Archive of posts from November 2006

    Chocolate Works 4: Molded Chocolates

    2006-11-30

    The first order of business in class was to make a caramel filling. This was quite easy: caramelizing the sugar, then mixing in whipping cream and melted milk chocolate. We let this cool to a thick, but pipeable consistency. Unfortunately, I left ours in the fridge a little to...

    Free Range Fruitcake

    2006-11-29

    Grr, I made this cake twice this week. The first time, I forgot the eggs (!!!) and baked it in a 9” loaf pan. Of course, it didn’t turn out but I learned a few things: there is too much salt in the recipe, and it really does need a 10” pan.The second time around, I made a 1.5×...

    Black Mamba Cookies

    2006-11-25

    My substitutions: 19 ounces of bittersweet chocolate replacing 16 oz semi + 3 oz unsweetened; all pecans instead of half walnuts. The “dough” is indeed quite batter-like. I bought a cookie scoop (#24) to make these and it already feels like one of those indispensible gadgets. ...

    Baking Warehouses

    2006-11-24

    I learned about two (2!) baking supply warehouses this week that were previously unknown to me:David Roberts Food Corporation has an outlet store in Mississauga (Google Map). They have a huge assortment of packaged nuts (375 g tub of macadamia nuts for $8!), dried fruit, snack...

    Chocolate Works 3 / SHF #25: Truffles

    2006-11-23

    It happens that the class for this week coincides with the theme for this month’s Sugar High Friday: chocolate truffles.My partner and I began by chopping and melting some dark chocolate which we combined with cream to make ganache. Often, a recipe says to boil the cream and t...

    Azuki Bean Pound Cake

    2006-11-18

    My approach to recreating a wonderful cake I had in Japan has been to look for recipes using chestnut paste and then substituting azuki bean paste. For this pound cake, I replaced the sweetened chestnut purée with koshian, and added two tablespoons of cocoa powder. While the c...

    Flag-Raising Apple Pie

    2006-11-14

    The crust (butter and shortening) is easy to work with, but the quantity is barely enough to line a 9” pie plate. I used a mix of Northern Spy and Fortune apples; the latter are called Longo’s apple at Longo’s (?). For the streusel topping, I replaced almost all of the sugars ...

    Blue Cornmeal Muffins with Blueberries

    2006-11-11

    I didn’t have any sour cream so I used buttermilk with additional butter and flour. This turned out to be a mistake as the muffins had a pronounced buttery flavour. I also used sea salt instead of table salt and they were too salty. Tsk tsk, I know better than to make substitu...

    Apple and Walnut Cake

    2006-11-10

    The recipe in the link says to use self-raising flour, but the book calls for plain (preferably Italian 00) flour. In fact, I think there’s too much leavener already. 1 ½ teaspoons of baking soda is very noticeable; I would reduce it to 1 tsp next time. I also forgot the cream...

    Deep-dish Autumn Fruit Pie

    2006-11-06

    The recipe in the link is terribly transcribed: it doesn’t provide a recipe for the pastry (a pâte sucrée flavoured with orange-blossom water and orange zest); it also omits 3 Bosc pears from the ingredient list. The dough is very soft and I made the mistake of letting it warm...

    Chocolate Works 2: Cherries and Caramelized Almonds

    2006-11-02

    To start, Chef spent time explaining the ingredients we were going to use in tonight’s class for the cherries. He suggested we take store-bought maraschino cherries and let them soak in a flavoured syrup or alcohol for a few months to imbue them with even more flavour. Fresh, ...