It’s Daring Bakers time and, as usual, participating has afforded me the opportunity to try something new, tuiles!

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.

That said, since I’m an alternative Daring Baker making vegan tuiles, I did not use the recipe provided. Thanks to the intrepid baker behind the awesome VeganYumYum blog, however, I didn’t have to invent my own tuile recipe either. If you don’t know VeganYumYum you should check it out – it’s really great! It’s well-written, filled with great recipes and tons of beautiful photography. You can find the VeganYumYum recipe for vegan tuiles here.

These took me about 3 hours to make. The batter is easy to whip up. The baking part is rather slow-going. This is because you really can’t make more than 2 or 3 tuiles at a time. The reason for this is that you have a narrow window of time (we’re talking 30 seconds maybe) to shape the tuiles after they come out of the oven.

The way it works is you make a cardboard template in any shape you like (I made butterflies), lay it over a sheet of parchment on your baking sheet, and spread the batter inside your cutout. You then lift the template up to reveal your batter in the desired shape. Then it goes in the oven. When they come out you have to work fast to bend them the way you’d like them to be. Since I was making butterflies, I wanted the wings to bend upwards. Needless to say I burned my fingers, something we were warned about. It’s a necessary sacrifice.

For me, the most tedious aspect of making these was using a dull x-acto knife to cut out my template. It took me about 20 minutes of suffering to realize my dull blade could be popped out and replaced by the shiny, sharp new one beneath. It wouldn’t be a Daring Bakers post if I didn’t say the following phrase: you live, you learn.

I melted some gorgeous Italian dark chocolate, so decadent, and used a small artist’s brush to paint some of the butterflies. I left some naked. Others were embellished with some French chestnut spread, one of my absolute favourite indulgences – so sweet.

I new I wanted to pair my tuiles with vegan ice cream and that’s exactly what I did, dishing out several scoops of chocolate and maple. Place a few butterlies on top and voilà, un dessert extraordinaire. My hubby (who was there to eat the props after the photos were taken) enthusiastically declared that a dessert like this would cost $50 in a nice restaurant. Now I don’t know about $50 sweetie, but I’ll take that as a compliment.

Be sure to check out all the stunning tuile examples on the Daring Bakers blogroll.