That changed this weekend. I’ve never been able to find blanched, shelled pistachios locally, so this weekend, when Jay decided we needed to make a trip to Toronto for some toys for his wood shop, I decided we were also going to make a trip to Tavazo, which claimed on its website (which somehow, I can’t get to right now) to carry exactly what I wanted.

This is a fairly normal butter and sour cream cake, though this time, it has pistachios ground up with the sugar, to give the cake itself a nice green tinge.

Cake Ingredients

Mix the dry ingredients, along with the ground nuts, then add in the butter and most of the sour cream.

Adding the butter and sour cream

Beat that well, and add the egg/sour cream/extract(s) mixture in two additions.

Beating in the egg mixture

After that’s thoroughly incorporated, spread the (really thick) batter evenly in a prepared pan.

Ready for the oven

Bake!

Baked cake

Then make the frosting. This cake uses a golden neoclassic buttercream with a hint of pistachio essence (I think I added too much). I didn’t get pictures of that process (I never do) because there really is no good stopping point to set down the spatula and grab a camera, once you get going, so you just get a picture of the frosted cake, instead.

Frosted

Next, sprinkle the top with blanched slivered pistachios, and throw some at the sides, while you’re at it. I like how the nuts cover up all manner of imperfections in the frosting layer.

Benutted

I really liked the flavour on this one. The almond extract in the batter complimented the pistachios nicely. My team at work seemed to enjoy it for the most part, though one wasn’t a big fan of the frosting. As I said, I think I may have over done the pistachio essence in the frosting, so I can’t blame Rose for that. I’ve now got a bag of pistachios vacuum sealed in the freezer, so at some point, I’m going to have to try my hand at baklava!

This goes together like a basic sour cream/butter cake, but with the addition of ground nuts and cocoa.

Flour and Sugar mixture

Cocoa, Sour Cream (Greek Yogurt) and eggs

Toasted Walnuts

Once you’ve got the ingredients prepped, and you’ve ground the walnuts, you mix them into the flour/(turbinado) sugar mixture.

Walnuts mixed in

After that, like any of Rose’s butter cakes, add the butter and some of the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix/beat well.

Adding the chocolate mixture

Then add the rest of the liquid in batches, beating after each addition.

Nice thick batter

Pour into a prepared bundt pan, and bake!

Into the oven!

Near the end of the baking, make the chocolate syrup. This is basically sugar, water, cocoa, and a bit of flavour (Coffee liqueur and vanilla). Brush this onto the hot cake, and use plastic wrap to pull any puddles up onto the cake.

Soaking up the syrup

I think I need heavier duty plastic wrap (or just to learn to read instructions better), since my plastic wrap got a little melty, and when I was trying to move the cake around after forgetting to put a plate under (over) it, I ended up cracking it in half. Oh well, if you take the first slice from the place where it’s cracked, nobody’ll notice! As Jay said, “That’s what frosting’s for.” He sounded a little disappointed when I told him this cake didn’t get frosting.

Ready for consumption

Tasting impressions: It’s a good chocolatey cake, and the walnuts definitely add a little something. I like that they’re finely ground, so they add flavour, but no nut texture spoiling the nice soft cake. I know this cake was inspired by the golden lemon almond cake, and if I’m asked to compare them, I’d definitely have to say I prefer the lemon/almond combo, which surprises me a little, considering how much I like chocolate.

By the way, I did make the chocolate soufflé/lava cakes last weekend, but neglected to blog about it. We finished up the kitchen reno on Saturday, then spent the weekend in it, cooking, baking, and prepping. Monday, we hosted my grandparents, 2 sets of aunts and uncles, and a couple of cousins for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a fantastic way to celebrate the end of the reno.

And now, off to finish up the packing. Tomorrow night, we’ve booked a car to pick us up and take us to Union Station in Toronto, where we board the train and head west to Jasper, AB, for a 5th anniversary trip, that just happens to coincide with the Jasper Dark Skies festival. I’m so excited!

This week, I baked the last of the ingots, since I’ve already made angel food cake. It’s my second-to-last recipe from the baby cakes chapter, since I’ve made all of the various cupcakes numerous times (just haven’t blogged about those recipes individually).

For this recipe, you start by caramelizing cocoa nibs. Luckily, when I’d ordered vanilla beans from the vanilla food company, I picked up some cocoa nibs, too, because they sounded interesting. I haven’t really had reason to pull them out until now, though.

Cocoa Nibs

I can’t really say I ended up with what I would call caramelized cocoa nibs. It was more some caramelized sugar and toasted cocoa nibs. For some reason the sugar didn’t seem to want to stick to the cocoa. I’m not really sure if that made much difference.

Next was the batter, which is primarily an almond meal batter, with beurre noisette slowly beaten into the mix. Then mix in a few teaspoons of the cocoa nibs, and distribute the batter in your chosen vessel. I’m still confused as to whether you’re expected to let this batter rest for an hour, because the wording in the recipe’s a bit odd, but I stashed it in the fridge anyway. After sprinkling on more cocoa nibs, you’re ready to bake.

Ready for Baking

These came out of the oven looking really weird, and I’m not sure why. My theory is either the butter wasn’t properly emulsified, and kinda sank out of the batter, or the bits of caramelized sugar that came with the nibs did something weird. My ingots were all crater-y.

Chocolate Round Ingots

I think I’ve finally figured out, now that I’ve baked all of the ingot recipes, that I’m just not a big fan. They’re almost too buttery for me. The first time I made one of these recipes, I thought it was just due to the tiny size I’d made them, and figured that the ratio of surface area to batter made my baking spray make them all greasy, which is why I decided to make them in a larger size this time. As it turns out, they’re just really full of butter. Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice and moist, and the tops are kind of a neat texture, but the flavour’s underwhelming. I guess I was just expecting a bit more of a chocolate punch with these.

By the way, I’m probably going to be sitting out the next two weeks. I might bake and write something up next weekend for the 17th, but the weekend after, we’re going to be in Jasper, Alberta, for our fifth anniversary! We leave from Toronto by train next Tuesday.

After pouring the caramel in the ramekins, top it with a pineapple slice and a cherry. I couldn’t find any canned cherries that weren’t maraschino, so that’s what I used.

Prepared Ramekins

After the dishes are ready, start working on the batter. You’ve got butter, yogurt, egg/vanilla/yogurt mixture, and flour mixture. I’ve been on a greek yogurt kick as a substitute for sour cream lately, because it’s delicious. So, since that’s what I had around the house, that’s what I ended up using. It didn’t seem to cause any real moisture content issues in the finished cake.

Cake Batter Ingredients

This goes together like a standard Rose Levy Beranbaum sour cream butter cake (only with yogurt). Mix the liquid and butter into the flour mixture, then add the egg mixture in a couple of additions. Dish it out evenly into the pans, then try to smooth the tops.

Ready for the Oven

Unmold as soon as they come out of the oven, onto the serving plates.

Plated dessert!

After that, make the pineapple caramel sauce. Honestly, I think this was the most tedious and time consuming part for me. My caramel took forever to reach the requisite 300 degrees the first time. Then when I added the remainder of the pineapple juice, it was already at 140 the first time I checked it. I decided that must be a typo, and tried to get it up to 240, and ended up just taking it off when it looked kinda sauce-ish to me. I neglected to get pictures after adding the sauce to each plate.

I think this is my new favourite way to do pineapple upside-down cake. Probably my new favourite pineapple upside-down cake recipe, too, though I wonder if making the caramel is necessary, or if I could do the more traditional butter/sugar mixture in the bottom of the pan thing, without having to cook it in a cast iron skillet. Regardless, this was definitely a hit. As I just discovered, the pineapple caramel sauce is delicious on mint chocolate chip ice cream, too.

By the way, apologies for the late posting. I meant to post this last night, then got distracted by making plans for what to see and do while we’re in Jasper for our 5th Anniversary next month!

The mise en place involves separating eggs, weighing sugar, toasting and grinding walnuts, and grating chocolate.

Mise en Place

Once the ingredients are ready, the rest is a snap. You whip egg yolks and sugar, make a meringue, fold nuts and chocolate into egg yolks, then fold meringue into the egg yolk mixture.

Folding Meringue into Egg Yolk Mixture

Pour the resulting mixture into a prepared pan. Since my pan was less than 3″ tall, as recommended, I added a parchment paper collar to it.

Ready for the Oven

Bake for 35 minutes, though I went for 40, because it looked really underdone at 35.

Baked and Cooling

After letting it cool in the pan for 5 minutes, unmold, remove the parchment, and watch it sink. Except mine didn’t really sink much.

Unmolded

I had a piece of this last night, and it was delicious. Moist, chocolatey, and nutty. Just what you would expect from a torte made with walnuts and chocolate, I guess! I brought the rest into work today, and got rave reviews.

Weekend Baking

As I mentioned, I also made the deep chocolate rosebuds, though since I don’t have a rosebud pan, mine were cupcakes. As you can see in the container to the right of the picture above, they developed craters where the ganache sunk through the batter. Whether they looked good or not, they certainly tasted good, and I think they really hit the spot with friends we had over for campfire and s’mores.

To start off with, I got out and weighed/measured all of the ingredients for all of the various components of this cake. Many of them needed to either thaw or come to room temperature, so I figured getting everything set out at once was the easiest way to do things.

Genoise Ingredients

Curd Ingredients

Syrup Ingredients

Custard and Buttercream Ingredients

Whew! That’s a lot of bowls! Time to start consolidating some of those things.

Whisk together the butter, egg yolks, and sugar for the curd.

Butter, sugar, egg yolk for passion fruit curd

Add most of the passion fruit purée, and cook slowly over medium-low heat.

Cooked Passion Fruit Curd

When it’s done, pour it through a strainer into a bowl waiting with the remaining passion fruit purée for the curd component, and mix together gently. Let that cool, then refrigerate for a few hours.

Now, make the génoise part, since that’s another component that has some “wait” time built into it. Heat the eggs and sugar over a double boiler.

Eggs and sugar for genoise

Then beat the snot out of them, and watch them transform into a white cloud of deliciousness.

Beating the eggs into magical foam.

Mixing egg foam with buerre noisette and vanilla

After mixing some of the egg foam into the beurre noisette mixture, fold in the wondra flour in two batches, then mix back in the egg that you mixed with the butter, then spread in the prepared pan.

Ready for the oven

While that’s baking, go load the dishwasher. You’re probably getting close to a full load by now. You can also take this time to make the passion fruit syrup, which is good timing, because it’s another thing that needs to cool before it can be used. No pictures, because it wasn’t very photogenic. Next, go melt your white chocolate and butter, for the buttercream, which will also need time to cool.

Melting white chocolate and butter

When your chocolate and butter starts separating and curdling and generally looking disastrous, don’t panic. Whisk it back together, and you’ll be fine.

Rescued from curdling

Then whisk in the egg. Discover, like Jenn, that it’s already over 140 degrees, but decide to cook it just a little extra just in case.

Completed White Chocolate Custard

I’m not sure this is something I’d ever want to eat on its own as a custard, but it sure works well with the cream cheese in a buttercream.

Butter and Cream Cheese, ready for the custard

Gradually (I used about 3 additions), beat the custard into the butter and cream cheese (and a half tablespoon of sour cream — wth?).

Now, clean up everything else, and take stock of what you’ve got. You should have:

1. passion fruit curd
2. génoise
3. passion fruit syrup
4. white chocolate/cream cheese buttercream (there’s some fancy name for this in the book, but I don’t remember what it is)

All 4 components, ready for assembly

Got it all? Ok, now it’s deconstruction and assembly time. Split the génoise in half, horizontally, then syrup whatever side is currently facing you. Now flip it onto a plate. Syrup the other side of that layer. Add some of the passion fruit curd, and syrup the up-side of the remaining layer.

Syruped and curd-ed cake layer

Put the second layer on top of the curd, syruped side down, and syrup the top (which was probably originally the bottom of the cake).

Ready for Frosting

Now, frost the cake, as messily as possible, if you want to be like me.

Buttercreamed

Then, stash that in the fridge to firm up a bit, so you can swirl in the remaining passion fruit curd. Or, you can be like me and completely forget about it until it’s just about rock hard, and then when you go to swirl in the curd, it just sits on top like a puddle. Oh well! Hopefully, it will taste good!

Curded!

Whew! Quite an afternoon in the kitchen. I plan to take this cake into work tomorrow, so we’ll find out how it tastes, then.

All that being said, this is a delicious chocolate cake, and because it’s made with oil instead of butter, it stays moist and soft even when cold, which makes it perfect for ice cream. I love it.

Post-movie snack

I don’t have a whole lot else to say about this cake, so I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Mise en Place

Adding yolks to chocolate

Yolks and Chocolate well beaten

After adding the flour mixture, in two batches

At this point, the batter was looking and tasting a lot like brownie batter.

After mixing in the egg whites

Out of the oven

The cake is rich, moist, chocolatey, and fudgey. Almost brownie-like, but lighter. It really needs very little adornment, though as I said, it goes great with ice cream. I may still make The Goop later this week, but given my dislike for coconut texture, and the fact that I have no sweetened condensed milk (or even evaporated milk) on hand, it’s one of those “if I get to it, I get to it” sort of things, and I’m really kind of indifferent about it.

I figured it was time I made this cake, in my quest to bake my way through Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. I’m now only one cake away from completing the sponge cake chapter, and since the white gold passion génoise is on the menu for 2 weeks from now, I can finish at least one chapter this month!

Cooled, and a bit deflated, but delicious

Start, as always, with the mise en place. You need ground almonds, eggs, sugar, and cake flour. There are also 2 egg whites hiding out in the mixer, off-camera.

Mise en Place

Beat the egg whites into soft peaks, then add the lion’s share of the sugar, making a thick and glossy meringue.

Meringue

Add the ground almonds…

Adding Almonds

…then fold them in, using the whisk beater.

Almonds mixed into Meringue

Next, you add the eggs, 2 tablespoons at a time. Because I’m notoriously bad at estimating quantities, I used a little measuring cup for this. You can see my 2 step process in the picture below.

Adding eggs, 2 tbsp at a time

Beat for 2 minutes between each 2 tablespoon addition. This ends up taking about 20 minutes or so. In the meantime, you can’t really walk away, so I grabbed my kitchen stool and sat and read some more of Les Misérables while I was waiting for the mixer to do its thing.

Into the oven it goes, with a full parchment lining. I had a big moment of trepidation when I tried to lift the cake by the parchment. It looked like the parchment was going to let go, for sure. Luckily, it didn’t.

Right out of the oven and already starting to sink

This cake is mostly eggs, almonds, and air, and to my mind, that makes it downright healthy. I mean, eggs and almonds are protein and the good kinds of fats, right?

Enough excuses, let’s bake.

First, read the recipe, and realize that you won’t be able to take this cake to a BBQ pool party at a friend’s place because it needs to be refrigerated for 6 hours, and it’s already 2:30. Then, mix the dry ingredients — toasted ground almonds, flour, icing sugar, salt. Add some egg white (I only needed 3, though the recipe calls for 4), then pulse in hot beurre noisette. I pulled my beurre noisette out of the freezer, because I’m too lazy to make it every time I need it. Stash in the fridge.

When you’re ready to bake (it took me until the next day before I had a few minutes again), scrape the batter into a bag to make it easier to get into the pans unmessily.

Ready for distribution

Once the batter’s in the pans…

Ready for apricots

… slice up the plums (or in my case, apricots) thinly, and arrange them in vague rose shapes in the “tarts”. As you can see, I don’t have tart pans, so I used a muffin tin. Dust with powdered sugar, and bake!

Ready for eating!

Most of the powdered sugar absorbed right into the batter with mine, so if I was less lazy, I’d probably dust them again right before serving, just for the appearance. As you can see, my “ingots” kind of did a bit of a volcano thing in the middle, probably because they were baked in a smaller diameter pan than the recipe called for. The texture didn’t seem to suffer at all, though.

The apricots are the most prominent flavour in these, making it absolutely delicious to my tastes. It’s not overly sweet, the ground almonds hide in the background, texture-wise, and the best part is that I probably don’t even have to share many with Jay, because this is a dessert with cooked fruit in it! Score! He’s very much a texture eater, and cooked fruit just isn’t something he enjoys.

What else have we been up to? Well, my path to my shed’s finally finished:

Shed Path

I’m going to move my herb garden to the corner to the right of the path, there, once I get some stone borders set in place. We’re also planning further stone work/patio stuff, but that probably won’t happen this summer, hence the gravel ramp.

Also, our porch project has progressed!

Flooring is finished

The rails are getting siding next

It's too pretty to walk on