Daring Baker’s Challenge: Orange Tian
The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.
Pâte Sablée
2 egg yolks
granulated sugar 6 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon; 2.8 oz; 80 grams
vanilla extract ½ teaspoon
Unsalted butter ¼ cup + 3 tablespoons; 3.5 oz; 100 grams ice cold, cubed
Salt 1/3 teaspoon; 2 grams
All-purpose flour 1.5 cup + 2 tablespoons; 7 oz; 200 grams
baking powder 1 teaspoon ; 4 grams
Instructions
Put the flour, baking powder, ice cold cubed butter and salt in a food processor fitted with a steel blade.
In a separate bowl, add the eggs yolks, vanilla extract and sugar and beat with a whisk until the mixture is pale. Pour the egg mixture in the food processor.
Form into a disc, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat your oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit. Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface until you obtain a ¼ inch thick circle. Using your cookie cutter, cut out circles of dough and place on a parchment (or silicone) lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or until the circles of dough are just golden.
Orange Marmalade
Freshly pressed orange juice
Granulated sugar
1 large orange
Instructions
Cut large orange into slices, place them in a pot and cover with cold water. Place over medium heat until it begins to simmer slightly. Let simmer for ten minutes, drain water, cover with new cold water and repeat process two more times. Let slices cool and mince them finely. Weigh the minced orange and add the same amount of granulated sugar. Mix well and let rest for twelve hours or overnight. Add the juice of one orange and place over medium heat so that it is barely simmering. Let simmer until it reaches desired consistency. Let cool and reserve.
Note: for more bitter citrus fruits like lemon and grapefruit, the blanching process should be repeated at least five times to completely eliminate the bitterness. Below is my limequat marmalade. Limequats are a mix between limes and kumquats, and their taste is quite bitter. They were blanched five times and the result was a sweet and tasty marmalade.
Orange Segments
8 oranges
Instructions
Cut the oranges into segments over a shallow bowl, keeping the juice. Add the segments to the bowl with the juice and reserve.
Caramel
200 g (7/8 cup, 7 oz) granulated sugar
400 g (, 14 oz) orange juice
Instructions
Heat empty pan over medium heat. Once heated, add the sugar. Once the sugar starts to bubble and foam, slowly add the orange juice. As soon as the mixture starts boiling, remove from the heat and pour half of the mixture over the orange segments and reserve the other half.
Stabilized Whipped Cream
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tbsp. confectioner's sugar
1 tbsp. Orange marmalde
1.5 leaves Gelatine
Instructions
Hydrate gelatin y cold water for ten minutes. Once hydrated, dissolve it over low heat. Whip the cream until thickened, add sugar and continue beating until the beaters leave visible (but not lasting) trails in the cream. Add the cooled gelatin slowly while beating continuously. Gelatin must be liquid but not warm when added to cream. Continue whipping until the cream is light and fluffy and forms soft peaks. Transfer the whipped cream to a bowl and fold in the orange marmalade. Fill cake rings with the cream, level surface and freeze.
Assembly
Spread marmalade over the baked pâte sablée.
Remove rings from freezer and unmold the cream with the help of a knife. Place cream disks over the baked pâte sablée. Drain orange segments on a kitchen towel and use them to decorate the tian. Meanwhile, heat the caramel sauce previously reserved until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Add a spoonful of caramel sauce and serve immediately.
Source: Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris, TasminCakes
St. Patty’s Matcha Kasutera
This cake is a wonderful bright green color, which makes it great for celebrating Saint Patrick's day. Matcha Kasutera is a Matcha tea japanese sponge cake. There are different types of kasutera, including honey and chocolate, and matcha tea kasutera is just one of the many variations. Kasutera is the japanese transcription of the word Castella. This term comes from the portuguese pão de Castela or bread from Castilla, which is a region in Spain (historically called reino de Castilla or kingdom of Castilla).
Ingredients
25 g ground matcha tea
175 plus 65 g sugar
13 g cornstarch
5 egg whites
4 egg yolks
50 g flour
30 g milk
5 eggs
Instructions
Sift flour, cornstarch and tea and reserve.
Beat the five eggs, four egg yolks and 175 grams of sugar until foamy.
Meanwhile beat the egg whites in an electric mixer until the whisk leaves marks. Add 65 grams of sugar and whisk until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites with with yolks. Add sifted flour mixture and keep mixing until combined, working gently but fast to prevent the whites from deflating.
Add milk, mix and pour into the pan. The cake is so soft and moist that it will stick to a metallic pan even though it is well greased. People usually line the pan with parchment paper to make unmolding easier.
Bake at 200 ºC (392 F) for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. The top should be golden brown. To prevent de cake from drying, unmold while still warm, insert into a plastic bag and pkace in the refrigerator for a couple hours.
Source: Roger Ortuño's Comer Japonés and Just Hungry
Wind Buñuelos
Wind buñuelos are typical in Spain during easter. They are hollow dough balls made with pâte à choux or choux pastry, which is the dough used to make profiteroles, eclaires and croquembouches. Choux pastry is usually baked, but for buñuelos it is fried. As they are hollow, they can be filled with pastry cream, whipped cream, chocolate or even gianduja and lemon curd, you choose!
Ingredients
125 ml. water
125 ml. milk
110 g butter
3 or 4 eggs
140 g flour
5 g sugar
3 g salt
Instructions
Mix water, milk, salt sugar and butter on a cooking pot and place over medium heat, until it starts to boil. Remove from heat, add flour and mix well with a wooden spatula. At first, the dough will look coarse and with lumps, as seen on the following image.
Keep mixing with the spatula until the dough stops sticking to the pan, as seen below. The dough will form humid ball. At this point, you can either reduce the dough's humidity over low heat with the wooden spatula or transfer it to an electric mixer and mix until dry. The drying process will take a couple minutes, until water vapour stops coming out from the dough.
Add beaten eggs one by one and mix well after each addition. You must add enough eggs until the dough forms what is referred to as a duck's beak. This will mean that the dough is soft enough to make light buñuelos. The way to check if the dough is ready is to grab a big scoop with the spatula and let it rest on top of the bowl. Eventually, a blob of dough will fall, leaving on the spatula a fine, almost translucent triangle called duck's beak.
Place dough into a piping bag. Heat sunflower oil in a pan until it reaches 160 ºC (320 F). Cut the tip of a piping bag and pipe batter onto the hot oil, cutting every couple of centimetres with a knife, so as to form small balls.
The small dough balls will puff up, yielding round, hollow balls.
When the buñuelos are lightly golden, remove them from the oil and let them drain over a wire rack. You can line the rack with absorbent paper towels to eliminate the excess oil.
Drizzle with anise liquor and let rest until fully absorbed. Fill buñuelos with a piping bag, with the filling of your choice.
Coat with sugar and serve!
Lent Buñuelos
Buñuelos are a typical dessert found in almost every bakery in Spain during lent. They look like mini-doughnuts and taste like cinnamon, lemon, and anise.
Ingredients
Zest of one lemon
30 g fresh yeast
5 g anise seeds
Sunflower oil
3 egg yolks
35 g butter
250 g flour
100 g milk
35 g sugar
20 g water
cinnamon
5 g salt
Instructions
Mix all dry ingredients in an electric mixer. Mix water and milk and add little by little while kneading the dough. Keep kneading for at least ten minutes. Add butter in cold chunks, one by one until fully incorporated into the dough. Remove from mixer and knead by hand (it will be very sticky) on a countertop (preferably marble so the dough doesn't heat up). Knead until the dough stops sticking to the counter. Wet your hands with sunflower oil, and make a ball with the dough.
Wrap a tray with Saran wrap and spread a thin layer or sunflower oil over it. With sunflower oil on your hands, weigh 20 g pieces of dough, round them and place them on the tray. Make sure the balls are round and the surface is smooth. Let them rest for 15 minutes.
Heat a frying pan with sunflower oil until it reaches 160 ºC. Pick up a ball, tear a hole in the middle and place it in the hot oil. Let it gold on one side, turn and let the other side turn golden too. Remove from oil, drain on top of a wire rack and drizzle with anise liquor, and let the buñuelos rest for a minute, until the liquor is absorbed. Coat the buñuelos with granulated sugar and let them cool. Repeat process with the remaining boils, making sure not to fry many of them at one time (to prevent the heat from cooling) and making sure the temperature doesn't rise too much.
Source: Hofmann cooking school recipe book
Message in a Cookie
I used my new Message in a Cookie cookie cutters to convey an important message: Silvia Rocks! Just being my sister and food stylist are reason enough to rock, but it's also her birthday, so that's one extra reason. These cookies are made of Pâte Sablée and were more an excuse to use the cutters than to make good cookies, so no recipe today. Just a message: Happy Birthday Silvia! You Rock!
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