Daring Bakers - Tiramisu

 (Left to Right: Coffee Tiramisu, Chocolate Tiramisu and Mocha Tiramisu)

I LOVE tiramisu! It's rich, decadent and a bit of a pain to make, all good points in my book. While I have made it before, the challenge this month had us make EVERYTHING from scratch and it turned out amazing.

First off, I made the mascarpone cheese. Despite the recipe saying it should take about 15 minutes to heat to 190F in the double boiler set up, after about 45 minutes I switched to a saucepan to get it up to temp. But it thickened right away when I put in the lemon juice and tasted great - creamy with a good tang.

Next was the zabaglione (right). This is essentially a VERY rich custard flavored with marsala wine. When Kat and I tasted it, I was a bit dismayed - the marsala flavor was overpowering and the custard was intensely sweet. In the end, though, it faded into the background and (I think) just added a additional richness to the cream portion of the tiramisu.

I'd always pictured pastry cream (left) to be something else! This is the filling in custard doughnuts... light but rich, creamy... YUM. And it was incredibly easy to make. I think this was one of the best parts of this challenge since I'm now picturing Boston Cream Pies, homemade doughnuts and pouring it on just about anything.

This is the dough for the savoiardi (ladyfingers). I was expecting the cookies to be fairly difficult, but the dough went together in no time. The texture was amazing! Luckily, though, I had Kat taste it before I piped it out onto the cookie sheets. Turns out, the grocery store had somehow mixed self-rising flour or maybe straight baking powder into the bin marked cake flour. The batter was horribly salty so it all went into the garbage. I made the next batch with all purpose flour and it was fantastic. I used a plastic bag to pipe the cookies. The big round ones were for the main body of the tiramisu, and the little ones were for decoration (and munching). These are NOT cookies I'd make for eating plain, but they were pretty tasty. 

I wanted to make small tiramisus so I could give most of them away, rather than having a big pan of it here at home. I made forms out of tin foil and the round cookies (above) fit inside it. I'd expected the cookies to puff outward more than they did, so the sizes weren't exact, but it still worked.

The creamy layers of the tiramisu are made of the zabaglione, mascarpone cheese, pastry cream and whipped cream. I kept the whipped cream just barely sweetened so the cheese and that balanced out the sweetness of the other ingredients. It was a bit softer than I think it should have been, but it sure was tasty. I had enough of everything to make 6 small tiramisus - 2 coffee, 2 chocolate and 2 mocha. Once I'd filled the tin foil forms, they went into the freezer until they were hard and could be decorated.

When frozen, they were MUCH easier to work with, although as soon as they thawed they got a bit gloppy. The coffee ones were dusted with instant espresso powder and topped with cookies and coffee beans. The chocolate ones were dusted with cocoa powder and topped with a milk chocolate disk (and more cookies). The mocha was a combo...

 

DELICIOUS.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession. 

Daring Cooks: Mezze

The challenge for this month was MEZZE, essentially Middle Eastern tapas. The only requirement was to make both hummus and pita, following the given recipes. Everything else was just for fun!

Hummus:

Now, I make hummus frequently so it was strange to follow a recipe. I used dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and then boiled. To make things more interesting, I added pistachios to the hummus which gave it a bit of a green tinge. Overall, I much prefer my hummus; I only used about half of the called for lemon juice and it was still tarter than I'd have made it. The pistachios gave it an interesting, nutty (obviously) flavor but also made it a bit grainy. The garlic (and this was a problem throughout ALL the dishes) was pretty hot, probably more so that the recipes had anticipated… very stinky!

Pita:

THIS was fun. The recipe had you make a sponge first which I think really added to the flavor of the pitas. It also specified that the sponge be stirred 100 times in the same direction! I'm not convinced that made a difference, but the dough turned out great.

I started rolling the dough out a bit too thin and learned that too-thin pitas DO NOT PUFF in the oven. Still tasty, but not pita.

 

Keeping them under a towel kept them soft, just like tortillas. I love bread….

Feta:

This was an improvisation. I'd been wanting to try grilled Haloumi cheese but there was none to be found. Instead, I baked a block of cow's milk feta (not traditional but I loathe goat and sheep's milk cheese) with canned tomatoes and oregano. It's incredible on any kind of bread.

Tabouli:

Kat and I differ in our tabouli preferences. I like LOTS of parsley (apparently that's a Lebanese tradition) and Kat likes hers with mostly bulgur (like most of the rest of the Arab region). This was definitely MY tabouli. The tomatoes were canned as I can't bring myself to buy the cardboard imitations in the winter. (Photos of this down in the shots of the whole spread.)

Red Pepper Walnut Dip:

I made this with Kat in mind - it has so many of her favorite things in it. Despite that, something about it (texture? acidity? ???) hurt her mouth when she ate it. Sure was pretty though. I had no whole bell peppers so I tried to roast some that I had sliced and frozen over the summer. In theory, a good way to use up a lot of peppers. In practice… a lot of time spent peeling individual pepper slices.

Tzatziki:

Or raita, depending on what cuisine you're looking at. Toasting the cumin seeds gave the dip a very smoky flavor… I could slather this stuff on just about anything.

Falafel:

These tasted great… I'm not a huge fan of the texture of falafel but Kat enjoys them. I ended up baking these instead of frying to cut down on the smell and the fat. Fried falafels are definitely tastier, but baked is not too bad.

Dolmathes:

These were a cheat… I'd made them months ago and frozen them. I stuff the grape leaves with a rice/ground beef mixture with some raisins and spices. Everything is cooked in a lemon broth until they are plump and the flavors have blended.

Baba Ghanouj:

Of the whole meal, this and the pita were my favorites. I roasted the eggplant in the oven - next time I'll try it on the grill to see if it gets a smokier flavor. It turned out so incredibly creamy and light, not very eggplanty (for those of us who don't really revel in eggplant as a general rule) with a good kick of garlic.

The spread:

This was such a fun meal to prepare, with so many little things to work on. The garlic was pretty overwhelming throughout all the dishes though. We use garlic grown by Kat's dad and some varieties are considerably stronger than others so I'm guessing this was one of those varieties. Definitely NOT date-night food!

The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

The recipes for Pita, Hummus, Red Pepper Walnut Dip and Falafel are courtesy of Veggie Num Nums.

Bacon Caramel Corn

This is over-the-top caramel corn: sweet and crunchy with chunks of almonds and crispy bacon. I've found this recipe, using just the microwave - no pots, no temperature taking. Since caramel corn is now easy, I've been making it a lot, although sans the bacon which didn't actually add as much as I expected.

WE LOVE CONCHAS

Not too sweet, great contrast in textures. It's been trial and error getting the recipe down… the dough comes from The Art of Mexican Cooking - aging the dough overnight in the fridge really amplifies the flavor. The topping recipe I found online as the recipe in the book was too dry to roll out without cracking.

Christmas Cookies 2009

Trying to bring a bit of Kat's childhood into Christmas this year: iced sugar cookies.

Birthday Lemon Meringue Pie

This was Kat's mom's birthday pie…. the meringue was GREAT and amazingly, the little brown tips survived Kat long enough for a picture to be taken! The lemon filling never quite firmed up but tasted damn good.

Homemade Corn Tortillas

I have mixed feelings about corn tortillas. Getting to knead the dough and use a press… awesome. But for eating, flour tortillas are really more up my alley. I've found corn tortillas to be wonderfully tender and soft for about an hour if kept under a towel. After that they tend to crack when filled. It's still fun though… and I have learned that there is a HUGE difference between masa for tortillas and masa for tamales.