chocolate cream puff cake

Today was our Mother/Daughter Banquet at Church and I got to make the cake. I got an inspiration from watching the Cake Boss and came up with my own version of the Chocolate Cream Puff Cake. This cake is chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache. Then I made chocolate cream puffs and filled them with chocolate whipped cream and sprinkled powdered sugar on the cream puffs. I then arranged them on the cake and added some chocolate dipped strawberries and chocolate drizzle over the whole cake.

The cake was a full sheet cake 2 foot by 3 foot in size. The cake alone served 120 then their were 24 cream puffs and 15 strawberries on it. It took 9 hours to make and I have decided if anyone ever wants me to bake them one it will cost them $500!

I also dipped 125 strawberries into chocolate. Each place setting had a strawberry at it. It looked very nice.

onion dill pinwheels

I've decided to begin a quest for ultimate bread. I do work in a professional bakery setting and when I have had to be the bread baker I have found it so boring. Scaling dough and forming it for hours on end leaves for no creativity. So I know I can make a basic loaf of bread but how can I make bread baking exciting? I will try new and different recipes that I have never seen done before and discovering a new world of bread baking is going to bring excitement into an aspect of baking that is not my favorite thing to do.

And so....I began my quest. I researched in an old volumn from Bon Appetits-Breads, cookbooks I have had since the 1980's. I found this recipe. It went well with my pot roast I made tonight.
2 1/2 tsp dry yeast

1/4 cup water

1 Cup milk scalded, add 1 Tbsp butter, then cool to lukeroom

1 Tbsp Sugar

1 tsp salt

3 1/2 Cups Bread Flour

1 Medium Onion chopped and sauted in butter

2 tsp dried dillweed

melted butter

Scald your milk on stovetop or in microwave, add 1 Tbsp butter to the mixture and set aside to cool to lukewarm.

In your mixing bowl add the water, yeast and sugar and let sit until bubbly. Add the salt and the lukewarm milk mixture and mix together. Add the flour 1 cup at a time and knead until done. Set the dough in an oiled bowl and let rise to double.

Meanwhile saute the onion and put in a seperate bowl and add the dillweed to it.

Once the dough is doubled in volumn put it on a floured surface and roll it out to about 1/4 inch. Spread the onion/dill mixture on top of the dough and roll it up like a cinnamon roll. Cut the log into 8 pieces and place in a container close but not touching. Let them proof up until doubled in size, brush the pinwheels with melted butter then bake at 350 for about 25 minutes or until done.