Archive for the baked Category

Missing Coco Mill and Homemade Thin Mints

Posted in baked, chocolates, cookies with tags , on April 17, 2011 by thebrokenganache

I felt like a kid on Christmas morning when I woke today because I was so excited about opening the packages that came from Chocolate Alchemy. The first box was filled with roasted and un-roasted cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic, cocoa nibs, organic coco butter, lecithin, and five different chocolate bar molds. The next box contained the Champion Juicer which will turn the coco nibs to liquid chocolate. The last box had the Ultra Melanger which conches and refines the chocolate, sugar, coco butter and lecithin which gives it that silky smooth texture.  Then I realized that I was missing the coco mill which is used to crack and separate the hulls from the nib. I ran to my laptop to send off an email to see what was going and within five minutes I got a response that it was on back order. I was relieved that it wasn’t lost but a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be making chocolate today. In reality I still could make chocolate, I wouldn’t have to do the first few steps and go right to the juicer to make the chocolate liquid. But I really had my heart set on experimenting with the whole process from beginning to end. So I will wait.

Melanger, Juicer and Cocoa Beans

So I was looking for something to make when I ran across a Thin Mints recipe from Heidi Swanson’s blog 101 Cookbooks which is really a wonderful blog with great recipes. Her recipe called for whole wheat pastry flour which I didn’t have so I substituted   a 1/2 cup cake flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour to equal ! cup whole wheat pastry flour. I also thought tempering the chocolate for the cookie was a better way to go than just melting it, that way the chocolate would not melt on your fingers when eating it. I also ended up using a 53% Callebaut Dark Chocolate since that’s all I had. They came out rather yummy and I just love the mint with that nice crisp cookie inside!

Homemade Thin Mints

Thin mints anyone?

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A busy week in the kitchen

Posted in baked with tags , , , on April 16, 2011 by thebrokenganache

What a week, I think we must have gained 20 pounds from all the sweets I’ve made. Every evening after work last week I felt compelled to whip up a yummy treat. It all started with the arrival of raspberry freeze-dried fruit powder that I had ordered to add to chocolate.  It’s a wonderful product because you get the great fruit flavor with out adding any moisture to ganaches. Of course I had to try it out right away so I made a white chocolate and raspberry tart with almond crust. which was so yummy that we ate  it as soon as it was done and unfortunately we didn’t take a photo. Then it was on to a creamy Tahitian Vanilla bean Panna Cotta, homemade Cinnamon Graham Crackers, Coconut Graham Cracker Bars, then I thought perhaps I should make something a little healthier so I made some Chewy Granola bars. Healthy is no fun so I decided to make more Macaroons, actually a lot more Macaroons with a variety of fillings from a Pear Williams and dark chocolate ganache to a peanut buttercream. I must admit I became slightly obsessed with macaroons trying to get them perfectly crisp on the outside with a soft chewy center.  Andy was a good sport about being a taste tester for all those macaroons since it’s not his favorite dessert.

Tahitian Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with pears poached in Pear Williams

Cinnamon Graham Crackers

Coconut Graham Cracker Bars

I ended up baking over 10 different batches of raspberry and chocolate Macaroons  two batches a night with some success and others complete disasters. I did learned a few things along the way, such as: 1. When I baked Raspberry Macaroons at 350F for 15 mins. they came out a light brown color, but when I baked them at 300F for 18 mins. they came out a lovely shade of pink. 2. Make sure egg whites are stiff with a nice satin sheen. 3. When folding the powder sugar/almond mixture into egg whites the consistency shouldn’t be too stiff nor too loose. With all the ups and downs I experienced with making macaroons It was a lot of fun, I do look forward to the day when I can constantly make a prefect batch every time. So I will keep practicing, I just won’t be eating them all other wise I will be as big as a house.

Chocolate Macaroons with a Pear williams chocolate ganache

more Chocolate macaroons with a raspberry/dark chocolate ganache

But for the moment I will take a break from macaroons. Since all the equipment for my chocolate from bean to bar experiments have arrived. I haven’t unpacked the boxes since I told myself that I wouldn’t open them until I quite smoking. So tomorrow will be the big day, I can’t wait to get my hands on everything and see what type of cocoa beans I have to work with. As you can image tonight will be spent smoking like a chimney, saying good-bye too my old friend tobacco for tomorrow will say hello to my new friends taste buds. I’ve heard when you quit smoking your taste buds and sense of smell improve dramatically. I’m sure it doesn’t happen the day of quitting, but I would like to think so.

Raspberry Macaroon with a Vanilla bean buttercream baked at 300F

Raspberry Macaroon with a Milk Chocolate ganache baked at 350F

P.S. If anyone out there can recommend an amazing macaroon recipe it would be greatly appreciated. Even though I’m getting back to chocolates I just love those little things so much.

Here are the recipes I used over the course of last week and how I changed them: 

Tahitian Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta from Epicurious

  1. I Spilt/scraped 1 Fresh Tahitian Vanilla bean and steeped it in heavy cream for 10 minutes.
  2. I also used organic cane sugar.
  3. The recipe came out quite nice the only thing is that I wish that the Vanilla bean was suspended throughout the Panna Cotta instead of settling on the top and bottom of the bowl.

Cinnamon Graham Crackers from Smitten Kitchen

  1. I used 1 cup of whole wheat flour and used dark muscovado.
  2. They came out fantastic, better than any store-bought brand I have ever had. differently a winner. The only thing I would do different is to roll them out thinner they where a bit to thick. And next time I will dip then in Dark Chocolate.

Coconut Graham Cracker Bars from All Recipes

  1. I didn’t add the layer of chocolate on to because I thought they where already a bit to sweet for me. I don’t think I would make these again.

Chewy Granola bar from Joyful Abode

  1. I did  make a few changes to the recipe since I wanted to use what I had on hand.

2 cup whole oats
1/2 cup wheat gem
1/2 cup wheat bran
1 cup pecans
a handful of sour cherries and dried apricots

Macaroons from David Lebovitz (My favorite recipe out of all the ones I tried)

  1. For the raspberry Macaroon I just substituted freeze-dried raspberry powder for coco powder and baked at 300F for 18mins.

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French Macaroons while waiting on chocolate equipment

Posted in baked, cookies with tags on April 4, 2011 by thebrokenganache

Hey everyone!

I finally ordered all of the equipment that I will need to make chocolate from bean to bar. So hopefully within the next couple of weeks I will be ready to start making my first batch of homemade chocolate from scratch – I am really excited about this! In the meantime I have been doing a lot of baking and sadly I haven’t posted any of it, but over the weekend I decided to tackle French Macaroons which turned out to be rather challenging. I tried quite a few  different recipes but none of them came out as well as I would have liked. I was about to give up then I came across a great recipe on   David LeBovitz‘s blog. I did make a couple of changes. I replaced cocoa powder with equal amount of powder sugar, vanilla extract and powdered orange food coloring. All in all I was happy with them, but the color wasn’t as vibrant as I wanted, will figure that out next time.

French Macaroon Recipe

Adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Batter
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
½ cup ground blanched almonds
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
5 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla extract
1 tablespoon food coloring

White Chocolate and orange ganache
½ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoons light corn syrup
4 ounces white chocolate
1 tablespoon butter
3 drops orange oil

Preheat oven 350F

Ingredients

grind almonds until you get a powder

ground almonds

add powdered sugar

grind almonds and powdered sugar together

beat egg whites

add sugar to whites once you get peaks

whip for 2 minutes

add powdered food color

add powdered sugar and almond mixture

fold

pour batter into pastry bag

pipe little circles .

bang tray on counter to get ride of air bubbles, let rest for 30 minutes then bake at 350 for 15 mins

Yummy

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Pineapple upside-down cake, it’s not chocolate but it’s YUMMY

Posted in baked on March 6, 2011 by thebrokenganache

I’ve been so busy lately with work and exploring Buddhism (which I find quite fascinating and it has made such a difference in my out look on life) that I haven’t  even had a moment to get into the kitchen. Until today.

Today we had to shoot a few drinks for  Eden Roc magazine and one of the drinks called for a pineapple garnish.  Since I had so much pineapple left over I wanted use it and  not let it go bad. But I wasn’t sure what to make with it, then it dawned on me that I haven’t made a pineapple upside cake in years. I found a great recipe at Bettycrocker.com, I made a few adjustments.

Adapted from Betty Crocker

Pineapple Upside Down Cake Recipe

1/4 cup butter
2/3 cup muscovado sugar
pineapple slices
maraschino cherries
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg

  1. Heat oven to 350°F. In 9-inch square pan, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter. Arrange pineapple slices over brown sugar. Place cherry in center of each pineapple slice.
  2. In medium bowl, beat remaining ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour batter over pineapple and cherries.
  3. Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately place heatproof serving plate upside down over pan; turn plate and pan over. Leave pan over cake a few minutes so brown sugar mixture can drizzle over cake; remove pan. Serve warm. Store cake loosely covered.

That’s it for now

pineapple upside-down cake

4 Comments »

Pumpkin Bread for friends

Posted in baked with tags , , on November 16, 2010 by thebrokenganache

Tonight I thought I would make pumpkin bread for a few friends for the Holiday’s. This recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks The Joy of Cooking I did make a few changes. They came out quite tasty.

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

PUMPKIN BREAD RECIPE

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Combine:
1 1⁄2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1⁄2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1⁄2 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg
1⁄4 teaspoon ground cloves

Combine in a small bowl:
3/4 cup milk
1/4 water
1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla


Then Cream together:
6 tablespoons  butter
1  cup sugar
1⁄ 3 cup Muscovado Sugar

Then add eggs 1 at a time:
2 large eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree
Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the milk mixture, beating on low speed or stirring with a rubber spatula until smooth and scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Fold in:
1⁄2 cup pecans

Pour into Six mini loaf pans

Bake 35 minutes

Vanilla syrup
1/2 a vanilla bean
1 Tablespoon Muscovado Sugar
1/2 cup Water
Bring to a boil

Once out of the oven poke holes in the top and spread syrup over the top of the loaves to soak.

Than enjoy!

Thats it for now.

Pumpkin Bread

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