Dessert, the Sweet Spot

[joethefoodie]

Rhubarb, strawberries, and a lonely peach made it into yesterday's crisp. Served with a dollop of crème frâiche atop. Nice and bracingly tart.

[StephanieL]

N's birthday is tomorrow, so I spent several hours on my day off today making the Dolester Miles' Coconut-Pecan Cake.  This is not for the novice baker; the recipe assumes that you know how to toast coconut, make a crumb coating for frosting, etc.  The parts I tasted are quite nice; I did have a couple of hiccups, though:

• I hadn't realized there's a different between cream of coconut and coconut cream; the recipe calls for the former and I bought the latter.  I was wondering why the coconut flavor in the filling wasn't as strong as I'd expected.  It does mean things are less sweet, which isn't bad.
• We had a can of sweetened condensed milk for a long time (like a couple of years at least), but since it wasn't past the expiration date I thought it'd be fine.  Well, it had turned into dulce de leche and I had no time to buy another can, but it wasn't rancid or spoiled so I used it.  However, it made the filling thicker and thus less spreadable (yes, I should have thinned it out with milk....oh well).

[Evelyn]

I am a frequent guest at HB&G. I have my fingers crossed Frank will guide her through a cookbook. Her desserts are so good.

[StephanieL]

Cake picture.

[Sneakeater]

THAT looks successful!

[bloviatrix]

Nowhere near as impressive as Stephanie's cake but the boy and I made Tahina Blondies. My job is prepping the mise and then he does the rest.

[voyager]

That's a stunning cake, Stephanie.   

[Lippy]

A fabulous looking, and, I'm sure, TASTING cake, Steph!

[StephanieL]

Thank you all!  It tastes really good, and I feel like I've picked up a bunch of new skills.

[StephanieL]

Made this recipe today: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021206-joanne-changs-maple-blueberry-scones. No pictures because they're not as pretty as the cake I made last week.  I did make them about half the recommended size, because I don't really like big pastries, and I think they ended up too flat.  They taste nice, and having more WW flour than regular flour gives them an nuttiness not normally found in scones.

Meanwhile, N made English muffins and banana-chocolate chip bread from the sourdough discard.

[joethefoodie]

Before.

After. Strawberry, blueberry and peach.

The next day when I was taking it out of the fridge, I dropped it on the floor; the cazuela broke into many pieces, I cursed, and thankfully we'd eaten some the night before. New cazuelas ordered.

[StephanieL]

Maida Heatter's Banana Rocks, primarily for the childhood nostalgia factor.  I didn't have as many nuts as I thought I did and wasn't in a position to get more right then, so the cookies are skewing a little sweet thanks to the 4 different types of fruit (raisins, prunes, dates, and mashed ripe banana).

[bloviatrix]

I made a sour cherry nectarine clafouti type dessert. Crazy recipe that called for 2 sticks of brown butter. But it's so good - a little on the rich side. I think buttermilk ice cream would be the perfect accompaniment. 

[StephanieL]

We finally had people over for dinner, so I broke out a fruit crisp recipe I clipped from the paper that I've been meaning to try for ages. It uses peaches/nectarines, blueberries, and raspberries (I used a combo of raspberries and blackberries), which you toss with brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour (to prevent excess liquid), and salt.  The topping contains oats, flour, and fine cornmeal, plus cinnamon and brown sugar and 8 ounces (that's 2 sticks) of butter.  Then, you gild the lily with a warm cinnamon cream sauce that has in it a full pint of heavy cream (2 cups) and another stick of butter.

Between what we all ate and what we sent the guests home with, I'm very glad only a relatively small amount of this caloric concoction is still in our fridge.

[StephanieL]

As a follow-up, I don't think I fully incorporated the butter into the cream when I was making the sauce, because the butter rose to the top and solidified like animal fat in soups/stews.  So I skimmed off that layer into a separate jar, and we now have vanilla-cinnamon butter to spread on toast.