Daring Bakers Challenge #9 - Milk Chocolate Caramel Tart

Caramel is not a favourite flavour of mine but it is a great pairing with chocolate. Milk chocolate was specified for this recipe and I did use it but for my taste I think that dark chocolate would have worked better. It probably didn't help my tart that in the interests of frugality I used an elderly, hollow Easter bunny that was sitting in my pantry and some regular chocolate melts rather than buying excellent quality chocolate. No-one else noticed but I could tell.

This challenge was actually a breeze and although I had a few moments where I wondered if I was doing the right thing I didn’t have too many problems.

When I rolled out my tart pastry I placed it between two silicon baking sheets and that worked really well for me; I think every kitchen should have a pair. Flavourwise I felt the pastry was a little delicate but that’s not really a bad thing with the richness of the caramel and the chocolate mousse. The texture was very tender again a good thing because there’s nothing worse than a tough crust that flies across the room when you cut into it.

I had never made caramel using the dry technique before and had no idea what I was doing. It was one of those "feel the fear and do it anyway" experiences. Essentially you just heat up your pan of sugar over a low to medium heat until it melts. It’s like magic to watch. I stirred my first batch part way through and it crystalised a bit but soon incorporated into the melted stuff. The worst part was when I added the cream and ended up with a huge lump of like goo that looked like dinosaur snot! I decided that I wasn’t going to waste my ingredients and effort and wondered what would happen if I just continued to beat the bejeebers out of it over a low heat. Miraculously the cream incorporated with the sugar and caramel was born.

After such a success with the first batch of caramel I was keen to make more for the Caramel Fragments. I bashed them with a rolling pin between my wonderful silicon sheets and have yet to find the two pieces that bounced off the bench into the living room. No doubt I’ll find a sticky piece of something covered in cat fluff if I look hard enough.

Daring Bakers Challenge #9: August 2007 – Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart
Source: Eric Kayser's Sweet and Savory Tarts

Hosts: Veron of Veronica's Test Kitchen and Patricia of Technicolor Kitchen)

Chocolate Shortbread Pastry
Note: The Chocolate Shortbread pastry can make 3 tart shells.
Preparation time: 10 minutes + overnight refridgeration

Ingredients
1 cup (250g ) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (150 g) confectioners’ sugar
½ cup (50 g) ground hazelnuts
2 level teaspoons (5 g) ground cinnamon
2 eggs
4 ½ cups (400 g) cake flour
2 ½ teaspoons (10 g) baking powder
1 ½ tablespoons (10 g) cocoa powder

Method
A day ahead
1. In a mixing bowl of a food processor, cream the butter.
2. Add the confectioners’ sugar, the ground hazelnuts, and the cinnamon, and mix together
3. Add the eggs, one by one, mixing constantly
4. Sift in the flour, the baking powder, and the cocoa powder, and mix well.
5. Form a ball with the dough, cover in plastic wrap, and chill overnight.

Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart
Preparation time: 40 minutes
Baking Time: 30 minutes
Refrigeration time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
½ lb (250 g) chocolate shortbread pastry (see recipe above)
1 ½ cups (300 g) granulated sugar
1 cup (250 g) heavy cream (30-40 percent butterfat) or crème fraiche - I used regular cream
¼ cup (50 g) butter
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
2 ½ tablespoons (15 g) flour
1 ¼ cups (300 g) whipping cream
½ lb (250 g) milk chocolate

Method
1. Preheat oven to 325 °F (160 °C).
2. Line the baking pan with the chocolate shortbread pastry and bake blind for 15 minutes.
3. In a saucepan, caramelize 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar using the dry method (just heat in a heavy bottom pot on a low-med heat until it melts) until it turns a golden caramel color (like golden or maple syrup). Incorporate the heavy cream or crème fraiche and then add butter. Mix thoroughly. Set aside to cool.
4. In a mixing bowl, beat the whole eggs with the extra egg yolk, then incorporate the flour (I used a whisk to reduce the risk of lumps but ended up running the egg/flour mixture through a sieve as suggested by some helpful Daring Bakers).
5. Pour this into the cream-caramel mixture and mix thoroughly
6. Spread it out in the tart shell and bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. I baked mine a little longer, about 10 mins more – the caramel should feel “jiggly” to touch.


7. Prepare the milk chocolate mousse: beat the whipping cream until stiff. Melt the milk chocolate in the microwave or in a bain-marie, and fold it gently into the whipped cream. Make sure the chocolate isn’t hot hot or the cream will melt - ask me how I know!
8. Pour the chocolate mousse over the cooled caramel mixture, smoothing it with a spatula. Chill for one hour in the refrigerator.

Caramel Fragments

Melt ½ cup (100g) granulated sugar in a saucepan until it reaches an amber color
Pour it onto waxed paper laid out on a flat surface
Leave to cool
Break it into small fragments and stick them lightly into the top of the tart. If there's a next time I'd try for long shards rather than chunks.
(in real life the caramel isn't as red as it looks in the photo - the colours are a wee bit off)


A big thank you to Veronica and Patricia for an interesting challenge. It was great fun to do and very well recieved by my co-workers who enjoyed my efforts.

Last Things

Yep - another meme. I don't know what it is I like about these things but they are a little bit addictive.

What is the last thing you ate? Roasted pumpkin and kumara with Montreal steak seasoning, roasted red peppers, feta and coriander - at my desk. Want the recipe? Find it here



What is the last blog or site you came from? Red Shoe Ramblings where I found this meme.

When is the last time you had a decadent dessert? Last night I made an apple bread and butter pudding out of a Healthy Food magazine. It had sultanas and lemon zest in it and was quite tasty for something that was supposedly healthy. However, the last time I had a truly decadent dessert was a week or so ago at Bella’s restaurant when my husband and I split a piece of their ooey gooy chocolate raspberry layer cake. Ordinarily he doesn’t have a sweet tooth but this seems to be a favourite and who am I to complain when he wants to split a piece of cake? It’s so rich I wouldn’t want a whole piece anyway although I’d give it a good shot!

When is the last time you missed the sound of someone’s voice? Haven’t really missed anyone for a while. Although I wish I could just pick up the phone and talk to my US friends any old time I wanted. Time zones are a bugger.

When is the last time you truly laughed out loud? Sunday night, watching Failure to Launch, at the bit where the gorgeous but unfortunately shirted, Matthew McConaughey got bitten by a chipmunk and had it hanging off his hand.

Your turn...

7 Random Things

Some time ago Lis from La Mia Cucina tagged me for a meme. Ordinarily I love these things but I’ve struggled to write this one.

1. Lime green and turquoise are my favourite colours. How do you like my new blog look? A bit much? I thought the white was a little bit boring and I'm not au fait enough with computing to come up with anything fancier. Hey - check out my new kitchen toys.



2. I am very finicky about meat on bones and won’t eat chops, chicken wings or legs. I make an exception for ribs and lamb shanks because they’re usually so tender the meat falls off the bones anyway. At restaurants I go so far as to cut all the meat the bones and put them on my side plate before I can eat my meal. Having said that, BBQ ribs would rate as one of my favourite foods.

3. When I was about 11 or 12 I got hit by a car while crossing the road on a pedestrian crossing. As a result I fractured my pelvis and have a scar in the inside of my left thigh. Unfortunately it’s too high up to show anyone. Much to my disgust I missed out on school camp. Kind of served me right though because I had snuck out of the house on my bicycle to go and buy candy for the camp and shouldn’t have been out. My mother and brother drove past the accident scene as I was lying on the ground but they didn’t know it was me. Later my brother commented that he thought he recognised my trousers. For the record, they were rust coloured corduroy bell bottoms. Styley!

4. I have moments when I hate my name. Because it is unusual people just can’t get it right. The most common name I get is Morgan although I often get Maureen, Robyn or Norma. I particularly hate it when people call me Marvin or Mervyn – they’re boy’s names fer Pete’s sake. Recently I asked my mother what the other options might have been and she said Hannah or Gabrielle. I’m not sure if I really want to share this random fact but one of the options was Dorcas. Imagine the teasing I would have got. If I’m somewhere like a coffee shop and have to give my name I struggle to quickly come up with a name other than my own. I never even think about using my middle name which is Jean. The funny thing is that if I decided to change my name I really don’t know what I prefer.

5. As a teenager I was a contestant in the Miss Wellington competition. I didn’t place. My husband takes delight in bragging about marrying a beauty queen.

6. My late Grandfather was a real magician. His stage name was Mister Fy . He passed on all his tricks and tools of the trade to my brother. When I was a kid Grandad used to entertain me with a ventriloquist act using my dolls and one day after he’d left I cut up one of them to see where the voices were coming from.

7. My husband doesn’t know I blog and would probably flip if he found out – on two levels. One is the whole internet/privacy thing and the other is my obsession with food. Oh well, I’ll deal with it when it happens. Most of my Daring Bakers creations are done when he’s out of town.

The usual self tagging rules apply.

Tomato Chilli Jam

When you go to a cooking class at Ruth Pretty's Cooking School, more often than not you’ll be served her delicious Tomato Chilli Jam with morning tea. It is one of those perfect flavour combinations – slightly sweet but tart tomatoes over creamy cream cheese, atop salty rice crackers, garnished with a fresh snippet of coriander. YUM! It is not dissimilar to the very popular American styled jalapeno jelly.

This past summer, my father-in-law gave me some homegrown tomatoes – big juicy orange ones. I diced them up, put them in the freezer and earmarked them for tomato chilli jam. When I cooked them I was a surprised and even a little disappointed to see that they turned red, like regular tomatoes. The tomato chilli jam calls for ginger, fish sauce and surprise, surprise - chillies. I was a tad generous with everything to the point where I would have had to label my preserves as “rip yer lips off tomato chilli jam with a hint of fish”. My solution was to make a second batch without the fish sauce, ginger or chilli and mix the two together in the final stages. I've ended up with a slightly more caramelized version due to the extra cooking but it's at least edible. So edible in fact that I've polished off the jar I kept for myself jar and need to make some more.

You can buy Tomato Chilli Jam at Ruth's shop and the recipe appears in Ruth Pretty's Favourite Recipes. However, Ruth has generously shared her recipe with the world on her website and I urge you to make use of your summer tomatoes and try the recipe for yourself.

1 Year Ago Today...

.... a blog was born and I can't believe it's been a year already. I've kept in touch with old friends, made some new ones and challenged myself along the way. A big thank you to Deb of Red Shoe Ramblings and Barbara of Winos and Foodies for encouraging me to take my first steps and thanks also to Lisa of La Mia Cucina and Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness for their support in the early days when I was even more clueless about blogging than I am now.

Since I'm lacking a recipe and to make this a pretty post here's a gratuitous lemon tree shot taken early one morning a few weeks back. My tree is bursting with new season fruit so I foresee a lot of lemon recipes in my future.

Morven's World of Cake - The Answers

Now that Blogger is playing nice with me and I can edit my HTML again here are the answers to my quiz. Sorry to have kept you waiting.

The winners of my little brain teaser competition were Brilynn and Peabody and a little somethin' somethin' will probably be winging its way to Lis and Barbie2Be as well.

1. Who is attributed to the quote “Let them eat cake”?
The answer I was looking for was Marie Antoinette. I asked who is “attributed to the quote”. However, it is widely agreed that someone else said it. Check out an opinion on it here

2. What is the name of the main actor in the recent movie “Layer Cake”?
Daniel Craig

3. Who painted “Still Life with Cake”?
Most people said Raphaele Peale but the picture I showed was by Pablo Picasso. You can see the Raphaele Peale picture at The Met in New York or check out Pablo's work below.


4. What is the French word for cake?
Gateau

5. Who made the world’s biggest cookie?
This was a bit of a trick question for all you Googlers out there. A New Zealand company called Cookie Time made the world's biggest Cookie in April 1986.

Cookie Time was put firmly on the international map by baking the World ’s Biggest Cookie - a giant chocolate chip creation covering an area of 487.15m² (or 5,243.6 sq ft!)... now, more than ten years on, Cookie Time are still hold the official Guinness World Record. In 2003, American company Immaculate Baking Co. set about trying to break the record by baking a 100ft diameter cookie (Cookie Time’s was 81ft; 24.9 metres in diameter). At the time it looked like Americans might have done it - it certainly looked like one big pile of cookie dough! But as it turned out, they failed in their attempt to gain the official title. Cookie Time are still officially Guinness World Record holders for baking the World’s Biggest Cookie!

6. Who is the patron saint of pastry chefs?
St Honoré
I note that Taste magazine has a recipe for Gateau St Honoré in the latest issue. No disprespect but it is not as pretty as the creations by the Daring Bakers.

7. If you were eating a mooncake what would you be celebrating?
Mid Autumn Festival aka Moon Festival/ August Moon Festival/ Lantern Festival

8. What ingredients characterise a tres leches cake?
Evaporated milk, condensed milk, whole milk (or cream)

9. Black Forest cakes contain cherries; what else is associated with the Black Forest?
Cuckoo clocks, fairy tales or honey.
Most people misread this question and thought I was talking about what was in a Black Forest Cake which of course would include whipped cream and chocolate.

10. Thanks for the lovely suggestions of what kind of cake I might like - the lemon cheesecake with a swirl of olallieberry jam sounds delicious and the lemon buttermilk breakfast cake and the sour cream chocolate cake and Dorie's banana cake - wait, let me wipe the drool from my keyboard. However, if I had my pick of any cake it would be my mum’s fruit cake. I'm stunned that this kind of cake is frequently the butt of jokes in America. What's wrong with you people??? Mum makes an absolutely gigantic one at Christmas time and cuts it into quarters to give it away. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. My mother-in-law makes a pretty decent fruitcake too. Hers is quite different and contains only three basic ingredients – dried fruit, orange juice and flour plus some essences.

Mary's Fruit Cake

Ingredients
1 kg/2.2 pounds or 35 oz dried fruit
2 cups orange juice
2 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 teaspoon lemon essence
1 teaspoon almond essence

Method

Soak the fruit in orange juice overnight.
The next day add self raising flour spice and essences as desired.
Preheat the oven to 160 C
Pour into a greased and lined cake pan and bake 1 1/2 hrs 160 deg. then 1 hour 140 degrees (not fan bake)
Enjoy!

Postscript: I have seen a similar recipe with slightly different proportions. it calls for 2 cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 kg fruit mix and 2 cups OJ. The baking time for that cake (in a 24 cm/approx 10" round tin) is only 1 hour at 150 degrees C.

Monthly Mingle - Earth Food

Meeta of What's for Lunch Honey? asked "What action are you taking that helps the earth? It does not have to be anything spectacular or a list of 100 things - just the one small action that you consciously do that reduces the impact."


What has a cat got to do with a monthly mingle you might ask? Well read on and you'll find out...

I am fortunate to live in a city which offers recycling as part of our weekly rubbish collection so we separate out our plastics, glass, papers, cans and regular rubbish. We also have a compost bin in our yard although I'm a little bit lazy about using it for kitchen waste. I’ve taken the recycling of our newspapers one step further though. I volunteer at the local SPCA every 2nd Sunday and they use cut up newspapers as liners for the kitties’ litter trays. So each night after I’ve read the newspaper I sit at the kitchen counter and cut up my paper and save it till I’m next at the SPCA. This is a job I’d ordinarily do during my time at the SPCA so I figure if I’ve done it before hand I get to spend more time loving on them all. Who could abandon a gorgeous creature like "Sylvia"? I am pleased to report that she didn't stay with us long and went to a good home.


Ok - so here's my recipe and for a change it is a completely original creation which evolved because I made a tomato and lentil soup that tasted far too sharp. I knew that a touch of sugar would take the edge off the sharpness but I felt that it needed something more. A pureed pumpkin base seemed an obvious choice and my instincts proved correct because the resulting combination was delicious and the pumpkin gave the soup a velvety base that contrasted nicely with the chunky bits. I’ve since made this soup 3 times and each time it has been a little different depending on the pumpkin (crown is a tad more watery than buttercup) and the seasonings and the quantities of other vegetables. Also, I’m truly my mother’s daughter and can’t resist putting a little something extra in my soups – most recently some leftover French onion soup. That batch was without a doubt the best.

Pumpkin, Tomato and Lentil Soup
Serves approx 8

Ingredients
Pumpkin – about half a butternut or big chunk of crown
Onion ½ - 1 depending on your preference
Garlic 2-3 cloves
Carrot 1
Celery 1-2 stalks
Green pepper ½
Canned diced tomatoes in juice 1-2 cans – Moroccan or Indian spiced are nice
Lentils - organic of course! I used canned lentils because I had trouble sourcing dry lentils in the supermarket and I didn’t think that soup was a good use of my box of lentils de puy!


Method
Saute very finely diced (really teeny tiny – about the size of a lentil) vegetables in a little oil or butter. Up to you what you put in - it might depend on what needs using up in your fridge!
Set aside
Peel and dice the pumpkin and just cover with water and cook until the pumpkin is tender.
Drain the cooking water but save it
Mash the pumpkin
In a large pot add the sautéed veges and pumpkin plus as much pumpkin cooking liquid to get the consistency you like. It’s your soup so if you want to stand your spoon up in it that’s fine with me.
Add the canned tomatoes
Add the drained lentils
Adjust seasonings eg salt and pepper, cumin, garlic salt – whatever you fancy.
Add a teaspoon of sugar if tastes too sharp
This freezes really well.