Daring Baker's Ice Cream Petit Fours

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!

Disaster Baking with Cannoli

Prior to my first Daring Baker's challenge, I didn't have a strong
opinion on cannoli. I would have to say that has changed in the last month.

Due to a crazy month, I put the challenge off until this past weekend. As the husband was off watching football at a friend's house, I prepped the dough, let it rest in the fridge, then rolled the dough out. Following the instructions and information posted by lisamichele, I rolled the dough to the thickness of 1/16th of an inch.

Using a 3 1/2 inch circle cookie cutter, I cut circles out of the dough. I used standard cannoli forms, 6 inches long, greased them with extra vegetable oil, and then rolled the dough around the forms. 

After cutting the dough out, I rolled the circles a little thinner, just slightly.

I used standard cannoli forms, 6 inches long, greased them with extra vegetable oil, and then rolled the dough around the forms. 

The directions said to pour enough oil in a sturdy pot to have oil 3
inches deep. What I later found out was from the hubby was that the large, heavy-bottomed soup pot was not the appropriate pot to fry cannoli. Maybe if I had used a more appropriate pot, my Saturday might have ended better.  So, with such a large pot, I used about 4 1/2 quarts of oil to get the 3 inches, instead of the suggested 2 quarts.

As I started to fry the cannoli, I quickly realized they were frying
super fast. So the first couple cannoli were more of a dark golden
than a nice light gold color. I was getting the hang of it, 7 done and
7 to go. Then my horrible clumsiness struck, a style of baking I call 'Disaster Baking'.  Cheap bamboo tongs aren't advised to pull hot, oily metal tubes out of a pot of extremely hot frying oil. I learned this the hard way, after decently burning myself on the wrist. Damn it hurt!

The fun burn took my focus away from the cannoli project, and brought it to how in retrospect, I should have gone about the project differently. Too late! But I still finished the challenge, making a basic ricotta filling. I was originally going to make a savory Mexican chickpea filling, topping it will cheddar cheese, but that was nixed.

I would have to say, I am currently underwhelmed by cannoli. For the effort, I don't think the are worth it. I think many other desserts are better, and easier to execute without such pain. I might try it again in the distant future, who knows.   And do you notice the different looking canola? It was neglected in the hot oil as I held my hand under cold water until hubby got home to fix the problem I had gotten myself into.