October DB Challenge: Pumpkin Spice Macarons

We all knew this day would come - the day that a Daring Baker host would choose macarons. Luckily, I've been practicing (not really for this day though), so I wasn't quite as worried as many others. You see, I'm an odd combination of precise and haphazard in the kitchen. Things that aren't really fussy, like bread and cookies and cakes, I don't spoon and level flour. I don't measure vanilla. Eggs are not at room temperature. And butter, more often than not, is half-melty from being warmed to room temperature next to the oven set to 200 degrees.

But other things, fiddly things? Oh yes, that is why I own a scale. For when I realize that I have 100 g of egg whites, not 90 g, so I will need to increase my tant pour tant (almond / confectioners sugar mixture) by 11%. Well, 11.111111% (11 1/9), but my scale isn't quite that exact! Macarons are also why I have an oven thermometer, just in case. And I have a nice little template to pipe my macarons on, just so that they're all the same size and bake at the same rate. Fiddly things bring out the spreadsheets and calculators in me, what can I say?


And I love it. I love the precise nature of baking macarons, followed by the freedom that comes from asking what flavor the next batch will be. I've made hazelnut macarons, chocolate, coffee, almond, pecan, and now spice. Not too much spice, so I didn't overwhelm the almond flavor - just 1/4 tsp of ground ginger and 1/8 tsp each of nutmeg (fresh ground!), cinnamon, and cloves. They smelled like fall. And what would be better to fill them with than my new bff gingered pumpkin cream cheese frosting?

Yes, I'm in love with cream cheese frosting. If it weren't for pesky people wanting chocolate or vanilla cakes at my wedding, I'd make all spice and carrots cakes, slathered with ginger-y cream cheese frosting. But this new discovery - adding a couple tablespoons of pureed pumpkin to my standard cream cheese frosting? Oh yes. This is special. Not only for the faint but gorgeous orangey color, but the slightly savory note in the frosting makes this extra special. Which is good, since I have, oh, maybe a couple cups of it left over :)


Disclosure: I tried the challenge recipe, chosen by Ami. Once. It didn't work - much too wet, and since it didn't give weights for egg whites, it made me nervous. So I went back to my standard macaron recipe, based on Helen's, which I have a very high success rate with. It's fiddly and precise, and I like that.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, left at room temperature overnight
2-3 Tablespoons pureed pumpkin
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 - 2 cups powdered sugar

Using a hand mixer, combine the cream cheese, pumpkin, and ginger until smooth. Slowly add the powdered sugar until you reach a pipeable consistency.

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

TWD: Cherry Fudge Brownie

I grew up in Indiana, northern Indiana to be specific. So when we talked about summer fruit, it was all about the blueberries. We'd buy the 5 pound boxes of blueberries, and I'd happily sit with a book and the entire box and snack on them for hours at a time. Hey, it has to be better than snacking on chips or candy! At the end of the blueberry season (*sob*), my mom would buy a box or two and we'd pack them away into bags and into one of the freezers (yes, multiple freezers - preserving and raising livestock for slaughter will do that to you). All those bags of blueberries would hold me over until the next blueberry season, when I would happily gorge myself on the plump little berries all over again.

So when I moved to Wisconsin, I figured - hey, same latitude as Michigan, and they grow kickass blueberries, so Wisconsin will have lots of blueberries to satisfy my habit! Um, I hate to break it to you, but no, no they don't. I can barely find those measly little boxes of blueberries - no one should be faced with mere pints of blueberries. Gallons! Buckets! Hordes! All much more suitable terms for blueberry quantities.


What they did have was cherries. Boatloads of tart cherries. Cherry jams and preserves, huge deep cherry pies, and *shudder* cherry wine. But we'll forgive them for the wine, because those cherries are damn good in pies. No more crappy cherry pie filling, I can make a quick drive up to Door County and pick of a 5 or 10 pound bag of frozen tart cherries. So since I love pie, I've been able to forgive Wisconsin for their lack of blueberries.

Until April picked the cherry fudge brownie torte though, I hadn't considered the Black Forest angle. Cherries and chocolate? Hmm... this required some thought. Well, not actually, to tell you the truth. I considered the idea for approximately 5 seconds before the "hell yeah" reaction occurred. And oh, is this a hell yeah of a dessert. I skipped the mousse on top, because nothing should get in the way of the fudgey, chocolatey, cherry dotted goodness that is this brownie. Wisconsin, I'd love you, just for your tart cherries.


Last Week: Sweet Potato Disappointment
Next Week: Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake

Condensed Milk Pound Cake

I'm a very bad person. And since I'm an engineer-type person, I've totally got data to prove it. Exhibit A: This condensed milk pound cake. Do you know when I made this? Three. Weeks. Ago. And I promise, you don't want to know when I finished it off. Because it was an embarrassingly short period of time after baking it. I couldn't even wait to take pictures of it before slicing in and trying some, and that's pretty rare for me. Generally, I finish making something and am so covered in butter, sugar, and flour that I can't imagine even trying what I just made. So I hand it off to others to have. But, um, this wasn't even given to the bf. Not even a taste. That's right, I kept it all for myself.


Surprisingly, I'm not generally a fan of pound cakes. They just tend to be a bit too heavy, a bit too greasy, and (please don't kill me) a bit too buttery and one-dimensional. This one though? Oh yes. It's my new favorite poundcake. It's dense, but not heavy. Sweet, but not sugary. Perfect on its own, toasted a bit, or smeared with some raspberry jam. My favorite was having it with jam though, giving it just a little bit of pop - perfection with a cup of strong black tea.

Oh, and while Veron didn't mention it, this is freaking fantastic as a breakfast, mid-morning snack, afternoon tea, or dessert. It's like the little black dress of the loaf cake world.


So I guess I'm apologizing. For holding out on you. Because really, you need to make this pound cake, immediately. And then go out and buy the book it came from, because if this is a sign of what's in Pichet Ong's book, all the recipes will be dynamite. Which reminds me, I really need to bake more things out of it now that I own it...



Condensed Milk Pound Cake

from Pichet Ong’s “The Sweet Spot”

1 cup (8 ounces/226 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pan
1 1/3 cups (7 ounces/200 g) all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup (3 3/4 ounces/ 106 g) sugar
1 vanilla bean, chopped, or tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup (8 1/2 ounces/ 239 g) sweetened condensed milk
3 large eggs

Preheat the oven 325 F. Generously butter an 8 1/2x 4 1/2 loaf pan and set aside.

Sift together the flour and baking powder and set aside.

Put the sugar and the chopped vanilla bean, if using, in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse until the vanilla bean is finely ground. Sift through a fine-mesh sieve and return the sugar mixture to the food procesor. If not using the vanilla bean, just put the sugar in the processor.

Add the butter and salt and process until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl occasionally. Add the condensed milk and pulse until well incorporated, about 15 times, scraping down the sides of the bowl once. Add the sifted dry ingredients and pulse until no traces of flour remain, about 10 times. Add the eggs and pulse just until combined, about 5 times. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, add the vanilla extract if using and finish mixing by hand to fully incorporate the eggs.

Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan. Bake until the top is dark golden brown and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool completely in the loaf an on a rack, then unmold.

TWD: Sweet Potato Disappointment

Hello pastrami reuben on rye, I love you.

Yep, you read that right. Disappointment. The idea sounded fabulous - biscuits, light and flaky, with a bit of squash-y sweet potato-y flavor to them. Instead, they were dense, vaguely sweet, and dry. So sad.

So this will mark the first time I don't even have a picture of the week's TWD pick. I made them, but was underwhelmed. So much so, that I can't in good conscience recommend them. Nor could I be inspired to take anything other than a crappy photo of them.

So instead, I'll leave you with a couple of other photos. They're from this last weekend with Jacqui (also found here, with her gorgeous photography) and Shanna in Chicago. We went on a Chicago food tour with Chicago Food Planet, and it was awesome. Seriously, the guide was amazing, we got a nice little walking tour of a couple neighborhoods (with history & architecture thrown in!) and some very generous and delicious tastings as we went. **disclosure** Thank you to Shanna for including Jacqui and me when Chicago Food Tours offered her a free tour - so worth it!

Important note - this is across the street from Anthropologie. And has BAGEL TABLES. *heart it*

They have fennel pollen at the Spice Merchants. WANT.

This shop, while it has cupcakes, wowed me more with their selection of salted butters. *jealous*

And this sign? Wiser words were never written.

And while no picture of the original Playboy mansion, I fell in love with all the stonework on this house...

Seriously, how could you say no to a proposal in front of the Cowardly Lion at Oz Park?

TWD: Allspice Crumb Muffins

No offense to Kayte, who picked these allspice crumb muffins (muffins! One bowl! Easy! Yay!), but I'm a wee bit distracted right now. Not to say that these weren't perfectly acceptable muffins. Helloooo, they have a CRUMB TOPPING! But it's just to say that they were sorta "eh" without that CRUMB TOPPING, especially because I didn't use freshly ground allspice. Oh, and my CRUMB TOPPING sorta melted together into a (tasty!) sugar coating on the top of each of my muffins. But who cares? It's CRUMB TOPPING!


Oh right, distraction. My excuse for being a wee bit scatter brained right now. Well, it started with this:


And (of course!) my answer was this:


Which meant I got this (handed down from his great grandmother!):


Well, I'll get it in a couple days. Darned fingers, with their large knuckles.


So I feel the need to apologize to Kayte for giving short shrift to these muffins with CRUMB TOPPING. Because, well, it's not her fault - they were tasty, just not quite as exciting as my weekend.

Last Week: Split Level Pudding
Next Week: Sweet Potato Biscuits

TWD: Split Level Pudding

Did anyone else grow up with a ubiquitous pudding cup in their lunchbag? Because really, that's all I could think of when Garrett picked split-level pudding for this week's TWD recipe. You know, those wiggly, jiggly jello pudding cups. My sister's favorite was chocolate vanilla swirl, but that was one lunchbox treat that I traded away every time. There were very few things I would trade out of my lunchbox - jello pudding cups, little boxes of raisins (seriously, who ate those???), and a few different types of fruit snacks.


There were coveted lunchbox components though too - lunchables meant your parents were cool, as did fruit snacks like Gushers or Fruit by the Foot. God forbid you get a banana, because there was no appropriate way to eat those in public, even in middle school. You were weird if you brought a lunch that needed to be heated up, and boring if you got PB&J. Little bags of potato chips were pretty cool, but not little bags of pretzels. Man, middle school lunch was tough, wasn't it?


Where was I again? Oh, jello pudding cups, and how I traded them away like they were poison. There were always kids clamoring for them, and I never understood it. Those pudding cups, well, they tasted like plastic. And jiggled too much. And were too smooth, in an oddly fake way. And the flavors? You can't seriously tell me that's what chocolate and vanilla taste like. Don't even get me started on the "tapioca" flavor - *shudder*


So I was pleasantly surprised when I realized two things while making this dessert - one, the chocolate part is just chocolate ganache. YUM. And two, the vanilla part actually contains vanilla. And no weird emulsifying things. My one gripe? The ratio of chocolate to vanilla. I halved the chocolate recipe and thirded the vanilla, didn't use all the vanilla, and still had too much vanilla compared to the chocolate. Priorities, people, necessitate vast quantities of chocolate.


Last Week: Chocolate Caramel Peanuts Tart (it's all that and a ball of wax, people. just make it)
Next Week: Allspice Crumb Muffins

Vanilla Cupcakes

All you crazy summer-lovers, you might want to avert your eyes, skip this post, whatever you need to keep from thinking I'm 100% batshit insane (I know, I know, you already think that. Please pretend you don't for 2 seconds though?). Because I have an announcement. Now, those of you on Twitter probably already realize this, but here it is: Fall? It's my favorite season. Think about it - it's not too hot, you don't have to scrape the ice off your car, the leaves change color, soups and stews and baking can come back into your life...

Now, granted, it does mean that summer is over. No more swimming or barbecuing, no more long days, and suddenly lemonade and gin & tonics have lost their luster. But here's the thing - I won't miss much of that at all. I like to run outside, so heat = sweat = bad. I live in an apartment, so grilling is a no-go. And oh darn, I have to give up lemonade and G&Ts for what? Cocoa? Hot tea? Mulled cider? Yeah, that's really a hardship.


In fact, I even love those cloudy, windy, rainy days we've been having all week here in Wisconsin. Burrowing under blankets, wearing comfy sweatpants and sweatshirts, drinking a big mug of tea, and reading, reading, reading. (Oh, and baking, baking, baking too!) But I love being able to look outside and see how nasty it is and think "Isn't it nice I'm in here and not out there?" So yes, I love fall, in all its forms. Pretty sure we're bffs.

What does this have to do with cupcakes? Well, um, probably nothing. Sorry, these things just happen sometimes. Y'know what does relate to these cupcakes? Joy. Joy the Baker. Turns out, I got to meet her at BlogHer Food '09, and let me tell you - she's nicer, sweeter, and more beautiful in person than she is on her blog. She's pretty special, so I decided to get off my butt and make something I'd bookmarked off her site - 12 cupcakes, just one stick of butter. And they're pretty awesome, which makes sense, because she is too. Get the recipe on her site (and poke around - post re-design, it's a pretty snazzy place!)