E: Ebelskivers

I first heard about Ebelskivers a couple of years ago when I was taking one of my usual walks around the aisles of Williams Sonoma. I saw a peculiar pan that consisted of seven small wells. Propped right next to it was a book about Ebelskivers. I opened it up and read that they are small stuffed pancakes that come from Denmark. If you are aware of the mini Dutch pancakes, Poffertjes,these are very similar except that they are slightly bigger and are filled, traditionally with apples. The book contains a variety of both sweet and savoury recipes. Immediately I fell in love with both it and the pan and luckily for me my birthday was just around the corner!
 
Since then I have hosted the occaisional Ebelskiver event. When you make the batter, you separate the yolks from the whites and blend the whites until they are stiff. This meringue mixture is mixed into the batter which results in a very light and puffy pancake. You can really use your imagination for the filling. Options are jam, fruit, chocolate, leftovers, etc. This time around I experimented with the following fillings:

1. Feta, sundried tomatos, spinach, and pesto
2. Pear, blue cheese, and candied walnuts*
3. Smoked salmon, corn kernals, and dill

My only hesitation with Ebelskivers is that they are very time consuming since you can only make seven at a time. I think I have only made them when I have had other people over. Even though I normally prepare the fillings in advance, it can be a bit challenging to carry out a conversation while making these. If you are planning on making them for other people, it probably would not hurt to make them in advance.

Ideally one would use an Ebelskiver pan for this recipe. The pan has small wells that are deep enough to fit a tablespoon of batter followed by a tablespoon or less of your choice of filling, followed by another tablespoon of batter. If you do not have an Ebelskiver pan you could always try using a metal circular cookie cutter to hold the batter in place but I am not sure how well that would work and it would probably be a little more time consuming. If anyone ever feels like experimenting with that method let me know how it turns out!

D: Drizzled Honey Cupcakes

I told one of my `recipe advisors´ that I was planning on making `Drizzled Honey Cupcakes´ from my other Cupcake book, written by Susanna Tee. A friendly debate ensued where she insisted that having the word in the recipe that starts with `D´ be an adjective rather than the actual main ingredient was a cop-out.  Now this may be true but neither of us really felt like date loaf or a near repeat of last week with devil’s food cake or dark chocolate whatever, so drizzled honey cupcakes it was!

So far everyone who has had a chance to try the cupcakes (including my advisor) has been very happy with the result.  The cakes would probably be appropriate all year round.  The nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon give them that holiday feel while the orange and honey make them lighter. De-lish!

C: Chocolate Mousse Cupcakes

Where to begin...I have always considered cupcakes to be a fairly simple dessert to make.  I had been eying this recipe from Elinor Klivans' Cupcakes! for quite some time and it proved to be the most challenging one I have ever tackled. Don't get me wrong, they were absolutely delicious! The cake itself was rich and fudgy and once it was filled with the mocha-flavoured mousse and topped with a fudgy sauce, the result was decadent beyond belief!  The problem with these cakes was that they took a couple of tries followed by a bit of improvisation. The recipe requests the use of paper cupcake liners. USE THESE!!! For my first attempt, I did not have any liners around and decided to just grease the pan. Because the tops of the cupcakes expand over the edge of the individual cups, you cannot really use a knife to wedge them out. I ended up creating quite a mess. When I used the liners in my second attempt, the cakes came out much more easily.  I just greased the top of the cake pan in order to keep the tops of the cakes from sticking to it.

The other problem I had was with the muffin tops. The recipe calls for you to fill the paper liners quite generously in order to create a large top. Once the cakes cool, you are to cut the tops off, cover them with fudge sauce, place a mound of the mousse on the base, and then create a sandwich. I am not sure if it was the sour cream in the batter that makes them really moist or if it was my wonky, unevenly heated oven, but both times I tried, the tops expanded and then sank.  They ended up being very fragile. When I went to cut them off, only two survived. Once they had been iced and they were ready to go on top of the mousse, the part that was not being supported broke off (see the pictures at the bottom of this post).  What I ended up doing for the rest of them was stack two "topless" cakes on top of one another. If I were to make this recipe again, I would repeat my stacking method and I would avoid creating any top on the cakes by filling the liners up with half of the requested amount of batter.

All in all, if you are up for a bit of a challenge, these cupcakes are a tasty treat!

B: Brioche

This recipe comes from my other Williams-Sonoma book, Essential Recipes for Today's Home Baker.
This was my first time making brioche and I was a bit nervous since I wasn't sure how the dough was meant to turn out.  They were a lot of work (the dough has to sit overnight) but I think it was all worth it. The final result: cloud-like, buttery puffs of joy. They are great fresh out of the oven, served with jam.

I would just like to give a shout out to my mother who has been letting me borrow her food processor. I promise everyone that the next couple of recipes I post will require less equipment!!

A: Apple-Pear Pie

I've been baking for a long time but I haven't had too much experience with pies. This recipe, which I got from my Williams-Sonoma The Best of the Kitchen Library: Baking book, turned out quite well although I do have some reservations towards the pastry. I decided to try out the basic pastry recipe that was in the book. Once the pie was baked, it was really flaky and tasted great, however it was a little hard to handle. It fell apart when I was rolling it out and it definitely didn't turn out as nicely as the picture in the book. When I was mixing the dough, I didn't want to over mix it (as was directed) but maybe my cautiousness caused me to leave it under mixed. I also didn't use the dough immediately so maybe that would have been better. If you have a pastry recipe that you're comfortable with, I would advise using it instead. Besides that, the filling is divine and it's great warm with a nice scoop of ice cream!

A, B, C, D, Eat

I've always had impeccable timing...NOT!

This is probably one of the worst times to start a food blog for the following reasons:

1) My exams are going to start in less than a week and I am probably better off without any type of distraction

2) I'm going to be leaving the country in a month for at least half a year and I can't imagine having continuous access to a well-equipped kitchen

3) My laptop just broke...

Nevertheless, obstacles create challenges and challenges are FUN!

I have a medium-size collection of cook books. I love them because they have beautiful pictures and they are fun to flip through on a rainy day (or when your laptop breaks). The thing is I spend more time reading the recipes than actually putting them to use. I have always loved baking and sharing the results with my friends and family, but it can be difficult to find the time to do it. There is no way that I would ever be able to make all the recipes I have but I feel that I owe it to the books to at least try out a few from each of them.

So, here is the idea:

My books are going to be put into storage soon but I recently had a look through all them. In order to help narrow down my choices, I have selected 26 recipes that all start with the different letters of the alphabet (I even have one for 'x'...sort of). I will not be able to make all of them before I leave so hopefully I will meet some people overseas who will let me make use of their kitchens. Let's see how it goes!