The Spastic Baker

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.

OK…So I joined the Daring Bakers a couple of months ago. I consider myself a pretty decent baker. A daring baker, even. So it seemed like a perfect fit.

Well, for the November challenge I almost burned down the kitchen, and in December when I read the 18 pages of instructions (realizing that I would need to take a day off from work, and easily spend $50 for ingredients) I bailed. So it was with great joy I found out that we’d be baking delicate French tuiles in January. There were three tuile recipes to choose from! We were challenged to pair with a fruit of our choosing! Easy and fun, right?

Wrong.

Before I got cracking, I read the Daring Baker message boards and saw that a lot of people were having problems monitoring their fast-cooking tuiles. The delicate, thin wafers (think fortune cookie) were burning around the edges easily, and difficult to work into the fancy shapes we’d be expected to. Note to self.

Given that, imagine my surprise when mine not only didn’t burn, they barely cooked. Mine were more like crepes (hey, at least it’s French!) and they puffed up and bubbled in the oven…just like a pancake...despite my slathering onto the chilled baking sheet in a thin, almost transparent layer. I figured as much would happen, since the batter was the consistency of plaster of Paris (look at me with all this French!).


And molding a cooked pancake…

…ain’t happening.

As if that isn’t bad enough, I opened up my brand new pint of organic lemon sorbet while they were baking and it was crystallized.

Merde. (More French! :-)

So, I scooped up my pieces and did what any self-respecting baker would do. I drank a margarita (to take the edge off, mais oui), and accessorized with my random tuile parts.

I had just enough batter left to try one more. This time I dropped it onto a warm (the recipe called for chilled) silpat-lined baking sheet, which helped the batter spread. Ten minutes later (still quite a long time to bake. Hmmm...), with some over-the-top “staging” and a bit of resuscitation on the sorbet, voila:

Still thick and crepe-like, but a bit better. Once again, I point you to the amazing Tartelette, for her far better execution and the full suite of tuile recipes, along with her own fantastic fillings like a Bailey’s cream that I’m anxious to try. And her photos are to drool for.

There were a couple of good things came out of this. My purchase of vanilla sugar, which will be perfect for – what else – FRENCH toast!

And the raspberry sauce I made by simply heating a bag of frozen organic berries and adding a scant tablespoon of sugar, then giving it a whirl with the emulsion blender after the berries had broken down a bit. This is super easy and very delicious, especially when paired with lemon sorbet as I (eventually) did here.

With that, I bid you adieu.