America Tastes Sweet!

I hope you all had a lovely 4th of July!  We enjoyed a relaxed afternoon with our friends and neighbors and ate hamburgers, ribs, sausage, and hot wings. It was good times!  As usual, I brought dessert and I whipped up a humdinger of one!

My northern friends, you're probably more familiar with these than me and my southern compatriots, so forgive me for being a little loopy over them, but I am in LOVE with whoopie pies!

And so is my daughter:

Along with the rest of her friends:

These were red velvet flavored, which I dyed half of them blue and the other half red, and slathered cream cheese frosting between the two.  Heavenly!  Whoopie pies rock.  Cupcake, you're dead to me. Over.

In addition to whoopie pies, I created this little free form tart for further Fourth festivities with my folks and frere (I love alliteration):

Behold the Galette of Glory! 

It's a strawberry and blueberry galette which I further decorated by laying stripes and stars on top from pie dough.  My folks had some dried orange peel in a jar that complimented the fruit nicely, and topped off with some vanilla bean ice cream, it was delightful after a heavy meal of BBQ chicken and pizza. 

I tell you what, America never tasted so sweet.  And a very heartfelt thank you to the men and women in the service who fight each day to keep it that way.   Happy birthday America!

Happy Baking,
Kelly 

Daring Bakers: Croquembouche

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

May is a very special month for me–not only do I celebrate my birthday every May, but my dad's, my father-in-law's, my husband's grandmother's, as well as several cousins and friends.  What can I say?  September was apparently a busy month!  It is also the month in which I celebrate my wedding anniversary and this month's challenge is especially close to my heart because it was this very same cake that inspired my own wedding cake.  My husband and I both share a love for medieval history and while our wedding appeared very traditional at first glance, everything was influenced and inspired by medieval culture and history.  In fact, here's a little historical tidbit for you: the wedding cake as we know it comes from a medieval tradition in which wedding guests would bring small cakes and stack them up upon arrival.  The bride and groom were then required to kiss over the top of said cakes and it was a good sign if none of the cakes were knocked over.  Eventually, it morphed into the cake we know and love today.  The croquembouche is about as close as you can get to that tradition and they are very common as wedding cakes in France.  Our version were mini cheesecakes for the groom and Italian cream cake for the bride - our favorite flavors!

But I digress.  This blog entry is about the croquembouche, or piece montee as Cat calls it.  In a nutshell, it's a bunch of little cream puffs all stacked up on each other to form a tall mountain of creamy puffy goodness.  Yum!  You start by making a pate a choux (pronounced 'pot ah shoe')which are the puffs.  You then make a cream filling and fill the puffs.  Finally, you use a glaze to glue them all together and voila!  Croquembouche.

Recipe: Apple Pear Gallette

I actually posted this a couple of months ago on my family blog.  One of my resolutions this year is to expand my blog some by including more recipes and tutorials, and post more pictures of things I've done, or that other people have done that I think provide inspiration or learning opportunities.  I love baking and I love blogging and I hope to marry those two and create a blog that showcases my work, but also teaches my readers something too!  So while this post might be old hat to my Lapiz de la Guerra readers, it's new to Billa Cakes and I hope you enjoy the recipe!

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I love baking. I love the smells, I love the taste, I love how it looks, but most of all I love how it makes me feel. Baking is good cheap (not to mention darn tasty) therapy. But I'll admit it, there are days when I am super lazy and want a baked good but don't want to work hard or clean the kitchen just to get my sweet fix. The following recipe was something that I just whipped up, inspired by many things and it takes almost no time or extra cleanup required. Of course, you still have to clean up afterwards, but at least you don't have to clean the entire kitchen just to bake! In case you were wondering, a galette is free form pastry tart. I always keep pre-made pie dough in the freezer for just such an occasion and this is a great way to use up those apples and pears in the fall!



Apple Pear Galette
1 pre-made pie dough round, thawed
2 apples (I think I used Pink Lady or Gala for this one)
2 pears (I like to use Bosc)
about 1/4 cup lemon juice (a couple of good splashes)
a small palmful of flour
a healthy palmful of brown sugar
a pinch of cinnamon
a pinch of ginger
1 egg, blended
Gallon size zip top bag
Parchment paper

1. Preheat oven to 350F and place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet or pizza pan.
2. Roll out the pie dough a little bit bigger than it is and dock it with a fork, very lightly (Docking is the term used to poke holes in the pie dough). Place it on your pan and set aside.
3. Core and slice the pears thinly, about 1/4" thick. Dump them in the zip top bag with the lemon juice and drench thoroughly. Be careful if your pears were close to expiration, because they might turn to mush if you shake them around too much!
4. Dump in the sugar, flour, and spices and toss to coat. Let sit for about 5 minutes.
5. Carefully spoon the apple pear mixture into the middle of your pie dough. Move it out towards the edges making sure to leave about 1-2" of pie dough all the way around.
6. Fold up the outer edges of the pie dough over the filling and pinch together as needed to hold it in place.
7. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the egg on the crust. This will give it a nice golden crust and color while baking! Feel free to sprinkle sugar on the crust if you choose. You can also sprinkle a bit more cinnamon on top of the pastry too if you would like.
8. Pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes, making sure that the fruit is cooked all the way through and a nice golden crust has formed. Allow to cool for a few minutes before diving in.

Some food for thought...

• You can freeze pre-made pie dough for several months, just make sure that it's thawed thoroughly before trying this or you'll have torn dough on your hands.
• The point of this recipe is to be lazy, but if you must, I use about 1/3-1/2 cup sugar and 1-2 TBSP of flour, and about 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp ginger. You can add more or less sugar if you like, I tend to like my apple pie on the sweet side.
• If you don't have lemon juice, lime will work too. You need this to keep the fruit from browning, so adjust the amount as needed; you don't want to saturate it.
• I suggest serving this with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Yum!
• And lastly, if you don't have a pastry brush, use a wadded up paper towel or your fingers to get the egg on the crust.

Bon apetit!
Kelly