The Daring Bakers: Panna Cotta and Florentine Cookies

vanilla panna cotta and Florentine cookies

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

All the recipes are here.

Thanks MissMallory for coming up with this delightful challenge. I love having the panna cotta and Florentine cookies together, the contrasting textures of smooth, creamy, and crunchy are just perfect. I made the vanilla panna cotta and topped it with slightly bitter orange gelée, orange slices, and a drizzle of caramel sauce. For the Florentine cookies, I made some into milk chocolate filled sandwiches, drizzled some with chocolate, and rolled a few into cigar shape which is not an easy thing to do because they set pretty quickly. I bake 2 at a time in the toaster oven and use a small offset spatula to lift and guide the still warm and very fragile cookies onto the handle of a wooden spoon resting across the cookie sheet over the 2 cookies.

vanilla panna cotta with a layer of blood orange gelée

milk chocolate filled Florentine cookie sandwixhes

drizzled with milk chocolate

I use a one-tablespoon cookie/ice cream scoop for even-sized cookies

And I couldn't resist making a panna cotta with my favorite Nutella. I crushed the cookies that broke and scattered them on the plate. The crumbs add a crunch to the creamy panna cotta.

Nutella Panna Cotta, rolled Florentine cookie and crumbs, a sliver of hazelnut brittle

Nutella Panna Cotta
1½ teaspoons unflavored gelatin powder
water
1 ounce finely chopped bittersweet chocolate
1 cup Nutella
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1½ cups heavy cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk

• In a medium bowl, whisk gelatin with 4 tablespoons cold water.
  
• Place chopped chocolate in another medium bowl.
  
• In a large bowl, combine Nutella and salt.
• In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring cream to a boil. Pour half the cream over gelatin mixture and whisk gently to combine; stir in vanilla. Pour remaining cream over chopped chocolate; whisk until smooth. Combine the two mixtures and whisk well.
• Pour a third of the gelatin-chocolate mixture over Nutella; beat using an electric mixer on low speed until a smooth paste forms. Pour in remaining mixture and milk; beat until fully combined.
• Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into six lightly oiled ramekins. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator until set, about six hours or overnight.
  

The Daring Bakers: Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet

white chocolate mousse cake with raspberry

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe from the blog, accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremet dessert.

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Wow! I've never made a cake as elaborate and labor intensive as this one. It took me almost half a day to prepare, bake, and assemble this easy-on-the-eyes and delicious dessert. Thank you Astheroshe for a choosing an exceptional challenge. I enjoyed every minute I spent making and every bite of this wonderful cake.

I followed the recipes for biscuit joconde and decor paste without any changes, except I only made half a recipe of decor paste. I added 1 whole tube, about 1½ tablespoons, of gel food dye to the decor paste to achieve the intense red color. I used a metal pastry comb to create the pattern on the decor paste which had to be frozen to prevent it from leaking into the biscuit joconde batter. Since my freezer is not big enough for the size of a half-sheet pan, I left it outside (25°F) until the decor paste firmed up.

I placed the silpat inside the pan before spreading the joconde batter evenly on top of the frozen decor paste all the way to cover the sheet pan. It took just 7 minutes to bake the cake which was immediately flipped onto a parchment paper. 1½-inch thick strips were cut to fit an 8-inch round springform pan (bottom removed and flipped) lined with parchment paper. Parchment paper is not the best thing to use for this kind of dessert because it bends and creates creases on the mousse. I would use an acetate sheet next time I make the cake. I made a mistake and did not fill the bottom with enough mousse before putting the raspberry insert and added too much on top by about half an inch; and the raspberry gelée should be thinner. Well, next time I'll try to do better, I hope. It takes a lot of patience to build the entrement cake dessert but I will definitely be making it again. Yes, definitely.

The inspiration for the design and white chocolate mousse and raspberry combo filling comes from my cookbook ADVANCED BREAD AND PASTRY by Michel Suas. The mousse is light as feather, not too sweet, super delicious, and perfect with raspberry.

White Chocolate Mousse
adapted from ADVANCED BREAD AND PASTRY by Michel Suas
1 envelop unflavored gelatin
3 tablespoons cold water
25 ounces heavy cream
16 ounces white chocolate
8 ounces milk
4 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 egg yolks

• Sprinkle gelatin on water to soften; set aside. Melt chocolate, set aside. Whip heavy cream to soft peaks, set aside.
  
• Make a crème Anglaise with milk, vanilla, sugar, and egg yolks. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl, add the gelatin and stir until well combined. Add the melted chocolate and stir until emulsified. When the mixture has cooled to 80°F, fold in the whipped cream.

The Daring Bakers: Stollen

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

Stollen is one of the regular Christmas goodies that we have in our house year after year for more than 20 years. This is the second year I have not bought them from the store since discovering homebaked is much much better.

For this challenge, we were given a choice of shaping it into a wreath. I baked a small batch of stollen a few days before the challenge was announced and they have been shaped into the usual rectangular cakes. I wanted to try this recipe and the wreath shape so I baked just half of the recipe. To view the complete recipe and instructions click here. A few changes I made: I used 2 tablespoons of sugar instead of half a cup, omitted the cinnamon and orange and lemon extracts, used almond flour instead of flaked, and added 1 more cup of dried fruits and candied peels. These are the fruits I used: golden and dark raisins, dried cranberries, dried tart cherries, and candied citron, lemon, and orange peels. I also used vanilla infused powdered sugar for the coating because I love the extra vanilla flavor. The fruit cake is very yummy and I can't wait for it to age for 1 week which is how I like stollen. And I always leave some slices on the kitchen counter for weeks until they are very very dry and crunchy, sort of like biscotti without baking them a second time. The crunchy stollen slices are very good for dunking on my morning coffee.

These are the ones I made November 29, 2010 and last year both using Peter Reinhart's recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

2010 Christmas stollen

2009 Christmas stollen