Coffee Cake

Oh wow.  Just looking at this picture makes me wish I had more of this cake lying around.  This is another brioche recipe from TSOB, and what a great one.  I think I've got brioche down now; what a rich delicious bread!

Chocolate Blackout Cake

Happy Birthday to my husband!  This celebration calls for a decadent chocolate cake.  And this blackout cake I got from Food and Wine is a great one.

On the technical side, I was surprised that all the chocolate in this cake comes from cocoa powder.  I also thought that the cornstarch in the frosting needed to be cooked longer than the recipe says to get rid of it's flavor. I love the idea of crumbling a cake layer and decorating the cake with the crumbs.

Bee Schnitten

This unusual "cake" is actually brioche bread.  It's a TSOB recipe, and quite a unique one.  Schnitten means "cut" in German.  The bread is baked whole, then cut in half and filled with pastry cream.  It's coated with honey before baking, so that's why it's a bee.  I decorated the top with pastry cream to look like the rings on a bee.  Another yummy addition to this cake is that the crust gets soaked in a rum simple syrup.  It tasted like a coffee cake, without the crumble.  

Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream

After making the galette, I still had some rhubarb to use.  So I decided to make ice cream, because one can never say no to ice cream.  I mean I even like lemon ice cream and that's saying a lot, given my lemon dessert aversion.  Once again, ice cream did the trick and now I can confidently say that I like rhubarb (with strawberries and sugar of course.)  Recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart.com.

Strawberry Rhubarb Galette

I'm not sure what possessed me to buy rhubarb at the farmer's market the other day.  I generally don't like it because it's too tart.  But I guess seeing new fruit at the market is exciting, since all winter it's been apples only. Rhubarb's natural pair, strawberries, would have to counterbalance it for this to work.  I also found some golden raspberries at a new grocery store a few feet from my house.  I had the right start for me to rethink my feelings for rhubarb.

I decided to make this galette for my Memorial Day weekend party.  I hadn't made a galette before and wanted to see what it was about.  The dough was super easy to make since you use a food processor.  It was cool to roll out the dough so wide and get it onto the baking sheet- major skills there.  The galette is basically pie, just with the majority of the crust around the border instead of on top.  The recipe comes from Jacques Pepin via Food and Wine magazine.

Overall, this dessert isn't my favorite, but pie isn't my thing either.  Everyone else enjoyed it though, and that's what matters. Also, I guess rhubarb isn't so bad after all.

Carrot Financier Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

For my dating anniversary with my husband (9 years) I made his favorite cake- carrot cake.  (We celebrate both dating and wedding anniversaries.)  The financier cake on it's own is again, a little drier because of the almond flour. But the cream cheese frosting in TSOB that goes with it was runnier than most, it had rum and lemon juice in it.  So good!  I also added coconut and pecans and of course after I threw both on the cake, I realized I should have toasted them first.  Oh well, next time.

For the next TSOB recipe, it's back to the cookie chapter.  I already made Chinese Almond Cookies.  We'll see which one sounds good now.

Tres Leches Cake

I went to a friend's house for an Oscar party last Sunday.  She wanted to make tostadas, so I wanted to make an appropriate dessert.  So I decided on Tres Leches cake.

We had made tres leches in school, during our nuevo latino menu, but I didn't get a chance to make it, because I had to work on other courses.  I made a sponge cake for the base instead of a yellow cake.  Then I used Alton Brown's version of tres leches milk.  Then, because we did it in school, I made common meringue, and brought my mini blowtorch to torch it!

I think it turned out nicely and was very elegant for an elegant awards show.