The Daring Bakers' Challenge: Chocolate Pavlova with White Chocolate Strawberry Mascarpone Mousse and Mascarpone Cream

Chocolate Pavlova with White Chocolate Strawberry Mascarpone Mousse and Mascarpone Cream

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.

Another month, another challenge. I was very pleased with this one. We were challenged to make chocolate pavlovas! It was my premiere. I've never made pavlovas before. Everything was quite o.k. except the pavlova "meringue". I followed the recipe step by step, but it kept falling - it wasn't fluffy at all. So I tried another batch with less cocoa powder. The meringue was "tougher", but still quite runny. I didn't have the strength to make yet another batch, because I was afraid of it would not be o.k. again. Plus what would I do with so huge lot of meringue?
So I tried to shape the second batch into hearts. Eventually it wasn't that bad, but they were pretty flat. But nevermind, I'd say mine were much more real meringues than pavlovas, because they were nothing but crunchy.
I made the Creme Anglaise the same day as pavlovas. I liked it pretty much, so I had tough times with making myself not eat it all. Fortunately I had overeaten sooner that day, otherwise there wouldn't be any creme anglaise left :)
Then I continued with the mascarpone cream. At first I wanted it to be strawberry flavoured, but I didn't want to "destroy" its creamy flavour so I let it be.
My mascarpone white chocolate mousse was supposed to be pink in color. To make it happen I used pureed strawberries instead of Grand Marnier. Well, it didn't affected the color at all. Now I'm a little sad I didn't add more of them, but still I'm afraid the mousse would be runny with more strawberries. However, when it's decorated with strawberries all these minus points are lost, because of the freshness and sweetness of them :)

The Daring Bakers' Challenge: Traditional British Pudding

 
The April 2010 Daring Bakers' Challenge was hosted by Esther of  The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

The required elements of this challenge were:
1) to make a suet pudding using real suet or as close a replacement as we can manage or is acceptable to us; and
2) to cook it by steaming or if we want to be even more traditional by boiling tied up in a cloth.

The Original Recipe Sources:
Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, The pudding club, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and the Dairy Book of Home Cooking and Esther's family’s recipe notes!

So I´m here with this British pudding recipe. It's something special, because it's my first daring bakers' challenge! I´m officially a member, wonderful! However, let's get to the pudding. The pudding is made using suet, which is pretty hard to get here in the Czech Republic. To be honest, you cannot get it almost anywhere. Even though I went to try to get some in local butcher's. In fact I visited all of them, which means six shops. In four of them I was told this: "Oooh, that's something we DO NOT have!" I got really funny answers in the remainig two stores. Once again I asked about the suet and for the first time the answer was positive. I thought I won. At least until she asked me what I wanted it for. When I told her about the British pudding, she looked at me and said: "That must be extra fresh, mustn't it?" I nodded in agreement. And then she replied: "We don't have anythig fresh in here!" So that's absolutely perfect. Well, my question was the same in the last remaining store and the reply? Pretty odd: "We don't have anything like that. We don't sell meat!" So now I know there's no meat at butcher's :D Because of this I had to replace the suet with old ordinary lard.
We had some choices - whether to do a savoury pudding or a sweet one. I chose Sussex Pond Pudding. But I tried to go wild (as Esther suggested) and changed some stuff in filling :)

Tiramisu

 Hi again :) This week's recipe is Italian tiramisu. I used store-bought mascarpone cheese as I had decided to do it in the morning so there wouldn't have been enough time to do homemade mascarpone cheese. Tiramisu was absolutely fabulous! I ate it not even 2 hours after finishing the preparation. Plus it was eaten within 2 days, so good it was.
The ladyfingers (savoiardi) biscuits have to be soaked ONLY for 1 - 2 seconds to avoid making it all too soggy. Fast in, fast out. I recommend you to taste the espresso which is used for soaking the savoiardi biscuits to avoid it being too bitter, because then the savoiardi would be too bitter, too and that wouldn't not be good. So add more suger if needed. When it comes to amaretto liqueur it's not typical for tiramisu (marsala wine is the tradition) but it has a very nice almond flavour and I use it because it's pretty difficult to buy here this marsala wine. Anyway, don't be afraid to sprinkle the biscuits a little bit more with it - it has to have its taste :) The sweetness of the mascarpone cream is again up to you - I prefer it being sweeter 'cause the savoiardi themselves aren't too sweet and whole tiramisu is then sprinkled with pretty bitter cocoa powder and if you don't want it to be one big super bitter square make the cream sweeter. Next time I'd add the liqueur also into the cream to make its flavour more liquorish and well, the flavour of the liqueur wasn't too intense in these savoiardi.