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.

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.

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.

Mmm.. so pink!

Saturday afternoon, while Jay was cutting the rafters for our shed’s roof, I assembled the various components of this cake. I measured all my ingredients, made my syrup, melted/simmered the chocolate so that it could cool, made the crème anglaise so it could cool, etc. Once that was done, I realized there was still time to wait on the last load of laundry, and the rafters weren’t quite finished yet, so I baked the cake layer too. I halved the recipe, because going through nearly two dozen eggs for one cake just struck me as absurd (plus yadda yadda trifle dish…). So, here we sit. We have the crème anglaise, the raspberry preserves, the syrup, the cake layer, and the raspberries.

Various bits and pieces

I left the cake to cool while I went outside to help with the shed. Later, just before supper, I came back in for assembly. First, split the cake layer(s) in half. Spread preserves on the bottom side of each layer, and syrup the tops. Of course, just spread the preserves on, then put the first layer into the pan, preserves side down, THEN add the syrup. I still made a mess of things, but I can only imagine what it would have been like if I’d tried to syrup it first. I also had to cut down my cake layers slightly to fit them in my dish. Spread about half of your reduced recipe of the crème anglaise on top.

Chocolate cake, Crème Anglaise

Then add some raspberries, put in the other cake layer, syrup it, add the rest of the crème anglaise, and more raspberries.

Raspberry layer

The next step is the whipped cream with raspberry preserves, which is absolutely delicious. After piping an admittedly modest amount onto the cake, I took my leftover cake bits, after trimming the layers down to size, and added the cake bits in layers with the cream to a couple of small bowls for dessert. We can’t be wasteful! Besides, it’s trifle, that’s what it’s for.

Finished Trifle, plus leftovers

I popped the lid on the casserole dish and took the cake into work today, and like always, it disappeared quickly. It’s nice to have co-workers I can count on.

Convenient travel dish

I thought this was a great combination of flavours, though the whole thing ended up just a touch soggy as far as my own personal texture preferences go. I’d almost say I could happily get away with leaving off the syrup entirely. I do have to admit to one blunder of my own that may have contributed to the texture — when I was adding the milk to the crème anglaise, I halved the 1/4 cup that gets mixed with cornstarch, but forgot to halve the remaining 3/4 cup. I did cook the custard just a little bit longer to get it to a good consistency, but this still could have been part of my problem. I’ll have to try again sometime.

The first step was to make the cake base. This is a flourless chocolate cake, with egg yolks and whites beaten separately, each with sugar, melted chocolate is added to the yolks, then the whites (meringue, by now) are folded into the yolk/chocolate mixture. Doesn’t sound all that complicated, when you say it like that.

Cake Base Components

Whipping Egg Yolks

I still am amazed every time I beat yolks to the “ribbon stage”. Yeah, I know the machine’s doing the work, so I should get over it!

Beautiful fluffiness

Whites, I’d like you to meet my friend here, chocolatey yolks.

Folding in the Foam

Next up is the Sabayon. Like I said, I used this black currant tea. It claims to include “the traditional base of hibiscus, apple pieces, and rose-hip peel with the addition of elderberries, black currant leaves, black currants and vanilla flavour.” It was very flavourful. I was amazed at what the 1/4 cup of tea did to the flavour of the Sabayon. Unfortunately, I neglected to get process pictures, because I was too busy whisking. Once the Sabayon is finished and cooled, we’ll mix it into a chocolate mousse.

Whipped Cream, Chocolate, Blackberry Puree, Sabayon

Start by whipping cream. Oh… actually, start by pureeing blackberries, and straining them. That was messy, so I didn’t pick up the camera until it was done. Then mix some gelatin into the blackberry puree, and wash your purple hands. Then melt some chocolate (ganache, because it has cream added), and THEN start whipping your cream.

Mix in the chocolate…

Chocolate Mousse

…then the raspberry, then gently fold in the Sabayon, and pour that into your mold (or plastic IKEA mixing bowl, since that’s the only thing I had that actually had a round inner bottom).

Blackberry Mousse

Top with a round of the cake from waaaay earlier.

Topped with Cake

Stash the whole thing in the freezer for 8 hours. Or until after work the next day. Then make the glaze.

Glaze Components

The glaze takes a while to cool, so I spent the time unmolding my “la bomba”.

Waiting for cooling...

It turns out the lid for the IKEA bowl is almost exactly the same size as the top (bottom!) of the cake, so I just basically flipped the bowl upside-down and pulled the bowl off the top after manipulating it a bit.

Here’s how it looks after glazing, from a strategic angle:

Look at that reflection!

I love how I can see the reflection of our backsplash on the top of the cake. I had myself a small slice of this tonight, just so I could include my feedback in this post. I was frankly shocked at how much the berry flavour came through, especially in the parts of my piece that were thawed. It was delicious. I’m guessing the flavour was a function of the tea I used, and the fact that it wasn’t black tea, so contributed nothing to the potential bitterness of the chocolate. I just hope all that chocolate doesn’t keep me awake tonight!

I would be interested in trying to use this basic recipe, minus the bottom crust and top glaze, just as a mousse/pudding type dessert in custard cups or sundae glasses. I think that would simplify the process/timeline (and maybe even the number of dishes) significantly.

*What weekend? Well, on Friday night, my husband tore his calf muscle at soccer practice. At first he thought it was a bad cramp, but based on the state of his mobility Saturday morning, we thought we’d better get it looked at. So, we spent most of the day Saturday in the ER, and a couple of hours on Sunday at the hospital again, getting an ultrasound done on the muscle and waiting for results. The treatment is to stay off it for a week, and he has a referral to physio. I feel lucky to live in a country where all we have to pay for that is $20 for the crutches, and that will be reimbursed through work. Then, of course, on the way home yesterday, I got hit with a migraine and was flat out on the couch for a couple of hours, before I managed to feel well enough to start baking.

PS: It looks like I missed 19 cakes, plus or minus cupcakes and buttercreams, depending how you count those (though I’ve made those recipes, just not photographed/posted them). I’ll be sticking around with the group a while yet.

Pretty Little Cake

The cake is an oil-based cake, which I think tends to keep things a little moister. It contains both melted chocolate and dutch processed cocoa, which up the fudginess factor.

Mise en Place

You start by basically making a somewhat thin (though rather oily) mayonnaise. Beat the egg until lightened in colour and texture, then drizzle in oil, making an emulsion.

Mayo

Add the melted chocolate, water, vanilla, and buttermilk.

After adding the wet ingredients

Next mix in the dry ingredients, then pour into a 6×3″ pan.

Ready for the oven

After the cake’s cooled, it’s onto the frosting. This is a vanilla mousseline, which uses Rose’s new (I think?) technique developed for this book. Beat the butter, and let it come up to room temperature (70 degrees). Make an italian meringue, and let it come down to the same temperature. Add the meringue into the butter, then beat to combine, adding vanilla after it has come together.

Vanilla Mousseline

I decided to decorate the cake with a leftover gumpaste daisy I had stashed in my cupboard from my cousin’s wedding cake. Given that they now have about a 6 month old little girl, I don’t think the daisy would be particularly tasty, if it even was to start with, but hey, it’s still pretty.

Miette's Tomboy

I absolutely loved this cake. Soft, fudgey, moist, and delicious. The mousseline’s not necessarily my favourite buttercream, but it compliments this cake well. This is definitely on the “will bake again” list. I might just have to see how it does in a larger size for a party cake, too.

Dig in!

Gotta run. My bread smells done…

Moist Chocolate Raspberry Génoise

Mise en place for ganache

Framboise from down the road instead of Chambord from France

Pouring scalded cream mixture over chocolate

Melty smooth chocolate raspberry ganache

Now’s when you read the instructions for the cake, and realize you should have made a boiling water/melted chocolate mixture before you even started the ganache. Oops. The plan ahead just told me to make the raspberry sauce and the ganache!

Mise en Place for Génoise

Whipping up the warm eggs and sugar

Folding the flour into the fluffy eggs

Into the oven

Completed Génoise layers

Making the cocoa syrup

Bubble, bubble

Ready for frosting

Moist Chocolate Raspberry Génoise

I found this génoise odd in that the syrup didn’t seem to distribute throughout the cake quite as well as it normally does. I’m guessing that’s due to the cocoa in it. It kind of left a slightly soggy layer and a drier layer (though I would in no way call this cake dry). I wonder how this cake would taste with a raspberry based syrup? Maybe find some pure raspberry juice, or use a sugar syrup with the Framboise or Chambord. I love the raspberry flavour in the ganache. Hubby did too, even though he’s so totally over the chocolate. My team at work (6 of us, including me) hacked their way through more than half the cake in less than 10 minutes. I think I can call that a success! I was dealing with a few geeks wigging out on sugar and chocolate for the last hour or so of the day, though.

Marble Velvet Cake

The marble velvet cake starts with a sour cream/egg yolk butter cake base. The method’s the same as most of Rose’s other butter cakes. Start by gathering ingredients, then mix up the dry ingredients and add the butter and most of the sour cream. The rest of the sour cream gets mixed with the egg (yolks) and vanilla. Have some melted chocolate standing by.

Mise en Place

Cream the butter and sour cream into the dry ingredients, and beat for a minute and a half to “strengthen the structure”. Gradually add the egg mixture, beating in between.

Adding the egg mixture

Last of the egg mixture

Once it’s all in and mixed, take about 1/3 of the batter out and mix with the (cooled) melted chocolate. Layer the batter in the pan, as vanilla, chocolate, vanilla, chocolate, vanilla.

Layered batters

Use a spoon to make waves in the batter, marbling it.

Marbled Cake

After it bakes and cools, drizzle with a chocolate glaze, then dig in. We had a few friends over for drinks and card games last night, and more than half the cake disappeared. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. The crust had a satisfying crunch to it. I think this was partly because of how fresh it was — I had only finished baking it about 2 hours before everyone got here.

This is what the inside of the leftover cake looked like this morning.

Marbled Cake

I think I need to work on my marbling skills, but the flavour and texture was fantastic, so I’ll be happy to practice with this one.

Isn't that cake gorgeous?

I almost feel like I ruined it a bit with my sloppy frosting job, but the taste of that ganache, with a touch of banana liqueur was so totally worth it.

Chocolate Banana (no) stud cake

I didn’t bother with the chocolate chip “studs” because I remembered a few of my fellow bakers saying the chips detracted from the soft texture of the cake. The rest of the Heavenly Cake Bakers’ group baked this cake last summer while I was in the middle of kitchen renovations.

Anyway, enough about catching up… What was this week’s cake selection? It was the mud turtle cupcakes. I asked my husband how he felt about turtle chocolates this weekend and he said “I don’t think I’ve ever had one. Remember, I didn’t really have a sweet tooth growing up.” Ah, well, we’ll fix that.

The cupcakes are a butter/sour cream/cocoa concoction, following something similar to the normal Rose Levy Beranbaum butter cake technique (cream butter and some of the liquid with the dry ingredients, add the rest of the liquid in two stages).

Cupcake batter stuff

It’s a really thick batter, so a cookie scoop seemed like the best bet to distribute it among the cupcake tins. Yes, I refuse to call them muffin tins, considering what they’re normally used for in my kitchen…

Cupcakes, ready for the oven

You can see the ganache lurking in the back of that last picture. It’s cooling. After the cupcakes bake, let them cool, and start working on your caramel. If you’re like me, as it’s cooling, it’ll start crystallizing. I scooped it into a clean microwaveable container, and brought it up to a good hard boil in the microwave. The crystals disappeared temporarily, and didn’t start reappearing until I introduced the caramel to the ganache. They shook hands and turned grainy. By this time it was too late to do anything about it, so I didn’t.

To chip or not to chip?

The next decision I had to make was whether to go for the chip studs on the turtle backs. I decided I didn’t like the look (that, or I decided to be lazy, I haven’t quite decided which). I did come up with a compromise, though.

Chip tails!

Chocolate chips make cute little turtle tails, dontcha think?

A little turtle army, ready to go to work.

I bundled up my turtle army and took it to work today. My husband actually just started a new job today, after his former employer laid off most of their development and design team 2 1/2 weeks ago. The director of my department overheard me mention his new “job seeker” status at lunch one day, and decided to call him in for an interview for a new position they’ve been having trouble filling for almost a year now. He’d applied and interviewed previously with my employer, but I guess it wasn’t quite the right fit at the time. I think he’ll be good in this new role. So, I took the cupcakes and the chocolate banana cake to work, and put them in Jay’s new office when his manager sent out a “please welcome new employee” email. I think he enjoyed the attention the cakes got.

Now, can anyone tell me why my caramels always crystallize? This one softened again once it had been on the cupcakes overnight (maybe picked up some moisture from the ganache?), but it certainly was never both soft and sticky. Sure tasted darned good, though.

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.