SMS: Cherry Clafoutis Tart

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there!! I hope your day began with breakfast in bed and that it was prepared with lots of love!  :) 

This week for Sweet Melissa Sundays, Tess of Cookin' Chemist hosted and chose something I've never made (or even heard of) before.  We made a Cherry Clafoutis Tart - a perfect treat to bring to your mother for Mother's day... well, I think so.  It looks beautiful, but I haven't actually tried it yet... because I'm bringing it to Mother's Day dinner!

It was fairly easy to put together.  The crust was a little troublesome (a bit on the sticky side!) but the custard was very quick to make.  I had no idea what on creation a "Clafoutis" was until this week.  And even then, I was pronouncing it "Cla-fow-tis" up until yesterday when I googled it and found out it was really pronounced "Klah-foo-tee".  A traditional Clafoutis is a baked French dessert of cherries arranged in a dish and covered with a thick flan-like batter.  The Sweet Melissa recipe is a tiny bit different I guess, because it has a sugar cookie crust.  We'll see later how it tastes!  I made a cherry sauce and some freshly whipped cream to go with it - more pictures later!

I didn't have a deep dish tart pan, so I had some extra custard:

Click here to see how the other bakers' Cla-foo-tee's baked up.  And happy mother's day!

SMS: Chocolate Pudding and Chocolate Pudding Popsicles

It's Sunday!  And it's time for a delicious edition of Sweet Melissa Sundays.  Leslie of Lethally Delicious is our gracious host this week and she chose Sweet Melissa's Chocolate Pudding as our recipe.  I've never made chocolate pudding from scratch before so I was excited to try this one!


I prepared the recipe just as it was written in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book, but added a little frosty twist to half of the pudding.  I used Wilbur's Semisweet Chocolate.  This chocolate is absolutely delicious and conveniently - it comes in a 2.25 ounce bar - which is exactly the amount we needed for this recipe (even though I was kind of hoping there would be some extra for me to nibble on while preparing the recipe...)

With half of my pudding, I followed the directly exactly and produced some delicious, super rich chocolate pudding.  With some extra heavy cream I whipped up some homemade whipped cream and we had a perfect dessert

 

With the other half of my pudding, I decided to change it up a little bit.  Instead of refrigerating after cooling in the waterbath, I whisked the pudding until smooth, put it in a ziplock bag, snipped off a corner and piped the liquidy pudding into a Popsicle Mold.  

I used this Frozen Treat tray I got from CSN Stores. What a handy dandy little tray!  


I froze them overnight and ran a little warm water over the tray to loosen them up and voila...

The creamiest chocolate pudding pops you can imagine... yum.  


Thanks for hosting and picking this great recipe Leslie!  I loved experimenting.  Click to visit Leslie's blog and find the full recipe for Sweet Melissa's chocolate pudding.  And don't forget to visit the SMS site and see how it went for the other SMS-ers who participated this week.  

SMS: Speakeasy? Or Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream Frosting & Ganache

The Speakeasy cake, the recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays this week, was chosen by Jeannette of The Whimsical Cupcake.  According to the Sweet Melissa Cookbook, Melissa "snuck a lot of booze into this cake!"  I knew I was making this cake for a family dinner where we have a pregnant family member so I decided to un-booze this Speakeasy... so I guess it really shouldn't be called a Speakeasy at all, huh?  Whatever you want to call this cake, it turned out absolutely amazing.  Probably one of my favorite cake recipes I've prepared to date.  It's very unique, not your every day cake - and I mean that in a very good way.

SMS: Ginger Custard Pumpkin Pie

This weekend it began to feel like Fall in Florida.  Up until now, it was still a consistent high 80's - 90's.  But Friday morning started off chilly and it has been long-sleeves weather ever since.  It is definitely a nice change!  And what better way to make it feel extra Fall-ish than to make a Pumpkin Pie.  

SMS: Roasted Cashew Brittle

This week, it's my turn to host Sweet Melissa Sundays!  Last time I hosted it was August 2, 2009 so I was so excited to finally host again.  We have been baking along to the Sweet Melissa Baking Book since April of 2009, so a good deal of the recipes from the book have already been selected and baked.  We've made so many delicious things over the past year and a half!   Can you believe we've been doing this that long already?

For the recipe this week, I selected the Roasted Cashew Brittle.  I've never made brittle before and I love cashews so I thought this would be a fun recipe.  I prepared the recipe word for word from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book, no substitutions or changes.  I'm hosting, so I didn't want to mess anything up!  It was actually a rather quick and easy process.

SMS: Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie

This week, Melissa of Lulu the Baker selected Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie as the recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays.  Thanks for picking this recipe, Melissa!  This was a fun one.  I don't think I'd ever made a buttermilk pie before!


I prepared this recipe exactly as Melissa Murphy says in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book - no substitutions and alterations!  In fact, it was the first time I baked with actual buttermilk instead of substituting buttermilk powder. It was almost a success!  (and the buttermilk pancakes that were the result of having left over buttermilk were VERY much a success... I think I may have found a new favorite pancake recipe! More on that later!)   I simply decreased the amount of blueberries for the topping to 12 ounces because I thought 1.5 pints was a bit of overkill.  


Everything went very well, though there was a significant amount of clear liquid (butter maybe?) flowing out of the pie and onto the cookie sheet during the last minutes in the oven.  And I think the liquid made the crust a bit too soggy, because it wouldn't come out of the pie plate!  It did wind up being quite a mess, but it was a DELICIOUS mess.  Everyone enjoyed it at dinner tonight!


Thanks for hosting, Melissa!  I liked this one quite a bit.  Go to Melissa's blog Lulu the Baker for the recipe.  And be sure to visit the list of this week's participants to see if the other bakers had a less messy experience than I did!

SMS: Mom’s French Pancakes

My very first crepe experience was in Greece.  I know crepes are a French thing but there were crepe shops all over the place in all of the Greek cities we visited.  We tried them in a few cities there and they were all delicious.

My wonderful fiancee enjoying a crepe in Corfu

When I saw that Jaime of Good Eats and Sweet Treats, this week's host for Sweet Melissa Sundays, chose "Mom's French Pancakes" as our recipe, I knew I wanted to bake along.  When I saw the other bakers said they were easy and tasty, I was even more sold on the idea. :)

I made the recipe word for word from the Sweet Melissa book and it came together perfectly. And it was a cinch to make!  Very few ingredients and it all goes in a blender.  The swirling in the pan is what gave us some difficulty...

We used a 12 inch pan just as the book says, but we have a very hard time getting it to swirl across the whole pan without leaving holes.

Attempt #1

Attempt #2

We gradually got a little bit better as we made more, but I halved the recipe and only got about 6 crepes, so by the time we started improving our technique we were out of batter.

When we got to the end, we wanted a nice looking crepe so badly that we took a circle cookie cutter and cut it:

It made one itsy bitsy little crepe!  The butter is there for scale :)  It was a one-bite crepe.

Even if they weren't perfect looking, when spread with a little bit of strawberry jam and topped with homemade whipped cream, they were pretty tasty.  However, I did think the crepes themselves were a little on the bland side.  The jam and cream is what gave it all of the flavor.  Next time I might try adding a little bit of vanilla or almond extract?

Thanks for picking this recipe Jaime!  See Jaime's blog, Good Eats and Sweet Treats for the recipe or buy the Sweet Melissa baking book for all of the recipes.  Jaime, this made for a very lovely Sunday morning breakfast. :)  Be sure to visit the other participating SMS-ers blogs to see how their "French Pancakes" came out!  

SMS: Sweet Almond Cake with Lemon Curd and Lemon Mascarpone Frosting

Sometimes adding a garnish can make or break the appearance of a cake.  A cake can be absolutely delicious, but if it doesn't look appealing and inviting, everyone might pass on it.  Which of these would you rather dig into?

or 

Yep, definitely the one with the cute garnish.  I'm glad I added the chopped almonds to the top or else people may have passed on this seemingly plain cake and they would have missed out on the out-of-the-box complex flavor of this week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe.  Everyone here who taste-tested it seemed to enjoy it.  It definitely doesn't taste like something I make all the time.  And the change was welcomed.

There were a lot of steps to this dessert, but everything went rather smoothly.  No hiccups or hurdles in this cake making.  But... a lot of ingredients did go in to this cake.  I mean...

Woah, butter.

And woah, egg whites.

A lot of egg whites means a lot of meringue!

But I think it was worth it.  I even learned a new technique for cutting cake layers in half.  Thanks, Melissa Murphy!  And thanks Dan, my wonderful fiance and sous chef whose hands appear in the following pictures :)

I loved the toothpick marking technique to cutting a cake layer straight mentioned in the cookbook!

Look how nice and even the split layers are!

After it was frosted, I laid a small bowl lightly on the surface of the cake to mark off the area I wanted to keep the chopped almond garnish off.

And it worked pretty good!

Boy was it a heavy cake!  Carrying it in the cake carrier to family dinner was definitely a two handed procedure.  But it was definitely good.  The lemon curd filling was pretty easy to throw together and had a wonderful tart lemony taste.  The cake was nice and moist and have a great almond flavor.  And the frosting... oh the frosting.  The lemon mascarpone frosting was surprisingly subtle in the lemon department and it wasn't overly heavy despite the mascarpone.

Thanks for picking this recipe and hosting this week, Katie!  Check out katiecakes, Katie's blog for the recipe.  And see the list of this week's SMS participants here.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Cherry Almond Granola

When SMS was still pretty new, we made Melissa Murphy's Granola Breakfast Cookies.  When I made this granola for those cookies, I scaled the recipe down considerably and made quite a few substitutions.  This time around, I stuck to Melissa's original recipe much more closely.  I only left out the dates, and I added a little bit of flaxseed (about 1/2 cup).

It was hot here in Florida yesterday.  Since it was really too hot to be outside, we tried to stay indoors most of the day.  But for those few minutes that we were outside, it felt like we were standing inside a preheated oven.  There was no breeze, not even a slight one so all we could feel was the heat.  Whew!  But if you took a step inside my house, you'd think it was the middle of fall judging by the smell coming out of the kitchen.  The Granola with ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, maple syrup and honey browning slowly in the oven let out the most delicious autumny smell.  I wish I could have taken a picture of the smell!  And the taste of the final product was delicious, too.  Not too sweet, and not too spicy.

Thanks so much for picking this recipe and hosting this week, Wendy!  I'm sure the recipients of my little granola gift packages will want to thank you!  Check out Wendy's blog, Pink Stripes, for the recipe.  And click here to see the list of this week's SMS participants.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Torte

For about two weeks, I was on vacation in New York visiting family and friends.  We had a great trip, and everyday our schedule was filled to the brim.  We got to visit friends we hadn't seen in a long time, spent lots of time with family, took a trip to NYC to the MOMA (and eating cupcakes of course), went to Six Flags Great Adventure, watched my little brother compete for state in Little League, and had a wonderful bridal shower that my mom, aunt and sister threw for me.  Somehow, in the middle of all that, I found some time to make this week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe, a Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Torte, with my sister at her house.  Please forgive the horrible pictures!  

Before beginning, I took advantage of the fact that I was in NY and bought some nice high quality belgium chocolate for the recipe:

Yum.  I bought a few extra massive chunks to bring home with me, of course. :)


It's always harder baking in someone else's kitchen.  Just because you don't know where everything is and what they have, but we made due.  Though, I'm not sure if mine came out right or not...  I did substitute Godiva Liquor for the Rum... I wonder if that had anything to do with it?  

First, I poured the delicious smelling batter into a springform pan... and when half of the batter barely covered the bottom of the pan, I realized my pan was actually a 12" Springform - far too big for this recipe.  So we poured it over into a 9 inch long glass dish:

After it finished baking and cooling all the way it looked like this:

Here is my lovely sister modeling it:

If I had to describe the texture of this Torte, it would be somewhere around mousse I suppose.  Is that how everyone else's came out?  When we served the first slice after about 4 hours of chilling in the refrigerator, it came out like this:

Kind of a mess.  But when my stepfather had it a little later on, it came out of the pan a little more neatly.  He was even able to pick it up like it were a brownie.


It tasted delicious.  Everyone who tried it absolutely loved it.  I'm just not sure if this is the result I was supposed to get.  The taste of the godiva liquor came through a bit to the finished product.  And the blackberries (I substituted blackberries for the raspberries) were a really nice contrast to the softness of the Torte.  I can't wait to see everyone else's to see!  


Thanks for hosting this week, Jennifer!  Be sure to visit Jennifer's blog, The Rookie Baker to see the recipe.  And click on over to the list of bakers who participated this week to see how everyone else's came out (maybe quite different from mine!)  
Also, has anyone ever heard of Giveaway Scout?  Seems like a cool way to find out what blogs are doing giveaways!  And if you happen to be doing a giveaway on your own blog it's a great way to get info of your giveaway out there to a larger audience! 

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Chocolate Walnut Brownies

I'd probably never turn down a chance to make brownies.  No matter how many recipes I've tried, I'm always willing to try a new one.  Even the not-so-great recipes seem to disappear quickly in this house.  So this week's SMS recipe of choice, Chocolate Walnut Brownies, was warmly welcomed.  Thanks for picking it, Tiffany!

Recently I received a kitchen item in the mail from CSN stores, so that is why I decided to make these brownies in cupcake form (more on that product review soon).  The full recipe yielded 16 cupcakes filled about half way, and baked for about 30 minutes.  

The brownies turned out great, but baking them in the cupcake liners made them a little bit crisper around the edges than if they were sliced from a 9 x 9 square pan.  Someone who loves the brownie edge pieces would love these.  But they were still fudgey and soft in the center, and sturdy enough to stand on their own without falling apart (a problem with very soft brownies).  We did have a tiny bit of a sticking-to-the-paper problem when trying to remove them from the liners... but this got much easier the day after these were baked.

I asked the fiance (97 days until our big day!) how these ranked compared to other brownies we've made, and he said, "Well these are different.  They have nuts.  But brownies with nuts are good.  They were good, I could eat a whole bunch of them."  (He may sound distracted because he gave his review racing a car around Rome on Playstation).  

Thanks for hosting, TIffany!  Head on over to Tiffany's blog, A Spoonful & A Heap, to see the recipe for these brownies.  And check out the SMS website for the list of this week's participants.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sour Cherry and Almond Biscotti

Do you love breakfast?  I do.  I rarely begin my day without some sort of breakfast.  No matter how busy I am or what kind of a rush I'm in, it always involves coffee.  When I'm running behind I grab my to-go mug of coffee and whatever is on the counter which is usually just a banana or apple.  On those rushy-rush days I'd love to be able to grab one of these freshly baked biscotti on my way out the door.  They were just the right thing first thing in the morning... or any time of day for that matter. 

This week, Tracey of Made by Tray Tray chose our recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sour Cherry and Almond Biscotti.  Though I couldn't find Dried Sour Cherries anywhere, I picked up some regular Dried Cherries, and instead of simmering them in Orange Juice, I used Lemon Juice to try to add some of that Sour-Tartness I'd be missing.  Other than that and scaling it down by half, I made this recipe exactly as is.  Which I'm glad about because they came out perfect.

Dan doesn't love super crunchy things, so I made some of them as "Biscotti" - twice baked, and the others I only baked once, so I call them "Unscotti".  These ones weren't dried out entirely, so they still had a little bit of chew left in them.

After I simmered my Dried Cherries in Lemon Juice, I saw how much Cherriness had seeped into the Lemon Juice.  I decided it would be a tragedy to throw this away, so I stuck it in a measuring cup (it was about 2 ounces total) and stuck it in the frig.  I grabbed 2 ounces water and 1/4 cup granulated sugar and made a simple syrup with it, and then let that cool to room temperature.  After it's all cooled, add 6 ounces ice cold water, and a bunch of ice cubes and what do you get?

Only the most delicious Cherry-Lemonade EVER!!

Cherry Lemonade - I didn't include measurements because this can be scaled to make your desired amount.  Mine above yielded two glasses.

Ingredients:

Dried Cherries

Lemons, juiced

Sugar

Cold Water

Ice Cubes

*Combine equal parts Dried Cherries and lemon juice (Example: 1/2 cup of Cherries and 1/2 cup of lemon juice). 

*Simmer over medium heat until the color of the lemon juice is murky and brownish-red.  Remove from heat and strain out the Cherries (now would be a good time to make some Sour Cherry Almond Biscotti!). Pour into a measuring glass and allow to cool.  Note the amount of Lemon-Cherry juice mixture after simmering. Chill in the frig 30-40 minutes.

*Measure out equal parts water and sugar (each equal to what the Lemon-Cherry Juice mixture was after simmering. So if you yielded 1/2 C Lemon-Cherry Juice after simmering before, take 1/2 C water and 1/2 C sugar).  Boil together until the sugar dissolves and you have a simple syrup.  Set aside and allow to cool.

*Add all ingredients together and stir.  Add cold water (the amount of ice water is your Lemon-Cherry Juice mixture amount x 3.  So if you had yielded 1/2 C Lemon-Cherry Juice earlier, add 1 1/2 C cold water now).  

*Serve over ice cubes and ENJOY!

Thanks for hosting this week, Tracey!  We enjoyed these biscotti thoroughly!  Head over to Made by Tray Tray to check out the recipes.  And click here to see the list of this week's participants!

Don't forget about my GIVEAWAY.  Umm.. free dove ice cream miniatures, anyone?  Click over to this post for the details!  I'll be giving away TEN free product coupons, so there's a good chance you could win one!!!