Flourless Chocolate Cake: February DB Challenge

I was so excited to see that this month's challenge involved chocolate! Mmmmm delish!  The great thing about this recipe is that it came together very quickly, with easy to follow instructions.  I was thankful as I pushed this one right to the wire as per the challenge deadline. 

I used all semi-sweet chocolate, as I find sometimes that when I mixed chocolates (semi and milk) it never has the desired taste that I am after.  I quite enjoyed the chocolate taste, although I had some critics say that they might have enjoyed a mixture better. ( I will save that for next time!)

As I said, the prep/baking process was quite simple, melted the chocolate and butter, added egg yolks and then the whipped whites making the cake a little "fluffier" given its lack of flour.

Overall I found the cake almost overly moist.  I had thoughts that the cake might even be under cooked, but I did bake it for 5ish minutes longer and followed the instructions of "the top should look like a brownie and cake tester should come out wet", so I am thinking that this was actually the desired affect.  In the end it wasn't my favorite chocolate cake, but I loved making this new version!  Perhaps I will give it another go, with some different chocolate.  Already looking forward to next month!

Credits:

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Tuiles: January DB Challenge

I don't have much time to write about the baking process for these tuiles, so I will leave you with this pic for now and hopefully be able to write more tomorrow!!! 

Credits:

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Caramel Cake: November DB Challenge

I was so excited that the November challenge was not only sweet in nature but also a cake!  I had never made a caramel cake before....in fact I have never even eaten a caramel cake before.  I like caramel, but the thought of a whole cake devoted to such a sweet made my teeth hurt just reading the recipe.  But alas this is the point of the DBs!! To push you out of your baking comfort zone to try new and exciting recipes each week.  So spirits were high heading into this adventure.

Step One:  The Caramel Sauce - This part was by far the most exciting to me.  As I mentioned I have never made caramel before so this part was definitely fun.  I know with sauces of this nature burning it can occur quicker than you think.  One minute the sauce is all brownish and caramelized and then *poof* blackened sticky goo.  So being my extra cautious self I was a constant monitor and probably could have cooked it just a little longer (although really now I am just being picky).  And one thing this recipe is bang on about is the crazy sputter action that happens when you pour in the water....STAND BACK! 

Step Two: The Cake - Overall I felt this to be a pretty standard issue cake (minus the addition of the caramel sauce above).  Now one thing that I find frustrating with cakes is that sometimes I find that they don't rise as much as I would like them to.  Now what does this stem from....perhaps my butter was sufficiently at room temp?  Not enough baking powder?  Room temperature eggs?  To me this is just as mysterious as the "caramel secret" (ohhhh....such a bad pun, but I had to).  I think perhaps because my cake didn't rise as much as I wanted it, it became somewhat dense once it was baked.

Step Three: Caramelized Butter Frosting - I think the frosting actually turned out pretty well for me.  I am not a huge icing fan to begin with, so sometimes it is hard for me to judge what a great frosting should taste like.  Overall this might have been the best part of the cake for me.

With the cake finally baked and frosted it was time to test my hand at a little decorating flare.  I would have loved to have actually made caramels from scratch, but I buckled and bought some store bought caramels and crushed them.  I then just placed them around the sides of the cake for a subtle yet scrumptious touch.  (I take my frosting comment back....this was the best part of the cake). 

Overall it was a great experience, but those who had my cake had the same comments as I did. "Sort of dense", "Very sweet", and "Not your best work"....sigh....my baking education continues. 

Credits:

• Recipe Details - http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2006 … he-recipe/
• Author - Shuna Fish Lyndon
• DB Hosts - Dolores the host http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/ with Co-hosts Alex (Brownie of Blondie and Brownie duo: http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/), Jenny of Foray into Food (http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/). And our gluten free expert Natalie of gluten-a-Go-Go (http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/)

Pizza! October DB Challenge

I'm not sure if this pic is more about the pizza or the wine!  Either way they were both good.  This was my first challenge as part of the daring bakers and I was so glad it was a savory one!  I have never made pizza dough before and although I swear it is probably an easy process I felt a little pressure.  I had actually never worked with yeast before either, so I was unused to the consistency of what the dough should really feel like.  I played around with it and ended up splitting the dough in half (adding much more flour to the second half).  In the end I sort of used a combination of both doughs (it was a pretty random process but turned out great nonetheless).

I decided to make two different types of pizzas with two different types of sauces.  First I made the pizza shown at the top of this post.  It is a pesto, chicken and sundried tomato pizza.  The next pizza is to the left here and has tomato sauce, green pepper, red onion, tomato and pancetta.

Overall it was a great experience and I actually can't wait to try out this recipe again.  Thanks DB for pushing me out of my baking comfort zone!