Daring Baker's Challenge: Caramel Milk Chocolate tart

Reading the recipe title this month I was happy! I adore caramel and when I "have" to eat chocolate I prefer milk chocolate; this was so going to be my tart. Original recipe comes from Eric Kayser's Sweet & Savory Tarts. Second reading and visualizing how the tart was going to look had me thinking: Mars bar in tart shape.

Chiching! Program break for a little explanation here: our European Mars bar is known in the US as Milky Way, whereas our Milky Way is your 3 Musketeers, our 3 Musketeers is discontinued long ago and has made a reappearance under the name Curly Wurly which is your Marathon. Your Mars bar? Doesn't exist here... or might be disguised as a Snickers bar with peanuts not almonds. Confused yet? Moohahaha (Evidence can be found here and here) Why all this? Because the good founders of Mars once divided the world in two after a little argument (dad and son didn't get along together for a moment).... That's global thinking avant la lettre folks! Mars bar was invented in the UK, based on the US Milky Way. At one point of time the companies were merged again and there we were, millions of marketing money had gone into branding.... resulting in status quo.
Chiching! End of break, back to the program on hand.

{Gosh! When I digress, I digress good 'n plenty! We were discussing Daring Baker's August Challenge. Milk Chocolate Caramel tart.} OK.

I'll leave the recipe and directions to our wonderful hosts this month: Veronica at Veronica's Testkitchen and Patricia at Technicolor Kitchen and just mention the ingredients here so you'll know what was going on.

Ingredients shortbread dough:
1 cup (250g ) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (150 g) confectioners’ sugar
½ cup (50 g) ground hazelnuts
2 level teaspoons (5 g) ground cinnamon (optional, omitted entirely forewarned by fellow DB's)
2 eggs
4 ½ cups (400 g) cake flour
2 ½ teaspoons (10 g) baking powder
1 ½ tablespoons (10 g) cocoa powder (used our Dutch Droste cocao)
Let us go to the bottom of this and introduce you to another term: P&P as in Patch and Push. I expected the dough to firm up by the rest in the fridge, instead it soaked up every available moisture and came out wet, wet, wet.
I couldn't roll this dough even if I wanted to, and believe me, I wanted it bad! Wasn't going to work. I tried rolling between plastic sheets, rolling between paper, flouring.... Hence the term P&P 'coz that's what I did. Even wetted my hands to will it into the waiting pan! No crimping the edges. Crimping edges, did she say crimping edges? What the f** was she thinking?

Blind baked the shortbread layer, and it came out rather moon landscape-ish, the bottom had risen a bit but not alarmingly so and since it was going to be covered by a caramel layer I wasn't worried. I did use some words however. Nasty words.

Ingredients caramel layer:
1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
1 cup (250 g) heavy cream (30-40% butterfat) or crème fraiche (used our regular whipping cream)
¼ cup (50 g) butter
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
2 ½ tablespoons (15 g) flour
Caramel was next. Some debate going on using wet vs dry method, I used dry as I almost always do and all went well. Of course when adding the cream to the caramel the whole pan protested loudly to the point of exploding and the melted sugar crumbled and hardened again, no worries there. Make sure you stand away from the pan and let the low heat do it's work and stir stir stir! The cream will heat up and melt the sugar again, lumps disappear and you'll be rewarded by a creamy caramel. Then add butter, I did this off the heat, the remaining temperature will melt the butter nicely in the caramel. Combining the eggs and yolk with the flour was easy, to mix it into the still hot caramel was, let's say, risqué..... First I poured a little stream of caramel into the egg mixture, all the while whisking like crazy, (in Dutch it's called: "making family" in English?) exhale, no scrambled eggs!! Safe to stir egg mixture in the caramel then, resulting in a delicious scrumptious sauce.
Take a spoon and eat. Sorry, slip of the fingers.

Instead after having a spoon or two, three maybe, slap the DH hands, have another spoon, pour in the waiting blind baked crust(s), bake for another scant 15 minutes and let cool.

Ingredients milk chocolate mousse:
1 ¼ cups (300 g) whipping cream
½ lb (250 g) milk chocolate (used Callebaut milk chocolate chips)
Meanwhile melt chocolate in another pan (low low low heat or bain Marie but please make sure there is not a drop of water spilling in the pan or you will be punished with grainy chocolate mush) and whip some more cream to peaks (yes, even more cream). Now here comes a tricky part, we needed to create chocolate mousse but between chocolate being warm and cream being whipped how to proceed? I decided to offer some of the cream to make a "family" again and stir, to prevent to shock the chocolate and deflate the cream. Then I folded one into the other, loosing some of the air in the process but not all.

This is where I decided to allow some freewheeling. I mean, there was a lot of caramel sauce and a lot of chocolate mousse and just this one shallow tart pan to fill. I feared overflowing so somewhere in between the above mentioned I fixed (P&P) another shortbread crust. (The amount of dough was said to be enough to make three shells) Divided caramel between the two, let cool for a bit and tried to pipe the mousse.

No way! Too soft to pipe, too eager to finish, not patient enough to let the mousse cool sufficiently, dreading the moment where the mousse would be too stiff to pipe at all. So I smoothed out my piping and decided to comb instead.

Which resulted in a nice Japanese Garden.

Tranquility in chocolate.

Verdict: 16 people ate the cakes, all but two were positive and liked it. The one? That was me, but I believe you immediately when you say I was biased. You know, I tried and sampled all the components in their not-assembled state and I expected the combined end product to exceed the individual parts of the sum. Like 1+1+1 = 4

I don't think it did. Somewhere between crust and layers some texture was missed. May be the crust too soft to bring out the smooth layers? I cannot say. All I can say is: make that caramel!!
Oh and check out my fellow Daring Bakers on this blogroll! Can't wait to see their stories.

Ben mijn pit kwijt!

(A little rant just in Dutch this time, about my dorkyness, losing something (my sanity?) and the frantic search that followed.)

Hoe krijg ik het voor elkaar! Ik bedoel maar, pit raak je toch niet zo maar kwijt? Mijn hele leven al in het bezit geweest van een behoorlijke portie pit, maar vorige week was het toch echt even weg. Niet ongerust worden hoor, geen last van een dipje, maar "gewoon" last van een verdwenen pit van een gasfornuis. Wilde een aanvang maken met de avond maaltijd, draai me naar het gasfornuis en kijk recht in een gapend gat....

Dan denk je eerst nog: okee, bij het schoonmaken verschoven, dan ligt dat ding een stukje verderop op de plaat. Niet dus. Dan dwaalt je oog iets verder weg, hoe ver kan zo'n ding rollen tenslotte.... Ook niet.

Niet op het aanrecht.
Niet in de la onder de kookplaat.
Niet in de la rechts.
Niet in de la links.
Al helemaal niet op de grond.
Geen pit.

Met het schoonmaakdoekje en al bij de wasmachine terechtgekomen misschien? Op mijn kop de wasmachine leeggehaald. Geen pit. Kan ook eigenlijk niet want ik gooi mijn doekjes na gebruik met een fikse zwaai de bijkeuken in, vóór de wasmachine. Ik stel me zo voor dat je het wel hoort als daar een pit in zit.

Echtgenoot? Echtgenoot! Die heeft vast vanmorgen vroeg gedacht: kom, laat ik eens even die ene pit in een bakje schoonmaak zetten, lekker inweken.... (Dûh, dacht het niet). Maar goed, toch gebeld...
Geen pit. Wel gelachen.

Wat nu? Word zo langzamerhand behoorlijk giechelig want dit kán gewoon niet. Nou dan bel je gewoon je vader. Pappaaaa help, ben mijn pit kwijt! Een aantal verstandige suggesties later; Geen pit. Wel gelachen.

Vader geeft telefoon over naar mijn moeder. Die heeft wel pit maar niet de mijne, wel weer andere verstandige suggesties. Afijn, op mijn kop in de groentebak gehangen, de vuilniszak nagekeken...
Geen pit. Wederom wel gelachen.

Tja, en toen begonnen er zich kleine wolkjes hoop te vormen...oei, geen pit. Moet ik natuurlijk een nieuwe kookplaat...jippie!! SStttt, wel gepast serieus blijven natuurlijk. Nieuwe kookplaat Jippieeee! Geen pit. Sjonge da's nou ook jammer... Kun je niet goed koken. Moet je een nieuwe kookplaat. Vervelend. Wat? Pitten los bijkopen? Nee joh, die van mij niet.

Ik ben namelijk de niet zo trotse bezitter van een tamelijk oud rottig 4-pits gasfornuis dat
A) te dicht op de achterwand ingebouwd is
B) geen afzuigkap heeft
C) al lang niet meer zelf ontstekend is
D) geen 2 laat staan 3 grote pannen kan hebben.

Plannen voor avondeten verlaten en de frituurpan aangezet voor kroketjes. Kroket met brood. Prima maaltijd. Kinders aan de dis. Ik ga even mijn brood vormen. Haal de digitale kernthermometer uit mijn deeg; deksel van de kom, pak de thermometer op. Verrek wat is dat ding zwaar..... Ik kijk, kijk nog een keer....
En wat zit daar vastgeplakt aan het minieme magneetje van de thermometer?

Juist ja.
MIJN PIT!
Sh**!

Geloof me, ik heb het nadien een aantal keren geprobeerd na te doen....je krijgt het bijna niet bewust voor elkaar. Kennelijk heb ik om de voeler in het deeg te steken de thermometer op mijn gasfornuis gelegd. (Klik! pit op magneet) Daarna deksel op de kom, thermometer op de deksel en op het plankje bij het gasfornuis gezet. De hele middag. Met pit en al.

Geen nieuwe kookplaat.
Dat was toch wel een eh.. pittige teleurstelling. Wel gelachen.

7 random things about me...

Who me? Why me? Lovely Lis at La Mia Cucina idea of fun. Yeah right, thanks Hon! No, just kidding, I felt flattered until I started writing; gosh this might prove harder than I thought. I don't need to explain what this meme is about, it's been doing the rounds for quite some time now. Without further ado, this is what I came up with:

1.) I am afraid of dogs. That is all dogs. In fact anything on four legs that says woof gives me the shudders. Not only that I've been known to do irrational things to avoid them (like crossing highways, making detours, not ever walk in the forest). And yet, we're debating on having a dog ourselves. I think that is the only way to get rid of this fear. We're still debating....

2.) Getting my hands dirty? No way, not me! When I was a little baby in diapers my Mom used to put me on the lawn just to have a laugh, in an instant my feet went up, my hands in the air so that just my diaper would touch that darned grass and I cried.... Then there was kindergarten and the lovely miss would make "papier maché" to let us kids play and be creative. She would spent half of the morning convincing me to stick my hands in that ugly goo...

And I am a baker. Now you can see where the "daring" in the Daring Baker part comes in. To this day I still take a deep breath before plunging my hand in something that has to become dough. I use whatever is available (spoon, forks, kids) just to stall the moment and make sure it is somewhat cohesive before I get my hands in. Love my DeLonghi stand mixer!

3.) One of my childhood fantasies: After we visited the Bijenkorf (department store) with it's -at least in my point of view then- huge book/magazine department I dreamed of getting myself locked in at night, grab all the books and magazines I could lay my hands on and snuggle in a large armchair with a bag of potato chips and read read read.....

4.) I had a crush on Eric Heiden for a long long time....... a very long time.... No I am not blushing.

5.) I think they invented the gps route planner just for me. (So why don't I have one?) I am notorious in not finding my way...never ever. Except in foreign countries...I go by feel instinct/map and that seems to work. Just don't understand those Dutch road signs, I mean you leave Amsterdam (you're pretty sure you just left the cities boundaries and that Amsterdam is still there where you left it, behind your back, I mean they don't move entire cities just to pester me right? Right?) and pop! there it is; a road sign that says: "Amsterdam 20 km straight ahead". I mean: Dûh!

{By the way: did you know they named the lady voice in the first ever available route planner in Holland "Karen"? Beats me!}

6.) When I was a little girl I wanted to be either a librarian or a cashier at a toy store. Not because of the toys but I liked the way these women effortlessly wrapped presents. I wanted to be like that! I got to be a Management Assistant and a Mum. That's close, right?

(pic taken from here)
7.) I'm a sloppy perfectionist with an errate fear of failing. I will never be good enough to actually do something with it. (Erased the following 4 times already mooohaha). I'm the one that looses weight before joining Weight Watchers, however, I will never join Weight Watchers of course, suppose I fail... the kid that never joined skating class because she couldn't skate well enough. Story of my life. Perfect skills in a dark corner at home to be disappointed they can't teach me anything new in class, and make a career doing that! I could teach these classes, if only.... Perfect in finding excuses as well. Cry in the shower, happy face and a display of aloofness/nonchalance to the outside world. (FYI I'm a pretty good skater.. distance, figure, ánd roller/skeeler).

I'm your best friend. I'll support you when you on the other hand pursue your dreams. I'll cook your family dinner, look after your kids, listen to your rantings and encourage you every step of the way on your jump to success, offering sound advice when needed. Perfect. I will forget your birthday, your kids exams and your doctors visits. Sloppy.

I like you to be my friend, but beware not to be my next door neighbor in the old age home when I look back on life and tell you over and over again what I could have been if only.... (drama queen, self pity, and pathetic, wow if I were a stand up comedian this is the time you were all getting the boxes of tomatoes out. Eh, could that be overripe tomatoes please, I like things to be, you know ... perfect!).

Tagging: Glenna , David, Christine, the Baroness

Up for grabs: Brioche sweet and savoury

Butter and sugar leaden doughs give me a bit of a problem every now and then. It takes ages to complete their first proofing and after that shaping is a bit of a problem as well. That's not my shape I'm talking about although baking more sweet stuff nowadays this is bound to give me problems as well. In shaping sweet buttery doughs I find that it won't hold it's shape as well as the leaner bread doughs. In comes the mould!


In this case I baked mini -almost bite sized- brioches, in three flavours, part of them filled with jam (yeah that was tricky), part of them filled with a piece of bitter chocolate to offset the sweetness of the bread, and -my favourite- used some left over brie to fill! I used both tiny metal tins and silicon cupcake moulds. Both of them performed equally well, the red silicon is quite sturdy opposed to some of the brands you'll see in the shops and it holds shape even with a liquid cake like batter. I've never used or own any other silicon moulds myself but I hear from friends who do, that the bigger moulds tend to go all wobbly making your cakes uneven. Plus, silicon doesn't guide the heat as well as metal so the sides of your cakes will always be a little bleak. You could of course cheat and bake "colored" batters like chocolate to disguise.

On to the recipe
(makes approx. 18-24 depending on size)

1/3 cup of milk
2 eggs
2 cups bread flour
2 tbs sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1.1/2 tsp yeast
7 tbs unsalted butter cut into little chunks
(plus 1 egg to glaze)
Filling: brie cut into chunks, chocolate in squares

I used a stand mixer to make the dough and I would recommend to use a mixer or a bread maker to knead, the nature of the dough is so soft that it's somewhat harder (sticky!) to make it by hand.
So, mix dry ingredients in your mixing bowl, add all other ingredients except the butter and start mixing on slowest speed. When the dough is starting to catch after a minute or three, proceed by adding butter pieces, allowing the butter to be fully incorporated before adding more. Don't add more than two small pieces at the time. It'll take a couple of minutes to add all of the butter.

Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover and proof for at least 1.1/2 hour. Don't expect this dough to double in size, it will ferment and change in feel but not exactly double.
Grease your brioche tins if using and divide the dough in equal pieces fitting the size of your tins. I think I got 22 out of this amount. Proceed to form nice smooth dough balls and cover with a tea towel while you're working to fill.

Filling the dough balls with brie/chocolate, the latter being the easiest. Simply dent the ball, push a small piece of chocolate in and fold dough over and pinch tight. Shape into a ball again and place seam side down on a baking sheet or mould. Same works for the brie.
[Filling with jam is the other possibility however this calls for nimbly working the dough, trying to keep the jam from oozing out... It helps when you use a real thick jellied jam, the one that keeps tearing your bread if you try to spread it. Use that!Tricky but doable.]

Cover the brioches with plastic wrap and let rise for another 30 to 45 minutes. I found that this time they did rise beautifully, doming their moulds. Glaze with another egg (beaten loose with a spoonful of tepid water).
Bake in a preheated oven (200C/400F) for 12-15 min, turning golden brown, having smooth well risen domes. Cool on a wire rack. I love to eat this still warm and of course my preference went with the brie-filled ones, kids adored the soft melted chocolate inside.

I baked these the week before we left for our vacation and froze the remaining. Friday I defrosted them and stuck them in a warm oven for 5 minutes. They were absolutely equally tasty, although a tiny bit dryer on the outsides.


Edit: Wait a minute.... I lied to you... I do own silicon moulds! I have a wire rimmed 8-piece mini bread/cake mould ánd two mini 9-piece madeleine moulds. The madeleine ones are as wobbly as you can get, but since they are so shallow it is not much of a problem. The mini bread moulds are, as I said, wire rimmed so it will transfer from work surface to oven quite nicely, however the sides will stay quite light.

View Sweden through a keyhole (pictures!)

Our vacation in a nutshell.

- Someone took a sidestep in Store Mosse where we walked more than 3 km bare foot in peat bog, crossing the marsh on wooden planks that they had laid out, the second half of our walk we were forced to go barefooted (shoes tied around our necks) the boarding was flooded due to the heavy rains. At one point we were up to our ankles in murky water.....
It was Floris who attempted to canoe without a canoe; he slipped on the very slippery wood (literally only two feet wide) and plunged with one leg in the swamp, he was wet and dirty all the way up to his hip! We tried to comfort him as best as we could (couldn't really hug him because we couldn't stand close enough and well ..being all wet and dirty, rather unhuggable I must say).
We saw cranes feeding on the marshes near the visitor center!- Hiked through the gorge of Skuregatta (Tolkien territory and we forgot to bring our cameras!). It was so much fun to do, scramble over giant rocks, straddle fallen trees, sip from the stream, leave our names in the hidden guestbook under the rock somewhere in the middle of the gorge.... No pictures but if you scroll down here you'll get an idea.
- I had the chance to meet the wonderful Ilva over coffee! (Imagine, all the way from Italy and Holland and where do we plan to meet? Are we world citizens or what?) Besides seeing the sites my highlight in Stockholm was meeting Ilva, we set up a date at the corner of a big square in Stockholm and trusted our instinct to recognize each other. I mean come on, you can smell a fellow Daring Baker from a mile away right? Well, eventually, yes! Right from the start we chatted almost simultaneously (I think these four boys in my group didn't mind exploring Stockholm on their own that afternoon) and almost dashed to the first spot where we could have coffee and sit, plopped down and sat there talking for the rest of the afternoon! Amazing! As you can tell from reading her blog, she really is a thinking blogger in so many ways, thoughtful, reflecting, supportive and fun to be with! I had a wonderful afternoon Ilva! And to top that I am the proud owner of a Swedish apron Ilva brought me from her hometown. I can touch up on my Swedish now as there are all kinds of fruit and veggies depicted with their names in Swedish (which isn't all too far removed from Dutch, now the pronunciation...).

- clambered up a skiing hill and rolled down another...

- we loved our days in Stockholm, so much to do, so many things to see, I think we'll be back one day. Picture left is in Skansen on Djurgarten.

- we encountered a campsite from hell (and it had sufficient hell hounds to be named that way, one evening we came "home" from Stockholm to find 6! German Shepherd dogs who occupied the space next to our tent.... Suffice to say that we earned a world record tent packing the next morning. Out Out Out!

- it rained and rained but we managed to get some sun during the last week or so, even getting a little tan!

- of course there had to be some time dedicated to a garage visit again... we had a brand new car this time but communication between car lights and caravan lights failed at one point of time and as it is not a good idea to hang kids out of car windows to indicate which way you plan to go, it needed some fixing...

- of course I brought some minor shopping things back home *cough* almost all *cough* concerning food or food related items of some sort.

Weekend Cook Book Challenge in retrospect

This is a post I initially wrote for Weekend Cookbook Challenge no.18 hosted at "I like to cook". Somehow, inbetween kids at home for the summer holidays and preparing our vacation the post never got posted. I figured since I have to start somewhere to again, I could as well do it here (I hate to see things go to waste, even if it's a ramshackle post that was already finished the 15th of July....).

So, to explain the challenge: we were given a choice of either something made of red and white, or something made out of a cook book in red and white. I could have picked King Arthur's Baker's Companion, but instead decided to open Sheila-Lukins' USA Cookbook.

KA, I know for sure, would have given me success recipes, Sheila on the other hand... Don't know what it is with that one. Somehow I love the way the book looks and feels in your hands, it's a sturdy square chunk of a book, bold cover, I like the way the recipes are written, hell I even like the cheapish paper the book is made off. For me the book oozes something comforting, it almost pats you on the arm and says: hey, I know you don't know how to cook but let's do it together, see I am not scary, look at my friendly lettering and the soothing little stories that are preceding every recipe.

The recipes in this book are an overview of true American dishes, chapters are divided by type of meal; breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks. In a way that's convenient, on the other hand if you are looking for a muffin recipe you have to think real hard at what time other people would like to have their muffins.... Comes in the magnificent index which is real nice and lists the recipes by their names as well as their ingredients. I like that. In my Dutch version (yes, it's translated and that feels a bit weird with the all-American cover and the all-American recipes) it even gives the recipes in their original names as well.

So, why not use it more often? I really don't know. I made a very successful cake once, used the layer cake recipe again to make other cakes and it worked great. I really don't know why the recipes in it don't shout: make me, no me, oh make me!

This time I chose a waffle recipe, and not just an ordinary waffle recipe but the Marion Cunningham raised waffles! To be honest I didn't have a clue who she was but it seems she is the Queen of waffles. Well, apparently I am not! Have a look;


This doesn't look half bad eh?







And... this is the other side. You know how they say there are always two sides of a discussion? Well here it is, discuss!

Don't think it was just this lonesome waffle showing us the dark side, they were all like this. The batter was way too liquid, the yeast managed to raise some of the batter but underneath there was a milky sea.


The flavour was off as well, overly sweet and awfully buttery (really just greasy...yuck!). I realized however that I misread the recipe....ahem....happens a lot right? In your houses as well right? Again I started a recipe two hours before mealtime and halfway through discovered that the batter had to rest a whole night in the fridge prior to using.....ánd prior to mixing the eggs in... yeah right. I was looking at a bowl of strange-looking batter at the time, eggs whisked in and all.... screaming kids around me: Yay, we're having waffles....

So what's a Mom gottado? She serves waffles and then blogs about it, dissing a recipe where throngs of people rave about... or not all of them?. Hmmm, obviously, what She really needed to do was toss the whole batch and start another recipe, another batch. Yup! But She didn't.

PS: for you to try.... here's the LA Times recipe (if you scroll down there's some instruction on how to par bake your waffles and reheat them in the oven to feed a hungry family in one batch. Might come in handy!

PS2: I know I know... if I let a dough rise for a fraction of the time it needs I would have gotten a disaster bread as well. So, it's not the recipe, it's me.

Mirror Mirror on the wall. Daring Bakers do it all!

Ack! Like we need a cheer leader yell! Well? Who is the prettiest of them all? I made a mirror cake and I am so proud of myself!! Teehee!

Redigera as the Swedish say.....or "edited" to say I'm still in Sweden and finally able to access my blog and by doing so (cross fingers) able to post!! it's 5 August now and I'm laaaaate! This is what I wrote shortly after finishing the cake:

Let's start at the beginning; the lovely Peabody at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody submitted this month's challenge and what a challenge it is! As she stated in her directives: we are back into the land of sugar and heavy whipping cream! (And dear Peabody, my thighs are ever so grateful *mumble, mumble*). On the brink of her birthday this was the task she laid before all of us Daring Bakers:

A Strawberry Mirror Cake! The original recipe comes from Cakes and Pastries At The Academy by the California Culinary Academy 1993. Does that sound scary or what? I'll leave it up to our host to post the recipe in English. {I will give you the recipe in Dutch in a next post as well as a substitute for the Bavarian cream. Please check back after my vacation!} Maybe this is the right place to say that I tried to make such cake once....you don't want to know, believe me. Disaster in lumpy pink I think is the way to describe that attempt. Never to be tried again. Until now. I had to. "They" made me do it.

As usual I started by reading the recipe, then copying it into Word and started tweaking (Nooo, not the recipe itself, just re-arranging the components of the recipe in a way that I can understand and read what I am supposed to do, step by step). Basically (!) we were supposed to make:
- two cake layers, (a genoise type of cake)
- sugar syrup flavoured with Kirsch to brush the cakes with,
- strawberry puree
- Bavarian cream flavoured with strawberry puree,
- strawberry juice
- the mirror consisting of strawberry juice and Kirsch

I used two spring form tins size 24 cm to bake the cake, and a 26 cm spring form to assemble. Gelatin proved to be a minor problem, English written recipes use gelatin powder whereas we in Holland (mainland Europe?) are using gelatin sheets. There was some discussion back and forth and I ended up substituting 1 tbs gelatin powder for 4 sheets of gelatin.
I found some real nice strawberries at the market and made the puree and juice that same night, freezing the results to have them ready and fresh for baking day on Saturday, the day that three Daring Bakers planned to cyberbake this cake together, and we had so much fun doing that! All three of us (Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups in Texas, Ilva at Lucullian Delights in Italy and me) were chatting away, I shared an afternoon cup of coffee with Ilva while Tanna enjoyed her breakfast. Time zones and borders gone!

I baked two cakes that day, one 10"round and a 9" square. To my surprise I used only 1.4 kg of strawberries to make the puree and juice for both cakes. Granted, with a little ingenuity.. but still. For the original challenge cake I used something like 500 grams of the strawberries to puree (mashed with the paddle on my stand mixer and passed through a strainer using the back of a ladle). Another 450 grams of strawberries went into the pan to make juice. According to the directions I let them drip through cheese cloth to get a transparent juice. Measured the amount needed and let drip some more. Used the mash in the cheesecloth together with some frozen and thawed strawberries to puree for the second cake, this time using my passe-vite.

Steep learning curve here, the passe-vite did a better job extracting more puree than I did the first time around. The thawing of the frozen strawberries left me with a puddle of juice which I sieved so that, together with the excess juice I had, made for enough juice to use in the second cake. (OMG I must sound like the thrifty Dutch that I am sometimes and I don't think anyone can follow this but I decided to write it down just the way I did, so indulge me, I felt so clever!!).

Baking the cake and making the Bavarian was no problem, lots of potential stress moments but looking back it was a smooth operation. Working with gelatin is always a bit uncertain to me, I mean: thickened but not jelled...when? Gelatin mixture resembling soft whipped cream? When is that? Syrupy? Those moments for me were the real stress points. You'll never know until it's beyond repair. The stupid thing is, I was more scared by baking the cake layers than by making the Bavarian... and even I think that's odd!My learning moments were plenty but one of them was that the bavarian cream doesn't have to set before you pour it onto the cake! This way it will form a smooth layer. I know now that is where I went wrong on previous attempts! On to the mirror then.
Again, the trick with the mirror is to use the juice while it is still very liquid (syrupy!) and just "close" your eyes, send a prayer and pour it on. And another one for the next time I am going to bake a mirror cake (yes, there will be a next time!) is to make sure you have a straight level top layer of cream. You might even want to use a water level as one of the techies that enjoyed the cake suggested.... he was kidding....I am not!

Last stress moment: unmolding the cake...which went smoothly! I made sure that the sides of my spring form were thoroughly oiled and indeed made a aluminum foil covered cardboard bottom fitted into the bottom of the pan as was suggested in the recipe. Didn't do the hot towel wrapping.

Although I had a hard time reading and understanding the recipe at first and the order in which it was written didn't work for me, I liked the detailed instructions, yes it made me go back and forth reading but at the same time supplied me with the confidence I needed at some points. I was happy with the quantities given, they worked out beautifully. Peabody; I loved the cake, family and friends loved the cake, my husband took the second one to the office for his birthday and it got rave reviews! But most of all, it boosted my confidence as a cake baker! Thanks so much. Anyone in for a slice after this much sucking up? Here you go:Go on and read all the other Daring Baker's Adventures!