Daring Bakers: My 2nd challenge. Kim: 2, The Kitchen: 1/2

This month's challenge was tuiles. I'll admit yet again I was intimated by the task ahead of me. The batter seemed reasonable- easily accessible ingredients, basic instructions. However what you were supposed to do with the batter presented the biggest challenge. Not only did the batter have to be spread thinly with in the confines of a stencil, but the delicately baked tuiles had to be shaped quickly out of the oven.
Naturally I employed the help of my boyfriend to cut stencils out of cardboard while I labored away on the batter. We started ambitiously, using a butterfly stencil, antennae and all but quickly switched to circle stencil when all my antennae broke off. I quickly took the circles off the silpat mat and shaped into muffin cups. I filled the cups with a vanilla bean pastry cream and topped the cream with raspberries, blueberries, fresh currants and mint. I brought the finished filled tuiles to share at work.


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.

Daring Bakers and My First Challenge, Kim: 1, The Kitchen :0

My first month's challenge was hosted by Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater (http://eggbeater.typepad.com/) with the assistance of Alex of Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo and Jenny of Foray into Food. The recipe was by Shuna Fish Lydon and her recipe can be found at http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2006 … he-recipe/. Many other versions of this cake can be found on the Daring Baker's blog roll.
I must say that this recipe came a warning for the carmel syrup which left me feeling rather intimidated. But other then the small speckles of hardened carmel all over my kitchen it went pretty well.

The carmel starts off innocently enough but soon...


Anyways my baking talents are more then lacking but I worked hard to follow this recipe exactly and to measure everything, the cake originally was supposed to be enjoyed by my coworkers but I got scared I was going to feed them something horrible so I saved it for Thanksgiving and full blown criticism of my friends. Feel free to ridicule and mock my cake decorating style but I think its pretty damn good for my first attempt at doing more then just slapping frosting on. So here it is ready and awaiting.


I ended up cutting the cake in half and putting in fresh strawberries. This cake almost didn't "pan" out because my spring-form cake pan seemed to have left the house. So I cooked the cake in a glass pyrex which worked out pretty well. All in all I am very pleased with the way this challenge went and the taste testers enjoyed this challenge as well.