Sammy's Dot

Tiramisu: I love the name. According to one source, it means “pick me up”; I don’t speak Italian, but it sounds plausible to my French-conditioned ears. It’s also exactly what one needs after a good meal: a sweet pick-me-up to carry on with the evening’s conversation. I love the idea of it, too: soft, spongy cookies and coffee, cocoa, and delicious mascarpone beaten with pastry cream. Oddly, though, I’ve rarely eaten tiramisu; I remember having it for dessert when I was in Nice, but it wasn’t terribly memorable, and as much as I love to bake, I generally prefer pies and cakes and cookies to a complex composed dessert. However, joining the Daring Bakers is all about trying new things, and so:

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

The challenge required me to make my own savoiardi (ladyfingers) and my own mascarpone, which was fun. I’m no stranger to baking cookies but the technique for savoiardi was definitely outside of my experience (and clearly I need more practice with the method). I’ve also made paneer, and the method for making mascarpone is similar but not quite the same; it was interesting to compare the two. Making the tiramisu was a good way to get out of a baking rut that I didn’t really realize I was in: although I’ve got some experience with each individual part, except the zabaglione, I’ve never made anything that incorporated many different elements the way tiramisu does.

I definitely need to play around some more, though. My savoiardi were tasty, but I think I must have deflated the batter somehow, because instead of the predicted 36 cookies, I had 15, which wasn’t really enough. I also experimented a bit with the flavours, using amaretto as the liqueur instead of marsala, which I didn’t have. I really love the idea of the fruit flavours some of the other Daring Bakers tried, and if I make  it again I think I’ll head in this direction, because sadly, I didn’t love my execution of tiramisu. It wasn’t that it was bad, but it didn’t really come together as more than the sum of its parts. read more »

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.

***

I have to begin with a confession. I think this may cost me some of my Canadian cred – even more than the time I blithely said that the animal on our quarter is a moose.

I don’t particularly like Nanaimo bars.

I do love the idea of them: graham cracker crusts (with nuts and coconut, no less!) are yummy, custard is always good, and chocolate is chocolate and nothing else need be said. But put them all together, and for some reason we Canadians tend to produce something so sweet it makes my teeth ache.

I’ve made them twice before, the second time just this last December, while visiting R in Belfast; we brought them to a potluck dinner his co-workers put on, as they asked us to bring something Canadian. It took a good chunk of our last day before coming back to Toronto to track down the ingredients. We never did find graham crackers (though plain digestive biscuits turned out to be more or less indistinguishable), and had to go to five – FIVE! – grocery stores before we found unsalted butter. I was pretty pleased that we managed to make anything at all, given the under-equipped kitchen we had access to, but they turned out like ordinary Nanaimo bars – painfully sweet. I’m not sure R’s colleagues were impressed. (Probably a good thing we didn’t make poutine!) It convinced me that if I made Nanaimo bars again, I was going to do something different.

Fortunately, a few days later I signed up for the Daring Bakers, and the opportunity presented itself. read more »