Monday, August 30, 2010
RHC: Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache
Monday, August 23, 2010
RHC: Marionberry Shortcake
Failing to find frozen (or fresh) marionberries led me to my mistake-of-the-week: I forgot the explanation in the recipe introduction that only marionberries retain their texture after freezing, so only fresh berries should be used as a substitute. I bought frozen blackberries, and that was not a great choice. I should have checked out the fresh berries and gotten whatever was nice and flavorful.
The "shortcake" is actually a génoise baked in individual maryann pans. My maryann pan is a vintage affair taken from my parents' house years ago, and I do like having a chance to use it. The cakelets have a little depression on top to hold the berries for a shortcake--nice enough, but I really prefer a biscuit-style shortcake like the Buttermilk-Almond Biscuits from Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts. I'm more looking forward to the RHC recipe that fills that little depression with chocolate.
Here's how the Marionberry/Blackberry Shortcake comes together: the génoise cakelets, made with browned butter, are baked and cooled. The frozen berries are tossed with sugar and defrosted to get a syrup. The cakelets are brushed with the syrup, then the berries are piled on top. The whole affair is topped with lightly sweetened and whipped crème fraîche.
Tasting results: Sister-in-law gave it a pass as too much sugar. Younger niece and the nephew tasted the crème fraîche separately and opted for the cake and berries without it, then found the results too sweet. Niece also really disliked the way the frozen blackberries had broken down in the sugaring and defrosting steps, and thought the results were like jam. My brother and I and older niece all had the version with crème fraîche, and found it not too sweet at all--the crème fraîche gave just the right tang to offset the sweet berries and cake. I'd certainly have preferred to have more texture in the berries, but now that I've realized my mistake, I can make the recipe with fresh seasonal berries. Or maybe those elusive marionberries will show up in the freezer case sometime.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
RHC: Plum Round Ingots
My baking of the Plum Round Ingots, baked by Marie in July 2009, just fell into place. I had extra plums in the fridge after the search for greengage plums (I found green ones if not greengage, so these purple plums weren't needed for the Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte). This week's recipe needed browned butter, and it's easy to make enough for 2 recipes or more. I toasted the almonds after the shortcakes came out of the oven. And I had egg whites in the freezer from some other cake recipe that only needed yolks. To top it off, the batter is mixed up in the food processor--this almost qualifies for the easy list.
The Plum Ingots are financiers, buttery little cakes with ground almonds in the batter. For this version, toasted sliced almonds, powdered sugar, cake flour, and a little salt are thrown in the food processor and zapped until the almonds are ground. In go some egg whites to be pulsed into the mix, then the hot browned butter is slowly added while pulsing some more. Add in a little vanilla, then the batter is ready to rest in the fridge overnight.
After the resting period, the batter is portioned out into tartlet pans. The recipe calls for 3-7/8" pans, but I only have 3 of that size, not the 6 needed. I do have 6 slightly smaller pans, so I made one 3-7/8" cake and 6 smaller ones. Then came the artistic part, handled almost completely by my younger niece. I sliced plums into thin slices, and she arranged the slices in the batter in a rose-petal pattern. The cakelets bake and the batter puffs around the plum slices, making a very pretty effect.
Taste testing: all very positive from everyone but older niece, who saved hers for later. The almond flavor nicely complements the plums, and the texture of the cake is lovely with the little bit of chew from the ground almonds. No complaints about "too sweet" or "too dry", either! We might make this one again in even smaller tartlet pans, getting them down to 2-bite size or so. They'd make a very pretty dessert for a summer party.
Monday, August 16, 2010
RHC: Chocolate Feather Bed
I again did a half-size version (I think I've done half sizes for nearly half the cakes--must count up some time), which is very nice for this cake. The thin layers are baked in a half sheet pan, and for those of us with a single, regular sized oven, that would mean two rounds of baking to make the full cake. Granted, the thin layer bakes quickly, but I was glad to only have to do one round of melting chocolate, beating egg yolks with sugar until fluffy, mixing in the chocolate, then making a meringue in a separate bowl to be folded in.
The stabilized whipped cream actually gave me more problems, though less than dealing with the tricky temperature requirements of the ganache, I think. The stabilization is done with gelatin, so the first step is heating part of the cream with powdered sugar and the gelatin. That mixture is then cooled to room temperature. The rest of the cream is whipped to soft peaks, then the gelatin mixture is dribbled in and the mixture taken to stiff peaks. Well, my gelatin mixture set up past the 'dribble-able' stage very quickly, and I had to re-warm it to melt the gelatin again. Then the whole mixture also set up very quickly once the gelatin was added. At first I thought I had lumps of gelatin, or maybe butter, in my mixture, but no. It was just very stiff, and less fluffy. As I started composing the cake, I quickly found out that I had a good bit less yield than the expected 2 cups and I had to cut back on the amount spread on each layer. The texture was noticeably different than plain whipped cream--both my brother and sister-in-law asked about it, unprompted.
One more thing on the whipped cream: here's another place where I miss the "why" parts from other of Rose's cookbooks. Why bring the cream/sugar/gelatin to a boil? Is it to melt the gelatin? Some other reaction? That would have helped me decide when to take it off the heat, instead of waiting for a clear boil and perhaps overdoing it. I should have pulled out one of those other books...looks like all that's needed is to melt the gelatin.
As my timing worked out, I refrigerated the cake overnight before composing the cake. I also popped it into the freezer for a few minutes before I started, warned by the recipe of the fragility of the cake. All that must have helped, as I really didn't have problems trimming the cake into 4 rectangles, then spreading each with a thin layer of the stabilized whipped cream before stacking the next layer on top.
The last step was to make chocolate curls for the top, a process that covered my hands in 62% Scharffen Berger chocolate (oh, horror!) but gave a very nice finish to the cake.
Monday, August 9, 2010
RHC: Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte
This Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte is indeed easy, with the most difficult part of the baking being a caramel. The most difficult non-baking part would be finding the recommended greengage plums, which I failed to turn up in any of the places I go for more exotic or upscale produce in Atlanta. I even looked while in San Diego, in case southern California ran to such things when Atlanta did not, but no. Red plums, black, green, purple, but no greengage. I ended up with a green plum variety and a red plum, and used the green ones. I suspect my palate couldn't tell the difference once baked up with the cake anyway.
The cake process is in three stages: make a caramel and pour it in the cake pan. Arrange the plums on top, then spread lots of blueberries over the plums. Then make a quick butter cake batter in the food processor (dry stuff first, blend in butter, then add eggs and vanilla and zap until mixed) and dollop that over the fruit, smooth it out, and bake.
The cake is turned out to give the "upside down" fruit topping, and Rose recommends baking it a day ahead to let it moisten evenly. Hard though it was when the smell of the warm fruit was wafting through the kitchen, that's what I did, so I baked on Saturday and we cut the cake on Sunday evening.
Monday, August 2, 2010
RHC: Lemon Meringue Cake
This week's cake is Rose's interpretation of lemon meringue pie, as a cake. I wasn't expecting this one to suit many people in my family--it's not chocolate, has a pile of meringue (traditionally very sweet)--the only positive for most of them is the lemon. On the other hand, lemon is a real favorite, behind chocolate.
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