This month's challenge was Brown Butter Pound cake, used in Ice Cream Petit Fours or a Baked Alaska. The challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and baking. Feel free to hop on over to her site for recipes.
My feedback on the challenge : in general, underwhelmed. The brown butter pound cake gave me issues, was not cooked in the center, even though it was cooked plenty long enough, I didn't test the cake and got an undercooked cake. I was able to work around that, but the taste of the cake was a bit dry to me. Maybe I'm not a fan of browned butter.
I made coffee ice cream, using David Lebovitz's vanilla ice cream recipe and adding several tablespoons of instant espresso powder to the cream as it initially came to a boil. I was pleased with the coffee flavor, not overwhelming, but strong enough to notice.
More problems came when I took the cooled pound cake scraps, cut them in half and places the ice cream on the cake, so then it could set up to freeze. I live in Florida, in an old house with a very hot kitchen. As I was leveling the ice cream layer on the pound cake, it was hard to work with. I tried to quickly get it back in the freezer, but it was a little too melty, and the top layer of the cake slid off the ice cream. I now know to put toothpicks in the cake to anchor it.
I made the chocolate glaze according to instructions, and it consistency was thick and clumpy. I decided to use ganache as a glaze, and that ended up working better. When I took the cake out of the freezer to trim and glaze, the ice cream started to melt quickly.
It was an interesting challenge, I would make petit fours again, but without the ice cream element, that seemed to be more of a hassle than it was worth. My camera battery also died in the middle of the project, so it is an interesting selection of pictures!
