Gingerbread House, The Sweet Shop

The December 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.
I love making gingerbread houses. I make them almost every year. This year i decided that i wanted to try something different and not make a real traditional gingerbread houses. I wanted to try something funky and colorful, so I decided to make a Sweet Shop gingerbread house. I bought lots of different candies and chocolate from the store. I didn't quite get the "Sweet Shop" gingerbread house I had planned, but it still turned out colorful and oh-so-sweet with all the candy that I had glued onto it. But it still looks like a gingerbread house so it's all ok.

Equipment Needed:

Stand or handheld electric mixer (not required but it will make mixing the dough a lot easier and faster)

Plastic wrap

Rolling pin

Parchment paper

Baking sheets

Cardboard cake board or sheet of thick cardboard

Foil, if desired

Small saucepan

Small pastry brush (optional)

Piping bag with small round tip, or paper cornets if you're comfortable with them

Y's recipe:

Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga) from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

1 cup butter, room temperature (226g)

1 cup brown sugar, well packed (220g)

2 tablespoons cinnamon

4 teaspoons ground ginger

3 teaspoons ground cloves

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ cup boiling water

5 cups all-purpose flour (875g)

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight.

2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard.

3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place.

4. [I rolled out the dough on a floured bench, roughly 1/8 inch thick (which allows for fact that the dough puffs a little when baked), cut required shapes and transferred these to the baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and rerolled at the end.]

5. Preheat the oven to 375'F (190'C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Royal Icing:

1 large egg white

3 cups (330g) powdered sugar

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon almond extract

Beat all ingredients until smooth, adding the powdered sugar gradually to get the desired consistency. Pipe on pieces and allow to dry before assembling. If you aren't using it all at once you can keep it in a small bowl, loosely covered with a damp towel for a few hours until ready to use. You may have to beat it slightly to get it an even consistency if the top sets up a bit. Piped on the house, this will set up hard over time.

Simple Syrup:

2 cups (400g) sugar

Place in a small saucepan and heat until just boiling and the sugar dissolves. Dredge or brush the edges of the pieces to glue them together. If the syrup crystallizes, remake it.

Praline Course!

Pralines or truffles are a crutial part of Christmas. Now that it's almost Christmas pralines are everywhere. We are busy making all sorts of pralines and truffles at work and also at school. I just finished my first pralinen course at school and it was awesome! We learned the basics of praline making and some great tricks and recipes. We made about 8 different sorts of pralines, some made with marzipan and others with a rich chocolate ganache filling. They were all absolutely delicious! I still need to improve on my decorating though...

I'm already planning the different praline flavors that I want to try next. Pralines are great to give as presents, especially for christmas and thats what i'm planning to give people this year. I'm also going to take a whole box full to Finland for christmas.
I'm in the phase now where i'm trying to create interesting and different flavors, but thats turning out to be a little more challenging. I only have a few flavor ideas, but I need more. I need to find inspiration.

I recently ordered a bit of equipment and ingredients for praline making. It's impossible to find some of the igredients and equipment in the normal store so I had to order some. The site that I ordered from has an unbelievable wide selection of equipment and ingredients for praline making. I could have ordered everything! The site also has a large selection of other baking equipment and ingredients, which is great. There's another site from which I want order some other stuff. I'm obviously in another one of my "obsessed" phases. I can't wait for my little package to arrive. Hopefully next week!

Daring Bakers October: French Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I was excited when I saw that the challenge for October was Macarons. I fell in love with these cookies a while ago and have tried numerous recipes. The recipe only calls for a few ingredients, but that doesn't mean that they are easy to make, quite the contrary. I've tried quite a few macaron recipes and 1 out of 4 tries have succeeded. You have to get everything just right to get perfect macarons and thats the difficult part and definitely a challenge.

Macarons:

Ingredients:

confectioners' (Icing) sugar: 225 g ( 8 oz, 2 1/4 cup)

almond flour: 190 g ( 6.7 oz, 2 cups)

granulated sugar: 25 g ( 2 Tbsp, .88 oz)

egg whites: 5 ( have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.

2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.

4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.

5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).

6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.

7. Cool on a rack before filling.

Yield: 10 dozen. Ami's note: My yield was much smaller than this. I produced about two dozen filled macaroons.

Blackberry mini mousse cakes

I finally have a new post! It's been ages since i've posted anything on my blog. I now have a new camera so I can finally post again!

I'm slowly getting settled here in Germany, with work and school as well as with everything else, however I still really miss Finland...but I do find more time to bake.

I regularly buy german baking magazines, almost every week. I just love looking through all the different cakes and tarts and cookies. But I haven't found the time to try any of the recipes in them. This weekend I finally decided that it's time to try something. I was also lazily browsing through my baking book stash and I found the recipe of the lovely little cakes that I've wanted to try for months now and then I got planning on my little mousse cakes. My grandmother has a lot of frozen berries in her freezer, especially blackberries and I thought i'd make a little space for next years berries....

I took the recipe of a simple sponge base from one of the baking magazines and made the little mousse cakes.

Vanilla Sponge base:

from: Laura Backen

3 eggs
100g flour
90g sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt


separate the eggs. beat the egg whites and the salt until stiff, add the sugar in little by little. In a separate bowl mix the flour and the baking powder. gently fold in the flour mixture into the egg whites. fold until incorporated and you have a smooth batter.
Pour the batter into a buttered and floured cake tin (26 cm) and bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes at 180 C. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the top has a slight golden brown color. Let the cake cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes and then let it cool completely on a wire rack. Once the cake has cooled completely cut it into 2 and cut little circles with your ring molds.


Blackberry mousse:
recipe from Canelle et Vanille


100g blackberry puree
10g sugar
2g gelatine sheet
75g heavy cream, soft peaks


Warm half of the blackberry puree with the sugar. In the meantine soak the gelatine in ice water. add the rest of the puree and let it cool.
Whip the cream to soft peaks and gently fold it into the puree.

Making the mini mousse cakes is very simple. If you have your ring molds, just layer the base with the mousse. First I have a sponge base and then a layer of mousse. Before adding the next layer of sponge and mousse I put the cakes in the freezer for about 15 minutes.

Once you have all the layers, let the cakes rest in the fridge until firm. then cut the cakes gently from the sides of the rings and gently remove them from the rings.

Enjoy!