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:

Using up egg whites: Amaretti made with almond paste

Three out of four of this month's Tuesdays with Dorie recipes leave you with left-over egg whites. Argh! I already have three one-cup containers of frozen egg whites in storage! It's time to start using up the egg whites.



For my first try, I decided to make some home-made Amaretti cookies. As they were going to be part of the Chocolate Amaretti Torte for Tuesdays with Dorie, I wanted to make them dry and crunchy, so I put them back into the warm oven to dry out after baking them. This worked very well. They ended up like dry, crunchy rocks with just a faint trace of "chew" at the center. My husband was disappointed -- he wanted to eat some of them! Next time I will save some for eating and only dry out part of the batch.

There are a lot of Amaretti recipes out there on the Web. I based my version on these three, but reduced the sugar a lot.
From Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/AmarettiCookies.html
From MyRecipes: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1545760
From Solo Foods: http://solofoods.com/Almond_Macaroons.aspx

Recipe and directions:

1 8-ounce can (227 gm) almond paste (I used Solo brand)
1/2 cup (100 gm) granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 large egg whites (60 gm)
more granulated sugar for sprinkling

Place almond paste into food processor fitted with metal blade. Pulse to break up the paste until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add sugar and salt and pulse until it looks like fine crumbs. With processor running, add egg whites in 4 additions. The mixture may form a ball at first, but once you've added all the egg whites, it should become softer. Process another minute or two. It should be a smooth, soft paste.

Scrape into a pastry bag fitted with 1/2-inch round tip (or smaller for minis) or with a coupler. Put some plastic wrap over the open tip of the bag, fold down the top of the bag, and refrigerate for 2 hours or so to let the sugar finish dissolving.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone sheets. Preheat oven to 325 F. Pipe into small balls about 1 inch across. (I ended up with 27 of them. Your results may vary.) Moisten your fingers with cool water and gently flatten the pointed tops. Sprinkle generously with granulated sugar.

Bake for about 20-22 minutes, until cracked and dry on the tops, golden brown around edges, and beginning to be golden on top. Let cool for about 10 minutes, still on pans. Keep oven door closed but turn off heat.

If you want to save some soft, chewy cookies for eating, remove as many as you want and place on racks. Place the remainder back in oven and prop oven door slightly open. Let sit for about 30 minutes or more in warm oven to finish drying out.

Peel them off the silicone sheet. If you used parchment and they don't want to come off, dampen back of parchment slightly and wait a minute or two.