Daring Bakers: Tuiles

Raspberry Blackout Cake w. Chocolate Dipped Lemon Tuiles

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I was very excited to see that Tuiles were this months challenge. I've had many chances in the past to play around with them for work and school. In school I was in charge of making a cookie bowl to fill with delicious ice creams for our final Friday Night Dinner. For another dinner I was "lucky" to be chosen to make pumpkin puree tuiles shaped like cylinders that if I remember correctly were going to be holding a candle. The pumpkin tuiles were obnoxious to make but a great learning lesson.

For this challenge I made the Lemon Tuiles from the Millennium Cookbook. Originally I wanted to shape them into cannoli's and fill them with a light coconut and chocolate chip cream. Then I got asked to make a cake to celebrate our friends birthday. I though it would be great to make the filled "cannoli" tuiles smaller to put them as decoration on the cake. As you can see above that didn't happen. The batter for the Lemon Tuiles was too thick to shape how I wanted. After many tries and variations I gave up and made flat ones and semi rounded ones which I dipped in chocolate and stuck on the cake as decoration.

I was very very pleased with the overall effect that the chocolate dipped cookies gave to the cake. It is probably my favorite looking cake that I've ever made.

Dumplins'

Veggie and Tofu Dumplings

I LOVE to make my own dumplings. Problem is they are time consuming and when I'm home alone with Reno during dinner time I don't have time for time consuming meals. Peter went out the other night. Reno went to bed. I was watching House thinking about just eating some Rocky Road ice cream for dinner. I really wanted Chinese food. I remembered that I always keep bags of frozen dumplings in my freezer for such an occasion. The dumplings turned into a delicious appetizer for my ice cream main course.

Really though. Frozen dumplings are a perfect item to keep stocked in your freezer. They are great for: a quick lunch
an appetizer to an asian inspired meal or an ice cream main
course
a pot luck you are late for and haven't prepared anything for yet

Go buy yourselves a few bags. Or make your own and freeze em.

In other news.

The new site is still coming. My husband will be helping with a custom design for it. In the mean time I'll still be posting here as usual.

Happy New Year

Cookie Box Gifts

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone is happy and healthy. I've been MIA for a few weeks and have been missing my blog. The last few months were a bit rough for us. In a happy way thankfully. We had 3 weddings to go to. 2 of them were out of state and
required a few nights in a hotel plus travel and food expenses. Then 1 was the Saturday before Christmas, that was local thank goodness. Needless to say our bank account took a BIG HIT because of all of these wonderful and happy occasions. I informed our families earlier this fall that christmas will be presentless for everyone.

Instead of buying gifts I baked gifts. Luckily I pretty much have everything I would possible need at all times for baking up a few batches of different cookies. With a little excursion to The Christmas Tree Store (or is it Shoppe) to get pretty $2 foil boxes and VEGAN BUTTERSCOTCH CHIPS!!!!!!! I never cared for that store but now I love it. You have to love anyplace that you can find those chips.




Peanut Butter Bombs

My favorite cookie and I think everyone else's favorite as well. These were a lot of fun to make. I love rolling dough and flattening it with my hands. I also love getting chocolate all over them too. I'd be perfect for a job that makes handmade truffles.




Chocolate and Butterscotch Chip Cookies

Just your basic Chocolate Chip Cookie with Vegan Butterscotch Chips added. They came out nice and flat just how I like them. They would have been perfect if there were a little crispier as well. I'm not a fan of the "soft batched" variety. I want some crunch but my oven is whack so I feared leaving them in any longer.



Shortbread

If I had to make these again I would roll the dough in a mixture of sugar and colored sugar sprinkles just to make them extra pretty. I've always been a huge fan of Shortbread cookies so I don't know why it took so long for me to make them vegan. It's so simple. I also wanted to dip some of these in melted chocolate but ran out of time




Gifts

The gift boxes lined up and filled ready for a square of parchment on top and some tissue paper filling. The one delicious looking bar that I didn't write about yet is called a Caramelita. It isn't vegan. It's the only cookie that I'll make for others that isn't. Everything in it is except for the caramel sauce that it used. It is something that I've been trying to veganize for years now and just haven't found the right caramel yet. It's something I'm working on and can't wait to make fully vegan. It's a wonderful cookie that my family has been making since I was a really little girl. You should see the original magazine that we still have somewhere with the recipe. It's hysterically old.

Now for some resolutions: the first 2 won't matter really much to you but I plan on getting organized this year. You can imagine how hard that is having a toddler but I'm determined. When your 16 month old is having a bad night because of teething and you never put the tylenol back in the same spot and it's easier to just run to the 24 hour store at 2 a.m. you've got problems. The second one is nimbleness. It was said as kinda a joke but I think I'll follow through with it. I've become quite the klutz and I'd like to be more agile.

The 3rd one does matter to you...I want to close this blog and start another. I want to blog about more then just food. Things like the knitted items I make, everyday things that I like, etc..etc.. I realize that I can still do all of that on this blog but I feel it's time to move on I don't live in B36 anymore and don't have a connection to the name anymore. Unfortunately it is very hard for me to come up with a new name. It took me literally weeks to name both my cats. Thank goodness for Reno we had a few months to name her before she got here with other options if needed. All the names I've come up with so far are already taken. I will still be blogging here until the naming mess is sorted out and it's designed then it will all be moved over and I will probably still mostly blog about food cuz I'm obsessed with the stuff.

Thanks for listening to all of this.