Rose's Alpha Bakers: Almond Coffee Crisps

The latest in my whirlwind baking adventure with my fellow Rose's Alpha Bakers is Almond Coffee Crisps from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Baking Bible. The cookies are buttery and flaky; and because they are made without eggs, they are very delicate and melt in your mouth.

crispy with a hint of coffee flavor

Rose described these light and crumbly cookies as "crisp, fragile, ethereal" and they really are. I'd advise making these when you're going to serve and eat them all because they are very delicate (I broke two just lifting them from the baking sheet...you might think I did this on purpose so I could eat them, but that was just a lucky coincidence!). They were also very fast and easy to make, another plus.

These cookies would go wonderfully with coffee or tea...a tea party, perhaps? I'd love to have a little tea party and serve finger sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam, cookies, tiny pastries, and, of course, tea! These delicious cookies would fit in very well on my tea party sideboard!

mise en place for the cookies - so simple!

I was a little skeptical that the tiny bit of ingredients above would make 36 cookies...but, of course, they did (note to self: never doubt Rose!). The cookies spread quite a bit when baking, so what starts off as little cookies rounds when raw bakes up to nice 3" cookies when baked.

I decided to skip the final step of dusting each cookie with more espresso power. I wasn't sure if that would be coffee-overkill, or just make a mess. Either way, I'm glad I skipped it. There is still a hint of coffee flavor, but it's not overpowering. Overall? Yum! 

I processed the toasted almonds with a few tbsp of the flour mixture until finely ground
and then added the rest of the flour mixture and processed again

the result is similar to almond flour

the sugar and butter are creamed until smooth

then the flour is mixed in...

...and pulsed until the dough comes together

the finished dough is kneaded a few times to make sure all of the butter
is completely mixed in. The dough is extremely easy to make and work with.

tiny little balls of dough are measured out - 10g each...so small!

all of my balls of cookie dough

a dozen balls of dough placed on the cookie sheet...

...and then pressed into flat rounds

they spread quite a bit when baked, into thin, crisp cookies

and done! A delicious plate of almond coffee crisps

time to make a pot of coffee and enjoy a cookie

Bye for now...

Gâteau Breton

time for a bite...

This Gâteau Breton is another recipe by Rose Levy Beranbaum from Rose's Heavenly Cakes cookbook. One of the things I love about this cookbook is the variety of types of recipes. There are really complex cakes that take a couple of days to complete which I love, because sometimes I am just in the mood to bake something complicated and intensive that requires me to go out and find special ingredients or a new pan. But I also love that there are really straightforward - yet delicious - recipes, for which I am likely to already have all of the ingredients...and this is one of those. Simple, easy, yummy.

This dessert is sort of a cross between a shortbread, a cake, and is baked in a tart pan. As it bakes, the outer edge forms a flaky sort of a crust. The middle is lighter than a shortbread, but heavier than a cake and not too sweet. I recommend serving it with coffee and some whipped cream would be lovely too.

mise en place for the cake

the toasted almonds and some of the sugar...

are ground together

the butter and sugar are combined

and creamed for several minutes until nearly white in color

the eggs are added and beaten until fluffy to incorporate more air into the batter

the rum, vanilla, and almond mixture is added, then the flour mixture
is added in four parts

the finished batter is very stiff...

smooth the batter into the tart pan and brush with an egg wash

score the top with the tines of a fork

and voila, done!

it makes such a pretty presentation

lovely flaky crust

ready to serve

dense, but still flaky...delicious!

Bye for now...

Discovering a new neighborhood café

My husband and I are in the process of buying a new house in Medford, MA. (Stay tuned for lots of upcoming posts on another of my passions - gardening! We're planning to transform both the front and back yards into perennial gardens instead of lawn.)

During the house hunting process, one of the first things we would do was to investigate the different neighborhoods of the houses we were considering. We wanted a quiet, residential neighborhood but we also wanted to be able to walk to parks, cafés, restaurants and shops. Today was our home inspection and we got there early so we could have breakfast at The Danish Pastry House nearby...and we discovered what I am sure will become our new favorite café/weekend breakfast place. The cappuccino was delicious (and huge!) and egg, bacon and cheddar cheese bagel was amazing. It was fresh, piping hot and was served with a yummy side salad with balsamic vinaigrette.

my huge double capp...pretty, pretty crema!

egg-bacon-cheese sandwich and side salad

crema stains on my empty cup

Bye for now...

Heavenly Cake Baker: Tiramisù (free choice)

It's free choice this week in the Heavenly Cake Baker club. I was debating between the Red Velvet Cake on page 83 of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes and Tiramisù on page 267. Tiramisù won out in the end as it seemed like more of a challenge.

I must confess that I cheated a bit this week and deviated from the recipe in the book to (mostly) follow a recipe I'd made once before. While baking, I went back and forth between the two but the final cake, in the end, leaned more toward the more familiar recipe and not the book. I hope I won't be kicked out of the club!

To start with, I got totally flummoxed when reading RLB's instructions for the ladyfingers because she instructs you to pipe the fingers but also to pipe out an 8" disk...but the disk is never called for in the tiramisù recipe. It wasn't until much, much later that I realized the disk instructions were for the recipe on the previous pages. D'oh!

The recipe I (mostly) used called for ladyfingers for the top and bottom layers and a sponge cake as the middle layer (another reason I kept wondering where to incorporate the ladyfinger disk). As you can see from the pictures below, my ladyfingers were pretty much a disaster. Next time I will definitely either use RLB's ladyfinger recipe or the sponge cake recipe (which said it could also be used to pipe the ladyfingers).

I'm not sure exactly what went wrong with my ladyfingers. I think I may have over-beaten my eggs, egg yolks and sugar mixture, but everything seemed fine until just before I started filling the pastry bags...then the batter just collapsed before my eyes. Sad.

mise en place for the ladyfingers

beating the eggs and sugar

I can tell disaster is coming; after adding the flour and butter, the batter is already collapsing

as you can see I had a hard time getting a light dusting of powdered sugar!
the first set wasn't great but they weren't too horribly bad

the second set was a complete disaster

they look okay from afar and were actually very light inside...but

...they were so sad and FLAT up close

The sponge cake, on the other hand, was fantastic. It was easy to pull together, it didn't collapse on me and it baked in less than 10 minutes. It was spongy and moist (it would roll up nicely for a roulade!). It was a bit sticky on the top, but otherwise was very easy to work with after it was baked. I picked it up, flipped it over - both dry and wet - and it never tore.

mise en place for the sponge cake

egg whites and sugar are whipped to a stiff peak

gorgeous!

dry ingredients are added to the egg yolk, sugar, vanilla and water mixture

after the whipped egg whites are folded in, it's baked in a sheet pan

less than 10 minutes later - done!

mise en place for the pastry cream

making the pastry cream...whisk whisk whisk until it boils

the mascarpone has been added to the pastry cream which is set over an ice bath to cool

the final ingredients: cream to lighten the pastry cream; super strong coffee and Kahlua to soak the layers;
and cocoa/powdered sugar to decorate

adding the whipped cream to the mascarpone pastry cream

almost incorporated - smells delicious!

the first layer of cookies are soaked with the coffee/Kahlua and
covered with the mascarpone pastry cream

the sponge cake layer is up next; it's given a good soaking

I had lots of extra cookies and more sponge cake than I needed for the large serving dish I was using so I made a second dish (what I'm going to do with TWO dishes of tiramisù though, I don't know). However, at this point I started thinking that I was going to run out of the cream filling by the time I got to the top so I whipped up some more heavy cream, added a few splashes of the coffee/Kahlua mixture for a bit of flavor and then incorporated it back into the mascarpone pastry cream mixture. It diluted the delicious pastry cream flavor a little, but definitely made it go further.

the final layer is made up of ladyfingers and then topped with more cream

all done...looks great

now I just need 20 people to serve this to!

after setting up for about an hour, I sliced into it; I think it will be even better tomorrow after the
flavors have more time to meld

delicious!

Bye for now...