Aaaah it’s Daring Bakers time again kiddies! This time the recipe is a:
Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream
From Great Cakes by Carol Walter
I managed to be in a foreign kitchen for yet another challenge. Faaabulous. However, the timing was perfect because I was on vacation with my family and for our annual “Happy Birthday to Everyone” party, I am the delegated cake-maker. I didn’t tell anyone in my (Southern, meat, butter, cheese, milk loving) family that this happened to be a vegan cake until after everyone finished swooning over how delicious it was. Oopsies? I also had to explain what the word vegan meant to a couple people, but hey, it’s all about spreading the word one cake at a time.
I must be honest, I cut a lot of corners trying to make this recipe as close to the original as possible – and vegan. The hard part was figuring out how to substitute the obscene amount of separated eggs. So, I made two 9″ cakes – based on a VCTOTW recipe for Almond Cupcakes. In one cake, I used corn starch as an egg substitute and soy yogurt in the other. Silly me forgot which cake was which when they were in the oven so my experiment was for naught. One of the cakes rose a lot higher and was fluffier (probably the soy yogurt?) and the other was denser and rose 2/3 as much as the other. It would be good to know which was which! I skipped the whipped cream all together because I simply didn’t have the resources to make it work The buttercream was also a VCTOTW recipe with my filbert almond paste added. That’s right kiddies, it’s all almonds all the time. I used the VCTOTW ganache recipe – can we see a theme here?
Oh, isn’t that lovely? Obviously I need to work on my ganache skills. I think I just needed to make a bigger batch and do a second cover. I read a few tutorials, and next time it will be shiny and smooth like a really nice hairstyle.
I did use rum in my sugar syrup and in the buttercream – I like the added kick that alcohol adds to baked goods. When I worked in a French bakery, we brushed layer cakes with cointreau and other liquers. I also used apricot preserves to cover the crumb layer under the ganache. I hate fruit with chocolate (except strawberry) but the apricot flavor was just a whispy hint of something special – really lovely.
The final product was immensely lauded. The joke going around the table was how impressed everyone was with my skills – my driving to the bakery and picking up cake skills.
A rather unappetizing look at the inside of my cake – but it was devoured so quickly that this is all I got! This isn’t my proudest Daring Bakers attempt, but I think it might have been the most delicious (so far).
“Yeah I got on sneaks but I need a new pair
Cause basketball courts in the summer got girls there
The temperatures about 88
Hop in the water plug just for old times sake
Break to ya crib change your clothes once more
Cause youre invited to a barbeque thats starting at 4″
Our barbeque started at 2, but who’s to argue with the Fresh Prince? We headed to the Hollywood Farmer’s market early Sunday morning to get the supplies necessary to create this dish:
Haricots Verts with Figs and Walnuts
This is a really simple recipe that is inspired by a dish that the boy and I shared at a Silverlake restaurant. All you do is blanche about a pound of green beans, quarter 10 or so figs, throw in two handfuls of walnuts, and sprinkle with lemon juice and salt to taste. It’s such a light, refreshing salad but the figs and walnuts make it feel, as one diner put it, “decadent.” Oooooh.
The other dish I contributed to the barbecue was a menacing counter balance to the healthy glow we all felt after the salad. Introducing:
These cookies are out of control. They were so amazing – I couldn’t stop scooping out the batter and eating it before I could even get them in the oven. The recipe still yeilded 4 dozen cookies, plus 2 gigantor cookies I have saved in the fridge for my parents when they come into town this weekend. The texture is perfect – chewy and a little crispy on the edges. None of that fluff or cakiness I find so abundantly present in a lot of cookie recipes. At one point during the barbecue, there was a chorus of toddlers chanting “COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE.” It was a beautiful sight. Oh, and that four dozen? GONE. I took home an empty tupperware container at the end of the day.
Nothing like playing with a four year old in a pool for a few hours to work up an appetite. The lovely Princess Addie, seen here about to chomp down on my foot, is the product of another blogger, Amy Lou and papa Finn. They were visiting from out of town, and we had an excellent time playing and splashing and Abba-ing. On one last note, this is why the summer is so great:
I finally broke down and made Julie Hasson’s Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausages. They were so ridiculously easy and delicious that they’re likely to become a staple ’round these parts. I didn’t have all the spices she used so I improvised with my cabinet supplies and ended up putting quite a bit of cayenne pepper in there – resulting in fire-breathing dragons around the kitchen table. I personally enjoy imparting super powers upon my guests – it adds a little more excitement to life – so I really really love the spice.
Recipe
Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausages
Makes 8 links
2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1/4 cup chickpea flour
2 tbsp Bills Best Chik’Nish Seasoning (if using another brand which is salty, or saltier than Bill’s Best, you’ll want to greatly reduce the amount you use)
2 tbsp granulated onion
1 to 2 tbsp fennel seed, optional
2 tsp coarsely ground pepper, preferably freshly ground
2 tsp ground paprika
1 tsp dried chili flakes, optional
1 tsp ground smoked paprika
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground allspice
2 1/4 cups cool water*
6 to 8 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
1. In a large bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients. Whisk together the water, garlic, olive oil and soy sauce and using a fork, gently stir into the dry ingredients. Stir just until ingredients are mixed. If dough mixture is too dry, you can add another tablespoon of water or as needed.
2. Scoop 1/2 cup dough mixture at a time and shape into logs. Place logs on piece of aluminum foil and roll up, twisting ends. Place sausages in steamer and steam for 30 minutes. Once sausages have cooled, remove from foil and refrigerate until ready to eat. After cooling, the sausages may feel a bit dry on the outside. Don’t worry, as they will soften and firm up considerably after chilling.
Variation: You can shape the dough into little patties instead of links. If you don’t want to use aluminum foil, you can wrap the links in damp muslin or tea towel and tie ends with cotton twine.
Little steamy babies, all snuggly and warm! Make these! You can watch the step-by-step instructional video on EverydayDish.tv. Or just enjoy this non-vegan friendly video:
It was early in the morning on a Tuesday. The bananas weren’t feeling well. They were sick and tired of hanging out on the kitchen counter, and they weren’t getting any younger. Quite frankly, they were lookin’ bad. The bleary eyed stranger who wandered into the kitchen on that fateful morning took one glance at the bananas. She had once known them as green, naive, unspoiled by the harsh reality of life outside the grocer store. Now, well past the prime of their lives, the bananas called out for mercy.
What?
So I have about two more months in this apartment before I roll out and let my lease cruise – peacing out to the east coast that big New York place. I’m trying to use up everything I have in my cupboard that I can’t easily donate to a shelter. Here come the muffins.
I made up the recipe and considering there’s no sugar or Earth Balance I wasn’t sure how they’d come out – therefore I titled them:
Ye of Little Faith Banana Kitchen Sink Muffins
2 bananas
1/4 C apple sauce
1/3 C unsweetened soy milk
1/4 C brown rice syrup
2 T maple syrup
1 t almond extract
1 C whole wheat flour
1/2 C white flour
1/2 t baking soda
handful of currants and raisins
I just really mashed up the wet ingredients and then mixed everything into the dry ingredients, poured them into a muffin tin, and called it a day. Well, beside baking them for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. I only made 8 because I didn’t trust them to rise very much. The did actually rise beautifully, so it was a treat to have a real muffin top (without giving anyone the less preferred sort of muffin top – get it? heaaallthyyy).
The buttercream was also a VCTOTW recipe with my filbert almond paste added. That’s right kiddies, it’s all almonds all the time. I used the VCTOTW ganache recipe – can we see a theme here?
