Experimental Cake with Bavarian Cream and Mango

Yesterday I went off-book and made up a weird cake recipe. I can't say I'm completely in love with it, but it was a worthwhile experiment and I'm going to keep playing with it to see what I can come up with. I started with what was essentially a kasutera batter, in which whole eggs and sugar are beaten together until quite thick and foamy folded together with flour, but I added some extra flour, a little baking powder and a little oil and milk. The oil of course completely deflated the eggs (which is why I added baking powder), but I wanted to see if beating them affected the quality of the finished product. I did end up with a loaf that rose beautifully and had a very lovely, very fine crumb; however, the cake was fairly coarse once it cooled completely, and quite dry.

What I'd like to do is bake another cake with the same ingredients but with no beating of the eggs to see whether beating them made a difference despite the oil-induced deflation. Then I'd like to bake one with more oil or maybe some butter in order to try for a soft, moist cake.

It did come up beautifully though, and baked through without threatening to over-brown! All too rare in a cake recipe.

To add some zazz I whipped up an eggless Bavarian cream and made some layers (Bavarian recipe below). The layers are so crazy uneven because I was in a terrific rush. I put this cake together in about ten frantic minutes, so think about the skill needed to achieve that before judging!
 

Also we didn't have any baking paper (I'm at my family's house in NYC) so I lined everything with foil... Looks kind of awesome, I have to say.

I also took some dried mango and boiled it in sugar syrup, let it soak for a while, drained it and studded one of the layers of cream with it. I used the syrup as a soak for the cake layers, but they still managed to remain remarkably dry. To my surprise, this coarse texture ended up working with the soft Bavarian cream, and my family likes the cake quite a bit! I'll still want to play around with the recipe before I post it though. 

 

Eggless Vanilla Bavarian Cream (adapted from festivalfoods.com)

1 Tbsp gelatin 
2 Tbsp very cold water
2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Bloom the gelatin in the cold water for about five minutes.
Mix one cup of the cream with the milk, reserving the second cup of cream in the refrigerator. Put the cream and milk mixture over a medium heat and scald it, removing it from heat before it boils. Stir in the sugar and the salt, and stir in the bloomed gelatin until it dissolves completely. Chill it, adding in the vanilla once it's cooled but is not yet set (ten minutes or so). Once thickened, beat it until fluffy.
Separately, beat the reserved cup of cold cream until soft and pillowy. Fold it into the gelatin mixture, or beat it a bit if the gelatin is so set that it remains chunky after folding.
Pour the Bavarian into whatever mould is being used, lined with wax paper or wetted, or if using the Bavarian as layers of filling in a cake, build the layers immediately, using the pan in which the cake was baked in order to keep the Bavarian from squishing out as it sets. Here it helps to have very deep cake pans available, three or four inches works well.


So there we have it! I'm excited to be playing with vanilla cake and fruit combos. I am a committed chocolate person, but these flavors were great and I look forward to more fruit projects coming up, especially since I'll be hanging out in California for the next month and a half (starting the day after tomorrow!) and will be surrounded by gorgeous produce.

Next time I post it'll be from not-always-so-sunny Northern California! Maybe a fruit crisp or even a pie... yes...

Bake Hard!
Azara

Tiny-Checkerboard Cookies and New Camera!

I got a new camera! And I am terrible at using it.

I am pretty sure this is a terrible picture. But it's the best terrible picture I took all day so... you're welcome.

I'm hoping to improve with time, although it might be a while since it's really important to me that I learn to properly adjust aperture and shutter speed and other such confusing things manually. It is quite difficult and my shaky hands make for so many blurry pictures. Sigh. I'll get there!

Today I had more fun with cookie dough extrusion, abandoning the small circular template for the tiny square one and using the resulting pieces to fashion pretty hardcore little checkerboard cookies. I didn't have a ton of dough since I was using what was leftover from the clouds and another project, but it was enough to get eleven solid cookies.

Ready for baking!

 

Baked.

A little jumble of checkerboard.

While time-consuming, this process resulted in some nice cookies and I'll be keeping it in my back pocket. I will also be working on refining my technique and the recipe as time goes on, so keep an eye out for updates.

Bake Hard,
Azara

Cookie Clouds

These are some cookies I made while playing around with my Play-Doh extruder. So much fun to be had with that thing, although I wouldn't recommend first using the extruder with the Play-Doh that comes with it. You may end up finding little bits of blue and neon yellow in your cookies... Oh well, it's not like it's poisonous! If it was, let's be honest, we would all have been chronically ill as children.


*No recipes in this post; these are works in progress.*

In order to achieve this look I extruded long ropes of soft vanilla dough and rolled them up, stuck them together and made a frame with chocolate dough. I'm happy with how they came out but I'm going to keep playing with the recipe until I can get the dough to extrude more smoothly. I am tempted to try less flour and more milk, which will make for very soft dough that I may only be able to handle when cold. Also less flour might help the dough to melt a bit more, softening the crackles. I do kind of like the textured appearance, but if the dough could be just a bit more forgiving I'd be totally happy.

 Bake Hard,
Azara

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

Chris' Southern Disco Kitsch Pineapple 7-Up Birthday Cake

This one goes out to everybody with a crazy sweet tooth. Chris' SDKP7UBC was a massive effort, but it led to a major payoff. This cake got me the coveted "this tastes like my childhood" compliment from my friend Karma, a native of South Carolina. A clear win for the recipes I will be sharing in this post! But first, some terrible pictures (some day I will get a new camera... promise).

So kitschy! So Fabulous.

Little stars piped on top.

My friend Meghan working on a sidewalk chalk rendition of the cake.

Aaaand recipes:


7-Up Cake (adapted from the Whiteout Cake from BAKED bakery's first book. Love their stuff)

5 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, at room temp
1 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sugar
2 Tbsp vanilla
2 large eggs at room temp
3 cups (1 normal-sized bottle, like not the giant one) ice cold 7-Up
6 large egg whites at room temp
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 325°. Prep two 2" high 8" round pans and two 2" high 7" pans or one 3" high 8" pan and one 3" high 7" pan. (For this recipe I found it better to bake smaller amounts of batter at a time, so if you only have one each of the 3" high pans then bake half the batter first, prep the pans again and bake the second half. This will prevent the delicate cake from collapsing under its own weight or over-baking)
Sift the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt together into a large bowl. Whisk to combine.
Beat butter and shortening for 3-4 minutes until creamy and lightened. Add sugar and vanilla and beat for 3 more minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating continuously until completely combined.
Add flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the soda.
Whisk/beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Check often and do not overbeat! Fold the egg whites into the batter.
Dole batter into prepped pans until half full and bake for 35-45 minutes: keep an eye on this one! You want to pull it out as soon as its finished to avoid over-browning and drying of the inside of the cake.


Macerated Pineapple (Makes enough pineapple and syrup for the whole cake)

2 cups sugar
2 cups water
2 pineapples, chopped finely (looking for roughly quarter-inch pieces)

Create a simple syrup by cooking the sugar and water together and boiling for five minutes.
Cook the pineapple in the syrup, boiling for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for at least 8 hours.
Drain and reserve syrup for soaking 7-Up cake layers. Add a little rum if you like!


Pineapple Italian Meringue Buttercream

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
1/2 recipe Macerated Pineapple (above)

Beat the butter until smooth, light and creamy, about 3-5 minutes. Reserve. Thoroughly wash and dry bowl if using a stand mixer.
Cook sugar and water over medium heat to 240°. As soon as it reaches this temperature beat egg whites and cream of tartar together in a clean bowl at high speed until the soft peak stage. By now the syrup should have reached between 248° and 250°; remove from heat and slowly pour into the egg whites down the side of the bowl as the mixer remains at medium. Turn it up to high and whip until the bottom of the bowl is cool to the touch.
Turning the mixer down to a low setting, add the butter in a spoonful at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla. Divide in half and reserve one half for frosting the cake.
Put the macerated pineapple in a food processor or blender and blend well. Fold into half of the buttercream.

*Note: this buttercream may weep a bit; keep this in mind when soaking your layers, by which I mean do not oversoak in order to leave a little room for the pineapple juice that may leach out of the buttercream.


To Assemble the Cake

Split the cake into however many layers you wish. I did seven and seven to play on the 7-Up content of the cake. Nobody got it until I said something. Such is the plight of the detail-oriented baker.

Soak each layer in the maceration syrup and spread on a thin layer of pineapple buttercream. Use the reserved macerated pineapple to add some texture to some of the layers of buttercream; I put it in the two middle layers. Continue until you reach the final layer of cake, and then frost the cake in the reserved plain vanilla buttercream. I fortified the bottom tier of cake with some chopsticks that I cut down to size. Decorate as desired.

Bake Hard!
Azara

Blue Corn Muffins for the Viewer's Aesthetic Appreciation

More food should be teal-blue.

Blue corn muffins... lovely to look at, although a little bit on the gritty side. Oh well, they were beautiful, hence completely worth baking. I used the recipe on the back of the Bob's Mill blue cornmeal. Here it is:

1 cup flour

1 cup blue cornmeal

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg 

1/3 cup veggie oil

1 cup milk (I used 2%) 

Preheat the oven to 400°. Prep a muffin pan by greasing with shortening and then flouring it if you're feeling ambitious. Are you feeling ambitious? I am. Bake hard.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.

In a separate bowl combine wet ingredients, creating an emulsion with the egg and oil and then thoroughly whisk in the milk. 

Mix wet into dry.

Dole batter into the muffin cups until each is about halfway full.

Bake for 25 minutes or until done (always test one with a toothpick!). Let the muffins cool in the pan until easily handled, and then remove them by slipping a knife between the muffin and the pan and working it out.

Eat warm with butter! I served these alongside lentils (my one claim to fame in the cooking arena) and they were pretty good, although again, a bit gritty. The grit seemed to lessen by day two, and you can always reheat or, even better, split the muffins in two, toast them, and slather them in butter... mmmmm. 

Enjoy!