Cruchy Almond Tart

Although I experienced quite a blogging drought, that did not correlate with a BAKING drought! Now, I have to make up for lost time, and fill in the blanks.

This is going back a while....

I tried David Lebovitz's version of the Chez Panisse Almond Tart for the first time. I've had my eye on it for a while... and it sure didn't disappoint! I brought it for dessert at the in-laws', and everyone loved it.

You should try it - although he describes it as being difficult to do, it isn't that bad. The pastry is quite different, and you aren't able to roll it and end up 'smushing' it into the tart pan:


The tart does require quite a bit of tending-to while in the oven; you need to break up the crust that forms on the filling every few minutes.

I now remember that the tart took a lot longer to bake than I had allotted, and as a result we were a few minutes late for dinner. BUT no one dared complain when they saw this sucker!...


We cut small wedges of it, and speared them into our bowls of vanilla ice cream. It was mentioned in the link above that the tart was taken off the menu at Chez Panisse due to people complaining they couldn't eat it with a fork.... Gimme a break! Pick it up - it's delicious.

My Goodness, How Long it has Been!

Shame on me, it has been tooo long. I barely started blogging, and then disappeared..... But I guess that's what finishing your Masters does to ya!

So, I guess I have some catching up to do.

Let's start with the most worldly of all - our trip to PARIS!

or as I referred to it: "The Pastry Tour of Paris!"

I won't document every stop i made at a patisserie, because that would just be far too long! Here are a few of the highlights:

#1: Lenotre!

Oh, to take a course at Lenotre one day! I know there are quite a few throughout Paris, but there just so happened to be one just down the street from our hotel!

What an amazing display of talent!

This one is my favourite: I'm not even sure how they did this - but it is beautiful!

SOOOOoooooo many mouth-watering choices!

Half an hour later, we were strolling down Avenue des Champs Elysees, and i looked up... and there it was! The pastry Mecca of Paris!

#2) The fabulous Laduree!

Being from the middle of Canada, I can honestly say that I had never tasted a Parisian macaroon... Macaroons in Canada are usually a mixture of coconut and chocolate, and in no way resemble their French cousins. But when I learned of the Parisian macaroon in the 'blogging world'... it sounded beautiful and intriguing... Here is a photo of their beautiful macaroons from one of their window displays:

And I was able to choose from their DOZENS of flavour choices!

Here is a bootlegged picture of some of their beautiful pastries:
Haha, as soon as the lady in line behind me saw me take a picture, she took one... and the guy caught her taking the picture, and yelled at her! hehe... it pays to be stealth!

We took our beautiful prizes to a near-by park, and had a delicious break from our long walk. My husband has a real 'thing' for strawberry rhubarb, so when we saw their gorgeous wild strawberry rhubarb tart, we had to get one. Who the heck wouldn't want to eat something that came out of this box?!:
And the beauty that lay within:
We were in heaven.....

And then i opened the little baggie with my two macaroons; A dark chocolate macaroon, and a salted caramel macaroon. My husband is not a bit "fan" of macaroons, as it turned out... so (oh no....) I had to eat them all myself!
ah well, that's what the gym is for, eh?
how beautiful! how scrumptious! how sweet it is......

Wedding Cake Extravaganza

phew..... i feel like I need to sleep for days.
My friend and I make wedding cakes for friends and family, and now have started making them for other people. This weekend we happened to have taken on a little more than we normally would.... 2 cakes. And we both have full-time jobs.
Needless to say, we are totally EXHAUSTED
But, here is one that we made (sans the floral cake topper). excuse the crappy pic... it was taken late at night on my dining room table ;)


I will post a picture of the other cake as soon as i get a copy... of course, we both forgot our camera when we left to set it up at the hotel.

IN THE MEAN TIME,
here are some photos of wedding cakes we've made over the last few years:
Enjoy!

Cream Puffy Goodness

I have always wanted to try my hand at the Cream Puff. I've tried the Cheese Puff, with great success. I guess that extra step of making the pastry cream always prevented me from giving it a go. But today was the day!
I used Ina Garten / Barefoot Contessa's recipe for Profiteroles and Pastry cream. They were great! My little niece, who is not quite 4 years old, ate 4 of them at dessert! Four! More than anyone else! She liked them. a lot.

Here I am piping out the Profiteroles (Choux pate)

You wet your finger to pat down the little peaks

The finished product - filled with delicious pastry cream, drizzled with chocolate, and dusted with powdered sugar

St. Pat's Day = Chocolate Stout Cupcakes

Irish... irish..... irish................... soda bread cupcake? blech..... hmmmm....
Green cupcake? yuck...... mint? nah, it's been done....

And then i stumbled upon Big City, Little Kitchen's Chocolate Stout cupcakes. Perfection!
I whipped them up this morning (went into work late... hehe), and mmmmm the smell was wondrous! Melting the butter with Guinness, the aroma was gorgeous! The recipe made 23 cupcakes. I made a quick half recipe of Martha's brown sugar buttercream icing, and decided to ice them by hand (the look inspired by the 'foam' at the top of a beer), and roll the edges in green and white sanding sugar. They turned out pretty well, although i had to take a crappy picture at work (i was in a huge rush this morning):
Everyone really enjoyed them! The texture was quite light, and had a good depth of flavor due to the Guinness. I didn't put a huge amount of icing, but i think it was a good ratio. I think i would fill the muffin cups a little more next time (I used 1/4 cup in each), as i would like them to form a dome that spilled just slightly beyond the edge of the liner.
I would definitely use this chocolate cupcake recipe as my 'standard' chocolate recipe. Yum!

A Conference for Cupcakes?

I was in Calgary this weekend for a work conference. The conference was ok, but the highlight of the weekend was my 1st ever trip to an exclusively cupcake bakery! hazzaa!!!
My friend/colleague agreed to tackle the task of cupcake taster with me..... i know, it's hard, but someone's gotta do it.

We arrived in Calgary on Thursday, and decided that we would attempt to visit Crave cupcakes. They have 2 locations, and we decided to visit their 17th Ave. location, which happens to be their second location. Friday afternoon, we got out of the conference around 5, and decided that although they closed at 6, we would give it a shot.
NOOOOOOOOOOO! after taking a taxi there..... they were closed early. Sold out! so sad :(
We sat it the taxi, staring at the closed sign, and sheepishly asked the taxi driver to take us back to the hotel. It was probably the fastest 20$ he's ever made.
Saturday rolled around, and we knew that we couldn't wait around until the end of the conference and risk them being closed again. We snuck out after lunch for a half hour, and went back to the same Crave location. Success!! They were open, and fully stocked:

(They said i could take pictures) - this is inside Crave cupcakes on 17th Ave.

The shop was really cute. Very bright, with pastel accent colours and white counters/shelves. Their method of presenting the cupcakes was cute - i liked the 'wall' of cupcakes behind the counter. I had one issue: They had no sign with the day's cupcake flavors/descriptions. As you can see in the picture above, they had cute little mini cake domes for each type of cupcake, with a little blue cardstock sign in front, with a description. This seems ok in theory, but it was kind of a pain: If there were more than 2 people in the store, you had to wait until you were up at the glass before you could make any flavor decisions! This led to me making very hasty decisions, and not sampling the whole range of flavor choices. We got a 6 pack:

"Lovely Bunch of Coconuts"
Vanilla-Coconut cake with vanilla buttercream and coconut shavings

I enjoyed this one for it's coconut flavour. I had anticipated the cake being a simple vanilla cake, but there was a coconut extract in the batter. I think that bits of coconut in the cake would have been a nice touch, but there were none, and therefore the cake didn't taste 'authentically' coconutty to me. I think the icing was vanilla buttercream (it didn't have any coconut flavour to me). I enjoyed this cupcake, but i think i would have preferred the topping to be toasted coconut, for a depth of flavour.

"Nutty over Chocolate" Chocolate cake with peanut-butter buttercream

Good cupcake. Moist, very light chocolate cake. The buttercream icing was quite strongly peanutbuttery, but was extremely sweet. They complimented each other nicely.

"The Princess" Chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream icing

This was the same chocoalte cake as the others - moist and fluffy, with a decent chocolateyness. The icing was delicious - it genuinely tasted of strawberries (they use strawberry puree), and I felt that although it was a very sweet american buttercream, i actually liked it the most of all the icings.

"Va Va Vanilla" Vanilla cupcake with Vanilla buttercream

This cake tasted essentially the same as the chocolate cupcake to me, as it had the same moist and light texture (minus the mild chocolate flavour). The american buttercream isn't really my thing, as i find it to be SO, SO sweet. The vanilla flavour in both the cake and the icing were noticeable, and the combination was simple but quite nice. There was too much icing for my taste.

"Just Chocolate" chocolate cupcake with chocolate buttercream

The same chocolate cake as described above. The chocolate buttercream was nice - it tasted like brownie icing to me. There was too much icing for me, however.

** I also tasted the "Crave-O-Licious" Cupcake, which is a choclate cake with blue vanilla buttercream. Same as the above cakes, just a slightly different combination. It was good.


Overall, I would say that i was slightly surprised with how the Crave cupcakes tasted. I was extremely curious to find out what 'cupcake shop' cupcakes tasted like, and i found that resembled the texture/taste of a boxed cake mix! I enjoyed them - don't get me wrong - but i was very surprised at the extremely light texture. The buttercream was American Buttercream in all instances, which i find to be very sweet, and doesn't appeal to a lot of people. I would have thought that an exclusively cupcakes shop would have a little more variety! There was a variety of flavours available, but i was suprised that all the cakes were essentially the same, had the same texture (slight flavor variation), and all the icings were essentially the same sweet american buttercream with different flavours.

I stopped by their original location the next day, on Kensington St. I didn't walk in, but i stood in the window for a while. Their window display was very cute! They had some astroturf on the counter, with little easter baskets of pastel coloured cupcakes. Very well presented.
The store was not as nice as their 17th street location. It was very simple, with not much of a display. They had bought out the store beside them, and this store was converted into their kitchen. Kind of nice, as they kept the windows at the front so you could see in. It looked quite busy! No places to sit at this location either.


On to the next Calgary cupcake shop: Buttercream Bakeshoppe, which was also on 17th ave. I found one thing to be quite weird upon entering the shop: They also sell a LOT of sugary-smelling bath products. It just seemed like a silly combination to me! And the display cases took up a lot of room that i feel they could have used for a couple small tables. We bought a mocha cupcake (of which i have no picture!).
The Cupcake had much the same appearance as the Crave cupcakes, but was topped with 3 chocolate covered espresso beans (yum!). The icing was a pale beigey colour, and had a bit of a greasy look to it. The cake had much the same flavour as Crave's chocolate cake, but I don't think i liked the flavour as much. There wasn't a very distinct chocolate flavour to it, which was unfortunate. The icing was an odd mocha flavour - it seemed that it might be an extract or something? It was smooth and buttery (maybe a bit TOO buttery), but you could taste the sugar granules - a big no no!
Overall i think I enjoyed Crave's chocolate cake more, and I definitely preferred Crave's icing. I do have to say that i only tried ONE of Buttercream Bake Shoppe's cupcakes, and so this isn't exactly a 'fair' comparison.

I returned home feeling quite queasy from too much sugar. The experience was well worth it, as i feel i have a better idea of what a lot of people have described to me as "The Best!" cupcakes. hmmmmm.... interesting!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes!

Last night at 10pm i got home, and realized that i had told everyone at work i was making cupcakes for today! so.... i couldn't let'em down, right? heheh......
So i made Chokylit bakeshop's ultimate chocolate cupcake recipe - it's delicious! It tastes like brownie, but it's a bit lighter. SOooooooo good.
I made a peanut butter cream cheese icing to go with it. It turned out really well. I think that i would make the icing a little more peanut-buttery. I'm not sure... but when you eat the peanut butter cup first, it kind of over-powers everything, and you can only taste a slight 'hint' of peanut butter in the icing.
Update: Everyone really liked them. Rich, but not TOO rich. The cake has a really nice texture - light, but not as light as a normal chocolate cake. Very decadent.