Daring Bakers' Challenge: Fraisier

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

Fraisier! it seemed too elegant for me to even try making, but since it was part of the challenge, i had to try, even if it meant possible utter failure...

but it turned out so good! i also added some raspberry coulis on the sponge cakes to add some sweet raspberry flavor. i opted for not using the almond paste top but dusting the top with powdered sugar still made it look pretty sweet. i followed the recipes for the sponge cake and the pastry cream exactly from the daring bakers challenge. the sponge cake was so magnificently yummy..i followed the basic chiffon cake recipe, but since it had lemon zest in it, it tasted more like a lemon sponge cake then a regular one, but i'm not complaining. the lemon zest added such great flavor to the cake...it was just beautiful. 

the pastry cream wasn't an ordinary basic french crème pâtissière recipe, since it called for gelatin to help thicken the cream and whipped heavy cream to lighten it..so i think the pastry cream used here can be considered a crème chiboust (according to wiki, hehe.), which is a type of french crème pâtissière lightened with heavy cream...it's so useful knowing the full details and background info about recipes, ingredients, and techniques before doing the actual baking process!(baking nerd!!)..but anyway.  

first i started with the pastry cream...

Ingredients

1 cup whole milk

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 cup sugar 

1 large egg

2 tablespoons unsalted butter*, cut into four pieces

3/4 teaspoon gelatin

1/2 tablespoon water

1 cup heavy cream

*i felt like that was too much butter..yeah, it did make the cream very creamy and less lumpy, which was amazing, but it tasted too much like butter in my opinion..i think if i were to make this again i'd just use a tablespoon and see if that's enough to make the cream non-lumpy, but i think i'd make basic crème pâtissière next time. 

pour milk, vanilla, and salt in a saucepan on medium-high heat, scalding the mixture (bringing it near boiling point). stir occasionally to prevent the milk from burning.

meanwhile, whisk together the cornstarch and sugar until combined. 

add the egg and whisk until mixed well.

like this! 

while whisking the egg mixture vigorously, very very slowly add 2/3 of the milk mixture. this is called tempering, making sure the egg mixture gets used to the heat before putting the egg mixture on the stove. this prevents the egg from curdling too much. 

then add the egg/milk mixture to the rest of the milk in the saucepan and put on the stove. 

heat the mixture on low-medium heat, stirring continuously, slightly vigorously, to make sure the cream does not create lumps or curdle. keep heating up until it thickens, when the mixture is just about to boil, and when it can coat the back of a spoon.

strain the mixture 

add the butter pieces one by one and stir to melt the butter into the mixture.

the butter made it not clumpy anymore! it looks so creamy mmm.

then cover with saran wrap directly on the cream to prevent it from forming a skin and leave in the fridge to cool. while i let this cool, i started making my sponge cake...but i'm just going to continue on with the pastry cream instructions here! 

pour the gelatin powder on top of the tablespoon of water and let it sit until it softens. 

take 1/4 cup of the cream and put it over a double boiler (water has to be simmering, probably on medium heat) 

while whisking vigorously, get the temperature of the cream to 120 degrees. mine kept going back and forth 110 degrees, so i had to play around with the stove heat in order for the cream to get to 120. 

at 120 degrees, add the gelatin until the mixture is smooth.

remove from heat and add the rest of the cold cream.

while the cream is cooling down, whip up some heavy cream until medium stiff peaks. i whipped this by hand whoo! 

then immediately fold the whipped cream into the pastry cream. first i added 1/3 of the whipped cream into the mixture and whisked it normally, since it was lumping up. then i added the rest and folded it in...no weird lumps! 

cover with saran wrap and leave in the fridge to cool.

yay pastry cream is done! now on to the chiffon!! 

Ingredients 

1 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon  baking powder
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 large egg yolks
⅓ cup + 1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon lemon zest, grated
5 large egg whites

combine the three eggs, vegetable oil, lemon zest, water, and vanilla in a bowl and whisk vigorously!

sift together the baking powder, flour, salt, and all except 3 tablespoons of the sugar and combine that to the egg mixture. whisk until smooth. i whisked for a little bit and then switched to my rubber spatula so i can fold the mixture.

so smooth!

then beat the egg whites on low to unwrap that protein gradually, and add the 3 tablespoons of sugar when it gets foamy, a tablespoon at a time. after all the sugar is added, increase the speed to medium, maybe medium high so the whites can form stiff, glossy peaks.

like this!

add 1/3 of the egg whites to the yellow mixture and fold slightly vigorously...then add the rest and fold just until combined. try really hard not to overmix. i feel like overmixing the egg whites into the mixture will make the cake tough and not as spongy.

i put my batter on a 9x13 sheet pan...then tap the pan on a flat surface to get rid of air bubbles and to make sure the batter fills the pan evenly. i let it sit out for 15 - 20 minutes so it can settle (plus i had to do alot of dishes...) 

bake at 325 degrees.

since i used a sheet pan it only took 20 minutes for the chiffon cake to cook. 

when it was done baking i let it cool for a little, then i used my cake mold to cut out circles!...yeah i should have used parchment paper for my pan, but i ran out! 

then make some simple syrup for the cake! this prevents the cake from getting dry and also keeps that spongy-ness.

to make simple syrup, simply heat up 1/3 cup of sugar to 1/3 cup of water, and keep on medium heat until the sugar dissolves and it's slightly boiling. then take off the heat and there you go! 

then apply the simple syrup onto the sponge cakes, just enough for the sponge cake to bounce back when you poke it! 

and the chiffon cakes are ready!! 

time to assemble! :]

Ingredients

chiffon cakes

pastry cream

raspberries

raspberry coulis

cake mold

this seems self-explanatory...

raspberry coulis!

cutting the raspberries in half...

and placing them against the cake ring, evenly spaced from each other. make sure the raspberries are sitting on the sponge cake...or else the raspberries will be floating when the cake is un-molded.

put my pastry cream in a disposable piping bag

and piped the empty spaces first 

then i piped to cover the raspberries

and then covered the bottom

i crushed the raspberries instead of placing whole ones

smoothed out the cream...

i refrigerated for four hours (well in reality, i stuck them in the freezer for 2 hours because i was pretty impatient...)

 dusted powdered sugar...

mmm.

Raspberry Coulis

Raspberry coulis is just a fancy french name for a simple raspberry sauce! it's such an easy recipe and you can put it on anything like ice cream, cakes, crepes, brulees, even on the actual dessert plate to make it look sexy! the possibilities are endless with this sauce and you just need three ingredients and you're good to go! 

Ingredients 

2 cups raspberries

3 tablespoons sugar 

2 tablespoons lemon juice

 put all the ingredients in a bowl...and mix/crush everything. i used my hands because i don't have a blender.

then strain.

 yup. that's it! enjoy!

Fettuccine Alfredo!

After making my egg noodles, i decided to make fettuccine alfredo! it was so creamy and delicious. but i think i ate more than i was supposed to..i also added some sausage to it! i thought fettuccine alfredo was going to be hard to make, but it just consists of five main ingredients and it didn't even take any time at all to make!

Ingredients 

1 pound of fancy homemade egg noodles!

1/2 cup of butter

1/2 pint of whipping cream

1 cup of parmigiano reggiano (parmesan is fine)

salt

pepper

dried basil leaves (optional)

first cook the pasta in salted water with olive oil (to prevent the noodles from sticking together while cooking). 

in about eight minutes, taste-test one. you want it to be al dente. the noodle has to have a bite to it: not too chewy/hard, not too soft. 

once it's done, dump into a sieve and add some olive oil so the noodles won't stick to each other as they rest.

for the sauce, add the butter into a low-heated pan.

once it melts, add the whipping cream and stir slowly, making sure it just heats the cream.

after it's heated, add the salt, pepper, and basil.

add the pasta into the mixture and mix.

then add the cheese a little at a time to make sure it gets fully incorporated.

delicious. bon appétit!

Daring Cooks' Challenge: Noodles!

Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess.  Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine.  She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Wow. i haven't updated this blog in so long...i've been sick for quite a while and my summer class goes by so fast..a midterm every other week. so the only time i have for baking/cooking is when i'm baking/cooking for the daring kitchen..but it's better than nothing! 

anyway, making noodles is so easy and very rewarding! and you don't need a pasta machine!! i used giver's log's blog for the recipe since the recipe that she used came up in many other websites so it seemed reliable. plus, this blog had some pretty good tips and pretty pictures(and she used heart cutters! :)) 

it was great knowing that just a couple eggs, flour, salt, and water can produce fascinating and yummy results. and the cool thing about noodles is you can make so many things with it: chow mein, noodle salad, spaghetti, fettuccine alfredo perhaps...

so here's what you need!!

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup to 1/2 cup water

sift the flour and salt together. then make a well in the center.

pour the egg yolks and egg inside the well and start mixing it from the middle, incorporating the flour towards the center a little at at time.

it should look something like this!

add the water a tablespoon at a time, just until all the egg/flour pieces stick together to form the dough.

almost there! i think i added about a 1/4 cup plus 1 or 2 tablespoons of water.

place the dough on a floured surface and knead for about ten minutes until it's smooth. it is a pretty tough dough to work with so don't worry. it's completely normal. ( i was totally worrying..and was tempted to add more water..but i pulled through!) 

beautiful dough! 

now that's done kneading, wrap in saran wrap and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. this will help the dough be more pliable when rolling out!

once it is done resting, cut into 4 equal parts! i used my new kitchen scale! 

flour your surface well; a sticking dough is a sad, sad ripped dough =/

roll out the dough as thin as possible...remember some people roll their dough out with fancy pants-y pasta machines and those things spit out dough crazy thin. 

once each ball is rolled out thin, wrap in saran wrap (don't want the dough to dry out) and leave it in the fridge for two hours...trust me it will be awesome. letting it rest in the fridge for two hours enables the dough to stretch out more, making it possible to roll it out really, really thin!! 

once taken out of the fridge, roll the dough out thinner (don't forget to flour, flour your surface!!) 

then cut into equal-sized strips with your trusty knife!

then add half a handful of flour and mix into the pasta strands so they will not stick to each other.

so fun!!

then place them on a plate and leave them out to dry! some people hang them to dry but i didn't have much space...and i was kind of lazy so i just plopped them onto a plate. straight strands are overrated anyways! 

and you're pretty much done! if you want to cook them right after you cut them into strands, they take about five minutes to cook. dry noodles take about 8 minutes to cook!