Daring Bakers: Pavlovas, Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse, and Crème Anglaise

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.

I did it! Even in the midst of the yellow cake experiment, two upcoming giveaways (yes, you read right!), and a frustrating, DB experience last month, I was able to pop out this lovely dessert for the DB Challenge! Woohoo! Go me!

Okay, with the exception of my favorite white cake, I abhor, detest, can't stand, don't like anything made of primarily egg whites.That includes macarons, meringues on top of pies, angel cake, and ...pavlovas. Needless to say, I didn't make that part of the dessert, but I did make everything else, including the mascarpone.

 This mascarpone was so smooth. Can you tell?

Unlike last month's challenge, everything progressed quite smoothly for this challenge. I made the mascarpone last night, and then I made all of the other components today. The only things that went wrong were the piping of the mousse and whipping of the heavy cream for the crème anglaise mixture.

For some reason, the mousse would not come out completely out of my (new) #1M piping tip. It kept clogging up the nozzle. So, I just spooned out the mousses into the goblets. In regard to the heavy cream, it wouldn't whip up completely for some reason. I've never had that problem before so I ended up making three batches of the stuff until it finally whipped up right.

 Egg Yolks and Sugar: The Beginning of the Crème Anglaise

Clockwise: Mascarpone added to crème; whipped together; whipped cream added; done...I guess.

 

ADJUSTMENTS TO THE RECIPE: I never post the recipe to DB challenges on here because they are so long, and are available everywhere by this time of the month haha. I only post adjustments or additional recipes I used not included on the challenge. Anyway, I added some powdered sugar to the whipped cream that was added to the crème anglaise. Also, after seeing what Barbara did to her mousse, I added some mint extract to my mousse, but I accidentally added too much, which leads me to my impressions of this dessert...

Clockwise: cream, milk and lemon zest; chopped chocolate courtesy of Guittard; chocolate added to milk mixture; chocolate base done

TASTE: This dessert is EXTREMELY rich as you would expect with all the heavy cream in it. I completely understand why this is more of a topping for pavlovas - to contrast with the lightness of it. I think it still tastes good the way I did it; I just won't be able to eat all of one goblet in one sitting, though. I'm not typically a fan of chocolate with fruit, so I just put the blueberries on top for decoration and moved the fruit aside hehe. 

Folding process of the mousse

Thanks for a great challenge, Dawn. To see what the others have done and the recipe, go here.

Daring Bakers: Pièce Montée and a Croquembouche

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a pièce montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Martha Stewart made it look easy and so pretty. The host of this challenge made it look easy and lovely. The other DBers made it look easy and amazing. But it wasn't easy or pretty for me. 

This is the final product. It is ugly and messy after two days of work. I had to make the pastry cream twice b/c the first one was too runny, the caramel sauce twice because I ran out of the first one, and the cream puffs twice because the dough (or batter in my case) was too runny. I had to do this all while having a serious toothache b/c of a wisdom tooth (or teeth) that I'm too chicken to get extracted. The pain was/is so unbearable that I didn't eat anything until the late evening. All of that work, and this so-called pièce montée ("assembled or mounted piece") and croquembouche ("crunch in mouth") is all I have to show for it.  I don't even like cream puffs, but I wanted to complete this challenge since I missed out on so many in the past.

Mise en place (the (failed) coffee pastry cream is in the bottle)

This challenge made me realize some things: 1) If I'm willing to spend all this time, effort, and money on a baking project, I should be able to extend even more effort on my dissertation. 2) I don't know if I can keep doing this Daring Kitchen thing. I was so frustrated today to the point of tears. *sigh* 

Anyway, below are photos of the process. I don't feel like going into details about the project. As far as taste is concerned, the pastry cream and puffs tasted good enough, but the caramel was so hard, I had to spit it out.

Blurry photo. Sorry.

So, yeah, I'm going to take a break from the kitchen for a few days. I don't even want to do anymore baking for a long time (hah! yeah, right). I should feel better by tomorrow.

You can find the recipe on Cat's blog.

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Pastry Cream Process (the runny version): I was too tired to take photos of the good version.

I ended up using this pastry cream recipe on my second attempt.

Caramel (reheated a MILLION times):

First Creme Puff attempt was fine before...

adding the eggs...

Tried to work with the runny dough and ended up burning the puffs. Thanks overheating, old oven!

No, these are not macarons.

After adding flour to the runny dough...

Next day, second attempt.

 Better, but not great. 

The croquembouche kept falling, and I kept burning myself with the hot caramel that I had to reheat over and over again. Do I sound frustrated much?

A photo of the croquembouche caving in.

Oh well. I apologize for sounding so negative. I'm just tired and in pain. Take care, everyone!