Daring Bakers' February challenge: quick bread

This is my second Daring Bakers' challenge, my first one was scones. This group is a great opportunity, like TWD, to bake once a month something new and different or something normal but that you enjoy. Besides you can always give the recipes a twist and you have different options to choose from.

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lis stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

I have to confess though, even if I knew I had to do this challenge a month ago I didn't really do it until Sunday morning. The good thing about a quick bread is that is really a quick thing to bake, you just have to pour in the ingredients and wait until everything is baked. Easy and delicious. I chose to do the basic recipe because I didn't want to go and buy the ingredients at the store and, instead of the suggested glaze, I added chocolate on top, because chocolate makes everything much better. ALWAYS.

The recipe is from Sara Schewe and you can see it here.

Tarte Tatin

I had never done or tried a Tarte Tatin before and thus, I had to do a little research before actually jumping right into the recipe. After spending quite a lot of time looking through cookbooks and blogs the final decision came down to two recipes: it was either Jamie Oliver’s recipe in Jamie Does... or Dorie Greenspan's book. I love both cooks so it was difficult to choose.

My final decision was going for Dorie’s recipe (I know I use her books way too much) but mainly because I had all the ingredients at home and tons of blogs of TWD to look at before making the recipe. Certainly, as one of the bloggers said, you have to repeat out loud “with confidence!” while turning the dough around since it’s a very tricky part.

I don’t know if it was because all the yelling but mine turned out beautifully. I had a big disappointment though because the top of the cake didn’t have the caramel it’s supposed to have (like it happened to a lot of TWDs). I knew from the start I was doing something wrong, but I just didn’t know how to solve it!

Anyway, the recipe was absolutely amazing coming right out from the oven and, as opposite to what Dorie said; I think it was quite good as well the next morning from the fridge. I’ll have to try Jamie’s at some stage because it looks amazingly good as well!

Also I’m not a huge fan of vanilla ice cream so I tend to substitute it, like I did this time, with whipped cream. It worked wonderfully for the apple tatin.

Definitely a must try for all the apple lovers, you can see the recipe here.

TWD/BWJ: chocolate tartlet

I don't have individual tartlet molds... I'm not that cool and I can't spend 20€ right now for something I won't use that much. I will buy them at some stage though, just not yet.

That's why instead of the six very very cute tartlets everybody will be showing in their blogs I only have a big one. But a great one. Also as I didn't have biscottis at home I just used digestive cookies but it worked perfectly fine.

While I was cooking this super easy and tasty tartlet I knew it would be way too chocolatey (yes, even for me) that's why, when it was baked I added raspberries in the top.

BEST.CHOICE.EVER. the chocolate combined perfectly with the bitterness of the raspberries and the result was fantastic. I'm going to do this recipes again, that's for sure!.

I strongly recommend you to buy the book Baking with Julia (pages 382-383) and join us in Tuesdays With Dorie but you can also see the recipe in the blogs of this week's hosts: spike bakes, good eats blog, cookbook habit and a whisk and a spoon.

Rice with crab

Today was again my turn to make Sunday lunch at home (as I had explained before we have turns between my dad and my brother every three Sundays and my mom cooks every Saturday).

My dad has a specialty when cooking: he does the best paellas or, actually, any plate that contains rice... that's his thing. So when I decided that for Sunday lunch I would make rice, I realized I had made a big mistake: I was never going to do it better than him.

Still I went for it, I was determined to use for the first time Ferran Adrian's book and I wanted to cook the soggy rice with crab, so I did. The book is great, simple recipes well explained; he doesn't use nitrogen or something that you wouldn't find in a million years. The concept is great, 31 menus that the employees in elBulli usually had in the restaurant before serving the cool food to the rich people.

The recipe is supposed to be done pretty fast but you need to have some stuff ready that I didn't have so it took me a bit longer to do everything. The first problem came when I opened the bag with the crabs my mother had bought and I found out... they were alive! They just didn't stop moving... I had never screamed so much while cooking in my entire life; I thought they were going to eat me or something. Putting them in the saucepan was horrible, I had to put a lid so that they wouldn't leave and I felt like a murderer. I understand vegetarians now...  

I put the rice way too early and it ended up soacking all the stock so next time I'll just start cooking 20 minutes before lunch time. Besides, my saucepan wasn't that big which meant I didn't have the space to use all the stock so the rice wasn't really soggy.

Anyway, the end result was still fantastic, probably not in the same level as my dad's paellas but almost there.

I'll keep practicing!

Buttery bread rolls

Xavier Barriga is the equivalent for Ferran Adria in Spain but in the bread making industry. He has baked bread for very important events and he has four very famous bakeries around Barcelona (to which, disappointingly, I’ve never gone to). He recently published a book called Pan (bread) and it obviously went straight to my never ending wish list of cookbooks on Amazon. The list isn’t public and I had never mentioned it to anybody so I was quite surprised when two family members got me the same book for Christmas. I guess they know me really well….Of course I immediately changed one of them for another Spanish lovely book from Ferran Adria that had recently been published as well (there is also an English version).

Xavier Barriga’s book is good but you can tell he doesn’t do much shopping for his own house. In practically all the recipes of the book he calls for a certain kind of flour (harina de panadería or bread flour) that you just can’t find in Spain. So I went crazy trying to understand what he meant. I went to quite a lot of shops and nobody had a clue what he was talking about, so I decided to go like in the White Loaves recipe from Dorie Greenspan and just use a similar type of flour.

I know when I buy an American book that I will have problems finding some ingredients, it’s completely normal. I just don’t understand how a Spanish baker doesn’t know the types of flour you can find in a normal store; he should at least mention possible substitutes.

Being kind of mad at him it took me a while to go and try one of the recipes but I finally went ahead and decided to bake “Panecillos de mantequilla tostada” (something like buttery bread rolls). Absolutely amazing right out of the oven, pretty good the next morning and eatable the second day (after toasting the bread).

You can find the Spanish recipe here and, above, the translated version for about 10 bread rolls:

Ingredients:

• 500 gr of bread flour
• 10 gr of salt
• 28 gr of water
• 15 gr of fresh yeast
• 30 gr of butter
• 15 gr of sugar
• 10 gr of powdered milk

Preparation:

1. Melt the butter until it has a golden color. Let cool.
2. Mix the dry ingredients first and add the butter, the water and finally the yeast. Divide in pieces of 80 grams and form balls.  Let them rise for about 35 minutes.
3. Make the bread rolls closing the pieces to the interior as if you folded a scarf and let the rise until they double the size.
4. Preheat the oven to 250ºC and put a bowl filled with water to create vapor. Introduce in the oven the pieces and bake at 200ºC for 16-18 minutes.

Nutella-Swirl Pound Cake

In Spain people usually eat Nocilla instead of Nutella, it's similar but a thousand times worse and I just don't like it, I can eat it but it's something I don't enjoy. It wasn't until I went to Michigan that I found out I love Nutella. But wait, I don't just love it, I have an obsession with Nutella. Seriously, it's sick. I can eat spoonfuls of it and never get tired. I'm the only one that eats it at home and I can finish it in two days... You can imagine it's pretty dangerous for my well-being.

That's why I talked to my mother a few years ago and asked her to, for my own health, buy Nutella only once a year. So what I do is that I wait for my exams or a very depressing moment of  my year and go ahead and buy it. This year, strangely enough, I had forgotten all about it during my January exams so I hadn't used yet my only-once-a-year jar.

Then, yesterday, I found out there is a World Nutella Day, and that I had miss it. Bummer!

Oh well... to tell you the truth I didn't actually care. As soon as I saw this recipe in Food and wine I knew I had to do it and use my one chance. I literally run to the store and got it (as well as tons of other stuff... once I go I just can't stop myself).

This recipe calls for a full jar of Nutella and even I thought that was too much (specially with all the butter the cake already had), so I only used half of it. Big mistake. I couldn't really taste the Nutella. In the end everybody loved it, everybody but me. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great cake, I just had very high expectations, for me it was way too sweet and, again because I didn't put the amount necessary, the cake didn't have the swirl either.

Now, down to the real problem, I'm kind of confused because I bought the Nutella but I'm really only going to eat half of the jar since I gave the cake to some friends.... I still have to figure out if I'm or not allowed to buy another one! Tough decision....

Chocolates!

I’m very lucky: I have wonderful friends and family that, besides thinking I’m a bit crazy for this whole baking addiction of mine, still love me. And sometimes they even buy me stuff for me to play with. Like my grandpas who, a few months ago, bought me lovely heart shaped silicon molds that I had wanted to use since.

Now, don't get me wrong, I said it in my last post and I repeat it: I’m not a Valentine’s Day kind of person. Still I couldn’t resist making this simply yet beautiful chocolates hearts for my friends to share with.

I’m not a creative person either, if you want to see creativtiy you can go to my brother’s blog, he’s a painter, he’s creative. On the other hand, I tend to copy someone’s recipe and pray for it to work, that’s mostly all I do. So I’m not used to measure the ingredients when I make something on my own (because basically it never happens).

However, it kind of did happened this time, and I did not measure anything (great, I know). I did three types of very easy and quick chocolates (one wasn’t my idea, the rest I'll try to explain them as best as I can):

1. Filled chocolates (the one I copied from here): I melted the dark chocolate (150 grams) with a bit of butter (75 grams). In another bowl I mixed 45 grams of grinded almonds, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 egg yolk and 1 tablespoon of brandy. I put a first layer of chocolate, then another of the almond mixture and then I topped it all with chocolate. The result: beautiful and delicious!
2. White and dark chocolates: this I have no idea how much chocolate I used. First I melted the white chocolate alone in the microwave. I covered only half of each little heart and I made sure that there was a thin layer of white chocolate on the walls. I let it rest in the fridge for about five minutes. Then I melted the dark chocolate and poured it in the molds. Yummy and the most beautiful ones from my point of view.
3. Chocolates with almonds: I melted the dark chocolate (about 250 grams) with a bit of butter (about a tablespoon or two). Then I mixed it with about 150 ml of condensed milk and I added grinded almonds (probably about 20-30 grams). These were fantastic but they didn’t come out so beautifully as the other two.

Berry soup

I've never been a Valentine's person. I don't like to go and spend twice the money I would usually spend in a restaurant just because of the special menu, I'm not the one that goes and buys a love card that says "be my valentine"... Sorry, I'm just not that kind of person.

Baking on the other hand... I'm always up for that, even in Valentine's Day. Although I would never make a huge celebration I do think it's great you can say I love you by baking, cooking or making yourself (not buying!) a little something for people who are special to you.

This dessert isn't actually thought for that special date but it's red so I'm guessing it can work. It’s quite light compared to other desserts but still sweet enough to leave you fully pleased.

I found the recipe in a Spanish tapas’ book. To be sincere I don’t really get why this would be a tapa but I don’t care, I love it! Besides, it’s very easy to make, there are very few ingredients and it can be done in advance which is absolutely perfect. I love the combination between the bitter of the berries and the sweetness of the whipped cream. It was written in the recipe that it should be topped with a bit of lemon but I put chocolate instead (as I do as often as I can). Here’s the translation of the recipe:


Ingredients:
-For the soup
1 kg of mixed berries (frozen or fresh)
300 gr of sugar
300 ml of water
-For the lemon foam
300 gr of whipped cream
200 ml of lemon juice
100 gr of sugar
Grated lemon zest (I used chocolate instead)


Preparation:
For the soup
Boil the berries with the water and the sugar. Strain them and let them cool, add water if necessary.
For the lemon foam
Mix all the ingredients, mix them and introduce them into a pastry bag. 

Put the soup into a nice glass and put the lemon foam on top. Decorate with the lemon zest, chocolate or some berries on top.

Thumbprints for us big guys

There’s an erasmus girl in my class from Ireland. I actually spent two years living there and, besides people, there is one thing I miss a lot from there: Cadbury’s chocolate. I told her and she brought me a huge tablet… So good!! It was that good that it’s already gone…I wanted to thank her with something simple, quick and yet yummy and...

OK. I’ll admit it. I do have a problem. I can’t stop baking Dorie Greenspan’s recipes. So far all of them turned out great and I’m really excited to be baking along with TWD for this new challenge. However, in the way, and since we’re only doing a recipe every two weeks, I’m also baking other recipes from her other amazing, fabulous, perfect book: “Baking: from my home to yours”.

It was in this book that I found these beauties. The only two things I did differently was that I didn’t add the almond extract (I hadn’t had much luck with it before) and that I used strawberry jam for some of them as I only had enough raspberry marmalade for a few cookies. 

They were just so good... I had to stop myself because, although the cookies were for her, I have to admit that I ate quite a few too.

You can check the recipe in the blog "Uglydudefood "

TWD/BWJ first recipe: white loaves

Living in Spain is great, that’s for sure. Baking in Spain… not so much. Finding the ingredients here is way more complicated (if I do find them) and a lot of times I just have to figure out what substitutes I can use. This is exactly what has happened to me while doing the white loaves. For starters it took me some time to realize what the active dry yeast was in here, but luckily I had found it way before this recipe and at least that wasn’t a problem. The real issue was finding bread flour. I know, I know it says in the recipe that you can use all-purpose flour but I knew it wouldn’t be the same and so I started going to every single shop around my town to see if they had something similar, and I found nothing.  So I did some research and I found that the main difference between plain flour and bread flour was that the second one had more proteins (about 12-13%) and so what I did was to look for flour that had that amount of proteins and, luckily, I found one.

I don’t own a food processor so I had to do everything from scratch. I didn’t mind though, I love kneading the dough, it relaxes me. And the smell that surrounds the whole house when you’re baking the bread it’s just very comforting for a winter afternoon. Like in most baking recipes to make this one you need to be patient and let the dough raise. I put it next to the radiator so it rose pretty quickly but still you’ve got to wait at least 45 minutes each time. So in total the process may take you about three hours or more until the bread is baked (if you knead the dough by hand like I did) but it’s totally worth it and it’s not like you have to be around while the bread it’s rising!

I’m actually very proud of the result. A friend of mine suggested that a bit more humidity for the bread could have been good and I think she might be right so next time (I’m sure there will be a next time!) I will spry a little water in the oven and see the final result. In the end it was delicious and my family ate it in less than one day!

Some bloggers form TWD suggested making a cinnamon swirl for the bread, I’m sure the result would be fantastic!

In case you want the recipe you can find it in Someone's in the kitchen or in Slush or in the great book Baking with Julia. Enjoy!

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscottis

When I want to make a particular recipe and I don't want to spend the whole day looking for the perfect recipe online or throught my cookbooks I instantly go to Joy of Baking. I don't recall ending up with a bad recipe from that site. Ever.

And that's exactly where I went to find a recipe to make the biscottis. It was thorough a TWDs blogger that I remembered I had never done Biscottis. I have to say that I haven't tried them that many times either and that they're definitely not my favorite type of sweet but, I had to try.

I was surprised by the way Stephanie Jaworski (the fabulous author of the webpage) showed in the video how biscottis are supposed to be made. It isn't hard at all but you do have to follow the instructions step by step with the exact minutes in the oven and it does take a little time.

However, I think that, even with the time you have to spend making them they're totally worth it and perfect to take to college for a little snack in between hours! 

You can find the Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti recipe in Joy of Baking together with many other great recipes.

Perfect Party Cake?

Having friends with amazing cameras that take even more amazing pictures is great. Having to wait for them to send them to you... not so much!

Last Friday I made Dorie Greenspans' Perfect Party Cake for Puerto's birthday party (I made her cupcakes as well for her actual birthday that I posted here). I had spotted the recipe the frist day I got the book and I had been waiting for the perfect moment to make the cake. And this was it.

The cake didn't really look like I wanted it to, but because of the buttercream. My egg whites didn't pop up so the final buttercream wasn't truly a buttercream but more like a very buttery liquid thing.... Yeah, disappointing.

Still the cake was truly good, I don't know if it was the actual perfect party cake but at least it's in my top ten. My friend said that it was even better the following day which is exactly the opposite that Dorie sais in her book. I didn't try it then so I can't give you my word but my friend has tried a lot of my cakes and if she sais it's better the next morning, I belive her!

You can find the recipe from the TWD host Carol Peterman