Some of you may remember that my grandfather’s been having health issues off and on over the last year, and the doctors have finally made it known that he should be on a very-low-to-no-sodium diet. Congestive heart failure can apparently be mitigated by eliminating sodium. Who knew? Anyway, he’s been turning down food left and right because “nothing tastes very good”, so I thought this cheesecake might go down well. Well, Christmas morning, at about 9ish, we were about an hour from home, and I said to my husband, “I forgot the cheesecake.” He offered to drop me off at the farm (my grandparents’ home – adjacent farm to my uncle’s) and turn around and go home for it, but that just didn’t seem worth it. When we walked in at my uncle’s place, after I greeted my cousins and removed boots, etc, my husband asked my aunt if I’d told her my sad news. She looked quite concerned, and when I told her I’d forgotten the cheesecake, her face dropped. “I only stayed awake all night thinking about cranberry cheesecake.”

Oh well. Here it is, before I forgot it in the fridge.

Cranberry Crown Cheesecake

Now let’s talk about this week’s cake.

Chocolate Bulls Eyes

I’m going to make this mostly pictures, for a reason I’ll explain at the end of the post.

Mise en place

Whipped eggs, yolk & sugar

Folding in the flour & beurre noisette

Ready for the oven

Here’s where I stopped taking pictures. Syrup, apricot glaze, and chocolate custardy stuff didn’t seem terribly exciting, so I didn’t take any pictures of them. Actually, I just forgot. I left one of the cakes unglazed (though I did syrup it), for my husband, because I know he’s not terribly fond of apricot. He’d probably happily eat it, but I think he’d prefer it without, so I thought I’d try it. I haven’t gotten feedback yet, but if he has anything interesting to say I’ll share the feedback. You can see that one in the upper left corner here.

Chocolate Bulls Eyes

I took one of these to work today, and while I definitely enjoyed it, I wasn’t sure about the texture. It was almost gummy to me (difficult to get a piece off with a spoon), though I may have gotten the consistency of the apricot glaze wrong. It sure tasted good, though!

Now, what I was doing while I could have been writing up a more extensive post. Rose recently shared some of her early baking experiences on her blog. I spent some time the last day or two thinking about a reply. I’ll cross-post the result here:

I can’t say I had too many spectacular failures early in my baking career. I suspect that had a lot to do with my mother, who has a degree in home ec, and used to teach math. Of course, there was that one anniversary cake for my parents that my sister and I tried to make with caramel frosting, when there wasn’t enough powdered sugar in the house to thicken it properly, and it soaked right through the cake. Dad claimed it was delicious, but we knew he was just being nice.

Because of my Mom, I learned fractions, addition, multiplication and division in the kitchen, baking.

I was introduced to the Cake Bible by my supervisor for my Master’s thesis. It was an MMath at the University of Waterloo, in the School of Computer Science. The scientific approach in your books truly appeals to the geek in me, Rose. I suspect the same can be said for many, including my supervisor. I love the “Understanding” sections in your “Bibles”, and it’s been a real joy to bake my way through Rose’s Heavenly Cakes with other bakers from around the world.

My husband gave me the Pie and Pastry Bible for Christmas, and the gift couldn’t have been more well-received.

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.