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Baking Dessert Person

Blackberry Caramel Tart from “Dessert Person”

To say I was excited to make this is an understatement. I ordered all the special things (almond flour and a tart pan) online and “patiently” waited for them to come in. The moment the package was left at the door, I started baking.

This recipe starts with a pâté sucrée crust (basically just a sweet crust) that has roasted almond flour added in for a toasty twist. The dough seemed like it wouldn’t be enough for the 9 inch tart pan, especially as it didn’t even fill my tiny baby 3 cup food processor. Alas, it fit perfectly, and I only really had problems with it after baking, when it separated and cracked a bit. Claire wrote a solution for this in the book though, and I just mixed a bit of flour and water to make a little glue to patch everything up.

before and after baking

After the crust cooled and was quickly and quietly patched up, I started on the caramel.

I’ll just take a quick moment to say that the last time I made caramel, well I ended up in the ER. I really only just barely burned my fingers, but it wasn’t an experience I ever wanted to repeat. So this time, every single precaution was taken.

The caramel came together with no severe injuries, and after adding in the heavy cream, blackberries, salt and sugar, we were out of the Danger Zone. The next step was adding gelatin, which I had only ever worked with for jams. This part was painless as well, and within the hour I had a blackberry caramel that I really, really wanted to just eat with a spoon.

All that was left was to pour the caramel between the berries and chill! This recipe has an almost overwhelming number of steps, but in the end it was easy, and the results were very impressive.

Categories
Baking Dessert Person

Lime Bars from “Dessert Person”

Last night I got my copy of Claire Saffitz’s new cookbook, “Dessert Person,” and it might be the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. I’m determined to make every single recipe in this book, much to the detriment of my current jean size. I started with the Minty Lime Bars (page 155).

I didn’t have mint, or an 8×8 pan, so what I ended up with were super thin, tart and neatly snackable bars.

The recipe starts with a super simple shortbread dough, and having made a few of these before, this part was easy.

The next part was harder, just because I had never made any sort of curd or custard before and didn’t know what to expect, or any of the indicators that you’re on the right track. I miiiiight’ve slightly overbaked it, but I just had no idea when it was ready to come out.

After chilling for an hour and then dusting softly with powdered sugar, we had the final results. The combination of shortbread with the gooey, scrunch-up-your-face tartness of the lime curd was unbelievable.

I might’ve just picked this as the first recipe because I had almost all of the ingredients, but it was a great kickoff to my Julie and Julia moment of recreating every recipe in the book.

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My First Blog Post

a visual diary.

I want you to know that I can accept zero criticism right now.

– Claire Saffitz

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates. I hope that I’ll keep it updated with my latest cooking and baking attempts, more as a visual diary for me than anything else. You’re welcome to follow along, but it won’t hurt my feelings if you aren’t as invested in my life as I am…

Categories
Baking Bread

French Baguettes in ~only~ Three Days

I am, if nothing else, a fan of baguettes. I could, and have nearly, live off them with only cheese and olive oil. For the past few months I’ve been making my own baguettes from this recipe, but as I was binging youtube the other day I found this video by Patrick Ryan. Between his Irish accent and how good his baguettes turned out, I figured I had to try it.

His recipe begins three days before you actually get to eat the baguettes, which for a totally patient person like me, didn’t seem bad at all….

I started the first dough on a Thursday, added the second dough on Friday and after ten minutes of kneading, I let it chill out in the fridge for another 24 hours.

Saturday morning was the morning all my dreams were gonna come true. I shaped the dough, following the video as closely as I could.

The only real problem I ran into was that my dough was pretty cold from the fridge and seemed to take forever to come down to a workable temp. After a lot of shaping and waiting, I finally had them in their little flour and tea towel bed, ready for their final hour long nap. After this last rise and I began steaming and preheating the oven. I put a baking dish of water on the lower rack, and then added more boiling water right before they went in. I also put the baking sheet I was going to use in the oven so the baguettes would start baking as soon as they hit the sheet.

Right before popping three in the oven, I scored them with a razor and then sprayed them with a water bottle, just to make sure that the crust would develop.

They really didn’t take long to bake, and after three days, I had the most gorgeous, crunchy and crackly but pillowy-soft on the inside, french bread. My heart was full of love and my stomach was full of the first baguette that came out of the oven.

Despite being more work than I’ve ever put into french bread, I can definitely see this becoming a part of my weekly routine so that I always have fresh baked bread on hand.

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A Full Weekend of Baking

last week was stressful, so naturally I spent almost all of this weekend baking!

Friday night I made a focaccia dough to use as pizza crust on Saturday, but things took a dark turn. While that was happening, I also remade the Milk and Honey Oat loaf from Twigg Studios which is quickly becoming a staple recipe for me.

Here’s where the first focaccia batch went wrong…. I thought I overproofed it. I was trying to be proactive and make it the night before, but since my kitchen was so warm and I used a fast acting yeast everything happened verrrry quickly and even the jump to the fridge couldn’t save it. I made the bread the next day regardless, and although it looked like a focaccia and smelled like a fococcia, it was pretty thin and didn’t bubble.

The second batch I made Saturday morning was a much better success. I used Alison Roman’s recipe and split it in half for the final proof on two baking sheets, and they both grew to take up the whole thing! For pizza toppings, I made some lemon oil (BA’s of course), pickled onions, and roasted garlic. I bought spinach, mozz, tomato sauce, anchovies and my friend brought the mushrooms and peppers. The pizzas were. so. good. Like never order from Domino’s again good. It was also amazingly easy, and probably a new go-to for having guests over.

This was the best picture we got because we ate the pizza sooooo quickly!

I also whipped up a quick batch of Alison Roman’s tiny salty chocolatey cookies which are always a hit. Again, another easy go-to that I highly recommend.

Sunday I made BA’s Earl Gray Tea Cake and it’s currently resting fresh out of the oven. I also have a seasoned chicken with tomatoes and garlic slow-roasting as I write this. The tea cake is divine but super light and not overpowering.

I mean look at that crust…. wow

So with the grand finale of a roasted chicken, my weekend of manic baking comes to a close. If this week is as stressful as I think it’ll be, there might be a very similar post next weekend! If anyone makes it this far down, comment any suggestions for recipes I should try out!

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My Journey into Bread Baking

It all began with fellow Virgo Claire Saffitz, who inspired me to become a Person Who Bakes their Own Bread. Since I started baking, I’ve tried focaccias, whole wheat bread, milk and honey oat loaves, Hokkaido milk bread and a few others. All of the pictures are on the blog. I made all of these when I was writing on another blog page, but since I made the switch I decided to start fresh.

I have overprooved, underprooved, over-watered, over-baked, and under-baked bread but I have also created the most beautiful, glorious loaves of bread (maybe I’m bias but you also weren’t here to experience this, so you can’t argue with me). I’ve learned that baking not just bread but anything requires so. much. energy. Seriously, the whole wheat bread I made (from BA’s best bread recipe) was an entire arm workout.

Going forward, I’ll post most of my baking here, as well as on my insta (@laurenattemptstobake) and you can follow along the ups and downs of trying to bake your own bread.

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Hi there, you must be new.

Introductions are awkward, so let’s just get it out of the way.

My name is Lauren (if nothing gave that away) and I’m a college student who bakes a lot. That’s basically it!

I’m sure there’s more to me, as I am probably a complex adult, but that’s really the basic stuff for now. I also couldn’t figure out how to delete the introduction blog post so…. maybe not as complex of a person as I hoped.

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