Daring Bakers September Challenge--Vols Au Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I was so excited when I heard about this challenge, a little nervous that it wouldn't work out but how fun to be able to say I made puff pastry!  I took advantage of the Labor Day 3-day weekend and made my puff pastry early in the month.  Everything went well, I didn't have any trouble with the butter melting and it was so convenient to be able to throw it in the fridge, run an errand or two, and then come back to it!  

The advantage of being a daring baker is that you end up trying recipes you wouldn't normally try.  And the host of the month has already tried the recipe and provides very helpful tips you don't normally find with a recipe.  This month I found those tips to be especially helpful and all worked well!  Here's my dough between turns. So pretty!

I happened to have 2 sizes of this scalloped heart cookie cutter, so I used that to form the vols au vents and I got a pretty good rise.  It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to put in them, but I knew I wanted to make a dessert for sure.  I ended up making white chocolate mousse (receipe from The Joy of Cooking) and combined that with some slightly too runny vanilla-peach freezer jam.  They were SO delicious that I'm craving it now as I write this!

  One of those tips from the host suggested using the scraps to make something that doesn't need a lot of rise like cheese straws. That gave me the idea of making cinnamon & sugar straws, sticks, twists, whatever you want to call them.  So, that same weekend I made these beauties that also tasted pretty good.

The next weekend I finished using up my puff pastry by making more vols au vents.  This time I used a couple different sized cups and didn't seem to get as good of a rise, maybe because the dough was a little old?  This time I made a savory filling.  I filled them with cucumber dill sauce and hickory smoked chicken!  It was pretty good.  

Then, I used the scraps and made another item suggested by the host, Napoleons!  For some reason I've been wanting to make these and using my own homemade puff pastry made it even more fun.  I made the custard from scratch and just dusted the top with powdered sugar (recipe from The Joy of Cooking), rather than making the frosting you typically find on them at bakeries.  They were SO good!

 

Herbed White Beans

Al's not much of a bean guy, but he loves this side dish!  The recipe is based off a recipe found in the You on a Diet book by Dr. Oz & Roizen.

You'll need:
-1 TB olive oil

-1/2-1 tomato (depending on your preference), chopped

-1/2 sweet onion, chopped

-1 can Great Northern Beans, drained and rinsed
-1 clove of garlic, chopped/pressed

-1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
-handful (~1/4 cup total) of chopped basil and dill
(We prefers all dill but I have a hard time growing it here, so I supplement with my weed of a basil plant)

Start out by heating the olive oil in a pan, add the chopped onions and cook until translucent and soft.
Add the rest of the ingredients and season with pepper and salt (preferably Kosher salt).  Cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Of course, Al prefers everything to be cooked longer so that the flavors can blend, so I usually cook it for 30-45 minutes, but 15-20 will do ya fine.  Also, Al prefers the beans mashed up, so I mash them while I stir and I get this.

Such a yummy side dish and goes well with Mediterranean chicken!

Pork Pinwheels

Al has SO many BBQ books that I decided we needed to really start going through them and trying the recipes.  So, I had him put sticky notes on recipes in 2 of his newest books, that he wanted to try and that were easy and semi-healthy enough for me to try on a weeknight.  One of which I tried the other day was pork pinwheels from his Big Bob Gibson BBQ book.  It calls for pork tenderloin, but being cheapskates like we are, we just used pork loin.  The pork is cut to approximately the size of a bacon strip, a bacon strip is placed on top, the pork is rolled up and toothpicks are put in to keep it rolled. Then, we brushed on top Al's mustard maple sauce creation (rather than BBG's sauce recipe).  Really you can use any BBQ sauce you want. Then on both sides you press in a 1/4 cup chopped pecan, 1 teas. salt and 1 teas. pepper mix.  Then grill for about 30 minutes.

Al gave it 1.5 thumbs up, I was not that big of a fan, maybe 1 thumb up for me.

Tomato Sandwiches

This summer Al's mom introduced me to tomato sandwiches.  Y'all may already know about this delicious secret, but in case you don't, I thought I would share.

Mom uses a regular piece of bread, but usually I only have english muffins in my house and the tomato slices fit perfectly, so I figure it's a perfect adjustment.  Also, traditionally you use cheddar cheese, but for a healthier version we use low-fat mozzarella.

Just toast a piece of bread or an english muffin.
Add a couple slices of cheese to the bread and melt in the microwave for about 20 seconds.

 

Then, add a couple of thick slices of tomato.
Top with a couple squeezes of light mayo.
Lastly, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Daring Bakers August Challenge--Dobos Torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

The Dobos Torta is a five-layer sponge cake, filled with a rich chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. (You may come across recipes which have anywhere between six and 12 layers of cake; there are numerous family variations!) It was invented in 1885 by József C. Dobos, a Hungarian baker, and it rapidly became famous throughout Europe for both its extraordinary taste and its keeping properties. The recipe was a secret until Dobos retired in 1906 and gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, providing that every member of the chamber can use it freely.

Well, this was my first Challenge as a newbie Daring Baker and I semi-succeeded and semi-failed. I used the opportunity of being on vacation for a week at my in-laws house to attempt this intimidating challenge and I'm glad I did because it took me many, many hours over two days to only semi-succeed!

It was pretty cool making the sponge layers, I've never made a sponge cake before or a cake without using a cake pan. First you spread the pancake-like batter on parchment paper and bake for just a few minutes and you get this perfectly thin sponge cake layer!











Day One I made 6 of these sponge cake layers and the buttercream frosting. We were given the option of varying the flavor of the buttercream, being inspired by my husband and living in peach capital (not GA) I chose peach buttercream. I planned on doubling the frosting but I doubled every ingredient except for the butter! But it was too late once I discovered my mistake. I tried to fix it but ended up ruining it--too late to start a new batch. So, I wrapped up my layers of sponge cake and ended for the day.

Day two, I remade the peach buttercream better than ever and also made some white chocolate buttercream for the top (a mistake, should've just stuck with the one kind). I assembled the cake alternating sponge with peach buttercream.
Then, I poured the kind of runny white chocolate buttercream that I hoped would thicken up--but didn't. So I ended up with this runny layer on top.

Next I made the caramel, which I luckily tasted before putting on the cake and discovered it had an extra strong lemon flavor and was burnt! This was at about 9:30pm on day two, and I was not in the mood to try again. I also opted not to add the decorative, optional nuts to the side due to allergies of family members that would be eating it.

So, this was my final product, runny white chocolate buttercream frosting and all.And to top it all off, I discovered that I don't like sponge cake ;)
But I did learn some new techniques--hopefully next month I'll be more successful.

Ratatouille

Have you ever seen this movie? Well we some friends that kept telling us we had to watch this movie, that Remy reminded them of Al. Well, Al was a little irritated that a rat reminded them of him. But after getting the movie for Christmas we finally watched it and within 3 minutes we knew exactly why Remy reminds our friends of Al. At the very beginning Remy is tasting food and can tell each ingredient that is in each dish--that's SO Al. So, it was only fitting that we should make Ratatouille ourselves don't you think?

We used this Eating Well Grilled Chicken Ratatouille recipe. I didn't take a picture of the grilled chicken, but it just looks like grilled chicken. Also, I didn't have any fresh marjoram and didn't care to buy any so I just used dried marjoram (which is actually in the family of oregano, so you could substitute oregano if you don't have any marjoram lying around). A little tip on converting fresh herbs to dried, 1TB fresh herbs = 1 teas. dried herbs.

Doesn't this look so colorful and delicious? I had more fun that I probably should've grilling up all these vegetables.I'm still deciding on whether or not I like eggplant but have recently learned that eggplants are best small, because they have no seeds. And eggplants should NOT be stored in the fridge.
The red (purple) onions are definitely a must that can't be substituted, I think they really make this dish!

And this is what we ended up with.
Now Al really likes vegetables despite his heavy meat eating tendencies, so he liked this dish enough to try it again some time, but not worthy enough for the menu rotation. I loved it because it was so fresh and summery and made me feel like I was eating so healthy.

Out of 10 Al would probably give this Grilled Chicken Ratatouille a 5 and I would give it a 7.