Tuiles - Daring Bakers

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.

This was a fun and light challenge - just as well after the December French Yule Log which quite wore me out! I was a lazy artist as far as making templates of tuiles went - I bought mine from Kerekes in Brooklyn, aka "Paradise." They had all sorts of wonderful tuile templates lined up in boxes against the counter wall and I actually bought not one, but four.

The two I picked for the Challenge were the butterfly and the large flower. The recipe was easy and I applied the dough with an offset spatula onto the tuile shapes. I was as happy as a kid doing arts and crafts class. After baking, the tuiles were easy to mold - I used my rolling pin. Then the most exciting part of all - brushing on petal dust; now I really felt like a kid again - it was most enjoyable.

Oh dear, oh dear, though, I chose to make a blancmange for the dessert part and picked a recipe for a plain simple vanilla blancmange from somewhere on the web - it really turned out so dull and boring. Oh well, as least it served as a backdrop. I also tried raspberry coulis, but it turned out more like a blob of raspberry jam. I think if I had served this dessert to anyone but myself that person would have kept the tuiles for a decoration and sent the rest back to the kitchen. But that doesn't really matter; it was all about tuiles wasn't it?

Thank you Karen and Zorra for this delightful challenge; I will be using my tuile templates again for sure.