The last step once the lemon is completely frozen is to make a meringue, spread it to cover the frozen filling, then run the cake briefly under the broiler to brown the meringue. Once that was done it was back to freezer to let the frozen parts recover from the heat blast.
Monday, November 29, 2010
RHC: Ladyfingers and Lemon Canadian Crown
The last step once the lemon is completely frozen is to make a meringue, spread it to cover the frozen filling, then run the cake briefly under the broiler to brown the meringue. Once that was done it was back to freezer to let the frozen parts recover from the heat blast.
Monday, November 22, 2010
RHC: Chocolate Génoise with Whipped Peanut Butter Ganache
All that aside, I did get the chocolate génoise baked, and prepared the syrup with Chambord. (Unlike several Heavenly Cake Bakers, I had a dusty bottle in my liquor cabinet from some long-ago baking endeavor so didn't have to break the bank to get a new bottle.) Then it was on to the peanut butter whipped ganache. This should also have been simple--ganache has no terrors for me, and this recipe is just ganache with some peanut butter added, then whipped. Well, it was the whipping part that did for me. I carefully checked the temperature, but nonetheless when I started to whisk the mixture it seemed impossible to get soft peaks. I continued whisking and ended up with a grainy ganache. Rose says such a ganache can be rescued by re-melting it then beating it again, and indeed when I remelted it and got it to the right temperature it looked just like it had when I started. Unfortunately, it also once again never produced anything like soft peaks and quickly turned grainy. I gave up and frosted my syruped génoise with it anyway. It did have a nice light texture, so all that was affected (as far as I could tell) was the appearance.
Office opinions: a big hit. My supervisor called it the best cake-of-the-week he'd had. (He does have a limited sample size, as his office isn't on my regular Cake Distribution Route. <g>) P, who hadn't had a cake-of-the-week before, loved it (he started out asking if it was a mix, and the concept of frosting not from a can seemed rather foreign to him), as did B and V. C, like me, prefers the butter cakes and gave it an "OK". Still, I think we'll call it a success.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Clay's Multi-Grain Sourdough Sandwich Bread from KAF
Today's bread is from a recent King Arthur Flour blog post (or just see the recipe), which also inspired me to go revive my rather evil looking sourdough starter. After feeding it yesterday I left it out overnight, and today it was very bubbly and ready to go. Don't know if it was the freshly revved up starter or other substitutions I made, but this bread didn't much resemble the description in the KAF writeup.
First let me document the substitutions: I used more whole wheat flour than called for (3 oz. instead of 2), reducing the AP flour. I don't have the "KA Whole-Grain Bread Improver" but added some vital wheat gluten instead--I see on further research that the bread improver is a mix of vital wheat gluten and soy flour, mostly. And I don't have the KA Harvest Grains Blend, so I mixed some poppy, flax, and sunflower seeds into a little Bob's Red Mill 5-Grain Cereal blend, which is an oat/wheat based hot cereal. Seemed close enough.
Despite all that, it's a nice loaf of bread. Very light on the "multi-grain" bit, so I'd probably up the whole-wheat flour even more if I make it again, especially as it's clear the loaf has plenty of spring to handle it. The character could be varied quite a lot by using different seeds and grains for the Harvest Grains Blend.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
RHC: She Loves Me Cake--sort of
The result didn't look much like "She Loves Me" cake, though. First off, my flat decorative NordicWare baking pan is the snowflake design instead of the daisy--more appropriate for this time of the year, really, even though Atlanta may not see snow until February (or not at all some winters). Rose gives options of splitting the cake and filling it with lemon curd and blueberries (the Lemon Daisy Cake) or with whipped cream and berries (Berry Shortcake). I wanted to use the berry shortcake option (though I prefer a slightly sweet biscuit for a real strawberry shortcake). With this need for chocolate this week, raspberries seemed like a good choice for the berries. And that chocolate requirement....the hot fudge sauce from the ice cream cake was really yummy, and pretty easy. That'd do. Maybe my She Loves Me Cake is "Chocolate snowflake raspberry shortcake with hot fudge sauce".
I cooled the cake and made the fudge sauce, then asked younger niece to come over and experiment with some decorations to highlight the snowflake design. As we were adding chocolate, I melted a little 62% chocolate and handed her a small paintbrush, and she put a chocolate coating over a few of the snowflakes.
I did make an effort to judge the cake separately from the berries, cream, and chocolate, and really liked it. It has a lovely even crumb, a nice vanilla flavor, and a good yellow color from the (5+) egg yolks. I'd eat it plain, or jazzed up any number of ways--the lemon curd idea will be one of them, I'm sure.
Monday, November 8, 2010
RHC: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake
Cake of the week is the Swedish Pear and Almond Cake, a sour cream cake with a band of almond cream (almond paste, sugar, and egg) and a layer of pear slices. Theoretically, the layers of almond cream and pears, applied to the top of the cake batter, sink during the baking to end up at the bottom--which becomes the top as you turn the cake out. In actuality, my pear layers stopped about half-way through the cake, though the almond cream did end up on top.
Other tasters' comments mostly stuck to "good cake", with the exception of one friend who was wanting a different cake. When I told her this was a pear and almond cake, she was expecting more the style of the apple upside-down cake or the plum and blueberry torte--half cake, half fruit. That is not this cake. :)
Monday, November 1, 2010
RHC: The Bostini
As is my usual approach I did a half recipe, and for this individually composed dessert, I wanted half-sized servings--all the adults in the family are watching our weight, and while the active teenagers don't need to, they also are fine with smaller dessert sizes. Half-size seemed about right.
What to serve this in? Part of the reason the photograph of the Bostini is so attractive, I think, is the chocolate sauce flowing down the sides of the cappuccino cup used for serving. However, my practical side said that would be incredibly messy to eat--the cupcake would be pushed down into the pastry cream with the first few bites, sending (more) chocolate sauce and pastry cream cascading over the sides of the cup. Rose notes that if you have the right diameter of cup the cupcake will act as a stopper to keep the cream from running out of the cup, but I didn't have much choice of container diameters. Besides, I was going to have a half-sized portion, so coffee cups were out. After a scan of my cabinets, I decided on some slender 6 oz. white wine glasses (I had 4 of those) and custard cups for the rest. The custard cups weren't a good idea, as it turns out, for exactly the problem I'd thought of with the cappuccino cup. The wine glasses, on the other hand, were just right.
The first step was to bake the orange glow chiffon cupcakes, and for my half-size servings I couldn't use the specified cupcake pan. I went with a mini muffin pan. However, mini cupcakes are a lot less than half of a "regular" cupcake, so I ended up with 24 or so mini chiffon cakes. I was shooting for 8 half-sized servings, so decided that I'd use 2 mini chiffon cakes per.
The last component is the chocolate butter glaze, basically equal weights of dark chocolate and butter. I used a ganache instead of the chocolate butter sauce. I'm sure the butter sauce would be wonderful, but I love ganache, too, and did you know that heavy cream has half the calories of butter, tablespoon for tablespoon? <g> I did use the same amount of cream in my ganache as butter called for in the chocolate butter sauce.
To compose the Bostinis, I put two of the mini orange chiffon cupcakes into each container with the pastry cream, and pushed it down a little. Then the warm chocolate sauce was poured on top--but not dripping down the sides, as my wine glasses had enough room to contain it.
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