Pigs in Blankets

Daring Baker’s March Challenge: Yeasted Meringue Coffe Cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

This is a closeup pic of the awesome texture of the cake!

The recipe will be updated soon! I just wanted to update on time for a change. I'm off to eat dinner!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Croquembouche

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.

The croquembouche has three main ingredients: pâte à choux, pastry cream and caramel.

Pâte à Choux

Pâte à Choux is a very versatile dough. It can be used to make profiteroles, éclairs or buñuelos (a typical Spanish dessert during Holy Week). The dough is always made the same way but is shaped or baked in different ways. For example, buñuelos are fried whereas profiteroles are baked in the oven. You can find the recipe I use here. The procedure is the same, but instead of frying the dough, we will bake it.

Once you have the finished dough, transfer into a piping bag fitted with a number 10 tip. Butter two or three baking pans. When the dough is baked directly over a greased tray, it turns out equally golden on the top and on the bottom. This method leaves no room for error, though. If you would like to practice, you can pipe it on an unbuttered silpat or parchment paper. Since there is no butter, if you mess up you can always scrape the dough and reuse it. Pipe small balls of dough over your chosen surface as follows:

1. Place the tip of the piping bag perpendicularly over the baking sheet. Use your right hand to press the bag and your left hand to guide the tip (the other way around if you are a leftie).

2. Press on the bag without moving the tip upwards until the desired size is acquired. If you move the bag upwards, you will get a rough surface instead of the smooth one we are after.

3. Stop pressing on the bag without moving it. With a swiping motion and making sure you are not pressing the bag, move the tip away from the ball of dough.

4. The surface of the dough should be smooth and shiny. Pipe the rest of the dough on the baking sheets and bake in the oven at 180 ºC (356 F).

5. Once baked, the dough should be smooth and without cracks. This is achieved with ovens with a vapour reduction function. If your oven doesn't have this function, bake the dough for ten minutes, crack the door open for the humidity to escape and continue baking until golden brown.

Pastry Cream

1/2 vanilla bean
20 g cornstarch
250 ml milk
3 egg yolks
40 g sugar

Instructions

Slice vanilla bean lengthwise. Scrape the seeds and place in the milk, together with the scraped bean. Whisk together the yolks, sugar and cornstarch. Meanwhile boil milk with vanilla. When the milk starts to boil, pour one third of it on top of the cornstarch mixture. Whisk together and pour on the two thirds of milk that remain in the pan. Whisk gently for about a minute over medium heat, until thickened. If you whisk vigorously, the cream will come out too elastic and with an undesired texture. Once cooked, transfer to a tray and spread it to cool. Remove bean, cover with film and reserve.

Caramel

600 g granulated sugar
200 g liquid glucose
200 g water

Instructions

Put water, glucose and sugar (in that order) in a pan and place over medium heat. Heat without stirring until the sugar dissolves and starts to bubble. Keep heating until a temperature of 170 ºC (338 F) is reached. Remove from heat.

Assembly

Fill baked dough with pastry cream with a piping bag and reserve. Dip top part of the buns in the hot caramel and let cool. If the caramel hardens, reheat it until the desired consistency is acquired. Be careful, caramel is extremely hot and sticks to your skin while scalding you (caramel is nice that way).

Use the caramel to stick the balls together and create the shape you want. I used a balloon to make my dome. Once the croquembouche has is final shape, make the spun sugar. It's fun and messy (my floor was sticky for two days after making it).

Place three saucepans on the counter top with the handles hanging out. Cover the floor with newspaper. Grease the handles with butter. Dip a fork in the melted caramel ans with a swishing motion, move it over de handles. The sugar threads will fall over the handles. Keep dipping the fork and creating threads until you have enough spun sugar.

Place sugar gently on top of your croquembouche, and take pictures quickly! In humid weather, spun sugar doesn't last long.