The Cake to End all Cakemaking

Was this cake worth it?
No, Wait.
Ah:
Am I worth this cake?


This month's Daring Bakers challenge was to create a Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream, otherwise known as Devote your Life, Kitchen, and First Born to a Cake.

Here is a photo of just one of the seventeen parts of the cake (I won't bother posting the 8-page recipe here, it's just tooooooo long and trust me you don't want to make it.)

This is the praline paste, which goes in the praline buttercream.












Here is a photo of one round of dishes, and then the finished product.





Pretty,
Tasty,
But I will not make this cake again if I can help it.

Some Enchanted Galette

I wish you could have been there. The evening air was so light, and the deer came out of the woods to start munching on our neighbor's garden. Then, we saw the hummingbird. It was peacefully sipping at bee balm, a raucously red flower that looks like a firework. Then, it approached us. Slowly, it buzzed closer and closer until we could see into its eyes, hear its chirp, hear its wings. It stayed there for a full minute, and we didn't move, scared to chase it away but also fearful that we might miss the message it was trying to tell us: beware? be joyful?

When it finally flew away, we felt changed. How sad it would have been, to have to return to real, hard-edged life after that moment out of Pan's Labyrinth. How disappointingly ordinary it would feel. Fortunately, we did not have to step out of the magical world just yet. We had the galette:
So easy. So tasty. So dripping with juices and full of peaches and custard and all seated atop a light-as-air whole wheat pastry flour crust. Oy, joy. The hummingbird- I am sure now that he wanted us to be joyful!

The recipe came from Dorrie Greenspan's book, Baking, from My Home to Yours. Here is Dorrie's trick: on the bottom of the galette, put some jam and graham cracker crumbs.
I also mixed in some grated ginger, because, well, yum! Then, in go the peaches:Ooh la la! Bake it, add a bit of quick custard on top, and MAGIC. Thanks to Molly and Jodi for sharing this special enchanted evening with me!

Also, for those of you who are interested in whole wheat pastry flour, I use it because it has a great flavor and is healthy. Also, I think it tastes flakier, especially for leftovers. Here's one brand and here is the link to buy it: (King Arthur Flour is all sold out right now!)

  Buy Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

cherry and celery cobbler- oops!

Pre-baking... mushy balls of love. yum! Another Tuesdays with Dorrie looks like it's going to be delicious. I made a date with two friends to share cherry rhubarb cobber and possibly to get a look at their new baby. The baby fell asleep, so we fell to the cobbler. We scooped out some ice cream... and scooped out some of this:
Isn't it pretty?
But... the rhubarb didn't cook all the way. So while it tasted good, some of the rhubarb had the consistency of celery. Oh well- my friends still liked it. And me. That is the most important.

TWD: Mexican Chocolate Cupcake Pudding

I love pudding. It's so easy: just put some stuff in a pot and stir, stir, stir, then eat on the spot or refrigerate for later pleasures.

I do not love washing dishes, cleaning counters, or pouring hot liquids from one container to another.

Therefore, this week's Tuesdays with Dorrie challenge was kind of a bust. I never thought that a pudding recipe could use so many dishes, or require so many spins through the food processor. Oh well.

I made the pudding "Mexican" by adding 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon with the cocoa and substituting almond extract for the vanilla. Cinnamon and almond are traditional flavors that get added to chocolate produced in Mexico.

I topped my pudding with a swirl of meringue and colored sugar to make it look like a cupcake- though I should have made the swirls a bit bigger.

Taste? Awesome. Verdict? I would make Mexican Chocolate Pudding again using a traditional recipe for chocolate pudding.

To find the original recipe, get a copy of Baking, From my Home to Yours by Dorrie Greenspan.

Cookie of the Month

A rich dough made with egg yolks sandwiches raspberry and blueberry jam fillings.
These delicate and rich cookies are called "Red, White, and Blue Stars," and they are Martha Stewart's July cookie of the month. (Last page of the magazine) They took a long time to make, but they made me happy for a few days.

I thought the filling needed more zip- jam is nice, but not addictive, you know?- so I added my new favorite product: ginger in a jar. I'm not talking about the stuff you get at Japanese restaurants with your sushi, although I love that stuff, I am talking about The Ginger People's Minced Ginger:


I added two tablespoons of ginger for each type of jam, and wow! It really made the cookies worthy of adult consumption- though it wouldn't have repelled any child, either. The taste of this fresh ginger is completely different than powdered. It doesn't have that old, peppery taste. Instead, it tastes jazzy and exciting.

I have tried mincing ginger before, and the stuff in this bottle is more analogous to finely grated ginger. There are no chunks, only tasty ginger mush.

Thse muffins are for you...Thanks!!!

Thank you so much... everyone who wrote to me with words of encouragement. I can't tell you how meaningful it was to have strangers wish me a speedy recovery. I felt so inspired that I made zucchini muffins for everyone: zucchini, lemon, and basil muffins. I didn't post the recipe because frankly, it was not that great. But I did enjoy the combination of flavors, so I photographed a little montage.

Some gory details about my surgery, for those who wish to hear them:

I have a schwannoma- a benign tumor- removed from my ulnar nerve, just above my elbow. This nerve controls the pinky, half the ring finger, and part of the hand. The recovery takes a long time, over a month, because it's a nerve and it is very sensitive.

I've been having lots of pain because the nerve misfires. Fortunately, modern medicine has some very good drugs. Anyhow, I really, really appreciate everything that the Tuesdays with Dorrie group posted. In order to heal my arm, I need to use it! Things like cooking are really good for me. (Typing is still wicked hard, though. I'm using the backspace key a lot.)

All of you are so encouraging. I am going to keep cooking, healing, and sending happy thoughts and muffins your way!

Love,

Libby

Epitomy of Summer: Blueberry Pie and Iced Mint Tea

The berries before baking, coated in flour, organic sugar, lemon zest, and my own addition- almond extract.
The finished product. Crust looks a little darker than normal, but that's not just because I burnt the edges. I also substituted whole wheat pastry flour- and it's FABULOUS. If you haven't tried it yet, go get yourself a bag today!

This pie, made for the weekly cooking challenge "Tuesdays with Dorrie," shouldn't have been hard to make. After all, the recipe was clear and the ingredients were simple- I just didn't have all the equipment.

I had: a rolling pin, pie pan, parchment paper, oven, timer, measuring cups, and even a sieve to wash the blueberries... but I didn't have a functioning right hand. Surgery on my right ulnar nerve has left me with a tender and weak right hand, so when I went to roll out the crust (the hardest part!) I failed!

Fortunately, Dorrie Greenspan's book, "Baking: From my Home to Yours" is SO clear, SO easy to follow, that I was able to enlist my younger brother to create the most important part of this pie. (Thanks, Tim!) She instructed us to turn to crust 1/8 of a circle, then roll out from the middle. So simple! Of course, once I got it in the oven I forgot to cover the crust- hence the sawed-off edges. But it tasted. Absolutely. Amazing. Just like summer!

No TWD this week....

Just had surgery on my arm. Back next week!