French Toast with Chocolate Babka

So with all the leftover chocolate babka I had I needed to do something with it. It won't do as breadcrumbs or croutons but perhaps it would make a very nice french toast, I had thought. Well it turned out quite good and the bit of chocolate made it dessert-like.

French Toast (using Chocolate Babka)
Serves 2

4 slices chocolate babka, sliced thickly (you can also use brioche or challah; you can also stale the bread the night before if your bread was freshly made)
3/4-1 cup whole milk (you can use cream or half-and-half but not non-fat or low-fat milk :P)
2 eggs
1/4 cup vanilla sugar (or regular granulated sugar)
1 tsp vanilla extract (depending upon your taste)
2 tbsp butter, for frying

In a big glass measuring cup, pour in your milk and add in the eggs. Whisk until well-combined (your liquid should be quite yellow and not too white) and then add in your sugar and vanilla extract. Pour the custard into a shallow pie plate.

Soak your bread slices in the custard for about 30 seconds on each side.

Heat a large skillet on medium and melt your butter in it. Fry each side of the bread slices until golden brown, about 2 minutes per side.

Enjoy with a side of whipped cream and a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

French Bread: Attempt #1

So I attempted my first batch of French Bread yesterday with some success. They came out golden with the characteristic crunchy crust but the taste was a bit on the salty side. The recipe is a Julia Child one and goes as follows:

3 1/2 cups flour
1 package active dry yeast
2 1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups tepid water

I guess bakers normally use sea salt or kosher salt but I thought since it was only 2 teaspoons and she didn't specify kosher salt that I could use just normal table salt. I'm still investigating into this but I've looked at Chris Kimball's recipe for European bread (from Cook's Bible) and his proportions are just about the same. In fact, he calls for 1 tablespoon of kosher salt and 2 teaspoons of table salt if you don't have kosher.

The only other factor that I can think of is that I used King Arthur's Select Artisan Organic All Purpose Flour that has a protein level of 11.3%. Its supposed to be ideal for european breads which use an all-purpose flour lower in protein content than normal american all-purpose flour. If anyone has input on this problem, please let me know. I'll make another batch of the bread possibly tomorrow with kosher salt.

I also bought Chicago Metallic's French Bread pans for baking the bread and they worked wonderfully. The perforated bottoms gave it a real professional look.

Peanut Butter Cups

I bought a new baking book from the used bookstore today entitled Dessert Circus by Jacques Torres. I've actually had my eye on the book for several weeks now having first seen it at Border's Books. It isn't new (1998) and is actually based upon the Pbs show by the same name. Most of the desserts are pretty fanciful ranging from meringue snowman to chocolate sculptures. Its a good challenge I think but sometimes when I look at the pictures I wonder, "How the heck would you eat that?" :)

Anyways, on to the peanut butter cups which come from this same book. It was my first time tempering chocolate and I am so glad that Jacques Torres believes in tempering chocolate by microwave (which is the easiest by far) instead of the traditional tabliering which involves heating the chocolate and cooling it on a marble slab (too much work and too much mess!) I used 3-inch fluted nonstick tartlet pans to make the chocolate cups and they came out quite easily. This isn't a very "sweet" dessert so much as it is "rich" (very rich I might add). I actually did not make a full recipe as I did use smaller tarlet pans than he had recommended and I still had batter left over. I also omitted the praline paste (since I had none) and increased the peanut butter to 1 cup. More variations at the end of the recipe.

Peanut Butter Cups

(from Dessert Circus by Jacques Torres)

For the chocolate cups:
10.5 ounces Bittersweet chocolate, tempered

For the filling:
5.2 ounces Bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup praline paste

Prepare the chocolate cups: Place a wire rack over a baking sheet and set aside. Use 4-inch fluted nonstick tartlet pans to make the chocolate cups, but you can use any small nonstick tartlet pan you like. Make sure the pans are clean and dry before you begin.

Fill each tartlet pan with tempered chocolate. Make sure the chocolate covers the sides of the pan. Then hold the pan upside down over the bowl of tempered chocolate and allow the excess chocolate to drip back into the bowl. Wipe the top edge of the pan against the rim of the bowl to clean off the edge. Place the chocolate-coated pans upside down on the wire rack. This will allow any remaining chocolate to drain. Wait until the chocolate begins to set, 4 to 5 minutes, then use a paring knife to scrape the edge of the pans clean again to give the finished cup a nice straight edge and to make it easier to unmold the chocolate cups.

Place the tartlet pans right side up in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. This will cause the chocolate to retract from the sides, making it easier to remove the cups. You should be able to invert each pan and have the chocolate shell fall into your hand. If not, rest your thumbs on the outside of the pan and place your first two fingers on the inside of the cup. Gently begin to life the chocolate from the pan. Do not press or pull too hard, or you will break the chocolate. If you've used a deeper pan, you may need to apply this lifting pressure all around the inside to loosen the chocolate from the pan. Set the chocolate cups aside on a baking sheet until ready to be filled.

Prepare the filling: Melt the chocolate either in the microwave or in a double-boiler setup. Make sure the chocolate doesn't burn and once melted stir until smooth and set aside until cool to the touch but not so cold that is begins to harden and set.

Combine the peanut butter and praline paste in a medium-size mixing bowl. Add the cooled chocolate and whisk together. This mixture will be stiff and begin to set quickly, so whisk vigorously and thoroughly to combine.

Place the peanut butter mixture in a pastry bag with a large opening (no tip). Fill each chocolate cup to about 1/8 inch from the top. Very lightly tap the filled cups against the work surface to remove any air bubbles. Let the peanut butter cups set at room temperature for about 1 hour, then serve. If you are in a hurry, you can place the peanut butter cups in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. They can also be frozen for two weeks if well wrapped in plastic wrap. Thaw at room temperature before serving.

Variation: If you prefer, omit the praline paste. In that instance, use 2 cups of peanut butter and 5.5 ounces of chocolate. To make an even lighter dessert, add about 1 cup of Rice Krispies to the filling. Also try garnishing the dessert with whipped cream and fresh peanuts.

Christmas Cakathon

Happy Belated Christmas everyone. :) I was kind of dead yesterday after all the baking and cooking I had to do so here goes the 'belated' Christmas baking post. I'm eager to see what everyone else had made too. :)

Cake #1: Buche de Noel (Yule Log Cake)

I was quite pleased with how this turned out. I didn't have time to make the meringue mushrooms but all was well anyways. I used a Cook's Illustrated recipe that included a rich, dark chocolate sponge cake with an espresso mascarpone filling. The filling was most especially delicious and although I had thought about substituting the mascarpone with cream cheese I am glad I hadn't. The mascarpone lended a creamy velvety texture to the filling without the tangy 'cheesy' taste. I did have a bit of a problem rolling the cake as it immediately started cracking but that was fixed with extra ganache. I think I may have overbeaten the egg whites again (those darn egg whites!)

Cake #2: Creme Brulee (actually not a cake)


I decided to accompany this creme brulee with the chocolate cloud cake (see below) for the Christmas Eve party at my dad's house. One of his good friends is celiac (meaning he can't have any wheat) so I always find it a fun challenge to bring unique non-flour desserts when he is there. For this creme brulee, I used Nigella's recipe from Nigella Bites. I was originally going to use Cooks Illustrated but it was way too much for only 5 people so I paired down with Nigella's recipe. Plus, Nigella's is cooked on the stovetop which I thought would be much better than setting up the water bath for an creme brulee oven bake. However, the first time I started making this my custard split and I did see it coming but did not (although highly recommended by both recipes) keep cold water nearby to stop the cooking. So I had to make it a second time (and kept a roasting pan full of ice and cold water) and cooked it over low heat making it nearly 15 minutes before it had thickened enough to my liking. And it did set nicely after it had chilled with a very smooth vanilla taste. It was a lot of fun torching the sugar on top but it did take some practice. In fact, mine ended up being the only one that was torched properly. Oh well, everyone still thought it to be quite good.

Cake #3: Chocolate Cloud Cake ** no picture unfortunately :( **

This was the accompanying flourless chocolate cake that I made for Christmas Eve and boy am I glad that I used the best chocolate I had (Green & Blacks) because that's all you could taste with this cake: a rich, truffle-like with a lightly sweetened cloud of whip cream to just mildly counter the chocolate rush that hits your mouth when you take a bite. Of course, this was out of Nigella Bites (although this particular one is not her's) and because of that turned out to be absolutely delicious. :)

Cake #4: Snowman Cake


Sorry for the lack of better quality pictures (these were taken with my boyfriend's cell phone camera). This is my fourth year in keeping up with the snowman cake tradition so this year I decided upon buying the 3-d snowman mold from Williams & Sonoma. Well, I'm not sure I would do it again because the cake was a little hard to bake in the mold. Because the mold has various depths and widths to accommodate the shape and outline of the snowman, the cake was overcooked in the shallow ends and a bit underbaked in the more deeper ends. Then when I tried to frost it the two parts of him kept coming apart but I might have remedied that by letting it set for a bit before standing him up. Anyways, here is a picture of last years snowman and this years snowman.