stuck together and the little star shapes cut out and stuck on in the right place.

The biscuit dough was a very simple mix and not very sweet. I wasn't sure how it would taste but combined with the reduced berry jam it was just like a little jam tart (a sweet pastry with a jam filling). It's a really great combination of flavours and I'm wondering if you could make this into little tarts. It might be easier than struggling with the rounds. I was a bit impressed with the final product though... and that, my fellow bakers, is how you get sucked in.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making the Araxi Lemon Cream Tart.

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Frozen Lime Meringue Pie

I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself over this one because, to be honest, it looked like a pain in the backside to make. It really wasn't, especially when you make it over several nights (one day buy ingredients, next 2 days think 'I really should make that pie'...). Unfortunately, due to new job exhaustion, I still didn't finish my post in time for the round-up that our fearless Alpha Baker leader Marie writes every week (although I did get an honourable mention).

This Frozen Lime Meringue Pie (which sounds a bit like a cocktail) is another of Rose's unusual concoctions which turns out to be delicious. The pile of meringue topping makes it look like it'll be overly sweet, like lemon meringue pie, but, eaten cold, it's actually refreshing and creamy.

It was almost a frozen ... meringue pie since I wasn't organised enough to buy local limes at the weekend markets. Instead I had to pay an outrageous price of $1.70 PER lime at the supermarket. In fact I stood there at the fruit display considering my options for a while. In the end (options were no pie or expensive lime pie) I only bought 4 limes so I had to make do with minimal zest.

I had to ask my Alpha Baker friends about the wafer biscuits specified for the biscuit base. Apparently it refers to biscuits called Nilla wafers. Faithy suggested Marie biscuits as a substitute but when I spotted Scotch Fingers on the supermarket shelf I knew I had to have them. I spent quite a while calculating how many I could eat out of the packet. Quite a few as it turned out. The base also had toasted almonds in it which made it nutty and sweet and buttery. Is it wrong to want to just eat the base?

The filling is lime curd mixed with whipped cream. I must have been feeling usually zen because it seemed pretty easy. This is when the pie becomes out of the ordinary as you put it into the freezer to, um well, freeze. 

Then we're back on track to make, what turns out to be, a not particularly sweet meringue. I had the two egg whites left over from the curd and I didn't feel like breaking any more eggs, so my meringue 'pile' is half-size. 

The meringue is put back into the freezer after browning under the griller. Fitting it in the freezer was the most challenging part of that step. I would never have thought of putting barely cooked meringue in the freezer but it seems I'm lacking in imagination and daring.

I wasn't sure how a semi-fredo* pie would be but it turns out to be light, cloudy and creamy all at once. It was really a surprising and delightful texture. Well it was when I took the time to let my piece defrost. Otherwise straight from the freezer it was just a little bit frozen and icy :)

*spell-check kept changing it to freddo so now I'm thinking about chocolate Freddo Frog pie (which is not really a thing. Yet.).

Since this post is so late next week is actually this week and we're making Coconut Crisps.

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Goose, goose, gooseberry crisp

Ha ha! I found some gooseberries, or stachel-beeren, as the jar called them, to make this week's Gooseberry Crisp. The Alpha Bakers all had trouble finding these elusive berries and it was just luck that my local gourmet grocery shop had them in jars. Not quite the same as the fresh berry but gooseberries all the same. 

I wasn't sure what a 'crisp' was but the photo in the Baking Bible looked a lot like the 'crumble' that I'm familiar with (i.e. fruit stew with a crumble on top). One $10 jar of gooseberries only yielded 300g of berries so I made half the recipe for the fruit stew (I thought shelling out $20 would be going a bit far for this homely dessert). The crumble was such a small amount that I made the full recipe...and I could have made double that. It's not that I'm addicted to sweet, processed simple carbohydrates but there was NOWHERE NEAR enough crumble for my crisp. I'm assuming, being too lazy to google, that the crisp refers to the thin crisp layer on top of the fruit.

'*gezuchert* Oh! Pardon me.

I was a bit put-off by the slightly slimy look of the berries (childhood is never that far away). I tasted one and it was soft and gooey but nicely tart also.  I was still happy they were going to be stewed in a sugar and lemon syrup. I threw the syrup from the jar away.

Berry soup anyone? The berry stew did look very liquid but it held two secret weapons. One was a tablespoon of cornflour and the other was a brown sugar and butter syrup, simmered until it was quite caramelly. Rose just can't resist adding a caramel flavour wherever she can. Just as well I wasn't required to make toffee or there'd be a whole lot of complaining going on right now.

The caramel syrup also had quite a lot of lemon juice. It was really the most delicious syrup. I couldn't stop licking the spatula. It was lucky there was a lot of lemon in the recipe since the berries had been steeped in syrup in the jar. I should have taken that into account when making the stew and the crumble but instead I followed the recipe like an automaton. That's what a day of work does to you.

The crisp was certainly really delicious (especially with a large dollop of cream) but I'm not sure I could really taste the gooseberries that much - maybe because they were preserved rather than fresh.  I also found the final product a bit sweet overall (refer above re robotic cooking) but also with touches of tartness interrupting now and again. A really intriguing dessert. Maybe when I visit my parents for Christmas in colder, temperate southern Australia, I'll try out the crisp with some of the gooseberries on their gooseberry bush which usually sits lonely by the compost heap, with only the chickens as fans.

Next week we're making MORE CRUMBS! In the form of coffee crumb cake muffins. Mmmm

Fudgy chocolate ice cream sandwiches

You can't fault a recipe for biscuits that are baked for the sole purpose of sandwiching ice cream. I mean, I still don't really get the bother of an ice cream sandwich. There's no question that they're delicious but you can get the same effect with the old dinner party favourite of homemade ice cream served with a nice (usually crunchy) biscuit or two. I suspect ice cream sandwiches might be more of a thing in the US. Here they're just something you can buy at the shops if for some inexplicable reason you don't feel like a Magnum.

Inexplicability aside these are easy and delicious biscuits to make, although there is a bit of messing around with cooling periods so the mixture firms up enough to form into a roll. They are my favourite black cocoa-y type of chocolate biscuits. They could even stand being a little less sweet. That may be because I used ice cream called 'chocolate obsession' to sandwich them together. Something with more contrast and less chocolatey bits, such as coffee or strawberry, might have brought out the more bitter cocoa taste I was looking for.

The biscuit dough was more the texture of cake dough before going in the fridge to firm up. And it was delicious (no salmonella worries here, that I know of...).

After firming up in the fridge the dough is cut up and rolled into four rolls. In my kitchen this entails getting chocolate smears on everything in a metre radius. And if you squish the roll enough it looks almost cylindrical.

I made a rather pathetic and lazy attempt to follow the 'put the dough in a cylinder' instruction. I found a plastic barrel from my biscuit maker thingy and put the dough in that to try and keep the circular shape in the freezer (even though it was a bit large). Actually it seemed to work. 

My biscuits were quite soft in texture once baked. I was expecting them to be crunchier. I also might have cut mine a bit thinly in the first batch so I might try them slightly thicker next batch. Lucky I have three more dough rolls in the freezer. Which is also bad because it's just willing me to pop to the shops for some more ice cream. Perhaps coffee this time?

Next week we're making something with gooseberries. Which is going to be interesting because they're not the easiest berries to track down. Barring some sort of shopping miracle, mine are going to be in a glass jar, I think.

Party Cake!

The Sour Cream Coffee cake from the Cake Bible was the very first cake recipe by Rose Levy Beranbaum that I baked. I haven't made it for a while but it's still one of my favourites. This party cake (Blueberry Crumb Party Coffee Cake) is very similar to the Cake Bible recipe except for the berries.

The party cake met with universal acclaim at work so I think this one is a winner too. It's a moist sour cream cake layered with crumble mixture and, in my case, raspberries and blueberries. It has everything I love in a cake - I'm a sucker for anything 'crumbled'. If you do happen to take this cake to a party you will definitely have a hit on your hands.

Being part of the Alpha Bakers has seen my regular procurement and consumption of sour cream rocket up about 1000%. Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

Probably the key to the success of this cake (and the Sour Cream Coffee cake) is the sandwiching of crumble between layers of cake mix. Plus the fact that it's extremely moist.

Once again I chose raspberries over blueberries for my cake. Then, because I have some frozen blueberries to use up, I added a few of them. The mix of berries was nice and I must say the (relatively) tiny blueberries always look pretty.

I had to cook this cake for 20-30 minutes over the stated baking time, although my oven is a bit unreliable so I wouldn't take that as a rule of thumb. Because I halved the recipe I wasn't sure about adjusting the baking times. I over-cooked my first Sour Cream Coffee cake (it was still delicious) many years ago so I'm always cautious about repeating the mistake. 

My fears were groundless however as the cake turned out moist and delicious. I served it with runny cream which was perfect.

Next week we're baking Perfect Savory Cream Puffs. I'm not sure how they're going to go in the humidity but I'll probably try them anyway.

Not Molasses Sugar Butter Cookies

Tempting as it was to title this post 'no yucky molasses', I resisted the urge. Well as far as the first sentence anyway. Needless to say there is no (yucky) molasses in my biscuits. When I think of molasses it's actually a fond association with the delicious and exotic sounding molasses taffy of Little House on the Prairie. However, as I discovered with the nasty molasses cakelets, fiction is sometimes exactly that. I have three-quarters of a bottle of the stuff languishing in the fridge, waiting for someone to take it off my hands.

Apart from clarifying the butter, this recipe is the epitome of quick and easy. There's not even any rolling out of the dough. And they turned out looking very nice. I'm not convinced my biscuits are quite cooked in the middle although I clarified the butter (which Rose says is the key to a squidgy but cooked middle). I haven't cooked the second batch so I might try baking them a bit longer at a lower heat.

I had a furry assistant while I was making these biscuits. I suspect the usually forbidden benchtop repose was a protest against the general topsy-turvy of the renovations. Cats aren't big fans of change, in general, and specifically not fans of moving their food bowl. 

The golden clarified butter is a lovely colour. I wonder if it should be darker but the solids were looking very dark brown and I couldn't bear to ruin all that butter. I'd put it on the stove and then unpacked multiple boxes of books and had a long phone conversation with my mother before it was anywhere near ready.

You can't tell by looking at the dough but it has quite a lot of spice in it. In fact the finished biscuits are quite gingerbread-like in flavour. 

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Party-size Blueberry Crumble (or something along those lines).

Hungarian Raisin (Sultana) Walnut Tartlets

This last week seemed to be the longest, slowest week, so when I saw Marie's weekly round-up on Friday (as it was in Australia) I was surprised to find it wasn't still Wednesday. Yes, I really missed the boat on posting about this recipe. It was such a tiring week that I have to confess that the Hungarian Raisin Walnut tartlets were not put together with a lot of care.

They turned out pretty well, all things considered. The eggy filling is really delicious - I could have drunk it with a straw - although it was pretty sweet combined with the sultanas and walnuts, and the tartlets were quite large. I liked these best when they were warmed through and drizzled (saturated) with cream, when they tasted more like a pudding. I was surprised they didn't have any spices in them (since they're part of the Hungarian Christmas repertoire) and I guess you could try some cinnamon and nutmeg. 

No prizes for this pastry work but luckily Rose's pastry is slapdash-proof. I'm not sure why but I found the flavour of the pastry really came into its own when combined with this filling.

These are sultanas, which are not raisins in Australia but seem to be raisins in the U.S. This Easter I made Kulich (Russian Easter bread) from a Canadian recipe which specified raisins. I wasn't sure what to use so I put in Australian raisins (which refer to the largest, sweet dried grapes) and they were really too big and sweet - I should have used sultanas. So I used sultanas here and I think it was the right decision.

I was happy to be using walnuts again since I had such a big bag of them which is gradually whittling away and freeing up some fridge space.

The tarts are very easy to put together, especially when you ignore the complicated instructions for preparing the walnuts and just roast them, crush them a bit with your hands and throw them in. The filling is also very easy-care and I just used the stick blender to mix it (so lazy was I feeling).

I over-filled the tarts (even though Rose warns us not to let the filling leak under the pastry) but I baked these in a silicone mould so they weren't difficult to remove. I do recommend putting less filling into the moulds, if you're going to try them.

I found the muffin-size tarts to be a little overwhelming after a couple of bites so I tried them in mince pie-size. Despite overfilling them also (so they leaked all over the oven) they turned out nicely and provided just the right combination of sweetness and pastry for me. I sifted some icing sugar over them mince-pie style and it felt a little bit like Christmas.

 Next up we're making Rugelach.