Mise en Place for Custard Filling

Custard, ready to cook

Beaten Cream Cheese and sour cream, and cooled custard

Mise en Place for Italian Lemon Meringue

Bubbling sugar syrup

Folding it all together

Graham Cracker Crust

Full, right up to the top

Extra goes into a plastic tub for Jay to snack on

Finished Cheesecake

I have to admit, for a ‘no bake’ cheesecake, this was an awful lot of work, and even more dirty dishes. Was it worth it? In my opinion, absolutely. I think this cheesecake supplants the “Cordon Rose” cheesecake recipe from The Cake Bible as my favourite. The texture is so unbelievably light and fluffy. It’s a little bit of a challenge to serve because of that, but oh so worth it. Unsurprisingly, given that it has the word “cheesecake” in the title, Jay really enjoyed it too. I offered to make it for him for his birthday, but we were visiting my brother in law at the time, and it turned out that he’d made a different no-bake cheesecake before we got there. It was quite tasty in its own right, and if I want something quick and easy, I’ll definitely be calling and asking for his recipe. No offence to my big brother, but when it comes to taste, Rose’s recipe wins hands-down.

I don’t know whether this cake is on the quick and easy list, and I’m too lazy to go downstairs to find my copy of the book to find out, but if it’s not, it should be. Well, it’s quick and easy except for the frosting, but we’ll get to that. I don’t have a whole lot of process pictures for you, this time. I guess that’s what happens when I bake on weeknights.

Mise en Place

Mix the dry ingredients with the egg yolks, oil, water, and instant espresso powder. Then clean & dry your bowl and whisk, and make a meringue with the egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar.

Folding Meringue into batter

Fold the meringue into the batter, then divy it up into 6 mini angel food cake pans. I didn’t have mini angel food cake pans, so I figured if angel food cake can be baked in mini pans, then why shouldn’t something that can be baked in mini pans be able to be baked in a full-size tube pan? Plus full size makes a better birthday cake, anyway. My gamble paid off.

Ready for syrup (excuse the knuckle print)

Aside from missing the mini pans, I didn’t have kahlua, either, so I used some Bailey’s in the syrup, which is why it’s a little cloudy. I know, not the same thing at all, but at least Irish cream plays well with coffee. The other liqueurs I had in my pantry would have clashed badly. They all work well in hot chocolate, though. Does it surprise anyone that I don’t drink coffee, but love my hot chocolate? Unfortunately, the syrup didn’t absorb into the cake very well, even though I brushed it with the syrup Thursday night for a Saturday afternoon party.

All wrapped up to soak up the syrupy goodness

The frosting was a bit more time consuming. You start by making dulce de leche, which involves cooking sweetened condensed milk for an hour and a half in a water bath in the oven. I’d never had dulce de leche, so I had no idea whether I’d gone far enough in the cooking process. Maybe that’s why it never really came together with the whipping cream. I did double the batch to be able to frost the whole cake, but I don’t think that should really matter. I started to see some curdling before I got to any sort of peaks (stiff or otherwise), so I stopped. It wasn’t stiff enough to pipe stars or shells or anything, but at least it was spreadable.

Jay insisted that I really should write “Happy Birthday” on it, so I tried to come up with options. He suggested piping gel, which I had handy, and would be easy to colour, but I didn’t think the flavour would go that well. My other option was using some of the leftover dulce de leche, but I wasn’t sure how well it would stand up to travel up to Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. Then I spotted the half bar of chocolate leftover from the whoopie pies. Aha! I melted it carefully in the microwave, then scooped it into a ziploc bag and snipped off a tiny corner.

A bit off-center and slightly crooked

Nobody seemed to mind the wonky piping, and the cake itself was a huge hit. Grandpa loved the texture, my younger (they’re rapidly outgrowing the stage I can call them ‘little’) cousins consumed their pieces up quickly, and Aunt Gwen said something to the effect of “This is really good, and I don’t even like cake, so coming from me that says a LOT.” I don’t think Grandpa could quite put his finger on why he liked it so much until I told him what the flavour was. He wondered about the spongy-ness, and I told him it was a chiffon cake. *blank stare* “It’s made similar to an angel food cake…” “Whatever that is” “…but with coffee flavour.” “Oh, that’s why it’s so good.”

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?

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. :/