The perfect summer dessert {in the fall}

Tangy Berry Torte Day was a busy one. I like the sound of Buttermilk White Layer Cake, which was your typical batter. Shortening, sugar, lemon zest & salt are creamed and then: eggs, egg whites & buttermilk are blended and flour, baking powder & soda are sifted. The wet and dry mixtures are added into the shortening mixture alternately. Baking time is about 30 minutes.

The Tangy Whipped Frosting included sour cream, which I don't think I've tried before. The technique was a bit different: cream, icing sugar and vanilla are whipped, then the heated gelatine with the sour cream added in to temper it are added in and the mixture is whipped to firm peaks.

The layer cake and whipped frosting are layered with a berry mixture and then masked. I tried a "rustic" technique, which really means I could not get the sides of my cake smooth, plus I saw it in Martha Stewart Living once. There should actually be four layers in this cake, which would result in a TALL slice of cake, so I kept it to three.

Lemon & peanut butter dropped

It was drop cookie week, where dough gets rolled into little balls and flattened with either a Hershey's kiss or the end of a spoon. Sounds delicious, no? The Peanut Butter Blossoms were made with shortening, peanut butter, brown & white sugar, baking soda & powder, egg, vanilla, milk and bread flour. Lots of ingredients and it only took about 5 minutes to mix the dough. The dough is then rolled into little balls and rolled in sugar {I will leave this step out when making these again; it adds a weird texture to the cookie}. After being baked for 10 minutes, a chocolate kiss is pressed into the center while the cookie is still warm.

I had such a hard time getting a good picture of the Lemon Blossoms. These were made with butter, icing sugar, lemon juice and pastry flour. As with the peanut butter ones, these were rolled into little balls and rolled in chopped walnuts. An indent is made with the handle of a wooden spoon, which is then filled with jam and baked for about 12 minutes.

Gateau gone wrong

It was an off-day in the kitchen. My pastry cream burned, I overwhipped my topping and I piped my puff pastry layers too thin! But somehow, this ended up looking and tasting good. Go figure. I had never heard of a Gateau St. Honore before, but it is very similar to a Napolean, except for the profiteroles {cream puffs}. Puff pastry is rolled out very thin, cut into circles and baked. For this recipe, it's meant to baked very thin and not puff up, so we weighed our circles down with mini cooling racks before going into the oven. Then, choux paste {water, butter, salt, eggs and flour stirred quickly on high heat} is piped into little balls and baked. Then {yes, there's more}, pastry cream {milk, cream, vanilla, sugar, cornstarch, eggs} is made and set aside to cool. Where I went wrong with that is that the mixture needs to be stirred very quickly, right down to the bottom of the pot, otherwise it sits there and burns.

Once everything is baked/cooled/set, the puff circles, pastry cream and fresh strawberries are layered and masked with whipped topping. To garnish, strawberries are arranged on the top and the choux paste puffs are filled with pastry cream and placed around the top of the cake and around the sides. Voila!

I don't like piping

I felt like I would never reach the bottom of the bowl of the cookie batter for these. I must have piped 5 or 6 sheets of Chocolate Spritz and Hazelnut Rosette cookies. They're the sort of thing that took so long to make that by the time they came out of the oven, I had no interest in eating them. These are similar to the cookies I made in Baking Arts I. The chocolate ones are a mixture of shortening, butter, vanilla, orange zest, icing sugar, eggs, milk, flour and cocoa powder. Once piped and baked, they were made into raspberry jam sandwiches and dipped or drizzled with white chocolate.

The hazelnut cookies contained butter, icing sugar, eggs {+ additional yolks}, hazelnuts {aka filberts - who knew?}, flour, vanilla and spices {cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice}. After being piped and baked, a drop of raspberry jam is placed on the top and these are drizzled with chocolate.

"Having no interest in eating them" is actually code for "I caved the next day anyway because they looked so good" and yum! Both variations were good.

Better luck next week

Another dense European cake. Similar to the Austrian Linzer Torte, the Sacher Torte was created at the Viennese Sacher Hotel and you can even have it shipped to you if you want to try the original. It's a multi-step process that results in a really dry cake! Dark chocolate, butter and hazelnut paste are melted/egg yolks and sugar are whipped/flour, cocoa powder and ground hazelnuts are combined/egg whites and sugar are whipped...then all this is mixed and baked. Once cooled, it's sliced in half and filled with apricot jam, then ganache is poured over it. The word "sacher" should be piped on every slice to make it authentic, but I like my hearts better. All that work for something that didn't even taste that great!

Cookie classics

Oatmeal Raisin and Chocolate Chip cookies aren't the most challenging things to bake, but they're always a hit. They were gone in a minute when I left them in the kitchen at work. These are "drop" cookies {which means exactly that; they're dropped onto the cookie sheet} and include the usual suspects: butter, sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, eggs, vanilla and chocolate chips/oats. The oatmeal cookies also included some cinnamon...a nice touch!

Not sharing these

I love biscotti! We made two types last night: Espresso and Chocolate Chip Almond. I've never made it before as the twice-baked process seemed hard but was actually really easy. For the Espresso ones {the "dry" recipe which uses butter}, it only takes 5 minutes to cream the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla and then mix in the dry ingredients {flour, baking powder, cinnamon, espresso, orange zest, chocolate chips}.

The dough is then rolled into a log and baked for 35-40 minutes, cooled, cut, then baked again for 20 minutes. Cooled, then DIPPED in CHOCOLATE.

The Chocolate Chip Almond ones {"wet" as oil is used instead of butter} are basically the same process, except for the oil and baking soda instead of powder. Those were baked for 30 minutes, removed, cut and baked again for 10 minutes. Cooled and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Crunchy caramel

Now we're getting somewhere! My Cakes: Classic to Modern class started this past Saturday and everything on the menu sounds really good and involves a few recipes so will be more challenging. For week 1, we made a Crunchy Caramel Cake which included three recipes: Meringue noisette layers, butterscotch caramel and Chantilly cream. The meringues {ground hazelnuts, cornstarch, egg whites, sugar and vanilla} were baked at 250 degrees for an hour and a half {but could be baked for up to 2-3 hours} to dry them out.

Making caramel is scary. Sugar has to be cooked on high heat, along with water and glucose. While the mixture is caramelizing, the sides of the pot need to be brushed down with water to avoid crystallization and if a drop of the boiling mixture touches you, you will be scarred FOR LIFE with a sugar burn.

Then we made Chantilly cream. Whipped cream, gelatin and sugar made fluffy. Everything layered together and SO sweet.