CAKE, COUTURE & CIE

In our house, when the bananas get too ripe to eat, we cut them up, freeze them and use them to make smoothies. But recently I’ve been struck by a few decidedly unhealthier cravings, including banana bread. So when we had four bananas just a few days away from smelling chemical, I used them to make Dorie Greenspan’s classic banana bundt cake.

Not only did this cake curb my craving, but making it also provided me with the perfect opportunity to use a cookbook I received from my mother last Christmas (Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours) and a kugelhopf bundform pan I bought during a visit to Frankfurt the December before that (for reasons even I don’t understand, I’m a bit obsessed with kugelhopf molds – just ask my husband or select family members who’ve had the pleasure of accompanying me on one of my wild goose chases for them). We ate the cake plain, but I bet it would be great with coconut ice cream.

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

A croquembouche is the dessert traditionally served at French wedding receptions. We had planned to serve a croquembouche along with the classic American tiered cake at our wedding, but unfortunately the bakery was unreliable and pulled out at the last minute. We were pretty upset, since this was one of the ways we tried to incorporate French tradition into our wedding, which took place in the US. Though I must say that this is one tradition that is not always kept over here -- out of all of the weddings we've attended, a croquembouche was served at only one of them. Normally there is an elaborate cake, or several smaller ones. A wedding we attended earlier this month featured this amazing dessert bar: tiny pastries (tarte tatins, opéras, fruit tarts, etc.), mini crème brulées and mousses au chocolat, ice cream, macarons, fruit salad, and small crepes and waffle "popsicles" with every topping you can think of: chocolate, caramel, diced and pureed fruit, raw sugar...I'm getting off track, back to the croquembouche.

Though this dessert seems daunting, it is actually quite manageable when you break it into its component parts: cream puffs, pastry cream and glaze. First off, the cream puffs are easier to make than you might think. Though the recipe provided for the challenge worked well, my go-to recipe for cream puffs is from Dorie Greenspan -- see this blog posting. I've made the savory version for gougères to go with before-dinner drinks and used the basic cream puffs to make profiteroles for dessert. They always turn out perfectly and go over really well.

The pastry cream can be made in no time at all, but the glaze is a different story. I found this to be the most difficult recipe to get right, and it took me four tries and a sugar burn before I was able to achieve the appropriate texture / color. Unfortunately, the sugar hardened too quickly (you have to cool it down in an ice-water bath to stop the sugar from cooking any further, but I found that this is what led to the hardening) and would have taken several more batches to cover my modest croquembouche. This explains why I've posted only the "before glaze" photo above -- what I managed to glaze was just too sad to show. But I did manage to make this cute little bow from an overcooked batch: 

As for decoration, I decided to leave my croquembouche plain since I think they are prettiest without the Jordan almonds, dragées, ribbons, fake birds (yes, fake birds!) that you can sometimes find on them. With fantasies of an enourmous chouquette mountain floating in my head, I was tempted to sprinkle on some pearl sugar before the glaze hardened, but I decided that would be sugar overkill and left it at is.

I made this pie last weekend when we had my in-laws over. The crust and the crumble use the same recipe, which is a big time-saver. It was impossible for me to cut neat slices that did not fall apart, so mine ended up more crumble-esque than pie-esque. The Granny Smith apples that I used held up really well in the oven and remained crisp and just sweet enough.

The recipe I used is from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook; here is the closest recipe I could find on the MS website, though the one from the book uses ground almonds as well as flour in the crust / crumble.

Here's a quick and easy recipe for those of you looking to dirty as few pans as possible. I found this recipe in last week's St. Louis Post Dispatch's food section. I had some apples in the crisper and part of a liter of buttermilk that was a few days away from expiring, so falling upon this recipe was perfect timing.

This cake was a hit and tasted as good as it looks. With its warm, caramelized apples, it reminded me a bit of a Tarte Tatin with a cake underside instead of crust.

Here's the recipe provided in the newspaper. If you don't have a food processor, I'm sure a hand-held pastry blender would probably work just as well, while giving you a workout at the same time!

Upside-Down Apple Cake

Adapted from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 December 2009

Yield: 6 large servings

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, divided

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 cup honey (locally harvested if possible)

1/2 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet. Stir in brown sugar. When melted, spread evenly across the bottom of the skillet. Arrange apple slices in overlapping circles over the butter-sugar mixture.

2. In a food processor, pulse together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Cut remaining 5 tablespoons butter into chunks; add to processor. Pulse until butter is cut into small pieces and well distributed. Drizzle in honey. With motor running, slowly add buttermilk through the feed tube, processing until dough forms.

3. Using a spoon, drop batter evenly over apples. Spread dough into an even layer, stopping just short of the edges of the pan.

4. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center of the cake portion comes out clean.

5. Place the skillet on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the cake. Use pot holders to handle the skillet, which will still be hot. Place a plate on top of the skillet, and invert. Lift skillet straight up, releasing cake.

In September I decided to join the "Daring Bakers" subset of the Daring Kitchen. Members agree to make a recipe ("challenge") each month and blog about it afterwards on the reveal date, which is always the 27th for the Daring Bakers. The 2009 October Daring Bakers' challenge was brought to us by Ami S. of the Baking Without Fear blog. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming's The Last Course: The Desserts from the Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Living in France, it's hard to avoid macarons (not that you would want to!). Among the most well-known créateurs de macarons are Ladurée and Pierre Hermé, but you can also find them at your local corner bakery or boxed and frozen at the supermarket. On most days, I can even buy some at the café on the ground floor of the building where I work.

I was actually thrilled when I discovered this month's challenge recipe. I'd been wanting to try my hand at making macarons for a long time but just never got around to it. I ended up making two batches. I split the first batch in two and tinted the batter with food coloring paste (orange and brown in an attempt to mimic Fall's colors -- in reality they turned out more peach and beige, yet pretty nonetheless). For the second batch, I skipped the coloring and mixed in finely ground espresso beans. I filled both with a chocolate-espresso ganache.

Anyone who has tried to make macarons knows that they are tricky. And as you can see from the pictures, these macarons didn't quite turn out as they should have. I'm still not quite sure what went wrong. I measured the ingredients precisely and followed the recipe to a T. I let the piped macarons rest before putting them into the oven (check out the picture below of the macarons getting their requisite 30 minutes of R&R). I baked them in two stages, at two different temperatures. Despite all of this, these macarons never developed "feet" and the outer part of the shells are porous when they should have been smooth.

Despite their looks, these macarons still tasted pretty good. Though it's easy to get discouraged when a recipe doesn't turn out as expected, I know that it is just a matter of tweaking, experimenting and, especially, patience before I find a version of the recipe that works. This won't be my last venture into the treacherous terrain of macaron baking.