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Recipe: sugar plums

As a child, I only knew of sugar plums through The Nutcracker and Twas the Night Before Christmas. Several years ago when I had a subscription to Saveur, I jotted down a recipe for sugar plums, mostly because I had never tasted one before. These sugar plums are confections, not the fruits that you can read about on Wikipedia. They are quite easy to make and tend to be a huge hit with people who either don’t care for chocolate or just enjoy the autumny spices and dried fruits. It’s a heady aroma that wafts through your house when you make a batch: orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, toasted almonds, honey.

almonds, dried dates, dried apricots

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Recipe: lemon mousseline torte

Like I said earlier, my in-laws were visiting this weekend and there was much cooking going on at our house. It was my MIL’s birthday on Sunday, so I thought I’d bake a cake in celebration. My FIL is a huge fan of chocolate – one of those types who won’t actually eat desserts that don’t have chocolate. My MIL likes chocolate, but she loves custards, citrus, fruits, and other non-chocolate desserts too. It was a good excuse to make a non-chocolate dessert. Ever since I completed my pastry course this past spring, my MIL has been wanting to bake with me to learn some techniques and a recipe. I chose the Lemon Mousseline Torte because I never actually made it in class (my partner and I made the Zebra Torte for that lesson).

I altered the recipe slightly because we didn’t have time to make the pâte sucrée cookie base. The lemon chiffon cake had a terrifically lemony-tart flavor. I used a 9×2 inch round pan, but one day would like to get my hands on a pair of 9×3 inch rounds because the chiffons rise beautifully in those pans, allowing for more or thicker layers from each cake.

brushing the first layer with limoncello simple syrup

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Recipe: bostini cream pie

This month, I joined the Daring Bakers which has exploded as far as membership goes. The Daring Bakers is an online community of people who bake a recipe selected by a host each month, and then post about the experience and the outcome on the same day. Our host was Mary of alpineberry who chose Bostini Cream Pie for this month’s DB challenge, and today is the day everyone is posting. Go to the blogroll to see everyone’s fine creations!

The Bostini is a variation on an old favorite, the Boston cream pie. The main components are: pastry cream, orange chiffon cake, and chocolate glaze. So I began with the pastry cream, because I looooove pastry cream. Love to eat it, love to make it.

crème patisserie: mixing in the yolks

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