This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Fortune cookies have been on my mind this week. Since I've never made homemade fortune cookies, I thought this tuile recipe would be perfect, and it was. I used Le Cordon Bleu brown cane sugar with vanilla instead of the vanilla sugar called for in the recipe. This sugar contains crushed vanilla beans which show as black flecks in the cookie.

To form fortune cookies, place the paper fortune on top of cookie, fold the hot cookie in half, forming a semi-circle, and press the edges together gently. Then quickly fold the semi-circle over the edge of a small bowl to create the fortune cookie shape.

As well, the Daring Baker hosts asked us to make something "light" to go with our tuiles. I couldn't resist serving mine with my favorite flavor of ice cream: coffee. Not very light, I know, but delicious. For Christmas, I received a "Supreme Ice Cream Maker" that I think my kids have enjoyed more than me since we've made Smartie, Kit Kat, and Rolo ice cream several times. But I have squeezed in time to make Bailey's, vanilla, and this coffee ice cream since it's so easy to use (just a bit on the noisy side).

To see the different versions of tuiles cropping up all over the foodblogosphere, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll. Thanks to Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umrühren bitte (aka Kochtopf) who hosted this month.

Recipe
Yields: 20 small tuiles or 6 large

Preparation time: batter 10 minutes
Waiting time: 30 minutes
Baking time: 5-10 minutes per batch
Oven: 180˚C or 350˚F

65 grams (¼ cup or 2.3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened (not melted but soft)
60 grams (½ cup or 2.1 ounces) confectioner’s sugar. sifted
1 sachet vanilla sugar (7 grams or substitute with a dash of vanilla extract)
2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)
65 grams (½ cup or 2.3 ounces) all-purpose flour, sifted
1 tablespoon cocoa powder(or food coloring of choice)
Butter or spray to grease baking sheet

Using a hand whisk or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (low speed), cream butter, sugar and vanilla to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to firm up. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week. Take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it.)

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as a butterfly. Press the stencil on the baking sheet and use an offset spatula to spread the batter. Leave some room in between your shapes. Mix a small part of the batter with the cocoa and a few drops of warm water until evenly colored. Use this colored batter in a paper piping bag and proceed to pipe decorations on the wings and body of the butterfly.

Bake butterflies in a preheated oven (180˚C or 350˚F) for about 5-10 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. Immediately release from baking sheet and proceed to shape and bend the cookies in the desired shape. These cookies have to be shaped when still warm, you might want to bake a small amount at a time or maybe put them in the oven to warm them up again. Or: place a baking sheet toward the front of the warm oven, leaving the door half open. The warmth will keep the cookies malleable.

If you don’t want to do stencil shapes, you might want to transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip. Pipe the desired shapes and bake. Shape immediately after baking using for instance a rolling pin, a broom handle, cups, cones, etc.

Recipe for Coffee Ice Cream
1 cup whole milk
¾ cup sugar
2 tablespoons instant espresso or coffee, to taste (or ½ cup Bailey's instead)
2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Whisk all the ingredients until the sugar has dissolved. Process mixture in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to covered container and freeze until firm.

Tasting Notes
These tuile fortune cookies were perfect and very easy to make. They have a nice crunch and delicate flavor that goes perfectly with this coffee ice cream.

It's all about fish for the next four weeks. And this week's trout couldn't be easier. I thought last week's pork dish was easy, but this one beats that! All you need is some browned butter and almonds (and trout, of course) and you have trout almondine.

First, you season the trout with salt and pepper. Then, dredge it in flour and pan-fry it in butter and oil. After it's finished cooking, you let it rest while you brown some butter and almonds. Sprinkle some parsley around, squeeze a lemon on top, and you've got lunch or dinner ready in no time flat. It's tasty hot or cold too.

The hardest part is cleaning the fish, which is probably what this class is all about over at Le Cordon Bleu. I wimped out on this step and was lucky enough to find trout already cleaned at the grocery store. Instead, I watched this video about how to clean a rainbow trout.
Recipe

Serves 6 (I halved the recipe.)

1 trout, about 1½ pounds
½ lemon
Salt and freshly ground pepper
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 ounces sliced almonds
½ tablespoon chopped parsley
Parsley for garnish
You can find the recipe for Truite aux Amandes (Trout with Almonds) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home or here. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
I loved this dish, and I'm planning on using more browned butter and sliced almonds on other types of fish, chicken and vegetables. Affordable, easy and delicious. This is definitely a keeper.

Next Week (February 4)
• Bar à la Normande (Sea Bass with Mushrooms and Cream) pages 180-181

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $1,038.85 + $7.02 (trout) + $3.42 (other ingredients) = $1,049.29

Butter used so far: 9 pounds, 16 tablespoons

. . . . . . . . . .

I love fortune cookies. They make me feel like a child hoping I'll get a good fortune that will come true. Each New Year's Eve, I pass around fortune cookies to everyone at the table, and we all read them out to each other, always adding "in bed" at the end and giggling like teenagers. One year, I cracked opened my fortune cookie and it was empty. It turned out to be a tough year! This year, the fortune cookies I bought were dipped in white chocolate and all contained two or three fortunes in each. Before photographing this cake I noticed there was one fortune cookie remaining in the container on the counter from the holidays. And since it was Chinese New Year yesterday, I cracked it open to find four fortunes! I baked this cake in my cast iron pan that I found several years ago at a garage sale where a retired foodie was selling many of his prized cooking items. This was a great buy since I've used it often, but never for something sweet. Now I have a list of treats I want to bake up in my pan.

Recipe

Makes 1 9-inch square pan or 1 10-inch diameter cast iron pan (bake longer if using this size of cast iron pan and check the middle to ensure the cake is done)

For the cake:
2 tablespoons finely chopped, peeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup packed, light brown sugar
3 large eggs
½ cup molasses
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate (2 ounces melted, 4 ounces finely chopped)
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon finely chopped stem ginger in syrup

For the icing:
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon strong coffee
3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
3 tablespoons confectioner's sugar (sifted)
You can find the recipe for Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. Dorie also wrote about this cake on Serious Eats and on her blog she recommends freezing this cake to have on hand. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Heather of Sherry Trifle who chose the recipe for this week and will post the recipe.

Tasting Notes
I love ginger, and I love chocolate. Together, the taste was interesting. The cake was moist and the stem ginger added a little zing to some bites. Although it's not my favorite cake, it was fun to use my cast iron pan in this way. And Dorie says this cake freezes well, iced and all. So, I'll probably pop half of it in the freezer to pull out and share with friends and family. Recipe for Next Week (February 3)
World Peace Cookies on pages 138-139 chosen by Jessica of cookbookhabit.

Other gingerbread and cast iron baking ideas
• A review of The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook: Recipes for the Best Pan in Your Kitchen from Baking Bites
• Gingerbread cookies and cookie cups
• Swedish Apple Cake from Dorie at Serious Eats
• Cherry Clafoutis from Mark at No Special Effects
• Homemade Fortune Cookies from Kristen at Dine and Dish

Happy New Year!
新年快乐

Humble roast chicken was on the menu last week, but even though I made it while my mom was visiting, I didn't have time to write up my post in-between shopping, eating out and seeing movies. So here it is more than a week late. However, we all enjoyed eating it. Roasting
According to Barbara Kafka's Roasting-A Simple Art, roasting means food that's cooked with high heat and some fat (either from the meat or added to the pot). If the heat isn't hot enough, the food steams in its own juices.

I rinsed, dried, trussed, sprinkled (with salt and pepper), doused (with butter and oil), flavored (with bay and thyme in the cavity), and browned the chicken on top of the stove on each side. Then roasted it in a 350˚F oven for 45 minutes covered.

eGullet, and Thomas Keller suggest cooking it at a high-heat (450˚F), so I'll have to give that a try next time. Grand-mère
While the chicken was roasting, I prepared the Grand-mère part of this dish, which is the garnish of bacon, mushrooms, potatoes, and onions. We covered grand-mère as a garnish in class 3, but this time the garnish came together better. Each item is cooked separately and then thrown together at the end. Warning: This means lots of pans and dishes!

Pan #1: Pearl onions. Peeling the pearl onions took a lot of time. (I've been told there exists bags of already peeled pearl onions in the freezer section of some grocery stores. I've yet to see that here in Ottawa.) After peeling the onions, I covered them with water, added a pinch of salt and a knob of butter and cooked them over high heat until the water had evaporated. Then I continued cooking them until they turned a golden brown.

Pan #2 and #3: Potatoes. While the onions were cooking, I practiced turning potatoes, which also took a lot of time! Then, I put them in a pan of cold salted water, put the lid on and brought them to a boil. After blanching the potatoes for a few minutes, I fried them in Pan #3 with 2 tablespoons of butter until golden brown and al dente.

Pan #4: Mushrooms. In yet another pan, I fried the mushrooms in butter and seasoned them with salt and pepper.

Next up was the bacon. Although the recipe called for blanching it to remove some of the smokiness (which would have meant another pan), I just draped the slices over the chicken half-way through cooking the bird and then left the cover off until the juices ran clear. Finishing
When the chicken was cooked through, I let it sit under aluminum foil while finishing the sauce. This ensured that the juices were redistributed before carving.

I poured off the sauce and removed any fat. Then, I returned the sauce to the pan and deglazed it with ¼ cup water. I added the chicken back in, along with the onions, potatoes, and mushrooms, and let this mixture cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes were cooked through. A sprinkle of chopped parsley, and it was ready to serve.

Recipe

Serves 6

4½ pound chicken
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 sprig thyme or ¼ teaspoon dried
1 bay leaf
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
24 pearl onions
2½ pounds waxy potatoes (red or white)
1 pound button or quartered large mushrooms, trimmed, rinsed, and dried
10 ounces slab bacon, sliced ¼ inch thick
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
You can find the recipe for Poulet en Cocotte Grand-Mère (Braised Chicken Casserole with Bacon, Mushrooms, Potatoes, and Onions) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This was an incredibly delicious roast chicken. It was tender, the sauce was perfect, and the vegetables around it were tasty. I've made roast chicken (and bought several rotisserie roast chickens from the deli), but this was the best I've ever tasted.
My Bucket List

Dine on roast chicken at Bouchon.

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $1,003.98 + $34.87 = $1,038.85

Butter used so far: 9 pounds, 8 tablespoons

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::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.

This week's Cordon Bleu recipe is simple meat and potatoes fare. I didn't think I'd ever use "simple" and "Cordon Bleu" in the same sentence, but this is one recipe that is both.

And it's not your typical fried-and-dried pork chops. First, the pork is fried in butter and oil. Searing the meat forms a crust that keeps the flavorful juices inside the meat. But to avoid the dried part of the equation, the meat is finished in the oven layered between thinly sliced potatoes that have been sprinkled with salt, pepper and thyme, drenched in butter and baked until the potatoes are cooked. This Flemish-style rib of pork couldn't be easier or more delicious.

Recipe

Serves 6

6 pork chops, 6-8 ounces each
Salt and freshly ground pepper
¼ pound (4 ounces or 8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 pounds potatoes
Several sprigs fresh thyme
You can find the recipe for Côtes de Porc Flamande (Baked Pork Chops with Potatoes and Thyme) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This was such a simple and delicious meal (and affordable at $2 per plate). It was also quick and easy to make and one that I'll add to our menu rotation at home. Now if only I could get my kids to like meat!

Next Week (January 28)
• Truite aux Amandes (Trout with Almonds) pages 49-50

. . . . . . . . . .

Running total: $991.59 + $12.39 = $1,003.98

Butter used so far: 9 pounds

. . . . . . . . . .

While watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I made this Berry Surprise Cake. What an exciting time to be a citizen in the USA, and although I'm not a US citizen, I'm enjoying watching it unfold from Canada and feel a sense of pride even so.

As for the cake, it seems like a perfect celebration cake. Genoise, framboise syrup, cream cheese filling and sweetened whipped cream with a hidden berry as a surprise.

I used my mini cheesecake pan to make eight individual genoise cakes. I baked them for 15-20 minutes, and they overflowed a bit but didn't sink. I cut off the overflow and assembled the cakes.

Recipe

I halved the recipe.

For the cake:
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

For the syrup:
1/3 cup water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon kirsh, Chambord, framboise or raspberry syrup

For the filling:
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
½ cup plus 2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For the topping:
1 cup cold heavy cream
3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1-1½ pints fresh raspberries, for filling and topping (I used strawberries)
You can find the recipe for Berry Surprise Cake in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen who chose the recipe for this week and will post the recipe.


Tasting Notes
This was an upscale version of strawberry shortcake, and the cake had a nice light flavor but needed sweet berries to enhance it. I'll blame the January strawberries at our grocery store since the cake needed to be a little sweeter for me. It also might be all the Turtles and Toffifee chocolates that I've indulged in since Christmas. My taste buds were expecting something sweeter. But making it while watching the inauguration will be a sweet memory. Recipe for Next Week (January 27)
Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread on page 212 chosen by Heather of Sherry Trifle.