Chocolate Praline Dobos Torte

 

The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

Lorraine and Angela invited DBers to be creative with the shape and frosting. Originally, I thought I would frost the cake with a ganache beurre flavored with praline paste. Then I thought, no, I should make the traditional frosting, which uses eggs.

Horseradish Grill’s Amazing Chocolate Cake

I decided to give another chocolate cake recipe a whirl: Horseradish Grill’s Chocolate Chocolate Layer Cake (The first link is to the I.C.E. curriculum version; see also here for the Nick Malgieri cookbook version. Update: these links do not work, so go here). And yes, it is yet another variation on Hershey’s Black Magic Cake, just like my most recent favorite,  Zoe’s Devil’s Food Cake.

Hungarian Yeast Rugelach

Tzippora Kriezman’s Delights of the Jewish Kitchen delivered another winner: Folded-Dough Crescents (p. 134), otherwise known as Hungarian kipelach. These dairy-free rugelach are made from a yeast dough that is rolled and folded like puff pastry.

The result is a unbelievably flaky dough. The exterior is shatteringly crisp, with many thin, crunchy layers. The softer interior is reminiscent of danishes or croissants.

Dairy-Free Cheese Danishes

There is a fascinating recipe for Pareve Cheese Flavor Crescents in Tzipporah Kreizman’s wonderful Delights of the Jewish Kitchen. They are super easy to make, there is absolutely no dairy involved, but they taste uncannily like cheese danishes. 

The recipe is fairly similar to the dough for the sour cream twists, except that the recipe calls for water and salted margarine instead of butter and sour cream. After refrigerating the dough for an hour and a half, the dough is divided up, and each portion is pressed out into a large circle. The circle is cut into wedges like a pizza pie, and each wedge is rolled up into a crescent shape.

The secret to these crescents is that they are dipped after baking  into a sugar syrup that is flavored with fresh lemon juice and lots of vanilla. The moisture from the syrup and the lemon/vanilla flavor give these pastries a taste that evokes cheese danishes.

Reine de Saba Cake for Julia’s Birthday

For the Fourth Annual Julia Child Birthday Celebration, hosted by Champaign Taste, I made Reine de Saba. Julia said that this was the first French cake that she ever ate, as prepared by Simone Beck.

Sour Cream Cinnamon Twists

The theme for BBD #23, hosted by Imafoodblog, is “Something You’ve Never Made Before.”

Hmmm. That leaves the field wide open.

How about sour cream cinnamon yeast twists?