Yule Log Challenge

Happy Holidays, all... Joey here, announcing our membership in the Daring Bakers group!!! We received our logo yesterday (as you can see on the left) and are very excited about our Yule log, which is our first challenge as members of the group... Steven began yesterday by making mushrooms from meringue... See?









Don't they look real?

This morning I made the genoise...









the sugar and eggs










heating the sugar and eggs










whisking the heated sugar and eggs to triple the volume and cool them, too










I missed the opportunity to photograph the batter going in to the pan, but this is the result when it comes out of the oven about 10 minutes later... There was a bit of a bubble, but that's okay










spreading the orange-flavored buttercream, and then (drum roll)...










the big roll and chill!!!!


And now that the roll is chilled, and the buttercream is finished, we start building our log...









So, the texturing begins, too...





Steven adds snow...






...and the meringue mushrooms...










And it's finished!!! Complete with little forest resident!!!











This was really fun!!!! This ended up being the plain genoise, with a buttercream filling flavored with Grand Marnier, and bittersweet chocolate buttercream for the bark... We will be tasting this Monday night in South Orange, NJ for Christmas Eve... more photos when we return to the big city!

Tis the Season to eat cheesecake...

Boy, oh boy, have we been busy. The orders have been rolling in and we have had to arrange our schedules accordingly. Friday evening, my niece and her beau were en route from Boston to Florida, and stopped for a few hours to have dinner with their favorite redheaded uncle in NYC. I spent all day baking biscotti and cookies for them to take back to the family (hey, save shipping costs whenever possible, ya know?!). I made peanut butter biscotti dipped in semi-sweet chocolate (oy vey), Mistletoe Surprise cookies made with the seasonal Hershey's kiss flavors of Chocolate Marshmallow, Cherry cordial, and Candy Cane - Dayum, where they yumilicious. Also made a batch of our wonderfully decadent Maple sandwich cookies, so labor intensive and yet so wonderful on the tongue.

Saturday we had to provide the desserts for a co-worker's holiday party and we made 4 mini (5-1/2") cheesecakes in the following flavors: Caramel Apple, Creme de Menthe, Peanut Butter/Chocolate, and Pumpkin. They were so cute, and I am waiting to hear back from Shannon as to the reviews of her guests. Then Joey made a Lemon Flip (formerly Lemon Lemon Lemon cake) that was so tall, it gave the Empire State building a creamy, lemon curd and cream cheese filled run for it's money!

We finished off the order with a batch of our now-famous Joeltz, and fell alseep with the oven still cooling (its been cold here, so having the oven on all day is actually a plus).

Tonight Joey is baking Pumpkin Pecan Biscotti, which will be added to gift bags containing one each of Almond, Almond Anise, Tuscan Spice, Apple Cinnamon, Lemon Poppyseed, Butterscotch, and Cranberry Orange (don't you just envy the people receiving those gift bags, courtesy of Joey Biscotti?)

This Holiday weekend we have several orders for cheesecakes and cakes, and on top of all of that, we are taking on our first challange from the Daring Bakers, which must be kept in utter secrecy until the day it is blogged about - either Saturday the 22nd or Sunday the 23rd, complete with photos - mark your calenders for that one, folks!

We plan to have a new poll up for you by the first of the year - if you have some great suggestions for what to poll on next - let us know by emailing joeybiscotti@hotmail.com....you can order there also!

All you'll want for Christmas - or any other occasion...

Howdy folks, Steven here with some news for you New Yorkers that I am sure you will enjoy hearing (or reading, as it were): We now offer gift certificates! At this time, we're offering what we like to refer to as Dessert Dollars, or a Ticket to Paradise. One certificate is valued at $40.00 and is good for one (1) Cake or Cheesecake from our ever-widening menu. Unfortunately, since we are as yet not set up for shipping these items, we can only offer them to people living in the New York City vicinity who are available to pick-up or deliver to.

In the future, we hope to offer them in other increments as well, but that all hinges upon having enough demand for smaller batches and/or quantities of our wonderful cookies, biscotti, and mini bites - such as Joeltz (espresso brownies) or our newest addistion, Pumpkin cream cheese mini muffins.(can I get a YUM! please?)

Feel free to drop us a line to joeybiscotti@hotmail.com or call 212-842-5426 and leave us a message as to what you'd like to order, and we will happily and promptly reply to any and all inquiries. - So don't miss out on your chance to serve up some scrumptious dessert which will quickly become a new holiday household tradition. (oh heck - why wait for a holiday - make it a weekly tradition!)

There's still time to order for Christmas and New Years, not to mention any and all birthdays, anniversaries, engagement parties or any other special occasion you can imagine.

Ciao for now, friends -
Steven

Its awfully hard to lick a whisk

And now that I've caught your attention with THAT leading line...Joey just finished making the ganache for our Sour Cream Chocolate cake, which has been ordered for a birthday tomorrow, and, of course, I HAD to lick the whisk, because you just can't let something like that get away from you!

Today I made a batch of mini Pumpkin Cream Cheese Streusel muffins and BOY were they good...I'm gonna put those on the menu right now! And Joey is behind me in the kitchen perfecting a new Banana cheesecake that was a special request, but will surely become a favorite of the masses.

We just came back from Hershey Park, where we celebrated the cold with our four-year-old "niece". It was a wonderful chance to stock up on chocolate, and we found some great seasonal specials, which inspired us to try to come up with some interesting and tasty new treats. We'll be updating you with any and all chocolate related treats in the near future - so keep your eyes and ears open (and noses, I mean, you can't deny the lovely olfactory pleasures wafting from our kitchen!)

Stay tuned, fellow chocolate lovers...you won't believe some of the things we've got in mind...

Steven