Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble: Week One: Biscuits

Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble 

... and I am here for it

I did not make this cake for this book.
I made this cake long before the cover release but it's similar enough that I felt like sharing. 

IT'S HERE!!!! 

Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble, by Alexis Hall, came out on Tuesday and...  I've been waiting for this book for so long and I have to say I was nervous because while I obviously love everything Alexis Hall writes, he gave us a little taste of this one last year in a newsletter and I was immediately obsessed and I waited and waited and waited and you know how when you have a really long wait and really high expectations you fear that you'll be let down? Like, I avoided seeing The Matrix for years because I knew it could never live up to the hype (it kind of did, actually...).

But Paris did not disappoint. Not at all. It might... 

It might...

It might be my favorite?

Like don't get me wrong, I loved Rosaline Palmer (and literally everything else Alexis Hall has ever written and almost certainly everything else he will ever write) but Paris... It's extra fun to have a brand new book with  the familiar Bake Expectations setting and returning cast & crew... and... well, to be honest, the thing that I loved best is that while Paris's anxieties are extreme,  as someone with anxiety I just get it, you know? I really identify with him, even more than the bisexual female baker I was so excited to meet in Rosaline Palmer. While there's certainly more that's different about Paris and myself, that's such a core quality and something so rarely represented that it just... is really really nice to read. 

And Tariq is fantastic and adorable and tigger-hugs and... and... 

and...

MORAG. 

MORAG IS EVERYTHING. The self-styled fat Glaswegian sex goddess? I think she might have unseated George as my all time favorite. I know. I know. But fat, kinky, sex-positive and such a good friend and... I just… LOVE. I love her. I want her. I want to be her. She is amazing. I just want so much more of her in my life. I even permanently inscribed her on my favorite boots.* 

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that Paris does not disappoint, and, just as exciting, there are some really fun bakes coming and a few that I am really REALLY extra excited about. 

So let's get to it!

Week One- Biscuits

BLIND BAKE

The blind bake was two dozen perfect chocolate chip cookies. 

The recipe below makes 24-36 depending on how big you make them. If you were on a competitive baking show, you could easily weigh them with a scale and make them perfect. I... did not. 

This is a very slight adaptation of the classic Toll House recipe you can get off the back of a bag of chocolate chips or on the internet a million times, including Harry’s biscuits from my Rosaline Palmer post, minus the walnuts cuz... blech. But I played with it a little to how I think I used to make them in high school because when I made them I almost always made several batches at once (and only ran into disaster doubling when friends got involved) and because I was making insane quantities at any given time, we would run out of unsalted butter so I’d usually use one stick unsalted and one stick salted per batch. The extra salt does not hurt. They were popular enough that a guy at school I barely knew asked if he could pay me to make them for him once, and I was like, it’s just the Toll House recipe? But he swore mine were better and I’m guessing it’s the salt and that I slightly adjust the white/brown sugar ratio cuz I like a chewy cookie and I guess he did too. If you like a crispy cookie, revert to the original and you’ll get that nice crunchiness. To be honest the original is perfect (just without the walnuts. I don't get why people like walnuts in chocolate chip cookies).

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or more. I probably used more)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375° F.
• Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamed, light, and fluffy. This is very important, don't skimp! I put mine in an electric mixer and let it go on medium-high for at least a few minutes. Actual minutes. Like 3-5 minutes. Go get a drink of water or wash some dishes or something and just let it go. Make sure to scrape down the bowl a few times to get up any unmixed bits.
• Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
• Add salt, baking powder, and gradually add flour, a little at a time. Keep beating until completely combined. Make sure to use scrape down the bowl. Don't over mix it, but make sure it is actually fully integrated.
• Stir in chocolate chips. 
• Chill! Overnight, or until you get to them, or at least for long enough to get a medic to check your possibly broken nose if someone opened a fridge into it (like... 30 minutes, but can we talk about that meet disaster? I think we need more of those in romance. I’m officially over the meet cute. Gimme more meet disasters- if you have recs leave them here, off the top of my head I have Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert). 
• Drop by rounded tablespoon, or cookie scoop, (or weighed out rolled ball if you're anal or on a televised baking competition show) onto an un-greased baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat or nothing at all if you're ballsy. (I personally like parchment.) Also, if you only want to make a few cookies, you can chill the dough and scoop more in the future, or roll it into a log and freeze it, which you can then slice like slice-and-bake cookies in the future.
• Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. 
• Drop/bang sheet on the counter. This helps deflate the middles so they'll be nice and chewy, apparently. I think it helps? I mean, it’s optional. I definitely didn’t read about that trick until I was wellllll out of high school (and college, and law school, and then some- it's definitely some internet blog thing).
• Cool on baking sheets for about 2 minutes, then remove to wire racks to cool completely. If you skip this step the cookies will crack and definitely not be baking-competition-show-perfect.

Baketacular

Paris

If you have started the book at all you know that Paris is making biscuits rose de reims… bougie little shit that he is. (I say that with love, as a fellow bougie baker, though again a thing I love about Paris is I totally get his discomfort with his privilege, even if he’s got soooo much more privilege than I could ever truly imagine.)

The recipe is in the book, thus I will not put it here (buy the book!!! It's so good!!!) 

I liked this recipe. Follow it carefully and you should make decent biscuits. I say decent not because the recipe has any issues, just that it's a finicky kind of cookie and if you aren't someone who does a lot of finicky baking... it might be easy to mess it up. I found a stand mixer a great advantage here (my first attempt used a hand mixer and I couldn't quite get the meringues to soft peaks). 

If you've finished week one, you'll also know that the description of Paris making them on Bake Expectations doesn't 100% match the directions- he has his meringues at firm peaks separately while he's beating the yolks/sugar. I tried doing that too, same proportions as the book recipe but added in different order... they did not work well that way. One attempt I lost all the air in the meringues. Another kinda worked but they came out very cakey and not crispy at all and I think the crispy is the correct way. However, I will say the chapter description is clear about trimming *before* they cool, which I didn't do with my first attempt and broke a lot of them in the trimming processes, so do be sure to do that. I also slightly over-baked my first ones because I forgot to set a timer. You'll see pictures below from various attempts but mostly the *making* pictures are from the one that went the best.

Really try not to knock out too much air as you fold in the egg whites

Paris put his #biscuitsforpricks on a sugar cookie stand. I decided to make my sugar cookie stand using my favorite sugar cookie recipe, which I've used before and I'll use for Tariq's below. I decided to try and make mine look like a glass of champagne and covered my sugar cookie dough with edible gold glitter and then glued them together with the same icing that'll be below for Tariq's. 

I put tinfoil over a bowl and used that to make the bowl-like shape. 

and I rolled some around a reusable giant metal straw meant for boba 

and cut out a circle for the bottom and then just... glitter... all the glitter... 

and I mean... not winning any competitions but I think you get what I was going for?

When I tried to trim it neater the whole thing collapsed so this is the best you get. 

If you, like Paris and I, end up with just... an extraordinary quantity of biscuits rose du reims you can do all sorts of things with them.

Some of the things I did:

1. Give them to friends.

2. Hand them out at work. 

3. Play Jenga:

4. Dip them in tea that just happens to be called Paris at work in your Milord mug ("And it is my most particular favorite type of dried leaves in hot water.") on your Oliver coaster (a gavel and "Saying things like "the law is a demanding profession" is what made me thing you were pompous.") for an afternoon pick-me-up.

5. Make a mini version of this Barefoot Contessa icebox cake where you swap the Tates for crumbs, edges, and broken #biscuitsforpricks from the trimming process, leave out the instant espresso and cocoa, and swap the Kahlua for Champagne:

Tariq 

Bee biscuits with delicate icing on honeycomb

Again, I used this recipe for the sugar cookies, rolled them flat, and cut them out using stencils I drew on/cut out from parchment paper. BUT, I did use cane sugar (sorry, try to ignore the history of slavery and the environmental impact, and remember that Philip is of course right to push beet sugar, though if you're in the U.K. you then have to deal with how you feel about the fact that there's a monopoly on beet sugar production... all in the Murder post, if you care to know what I'm rambling about) and also I definitely did a different icing recipe. So, look to the Murder post for sugar cookie dough but use this icing if you don't have your own favorite:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups confectioners/powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (or almond extract or clear (artificial) vanilla extract, if you care to keep your icing super white, but honestly the vanilla doesn't make it that not-white)
• 2 teaspoons light corn syrup (this makes it shiny)
• 4.5–5 Tablespoons room temperature water
• A pinch of salt

Instructions

• Put the powdered sugar in a bowl or measuring cup, add vanilla, corn syrup, and salt, mix and slowly add water, a tablespoon at a time, until it is thick but smooth
• Separate and add food coloring if using multiple colors (yellow and black here)
• *NOTE: black food coloring is a pain, as you can see from my murder post, so this time I used some store bought black icing and added that to the white, because it was too matte on it's own. It's not quite as black as I'd like, but it also doesn't taste disgusting which most black food dye does so... compromises... 
• Pipe onto cookies!

This is very similar to the icing we do for Christmas cookies in my family. 
We don't bother with piping bags, though, we just use toothpicks.
Here, I piped but used toothpicks to smooth/spread where the piping wasn't perfect,
and which you can use to smooth out the piped icing, or honestly, to avoid piping entirely. 

I made my bees in 2 shapes, and flying in 2 directions to justify them all being a little different (different stripes, etc. because I know that I am not patient or delicate enough to make 24 identical iced cookies). 

HONECOMB

Tariq makes a honeycomb stand that is more a slab of honeycomb because of the aforementioned meet disaster. I did mine slightly differently for decorative purposes.

Honeycomb, for those of you unfamiliar, is a weirdly delightful British candy that's really hard to describe if you've never had it... it's kind of caramel-ish but crunchy and airy and... well... yum. It's yum.

But the recipe I used requires Golden Syrup. There are some Americanized recipes with corn syrup since Golden Syrup isn't a staple here, but you can sometimes find it at supermarkets that do imports, often at Indian grocery stores (and just like, try not to think about imperialism making your grocery shopping more convenient), and if you're in South Philly like me you can also get it at our local British pie shop. But if you're in a part of the country that doesn't have lots of British imports you might think, but it's basically just salted cane syrup so maybe I can use (American) cane syrup and a pinch of salt?

To which I will say... maybe. I did a little comparison here because Golden Syrup is it's own thing so if you're in a place that sells it like, that's great just go for it. If you're in the U.S. I'll say the cane syrup I'm used to- Steen's- is not likely to work as a substitute, it's darker (more molassesy in flavor) and thinner (more maple syrupy in texture), but if you can find the kind of cane syrup that I found at Rouse's last time I was in New Orleans and put in my checked luggage just to try as a substitute for this recipe (I've never seen this stuff in the northeast but maybe it exists in parts of the country other than the south?). Anyway, that one is a little darker than Golden Syrup (just barely more molassesy) and needs a pinch of salt to sub for Golden Syrup, but it is the right consistency and worked out fine and if you can find one like this, it'll be hella cheaper than buying Lyle's in the U.S. 

Lyle's Golden Syrup

Rouses Cane Syrup

I poured some onto these greased silicone ice cube molds shaped like honeycomb, 
which I absolutely did not buy just for this because that would be ridiculous
and I am not ridiculous. 

Okay FINE I saw them and I was like OH TARIQ MAKES HONEYCOMB FOR HIS BEES 
and bought them to see if it would work
and hedged my bets and poured some in a greased pan too.

and you know what? I don't regret it. They worked and are adorable and I love them.

so I put them around the outside and piled the traditional broken up honeycomb in the middle

Seriously though, not a stand but HOW CUTE ARE THESE?

... and then after I took a zillion pictures I split up the honeycomb and cookies for friends
*note: the honeycomb will keep in the fridge or freezer but it'll get gooey if left out

Bernard

On Bake Expectations, Bernard makes lemon shortbread on vanilla shortbread table, but then for the recipe section he does chocolate shortbread to prove that lemon and vanilla shortbreads are different cookies, and while the chocolate shortbread absolutely are different, the lemon and vanilla... let's be clear... if I were to make them, I would use the shortbread recipe I use for any variation (until this chocolate one), and add vanilla extract or scraped vanilla beans or vanilla bean paste or lemon zest and extract or lavender or ginger chips or, etc. etc. 

Bernard Chocolate Shortbread 

This is another book recipe. So, you know, GO BUY IT!!! (or borrow it from your local library, or me if you know me).

I honestly didn't expect to love this because I don't usually like chocolate things that aren't chocolate (I love chocolate, but don't love chocolate cake or ice cream) but these are truly fab. The only thing I'll say is when I make them again (which I am pretty sure I will) I'd use mini chocolate chips instead of the normal size ones to make them easier to slice and have more evenly distributed bits of chocolate, but these were super yum. Here are some pictures.

see why I would use the mini chips next time?

That's all I'm baking for week one, though there were more recipes described:

Tanya

Ginger chemical reaction. I'm not sure exactly what this is supposed to be and I really really wanted to try it but I love ginger and chemical reactions are fun. But I have two other books that I might eventually make ginger biscuits so... 

Joan

Bookcase. Sounds like fun, and maybe some day I will try it, but I don't know what kind of biscuits they were supposed to be so I'm going to cut myself a break here cuz I'm tired. 

Gretchen

Spelt and hemp biscuits served on a pair of giving hands, one modeled in vanilla shortbread, the other in chocolate shortbread.

Spoiler alert- the judges didn't like this one so much, so, since I've got about a zillion other things to bake I am giving myself a break on structurally unsound hands and spelt and hemp biscuits. Which, to be fair, if they were spelt/hemp versions of American-style biscuits (you know, the lovely fluffy things particularly popular in both the south (and my mouth)) might not suck, but I don't want spelt-hemp cookies. 

... and then pack up your extra cookies in a little tin and ain't they cute?
Don't ask why there are meringues in the corner... they're like... weeks in the future. 

*For anyone who doesn't follow me on Instagram- this summer I painted a pair of Dr. Martens with quotes and pictures inspired by a bunch of Alexis Hall's books (and one from a deleted Ardy scene shared in the anti-advent calendar cuz I loved it so much). Cuz I'm an uber nerd. And cuz I'm super happy with how they came out and strangers stop me on the streets to compliment them, I'll share them with y'all here: 

This one has the Morag quote- it's hard to read along the laces but it says:
"What's he told you?"
"He told me you were a fat Glaswegian sex goddess. But also said that was your language not his."
"It should be everybody's fucking language. It's what I fucking am."

Okay, I didn't explain any of the rest of the quotes/pictures other than the Morag one, but I'm particularly fond of 

(1) the pansies (which have quotes from Pansies, even though that's admittedly a little on the nose);

(2) the lemons, vanilla, and eggs for the For Real; and
(3) The elongated gravestone with every single, "Here Lies Kate Kane... Beloved Daughter, Sorely Missed." That one took time. 

See you next week for PASTRY WEEK!!!