Two Nearly Identical End of the Year Cakes

To celebrate the end of the quarter I made two little cakes, one for my anthropological methods class and the second for my Tamil language class. The bigger one was an 8" round, and the smaller a 7", and while I worried about having enough for my 15-person methods class, the cake was so rich and the slices so thin that there was enough left over for me to leave some on the mezzanine!

The cakes had a moist almond-chocolate base with hazelnut buttercream filling and cocoa-hazelnut buttercream for frosting. I wanted the hazelnut flavor to come through a little more strongly, but it ended up getting a little buried under the chocolate and almond. I couldn't find hazelnut extract at the grocery store (America's Most European Supermarket my ass) and didn't want to use nutella because I felt like that would make it a nutella cake. Nothing wrong with that! I just didn't want to feel compelled to label this a nutella cake. Hrm.

8" rough-iced with a nice swirl.

7" rough-iced with a nicer swirl.

To add textural interest and because I'd been on such a macaron bender I decided to pipe out two macaron discs for each cake. They are the light-colored layers below. They stayed crisp for days, which I found out after eating a piece of cake I stuck in the fridge. Totally delicious and amazing, totally planning on doing it for pretty much every cake I ever make again. It also made for nice high cakes, so it's great for adding height without adding heaviness.

A macaron layer.

Stacked cake with macaron.

I was in a bit of a rush when I made the cakes, so I decided to use a rough-icing technique that I learned at Cakeman Raven. Slowly draw an icing spatula up the side of your cake as you give it a few spins. Keep this slow movement up until you reach the top of the cake. Then, starting on the edge of the top of the cake, spin again and slowly draw the spatula towards the middle at a slight angle. It takes a bit of practice (which I was out of when I made these cakes) but you can end up with a nice looking finished product without spending lots of time piping.

I am going to finally stop being lazy about this and post the recipe for the basic Italian meringue buttercream I use below, and will add instructions to create the hazelnut buttercream I would have made had our stupid market carried hazelnut extract. The macaron recipe can be found here (I only needed one batch to make all four discs), and to make the chocolate hazelnut buttercream I just added several ounces of melted and cooled unsweetened chocolate to half of the hazelnut buttercream. I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor of the almond chocolate cake so I will be working on the recipe and will post it in the future when it is more awesome.



Italian Meringue Buttercream Base (Adapted from the Miette Bakery cookbook by Meg Ray)

2 lbs butter (eight sticks) at room temp
2 2/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
7 egg whites
1 1/3 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons vanilla (optional)

Beat the butter at high speed until it is very light and fluffy, at least 4 minutes. Remove the butter from the bowl if it's the one you'll be using to make the meringue, and clean it very well, with soap. Any lingering fat may inhibit the development of a light and fluffy meringue.

Heat the water and sugar in a pan over medium low heat, stirring until the sugar melts. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and cook the syrup until it reaches 240° F. As soon as it hits 240, start to whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar at high speed until they form soft peaks, keeping an eye on the boiling syrup. When the candy thermometer reaches 248°, remove the syrup from heat and, with the mixer on medium, slowly pour the syrup into the whites, being sure to avoid pouring it directly on the spinning whisk attachment to avoid splatter. Raise the speed to high and continue to whisk until the bowl is cool to the touch, at least 10 minutes.

Switching the mixing speed to medium-low, add the butter a quarter cup at a time, allowing each addition to be completely incorporated before adding more. Once it's all in there, add the vanilla if you like, raise the speed and whip for another minute or so just to get it good and fluffy. At certain points it may look like it's deflating or curdling, but keep beating and it should come together and fluff up nicely.


Hazelnut Buttercream

1 recipe Italian Meringue Buttercream Base (above)
Hazelnuts (I got 4 of the very small packets which came out to maybe a cup, but I would say put in as much hazelnut as you can afford! Probably two cups max)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1 Tbsp hazelnut extract

Chop hazelnuts if they are whole, and leave them be if they came chopped. Toast them in a 350° oven until lightly browned and fragrant, stirring them around once, for maybe 5 minutes or a bit more depending on how toasty you like them.
Pulverize the toasted hazelnuts and salt in a food processor until they become as close to a butter as you can get them. You will probably end up with a paste.
Fold the paste into the buttercream. Fold in the hazelnut extract.


To Assemble the Cake

Cut five layers for each cake. Layer as follows: cake, buttercream, cake, buttercream, macaron, buttercream, cake, buttercream, macaron, buttercream, cake, buttercream, cake. Next time I'm just going to have a layering schematic! You can sort of see the pattern below. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to cut a slice of this cake right out of the fridge: that makes for a cleaner cut and easier-to-identify layers. In any case, here it is!

This was a good-looking one, I have to say.

Clean plates all around... That's what I like to see.

This plate's been scraped! Yes.

Bake hard,
Azara

Maybe Not Totally Perfect but Still Really Awesome Macarons

At the front left corner you can see what happens when you try to peel off a macaron before they've cooled...

This was my third try for macarons; the second try had come out behaving very much like meringue, and the first try spread into weird little misshapen puddles and kind of burned on the bottom. Delicious misshapen burnt puddles, but on a certain level with the macaron shells taste is only half the battle, perhaps even less. The other key elements to a macaron, as far as I can tell, are a) visual appeal: smooth, lustrous surface and development of a solid pied, the little crackly 'foot' at the base of the shell which I will discuss further in a minute, and b) mouthfeel: a somewhat crisp shell with a softer almost fudgy center. The goal here is to avoid gummy chewiness or the texture of a meringue by observing a proper period of macaronnage, a process in which the batter is repeatedly spread against the side of the bowl in order, again as far as I can tell, to reduce air bubbles and create a molten lava-like texture in the batter.

So third time is apparently the charm! What I did differently for this batch from the previous ones was not overbeating the meringue and macaronnage-ing like it was my job.

The payoff? Smooth tops, solid pied.

Pied! Yes!

The recipe I use for macarons is from I Heart Macarons by Hisako Ogita. As are most Japanese sweets cookbooks, this book is pretty precious with beautiful photographs and extremely cute ideas for presentation. There are plenty of flavoring instructions for shaking up the plain macaron shell base, including green tea, black sesame, raspberry etc.

The book also includes instructions for making many different flavors of buttercream to be sandwiched by the macaron shells, although I have always had leftover buttercream to use. Also in the book are suggested flavor combinations that look pretty incredible. Maybe I'll get adventurous next time!

Italian Meringue Macarons (Makes about 12 sandwiched macarons)

2/3 cups ground almonds

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 Tbsp water

5 Tbsp granulated sugar

3 lg egg whites 

1 tsp vanilla

Sift together the ground almonds and powdered sugar three times. Set aside.

Boil the granulated sugar and water until it reaches 240°. As soon as it does, start whipping the egg whites at high speed. Beat until they reach the soft peak phase, at which point the sugar syrup should be around 248°-250°. Slowly pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites with the mixer still going, pouring it down the side of the bowl in order to avoid splattering on the beater. Turn up the mixer to high speed and beat until the bottom of the bowl is cool to the touch. 

Fold in half of the sifted sugar and almond mixture and fold in until just incorporated. Fold in the remaining sugar and almond and begin the macaronnage.

For Macaronnage:

Scoop up the batter with a spatula and press it along the side of the bowl. Repeat about 12 times, although you want to look for a very particular consistency, like of molten lava, and if you haven't achieved it after 12 turns, keep going. Here is a really useful video of a macaron chef folding in the sugar and almond (and cocoa for her macarons) and performing macaronnage until it reaches the critical consistency.

Pipe macarons onto parchment paper or a silpat-lined pan using a 1/4-1/2" tip. Allow the macarons to sit at room temperature for 10 to 30 minutes, until they are dry to the light touch. Preheat the oven to 375° and bake the macarons for 15-18 minutes. 

Et voila! Macarons. Sandwich with buttercream and you're all set!

Buttercreamed macaron! Not perfect thanks to the little bump on the top, but I actually think it's kind of cute!

I used leftover caramel buttercream and gave it a little color for contrast.

Délicieux!

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Azara