I wasn’t planning to host a cookie gathering, but I stumbled upon a comment by Jackie of La Casa de Sweets on Twitter about a virtual bake sale she was hosting to benefit Share Our Strength and I decided to get in on the project by hosting a cookie party.

Dorie Greenspan's famous World Peace Cookies

I invited friends over to enjoy a buffet of sweet treats and convivial socializing and asked them to bring a few dollars to drop in a collection basket for Share Our Strength. Through the end of the year donations to Share Our Strength are being matched by their corporate partners, giving every dollar collected twice the impact.

Sugared Cranberries with Ginger and Clove

It’s always good to have multiple motivators, so I took this cookie baking opportunity as a chance to dig further into Maida Heatter’s Cookies cookbook that I’d received as a review copy from Andrews McMeel Publishing earlier in the year.

Maida Heatter's Cookies and Maida Heatter's Cakes cookbooks

These beautifully simple paperbacks are newly published collections of Heatter’s classic recipes gathered from earlier works without glossy photos or a hefty price tag. Maida Heatter is a master when it comes to desserts with nine classic dessert books to her credit and an endless list of accolades. I find myself reaching for these books first when I’m thinking about doing some baking largely due to her reputation for recipes that work, but also because of the enormous variety of classic recipes in each book accompanied by descriptive head notes with helpful tips and valuable words of warning like, “They are very fragile and not suitable for picnics.” I highly recommend both of these books if you are looking for a go-to cookie or cake book. They’d also make an excellent gift for anyone starting to build their cookbook collection.

Maida Heatter's My Mother's Gingersnaps

Wintery weather and holiday festivities must include gingery spice cookies so I selected Heatter’s recipe called My Mother’s Gingersnaps. A recipe she grew up making year around with her mother and after tasting them, I won’t limit them to holiday baking either. Crystallized ginger, ginger powder and freshly ground black pepper give these crisp little “throwing stars,” as David called them, their spicy kick.

Maida Heatter's Swedish Rye Wafers

The fantastic use of spices throughout the book instantly caught my attention when I first flipped from cover to cover. Many are classics that have been passed down for generations and have roots in cultures all around the world. There are five recipes in the book that use caraway seeds for example. How many cookie books give you five ways to put your caraway seeds to sugary, buttery, good use? I can tell you first-hand that both the Swedish Rye Wafers and the Caraway Sour-Cream Cookies are excellent. Clearly I need to make the other three recipes just to be sure they measure up. Cardamom, sesame seeds, anise seed, poppy seeds, ginger, and black pepper all get play in various recipes. Spice flavor is very much a use-it-or-lose-it situation, so why let your spices languish in the back of the cupboard until they are lifeless and unidentifiable when you can put them to good use in cookies?

Maida Heatter's Blind Date Cookies

I was participating in a Twitter chat a few weeks ago and someone posed the question of what to do with all the dates she had on hand. I flipped open Maida Heatter’s Cookies that happened to be sitting on my desk and noted eight recipes using dates. The Blind Date Cookies immediately went on my “must make” list. A walnut stuffed date is dropped in batter to coat and then dressed with a simple glaze after baking. Apparently this recipe originated over 100 years ago at a famous Milwaukee pastry shop. These cookies are sweet and delicious with a soft cakey dough surrounding the chewy, crunchy surprise hiding in the center. They’re a great make-ahead cookie too because they were even tastier on the second day.

I deeply appreciate the generosity of everyone able to stop by for a sugar rush and donate to Share Our Strength. Your donations will connect 150 kids with up to 10 meals each. Here are some of Share Our Strength’s accomplishments for 2011 and your donations will help them achieve even more in the New Year. Thank you!

• No Kid Hungry campaigns up and running in 17 states, expanding reach and increasing participation in key programs like school breakfast, summer meals and afterschool snacks.
• Increased the number of summer meals served by nearly 1 million over last summer in six “No Kid Hungry” states alone.
• Provided $6.9 million in grants to more than 400 community organizations working to ensure that kids receive healthy, regular meals.
• Cooking Matters classes, teaching how to make healthy meals on a budget, reached 100,000 individuals at risk for hunger in 37 states.

With one out of every five American kids facing hunger — more than 16 million children — there’s still a lot of work to do before the goal of ending child hunger in America is achieved. If you’d like to help, please make a donation, and remember all donations made before the end of the year will be matched making double the impact.

A special thank you goes to Jackie for inspiring me to pull together this last minute cookies-for-a-cause party. And to think some people say Twitter is just a waste of time!

Alderwood Smoked Salt Caramels always round out a cookie party.

Recipe Links

• Alderwood Smoked Salt Caramels
• Sugared Cranberries with Ginger and Clove
• Swedish Rye Wafers by Maida Heatter
• World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

I’ve made a lot of special cakes to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, births, and even cakes simply for cake’s sake, but this cake was particularly exciting because it was for Neil Gaiman. What kind of cake to make for a world renowned writer with a delightfully dark, mind-bogglingly creative style? Just as I began to ponder this, the message that it needed to be a gluten-free was delivered. My excitement crumbled into a pile of dread, fear and bewilderment.

Chocolate Cake with Rum Chestnut Cream for Neil Gaiman

I have no experience with gluten-free baking and don’t even know the fundamentals behind this niche specialty. Though I was acutely aware of the real possibility of turning out a terrible cake, I wasn’t about to let this happen. I have an extensive tribe of food-obsessed friends and social media acquaintances and a handful of them are gluten-free specialists, so I started clicking around on their blogs to see what I could learn.

It was a post by Jeanne Sauvage, author of the blog Art of Gluten-Free Baking, about how she developed her Gluten-Free Flour Mix that made me think I could in fact pull this off. She is someone who loves baking as much as I do and shares the philosophy that baked goods are treats that should taste good rather than be healthy. I knew I was on the right track. Working with a fabulous chocolate cupcake recipe I’d just developed, I gave Jeanne’s gluten-free flour mix a try. What do you know? The gluten-free cake tasted great. Though the flavor was spot-on, I thought I could improve the texture by swapping out the brown rice flour for potato flour which has a smoother texture. Bingo! A little fiddling with the butter and oil ratios, which had more to do with converting a cupcake recipe into a layer cake than anything to do with the gluten-freeness of it, and I had Neil’s gluten-free birthday cake recipe. Drawing flavor inspiration from Dorie Greenspan’s Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake and Francois Payard’s Ardéchois with Chestnut Cream cake, the remaining elements fell in place.

Chocolate Cake with Rum Chestnut Cream and Chocolate Ganache

Each layer of rich chocolate cake, three in total, got a splash of rum simple syrup and sandwiched a blanket of chestnut cream gently spiked with more rum for good measure. Stacked one upon the next, the three layers of cake and two cushions of cream were cloaked in dark chocolate ganache. Resting on a cake stand, the cloaked layers of cake and cream appear to be nothing more than a large puck of chocolate. Uniform in color and texture the appearance is unassuming as if to convey there is nothing of interest to see here, so please move along.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer

A few years ago we got into the habit of feeding Amanda Palmer and her accompanying musicians and performers whenever she happened to be performing in Seattle. In January of this year she married Neil Gaiman and the two of them put together a show and set off on a six-show West coast tour ending in Seattle. It was essentially a mashup of music and readings from the two of them that delighted all who were lucky enough to catch it. A few weeks prior we learned that Neil’s birthday was the day after the Seattle show and that Amanda wanted to present him with a cake on stage. So, one birthday cake was added to the catering menu and I started to ponder various design options. One glance at their tour poster, however, and I had my décor plan for the cake.

The show poster on my backstage pass

As life seems to go, this big project fell in a week packed with other activities and responsibilities. Though I managed to get started on the gum paste work early in the week, I didn’t have the luxury of being able to re-do things once I crested the gum paste learning curve. My infrequent gum paste encounters require me to revisit the entire learning curve each time. Of course if I remade the décor again this week, it would be 100% easier and better. I might even avoid dumping an entire container of gold luster dust on my left shoe and the floor. Imperfections be damned. I contend that intention counts for a great deal and the cake was tasty, which counts for even more.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer in gum paste

When I was learning to quilt my sister-in-law gave me some sage advice about fretting over mistakes, “If you can’t see it from a moving train, don’t worry about it.” When it comes to making cakes to be presented on stage, I say if you can’t see it from the second balcony, don’t worry about it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbO-yDmhZsE

In addition to the cake appearing on stage, our living room sofa was part of the set and enjoyed center stage for the entire show. Yes, our living room sofa has cushioned the derrieres of Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman and we have the photos to prove it. Being newlyweds, they’re always smooching. We on the other hand have been married for 23 years, but can still smooch like newlyweds.

Just making out next to Neil & Amanda

Happy birthday Neil Gaiman. It was such a pleasure to meet you and bake you a cake.

David, Carol, Neil, Amanda

Recipe link

• Neil Gaiman’s Birthday Cake

Happy S’mores Day everyone! There are S’more events happening around Seattle today, and hopefully in your town too. Even better than that, however, is that you can take matters into your own hands and create a home-crafted S’mores Day celebration to wow everyone you know. 

Homemade S'mores

Certainly a trip to the store will set you up with a bag of Jett Puffs, box of Honey Maid Grahams and a stack of Hershey bars, but where’s the adventure in that? How about making your own marshmallows? It’s easier than you might think, but don’t waist any time becuase they need at least four hours to set.

Graham Crackers

If you’re going to make marshmallows you certainly can’t put them on a store bought graham cracker. Besides, you have four hours before the marshmallows are set, what else could you possibly have to do but make graham crackers? It’s no more difficult than making any cutout cookie and there’s the added bonus of being able to play around with flavor. My favorite version is dusted with sugar and Sichuan pepper.

Graham cracker dough ready for the oven.

Though it would be more fun, there is no need to light a bonfire in your back yard. The broiler in your oven will do a fine job of toasting marshmallows for your chocolaty, crispy, crunchy, gooey, marshmalloy graham sandwich.

Have a great S’mores Day!

Recipe Links

• Graham Crackers
• Marshmallows recipe by Alton Brown

Chocolate cream pie is my all-time biggest cooking disaster, quite definitively marking my culinary low point. Though filled with good intentions and made with love, the infamous pie made twenty-plus years ago was one disaster after then next. I’ve come a long way since.

Chocolate Cream Pie with Meringue

One of the things I learned about David when we were dating was he loved chocolate cream pie. Every time he return home from college his mom had a chocolate cream pie waiting for him.  To this day she always has a chocolate cream pie ready when we visit. As a bachelor David sourced his own chocolate pies at a whopping 89₵ each from the frozen case at the grocery store. Even back then an entire frozen pie for 89₵ seemed ridiculous to me. Besides a little sweetness it was, not surprisingly, devoid of flavor. I knew I could do better so I  decided I’d surprise him with a real chocolate cream pie made from scratch.

I didn’t actually know what a real chocolate cream pie was like. After a few inquiring probes I learned the filling was nothing more than chocolate pudding. Had there been an Internet to search I might have stumbled upon a great recipe for a chocolate cream pie and avoided this culinary black mark all together, but instead I set off to the store to buy a pudding mix.

Chocolate Cream Pie with Meringue

Keep in mind the benchmark against which my grand homemade pie would be measured  was an 89₵ frozen pie, so the concept of a boxed pudding mix seemed like a real step up.  As kids my sisters and I would occasionally talk my mother into buying a box of Jell-O brand instant pudding that we enjoyed making and eating. It was what I knew pudding to be.

Though I’d never made pudding from scratch, I could make a darn good pie crust. Baked goods and desserts didn’t make a regular appearance around our house, but mom always baked pumpkin pies from scratch for Thanksgiving. I learned the art of mixing, rolling out, and baking a crust early on. The lesson was heavily reinforced by the direct treat reward of the extra pie crust scraps baked up with cinnamon and sugar. Why would you buy a ready-made crust when you could make one and get bonus treats? I whipped up a crust and it was pre-baked, cooled and ready to fill before I headed off to the store.

Once home with my box of pudding mix I ran into trouble when I started mixing it and realized I didn’t have enough milk.  It didn’t register with me that the non-fat milk I’d used might not be the best choice. It’s what I always bought so I didn’t give it a second thought. I have no idea why I had a box of dried non-fat milk in my cupboard, I think I’d probably been toting it around with me for years, but I saw it as a fine solution to my predicament.

With the cold milk whipped into the powdered pudding mix I was ready to fill the crust. A quick taste and I recoiled at the strange flavor. I examined the box and noticed I’d bought sugar-free pudding. Oops. I didn’t realized Jell-O made even made sugar-free pudding. I hadn’t baked the pie crust scraps yet and I decided some cute dinosaur cut-outs to decorate the top would go a long way to salvage the sorry tasting pie.

My dinosaurs suffered a fate nearly as bad as the original dinosaurs that walked the earth. I managed to incinerate them to a nearly charcoal black state. As I placed the dino-chars on the terrible tasting pie the Apatosaurus’s head snapped off in my hand. I was thoroughly defeated. The vision I’d had of a beautiful and delicious homemade chocolate cream pie was completely destroyed. I showed up on David’s doorstep with pie in hand and as soon as he opened the door I burst into tears and handed him the disaster. I was crushed by the reality that my pie was worse than the 89₵ frozen pie.

He graciously ate a slice of my disastrous creation and no doubt after I left raced out to buy himself an 89₵ frozen pie to erase the trauma his palate had just experienced. In recounting the sequence of events to David I learned that the choice of instant pudding and non-fat milk were two additional mortal sins when it comes to pudding. “You’re supposed to buy the box of pudding that you cook and use whole milk”, he pointed out. It wasn’t long before we were laughing hysterically over the cascade of disasters that embodied that pie.

The laundry list of chocolate cream pie offences I committed that day reads like this: Sugar-free instant pudding mix made with non-fat milk supplemented with reconstituted non-fat powdered milk of unknown age, topped with headless burnt-to-a-crisp dinosaur pie crust cut-outs.

It became my mission to master the chocolate cream pie. I am very proud that my current-day truly from scratch chocolate cream pie is David’s favorite pie. He doesn’t even like to share it when I make one. What do you know, fresh whole milk, sugar, eggs, excellent 72% chocolate, and real butter make all the difference!

Recipe Links

• Flaky Pie Crust
• Chocolate Cream Pie

A while back I got an email from a friend of mine who is a glass artist telling me she’s been invited to speak at the Glass Art Society Conference happening in Seattle.  I was thrilled for her and especially happy she’d be coming to Seattle for a visit. She asked if I would I like to help her bake a cake and make tea as part of her presentation. “Yes” is a rather automatic answer for me anytime a question involves cake, be it baking or eating, so I enthusiastically volunteered to help. Though enthusiastic to help, I couldn’t quite get my head around how she was going to work cake and tea into a presentation on glass art.

Sarah Blood giving her Cooking with Neon demo

Her topic was working with neon in mixed media and she wanted to demonstrate how the meaning of a work of art can be transformed by changing the materials used to make it. Her current body of work called Luna Fossils combines neon and cement so she thought she’d illustrate her point by making a similar piece, but out of cake.

Luna Fossils in cement and cake by Sarah Blood

She invited the audience to help themselves to cake by breaking off a piece to eat. This interactive approach allows the participant to determine the shape of the edible temporary art piece as it’s consumed. A great example of how by changing the media to cake the piece is experienced in a completely different way from the cement version. Once the first fist-full of cake was removed, the surprise of glowing neon lurking inside the cake was revealed. Everyone was thrilled! Who thinks to bake neon into a cake? And serve it to people? This is why I love Sarah Blood.

Neon Cake revealed

With a chocolate cake the neon tube hides inside undetected until cake is torn away to reveal the bright glowing band of light. Change the material to white cake and the experience is once again transformed. The glow of the neon emanates from within the cake eliminating the element of surprise, but  generating an equal level fascination and excitement.

Neon Cake by Sarah Blood

Needless to say, her presentation was a smashing success. Anytime you can serve tea and cake when giving a talk you are setting yourself up for success. Light it up with neon and you’re home free!

Interactive art, delicious cake

Being invited to grab a piece of cake with your hands is quite liberating. Who hasn’t battled the urge to do just that when standing in front of a beautiful wedding cake admiring the perfectness of it?

Chocolate Neon Cake

There are obvious risks with baking and eating a cake filled with glass and I think the “Don’t try this at home” warning is applicable. So you’ve been warned, don’t try this at home. I’d imagine it’s unlikely you have a 12” round of neon laying around anyhow.

Neon cake ready to bake in the kiln

Luckily the cake is very tasty on it’s own. It’s a classic pound cake, rich and buttery with just the perfect level of sweetness to make it a special treat, but not so cloyingly sweet that you regret that second piece. It’s the kind of cake that can be enjoyed anytime of day with a nice cup of tea. Though I don’t encourage you to bake a glass tube of neon into your cake, I will encourage you to let your guests tear it apart with their hands. See how that changes the dynamic of your gathering.

You can visit Sarah Blood’s web site to see more of her glass art.

Recipe link

• Sarah Blood’s Neon Cake

This is a Twitter inspired cake. A great big happy birthday to Chris of @BlogWellDone. This cake is for you! Sorry you didn’t get a slice.

Kumquat Fennel Seed Cornmeal Cake with Honey Mascarpone Icing & Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

Every month My Spice Sage and I host a Twitter chat, #SpiceChat. As our chat was wrapping up last month, this little exchange took place.

The next #SpiceChat is April 6 4-5 pm EST, talking fennel seeds. – @TableFare

Sweet, the next is my birthday. – @BlogWellDone

Maybe we should make fennel b-day cakes, not to be confused with funnel cakes. – @TableFare

Or to mess everyone up… fennel funnel cakes   – @BlogWellDone

Fennel birthday cake for everyone! – @KyraTX

Virtual birthday cake seems kind of mean – @TableFare

Virtual cake is never meant to be mean! – @KyraTX

I would be honored by a virtual birthday cake. – @BlogWellDone

Consider it done! – @TableFare

I love making cakes, so I was confident I could come up with something, but when thinking of fennel and cake a rustic loaf cake seemed to make the most sense, but I wanted to create something fancy, something worthy of a birthday celebration.

Kumquat Fennel Seed Cornmeal Cake with Honey Mascarpone Icing & Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

Right out of the gate I was fixated on making a fennel seed brittle as a garnish. Fennel seeds are a spice that can be eaten as whole without being overwhelming. In fact they are commonly eaten after meals as a breath freshener.

Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

I settled on a simple olive oil cornmeal cake and decided a citrus marmalade would be the perfect filling because orange and fennel are just such good flavor pals. I made a kumquat marmalade and stirred in some crushed fennel seed to create a little flavor bridge to the cake.

Kumquat Fennel Maramalade cake filling

It was the icing that perplexed me. A birthday cake needed a real icing rather than a glaze, plus I needed something to act as glue to hold the brittle to the sides of the cake. Buttercream is the obvious default cake covering, but it seemed wrong. I described the cake with a buttercream frosting to a friend and she furrowed her brow and commented that buttercream just didn’t seem right. Now that I knew it wasn’t just me, I continued to ponder and then it hit me. Mascarpone and whipped cream with a little honey and orange zest. Ta-da! With the final pieced of the puzzle in place I raced to the kitchen to start baking.

Kumquat Fennel Seed Cornmeal Cake with Honey Mascarpone Icing & Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

Though there are a number of components to the cake, each one is very straight forward, with the exception of the brittle. It’s not that there is anything difficult about caramelizing sugar if you go slow, and wash down the stray sugar crystals from the pan walls, but the idea of caramel is intimidating to many.   My advice is to practice just this element first if you are concerned about it. The brittle is really tasty as a standalone snack. Once you master this, a whole world of caramels opens up!

The cake itself doesn’t even require a mixer. It’s made the same way muffin or cornbread batter is made; mix the dry stuff in one bowl, the wet stuff in another, and stirring them together. Done.

Kumquat Fennel Seed Cornmeal Cake with Honey Mascarpone Icing & Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

After appropriately celebrating @BlogWellDone’s birthday with 5 minutes of the cake on display in my kitchen, I quickly repurposed the cake for my birthday party.  I’m glad to share an April birthday with you Chris! Your cake was enjoyed by all. The one drawback to virtual birthday parties, is you don’t get a slice of your own cake. Maybe someday someone will figure out how to pass food through a computer screen.

Kumquat Fennel Seed Cornmeal Cake with Honey Mascarpone Icing & Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

Recipe Link:

Kumquat Fennel Seed Cornmeal Cake with Honey Mascarpone Icing and Almond Fennel Seed Brittle

Read about fennel seeds in our Spice Library.

Today at 4 p.m. EST is the second Twitter #SpiceChat that I host  with Wendy from MySpiceSage. Coriander seeds will be the topic of conversation, so I’ve had coriander on my mind for weeks.

Indian coriander (left) European coriander (right)

My local spice shop recently procured Indian coriander, which is apparently difficult to source because it’s not commonly exported. It differs from the more common European coriander (var. microcarpum) in both appearance and flavor. Indian coriander (var. vulgare) is lighter in color, more oblong in shape, and has a smoother flavor that is distinctly lemony.

Indian coriander

Chocolate is often the first way I experiment with a new ingredient and with the bright lemony flavor of this coriander a chocolate experiment was a must. Because coriander is mild enough to eat the seeds whole I opted to simply mix whole seeds into dark chocolate for a pure coriander experience. The seeds are very crispy and easy to chew and the texture of crunching into one is part of the pleasure of this spice. Additionally, using the whole seeds allows for bursts of herby-lemony flavor to contrast with bites of pure dark chocolate. I had a hunch I would love the result, and there was much joyous stomping of the feet after I tasted the first one.

Indian Coriander Toasted Almond Ice Cream

The next logical progression for testing out a new ingredient is ice cream. I whipped some up last night on a whim and can assure you it was time well spent. There was joyous stomping of the feet again this morning after freezing it. I used Indian coriander,  but have no doubt European coriander would be equally as stomp-worthy.

Please join us on Twitter the first Wednesday of each month for #SpiceChat from 4-5 p.m. EST.

Recipe Link

• Indian Coriander Toasted Almond Ice Cream

When you think “spectacular dessert”, what comes to mind? I needed to come up with the perfect ending for a week-long holiday dinner party and after careful thought it hit me. There is one dessert I consider to be as festive, grand, and challenging as this dinner party; croquembouche.  How exactly dose one pull off a week-long dinner party? The Internet. It’s a virtual party with over 70 bloggers participating and the best part is you’re invited, so please, come Share Our Holiday Table.   

Croquembouche with Spun Sugar

Share Our Strength is hosting this grand event featuring four complete holiday menus by sharing a different course each day. Lucky you, today is dessert! Don’t fret if you just arrived to the party, you can start at the beginning and enjoy each and every dish, or jump right in with dessert first and then go back for the rest.   

Croquembouche is not only a beautifully decadent dessert, but its many components make it multi-faceted, complex, and a little intimidating. I didn’t set out to create a pastry analogy for the work Share Our Strength does, but they’ve set a goal to end childhood hunger by 2015, and that’s clearly multi-faceted, complex, and intimidating, so it looks like a pastry analogy is exactly where this is heading.   

Share Our Strength has worked on hunger issues for 26 years and come to an interesting conclusion. People aren’t hungry because of a lack of food, people are hungry because of a lack of access to food. On a typical day like today, over half of the kids that qualify for a healthy free or reduced price school breakfast don’t get one. That’s a lot of kids sitting in class rooms distracted from learning by their empty stomachs. There are all sorts of reasons these kids are falling through the cracks. Share Our Strength works to identify and close these gaps so existing successful programs can meet the needs of the children and families in their communities. Providing access to healthy food where people live, work, learn, and play is at the core of Share Our Strength’s strategy for ending hunger.   

Croquembouch with Sugared Cranberries and Spun Sugar

In essence Share Our Strength is the sticky caramel that brings the individual cream puffs together to create something spectacular and glorious; an America where no kid goes hungry.   

Here’s a great example. Last year Share Our Strength partnered with an organization in Colorado to fund an outreach program to boost participation in the grossly underutilized Summer Food Program. Share Our Strength provided the resources needed to print fliers for schools to send home with kids and post at social service organizations. The Summer Food Program in Colorado grew by over 50% serving 950,000 summer meals. A lot of kids got healthy nutritious food last summer because this existing program was made accessible through outreach. Nationally only 16% of eligible kids participate in the Summer Food Program. Bridge this gap and kids get fed.    

Cream puff filled with Spiced Bavarian Cream

If each program, like the Summer Meals Program, is a cream puff and it’s filled with needed resources, you see where this is going. Building piece by piece, we canend child hunger by 2015. I must say I wish I had executed my crocquembouche assembly as effectively as Share Our Strength is executing their 10-Point Plan. Oh yes, lessons were learned and I’ll share all the details.   

But first let me ask you to join David and me and make a donation to Share Our Strength and help create an America where no kid goes hungry.   

This is an organization we are connected with on many levels. TableFare raises funds through our Rouxbe affiliation and I’m an active volunteer for Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program, a free six week cooking and nutrition class for low income families. When the opportunity came up to participate in this virtual fundraising dinner party I jumped at the chance because I’m happy to sing the praises of the work this organization does.   

Redirecting money for the purchase of one coffee house drink, bottle of wine, or dinner out this holiday season to Share Our Strength will make a difference in ending child hunger by 2015. At minimum, please take the No Kid Hungry Pledge. Add your voice to the chorus of people supporting the effort to end hunger in America and ask a friend to do the same.   

I alluded to some “learning experiences” I had while making my dessert.  It ended up being a success, but there are techniques that still need to be honed and that will take practice, practice, practice. Poor David, he might have to eat more croquembouche!   

The croquembouche structure is built from cream puffs which are made from a simple pâte à choux dough. It’s an extremely versatile pastry dough worth learning to make. Once baked the dough puffs can filled with pastry cream or ice cream, and if piped out as logs they magically become éclairs. When piped as one large circle or bicycle wheel, this same dough becomes the famous Paris-Brest Cake created to commemorate the Paris to Brest to Paris bicycle race.   

Pâte à choux dough ready for the mixer

Pâte à choux dough is simply flour stirred into a boiling water and butter mixture. It quickly thickens and is stirred until it cleans the pan walls. The idea when cooking the dough is to dry it out as much as possible so it will be able to absorb more eggs. Eggs give pâte à choux puff, well eggs and a hot oven.   

pâte à choux

Though it’s called a dough, it’s more like a thick paste that is piped into shapes for baking. A gentle tap on the top of each puff with a wet finger will smooth out the point.   

Press the points down before baking

My pâte à choux baked up beautifully. I made a two fillings for the puffs; a zippy and fresh Ginger Pastry Cream and a Spiced Chocolate Bavarian Cream. So far, so good. Two lessons were learned about fillings. First of all, it’s not necessary to completely fill each cream puff. If these were going to be served as individual plated cream puffs, yes, fill ‘em up, but for a croquembouche they get too fat and heavy if filled to capacity. A nice little dollop so the puff is about half full is perfect. The second filling lesson learned is a Bavarian Cream is much too delicate for croquembouche.   

Bavarian cream differs from pastry cream in that it’s set with gelatin rather than corn starch and lightened by folding in whipped cream. When the puffs are dipped into molten sugar, the heat from the caramel melts the filling so they become very messy. It’s an absolutely deliciously light and fabulous filling, but best used for cream puffs or simply scooped into beautiful stemware and served with a spoon.   

Always have an ice bath handy when making caramel

Caramel intimidates a lot of cooks for good reason. Molten sugar can cause a more severe burn than just about anything else in the kitchen. It cooks at 310°F to 320° F and it’s sticky, so if it gets on your skin it stays there. Notice my set up; it’s really important to always have a bowl of ice water at the ready. You will need it if caramel burns you or the caramel itself starts to burn. Quenching the bottom of the pan in the ice bath will quickly stop the cooking and can save a caramel from burning. The other potential problem with caramel is it can crystallize once it cools.   

The caramel is made by simply sprinkling sugar a little bit at a time into a dry heavy-bottomed pan over a low to medium-low heat and stirring frequently. After each sprinkling begins to melt, add a bit more until 2 cups of sugar have been added to the pan. Once all the sugar is fairly melted and it’s becoming liquid, brush the sides of the pan down with a wet pastry brush to rinse away any sugar crystals stuck to the sides. Warning: when the wet pastry brush hits the hot pan, a poof of hot steam will rise, so be careful not to burn your hand on the steam. After washing down the side walls of the pan, let the caramel cook without stirring until it reaches a nice golden caramel color. If it’s cooking unevenly, gently swirl the pan.   

Remove the caramel from the heat before it reaches the desired color because it will keep cooking from the residual heat of the pan. If it’s starting to get too dark, place the pan in the ice bath to stop the cooking, but only for a few seconds, or the caramel will get so cold it will harden and then you have to re-heat it.   

Is ending child hunger starting to seem easier than making caramel? With a clean heat-proof spoon you can give it a stir and begin dipping the puffs. I found holding the puffs with a pair of tongs to be the safest approach, even so my fingers went for an emergency swim in the ice bath a couple of times during this process. Having a chop stick or some other tool at hand is also helpful for getting the dipped puff turned upright and placed.   

An ill-conceived plan

Having made puffs, pastry cream and caramel more times than I can count, it was the assembly that was the real challenge. I’ve made a free-form croquembouche before, so this time I hatched a crazy plan to use a mold made from parchment covered poster board that I would remove after assembly. Real croquembouch molds exist and run upwards of $350, so I was keen on coming up with a home-made solution.   

There were so many flaws with my construction plan it’s difficult to know where to start. The biggest element leading to assembly failure was running out of cream puffs! To cover my giant mold, I would have needed twice the number of puffs, and I had upwards of 60, but that only got me about 1/3 of the way there. Then there were adhering issues. With the caramel on the top of each puff I wasn’t getting a solid bond on the sides of neighboring puffs. There was fear of pending doom at the thought of removing the mold, but once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to cover the thing, I decided to cut my losses and just pulled the puffs off and piled them on a serving platter in a rather free-form manner. Surprisingly they held together and looked pretty darn good. I added a few sugared cranberries and wrapped it with spun sugar strands and called it croquembouche!   

Croquembouch with Sugared Cranberries and Spun Sugar

It’s much easier to dip the puffs when the caramel is quite liquid, so reheat it as needed to keep it flowing. The sugar strands I made by just dipping a fork in the slightly cooled caramel. If the caramel is at the right stringy temperature, long threads are formed when the fork is pulled out. Grab the very thin threads and just pull and pull and gather them around the croquebouche. Be sure to only grab the very thin hair-like threads. If you see a thick glob falling from the fork, don’t touch it! HOT, HOT, HOT!   

I consider cooking to be a grand adventure and this was a fun one. I hope you’ll give a croquembouche a try and don’t worry if it doesn’t stack up perfectly because the cream puffs taste so good, no one will really care what it looks like.

After all that, don’t you feel like making a donation to Share Our Strength?   

Here are links to all the other desserts being served up today.

Gourmet

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  • Mini Milk Chocolate Cheesecakes from Little Bo Bakes
  • Walnut Snowball Cookies from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
  • Pecan & Caramel Chocolate Clusters from Cooking on the Side

Family

•  
  • Pom Pie Delight from Devour the World
  • Hot Cocoa Cupcakes from Hoosier Homemade
  • Brownies with Coconut Icecream from For the Joy of Food
  • Chocolate Crunch Snowball Cookies from Daydreamer Desserts
  • Double Chocolate Chip Icecream from The Food Junkie

Vegetarian

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  • Maple Cheesecake from Deliciously Organic
  • Pomegranate Poached Pears from Jeanette’s Healthy Living

Gluten-Free

•  
  • Strawberry Jelly Roll Cake from Tartlette
  • Cinnamon Pear Cornmeal Upsidedown Cake from Cook It Allergy Free
  • Gluten Free Girl
  • Crustless Apple Pie from The Blog

And here are the rest of the dishes created for Share Our Holiday Menu. Enjoy the feast!

Sides  

Gourmet 

•  
  • The Urban Baker (read the post) 
  • Heather Christo (read the post)
  • We Like to Cook, and Eat (read the post)
  • Plum Pie (read the post)

Family Friendly   

•  
  • What’s Cooking (read the post)
  • Dine and Dish (read the post)
  • The Evolving Cook (read the post)
  • Katrina Runs for Food

Vegetarian   

•  
  • My Kitchen Addiction (read the post)
  • Taste as You Go
  • Flamingo Musings (read the post)

Gluten Free   

•  
  • The Whole Gang (read the post)
  • Jenn Cuisine– A mostly gluten free cooking blog. (read the post)
  • Creative Cooking Gluten Free (read the post)

 Entrees   

Gourmet   

•  
  • What’s Gaby Cooking (read the post)
  • Food Blogga (read the post)

Family Friendly   

•  
  • Life in Recipes (read the post)
  • Bluebonnets & Brownies (read the post)
  • Foodie Tots (read the post)

Vegetarian   

•  
  • The Peche (read the post)

Gluten Free   

•  
  • The Sensitive Pantry (read the post)
  • Nourishing Meals (read the post)

 Soup   

Gourmet   

•  
  • edible cville (read the post)
  • The Runaway Spoon (read the post)
  • A Girl, A Market, A Meal (read the post)

Family Friendly   

•  
  • Ladles and Jellyspoons (read the post)
  • Two Dollar Dinners (read the post)
  • All About Alton Brown (read the post)
  • Cookie Central’s Great American Bake Sale (read the post)

Vegetarian   

•  
  • Good Life Eats (read the post)
  • Feed Our Families (read the post)

Gluten Free   

•  
  • Celiac Teen (read the post)
  • Celiacs in the House (read the post)
  • Gluten Free Life with Jen (read the post)
  • And Love it Too! (read the post)

 Salads    

Gourmet   

•  
  • The Bitten Word (read the post)
  • girlichef (read the post)

Family Friendly   

•  
  • Food For My Family (read the post)

Vegetarian   

•  
  • Glugle Gluten-Free (read the post)

Gluten Free   

•  
  • Add a Pinch (read the post)
  • Gluten Free Diva (read the post)

 Drinks    

Gourmet   

•  
  • Food Woolf (read the post)
  • The Gringo Chapin (read the post)
  • Neo-Homesteading (read the post)
  • Three Many Cooks (read the post)

Family Friendly   

•  
  • Fat Wuz Here (read the post)

Vegetarian   

•  
  • Lexies Kitchen (read the post)
  • Simply Sugar and Gluten Free (read the post)

Gluten Free   

•  
  • Gluten Free Easily (read the post)

Appetizers   

Gourmet   

•  
  • The Italian Dish (read the post)
  • Recipe Girl (read the post)
  • Neo-Homesteading (read the post)

Family Friendly   

•  
  • Family Fresh Cooking (read the post)
  • Giving Up on Perfect (read the post)

Vegetarian   

•  
  • Two Peas and Their Pod (read the post)
  • Smith Bites (read the post)

Gluten Free   

•  
  • La Fuji Mama (read the post)
  • Wenderly (read the post)   

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RUYkzJio24

I recall requesting a bunny birthday cake for a number of my childhood birthdays. I was quite taken with the fact that such a sculpted wonder could be created from simple round cake layers.

I loved that it didn’t look like the birthday cakes that other kids had, and I loved that it represented the season of my birthday. For everyone else Spring starts on March 21st, but for me it’s Spring when it’s my birthday, on April 1st.

This year, for the first time in 25 years, I celebrated my birthday with my family. I knew exactly what  kind of cake I wanted to make – a bunny cake. Though I associate this cake with my birthday, it would make a perfectly festive Easter dessert too. You can use any cake recipe you like, yes, even a boxed cake mix and a can of frosting will work. It’s all in the assembly and decoration.

I know the bunny cakes of my childhood did not involve splitting the layers of cake, so this first step is optional. My cake layers were very thick, so I decided to slice them in half.

Making the body of the bunny is as simple as cutting the cake rounds in half and layering them up with frosting.

If your cakes have a domed top, use these as the outside layers so the bunny has a rounded body. If you are working with only two layers of cake use three of the half-circles for the body and the fourth one will be used for the head. My bunny is extra fat because I had so much cake.

Place the layers with the cut side down on a serving tray. You now have the body of the bunny. The head is made from the remaining half-circle of cake. cut it in half again to make two pieces.

I found I needed to trim a little from each of the straight edges to make the head size work relative to the curve of the body. Some of the trimmings can be used to fill in the gap between the head and body and the rest can be snacked on for inspiration. As I think about it now, it would make more sense to trim the front curve of the body off so the head section could sit flush against the body, and I think that might be the way my mom did it. My bunny head wasn’t as round as I remember it being, and slicing off a piece of the body would allow for a rounder head. It looks like the next birthday to cross my path will be getting a bunny cake so I can test my theory.  Though I’m sure a quick Google search would provide ample bunny cake construction diagrams, sometimes it’s fun to just work it out through trial and error.

Once the head is in place, coat the entire bunny with frosting and then pat on shredded coconut for the realistic furry effect.

Construction paper ears, jelly bean eyes and nose, spaghetti whiskers, and of course a marshmallow tail, complete the bunny. Garnish with Easter grass and jelly beans or decorated Easter eggs. It’s festive and delicious!

I have such fond memories of my bunny cakes and there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation as to what kind of cake I would make for my birthday this year once I realized I would be able to celebrate with my family. Thanks mom, for making my childhood birthday cakes so special. Even if it’s not your birthday, Spring and Easter are good reasons to make yourself a bunny cake!

I’ve made dulce de leche once using fresh milk and sugar cooked on the stovetop and had lack-luster results in the form of a gritty texture. Wanting to conquer dulce de leche I decided to research some recipes and test various methods head to head. 

My options: 

Boil in the can method: Sweetened condensed milk cooked right in the can. This method comes with the warning that it’s possible for the can to explode, followed by, “ but it’s never happened to me.” 

Bake in the can method: Same concept as boil in the can, but the explosion danger is contained to the oven. 

Bake in the oven not in the can method: The convenience of the cook in the can method without the risk of an explosion. This sounds worthy of testing. 

Cook fresh milk and sugar on the stovetop method: Having had lousy results with this one, I was eager to try it again armed with better instructions. 

I followed David Lebovits’ instructions for baking sweetened condensed milk in a shallow pan in a water bath at 425 degrees F for an hour to an hour and a half. Simple. (Not wanting to crank up the oven just to bake a little pan of milk I baked a batch of muffins at the same time!) After an hour the milk had a nice caramel color, but wasn’t deeply golden, so I let it go for another 30 minutes. That would be a little too long. The center is clearly burned, but the edges were nicely salvageable and resulted in a lovely dulce de leche with a nice thick texture. Next time I won’t cook it as long, and I’ll place a silicone pot holder in the water bath to add some insulation to the center of the pan. 

Simultaneously I had a pan of milk and sugar simmering on the stove following Pim’s instructions. I made half of her recipe and decided to spice it up by adding a cinnamon stick, 8 allspice berries, and a 3” long dried New Mexico chile with the seeds removed. My first experiment with making dulce de leche suggested stirring occasionally; Pim mentions nothing about stirring once it’s set on a very low heat to cook. It seemed like keeping the milk moving would be a good thing, and I had the perfect underutilized tool for the job. 

I bought a StirChef years ago thinking it would be handy to have a pot sitr itself while I went about other tasks in the kitchen. It would be, but this little guy stirs so slowly that I have yet to find a good application for it. Dulce de leche could be it. The milk doesn’t put up much resistance and the slow pace is fine.  After about 3 hours it quit. Likely the batteries died, so I just pulled it out and let the milk sit over the lowest heat of my burner. After 3 ½ hours the milk had taken on a bit of color and reduced by about a third, but was still quite thin. The flavor with the spices was fantastic. While it was still so thin, I strained out the spices and returned it to the heat bumped up just a touch to try and move things along; it was getting late. Next thing I know it’s boiling and looking very curdled.  A blast with the stick blender smoothed it out and I returned it to the very lowest heat. After cooking for 4 hours bedtime was approaching, so my only hope is that it would thicken once chilled.  

After an overnight chill, it’s delicious but runny. I have bread ready to bake and decide to take advantage of the hot oven and bake this dulche de leche to see if it will thicken.  Using the silicone potholder trick, I manage not to burn it and it does thicken somewhat, but not enough to be filling for cookies, though rather perfect for drizzling over ice cream. 

Dulce del leche before and after baking.

I haven’t yet conquered dulce de leche, but I am a little further along on the learning curve. I was surprised that the sweetened condensed milk version had a stronger milk flavor and was less sweet than the batch made from fresh milk. The spices I added to the fresh milk version could account for this. It could be that the constant stirring prevented my stovetop batch from thickening the way Pim’s did, so the next time I have a spare quart of milk and six hours I’ll give this another try without stirring. Now, what to do with all this tasty dulce de leche…