Baking with Carla: Ecclés, aka puff pastry pockets

Despite the fancy name, these are nothing else but puff pastry pockets! Ahhh, the French! They can make anything sound better and fancier simply with their chic names.

How I failed the Daring Bakers Challenge: Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

I was so excited about this challenge. And I still am! I still am because I miserably failed it but I won’t let this discourage me. I will try again and again until I get it right.

Baking with Carla: dried cranberries crumb muffins

Yesterday I met Carla after 2 weeks without seeing her. I missed her and I wanted to bake something special with her. At the same time, it has been a rough period for my stomach and for Carla’s mom’s stomach too! So I decided that muffins with dried fruit could be a good choice for all of us. After all, we already had enough sugar with the mini baked donuts! And who says muffins are not special. These ones for sure were!

Brown Sugar Mini Buns for the Winter Comfort Food Event at Dazzling Kitchen

When Tamanna from Dazzling Kitchen wrote me an email asking if I was interested in participating into the Comfort Food Event she was hosting, I immediately thought “heck yeah! Comfort Food? That’s so me!”.

Creamy mini bundts with caramel sauce

No baking with Carla this week. Sigh. Yesterday was a holiday, she was off school and had other plans and I…well, I’ve been very sick with stomach flu all weekend. Yes, again! This has been a very unlucky season for me. So today, feeling a bit better, I decided to cheer myself up with these mini bundts. Oh well, you really don’t need an excuse to make these mini bundts! They are fantastic, they are feather light and they taste like heaven, thanks to the wonderful addition of cream in the dough.

Pear Trilogy – Part III – Pear Espresso Panna Cotta

Here we are. It’s time for the third and last part of the Pear Trilogy. After the Pear Espresso Trifles, I totally fall in love with that flavor combination and I decided to try it out again. I think unconsciously I felt attracted to this combo of ingredients a long time ago before because I remember seeing a Pear Espresso Panna Cotta recipe on an old Donna Hay Magazine (for sure a couple of years old!) at a friend’s house and writing it down….for the future. I’m so happy I wrote down this recipe. I’m so so so happy I finally decided to try it!

Baking with Carla: mini baked donuts

Last week I was looking around for new kitchen gadgets. I so need to buy a silicon mat. I so need to buy a ice-cream spoon. I so need/wish to buy so many things. But then I saw a mini muffin donut pan and I got the compulsive buyer bug.

Satisfying my caramel cravings with Caramel Pots De Crème

I’m having some serious caramel cravings. I would love to put caramel everywhere these days, not just on ice-cream and of all the caramel desserts I could have made, I chose to make caramel pots de crème for two reasons.

Baking with Carla: Cream Cheese Brownie Cake

It’s the first Monday of the year. Do you know what that means? It means that school resumes. It means that after 2 weeks of holidays I’m back to work. I know I should not complain about it. Most people do not get 2 weeks of Christmas holidays. There must be a perk in doing such a tiring job like teaching pre-schoolers. These 2 weeks did not feel too much. I was tired. I was exhausted. My life was a non-stop from August to December, so I sure needed 2 weeks. And for several reasons, I already know that January is going to be a hell of a month. I will be working far more hours than my usual schedule and I already have other commitments that will keep me more busy than what I like to be. Fo example, I know I won’t be able to be here, in my little humble space, with you guys as often and I wish. I’m already approaching January with a zen attitude. I know it will suck and I’ll deal with it. I will try to make the most of out it and I know I will also have to step back from blogging a little bit or I won’t get to the end of the month in one piece.

Connecting the old with the new year: overnight bagels

I wanted to something good for the first breakfast of 2011. Wally and I we are heading to San Jose’ today, just to take a short trip and visit the Winchester Mystery House. We wanted to do something fun, as the end of our time off is approaching. And a few days ago on twitter I was talking about bagels with Mara, from What’s for Dinner? and the whole conversation made me crave for bagels. So I thought “Why not have a couple of toasted bagels with cream cheese with us in the car?”