Cherry Clafoutis

Made Cherry Clafoutis from Michel Roux's Eggs with my pastry friend Will. I didn't take any picures until afterwards, but it was surprisingly straightforward... stir, pour, bake. Hard to describe, though. Not quite a cake. Not quite a tart. Maybe a sweet, fluffy, waffley, quichey kinda thing. I'd never had one before.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Coffee Meringue

Had the urge to make cupcakes for a little while now, so I used my section's turn to bring snacks to chorus tonight as an excuse to make some. I used the Essential Chocolate Cake Recipe from Dede Wilson's Wedding Cakes You Can Make; basically the same recipe I used for the wedding cake last year. I also wanted to try using a meringue instead of a buttercream as the frosting. I used an italian buttercream recipe, melted sugar poured into whipped egg whites, and just left out the butter. Also added some instant coffee for a flavor I thought would complement the chocolate cake well. The meringue looked really good piped into a swirl on the cupcakes. I used my little culinary torch to toast the outside a bit, like you'd see on a lemon meringue pie. After 24 cupcakes, I still had quite a bit of meringue left, so I piped it into swirls on a baking sheet and popped it into the oven to make meringue cookies. Crispy.

Teiglach

For a Rosh Hashanah dinner tonight I made teiglach, a traditional Lithuanian Jewish dessert. It's basically bits of dough cooked in boiling honey with ginger and lemon zest, then tossed with walnuts. When I called them to ask about teiglach, my family knew exactly what I was talking about, but I can't recall ever having actually eaten it myself. Thus, I am still not sure whether it turned out like it's supposed to or not. It looks pretty. The bread bits are... a little tougher than I would have liked. Maybe that's the intent. Let's assume so.

The recipe I used was from Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food.