2007 and the Daring Bakers

By 2007 I'd gotten my feet wet by participating in a number of events and blog parties. I'd figured out how to use natural lighting to get better photos and I began to develop my photography and writing styles. I didn't bother with analytics, but I was getting more comments so I knew that there were readers who were looking at my posts...always exciting by the way...and I suspected from comments from friends and family members that there were even more 'lurkers' who never commented. I love the lurkers, too.

In late 2006 or early 2007 I noticed that some of the blog I visited on a regular basis were buzzing about making Hot Buttered Pretzels on the same day at the same time, with emails whizzing around as they group baked. The next month the same women (it was all women at first), plus a few more, baked Chocolate Biscotti, also as a group bake. In January it was Croissants! I was interested and asked one of the the bloggers about it. She told me who to contact, so I asked to join the group. There was one more bake, of a decadent flourless chocolate cake, before I joined. By then the group had grown to something like 14 bakers. My first month we baked Red Velvet Cake. I was amazed that you could put a whole bottle of red food coloring in one cake! The group was the Daring Bakers. It grew like a wildfire and eventually had at least a thousand people in the blog roll, although I'm not sure that all of them baked any one month. It also grew so that there were Daring Cooks, rules, organized ways to take turns selecting the recipe or the month, etc. The guiding light for all of this organization was Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. At first it was really exciting...all those blogs and variations of the recipe. Eventually it really became too large so that there was no way to visit even a fraction of the blogs participating, so you tended to go to those you already knew about, which was sad for the newbies.

One of the best things about the Daring Bakers, beyond Lis's hilarious posts, was that it really, really expanded my horizons and forced me to grow as a baker. As I have watched the Great British Baking show it always amazes me to see recipes that we baked as Daring Bakers which are new to the bakers in the tent. Nothing was too difficult for us to try including Gateau St. Honore' which is one of the bakes that are given to students finishing culinary baking programs because you have to create puff pastry, choux pastry, pastry cream as part of Chibost cream, caramelized sugar work and whipped cream. You have to use a pastry bag, fill cream puffs with pastry cream and then dip filled cream puffs in caramel (while making sure to attach them to the base while the caramel is still hot enough for them to stick to the base), know how to make puff pastry stay flat but still baked, and how much or little to whip cream for decoration. As I go through the years I'll point out some of the Daring Bakers recipes so that you can see what an education it was in the pastry arts to participate. One of my favorites was made in the summer, Strawberry Mirror Cake. When those bakers in Britain get overheated in their tent, it makes me think of making this gelatin based dessert in summer heat, too. Still, it was very delicious and gorgeous!

Another new experience for me in 2007 was participating in memes. One happened right before the Gateau St. Honore' post. Peabody, who blogged at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody (now Sweet ReciPEAs)was interviewed on her blog and then she had to interview other bloggers, and I was one. She gave me five questions to answer. Here is what I wrote about the reason I joined the Daring Bakers: I was inspired by the croissant three-day marathon. Not only was the challenge daunting and exciting, but it was clear that a lot of fun happened among the bakers, too. Each one of the participants except one had blogs that I regularly visited, too, which made it even more fun to read about. Guess I wanted to have some fun with the girls and see if I could meet the challenges. Not only has it been fun and forced me to try things outside of my comfort zone, but I’ve started to bake more and have ‘met’ a wonderful group of very supportive, generous people.

Another thing I did in 2007, which I did variations of later, was to post every day for a period of time on a theme. In February I posted for 14 days...until Valentine's Day and each day's post was based on that day's number. Some of my favorite recipes are here, including Maida Heatter's 86 Proof Chocolate Cake on day 9 with 9 kinds of chocolate displayed, and Lemon Curd on day 11, with a photo of eleven tea pots...I often serve lemon curd when I serve scones for tea time.

My garden has always been a big part of my life and the advantage of blogging is that I was now able to share not only recipes made with garden fresh ingredients, but I could share my photography of the garden and the produce from it. In August not only did I have a recipe called 'Walk Through The Garden Pie", but the same post showed other ways I prepared fresh tomatoes from the garden, with photos. Photos in March showed the early garden and later in the year showed the mature plants and produce.

The blog sparked my creativity in a number of ways. I used my Illustrator skills to create elements of October's Bostini Mini-Cakes. I used my graphic arts skills to make a nutrition graphic for chard in early December. Perhaps the most lasting was my creation of the Land of St. Honore', where baking is a birthright. Posts about that imaginary Land include a short story that I made up and many of the posts were also Daring Bakers posts...as a matter of fact I started the short story idea because there were by then so many Daring Bakers posts all over the blogosphere and I wanted mine to be a bit different. HERE is the first one. Note that is is only seven months since I joined the Daring Bakers...the growth really was explosive.

Sometimes my posts were sort of educational like the one on making Quince Jelly. It is still a popular post and it uses photos and text to walk you through making quince jelly and shows the lovely shining results. Too bad it can't capture the almost floral fragrance. I also did a post at Easter on how to color hard cooked eggs the old fashioned way with food coloring, vinegar and boiling water. That post still gets hits around Easter time all these years later.

On occasion the blog becomes a travel journal, usually food-centric. A good example is a trip Sweetie and I took to Virginia to visit family and install a pedestal sink for my Mom.  These Lemon Bars are outstanding.

If you find these glimpses of the 2007 posts interesting, do check out that year. In web version you will see a list of years and if you change the arrow next to the year to point down, you can go through the months and discover your own treasures.

St. Honore' Gateau

Each month, as the time approaches for the Daring Bakers to find out what the challenge will be for the next month, the agony of anticipation is tremendous. Will the recipe be a good one, will the skills needed be extraordinary, will I hate one of the flavors or components, will the aggregate butterfat finally cause a heart attack?

For the month of May the answers are yes, maybe, no, and maybe. In honor of the patron saint of bakers, whose feast day fell earlier in the month of May, the Daring Bakers are making Gateau St. Honore', a confection of puff pastry, cream puffs, chibost pastry cream, caramel and whipped cream.

The recipe provide by Helene and Anita was comprehensive and well written.

The fact that it was four pages long was cause for a little apprehension. It can also be found at the bottom of this post.

I learned new skills as I worked with the puff pastry and, for the first time, made cream puff paste. The first cream puffs I made were too tiny, so I made another batch of larger ones. It was so easy that I hope to make eclairs next. I burned my thumb while coating the tiny extra puffs with caramel, but that was because I used a reflex reaction to one falling toward the floor and grabbed it, still very hot with molten sugar, instead of letting it fall. When the next one did hit the floor, I had to keep the dog away or he would have eaten it and burned his tongue. I would never make it as a professional pastry chef. Every bit of counter space was occupied by the end. My kitchen was a mess. Thank you Babs for the Silpat mat...it was perfect with all that super hot sugar.

The taste of the St. Honore' cake was sublime. The richness was evident, but the flavors were nicely subtle.The pastry cream especially was delightful. I flavored mine with rum.

As for the heart attack, there certainly was a lot of butter fat once you added the puff pastry to the butter in the puffs, the whole milk and whipping cream in the pastry cream and then the additional whipped heavy cream on top. My solution was to give a piece to Sweetie, eat a piece myself, then take all the rest of it to the wonderful folks at our local library. For months they have been commenting on all of the baking books I've been checking out, especially those with yummy cakes as the front photo. They had a booksale the next day, so I knew that a treat was in order. My heart, to say nothing of my thighs, benefited, too.

As fate would have it, no sooner had I returned home from the library than I received a phone call from my oldest friend. She needed me to drive to Richmond and meet her in the Kaiser ER. We spent over 7 hours, well into the wee hours, but she is doing better, so it was worth it. I was so glad that I had finished the challenge first and had all that fun in the kitchen.

For the recipe, go to Helen's site here. It may look daunting, but it can be done in stages. I made the puff pastry ring and cream puffs a day before I made the pastry cream and caramel and put it all together. You could also make the pastry cream first a day in advance.

When you are finished, you have a delicious, impressive looking cake. I'm sure that St. Honore' is pleased with the Daring Bakers and will be pleased if you make it, too.

This recipe starts with some comments by Helene who is the hostess for this month along with Anita. The group is growing so quickly that I've stopped counting how many members there are.

"Turns out that May 16th is Saint Honore (pronounced o-no-ray) Day, patron Saint of pastry chefs and bakers. It also turns out that there is a very traditional cake named after him: Gateau Saint Honore. It is the “must pass” element of pastry school students and it is a cake that includes several elements and techniques that bakers should try at least once: puff pastry, cream puff dough, caramel and pastry filling. There are many fillings as they are bakeries: chiboust cream, pastry cream, Bavarian cream (aka Diplomat cream).

The cake building goes like this:
- base of puff pastry
- rings of cream dough baked on top (so that the cream sticks)
- cream puffs set on the pastry filling or hooked to the base with hot caramel
- cream filling to fill everything

I compiled recipes from Bo Friberg’s books “The Professional Pastry Chef” editions 3rd and 4th, and "The Advanced Pastry Chef". It is straightforward and very close to what you would find nowadays walking on the streets of Paris and popping into a bakery (close our eyes, you’re there).

I realize it calls for time consuming puff pastry so you can use store bought that is totally fine, but if you have never made it why not try. It is just a long process, but the recipe given below makes more than you need so you can freeze it and use it later for something else.

The recipe for the Saint Honore cream is flavored with rum and that may not appeal to you, so substitute an alcohol that you like more (Grand Marnier, White Godiva, Kirsch,…), or use vanilla, without changing the filling altogether.

Make them round, square, oblong, heart shaped…your call.. Have fun!

Before you say “oh my lord is she crazy?!” The only difficult part I could foresee is the cream puff dough, but once again it is a very cool technique to learn if you have never made it before. (just remember the words “thick mayonnaise”!)

The cream filling and the puff pastry (if using)can be made ahead of time and refrigerated.
One more thing: the caramel is necessary to hook the puffs but if you are caramel challenged and don’t feel like using it to decorate the remaining of the cake and do not wish to end up like Jenny perched on high chair spunning sugar you can totally skip it.

Last thing: I liked the idea of co-hosting so new members would not have to wait a year or so to participate and I asked Anita from Dessert First to co-host this month. We are going to do it “round –up” style but modified because of logistics issues. We will divide the DB between our two blogs and list your name –blog- post url on our respective blogs."

Gateau Saint Honore: Components and respective recipes follow:

Puff pastry
Pate a Choux – Cream Puff Dough
Saint Honore Cream
8oz sugar for caramel
1 cup heavy cream + 1 tsp sugar

Pate a Choux – Cream Puffs Dough

4 ¾ oz. all purpose flour (135 gr)
1 cup water ( 240 ml)
2 oz unsalted butter (58 gr)
¼ tsp. salt (1 gr)
1 cup eggs (240 ml)

Sift the flour and set aside.

Heat the water, butter and salt to a full rolling boil, so that the fat is not just floating on the top but is dispersed throughout the liquid.

Stir the flour into the liquid with a heavy wooden spoon, adding it as fast as it can be absorbed. Avoid adding it all at once or it will form clumps.

Cook, stirring constantly and breaking up the lumps if necessary, by pressing them against the side of the pan with the back of the spoon until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan, about 2-3 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a mixer bowl. Let the paste cool slightly so that the eggs will not cook when they are added. You can add and stir the eggs by hand but it requires some serious elbow grease.

Mix in the eggs, one at a time, using the paddle attachment on low or medium speed. Do not add all the eggs at once. Check after a few, the dough should have the consistency of thick mayonnaise.

Transfer the dough to a piping bag and use as desired.

Pate Feuillete – Puff Pastry:

Makes about 2 1/2 pounds.
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface (420 gr)
3/4 cup cake flour (105 gr)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (7 gr)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces, well chilled (60 gr)
1 1/4 cups cold water (295.5 ml)
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (14 gr)
1 3/4 cups (3 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, well-chilled (405 gr)

1/ Make the dough package: In a large mixing bowl, combine both flours with the salt. Scatter butter pieces over the flour mixture; using your fingers or a pastry cutter, incorporate butter until mixture resembles coarse meal.

2/ Form a well in center of mixture, and pour the water into well. Using your hands, gradually draw flour mixture over the water, covering and gathering until mixture is well blended and begins to come together. Gently knead mixture in the bowl just until it comes together to form a dough, about 15 seconds. Pat dough into a rough ball, and turn out onto a piece of plastic wrap. Wrap tightly, and place in refrigerator to chill 1 hour.

3/ Make the butter package: Sprinkle 1/2 tablespoon flour on a sheet of waxed or parchment paper. Place uncut sticks of butter on top, and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 tablespoon flour. Top with another sheet of paper; using a rolling pin, pound butter to soften and flatten to about 1/2 inch. Remove top sheet of paper, and fold butter package in half onto itself. Replace top sheet of paper, and pound again until butter is about A inch thick.

Repeat process two or three times, or until butter becomes quite pliable. Using your hands, shape butter package into a 6-inch square. Wrap well in plastic wrap, and place in refrigerator until it is chilled but not hardened, no more than 10 minutes.

4/ Assemble and roll the dough: Remove dough package from refrigerator, and place on a lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, gently roll dough into a 9-inch round. Remove butter package from refrigerator, and place it in the center of the dough round. Using a paring knife or bench scraper, lightly score the dough to outline the butter square; remove butter, and set it aside. Starting from each side of the center square, gently roll out dough with the rolling pin, forming four flaps, each 4 to 5 inches long; do not touch the raised square in the center of the dough. Replace butter package on the center square. Fold flaps of dough over the butter package so that it is completely enclosed. Press with your hands to seal.

5/ Using the rolling pin, press down on the dough at regular intervals, repeating and covering the entire surface area, until it is about 1 inch thick. Gently roll out the dough into a large rectangle, about 9 by 20 inches, with one of the short sides closest to you. Be careful not to press too hard around the edges, and keep the corners even as you roll out the dough by squaring them with the side of the rolling pin or your hands. Brush off any excess flour. Starting at the near end, fold the rectangle in thirds as you would a business letter; this completes the first single turn.Wrap in plastic wrap; place in refrigerator 45 to 60 minutes.

6/ Remove dough from refrigerator, and repeat process in step 5, giving it five more single turns.Always start with the flap opening on the right as if it were a book. Mark the dough with your knuckle each time you complete a turn to help you keep track. Chill 1 hour between each turn. After the sixth and final turn, wrap dough in plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight before using.

Saint Honore Cream (Rapid Chiboust or Diplomat Cream)
1 envelope unflavored gelatin (7 gr.)
1/4 cup cold water (60 ml)
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar (130 gr)
½ cup all-purpose flour (70 gr)
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 egg yolks
2 cups whole milk (500ml)
1 Tb. rum
¼ cup whipping cream (57 gr)
3 egg whites
dash of salt
1/2 cup sugar (105 gr)

Soak the gelatin in the 1/4 cup of cold water.

Put the sugar, flour, and salt into a saucepan and stir together with a whisk. Add the yolks and enough milk to make a paste. Whisk in the remainder of the milk.

Place over low heat and stirring constantly, cook until thick. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and the gelatin. Stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved.

Stir in the whipping cream.Set the mixing bowl in cold water and stir until the cream is cool. Place the egg whites in a clean bowl and using clean beaters, whip them with the dash of salt. As soon as the whites begin to stiffen, gradually add the 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until they are very stiff. Fold the egg whites into the cooled cream.

Caramel:
8 oz sugar (240 gr)

Caramelize the 8 oz. of sugar: Fill a bowl that is large enough to hold the pan used for cooking the sugar with enough cold water to reach halfway up the sides of the pan. Set the bowl aside. Place the sugar in a heavy bottomed pan and cook until the sugar until it has caramelized to just a shade lighter than the desired color. Remove from the heat and immediately place the bottom of the pan in the bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process. (See below to see when to do this step)

Assembly:

Roll the puff pastry out to 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick, 12 inch square (30 cm). Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Refrigerate covered at least 20 minutes.

While the puff pastry is resting, make the pate a choux and place it in a pastry bag with a # 4 (8mm) plain tip. Reserve.

Leaving the puff pastry on the sheet pan, cut a 11 inch (27.5 cm) circle from the dough and remove the scraps. (An easy way to cut it is to use a 11inch tart pan as a “cookie cutter”). Prick the circles lightly with a fork.

Pipe 4 concentric rings of Pate a Choux on the pastry circle. Pipe out 12 cream puffs the size of Bing cherries onto the paper around the cake.

Bake the puff pastry circle and the cream puffs at 400F (205C) until the pate a choux has puffed, about 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375F (190C) and bake until everything is dry enough to hold its shape, about 35 minutes longer for the cake and 8 minutes longer for the cream puffs (just pick them up and take them out as they are done).

Place about 4 oz (114 gr) of the Saint Honore Cream in a pastry bag with a #2 (4mm) plain tip. Use the pastry bag tip or the tip of a paring knife to make a small hole in the bottom of each cream puff. Pipe the cream into the cream puffs to fill them. Refrigerate.

Spread the remaining cream filling on the cake. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours to set the cream.

Caramelize the 8 oz. of sugar:
Fill a bowl that is large enough to hold the pan used for cooking the sugar with enough cold water to reach halfway up the sides of the pan. Set the bowl aside.

Place the sugar in a heavy bottomed pan and cook until the sugar until it has caramelized to just a shade lighter than the desired color.

Remove from the heat and immediately place the bottom of the pan in the bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process.

Dip the cream puffs into the hot caramel, using 2 forks or tongues to avoid burning your fingers.

Place them on a sheet pan. The caramel must be hot enough to go on in a thin layer. Reheat if necessary as you are dipping, stirring constantly to avoid darkening the caramel any more than necessary. Also, avoid any Saint Honore cream to leak out of the puffs and get mixed in with the caramel while dipping as the cream can cause the sugar to recrystallize.

Whip the one cup of heavy cream and teaspoon of sugar to stiff peaks. Place the whipped cream in pastry bag fitted with a #5 (10mm) star tip. Pipe a border of whipped cream around the top of the cake. Arrange the cream puffs, evenly spaced, on top of the filling, next to the cream.

Option: Before filling the cake, take care of the cream puffs, dip them in more caramel, hook them up to the base. Fill with the cream filling and fill the holes with the whipped cream.

To recap:
3 modifications possible:
- puff pastry can be store bought or made follwing the recipe provided
- liqueur in the cream filling can be omitted or changed, oranges or lemons can be used, but no chocolate or coffee,... The idea is to keep the cream white/off white
- shape/size of the cake
- cream puffs set on the cream or dipped in caramel and glued to the base
Anita and Helene (which interestingly enough is pronounced "hell-en") co-hosting.
Stone throwing very optional...
Due date: Sunday May 27th