HCB: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

Though I'm no longer a member of the Heavenly Cake Bakers group, I still bake along from time to time. This week's choice was the Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake, from pages 58-60 of "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

It looks like a plain Bundt cake on the outside.....

...but inside you find a layer of almond cream (it's that darker, moister-looking area at the top) with tender thin slices of pear.

The cake is Rose's favorite yellow sour-cream butter cake, almost exactly as on her blog (see this link), except it uses 1 whole egg and 2 egg yolks instead of 4 egg yolks. I didn't have quite enough sour cream (Jim used it in his traditional Sunday waffle), so I made up the remainder with a mixture of yogurt and heavy cream. It seemed to work just fine.

All was going well until I turned on the oven light at 40 minutes into baking to see how it was doing. Without realizing it, when I turned off the light, I also turned off the oven! At 60 minutes it should have been done, but wasn't even close. That's when I realized my mistake. By that time the oven had cooled down to about 275 degrees. Oh rats! I turned the oven back on to 350 F and gave it another 10 minutes, and it was done. The top was too dark, but heck, that ends up on the bottom anyway when you serve the cake. And the cake part was just a touch overbaked and dry -- but by the next day, the moisture from the pears had taken care of that problem as well. You gotta love a cake that forgives your mistakes!

"This is a 'tea cake,'" said Jim. I agree -- it's the sort of simple and delicious cake that cries out to be part of your "afternoon tea." If you don't have afternoon tea (we usually don't), then it's wonderful any time at all.

HCB: Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group was the Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

Lovely! This one is a keeper. Light for a bundt-style cake, fluffy, with lots of lemon and the crunch of poppy seeds. I thought it was a bit crumbly and could have used more syrup, but I might have overbaked mine just a little bit. Notes for next time -- watch it like a hawk towards the end of baking. Oh, and maybe use a bit less sugar in the syrup. But those are just minor tweaks. This is a great cake!

The recipe (sorry, we don't post the recipes for this group) makes enough for a 10-cup Bundt pan. I made half the recipe, which was just right for a 4.5 cup Kugelhopf pan plus two cupcakes.

I used a mixture of half bleached cake flour and half bleached all-purpose flour, and frozen lemon peel from my stash. The batter came out very thick, smooth, and fluffy, almost like frosting -- which I've found to be typical for Rose's recipes. It rose beautifully and for a few moments I thought it might overflow the pan. Fortunately it didn't, and settled a bit after cooling.

I'm always nervous about unmolding cakes, but this one came out of the Kugelhopf pan looking great. The cupcakes, though, stuck to the wrappers something fierce. Next time I'll have to grease the wrappers.

The cake is finished with a lemon syrup while it's still hot. Once again I went to my stash, this time the one of frozen lemon juice cubes. But when I tasted the syrup, I began to wonder if perhaps I'd put some lime juice cubes in with the lemon juice. OK -- I stirred in a bit of my frozen lemon zest and let it steep. Ah, now it had a nice lemon-lime flavor, sort of like 7-Up or Sprite, only a zillion times better.

Part of my freezer stash - lemon zest and lemon juice cubes

Now, Rose says this cake is best made a day ahead. I'm sure she's right, but I have to tell you that the cupcakes were absolutely fabulous still hot, only 10 minutes out of the oven and oozing with warm syrup. Very crumbly, but fabulous. They made me think about making this in small ramekins and serving them syruped and hot, still in the ramekins. I'm sure it would be great.

messy but delicious, still hot

This recipe appears to be based on the "Sour Cream Butter Cake" recipe from Rose's earlier book "The Cake Bible," which was also published on her blog as "Rose's Favorite Yellow Layer Cake." The new HCB recipe is based on the original recipe times 1.25. Lemon zest and poppy seeds are added for flavor, but there are some other changes as well. The new recipe uses a mixture of eggs and egg yolk instead of all yolks, and the total amount of egg is a bit more. It has a bit less butter and more baking powder.

INGREDIENTS	TCB * 1.25	RHC
total eggs	93 grams	118 grams
whole eggs	0	100 grams
egg yolks	93 grams	18 grams
sour cream	200 grams	200 grams
pure vanilla extract	1.875 teaspoon	1.75 teaspoon
sifted cake flour	250 grams	250 grams
sugar	250 grams	250 grams
baking powder	0.625 teaspoon	1.5 teaspoon
baking soda	0.625 teaspoon	0.5 teaspoon
salt	0.3125 teaspoon	0.5 teaspoon
unsalted butter    (must be softened)	213 grams	200 grams

I miss the Understanding sections from The Cake Bible where Rose explains these recipe tweaks. My best guess about them is this: butter increases tenderness and makes the cake heavier. Egg yolks are more tenderizing than whites. So the "less butter" and "more egg white" changes both tend to decrease tenderness and strengthen the cake structure. To offset this, the baking powder has to be increased so the cake stays level.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Double Chocolate Valentine mini cakes

Here's the latest cake for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group. It's the Double Chocolate Valentine cake, as published in Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." In fact, it's the cake on the back cover of the book. It made a previous appearance as the Double Chocolate Sweetheart cake in "Rose's Celebrations," where it was on the front cover. And it's appeared in a video that is posted on Rose's site.


This recipe is based on the All-American Chocolate Torte from Rose's "The Cake Bible." After baking, the cake is then soaked in chocolate ganache. Ooh, yes! All you have to do is say "ganache" and I start salivating. Funny, a few years ago I didn't even know what it was. (Just a fancy French word for melted chocolate mixed with heavy cream. It's the stuff inside of chocolate truffles. 'Nuff said.)

I decide to make a half recipe of both the cake and ganache. (Portion control.) And to skip the fresh raspberries on top. Growing our own raspberries has spoiled us for out-of-season fruit.


I made mini cakes in my Nordic Ware heart pan. As you can see, I overfilled them a bit. I had just enough batter left over for one cupcake. Next time I should portion out two or three cupcakes first, and then use the rest of the batter for the heart pan. Oh well, live and learn.

Time to poke holes in the cakes. Wait a minute -- where are all the bamboo skewers? Oh, that's right, they're in the "gardening supplies" box (sticks for plant labels, if you're wondering). OK, I'll use the stem of my cooking thermometer instead. That made nice big holes -- next time I won't even look for the skewers.

There's a downside to having the mini cakes extend above the top of the pan -- the ganache ran all over the place when I brushed it on. What's more, I used up almost all of the ganache just for one side of the cakes -- even after scraping off and re-using the part that ended up on the pan. So, I just whipped up another half-recipe of the ganache and used it on the other side. What could be wrong with more ganache?

Since I didn't have the 60-62% bittersweet called for in the ganache, I made a substitution. Here's how to do that. Calculate (ounces of chocolate in recipe) * (percentage of chocolate in recipe) / (percentage of chocolate you're using). For a half-recipe, that was 1.5 ounces * 60% / 70 % = about 1.3 ounces. Then you make up the remaining 0.2 ounce with sugar. (Dissolve the sugar in the cream.) It worked fine.

Getting the cakes out of the pan was tricky. The ganache made them stick. I think I need a blow dryer (not that either of us would ever use it on our hair.) Several of them fell apart. Some could be patched back together -- ganache also makes a good cake glue -- but some were beyond repair. Oh well, consider it the cook's bonus. And the cook's husband's bonus too.

Despite the difficulties, these were wonderful. The cake was very light, fluffy, and tender. It might have been a little dry without the ganache -- but with it, ooh la la! Chocolate heaven!

Waiting for them to chill and set was the worst part. Not all of them made it to that stage. By the way, once chilled, a quick 10 seconds in the microwave warms up the cakes and does wonders for the flavor.

I'm not sure this is the ideal recipe to use for mini-cakes that have to be unmolded. The cake recipe is so tender that it tends to fall apart easily. Probably better to use paper cupcake liners and leave the cakes in them, like Vicki did. But aren't the little hearts just adorable?

Heavenly Cake Bakers: True Orange Genoise (tangelo version)

Ta-da! Here's a True Tangelo Genoise, the Heavenly Cake Bakers' assignment for February 8, 2010. Well, we were supposed to make a True Orange Genoise with Seville oranges, but I couldn't find any. So I went with some lovely organic Minneola tangelos instead.


This is a half-size recipe (6 inches). Since I'm terrible at decorating cakes to look smooth and regular, I was happy that this one called for random drizzles. Random I can do. Looks good, doesn't it?


Here's a glimpse of the inside (sorry about the smears of chocolate on the cake). Two layers of French sponge cake (genoise) with a thick layer of tangy tangelo curd inside. It was Rose's books that convinced me to try citrus curds, and I've been hooked ever since. You can find the recipe on her blog. I started with 12 tablespoons of tangelo juice and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, and reduced it down to 6 1/2 tablespoons, somewhat like the directions for juice oranges at the bottom of the recipe. I used tangelo zest and the amount of sugar she specifies for juice oranges. And I made a whole recipe, even though my small cake would only use half of it. Leftover curd is never a problem -- it's great on toast, and it freezes well too.

The genoise layers look nice, don't they? Well...that's the part I was able to save. I've only made genoise twice and it's been a failure both times. Sigh. Here's the whole sad story.

I decided to make two half-size (6-inch) genoise so I could use freeze the other layer and use it later. After consulting Rose's information plus Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise," (which has 8 pages of information on making genoise) I carefully weighed out my eggs (yolks and whites separately, since many eggs seem to have puny little yolks these days). I whisked and heated them with the sugar (Shirley says to heat them to 86-90 F, and no hotter than 110 F.). Then I beat them with my hand-held power mixer -- Shirley says the optimum beating temperature is 75-80 F. Mine got cool after a while, so I re-warmed them briefly over the pan of hot water as needed. She says you should not beat too long on high speed or the foam will fall when cooked, so I beat for 2 minutes on high and then 10 minutes on medium as she recommended. The egg foam looked lovely, smooth, thick and glossy. Then I folded in my cake flour / cornstarch mixture. It went in nicely and the eggs did not deflate. Everything was looking great!

Then I took some of the egg mixture and mixed it in with the melted browned butter / vanilla mixture. (Rose says to remove this egg mixture before folding in the flour, but Shirley says to do it after. I guess it must work either way.) I think this is where the problem began -- I didn't mix the butter in completely. So when I folded this butter mixture back into the egg/flour mixture, the whole thing deflated badly, even though I used my very best folding technique that had worked so well with the flour.

Well, onwards...I divided the batter up between the two prepared 6-inch pans. As I smoothed the top, a lot of large bubbles formed and popped. But, the batter did fill the pans about half-way. Into the oven to see what happened...


They certainly did not turn out 2 inches high. More like 1 1/4 inches. But the worst surprise was when I turned them over and took off the parchment liners. At the bottom, there was a heavy, dense layer that almost reminded me of the rind on a cheese.


See it in that picture above? Yuck! I tried a tiny bite of the "rind," and it was tough and awful. So, I just cut it all off. My theory is that the butter came out of emulsion, dropped to the bottom of the cake, and formed a thick gooey layer that then baked hard.

At this point I was left with two somewhat denser genoise layers about 1 inch tall. OK, let's just make the cake with those! I figured I had about 3/4 of the genoise left, so I made up 3/4 of the syrup recipe (sugar, tangelo juice, Grand Marnier) and used it to soak the cake. I layered with the tangelo curd, made up all of the ganache glaze recipe (because extra ganache is never bad, especially when it has Grand Marnier in it too), and went ahead with the recipe. The decorations are home-made candied tangelo peel.

By the way, I didn't have the 60% percent chocolate called for in the ganache, so for 4 ounces of 60-62% chocolate, I substituted 3.5 ounces of 70% plus 0.5 ounces of sugar.

Despite the genoise disaster, this was very tasty. As someone else said, this is a "grown-up" cake, with the bitter/sour notes of the chocolate and orange. And it's very elegant. It was a lot of work, though. All those different components, and then putting them together, and waiting for it to mature...

I'm still determined to master genoise! I think I may try Shirley's recipe -- it is very similar to Rose's except that Shirley adds extra egg yolks. Egg yolks contain natural emulsifiers -- maybe that would help the butter to mix in better. Just you wait, genoise, I'll get you yet!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes

Hello, folks, may I present an Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cake? It was the Heavenly Cake Bakers assignment for February 1, 2010.


Pineapple ring, cherry, caramel, all on top of a tender yellow cake. The cake recipe is actually a variation of Rose's Favorite Yellow Cake recipe, although it uses muscovado sugar, yogurt, and whole eggs.


I had hoped to use fresh pineapple for this cake, but all the cute little Costa Rican pineapples in the co-op looked seriously under-ripe. My husband spent 4 years in Hawaii as a child and would never dream of letting me buy such dismal pineapples! So, we turned to canned. For cherries, I pulled out a few frozen sweet cherries, sprinkled them lightly with sugar, and let them thaw. And since I wasn't sure where to get real muscovado sugar, I went for turbinado instead, ground up in my food processor so it wasn't so coarse.

Making the caramel to put in the pans wasn't hard, but judging when it was done WAS hard. The sugar syrup is so dark already, it's hard to judge when it changes color. Good thing I have a thermometer. The canned pineapple rings obligingly fit just exactly right inside of my new jumbo muffin tins. Since some other folks had said their caramel was very thick and stuck to the pans, I added about a half-tablespoon of pineapple juice to the caramel after it reached 300 degrees, to thin it out. It seemed to work -- no sticking. Just watch out for all the steaming and bubbling!


I didn't bother glazing them with jam, just brushed some of the pineapple caramel sauce on top. Once again, it was hard to judge the done-ness of the caramel, and I think I undercooked it just a bit. It didn't taste very, well, caramel-y. The pineapple juice gave it a nice flavor, though.

These were very tasty, but they were not good keepers. The next day, the caramel sauce sank into the pineapple, and the cake got kind of soggy. They're a bit more work than a single large pineapple upside down cake, but not that much -- they'd be great for a dinner party.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake

Still catching up -- here's the "Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake" for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group. We normally don't post the recipes for this group, but you can find this one on the National Public Radio Web site. However, the NPR recipe doesn't give the weights for the ingredients (one of my favorite part of Rose's recipes) and it doesn't give the recipe for the frosting. For those, you'll have to consult pages 158-162 of Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."


YUM!

This is a very light angel food cake made with Wondra flour (or you can use cake flour) and finely grated unsweetened chocolate. Then you slather it with whipped cream mixed with grated bittersweet chocolate. Then you are supposed to "pelt" it with mini chocolate chips or little chocolate morsels. As I didn't have any of those, I topped it with shaved bittersweet chocolate instead.

The whipped cream frosting is supposed to have almonds in it, but I left those out. I also stabilized it using 1/2 teaspoon of gelatin per cup of cream. And I must have really slathered it on, because I ending up needing to make 1 1/2 times the recipe.

I'm not a big fan of angel food cakes. Too sweet, too bland. But I loved this one. The chocolate adds flavor and cuts the sweetness. Most of the other folks who tasted it agreed. (Jim said it was just so-so -- but then he is even less of an angel food cake fan than I am.)

This isn't the first time I have baked this cake. I made it back in June of 2009, even before Rose's book came out. I didn't know that this particular cake would be in the book, but Rose had reveals there would be some sort of angel cake using Wondra flour. So I decided to use Wondra flour in her "Freckled Angel" cake from her book "Rose's Celebrations." Lo and behold -- this cake got a new frosting and a new name in the new book!

I did have the same problem both times I made this cake -- the top never rose really high, and it never cracked. Also, the cake pulled away from the sides of the pan a lot. At least it did not fall out of the pan when I turned it upside down to cool!

The other problem was that both times, after I removed the cake from the pan, it was really, really moist. In fact, the second cake was positively WET in the area that had been at the bottom of the pan while baking. I had to let it sit out for hours so the moisture could evaporate. The cake crumb itself was not "mushy" or underdone, though. It seemed "set" and springy. It was more as if excess water had oozed out of the cake as the crumb set, and been trapped. Very strange. But once the cake had dried out on the counter, it was fine.

Here are my pictures of that first baking:

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Torta de las Tres Leches

Yet another catch-up post, this one for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group. The assignment for January 18, 2010 was the "Torta de las Tres Leches" from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

I'm sorry folks, there are no pictures for this post. My cake wasn't as nicely decorated as some of the others, but I wish I'd gotten a close-up -- the cake crumb was lovely and light and spongy, just like it was supposed to be. Sponge cake success! Yes!

Rose's version starts with sponge cake made with whole eggs. I'm getting pretty good at whipping up whole eggs with sugar, even with my hand-held mixer. It took longer (about 10 minutes) but eventually they reached the right stage -- very pale, very thick, looking much like soft whipped cream or softly beaten egg whites. I managed to fold in the flour without deflating them too much.

I made a half-recipe in a 6-inch round springform pan that is about 2 3/4 inches tall. There was a lot of batter, so I put a tall collar of parchment paper around the pan. As it turned out, I didn't need that -- the cake rose just to the top of the pan, but not over. It was slightly domed in the center, as Rose said it was supposed to be.

After cooling and removing the crust, the cake is then soaked with the "three milks" mixture. For this recipe, we had to simmer a mixture of skim milk and whole milk until it was reduced to half its volume. That was a pain. It almost boiled over once, but I caught it in time. Fiddling with the heat, stirring (not all the time, I just couldn't stand doing that) -- I don't think I'll bother with that again. I ended up with a lot of "skin" on top of the milk, and it had to be strained before using. Next time? Canned evaporated milk all the way, baby!

OK, in go sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream. I added Mexican vanilla extract, too, because some folks had said theirs seemed a bit bland without it. It was a good idea -- I loved the flavor.

After soaking the cake for a day in the fridge, I mixed up some caramel whipped cream to spoon over each slice. (For the whipped cream, I melted a couple of home-made honey caramels in some heavy cream, chilled it, then whipped it .) Yum! Or at least I thought so. I love, love, love Indian-style "milk sweets" (kheer, gulab jamun) so I loved this dessert as well. Jim said it was good, but he didn't love it. Ah well, difference is the spice of life.

TWD: Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

My last catch-up post with Tuesdays with Dorie -- I've been baking along more or less on time, but haven't gotten around to posting until now. For the week of February 2, 2009, Kristin of I'm Right About Everything chose the "Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes" from pages 188-189 of Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours."


Aren't they cute? I made 12 of them, but between Jim & myself, we scarfed up 4 of them before I could even get around to putting on the glaze. Yes, they were good.

The batter is made with milk chocolate -- not my favorite of chocolates, so I tried to go for the darker varieties. I used 3.5 oz of Green & Black's (34% cocoa mass), 3.0 oz of Scharffen Berger (41%), and for the last 0.5 oz I threw in some semisweet Callebaut (53%). That ends up being about 38% cocoa mass.

How could I resist using my new Bundt Cupcake pan? It has 12 cups and each one holds about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of liquid for a total capacity of about 3 to 4 cups. The batter filled the pan almost to the top, and rose a bit above the pan when done -- but that was OK.


I need to work on my streusel-filling techniques, though. I put way too much batter in before putting in the cocoa-sugar-walnut streusel, and after that, spreading the rest of the batter on top of the streusel was hard. Plus, there were a lot of "gaps" on the outside of the mini-cakes. Next time I use this pan, I'll put a little bit of batter in the pan and spread it around with a small spatula or the back of a spoon, squishing it up against the sides to eliminate any gaps. Then I'll finish filling the pan.


Still, a good thick drizzle of glaze covered the flaws well. Since many folks had reported having trouble with the glaze recipe as given, I went with a plain ganache glaze instead -- 2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and 2 ounces of cream.

While we both agreed we wouldn't mind a bit more chocolate flavor in the cakes, they were still delightful. Making 12 tiny cakes might sound like good portion control -- but we found we couldn't eat just one! Two apiece was just right.

TWD: Cocoa-Nana Bread

OK, more catch-up for Tuesdays with Dorie. Our recipe for January 26, 2010 was "Cocoa-Nana Bread," chosen by Steph of Obsessed with Baking.


As a number of folks pointed out in the "P&Q" (Problems and Questions) for this recipe, this is really a loaf cake, made with cocoa powder and mashed bananas. Ah, a chance to use up some of the really-ripe bananas stored in my freezer! (And by the way, I like chocolate and bananas together. Think of banana splits!)

This is one of the recipes where I wish Dorie's publisher had agreed to include weights of ingredients in her book. For fluffy ingredients, like flour or cocoa powder, one cup can end up weighing quite differently depending on how you measure it -- sifted, gently spooned, or scoop-and-sweep. Dorie says in the back of her book that she measures cocoa by scoop-and-sweep -- that gave me 3.5 ounces of cocoa. (I used half Dutch-processed and half natural). I also replaced 1/3 of the flour with white whole wheat flour. I reduced the white sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup, because many (not all) of Dorie's recipes are just a bit too sweet for my taste. And my two bananas gave me just a bit more than 1 cup of banana puree.

The cocoa flavor comes out stronger than the banana in this loaf cake. It seems just a bit on the dry side, despite all the bananas. Did I use too much cocoa? or overbake?

I think it's good, but my husband thinks it's fabulous! In fact he said "You have to slice and freeze some of this, or I will make a pig of myself." We have a winner, folks!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: English Gingerbread Cake

Hello folks, I'm finally getting around to posting about the Heavenly Cake Bakers' choice for last week -- English Gingerbread Cake.


For this group, we don't post the recipes, but you can find it in "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

The recipe calls for Lyle's Golden Syrup or light corn syrup. Lots of it (1 1/4 cups). I had both in the cupboard, but even after scraping out both containers, I wasn't quite up to the full measure. So I added about 3 tablespoons of molasses, and used white sugar instead of brown sugar. I also had a feeling that this cake would not be gingery enough for me (only 1 teaspoon of ground ginger), so I added about 1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger and 1.5 ounces (1/3 cup) minced candied ginger.

The cake batter seemed very bubbly when I put it into the pan. It rose a lot, then fell in the middle. I think it was overleavened. I'm quite sure I measured the leavening correctly -- and I didn't mix them up either -- so I wonder if perhaps the culprit was the extra molasses. It might have added extra acidity and caused more of a reaction with the baking soda. Just a thought.


Because of the fallen center, I decided to turn the cake upside down for serving. Here it is, brushed with the lemon syrup.


And the verdict? Wonderful texture, except in the very center -- light yet moist. Great flavor, but even with the extra ginger, it wasn't quite gingery enough. The lemon syrup added a wonderful note.

Next time? Oh yes, there will be a next time. I think I will use a few tablespoons of molasses again -- I liked the flavor. But I will reduce the baking soda a bit. And definitely add more ginger -- about 1 1/2 teaspoons dried, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon fresh, and 2 ounces candied. No subtle gingerbread in this house!

This was wonderful just plain. But I've been wanting to try a cream-cheese sauce ever since I read this passage in Robin McKinley's "Sunshine" --

"I'd made my special cream-cheese sauce to go with the triple-ginger gingerbread. I'd long felt that gingerbread, while excellent in itself, was still essentially an excuse to eat the sauce, so I'd always made twice as much per portion as the original recipe called for. Then it turned out that some of our customers were even more crazed than I was, so I started making three times as much, and we served it in little sauceboats. You got purists occasionally that didn't want any sauce, but the slack was taken up somehow."

Doesn't that sound good? Anybody have a good recipe for cream-cheese sauce?

About the book "Sunshine" -- if you like vampire stories with scary, sexy vampires, lots of dark humor and irony, and a heroine who seems to be called to deal with the vampires but really just wants to get on with her everyday life (being a baker) -- then you'll like this book. And if you like to bake, you'll covet her recipes. I keep wondering -- what are Lemon Lust, Butter Bombs, Bitter Chocolate Death, or Hell's Angelfood?

Oh hey, Robin McKinley has a recipe section on her blog -- I'll have to go over and take a look!

Heavenly Cake Baker: Classic Carrot Cake (late)

Hello, Heavenly Cake Bakers! At last I am getting around to telling you about my experience with making the Classic Carrot Cake from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes."

Sorry, no pictures. I mislaid my camera for a few days, See, we were having our old (late 1920's) windows rehabbed. Just the inside windows -- the storm windows stayed in place, thank goodness! But it still involved a lot of moving things around, which is how the camera came to be buried under/behind other stuff for a while. (It has since reappeared, but not in time to take pictures of the cake.)

I made the full recipe for the cake and baked it in a 9x13 inch cake pan. That worked well. The cake domed slightly in the middle, so I was glad I did not reduce the leavening.

This recipe is exactly what it says, "classic." Not too heavy, not too light, rich but not oily, very well-balanced in flavor and texture. It met with universal approval. The only thing I'd change next time is to remember to reduce the cinnamon when using the very, very spicy Vietnamese cinnamon. I like spicy cinnamon, but this was just a bit too much.

And ah, the Dreamy, Creamy White Chocolate (and cream cheese) Frosting! I'd made the original white chocolate and cream cheese frosting from "The Cake Bible" once before, and felt it was just too "white-chocolate" tasting. As I've said before and no doubt will say again, I don't like the taste of white chocolate. So, this time I decided to do a sort of "half-and-half" version. Rose does give a "no white chocolate" variation at the bottom of the recipe (p. 124). I combined the recipes -- for the full amount of cream cheese, butter, and sour cream, I used 2.0 ounces of confectioners' sugar, 1/8 teaspoon of vanilla, and 4.5 ounces of Green and Black white chocolate.

The recipe in the Cake Bible calls for mixing the frosting in a bowl -- I love the new Heavenly Cakes method of mixing in a food processor! And the result really is "Dreamy and Creamy" as Rose calls it -- even with only half the white chocolate. The word that kept coming to my mind was "suave." We're talking suave like Cary Grant in an old movie, people! Wow!

By the way, whatever happened to suave leading men? Nowadays it's only villains who are suave (in a creepy or deceptive sort of way). Well, maybe James Bond is still suave -- I haven't seen any of the recent movies so I don't know for sure. I miss it. Let's bring back suave!

Back to the cake -- this version kept the white chocolate taste enough in the background that I liked it. And let's face it, there is nothing like cocoa butter for that fabulous mouth feel -- the way it melts just at body temperature -- o0h...

Some of this went to work, some got eaten at home, and the window rehabbing guy also got some. (I think he enjoyed this job.)

If you live in the Madison, Wisconsin, area and have old windows that you want to repair rather than replace, I highly recommend you look up Larry of Sashman Service in the business pages. Tell him Barbara and Jim in Mazomanie sent you. He'll do a great job and he's a nice guy, too. No, he's not super cheap, but nobody who does a really good job is super cheap. It's still a lot less expensive than having new inner windows put in -- and much more authentic, too.

And if you're looking for a really, really good classic carrot cake, you need look no farther than this recipe. Take a look at this book, folks, you won't regret it!

TWD: Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake

Happy Thanksgiving!

One of the choices for November's "Tuesdays with Dorie" was the Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake, chosen for November 3 by Katya of Second Dinner. It's a fancy cake, with layers of cake made with chestnut spread, moistened with a brandy syrup, filled with caramel-milk chocolate ganache and chopped chestnuts, frosted with more ganache. And as if that's not enough, then you glaze it with a darker ganache and top it with gilded chestnuts. Yikes! You can find the recipe on Katya's blog or on Epicurious.

This is a half-recipe, made in a 6-inch square pan. Looks fabulous, doesn't it? I really liked how it tasted, too. It was a great Thanksgiving dessert.

I'm going to blather on at great length about this cake, so here's a quick summary:

1) This was the first time I cooked with chestnuts -- or ate them. I think they're kind of bland and boring now that I've tried them. But it was worth a try! (Oh, and I didn't gild them.)

2) Despite my opinion of chestnuts, I loved the cake!

3) Instead of Dorie's glaze, I used the Chocolate Lacquer Glaze from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." Shiny!

One reason I wanted to make this cake was the sheer challenge of the recipe. Another was that it gave me an excuse to try chestnuts. I've never had them. After tasting both canned chestnuts and fresh, home-roasted chestnuts, I'm sorry to say that my opinion is "meh." They're not like other nuts -- more starchy, softer, less "nutty," with a mild, earthy taste that I don't dislike, but don't go crazy for either.

And as my husband pointed out, "They look weird. Like little brains." Oh, thanks for that image, love!

On one of my shopping trips to "the big city" (Madison, WI), I looked around for chestnuts. No fresh chestnuts at that time (they've arrived now, though). No sweetened chestnut spread (and I visited quite a few stores). I did find canned chestnuts at Whole Foods and sprang for a 10-ounce jar.

Having tasted them and found them bland, I decided to see if I could dress them up with a caramel glaze.

It looked like it was going to work, but a problem soon developed. Despite draining and drying the canned chestnuts, they still were so moist that the caramel wouldn't stick. And after a overnight stay in the refrigerator, the hard caramel glaze had turned into runny (but delicious) caramel syrup.

Since I couldn't find the chestnut spread, I made my own. Note to self: if I do this again, do NOT put the chestnuts into caramel syrup first. It made for a sticky mess that refused to turn into a paste, even after trips through my mini-food processor and blender. Eventually I had to push it through a sieve. It did taste lovely, though, after the addition of vanilla extract and enough water to make it spread-able. So far this is my favorite way to eat chestnuts. It's lovely on toast made from Jim's home-made bread!

Here's the cake - the chestnut spread gives it a nice color.


Sorry, no pictures of making the caramel-milk chocolate ganache filling. I'm not usually a fan of milk chocolate, but this ganache was luscious.

Here are the chopped chestnuts for the filling. They'd been soaking in the caramel syrup for a couple of weeks. I also mixed some of the caramel syrup with brandy and used that to syrup the cake.


Here's the cake after filling and frosting with the ganache. Then it went into the refrigerator overnight.


At this point I departed from Dorie's recipe and made the super-shiny Chocolate Lacquer Glaze from Rose Levy Beranbaum's new book, "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." It's easy to make, but alas, it thickened up quickly when I poured it on the cold cake. The recipe called for bringing it to 85 degrees before pouring, and I did, but for a really cold cake like this one, I think you need a higher temperature. Still, it looks pretty good. If you want to see what it should look like, check out this post by Rachel of the Heavenly Cake Bakers. Now, that's shiny!

Unfortunately, my whole chestnuts had been sitting in the refrigerator for two weeks, and I'd made the mistake of not storing them in the caramel syrup. They turned into a science experiment. Oops! By that time, fresh chestnuts were coming into the stores -- so I bought a few and roasted them in the microwave. Those are the ones on top of the cake. Sorry, fresh-roasted chestnuts still are "meh" as far as I am concerned. But it was fun to try it out!


After all these lukewarm statements about chestnuts, you'll probably be surprised to hear that I really liked the cake. The flavors were all subtle and blended well together, and it was so elegant! I do wonder how it would turn out with hazelnuts...bet I'd like it even better.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Catalan Salt Pinch Cake

This week's cake for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the Catalan Salt Pinch Cake. Despite the name, there's no salt at all in the recipe. But the "pinch" part is because the traditional way to eat it is to pinch off pieces with your hands.


How could I resist? I love eating with my hands -- to the despair of my parents and now my husband.

I did make a few changes to the recipe -- I used Trader Joe's almond meal, so I didn't have to grind up the almonds. I just spread the almond meal out on a baking sheet and toasted it in the oven until it smelled nice and "toasted almond-y" -- about 7 to 10 minutes. I used 6 tablespoons of Turbinado sugar, after grinding it in my food processor and sifting it to remove any larger crystals that were still left. For the rest of the sugar, I used regular white sugar, also ground fine in the food processor. And I added about 1/4 teaspoon of salt, because how could I make a cake called a "salt" cake without salt? (OK, OK, Rose says it's the name of a bakery and a village. But I still wanted the salt.)

This is a simple sponge cake using a mixture of ground almonds and flour, and a mixture of whole eggs and egg whites. You beat the egg whites to soft peak stage first, then add in a whole lot of sugar and beat again. I had a moment of panic at this point, because the egg whites became very liquid and runny. It was plain they were never going to get back to "soft peak" stage, let alone to "firm peak" stage. But wait! Rose doesn't say they should! You just have to beat until they are "very thick." OK, I can do that. They looked like marshmallow fluff sauce. Then stir in the almond meal and remaining sugar.

Now we beat in the whole eggs (and salt, in my case). Easy? Not easy if you only have a hand-held electric mixer...you have to beat the eggs in very slowly, taking 20 to 25 minutes. Even with switching hands, I was getting tired of holding that mixer! The scene from "Like Water for Chocolate" came to mind, the one where she is beating the batter for her sister's wedding cake and weeping into the batter. My love life is in much better shape than hers, but I was feeling a bit like weeping too.

Really, what did people do before electric mixers? Maybe they only made egg foam cakes for very special occasions -- or if they had servants to beat the egg foam for them.

I think I must be developing some "cake intuition" -- after about 25 minutes of beating, I could see a change in the egg foam and it seemed "done." It was light and foamy, and had thickened enough to show the marks of the beaters.

OK, fold in the lemon zest and flour. Pinch out any lumps of flour. (Did I mention I love using my hands?) At this point I remembered (too late) that Shirley Corriher has some useful tips on folding flour into sponge cakes in her new book "Bakewise." One of them is to reserve some of the sugar and mix it with the flour. Oh well, maybe next time.

Into the pan and into the oven. After 20-some minutes, my "cake intuition" told me the cake was not quite done -- and so did the toothpick test. Bake a little longer, ah, now it looked and felt done. It had puffed up nicely and hadn't started to fall -- but it did fall in the center once it came out of the oven.

We had great fun pinching off pieces and eating them! Other than that, though, Jim was just lukewarm about this cake. He is just not a fan of sponge cakes. I liked it better -- I am a fan. I love the open, springy texture and airy lightness of sponge cakes. Still, I thought this one was a touch too sweet and had a faint "eggy" taste that I didn't like. The lemon flavor was barely there, the toasted almond flavor and the raw sugar flavor were present but not strong. I'd like this better with more flavor, at least when eaten by itself. I'm thinking a touch of almond extract, and maybe some orange zest and cinnamon. And I'd also like to test it with a fruit topping. Sponge cakes are so great at soaking up those fruit juices...

But truthfully, I'm not sure I'll make this exact recipe again. If I'm going to spend a long time beating an egg foam, I think I'd prefer an almond génoise -- because I get to add lovely browned butter! Can I still eat it with my hands? Please?

TWD: All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake

One of our options for "Tuesdays with Dorie" this month was the All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake, chosen by Britin of The Nitty Britty. It's a pumpkin-spice cake with add-ins of chopped apples, cranberries, and pecans. Perfect for the fall season!


Doesn't it look delicious? Well, it was! You can find the recipe here or here or here.


The recipe says you can add a maple-flavored frosting, but that seemed like overkill. A light dusting of powdered sugar was just right.


I saved a couple of slices for my husband -- and took the rest into work in my "new" antique cake carrier. (An early birthday present from aforesaid sweet husband -- purchased on eBay.) Shiny!


We'd all had a rough week at work and this hit the spot!

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Woody's Lemon Luxury Cake -- well, almost

The Heavenly Cake Bakers' project for this week is Woody's Lemon Luxury Cake -- a lemon-flavored yellow butter cake (with white chocolate in the batter), layered with lemon curd, and frosted with a white chocolate-vanilla-lemon buttercream.


Mine is actually a Lemon "Whisper of Luxury" White Cake. Let me explain.

The full recipe calls for 13 egg yolks, 4 whole eggs, 17.8 ounces of butter and 16.6 ounces of white chocolate. Whew! Even with Green & Black's white chocolate on sale at the co-op, the monetary and calorific cost of the cake was scaring me. And then there was the thought of all those left-over egg whites. Do you know how many containers of egg whites are already in my freezer? (Good, then you can tell me, because I've lost track...too many, is all.)

But my taste buds wanted this cake. I love lemon! OK, I'll make a half recipe of the cake and bake it in 6-inch round pans instead of 9-inch round pans. And I'll make 3/4 of the recipe for the frosting, because I'll probably need more than half. (At some point I'd like to make a post explaining the math for this. But maybe not now.)

And, to help with the egg white problem, I'll make it a white cake instead of a yellow cake. Hey, if you turn to page 48 of Rose's earlier book, "The Cake Bible," you'll find the basis for this cake recipe -- the Golden Luxury Cake. It's virtually identical to this recipe - except the Lemon Luxury has very slightly less baking powder, adds a teaspoon of lemon zest, and is baked in deeper pans. And if you flip ahead a page in the Cake Bible, you'll find the White Velvet Whisper Cake. Guess what? It's identical to the Golden Luxury Cake, except it uses 4 1/2 egg whites instead of 6 egg yolks. Aha! A way to use some of those extra egg whites from the lemon curd!

After some time with a pencil and calculator, the first step was the lemon curd -- 3/4 of the recipe. Some of it goes into the frosting and the rest is used for filling and decorating. You might think measuring 3/4 of 7 egg yolks would be hard, but I just used my scale. Weighing is the way to go!


The last time I made lemon curd, it turned out a bit runny, so I cooked this a bit longer. See how it mounds up? Actually, my test for done-ness is to run the spatula across the pan, scraping all the way to the bottom. You should be able to see the bottom of the pan briefly before the curd oozes slowly back, and the marks of the spatula should fade away quite slowly. I've tried going by temperature, but mine never seems to get as hot as it is supposed to.

I love how Rose has you mix the softened butter in with the eggs. Yes, it's a bit more of a pain to wait for it to soften, but the curd just does not lump. You hardly have to strain it - although I did, just in case.

OK, put the curd into the fridge to cool and gather up and measure ingredients for the cake and frosting. Leave in a corner of the kitchen counter overnight. See? I just have to bring out the egg whites and milk from the fridge -- and later, the eggs for the frosting.


All went well with mixing the cake batter until I began to pour the batter into the pans. "Gee, this seems awfully thin," I thought, and then it struck me. The white chocolate! I forgot to add it! There it was, resting on the counter behind me as it cooled. Drat. I should have put it on the same counter. So I scraped the batter back into the mixing bowl, and mixed in the white chocolate. Ah, now it was nice and thick.

No way was I washing out the pans, drying them, cutting new rounds of waxed paper -- nope, I just wiped away the small amount of remaining batter with a damp paper towel and put on some more "pan goop." (Shortening, oil, flour. Thanks to Alton Brown, there is always some of this in my freezer.)


There really didn't seem to be much batter. It only came about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up the sides of the pan. Hmm. I don't understand. I really didn't lose that much batter with the mistake -- I was very thorough about scraping it back out of the pans. Oh well, into the oven.

They rose nicely. But it was interesting how differently the two cakes baked. The one with the red silicone strip baked considerably faster, despite having a little more batter in the pan. It domed more, and the edges got brown. The one with the Wilton fabric strip took 5 minutes longer to bake. It was more even and did not get brown at the edges. And even though I baked it longer, it came out dense and underbaked. (It's the bottom layer in the finished cake.)

Layer 1: Silicone cake strip

Layer 2: Fabric cake strip

My comparison was not quite fair -- I overlapped the Wilton strip on itself, so most of the cake had two layers of cake strip. I don't think this was a good idea -- it gave too much insulation. And of course there is always the possibility that my oven heats differently on one side.

Both cakes shrank and fell a lot after a few minutes out of the oven. And they were hard to get out of the pans -- but I blame that on my mistake. Some batter had gotten under the wax paper liners and they stuck. In fact, the fabric-strip cake cracked in half. Oh well, the frosting will cover it all up.

So, on to the frosting. First, melt white chocolate and butter together. Thank goodness for Kristina's post about this, or I would have panicked! By the time the white chocolate bits were melted, the mixture had separated into a grainy mess with melted butter floating on top. (It was about 110 F or so.)


It looked even worse just after stirring in the eggs, but as it heated up again, it smoothed out beautifully. For this, you really need to go by the thermometer reading to know when it is done -- there was no dramatic change in texture.


OK, into the fridge with an occasional stirring until it gets down to room temperature. Lovely! Now, beat up some softened butter and gradually beat in the white chocolate custard. Then let sit for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

At this point my husband started saying, "So, is it cake yet?" with increasing impatience. He likes simpler desserts that don't keep him waiting as long!

So, while we're waiting for the frosting, let's put together some of the cake layers. The recipe calls for splitting each layer and filling with lemon curd. Splitting my poor little flat cakes looked like it was going to be a royal pain -- and result in even more cracked cake. (I really should have remembered that white chocolate...Sigh.) OK, go to Plan B -- let's leave it at two layers and just put a really thick layer of lemon curd in between. Hey, I like that idea! And my lemon curd is nice and thick, not runny at all. See? (If you look closely, you can see the crack in the layer, too.) Wrap it up and put into the fridge for a while...




The frosting got to rest for about an hour and 15 minutes ("When will it be cake?") before I beat in a bit of the lemon curd. A taste test revealed only a faint taste of lemon. Now, I like my lemon desserts to be lemony. They may not have to shout "LEMON!!" (although I don't mind if they do), but they at least have to state "Lemon!" with a bit of emphasis. So I pulled out the jar of Penzey's lemon extract and the jar of frozen lemon zest/sugar/vodka and started doctoring it up. It took several additions before I was happy with the taste. It was still only saying "lemon," but at least the white chocolate had receeded to the background. That's where I prefer it. I'm not a fan of white chocolate, although it can be nice as a subtle whisper.

The cake got a crumb coat and a brief rest in the refrigerator, then the final coat of frosting. At this point the cake is supposed to chill again, but the cries of "Cake now!" were getting louder, not to mention that it was getting late. If I didn't finish up this cake now, we'd have to wait until tomorrow. "Unacceptable!" was the unanimous decision on that idea.

But, I am a food blogger, after all. Since I didn't have time to make the frosting all smooth and lovely, I settled for some rustic vertical spatula swipes up the sides. And we had to have some swirls of lemon curd on top! That was problematical because the buttercream was room temperature and quite soft and the curd was cold and quite firm. But eventually (fairly quickly, actually) I managed a sort of giant daisy/sunflower effect with a nice blob of lemon curd in the center.


It's cake! And very good cake too.

And what did I learn this time?
1) Lemon curd is sublime. Totally worth those left-over egg whites. Well, I already knew that, but I was reminded again.
2) Don't forget the white chocolate!
3) Don't mix types of cake strips. Who knew?
4) Eggs really are great emulsifiers.
5) A fancy cake project does better when spread out over several days. (I'm sure my husband will be happy to remind me of this. Or to say "is it done yet?" if I forget.)
6) Even a less-than-perfect cake can be delicious!