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Puddin’ by zylllah

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

Now I live in a smallish town. It is true that I can travel down to Nashvegas for exotic ingredients but I rarely go down there unless I can make a day of it and hit a bunch of places at once. Since I’ve had Elke that has become much more difficult. I did not want to skip this month though because I skipped both the baking and cooking challenge last month.  Even though I so rarely get time to do my hobbies these days I had decided that cooking and by that I mean good cooking was the one thing I would keep up even more so than knitting. Love knitting but cooking is much more of an instant gratification thing. Well more instant than the 6 months it can take me to finish a project.

Anyway I started looking at the links provided to find a recipe that fit the challenge and that I thought would actually get eaten since I am married to the most picky eater on the planet and I’m currently *trying* to diet. Eventually I found one that sounded pretty good to me from The Pudding Club:

Ingredients:

120g Unsalted Butter
120g Caster Sugar (I just food processed regular sugar)
120g Self-rising flour (I substituted AP with salt and baking soda)
30g Cocoa Powder (I used Valrhona)
2 Eggs
60g Chocolate Chips

Steps:

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and cocoa together and add with the egg, a little at a time, to the creamed mixture, beating well between each addition. Finally, stir in half the chocolate chips. Place a covering of the remaining chocolate chips over the base of a greased 1.1 litre pudding before adding the mixture. Steam for 1 ½ hours.

Puddin"

Review:

This is the second time I have used this particular cocoa powder and I’m just not loving it as much as I should for what it costs. I find it tastes slightly over roasted almost.  The first time was for Keller’s brownie recipe and I thought maybe it just was the recipe but no this time also it tasted too roasted. Also I think I might have overcooked it a bit. The toppings I slathered on it were tasty but overall…meh. It wasn’t quite mindblowing enough for me to make again. This is totally my fault though and not the fault of the Host. I am quite glad to have the steaming idea firmly in hand, I can see using it for other cakes. It would be interesting to try a sort of cheesecake cooked that way since it’s not that different than a water bath.

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. Here is the recipe if you would like it.

Here is the full photo set.

Now Tiramisu is not new to me, I make it several times a year since it’s Justin’s favorite dessert. However I had not tried that particular version of it, nor had I ever made my own marscapone so that was interesting to me. I usually use Kahlua in mine for flavor but this called for Marsala. So I decided to go with the Marsala and also to make a hazelnut flavored one since that is another of Justin’s favorite add-ons to coffee and chocolate. I had actually meant to start earlier in the week but my stupid overpriced dishwasher decided to break itself so I was dealing with that (it’s still not fixed).  Anyway Friday I started with the marscpone.  It was an easy process and reminded me quite a bit of making ricotta except for the change in fat levels of the dairy and acid.  From milk to cream and from vinegar to lemon juice.

So anyway it went for a long night of rest in the fridge but I stupidly forgot to take a picture after its naptime.

Another element to Tiramisu are lady fingers. I’ve made them before but as my piping skills weren’t quite up to the task since then I’ve done the insides in cake pans and just bought some for the outside. After the last one I made I decided in the future I was going to make enough filling to use it essentially as a frosting since the store bought ones are not nearly as good. This recipe did differ in the order egg whites to yolk folding but I think it yields an easier batter to work with so I will be using it in the future. I also chose to make smaller rounded shapes since I thought it would be easier to use them in parfaits with the leftovers.  Also in the last photo you can really see a difference in the ones I baked first and the ones I baked last.

The recipe called for adding a vanilla pastry cream and a zabaglione. Since I was doing two different flavors I had to make two different zabagliones.  All three recipes called for lemon zest so I dutifully microplaned some. Maybe I’m overly sensitive to the flavor but I couldn’t taste anything but lemon. It’s more than possible I added too much since I was unsure exactly how packed it was supposed to be.  I decided to use it as an accent when plating rather than adding it to the marscapone.  To be all food snobby I was hoping for a pleasing brightness but I ended up with oh my god it’s lemonaid.

So for the filling I portioned out my marscapone since I had just made double of everything and I whipped my cream. I ended up frankensteining the method I normally use and this recipe. Normally I mix everything into the marscapone and add my cream and whip it all together. I add the sugar last since I like to adjust the sweetness down a bit. This time I whipped the cream with the sugar and the vanilla.  It actually made for a lighter and less grainy texture. I also used the whisk attachment to my hand blender rather than the stand mixer. I thought it made for finer control and I will continue to do that in the future.

Whipped Cream

Putting it all together couldn’t have been easier. I made the two different dipping syrups by using instant espresso powder, warm water, some sugar and the liquor. I did add more liquor since I liked it to be a tad bit more strongly flavored. So I lined some of my mini bread pans with plastic and did my layers. The only difference between them was I had ground up some hazelnuts to add to the cocoa powder layer. With the leftovers I made some parfaits. I actually still have quite a few ladyfingers and syrup and marscapone in the freezer. I’ll probably make a casserole of it for Justin to take to work. Now the one thing I do not have is a beautifully plated finished dessert to show you since we’re having it for dinner tonight.

Tiramisu