Yum!

I’m gonna pretty much let the pictures do the talking today.

Wrinkly soaked apricots

Hm... I started the ganache, but now I need this for my apricots. Time to finish the ganache, and wash dishes, I guess.

That's better.

Looks like baby food. Or squash.

Tastes a whole lot better, though.

Perfect amount of leftovers (I did a half batch)

Ganache and Lekvar. What's next?

Oh. I need this for the biscuit. Looks like it's dishes time again.

Much better. Heart of Wheat bread will be ready by supper time.

Mise en Place for Meringue

Whipped Egg Yolks + sugar + vanilla

After folding in the flour

Time to fold in the meringue

I'm not very good at smoothing the surface of my cakes.

All rolled up. Propped against the oven mitt to keep seam side down.

All ready to assemble. Looks like someone made syrup, too.

Lekvar spread

Ganache Spread (with a layer scraped off and back into the bowl for the crumb coat after I read the next step)

Ready for crumb coat

Glaze software

Glaze hardware

Cocoa, sugar, and water mixed together

Cream and corn syrup added

Waiting for it to cool after yet another batch of dishes (see the clean strainer?)

Ready to glaze.

Wow. That was easier than I expected (It looks more precarious than it was... I think)!

Shiny! Does someone want to buy me a pretty rectangular cake plate? Anyone? No? Bah.

How did this get in here?

Hubby liked this, and thought the glaze was really cool. He (like me) was rather disturbed by the texture of the puddle that I scraped off the pan, though. Chocolate Jello! I put it in the freezer. Hopefully, I’ll find a use for it. I took the leftovers into work and sent an email out to a handful of people, rather than all of dev, because I didn’t want to email 30 geeks telling them I had cake, and have 20-25 of them go away empty-handed, since this was a pretty small cake. The few I emailed we rather pleased that they’d managed to end up members of some sort of exclusive club. I’ll have to email a different set of people next time just to keep them on their toes. Trade bug fixes for cake or something.

Mise en Place

This recipe, again, follows Rose’s standard butter cake method. Mix dry ingredients with sugar, add some liquid and the butter, beat, then add eggs and the rest of the liquid in 2 stages.

After mixing the butter and most of the sour cream into the dry ingredients, I was almost certain that I’d done something horribly wrong. Look at the “batter”! I could make cookies out of that!

It looks like a dough!

I knew that mixture would never beat up to the point of light and fluffy, so I added a splash or two of the egg mixture to smooth it out a bit before the “beat for 1 1/2 minutes” step. That helped tremendously, and I moved along to adding the rest of the egg mixture with no major mishaps.

Swoosh!

I spread the batter in my boring old Bundt pan (go look at Raymond or Nancy’s blogs to see the beauty that a bundt cake can be).

Doesn't look like much...

After it comes out of the oven, you poke it with a stick (ok, skewer, but that’s not as much fun to say), then drown it in lemon syrup. Ta-da!

I love the light that comes in this window. I think it's the only thing I like about this kitchen.

Then go feed your hungry co-workers. At least, I think they must be hungry, because my plate always comes home with nothing but crumbs on it, and sometimes it doesn’t even have many of those.

Anton said it was refreshingly lemony. Sergey said it had a “moist skin”, and came back for a small second sliver later in the afternoon. Matt said “The whole thing is moist.” Adam got the last piece again, and scraped most of the crumbs off the serving plate. Martin took two pieces, claiming he had someone visiting, but I think he just wanted both for himself. Jay agrees with Marie’s husband Jim and says “I wouldn’t know”. To be fair to me, though, I asked if he wanted a piece and he said “Does it have frosting?”. I looked at him and looked at the cake and said “Does it look like it does?” “Take it to work.” I don’t think he likes poppy seeds. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about the quantity of poppy seeds, but I’m glad I made the recipe as written. I really liked the texture they provided.

Cupcake!

This week, the heavenly cake bakers had “free choice” week. We’re each picking a recipe (some have done more than one) that has already been made during this bake-through, either one that Marie made before the rest of the group joined in, or one that has already been made by the group. I chose the very first recipe that Marie blogged about. You can see her post here. This is one of the three recipes she was allowed to post, so if you want to try it out, check out her post. My husband loves both spice cake (his favourite prior to this was my Mom’s recipe) and peanut butter, so when I saw this cake, I knew I had to make it. Yes, I’m lazy and it’s taken me this long to follow through on that.

Before I get too far into this, let me preface it by saying I’m watching the Olympic Ice Dance Free skate, so forgive me if I seem distracted. Go Tessa and Scott! I saw them win at Skate Canada here in the fall when my Mom and my sister were here visiting for the competition, and became a fan. I haven’t watched much figure skating it recent years (more or less since the time of Bourne and Kraatz, really), so being able to see it online is a treat.

Mise en Place

This cake follow’s Rose’s standard method for butter cakes, by mixing the dry ingredients with the butter and some of the liquid, then mixing in the eggs, vanilla and the rest of the liquid in two additions. The thing I found most interesting about this spice cake is the use of cocoa as a spice. The cake just has a teaspoon and a half of cocoa, so you don’t get a noticeable chocolate flavour, but I’m sure you’d notice if it was missing. If nothing else it adds colour. The thing I did find a bit odd is the inclusion of buttermilk, but no baking soda. Can anyone explain that? I thought you were usually supposed to balance acidic ingredients with baking soda. The only thing I miss about The Cake Bible versus Rose’s Heavenly Cakes is the lack of an “Understanding” section with each recipe.

Regardless, the batter mixes up beautifully like always.

I love my beater blade!

I’m not very good at distributing cupcake batter evenly, even using a disher (admittedly, my disher’s just slightly too small for this purpose), so my sizes are really uneven. Oh well!

All different sizes

I didn’t take any pictures of making the icing — dump it all together in the food processor. I think I might be inclined to try this in the stand mixer next time, because I can’t really see what the food processor adds, and I hate washing it.

Frosted!

I can’t find my huge piping tip anywhere, but that was probably a good thing because I’m not sure I would have had enough frosting to go around had I used it, but the smaller star tip did a pretty job, I think.

The verdict: Jay saw me packing them up off the baking rack, and said “What are you doing?” “Putting these away so I can put them in the fridge.” “You’re not taking those to work.” “Of course not, sweetie.” He wants to know if someone who’s never baked a cake in his life would be able to make them, because he wants to send the recipe to his brother. Good thing I’ve left my old smaller Kitchen Aid stand mixer with him for safekeeping.

This cake bakes up really easily and is structured just like most of Rose’s butter cakes — mix dry ingredients, add butter and part of the liquid, beat the mixture, then add the rest of the liquid in a couple of additions. I scooped the mixture into paper cupcake liners, and into the oven it went. I probably could have made several more cupcakes than I did (I think I got 17 out of it), because they overflowed the liners a bit while baking. After they came out of the oven, I poked holes in them, then brushed the tops with ganache. I think the holes I poked were a little small, because there was no noticeable ganache inside the cakes, just basically a glaze on top. I think maybe the probe from my thermometer would have been a perfect size for this, so I’ll try to remember that for next time. I didn’t add raspberries to the top, because I dislike buying non-essentials like that out of season, and frozen really wouldn’t have been the same.

Verdict: Honestly, not my favourite cake, and not as nice and moist as the cupcakes I made last weekend (vanilla & chocolate from the recipes in Rose’s Heavenly Cakes), but not a bad cake, really. It probably would be better with raspberries, just to add some juiciness. My version must have been edible, though, because my friend told me today at work that he’ll bring the empty container tomorrow (he didn’t want to return it dirty today). I sent the leftovers home with him on Saturday nightSunday morning.

Sevilles, from Sacramento

When I made the cake for my friend, I used a combination of a bunch of different types of oranges, hoping the variety would make up for the lack of whatever it was that made Sevilles unique. Now I know better. There’s really nothing like these tart little guys.

For this cake, you start by heating up the eggs & sugar in a double boiler, then beating the snot out of them.

Starting to lighten in colour

The mixture turns beautifully light and fluffy within a few short minutes.

So light and fluffy!

Gently fold in your flour, and bake. I doubled the cake and tripled the curd when I made it last fall, so I could have three layers of curd rather than just one.

Beautifully risen, flat, level cakes

Last week, I also ended up doubling the cake… but not for quite such a well thought out reason. The first batch of cake I made came out so short that there was no way I was going to be able to split it in two! So, I baked a second one. This one, I let heat a bit longer, and I also beat it a bit longer than the previous one. The second one came out a whole lot better, but nowhere nearly as nice as the one I’d done previously. I really don’t know what happened. Beginner’s luck, the first time?

Denser cake on the right

Denser cake in the back

I ended up using both cakes instead of attempting to torte either of them. I don’t think anyone noticed other than me (and maybe hubby). I did sort of run out of ganache, but I think that was probably a good thing. The chocolate just didn’t do anything for me on this one, so the super thin layer was kind of nice. Making the ganache and the curd wasn’t too complicated, and I actually really enjoy the time spent alone at the stove waiting for the curd to “pool thickly”. I followed Rose’s recommendation and put the whole cake together on Saturday, then resisted the temptation to cut into it until Sunday. Light and moist!

Finished Cake February

For the one I made for my friend last fall, I didn’t place the oranges on until I got to their house for the party, so there are no pictures of that.

Finished Cake November

I didn’t taste much of the cake I made for my friend, but I remember thinking at the time that it wasn’t quite what I expected when I read Rose’s description comparing it to an orange sour ball candy. Of course, that’s because I didn’t have the sevilles at the time, and I had just used concentrated juice from various sweet oranges. With the sevilles, this really does taste like an orange candy. I’d really like to try it with a really rich vanilla buttercream, because I think it would taste something like a creamsicle, which I absolutely love. I’ll have to keep my eye out for Sevilles, now that this is supposed to be the season.

Mmmm!

As always, the cake disappeared quickly at work. Programmers are like vultures, when it comes to free food. This past weekend I made up a bunch of cupcakes to use up an accumulation of frostings in my freezer, and they were gone within 20 minutes today. Vultures, I tell you! Our buildmaster said as he was wandering away, cupcake in hand, “you should put rat poison in these one of these days”. I keep having people ask when I’m going to open a bakery, and my answer’s always the same: “As soon as I can afford to.”

That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to post my response to the thread “Why real baking?” that I noticed on the forums at Rose’s website. My mother taught me and my sister fractions through baking, at a very young age. She had a degree in home ec, and was a math teacher for a time before I came along. It’s always been a dream of mine to bake for a living. I think my mother tried her hardest to squash that dream, along with the dream of being a hairdresser (not sure what I was thinking there), by making me do all of the baking in the house, as well as having to cut her hair regularly. In grade 7 (age 12), I did a science fair project on honey versus sugar as sweeteners in cookies. My next year’s project was on different leavening agents. For a while there, I figured I was going to become a food scientist. (Un?)fortunately, I took a computer programming course in high school and got hooked on that instead. I think my mother was quite relieved. My Dad’s a civil engineering professor, and my sister’s ‘known’ she was going to be a “CivE” since she was about 4, so Mom had big hopes for me, too. She did manage to rid me of my ridiculous career choice of hairdresser, but I still harbour a not-so-secret desire to have a bakery someday. Maybe a bakery/tea shop.

Completed Cake

Mise en Place

All of us in the heavenly cake baking group who baked Woody’s lemon luxury cake back in November had egg whites galore in our freezers, so it was time to bake angel food. I still have a couple of containers of egg whites in the freezer, but hopefully those will be used up soon with the upcoming chiffons and génoises. I’ll admit, I cheated and used cheap chocolate, because I had some that was sitting in my cupboard getting in my way, so I don’t feel right buying more until that’s gone.

So, you start by beating your egg whites (and sugar and cream of tartar) into a stiff meringue.

Stiff Meringue

I think I overbeat my whites slightly, because they lost a decent amount of volume as I folded in the “Best for Blending” flour (the Canadian equivalent of Wondra) and the chocolate. Speaking of chocolate: I found using a microplane to be more efficient, but much messier than using a rotary parmesan cheese grater. I’m not entirely sure which one I’d recommend to anyone. Anyone out there have better tools for grating chocolate?

Cake Batter

Between everything else we had going on this weekend, I missed getting pictures of the rest of the process. I did take one of my whipped cream & chocolate mixture though. See how it’s almost exactly the same colour & texture as the cake batter? Light, fluffy, and chocolatey!

Whipped Cream Frosting

I ended up leaving out the almonds, after toasting and grinding them, because of a failed experiment. Because I didn’t feel like dirtying the food processor for such a small amount, I decided to try grinding them in the coffee grinder (one used only for spices, never coffee). They turned into almond butter within seconds! I was out of almonds at that point, and we had too much going on for me to run out and get more.

One question for the rest of you heavenly cake bakers: Am I the only person in the world who has a tube pan with a hole too small for any wine bottle? We have 50 bazillion bottles in our house, because we make our own wine, and not a single one will fit into the hole in my tube pan, to suspend it above the counter. Last time I made angel food cake, after rushing around the house looking for something that would fit, I ended up suspending it over a plastic funnel, because by that point it was cool enough that it wasn’t about to melt anything. This time, I just flipped it over onto a cooling rack, but I wish I had something better.

Comments from co-workers:
Anton: Nice and light, I like it… a lot… thank you
Robin: That was very yummy and light
Adam showed up when there was only one piece left and no plates, took the bottom of my cake carrying case and a fork to his cube and said “Be back in 5″

Comment from hubby:
Jay: The chocolate is bitter. People liked this? Most people don’t like bitter. I like it.

Note to self: Make this again, and again, and again, preferably with better chocolate. Hm. Imagine it with this as some of the chocolate.

The first step in making this cake is reducing some skim and whole milk with a bit of sugar down by half. I took a picture at the start of this process, so I could compare the colour at the end. I was curious whether there would be a noticeable difference.

Milk just starting to steam

It turns out there was.

Reduced most of the way

I stopped paying attention to it for a minute at one point early on and ended up having to strain it then clean out my pot because it got a little scorched on the bottom. Other than that, it was easy to evaporate, but rather time consuming. Like several others, I have to wonder what it is we gain by doing this ourselves rather than buying evaporated milk, but I’d like to think that Rose has a reason. I also ended up straining the milk mixture after it had cooled, because it developped some chunks that weren’t too appetizing looking.

The cake part comes together pretty easily. You heat the eggs, sugar and vanilla over a double boiler, then beat the heck out of them.

Eggs, vanilla, sugar

Starting to lighten in colour

Light and fluffy

Meanwhile, while your mixer’s going, go sift your cake flour.

Flour

Sift the flour over the egg mixture, fold it in gently in two batches, then spread into your prepared pan. I finally (not that I’d really looked beyond the grocery store previously) found some baker’s non-stick spray with flour at the local wholesale grocery store. Remind me to go back there when I run out. I also bought something like 1000 muffin (who am I kidding? cupcake) liners for about $7 CAD.

Prepared Batter

The cake came out of the pan beautifully, aside from a slight dip in the center, and a bit of un-levelness due to my off-kilter kitchen. We’ll be leveling the floors there when we start our kitchen project (hopefully this spring)!

Cake!

So, then you take the top & bottom crusts off, in order to allow the cake to absorb the forthcoming milk, and stash it back in its pan, wrapped in plastic wrap.

naked cake

Pour on the milk, wrap it up tight, and stick it back in the fridge.

Soaking up the milk

Then, wait. And wait. And wait. And after all the good things you’ve heard about this cake, you just know it’s going to be fantastic. 24 hours later, you’re ready, and so is the cake. Whip up some cream as the ‘icing on the cake’ (because you can never have too much dairy), and serve.

Dig in!

Jay loved it. He likened it to when ice cream melts into birthday cake. He asked me to bring him a piece when I was coming upstairs to write this tonight. If you’ve read this blog previously, you already know he doesn’t have a big sweet tooth, so that says a lot about a cake. Me? You want to know what I thought of it? Well, I didn’t particularly like it cold from the fridge, so I took a piece to work today in my lunch and left it at room temperature for a couple of hours before eating it. I hoped that would improve it. I liked it even less. The flavour was excellent, albeit very sweet. The cake itself seemed to have kind of a dry texture, while still being very wet. I don’t know how to explain why I didn’t like it, I just couldn’t get my head around the juxtaposition. In my opinion, there’s a big difference between a moist cake and a dry but soggy one. As much as my hubby loved it, I don’t even want to take the leftovers into work because I disliked it that much. Maybe the soggy-ness will more thoroughly absorb into the cake in another day?

Mise en Place

I have to admit, since I started baking with blogging in mind, I’ve been doing a lot better at getting things measured and ready to go before I start. It really makes life a lot simpler. I even applied the “mise en place” concept to the drywall taping & mudding I did this afternoon. I got all my tools out, cut the pieces of tape for the corners to length, made sure all the screws were countersunk appropriately, got my wet rag I’d inevitably need out… *then* got the joint compound out.

Anyway, back to cake. Jay got me a beater blade for Christmas, and I finally had a chance to use it! This is the first cake we’ve done since Christmas that has required the paddle attachment.

Look ma! No spatula!

I found it was really good at funneling the small amount of butter down into the bottom of the bowl, making it easier to beat to a nice and fluffy consistency. I’ve been having a bit of trouble with that with smaller quantities of batters since getting this larger mixer last year, so this is a really great tool. The only thing the beater blade can’t do is scrape itself, so I had to get a spatula out to get the stuff stuck between the spokes out.

This recipe is really simple to mix up. Beat the butter & superfine sugar (I made my own in the food processor again — still too cheap/lazy to go pick it up). Beat in the eggs and vanilla, then add the flour & sour cream in batches. It may just be this recipe, but I found that after adding the eggs and vanilla, my batter seemed a lot fluffier & thicker than it usually is at this stage of a ‘creaming method’ cake batter. I think the beater blade may be to ‘blame’, though I’m not complaining.

Ready for the oven

Like gartblue, I found there was a bit more batter than I would have expected for 12 cupcakes, but I went ahead and filled them right up to the top anyway. I also had way more streusel than I could reasonably see putting in the middle of the cupcakes, so I sprinkled the last bit on top, which resulted in interesting cracking and a nice crunch to the tops of the finished cupcakes.

Yum!

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll take these into work or keep them all to myself (and Jay, I suppose. He did a lot of work on our house this weekend, so I guess I should share). If you’re a colleague and you want one, prove to me you’re reading my blog, and I might bring you one tomorrow.

Whipped Cream Cake

Gathering the ingredients for this cake was very simple. Whipping cream, eggs, vanilla, sifted together dry ingredients, and superfine sugar.

Mise en Place

I made my own superfine sugar by processing regular granulated sugar in the food processor, since I didn’t have any superfine handy.

Bringing the cake together starts with whipping the cream to stiff peaks. My bowl for my stand mixer had the sponge for the heart of wheat bread from The Bread Bible sitting in it, so I decided to use the hand mixer on this cake. It wasn’t like it was going to be difficult.

Whipped Cream

The next step was gradually beating in the eggs & vanilla, hoping to emulsify the mixture into something resembling mayonnaise in consistency. Once you get to that point, you gradually beat in the supah-fine sugar.

Mmmm.. tastes like ice cream

At this point, the mixture tasted like vanilla ice cream. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising, since that’s basically what it is, although if you froze this, you’d end up with a weird mouth feel, considering how high the fat content is. Next you gently fold in the flour mixture in two additions.

Spread it evenly into the pan.

Ready for the oven

After about 30 minutes in the oven and ten minutes cooling in the pan, you are awarded with a beautiful sight:

Ta-da!

My husband laughed at my pictures. “Brown on Gold on Brown. I call this my monochrome art installation.” I told him if he didn’t like them, he should start taking my pictures for me while I bake, like Jim does for Marie. He told me he’d get me some white poster board for my background. :/

1 egg white
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp dutch processed cocoa (optional)

Beat the egg white until frothy, then add the cream of tartar. Beat to medium peaks, then gradually add the sugar, beating to stiff peaks. If desired, add a tablespoon or so of cocoa for colour. Pipe into a variety of round and tall shapes on parchment paper. You’re piping the stems and tops of the mushrooms separately. A variety of heights of stems works well (between 1/4 and 1 inch tall, or so). Bake in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven, for 1 hr. Turn the oven off and leave door closed for 1 more hour. You’re trying to dry them out more than you are cooking them. Store in an airtight container once cool & crispy.

Close to when ready to serve, take a paring knife and hollow out a small crevice in the middle of the bottom of the caps. This crevice should be about the width of your stems. Pipe a bit of ganache (for me, this was easy, I had some leftover from the biscuit roulade) into the crevice, and stick the stems into it. Don’t do this too far in advance, or your meringues will absorb the moisture from the ganache and start to get soggy. Dust the tops with some cocoa and/or icing sugar for ‘dirt’ & ’snow’.