Boston Cream Trifle

My sister has already blogged on Boston Cream. It was supposedly a disaster. I didn't try it so I don't know. This spurred something in me though. Like my sister I thought "What could be so hard about cake, cream, and chocolate?" and then I too was bested.

So it started out as a cake but ended up a trifle. Why? Because the cake somehow shattered coming out of the pan. Ok, I say shattered, which sounds like it was crispy and brittle, it was not, but it did somehow still manage to fracture into a million pieces. Trifle it is!

I used a different recipe than my sister. One that used less than a million pots, pans, and bowls. The cake was a white cake. It had a rather thick crunchy shell for some reason though I know I just managed to cook the center through. The pastry cream came out rather well I think. It was smooth and thick and, well, creamy. The recipe called for what sounded like some kind o terrible chocolate frosting so I opted for a makeshift ganache. I heated up some cream, melted chocolate into it until I thought it looked chocolatey enough, then added some powdered sugar. The powdered ugar may sound strange, but I kind of like the quasi waxy texture it lends. It reminds me of the peel offable frosting on a Hostess Cupcake. Anyway, the cake was not difficult (other than getting it out), the pastry cream was not difficult, and the chocolate was not difficult. Even still, it wasn't QUITE right. I don't know what to change, but this tasty dessert remains, for now, a mystery.

As a mini side project I baked up a small batch of the Cinnamon Chocolate Meringuey Cookies that I have made here before. Turns out, you don't even really need a recipe for these. I just wanted to get rid of the egg whites I had left over from the yolks that were used in the pastry cream. So I beat up the whites, added some sugar, dumped in some chopped chocolate, cinnamon, coconut, and chopped pecans, and threw those babies in the oven.

Cinnamon Chocolate Macaroons

Okay, so I'm trying to make up for lost blogging time. This is my second post of the day because I did manage (despite completely forgetting about daylight savings time!) to carve a spot out of the day in which to bake.

I was back into my Ultimate Cookie Book today and it has produced another winner. I wanted to do something simple and already had my mind on meringue when I nearly opened the book right up to Cinnamon Chocolate Macaroons. Splendid!

I separated out my two whites and set them in the Kitchenaid bowl to come to room temperature while I prepared the rest of my ingredients. I chopped a half cup of pecans, got a cup of coconut, grated 1/2 an ounce of chocolate and even ground a teaspoon of cinnamon from the stick with the new hand powered spice grinder I bought (think the peppercorn grinders but with smashed cinnamon sticks in there instead).



After about a half an hour I started whipping up the whites with the vanilla until soft peaks. I then added the cinnamon and 2/3 cup of sugar gradually and beat until I got to stiff peaks. It already looked like I wanted to eat it at this point. I then folded in my nuts, coconut and chocolate.





The mixture then got plopped on parchment paper by the teaspoonful and sent into a 375 degree oven. The recipe said to bake them for 20 minutes, but I found that they were dry on the outside and set at about 17 minutes. Actually they probably could've come out at 15 or 16 minutes, as most came out a little hollow and with less chewy inside than I'd hoped, but they were still quite delicious.



When they came out they cooled for a bit on the pan and then the cooling rack. They didn't hold their heat for long and then Favorite and I were stuffing them in our faces. Sweet, nutty, chewy and fantastic! They could stand a little more chocolate, but the coconut, pecans, cinnamon, and chocolate are in amounts that compliment each other and adding more chocolate, though delicious, might detract from the other components.

All in all I would say these cookies were a success. They are great at satisfying a sweet craving but are so light you don't have to feel guilty about eating a couple. This, of course, is in complete contrast to the Bocca di Nonna of the last post which were overly rich and greasy with very little in the way of satisfaction.





That's all for today!! Hopefully I will be back soon to detail another foray into the adventures of tasty treats. I can't imagine these macaroons will last long...

Help My Nougat!

Ok, so I have performed another experiment. I don't have any pics of it up yet because I am writing this post quickly and in desperation. Sadly, no one really follows my blog so I doubt I will get much wisdom, but I have to try something... even the internet won't give me the answer.

I tried to make divinity. I recognize the fact that I am not a very good candy maker. I'm more of a drop cookie kinda gal. I thought that maybe I should put in some practice though because candy can be expensive and making my own, being able to customize it, sounded intriguing.

So I found a recipe for divinity, that soft, fluffy, sweet, white nougat, in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It sounded relatively simple despite that there were 30 minutes in the recipe where I was supposed to be doing nothing, no stirring, no scraping, no measuring, nothing. I am not very good at doing nothing while I'm making something, I am very impatient. I tried my hand anyway. I put the sugar, water, and corn syrup in the pot and stirred just til it started to boil. I then turned the heat down until I achieved a consistent low boil. I boiled it untouched for probably about 25 minutes (though the recipe said 15-20 I wasn't relly concerned because I was being wussy about turning up the heat). Although I took the mixture off just as the termometer closed in on 260 (hard ball stage) I thought it looked pretty dark and had maybe overcooked despite the tellings of my equipment. I beat my egg whites in about 2 seconds with my hand mixed and brought them to what I'm pretty sure was pretty stiff peaks. Then I drizzled in the hot sugar syrup blending as I went. The candy turned out to taste pretty good. I had added vanilla and some chopped pecans to the mix. The problem I discovered was this: my divinity was not divine.

Honestly when I was making the divinity, I did not know it was a form of nougat. I figured this out when nougat was what I ended up with. Hard, dense, filling removing nougat. It wasn't fluffy at all. It didn't stay in nice little mounds on my baking sheet. Instead, it pretended to keep a shape only to ooze into a flattened blob a half an hour later. Why is my divinity so dense? What did I do wrong? How does one achieve the glorious fluffy texture I so desire? I have reviewed a number of divinity and nougat recipes now and they seem so similar that I cannot even really choose a technique out of the recipe that makes them different. Help, someone. Please, help my nougat!

Bad Blogger

I thought I was doing so well with all of my October posts, and then November came and once again I was lost to the blogosphere.

It turns out I am terrible at keeping up with stuff. Since my last post I have made chocolate spice cookies, pumpkin bread pudding, pecan meringue with coffee buttercream. I did not get a picture of ONE of them. I realize the list is really not all that impressive considering I haven't posted for a month and a half. I will try to do better.

Even though I have no pictures I am going to expound on the desserts I made for my own posterity. The chocolate spice cookies were very fast and easy to make. No special equipment required, no eggs, very little fuss. They were made with applesauce and were moist and spicy-delicious. The recipe was from a new book I got called Perfect Light Desserts. The meringue was from this book too. I made the meringue to serve to my sister and her fiance when we had them over for dinner. Once constructed it consisted of a very thick and creamy Swiss style coffee flavored buttercream sandwiched between two 10 inch diameter thin crunchy pecan meringue layers. It was rich and sweet enough to make a satisfying dessert without being heavy and overwhelming. I would make both the cookies and meringue again although the meringue is not nearly as quick and simple as the cookies. Despite having few ingredients, the meringue dessert took a significant amount of time to assemble between creating and baking the two 10 inch meringue layers, letting them cool, and whipping up the buttercream. The buttercream took so long to come together, even with my trusty Kitchenaid, that I was about a minute away from giving it up for lost when it finally broke and I knew it was almost ready. I'm sure it is exaggerated in my head, but it seemed like a half an hour went by easily. This time being added to the time it took to bring the sugar syrup up to temperature and then entirely down to room temp before beating. Whew! I was lucky I finished it before they arrived!

The pumpkin bread pudding was brought to Thanksgiving. With only about a spoonful left at the end of the night I figure it fared pretty well considering the sheer volume of desserts that were there. There are a few things I would change in the future however. I didn't have day old bread for one thing, and I feel like the custard was not properly soaked in. I also could have had a slightly higher custard to bread ratio. The last qualm I had was it needed more pumpkin spices!!! I am a pumpkin fanatic and the best part of pumpkin desserts is getting to spice them.

Anyhow, I will post the recipes soon. Next up though I am using my sweet amigurumi skills to make a floppy stuffed cat. The pattern, although crocheted, is reminiscent of a sock monkey. The final product will surely be fun.