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Spiced Pumpkin Roulade with White Chocolate & Mascarpone

October 15, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

Nate and I usually host our families for Thanksgiving dinner, but with my bum elbow making it a little difficult to stuff a turkey – let alone maneuver it in and out of the oven – my parents took on the hosting duties this year, and I brought dessert. Pumpkin pie is traditional of course, but I don’t actually like it all that much. The slightly wet, heavy filling manages to make even the flakiest pastry soggy and just doesn’t get me excited about eating it. However I was very excited about eating this pumpkin roulade the minute I saw the recipe.

Spiced Pumpkin Roulade with White Chocolate & Mascarpone | Korena in the Kitchen

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Recipes Tagged With: baking, caramel, dessert, fall, mascarpone, pepitas, pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin spice, Thanksgiving, white chocolate

Brazilian Bolo de Rolo

February 28, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

When Gabby announced that February’s Around the World in 12 Plates destination was Brazil, I quickly realized that I knew absolutely nothing about Brazilian cuisine. I ended up on a Wikipedia page listing common Brazilian foods so that I could figure out what to Google, which is how I found out about bolo de rolo, a jelly roll-like cake from the Pernambuco state of Brazil, traditionally filled with guava paste and boasting EIGHTEEN extremely thin layers of rolled cake. As soon as I read that, my Daring Baker’s heart leapt and I knew I had found my recipe for this month.

Bolo de Rolo | Korena in the Kitchen

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Filed Under: Around the World in 12 Plates, Cakes & Pies, Recipes Tagged With: ATW12P, baking, Brazilian, cake, cake roll, caramel, challenge, dessert, recipe

Poached Plum Pavlova with Spun Caramel

September 4, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

Poached Plum Pavlova with Spun Caramel | Korena in the Kitchen

I have majorly fallen off the Daring Kitchen challenge bandwagon (the last challenge I did was in May!), and even now, my attempt to jump back on is a week late. But better late than never, right? August’s challenge, set by Marcellina, was the pavlova: a crisp meringue base filled with whipped cream and fruit. While both New Zealand and Australia claim to be the originator of this dessert, it is named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, because the billows of meringue and cream are supposed to resemble her tutu. That might be a bit of a stretch, but I completely understand why Australia and New Zealand are fighting over it, because DANG, pavlova is delicious! I’ve made several in the past, and for a while the header image on my blog was a pavlova, but somehow I’ve never actually posted a recipe. So finally, here it is….

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Filed Under: Daring Bakers / Daring Kitchen Challenges, Fruit, Other Baked Goods & Sweets, Recipes Tagged With: baking, caramel, Daring Kitchen, dessert, meringue, pavlova, plums, recipe

Maple Stroopwafels

March 27, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

Maple Stoopwafels | Korena in the Kitchen

This post is two days late for International Waffle Day, and is not exactly your traditional Easter Sunday fodder (Happy Easter! Hot cross buns forthcoming!), however today is Daring Kitchen reveal day, and I’ve been waiting to share these babies for weeks. This month, the Daring Kitchen made stroopwafels, a sweet treat of Dutch origin in which a waffle cookie (“wafel”) is sandwiched together with buttery caramel syrup (“stroop”). Honestly, with a concept like that you can’t possibly go wrong, however if I didn’t already have such a soft spot for Dutch baked goods (see: plain and gevulde speculaas, peperkoek, and schichttorte), I might have let this challenge pass me by, because stroopwafels require the use of a rather specific cooking appliance that I do not own and didn’t really want to purchase: a waffle cookie iron or pizzelle iron. But, having been introduced to exactly how delicious stroopwafels are by my half-Dutch friend Lynette, I made the effort to take a ferry to Salt Spring Island to borrow a waffle cookie iron from her dad just so that I could make them myself!

Maple Stroopwafels | Korena in the Kitchen…

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Filed Under: Cookies & Squares, Daring Bakers / Daring Kitchen Challenges, Recipes Tagged With: caramel, cookies, Dutch cuisine, maple, recipe, stroopwafle, wafflea

Daring Bakers: Tarte Tatin

March 27, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

Tarte Tatin | Korena in the Kitchen

For the March Daring Bakers’ Challenge, Korena from Korena in the Kitchen taught us that some treats are best enjoyed upside down. She challenged us to make a tarte Tatin from scratch.

This month I was excited to host another Daring Bakers’ challenge, for which I chose the tarte Tatin. This classic French dessert is basically the apple pie version of an upside-down cake: apples are caramelized in sugar in a saucepan, covered with pastry and baked, and then inverted on a plate to serve. It’s a great example of the magic of caramelized sugar: the apples take on a deep, rich mahogany colour and become infused with the complex flavours of a well-cooked caramel, and the crisp puff pastry base also becomes practically candied with caramel at the edges, resulting in a fantastic mix of soft, crunchy, and chewy textures.

The tart is named after the Tatin sisters, who ran a hotel near Paris in the 1880s. Apparently, one day one of the sisters forgot to put a bottom crust on her apple pie, but instead of the disaster she was expecting to pull out of the oven, she ended up with a dessert so loved by the hotel guests that it became the hotel’s signature dish. However, this sweet story conflicts with the fact that a similar upside-down apple tart called tarte Solognotte (named after the Sologne region in France) existed long before the tarte Tatin, suggesting that the Tatin sisters’ creation was actually just an updated and improved version of the tarte Solognotte. Either way, it is a stunningly delicious yet simple and rustic dessert….

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Daring Bakers / Daring Kitchen Challenges, Fruit, Recipes Tagged With: apple, baking, caramel, Daring Bakers, dessert, French cuisine, pastry, rough puff, tarte Tatin

Christmas Baking 2013: Salted Caramel Chocolate Truffles

December 31, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

I’ve been making chocolate truffles at Christmas for at least ten years, ever since a friend of my Mum’s let me know how easy it was – just make a ganache of melted chocolate and cream, let it cool, then shape and roll in cocoa powder. Some years I decide to get fancier and dip each truffle in tempered chocolate. I usually spike the ganache with some kind of booze, but this year I made the caramel version I’ve had bookmarked for years in one of my Canadian Living cookbooks. All it entailed was cooking sugar into a caramel syrup, adding cream, and pouring it over chopped chocolate to make the ganache filling – simple, yet delicious. Because of the extra sugar in the caramel, these truffles were very sweet, so I added a pinch of salt to balance it out and made them into tiny portions (in hindsight, I wonder about using some portion of unsweetened chocolate in the ganache… perhaps an experiment for next year!).

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Filed Under: Chocolate, Recipes Tagged With: candy, caramel, chocolate, Christmas baking, dessert, recipe, truffles

Caramel Cake with Raspberries and Cream

July 12, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 25 Comments

I turned thirty this past Sunday. Thirty. I know that age is just a number and I’m still plenty young, but it sounds a lot older than twenty-nine, somehow. It was a milestone, anyway, so there had to be an appropriate cake. As with every birthday cake I make, there was some agonizing over what kind it should be – but only a little. I already had it narrowed down between a crêpe cake or a caramel cake, and the caramel cake won. (But the crêpe cake is still on the list, because WOW.)

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Recipes Tagged With: baking, birthday cake, browned butter, caramel, celebration cake, raspberries, recipe, Swiss Meringue Buttercream, whipped cream

Chocolate and Caramel Tart with Hazelnuts (Daring Bakers: Pies, Part III)

June 29, 2013 By Korena in the Kitchen 20 Comments

Rachael from pizzarossa was our lovely June 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she had us whipping up delicious pies in our kitchens! Cream pies, fruit pies, chocolate pies, even crack pies! There’s nothing like pie! 🙂

As promised, the third and final installment of this month’s Daring Bakers pie challenge. I think my inner chocolate lover unconsciously saved the best for last. (Part I and Part II, for your reading pleasure.)

This tart has a buttery, crisp pastry shell, a thin layer of deeply flavoured caramel, and a thicker layer of dark and velvety smooth chocolate mousse. It is pretty decadent but so worth it. I added some ground hazelnuts to the crust and topped the finished tart with hazelnuts dipped in caramel for added drama. Not that a tart this good needs extra drama, but the fact that I lead a fairly drama-free life makes me feel the need to bring the drama sometimes – if only to dessert.

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Chocolate, Daring Bakers / Daring Kitchen Challenges, Recipes Tagged With: baking, caramel, chocolate, Daring Bakers, dessert, hazelnuts, pastry, pâté sablée, recipe, tart

Lemon Meringue Birthday Cake

May 9, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

Recently Nate had a birthday, so naturally, I made a birthday cake. Last year I made him a lemon-tastic cake which didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted, so I gave it another go this year. I came across two amazing-sounding lemon cakes: one with black tea-flavoured Italian meringue frosting by Honey and Jam, and the Tartine lemon meringue cake (lemon butter, caramel, chiffon cake, and torched meringue) at The Way the Cookie Crumbles. I decided to use the cake and frosting recipe from the first, and the lemon cream and caramel fillings from the second. I also intended to torch the black tea meringue frosting, but I’ll get to that in a minute……

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Filed Under: Cakes & Pies, Recipes Tagged With: baking, birthday cake, black tea, cake, caramel, Italian meringue, lemon curd, lemon meringue, recipe, Tartine

Caramel Pecan Sticky Buns

March 2, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

Here they are… the caramel pecan sticky buns that started my obsession with making bread the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day way. They are so good that I am sure they will also start your obsession.

This is one way to use up a portion of this challah dough. Roll it out, spread it with cinnamon-sugar-butter and sprinkle it with pecans, sit it on a bed of brown sugar-butter-pecan goodness, let it rest, let it bake, and then you will be in caramel pecan sticky bun heaven.

I’m telling you, these are GOOD, and although they require some waiting time, they don’t require a lot of physical effort. They don’t even have to be particularly pretty or neat looking to still taste out-of-this-world amazing. There is a TON of butter and sugar in this recipe, so if you’re looking for something diet-friendly, you might want to pass on this one… but I wouldn’t recommend it ;).

The pecans are calling your name. Make these sticky buns. You know you want to…

Caramel Pecan Sticky Buns

From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Makes 8 buns. This recipe uses one 1 1/2-ish lb portion of challah dough.

Caramel-Pecan Topping

In a medium bowl, cream together:

6 tbsp unsalted butter, soft

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

Spread the mixture evenly over the bottom of a 9″ round cake pan. Sprinkle it with:

1/2 cup roughly chopped pecans (you can leave them whole if you prefer)

Set aside.

Filling

In a small bowl, cream together:

4 tbsp unsalted butter, soft

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Set aside.

In a 375˚F oven, toast:

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Toasting the pecans keeps them from getting soggy inside the rolls. They should take about 20-25 minutes – watch them carefully and stir several times. Set aside to cool.

Assembly

Place a 1 1/2-ish lb portion of chilled challah dough on a lightly floured surface. Using your hands and a rolling pin, roll and stretch it into an 18″ x 9″ rectangle. Keep the dough lightly floured to prevent it from sticking, but try not to over-flour it.

Spread the rectangle of dough evenly with the filling, then sprinkle it with the toasted pecans. From one of the long edges, roll up the dough securely to enclose the filling.

With a sharp serrated knife, cut the roll into 8 pieces. Arrange them over the caramel-pecan topping mixture in the baking pan. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and set aside to rest for about 1 hour.

After an hour, the buns should have expanded quite a bit. With a few minutes left in the rest period, preheat the oven to 350˚F. Remove the plastic wrap, place the pan on a cookie sheet to protect against bubbling-over caramel (I didn’t do this and my oven was a mess of melted butter and molten caramel!), and bake at 350˚F for about 40 minutes, until golden brown and cooked all the way to the center of the pan.

Place the pan on a cooling rack for about 5 minutes, until the bubbling caramel subsides. While still hot, run a knife around the edge of the pan to release the buns and invert them onto a plate (if you wait for them to cool they will stick to the pan). Scrape out any caramel and pecans left behind.

Devour!

Filed Under: Breakfast & Brunch, Other Baked Goods & Sweets, Recipes Tagged With: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, baking, brunch, caramel, cinnamon buns, pecans, recipe, sticky buns, yeast bread

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I'm Korena: cook, baker, dirty-dishes-maker. My favourite things include flour, butter, sugar, and chocolate. Read More…

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All content © Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen, 2011 – 2021. Please contact me before duplicating any content, including pictures. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Korena Vezerian and Korena in the Kitchen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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