The tuile goes round and round

So that you can read this entry - tuile is pronounced (roughly) "tweel". It is a French word that means "tile" since the traditional cookies resemble roof tiles.

The Daring Bakers started 2009 off "light" with tuiles; both savory and sweet:

Perhaps to make up for missing the last 2 months - I went a bit crazy this month and made 2 different kinds of tuiles, 3 different ways!

Thomas Keller's cornet tuiles filled with spicy salmon or creamy crab

Vanilla tuile cups with homemade mocha ice cream topped with grandma's
hot fudge and crushed Heath Bar (um, I didn't make the Heath Bar)

Butterfly vanilla tuile topping meyer lemon mousse with raspberries

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.

They threw in the savory option for us as well with Thomas Keller (of French Laundry fame)'s cornet tuile recipe!

You've seen a tuile before. Often they're served at fancy meals with a dollop of some type of mousse or tucked into the side of a terrine. They're very light and crispy and can be flavored with sugar and vanilla or salt and parmesan (or LOTS else!) To make the shapes, you need stencils, but instead of paying $20 for 1 repeated shape, I bought a .06cm thickness cutting board from a Japanese [dollar] store, freehanded my own stencils and cut them out with a utility knife. I got a 4" circle, a 7" circle, a heart, a butterfly and an oval! For $3.00 and about 1 hour!

My $3.00 cutting board ------ It was .06cm thick ------ One of my 5 stencils I made!

I was so excited to tackle January's Daring Baker's Challenge since I missed both November and December first preparing for my Africa trip and then recovering from it! The announcement came that we'd make tuiles and I was very pleased! -- plus we were given TONS of freedom with the only requirement that we do 1 of 4 given recipes! There's a part of me that loves it when we're given a lot of freedom and another part that hates it. I love it because I can get as creative as I want and tailor the challenge to my and my loved ones' palates. But I hate it because I will often think and research and ponder and plan and create WAY more than one really should.

I could have made a meal on these alone!

When I start my planning and creating it usually begins with what I feel like eating. Once I come up with that I think about whether there's an upcoming event I could prepare my challenge for. If there's not - I create my own! So I invited Mom, Dad, Auntie Betty and Uncle Bruce over one weekend and proceeded to treat them to a nice dinner just as they've done for me so many times in my life. Dungeness crabs were on sale for $2.99/pound -- can we say, easy-as-pie cracked crab dinner? That way I had all the time in the world for my appetizers and dessert!

Cracked crabs are SO EASY to prepare, there was
plenty of time for making appetizers and dessert!

I am fortunate enough to have dined at the famous French Laundry. So I've actually eaten Thomas Keller's cornet with tuna tartar made my the man himself. It was absolutely delish - so I wanted to try my hand at them. However, those cute little cones were the most time consuming element of the entire 3 course meal! Right up to even finding a Sur la Table with cornet molds (aka. cream horn molds) in stock. I'm lucky to have 3 Sur la Tables within 15 miles of my home so mission was accomplished within a day's time.

Cream horn molds are those metal cones you see - they're about 4" tall

Those tuiles must be the PERFECT doneness to mold around the cones though. And even with latex gloves on - my fingertips were feeling a big fried by that night. But all was worthwhile! Would do it all again in a heartbeat!

Making Thomas Keller's cornet tuiles (and burning my fingertips!)

I've been making a lot of spicy salmon lately and decided to pair the cornet with that instead of Keller's tuna tartar. First problem though - I have only recently gotten my mother to put raw fish into her mouth (she enjoys it, as one should - but it took me a LONG time!) And I will not even ATTEMPT to talk my father into doing this. Just no way in heck, boy. So I whipped up a hot crab filling (with some of the crab I steamed for dinner) with green onions and cream cheese. ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!

Savory tuile cornets filled with spicy salmon tartar and hot creamy crab with scallions

For dessert that night I had pre-made a lot of items the day before: mocha ice cream (combo of this recipe and one from this book) and my grandmother's hot fudge sauce. My mom actually altered grandma's hot fudge recipe so that it is now not only RICH but when it's poured over ice cream - it solidifies just the slightest bit to a soft, slightly chewy, fudge...OMG it's amazing! I crushed up some Heath Bar and was ready for my tuile bowl making!

This is what mocha ice cream starts as --- Ready to firm up in the freezer overnight

For the bowls I used ~7" circle --- Gotta move fast to shape them

I would recommend to anyone attempting to make tuiles - for the first baking do ONLY 1. It will not turn out right so you'll learn from it. It will either be overdone or underdone and will either break when you try to mold it or end up chewy after you do.

Oh SOOOOO good - crispy, chewy, crunchy, fudgy... all in one bite

I've mentioned that I'm a freak before, yes? Well this just proves it. After a delicious and (what my relatives stated was) impressive meal I still had one last tuile idea in my head and could not live without fulfilling it. Here I had drawn and created all these stencils and essentially only used the 2 circles for my meal. I just HAD to use that butterfly!!

What do lemon curd and whipped cream have to do with a butterfly tuile?

So I created a whole new dessert idea JUST to make my butterfly. Ali brought dinner over after work one night and I served us dessert. I made a lemon mousse for my first Daring Baker's Challenge and l-o-v-e-d it. So I did a repeat performance with a handful of raspberries and a couple flat round tuiles. It was truly delicious. I tend to cook more for others than for myself - but this, I loved! Instead of folding equal parts of whipping cream with lemon curd (as a few of my mousse recipes call for) I did more like 25-75 cream-curd. It was much more lemony and tart and - PERFECT!

SO pleased with this one - delicious and adorable; can't ask for more!

So as you see - the tuile really does go 'round and 'round. From appetizer to main course to dessert to coffee to snack -- a tuile in any different shape or flavor will fit in perfectly. And there's something about it that will make you smile as well!

Check out all the other creative tuiles by my fantastic fellow Daring Bakers!!