Crème Brûlée

Happy belated Easter/Passover and Happy Spring to you all!  I had a wonderful dinner yesterday with good friends and for dessert I made crème brûlée.

I wish I would have picked up one of those small blowtorches.  Instead I tried to broil the sugar.  It didn't turn out like it would have with the blowtorch, but it was still really tasty.

This was another vanilla sauce recipe from TSOB.  I think I have a good grasp on vanilla sauce now and will be moving on at some point to another chapter.  But next up, I have to decide on a flavor for my mom's birthday cheesecake.

Pastry Cream Cookies

I am back to TSOB! Finally! My new job I'm starting in April at a certain high-end grocery chain's bakery was the inspiration. I don't think I've covered the vanilla sauce (aka creme anglaise) chapter on this blog yet. I attempted to first make it at school and accidentally broke it. But in my familiar surroundings at home, I quickly knocked out a version of the vanilla sauce, making it into pastry cream.

I always thought pastry cream, the stuff inside eclairs and cream puffs, was white. Mine turned out a bit yellow, probably from the eggs, so I'm not sure if I did it 100% right. But the cookies I made from it worked out just fine. To make them, I combined the cream with crumbs from a piece of the unfrosted St. Patrick's day cake. Throw in some nuts and voila, yummy cookies.

Happy St. Patty's Day

My first post of the year! This is the first special dessert I've made so far. It's called the Irish Car Bomb cake, since it has all three Irish liquors in it: Guinness cake, whiskey ganache, and Bailey's frosting. I don't think I would ever be able to drink an actual Irish car bomb, it just doesn't sound too good. But throw it all on some cake and it sounds fabulous.

This cake is just as rich as my birthday cake was. Moist from sour cream and rich from the ganache and frosting. I'd choose this over corned beef and cabbage any day.

Recipe found here.

New Kitchen Equipment!

It's not even Christmas yet and I've received a couple of really nice presents from friends.

The first is this pretty cookbook stand.

And I was really lucky that one of my husbands' friends wanted to rid his apartment of this:

Unbelievable! It was really great to use both presents to make a sour cream, browned butter ginger coffee cake for Christmas brunch! Stay tuned for that picture.

Peppermint Brownies

Merry Christmas! Or as Stephanie Miller says Happy Christma-Hana-Kwanza-ka!

This fudgy brownie recipe is part of my Christmas dessert rotation. I made this a few years back and thought it would make a perfect gift to the office holiday party this year. You can get the recipe here.

I haven't posted in quite some time. I got a second job that kept me busy pretty much every weekend in November, so no time for baking. I think I baked something for Thanksgiving, but I can't remember what.

I also just finished finals for culinary school. We made mother sauces (bechamel, espagnole, etc.), vinaigrettes, soups, and put together a full plate: chicken breast, one starch and two veggies. I did pretty well and got A's in all my classes. I'm looking forward to next semester.

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

If you haven't noticed from this and the last post, I love anything that's chocolate with hazelnut. I also love well-made biscotti; my first post on this blog was cranberry/pistachio biscotti.

I made these because I had a cookie craving, and also because my in-laws were coming to visit. I used a Smitten Kitchen recipe again, and will be back there another time to try out the fig and walnut biscotti.

I have been working in the TSOB, trying to make tuiles, which are very thin 'tile' cookies. I haven't gotten them to work yet; not sure if I'm cooking them too long or not getting them thin enough. I've tried twice now, so hopefully third time's a charm.

Hazelnut Ganache Tart with Sea Salt

My husband's friend invited us over for dinner last night with the stipulation that I bring a dessert. However I only found out about the dessert request about 3 hours before we were supposed to go over. So I looked for something quick and picked this yummy tart from Real Simple (recipe here.)

When our friend bit into it he asked, "Where do you get chocolate like this?" I explained that you just add hot cream to finely chopped (good quality) chocolate and there you go.