Daring Bakers Pick Me Up

Time for another Daring Bakers' challenge. This month's challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They came up with an amalgamation of recipes for a tiramisu. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post (newspaper), Cordon Bleu at Home (cookbook) and Baking Obsession (blog).

Tiramisu is typically custardy mascarpone cream layered with ladyfingers/savoiardi biscuits soaked in espresso. A little bit of booze like marsala or rum is usually present too. We were required to make the mascarpone cheese and ladyfingers from scratch. We were also required to make the zabaglione and pastry cream for the custardy cream layers.

I've never thought about making mascarpone from scratch since I can buy an 8 ounce tub for about $3 around here. The recipe looked fairly straightforward. Who knew it was just heated heavy cream and lemon juice? I used a really nice 36% butterfat organic cream. Unfortunately, even though I heated the cream for 30 minutes in a stainless steel bowl in a skillet of simmering water, my cream never got any hotter than 170F. The instructions said it would get to 190F in about 15 minutes. So I forged ahead anyway and added the lemon juice and waited for the curds to form. That never happened either. So after another 10 minutes I just poured my "cheese" into my cheesecloth lined strainer. After the overnight refrigeration I expected that some whey would have drained out. Nope, my "cheese" looked no different than it had when I first pour it into the cheesecloth and it looked nothing like creamy mascarpone.

Then I tried to remove my mascarpone from the cheesecloth. It was stuck on pretty tightly. So tight that when I forcefully scraped it off the cloth, all I got was a block of "cheese" covered in lint. I thought cheesecloth was supposed to be lint free? Maybe I got the wrong kind of cheesecloth? (I used a 100% unbleached cotton cheesecloth.) So I scraped off the linty side of the mascarpone and saved the unlinty part to use in my tiramisu. Thank goodness we only needed 1/3 cup for the tiramisu.

I love ladyfingers. When I was a little girl, sometimes my dad would take me with him while he went to Ahren's Bakery on Van Ness Avenue to pick up some pastries for the restaurant. The bakery workers were always so nice to me. While I waited for them to fill my dad's very large order, they always handed me a giant cookie from the bakery case. I felt so special. But the best part of our trips to Ahren's was the bag of soft ladyfingers that we would bring home. Sets of five ladyfingers were lined up next to each other waiting to be pulled apart. I can still recall that soft, airy interior with that wonderful crispy, sugary crust. I wonder if Ahren's was still around today and I ate one of their ladyfingers would I still love it as much as I did as a child? I'd love to say yes, but the truth is probably not. The most flavorful ingredient is nostalgia.




I loved this ladyfinger recipe. They remind me of those from my childhood. I couldn't help but sneak a few bites everyday. Well, maybe I had more than a few bites. By the time I was ready to assemble my tiramisu three days later, I only had enough ladyfingers for two layers instead of three. I plan to make these ladyfingers again and again.

In the past I've only made tiramisu recipes that had a zabaglione with mascarpone. But this recipe had the unusual addition of a pastry cream. It was also a bit strange that it only called for a teeny tiny amount of mascarpone cheese. Typically mascarpone makes up a large portion of the cream layers. The zabaglione was easy to make. The method for the pastry cream was a bit different than I am used to since the cold milk was combined with the egg then cooked. I am used to warming the milk, adding it to the eggs and then cooking it until thick. I think the cold milk method took longer to thicken than the warm milk method, but the resulting pastry cream was just fine.



We were allowed to assemble our tiramisu any way we liked. I decided to use an 8-inch round springform. If I knew ahead of time that I was going to use a round cake pan for assembly, I would have piped my ladyfinger batter into 8 -inch disks instead of individual fingers. It would've made for a nicer presentation.

Overall the tiramisu was delicious. But what's not to like about whipped cream, custard and coffee soaked ladyfingers? Even though I found the whole recipe to be a bit overly complicated and fussy for a tiramisu and I would probably never make this exact version of tiramisu ever again, I'm so happy that I have gotten such a great ladyfinger recipe out of this DB challenge. Okay, I'm off to have another slice now.



The fine print:
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.

Coconut Goodness

During a recent trip to New York City my brother Rich wanted to stop at Magnolia Bakery. He had tried Magnolia's coconut cake once before and absolutely loved it. Since we were close enough to the Rockefeller Center location of Magnolia we walked over to have a slice. As we approached the bakery we saw the huge line of about 40 people wrapped around the corner storefront. I've never seen such a long line for any bakery except perhaps Tartine Bakery here in San Francisco. We decided that no cake was worth that wait especially since it was about 40 degrees F that night. (We're wimpy Californians.)

I told Rich that I would make him a coconut cake when we got back from NYC. I delivered on my promise by making him some coconut cupcakes. It has all the components of a layered coconut cake but in cupcake form.

The cupcake batter has coconut milk, shredded coconut and coconut rum. The filling is a coconut pastry cream. The cream cheese frosting has some of the coconut pastry cream mixed in and then the whole thing is topped off with some toasted coconut.

I don't know how much more coconut goodness I could've packed into this cupcake, but I did my best to really max out the coconut factor and I think I succeeded. So if you're looking for a cupcake that really screams coconut from head to toe, this one is for you.

Sesame Coins

Every few years the Presidents' Day weekend coincides with Valentine's Day or with the Chinese New Year (aka the lunar new year). There is a confluence of the three this year which means my three day weekend will not be exclusively for rest and relaxation, but for observing Chinese New Year traditions.

The house must be cleaned and all laundry must be done before our Chinese New Year's Eve's dinner on Saturday. I have to wash away any bad luck that might have accumulated over the past year. The dinner signifies the beginning of the lunar new year so I don't want to do any sweeping after the meal or on New Year's Day. Otherwise I will sweep away the good luck of the new year.

There must be a new sack (or at least a significant quantity) of rice in the house so that we won’t go hungry in the new year. A big bowl of candy or sweets would be nice too so that the new year will be a sweet one. The traditional sweets are candied lotus root, melon, coconut, water chestnuts, and lotus seeds displayed in a lacquered candy box, but any candy will do. This year I'm setting out a bowl of almond torrone imported from Italy.

I need at least one pomelo, a large pear shaped yellow grapefruit, which symbolizes prosperity. Another necessity is tangerines with the stems and leaves still attached. The Chinese word for tangerine sounds like "gold" and will invite luck and wealth in the new year. The stems and leaves signify growth and longevity. Navel oranges are welcomed too since their round shape signifies wholeness and the golden color represents wealth. I'm not too strict about the citrus tradition. As long as I have one pomelo surrounded by any leafy citrus, I will be fine. This year I found some gorgeous blood oranges with stems and leaves at the farmers' market, but in the past I have used meyer lemons with leaves and stems from my backyard tree since they are also golden and round-ish. Blood oranges are extra nice since they are red on the inside. In my opinion, nothing is better than something that is red and gold for Chinese New Year.



Which leads me to the best tradition - red envelopes. The red envelopes are decorated with symbols and images in gold. The color red symbolizes good luck and vitality. The envelopes are filled with crisp bills since the use of brand new money symbolizes a new beginning. The red envelopes are usually given by the married to the unmarried. Although some families, like mine, take a generational approach to red envelope giving during Chinese New Year. Even though I am married, my parents, and other relatives who are a generation older than I am, still give me red envelopes for Chinese New Year.

So what do these sesame coins have to do with Chinese New Year? Tahini isn't a particularly Chinese ingredient, but it's really just sesame seed butter and, well, sesame seeds are used a lot in Chinese cooking. And these cookies are sweet and look like golden coins (wealth and prosperity) and they are round (wholeness and longevity). So make some and have a prosperous new year!