Pate choux.

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.

I've never worked with pate choux before (at least not that I can remember) and I've never had a reason to as no one in my family likes eclairs, cream puffs, etc. but it was the May 24 long weekend and I had a barbecue to go to and my friends eat anything.

I made my pate choux and creme a day in advance which worked very well time-wise. My choux came out beautifully and I was quite proud (things did get a little hairy as I didn't have a non-stick pan to judge the dough's humidity). The creme was very easy to make and work with. I used caramel glaze for my piece montee. Everything was fine until I was almost all the way through and I burned myself on the caramel causing me to flinch, hit my piece, and kill 3/4 of what I had done. By the time I had rearranged everything, the caramel I had already applied had cooled and broken off and the stuff still left in the pot had cooled to the point where it was just ridiculous to try and put it all together.

Basically I had no time as I was already late for the party to make more sauce, so I did what I could and monteed that sucker, got it in the car, and my friends rejoiced. It may look ugly, but it tasted goood. I can't wait for the next DB challenge!

It's like autumn in your mouth in the spring.

It was my friend's birthday on Mother's Day, but since we all have mothers he decided to celebrate a week later with a lovely barbecue. Since I am the baker of us all and that I wouldn't be eating the meat that would be provided, I decided to bring a dessert. I had some leftover pumpkin puree from making cinnamon buns and my friend loves pumpkin pie, but I knew he had pie the previous week . I also know my friends love cheesecake as they bought me one for my birthday even though I don't eat sweet stuff just so they could eat it.

I decided upon pumpkin cheesecake swirl brownies, the recipe for which I found on Perry's Plate. It worked out fairly well although the brownie batter was a bit thick, so swirling wasn't so swirly, but the brownies were soo good. The whole plate was devoured rather quickly. They're even better on the second or third day as the pumpkin cheesecake makes the lower brownie turn almost fudgy.

There's another close-up photo of these things on my flickr account which also shows the colour and interior a bit better (minus the blurry bits because apparently I can't see what I'm doing with the digital. One day...).