Truffle Mutt

I've Forgotten Your Name

This is another recipe from the Sherry Yard cookbook "The Secrets of Baking", that I borrowed from the Library.  During its brief foray from the library, this book was able to teach me some handy tips and a couple of tasty desserts.  What I like the most about the book though was the attention to basics, like ganache and caramel.  The recipes are straight forward and the variations Sherry Yard suggests are a great inspiration.  So, I've added this book to my wish list in Amazon, along with the other 50 or so titles that reside there. 

This nifty looking cake is pictured in the book (sorry I don't remember what it's called) and when I saw it I had to try it.  The thin layers are achieved by repeatedly ladling the burnt butter batter into a baking pan and baking it 1 thin layer at a time.  It's a different approach to making a cake and it looks so cool!  The only problem, which is a foreseeable one, is that the cake turns out to be as dry as mouthful of sawdust.  If I tried it again I'd try brushing each layer with a simple syrup halfway through baking, which might also darken the layers and make them more dramatic in appearance.   

The flavor of the burnt butter was subtle, but exciting.  I imagine if you were to follow the recipe exactly the butter would be more intense tasting, but I added cinnamon, cloves and cardamom to the recipe, as well as the nutmeg that is called for. 

The taste was absolutely fabulous and the cake itself was certainly a dazzler, so I just need the solution for the sawdust problem and this cake will be a keeper. 

Baby Eclairs

I'm back!

Wow!  It feels like forever since I've typed on these pages.  Between TypePad's issues and my schedule it's been challenging finding the time to blog.  But, while I've been absent on the blogging scene I have at least kept busy in the kitchen.  Of course not all of my stories are worthy of sharing in detail, like the flour-less chocolate cake that fell apart when I didn't have enough time to chill it, or the chocolate pudding cake recipe that turned into a 90% chocolate pudding when I tried to half the recipe but accidentally used the full amount of eggs.  In the end both still tasted quite good, though they certainly lacked eye appeal.         

Luckily, with the bad also came some good. 

These eclairs that I made for a baby shower at work fall under 'the good' category.  They were light and airy with a pudding-like chocolate almond pastry cream filling.  The fact that they turned out to be baby eclairs was a complete accident however, I just thought they'd puff up a lot more in the oven than they did. 

The pate choix, ganache and pastry creams were easy to make and the whole effort proved to be more time consuming than difficult.  Once the pate choix is cooked it has to be piped into cigars (big ones btw), baked, chilled, and iced with ganache.  I held off filling them with pastry cream until the next morning to keep then from getting soggy and so I could have the left over chocolate pastry cream for breakfast.  Yum.