Week 50 | February 15, 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day. What does that even mean? The best excuse to play with chocolate.
I love custards and puddings – tapioca or rice pudding, eclairs with custard filling, I recently mentioned to a friend that pot de cremes might be one of my favorite sweets. I grew up eating a lighter variation of a steamed gingery custard my mom would make during the cold season. However I tend to like custards that are lightly flavored, fragrant or fruity.
Week 46 | January 10, 2011
Yikes! I spy one ripe banana, but ripe bananas make for the best caramelized fruit. It’s still the perfect weather for comforting warm custard and caramel. Unfortunately that means it’s freezing outside.
I’m envisioning some sugary nuggets of banana nestled in a sweet tart dough and covered with a caramel flan. Sounds good no?
Week 37 | 11.10.2010
I have a great giant Cinderella pumpkin taking over one of my few wooden stools, remnants of Halloween festivities. I don’t have the heart to cut into it just yet, but it did get me in a mindframe of baked pumpkin possibilities – teacake, muffin, pie, cheesecake…
Is sweetened pumpkin only an American tradition? Only last week a french baker said to me, “I don’t like my vegetables sweetened!” when I asked why he never ate the delightful mini pumpkin pies he turned out for the holidays. Well I have a certain fondness for pumpkin, spice, and brown sugar crusts!
Week 32 | 9.27.2010
Fresh fruit, I know how delicious it can be but this weekend I was reminded by just how sweet and perfectly satisfying a ripe fig or juicy peach is. Sad, no more figs or peaches, but there are little baskets of lipstick red strawberries in the market that I simply can’t ignore.
Looking forward to making a little tart of vanilla cream and these berries later in the week.
Week 26 | 8.9.2010
A slight detour in my baking schedule and a very ripe mango led me to a pleasant discovery the other day. Mango & lime curd!
Fruit curds are pretty straightforward – eggs, fruit puree, some acid for flavor and to cut the sweetness, and finished with butter for creaminess. Simple but oh man, so tasty. Not to subject you too soon to yet another round of macarons (my discovery batch of curd ultimately wound up here), it’s back to tarts. Stay tuned.
Week 18 | 6.14.2010
I spent the past week waging war on the blistering heat with ice cream experiments. That leaves me LOTS OF EGG WHITES. Not quite ready to launch into another round of macarons, but a light meringue speckled with some chocolate cake crumbles and toasty hazelnuts might be just the thing. It seems condemnable to rely only on nuts and chocolate when the markets are overflowing with ripe fruit. I’ll find a way to sneak some cherries into the mix.
Tartlette pics from last week soon to come!
Week 7 | 3.29.2010
Let’s talk eclairs. I love eclairs. I don’t remember how I first came across them – something along the lines of my mom bringing home a fancy treat for us kids to try…
Not all eclairs are made equal. The variations appear in endless combinations of cream-filled ugh, and custard-filled, chocolate or vanilla, glazed with fondant or glazed with ganache, skinny and fat forms… A few years ago I scouted out a perfect eclair, a pretty stellar creation from the iconic Tartine Bakery of the SF Mission district. Puffy, eggy choux dough, runny vanilla custard, thick and dense dark ganache, and a sprinkling of cocoa for some glamor. Read the rest of this entry »
Week 5 | 3.18.2010
Has it already been a month? Focusing on making one item each week is wonderful. I look forward to Thursday mornings when I sample a freshly baked up treat of the week that you guys will enjoy later that day.
Silky custard pie. That sounds like a tasty mouthful. I mentioned a few weeks ago that tarts are one of my favorite desserts. I used to be a cake person – chocolate ganache cakes and vanilla sponge with cream and fresh fruits for my birthdays. But my sister’s birthday request was always the same fresh fruit and custard tart. She was onto something way before I was. So let’s turn this tangy traditional Southern pie into a tart. Read the rest of this entry »
Bakery Bites 