Daring Baker's May

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.



For the Vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg - I used two whole eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla I used one vanilla bean pod scraped and added to the milk when heating.

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.

Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.

Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

I find pastry cream a bit heavy so I like to lighten it with some whipped cream. I used the pastry cream and added enough whipped to soft peaks creams until it was smooth.

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.

Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.

As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes.

It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.



Piping:
Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.

Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.

Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.

Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

Can be stored in a airtight box overnight.

Filling:
When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.

Use one of these to top your choux and assemble your piece montée.

Chocolate Glaze:
8 ounces/200 g. finely chopped chocolate (use the finest quality you can afford as the taste will be quite pronounced; I recommend semi-sweet) I made a chocolate glace icing instead, it was delicious!!

Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.

Hard Caramel Glaze:
1 cup (225 g.) sugar
½ teaspoon lemon juice

Combine sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan with a metal kitchen spoon stirring until the sugar resembles wet sand. Place on medium heat; heat without stirring until sugar starts to melt around the sides of the pan and the center begins to smoke. Begin to stir sugar. Continue heating, stirring occasionally until the sugar is a clear, amber color. Remove from heat immediately; place bottom of pan in ice water to stop the cooking. Use immediately.
It was quite humid and rainy here today so the toffee didn't set as it should, still darn tasty though. Be warned it does stick to your teeth.

Assembly of your Piece Montée:
You may want to lay out your unfilled, unglazed choux in a practice design to get a feel for how to assemble the final dessert. For example, if making a conical shape, trace a circle (no bigger than 8 inches) on a piece of parchment to use as a pattern. Then take some of the larger choux and assemble them in the circle for the bottom layer. Practice seeing which pieces fit together best.

Once you are ready to assemble your piece montée, dip the top of each choux in your glaze (careful it may be still hot!), and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up. (You may want to use toothpicks to hold them in place – see video #4 below).

When you have finished the design of your piece montée, you may drizzle with remaining glaze or use ribbons, sugar cookie cut-outs, almonds, flowers, etc. to decorate. Have fun and enjoy! Bon appétit!

Now mine isn't that much of a tower, it was too wet today to make a nice tower that stuck together, so it's sorta a pile of profiteroles, but they were delicious!! As evidenced by the fact that there are NONE LEFT!!!



Sorry for the lack of pictures as you go, I've this time left everything to the last minute and just forgot to take piccies as I went, ah well next time :)

Small Stocking Tonight 27th May

Some semi-customs and shock horror a couple of Splitsie's semi-customs. I've been off colour this week, so the ready to go stuff isn't quite ready to go hence the semi-customs, but there will be a small amount of ready mades as well.

All instocks will be posted Monday latest.

Pop along to Cherub's Kiss to see what's on offer.

All preorders were sent last week, bar two of the raph packs, which fingers crossed will go by tomorrow.

Don't forget you can keep up to date with happenings on our Facebook page - link is on the right of screen :) Would love to see you there :)

Sunday Baking

And oh my I'm on time this week lol!! Well to be honest I did start them last night.



Shane and I watched 'It's Complicated' this week and there is a scene where they make chocolate crossiants and whilst getting groceries yesterday Shane asked if I could make them - well of course what a silly hubby. So here is the result.



I used this recipe I've made Danish Pastry before and this is not dissimilar - I did drop the butter back to 300g though as that was all I had and it was a trifle hard to roll out in the brisk morning, so I'm on the search for a softer dough.



But as you can see they went down a treat and look and taste delicious!!!

My life before nappies

Was smocking and heirloom sewing and although it still is to a degree. I still do some sewing and I still design on a semi-regular basis. But the teaching of smocking has taken a backseat for at least the next couple of years.

Australian Smocking and Embroidery Issue 91 is due to hit the stands I believe in early June, and here is my contribution.



Little Miss K is modelling it before I sent it in for submission



If you'd like to purchase the magazine Australian Smocking and Embroidery you can pop along here

It's not up there yet but I'm sure it will be in the next couple of days.

Sunday Baking

Okay, okay so the pictures are a couple of days late, but here they are.

Pecan Brownies - the original recipe called for walnuts but I really don't like them. So I used good old Aussie Pecans.



And then Caramel Cashew slice, wasn't too keen on the caramel, I thought it could be better, but it was quick and easy to make and quite tasty.



I also made Choc chip and craisin bikkies but Katherine doesn't like them - get the pink bits out mummy, I just want the chocolate bits.

Support a Charity

Would you like to help out a worthy charity? Well pop along to Harry's Rocky Road and support Redkite - providing real support to children, young people and their families through cancer has remained Redkite's single focus for over 26 years.

You know that the only way to get a hold of Cherubs Kisses is to score a nappy - well for those of you who are addicted to the yummy exclusive flavour you can for a limited time purchase it here

$2 from everypack goes to Redkite. Please dig deep and support this wonderful charity - and of course Harry's delicious Rocky Road.

And for all of those that purchase a pack of this wonderful chocolate, if you email with with a picture of you or yours holding a pack of this wonderful chocolate you'll go into the draw to score a Cherub's Kiss Splitsie!!

Email the photo into angel at cherubskiss dot com with RedKite in the subject line. Nappy will be drawn on 11th June, Sarah's Birthday - one entry per person and please ensure that your photo is no bigger than 400 pixels, so as to not clog up Angel's inbox.

Some baking

Firstly a tweaked Masterchef Sausage Roll - I used pork/veal mince and I didn't bother pureeing the veges mine eat bits lol! So they had grated carrot and cheese in them and oh yum!! I used 500g of the mince and 4 sheets of ready rolled puff pastry cut in half. So it made 8 big sausage rolls. I used poppy seeds on the top - except for K who doesn't like those black things lol!! This was enough for dinner for 6, a lunch for Shane for work and 3 lunchtime meals. They were delicious!!



And then it was cold, gloomy and dark and I needed desert after a rough day :( So Lemon and Coconut Self Saucing pudding and oh my it was delicious - ugly but delicious. Next time I think I'll make the top batter a bit runnier, it was quite thick, but nontheless tasty.





And last but not least, cinnamon scrolls, my favourite quick put together last minute morning tea.



2 cups of SR flour, rub in 90g butter and then mix in 2/3 cup of milk to a soft dough. Roll out to a rectangle to about 5mm thickness.

Then mix together 60g softened butter and 2 tablespoons brown sugar , 1 teas cinnamon and spread over the rectangle of the dough. Roll up and then cut into 2 - 3 cm slices. Place dough pieces close together on a tray and bake until golden - about 12 - 15 minutes at 210 deg.

When cool ice with Glace Icing - I use a cup of so of icing sugar, a teaspoon of butter, and enough milk to make a smooth paste, add a drop of pink colour. Mix together until smooth. Zap in the microwave for about 20 minutes and then spoon in dollops onto the cooled scrolls.

Girly Explosion!

Pink and girly was the brief for these hand dyed raphaels - and I think I got it spot on - the photos really don't do the marbled dyeing justice, but I hope you get the idea.



They are all bamboo velour dyed in shades of Rosebud, Fuschia, Hot Pink, Amythest and Pumpkin. 3 Marbled ones and 3 in various ways of dyeing. All overlocked with pink maxilock swirls.



Cathy I hope you like them :)

And a Quote for the day - sent to me by a gorgeous lady who has supported me and helped me stay sane recently.

"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort." - John Ruskin

The littliest Cherub

is growing up - she'll be 4 this July, where the heck did that go - can you remember when she looked like this? In a longie/skort from Ali aka Bumnround



Well now she looks like this and she's being supremely cheeky - I've had this Tikki Rainbow Dress made for nearly 2 weeks but until today she refused to put it on - as I was making it she was - is it finished, is that mine, is it done. Then it was done and she didn't want to put it on lol!! But she did today - I think Daddy might have had something to do with that. I find so little time to make for my cherubs at the moment, so knitting - and I'm only a beginner, I think this makes project no. 5 - I can do at night (when I can't see to sew) and I'm home alone with the littlies. William has reqested a vest, so after I finish what I'm working on now, shhhh! I can't tell you what it is, the mama might be listening :) He's next in the queue.



Anyways back to Rainbow Dress - the colours are just divine and I'm obviously a slack knitter but I think it might have come from Elissa and Kris. I used 200g of it eek! Cause the last Rainbow I made was too short, and the plain purple is from Tangled Yarns. Sacrilage that I don't knit a test square, oops, but if I did that, nothing would get made - Tikki is you are reading, just ignore that bit lol! Anyways I knitted up the size 3 with lots of added length, I basically just kept knitting till I ran out of wool.



So yes she's gone from super dark dead straight hair to very blonde and wavy, with some little curls and it's finally growing back after the mass haircut via her brother last year.

If I'm cranky

then I bake. Do you have weeks where just everything rubs you the wrong way? When things just don't go according to plan. When other people are just rude? Well I've had one of those weeks sigh!! Perhaps I'm tired, perhaps I'm sore - actually I'm both and maybe that's what's making me cranky, but anyways the baking bug bites, I don't even have to cook stuff I like, but I find myself HAVING to bake. So yesterday when I was particuarly cranky I decided I HAD to make these biscuits.

Peanut Butter and Choc Chip - both of which are fine by themselves, but I don't particularly like at all lol!! But the others in the family do - so a goodly portion were scoffed by the small children and teenagers boyfriend after dinner, no ice-cream as they had an icypole after school, so the bikkies had to suffice. The recipe is from the latest issue of Family Circle, not a magazine I usually buy but the chocolate tart on the front called Shane's name in the grocery line and then I had to look at the recipes didn't I - dumb move, but anyways some awesome recipes are in the book.

These were alot stiffer than I thought they would be given the mix, so they didn't flatten like my normal choc chip bikkies do, so the first lot ended up looking like these.



When really they look better I think looking like this.



They are also suppose to have melted chocolate drizzled, but it seems that someone has eaten the cooking chocolate :( So no drizzle.

But these bikkies - Butterscotch -they are yummy and very moreish. Again from Family Circle, but try as I might I couldn't track down Green and Blacks Butterscotch Chocolate as the recipe stipulated, so a girls got to do what a girls got to do and I HAD to substitute Toblerone, oops! But OH MY, they are delicious. Mind you they are better still warm from the over, but next day they aren't that bad either. I didn't follow the instructions to the letter - heaven's above when do I ever, and I didn't put them in the fridge till cold. I just used my trusty mini-icecream scoop and rolled them into the caster sugar and hey presto - divine yumminess.

If you have a girl

and you aren't Kylie or Lisa then you'd better not look cause I think there is going to be some serious girly fluffy envy out there lol!

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Are you Kylie or Lisa? No, then you shouldn't be looking lol!!
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Come on I know you are still looking.

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Okay so here they are.

Kylie's brief was super girly and pink! I think it qualifies, I had so much fun making this one - I love pink and pistachio, so clean and fresh but still oh so girly.



The frills are just frilly beyond belief and it's a lush pale pink inner as well. Just divine.



And here are Lisa's - Lisa sent her own fabric, a fav of mine too, it's Saffron Craig's Tulip Fairy - In a Splitsie (I really must think of a name lol) and a all cotton front with denim back.



All so incredibly girly. I hope you like them :)

QFD Creative Giveaway

I haven't as yet had the time to create any of the gorgeous tutorials from QFD Creative Team, but if you pop along here you can see what they have been up to. Some awesome goodies and they'd make super gifts if you are starting to plan for the Festive Season. So if you'd like to follow the blog - pop along to QFD Creative

Baby Stocking

That's right a stocking just for the wee bubba's out there - Previews are starting to go up and I'll be stocking on

Monday 10th May at 8.30pm
on the Cherub's Kiss Site

I'll also be randomly stocking some pre-orders a couple at a time, probably just once a day. Today's are up now.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

Mr Cherub's favourite combination, does absolutely nothing for me though. Anyways so I thought time to try out a new recipe, so I dig out the newest of the books, and there is a chocolate cake, and I think well Shane did want Chocolate and Peanut Butter and his cake diet is as you know seriously curtailed lately, so the recipe is light on the fat department, so I think let's give it a whirl



So the recipe is adapted from Cakes by Callie Maritz and Mari-Louis Guy

These cakes are super super light and fluffy, not for you if you like a super dense fudgy cake.

Place in the bowl

2 cups sugar - I'm hoping to cut this bit down
1 3/4 cups plain flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt - I leave this out
2 eggs
1 cup milk - I used sour light cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil - I used rice bran
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup of boiling water.

Preheat oven to 180 deg celcius and I used 24 muffin pans. This cake doesn't rise much, so I filled them quite full, leaving maybe 1cm at most at the top.

Mix all the dry ingredients together, then add all the wet ingredients except the boiling water. Mix till combined and then beat on medium for 2 minutes. Stir through the boiling water - yes I know it's quite odd, and the batter will be super runny. They take about 12minutes to cook.

I topped them with Peanut Butter/Chocolate Frosting. I had enough for the cupcakes and some left over.

250g of unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of milk
2 tablespoons of cocoa
1/4 cup of peanut butter (this is all I had left)
icing sugar mixture.

Beat together the softened unsalted butter with the peanut butter and milk, add in cocoa and gradually enough icing sugar to make a smooth/thick frosting suitable for piping. If you don't like super sweet, make it thinner and just spread it across the cake.



And I can finally post the picture of my Bagalicious Bag No. 2 - whilst I wasn't that happy with my rendition of no. 1 - I loved making no.2 When it arrived, I knew that it was destined for a dear friend, who is expecting her cherub no. 3 and I am so incredibily happy for her and her family. And I thought this bag would be perfectly girly and a great size for some nappies and baby bits and pieces.



It was designed by Natalie Ross and it is called Beach House. You can join the Bagalicious Club here



Bag No 3 arrived just last week and it's already destined to head to another nappy wahm Mumma as it has bright yellow and you all know how much I loveeeee yellow ........ not lol!!!