Occasional Baker

Almond cake with chocolate frosting

2010-11-11T13:00:00.006-08:00

Just a quick blog note while on a short hiatus from studying:

The cake layers are from David Lebovitz, and the recipe is available here. I used two 8" pans instead of the 9" that he calls for in the recipe; the baking time is about the same. Note that the cake requires almond paste, which is not the same thing as marzipan. Vancouver bakers can get almond paste at The Grainry inside the Public Market on Granville Island.

For the icing, I re-visited an old favorite: Mrs. Milman's chocolate frosting. The recipe and accompanying video are available here.

This frosting actually takes a good four hours to set in the fridge if you follow the instructions. Here are my notes and modifications:

The recipe was halved.
Pour the cream into the pan you're going to be cooking in and set it out to room temperature 30 minutes before cooking. This will take the chill out of the cream, and will hasten cooking a bit.
The cream and chocolate chips are cooked on LOW (not medium low as the recipe says) for 30 minutes (instead of 35), all the while stirring to make sure that no chocolate is sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the chocolate has all melted and the mixture looked homogeneous, I increased the heat *slightly*. If the cream is chilled when you started cooking, this will take longer than 35 minutes.
I placed the heated cream/chocolate in a pre-chilled metal bowl and stirred it for a few minutes to rapidly cool the mixture before proceeding with the cooling step.
I then placed the bowl in an icebath and I began to stir vigorously, occasionally taking the bowl out of the bath to make sure that the icing isn't forming any solid lumps. This method is quite a workout but the icing will be done in about 15 to 20 minutes, not four hours.

The frosting is done when it is very thick but still spreadable (it should hold furrows and soft shapes sculpted with a butter knife).

This frosting swirls very well:

Chocolate salted caramel cake with lacquer glaze

2010-10-09T16:21:00.004-07:00

Rose Levy Beranbaum's new book, Heavenly Cakes, features the shiniest glaze:

This glaze has intrigued me since I acquired her book a year ago. I finally had the opportunity to make it for this Thanksgiving weekend family gathering.

I decided to pair that wonderful Sweet and Salty Cake from NYC's Baked with Ms Beranbaum's new glaze:

From left to right the small photos above show my mise en place, two cake layers slathered with salty caramel and sandwiching a caramel ganache buttercream, three cake layers, all the layers with a skewer to keep the cake fro tilting, the crumb coat, the smoothed coat and the glazed cake.

Here once again is the finished cake:

Tips: The recipe for the lacquer glaze can be found in this post. Also, there is a youtube video where Ms Beranbaum shows how to pour this glaze.

Perfect chocolate chip cookies

2010-09-06T11:53:00.006-07:00

Today I decided to take a short breather from studying for my anesthesia clerkship (which I am thoroughly enjoying). Pat needed some sweet treats for an upcoming office shindig, so I baked up two batches of my new favourite chocolate chip cookies:

Audaciously dubbed by Cooks Illustrated as their "Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies," these truly live up to their name.

They bake up golden and crisply at the sides and chewy in the centre without tasting like unbaked cookie dough, which is a failing of many chewy cookie recipes. Instead what you get is the wonderfully complex taste of caramel, toffee and chocolate.

To bake these sublime cookies, first visit Une Gamine dans la Cuisine for a printer-ready copy of the recipe.

Prep your ingredients:

What sets this apart from other chocolate chip cookies is that it uses browned butter...

... which is then added to brown and white sugars with a bit more butter to make a caramel/toffee base.

Initially, the mixture will appear separated, greasy and gritty.

As you add the eggs and vanilla, and go through a couple bouts of stirring and resting, the mixture eventually becomes shiny and luscious.

At this point, all the other ingredients are ready for mixing.

I used an ice cream scoop to portion out the dough.

Tip # 1: If, after mixing all the ingredients, you find that the batter is too soft to scoop, pop your bowl in the fridge for 30 minutes, then proceed.

Tip # 2: Do not bake these right away. Instead, freeze the scooped dough overnight. This will ensure that the cookies do not spread too much when you bake them.

As with any other cookies, bake these until they are golden brown around the sides and soft and almost gooey in the centre. The residual heat will cook the centre perfectly. As they cool , the cookies will fall a little and wrinkle:

Tip # 3: All ovens are different, so it's good to get to know yours. In my oven, on a convection setting of 180 Celsius, these were done in 9 minutes.

Icing a layer cake

2010-08-17T19:45:00.012-07:00

Start with your components:

Buttermilk country cake. The recipe is from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible. For the cake I made, I split the batter into two six inch layers instead of using a single larger layer that she calls for. This is ready to be pulled out of the oven in 25-30 minutes.

Raspberry jam. Heat over a stove to a simmer, then strain to remove the seeds. A cup of jam yields about half a cup after straining.

Milk chocolate buttercream. Also from The Cake Bible. Follow the recipe link and prepare as directed, which will make more than you need for this project. See the notes below for storage and reuse. This buttercream is so much better than anything made with icing sugar. (I can write a whole diatribe against icing sugar "buttercreams").

The picture below shows all the cake components; the chocolate is melted and waiting to cool before being whipped with butter.

Assembly is a breeze.

First, tort each cake in half, so you will have four layers in total. Take the first layer and place it on a parchment lined plate. Place two tablespoons of strained raspberry jam on the first layer:

Spread the jam, then place about a quarter cup (or a little more) of chocolate icing on top:

Repeat with the second layer. Place the third layer of cake and dollop a large amount of icing on top. When it comes to chocolate icing, I prefer a relaxed approach. Instead of applying a crumb coat, then applying more icing which is then perfectly smoothed, I like to take that dollop of chocolate from the top and pull it to the sides and then swirl the cake around to make a whimsical pattern.

After this is done, I pull the parchment from the sides. Happy birthday, Patrick!

Notes:

What to do if instead of buttercream, you end up with melted slush. With Vancouver's hot, hot, hot August weather, I ended up with melted butter and chocolate instead of a luscious buttercream. If this happens to you, fear not, your icing is entirely salvageable. Take your Kitchen Aid bowl which is holding the melted puddle, and place it in an icebath. Stir. As soon as the buttercream solidifies on the sides of the bowl, return the bowl to the KA and resume beating. To arrive at the right consistency, you may have to repeat this process a few times. This buttercream really is best prepared in cooler weather... but it is noteworthy how this buttercream is able to withstand all that handling and the rapid temperature changes from a warm room to an icebath and back again.

In this hot weather, the cake was starting to become lopsided as the layers shift with each stroke of my spatula. I could have driven a skewer through the center to keep it still, but in keeping with the relaxed attitude of this cake, I just let it lean.

For a pretty cake - for any cake - there are three key visual elements: even icing, clean edges and a clean plate. Even icing means no cake layers peeking through on the sides. Clean edges means the angle between the icing on the top and sides is sharp (or sharp-ish for this casual cake). Tucked parchment sheets go a long way in giving you a clean plate. Below is a photo of two examples, showing a lemon curd cake and a bigger version of this chocolate swirl design. The sketches on the left are my vision of what a tiered version would look like.

The buttermilk cake rises very tall, so I only used three of the four layers. There will also be some spare strained jam and buttercream. To save the buttercream, freeze. To reuse, thaw at room temperature and then re-whip.

This post closes my summer as I head into the clerkship years of my medical schooling, which means my baking will likely become even more occasional. Much thanks to the readers of this blog who check in once a while to see what's up on Occasional Baker.

Rainier cherry frangipane tartlets

2010-07-19T18:36:00.008-07:00

The local cherry harvest is finally in full swing here in Vancouver.

Having feasted on cherries in almost about everything - tossed in salads, served alongside fiery Andouille sausages (works very well!), as a raw snack or dessert - I decided today to give in to a baking urge that I have been suppressing. This is the result:

I whipped up my favourite tart crust and used 1/3 of the dough to line two 4" tartlets, which I froze for two hours, then blind-baked for 20 minutes in a 350 F oven. Be sure to check out the tart crust recipe and the step by step photos courtesy of LA Times.

Then, I filled each blind-baked tartlet with a tablespoon of frangipane. The best frangipane, in my opinion is Dorie Greenspan's almond cream, to which I add a tablespoon or two of cream during the final whir in the food processor. This produces a lighter (well, not calorie-wise, just texturally) frangipane. The recipe makes quite a bit, but I find that it freezes well - just stir vigorously after thawing.

On goes some cherries, and in they go into the a preheated 350 F oven for about 30-35 minutes. Don't forget to turn halfway through the baking time.

They are done when the frangipane puffs and begins to brown at the centre.

Notes

This dessert relies on the sweetest cherries one can find. I prefer Rainier cherries to the more well-trodden Bing.

Don't overcrowd the tartlet with cherries, otherwise the frangipane won't bake.

Photos were taken with my iPhone 3GS.

Strawberry pavlova

2010-07-05T08:22:00.012-07:00

After Oprah's Favourite Brownies, I had to go on a three-month blogging hiatus to finish what has been an extremely challenging term at school. I am glad to back bringing this:

A pavlova is probably the easiest dessert to whip up. It is at once elegant and casual.

Its strength rests on the sweetest and best local strawberries you can get. I found mine at the Nelson Park Farmers' Market, held every Saturday during summer in Vancouver's West End.

To make this dessert, start by preheating your oven to 200 F. This low temperature keeps the pavlova snow white.

Clean, hull and slice your sweet, succulent red strawberries (as above).

Separate whites of two large eggs. Beat the egg whites until foamy then gradually add half a cup of sugar while beating. Continue to beat at medium-high speed until you have barely stiff peaks when the beater is raised.

Pile the resulting meringue onto a baking sheet lined with parchment. With the back of a spoon, form a mild depression on the centre. Sprinkle the meringue with icing sugar. This is to help the meringue dry up. Pop the meringue in the oven and bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. When the time is up, turn the oven off and let the meringue stay in the oven for another 30 minutes or so.

This will bake into a puffed "bowl" that you can easily transfer to a serving plate:

Whip some cream. (Note: the link shows whipping cream in a cold bath, which I usually dispense with).

Pile the cream onto the meringue.

Then top with strawberries.

Notes

When making the meringue make sure there is no trace of yolk in the separated whites, and that the bowl and beating utensils you will use are scrupulously clean and free of grease.

You do not want this meringue to be dry and hard through. Bake it only until it is dry on the outside and the sides separate easily from the parchment but the inside is still slightly soft. To check, press on the centre: the crust should shatter and yield a dry but soft interior.

I took the above pictures with my iPhone 3GS since my camera broke this month. Not bad quality photos for blogging, I think, after some mild post-processing to adjust lighting and hue.

The type of meringue used here is the French variety, which is uncooked. For an exposition on other types of meringue, particularly the Swiss kind, see this link.

Oprah's favourite brownies

2010-04-04T21:20:00.006-07:00

These brown beauties, which made Oprah's favourite things, are from that little Brooklyn pastry shop success story, Baked. Incidentally, these sell US $38 by the dozen.

A cheaper option would be to make it yourself, and thankfully, Baked owners Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito have released the recipe in Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. This homey cookbook features wonderful throwback American recipes, some of which call for quaint classic ingredients like Ovaltine as well as very of-the-moment food stuffs such as matcha, chipotle and espresso - but fear not, most people's pantries are well stocked as is to tackle the recipes without having to search far and wide for when the whim to bake hits.

Oprah published the spicy variation of this brownie four years after the original captured her heart, so you can imagine that this has made a lasting impression on her. The recipe is available here. To make the original, omit the chili powder, cinnamon and grated ginger, and make the following changes: 2 1/2 eggs (instead of 3), 5.5 ounces 60 to 72% chocolate (instead of just 5) and 1 Tb cocoa (instead of 1.5).

These are excellent, at once delicate and fudgy, chocolaty with every nibble, and I could see dropping $38 for a dozen if I were a New Yorker. However, these lean a bit more towards sweet than bittersweet for my current liking. Mind you, I did use a chocolate percentage that is a bit shy of 60%. I will likely go up to 72% next time around (and I rarely ever go that high when baking).

So, this is all the baking I'm going to be doing until exams are over. See you all in June!

Notes

Here are a few of my tips and tricks to brownies:

Above all, do not overbake your brownies. A dry brownie is uneatable and unsalvageable. You may crumble it over ice cream, and the ice cream might be worse for it. On the other hand, even a woefully underbaked brownie sets in the fridge overnight and turns into something deliciously fudgy. So, if you are to err, do so on the side of underbaking.

The different layers of complexity inherent in chocolate only come through if the brownie is moist. This almost universally for anything chocolate - it has to be in a moist vehicle! Imagine a chocolate bar. Now imagine it melting with your body heat when you place it on your tongue and it bursts into its full flavours. Mmmm. Now imagine dry cocoa on your tongue. Enough said - chocolate needs to be moist.

To this end, you must keep on checking on your brownies from 5 minutes or so before the stated end time. Poke it in the middle with a skewer. If the skewer comes out dry, it might be too late. You want the skewer with a good amount of moist crumbs attached to it (not wet batter, however).

To get fudgy brownies, start with a recipe that promises to be fudgy. Your goal after this is to minimize the air you whisk in the batter. Do not overstir your eggs in the chocolate. This means starting with room temperature or, even better, eggs warmed by soaking in hot tap water for 5 minutes. If the eggs are fridge-cold, you will have no choice but to whisk and whisk to get it incorporated with the chocolate. Also, fold the flour gently and just until it's almost fully incorporated. Don't be fussed by lumps unless they are huge. Scrape the mixture into your prepared pan, then rap the pan a few times on the counter before placing in the oven. This gets rid of air. At half the baking time, rotate the pan - but before you do so, take it out the oven and rap it on the counter a few more times. When the brownie is done, rap it on the counter again. Then, leave it alone until it totally cools. This will take about two hours at least. Leave it alone.

Just so I'm clear, when I say rap, do it with a reasonably strong force. Drop the pan straight on from a height of about a foot. Brownie batters are thick. It takes a good amount of force to release trapped bubbles.

Clafoutis - reworked, again

2010-03-31T20:42:00.015-07:00

Taken from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia, this clafoutis can be sampled at Provence Marinaside, the restaurant that the authors own. Writes the couple: "We once took it off the menu but soon customers begged us to bring it back!"

I was one of those customers.

When I tried the published recipe, I found that an 8-inch tart pan does not hold the volume of batter. An 8-inch deep-dish pie plate is required. Also, the original uses an unbaked crust which didn't quite bake enough in the oven, leaving a slight taste of raw flour. Using a pre-baked shell improved it immensely.

I have posted this recipe twice now, each time with a little tweak here and there. It's always a winner - one that I'm happy to haul out for family and friends.

Clafoutis with white chocolate and berries
(updated March 31, 2010)
adapted from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia

Set your oven to 375 F.

For the pastry shell: Use Dorie Greenspan's sweet tart dough or your own trusted tart shell recipe. Roll out the dough and place in a deep 8" pie dish (if you want to use a shallow tart pan, it needs to be 11" in diameter)

Whatever recipe you use, make sure to partially bake the shell: line the tart with foil and place pie weights, then bake for 20-25 minutes at 375 F. Remove the foil and weights. Return the shell into the oven and bake some more until the bottom of the shell begins to brown lightly, about 5 minutes. Set the crust aside.

Turn the oven down to 350 F.

For the filling

4 to 6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1 cup heavy cream, whipped until stiff, then set aside
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons butter, slightly softened (not melting)
1 egg
2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries or blueberries or mixed berries

Place flour, sugar and salt in a stand mixer and mix on low for a minute. Add the butter and run the mixer for another minute or so, until the mixture appears sandy.

Add the egg and half of the whipped cream. Set the mixer to medium-high speed for a minute and a half. Fold in the rest of the whipped cream by hand or use the mixer set on low. The batter will appear thick and luscious.

Scatter the berries in the pre-baked tart shell.

Scatter the chopped white chocolate pieces.

Pour the batter in the center of the shell, leaving a one-inch outer border free of batter. The batter will spread as it bakes and a batter-free margin prevents overflowing. Click on image below:

Bake at 350 F for 55 to 65 minutes, until the clafoutis is puffed at the sides and deeply browned all over.

Cool to room temperature, for about two hours. This dessert can also be served chilled.

Notes
If, after 30 minutes, you find the sides are browning too quickly, use some foil to shield it.
If using frozen berries, your clafoutis will bake closer to 65 minutes.
Do not be concerned if the clafoutis is still slightly jiggly in the centre when you take it out the oven. As long as the clafoutis is a deep golden to brown all over, the jiggle is a good thing. It will set some more with residual heat.
The final texture will be somewhere between cake and custard; the centre will fall a little.
Need a shortcut? One friend suggests using a graham cracker crust, pressed into the bottom and up the sides of the pan, as one would for cheesecakes. Another friend skipped the crust altogether and placed everything in a ceramic dish generously buttered then coated with flour. The crustless version is probably more in keeping in with traditional clafoutis. If going crustless, fill the buttered and floured pan in this order: 1/3 the batter followed by berries followed by another 1/3 batter then all of the white chocolate, then topped with the remaining 1/3 batter. I would have to say, though, that I prefer this dessert with the tart crust.
This is a "homey" dessert and it has a lot of tolerance for variation. But for those inclined toward details, the type of flour used is bleached and enriched all-purpose - this is the regular, ubiquitous kind found in supermarkets. The measuring technique is "dip and sweep" (dip the cup in the flour container and sweep the excess off the top). Or, for those who measure by weight, it is 3.75 oz (106 grams). Again, all this detail is probably unnecessary for this very casual dessert.

Lesley Stowe's Death by Chocolate and Raspberry Splash

2010-03-28T20:00:00.006-07:00

Here's a quick blog post as I head into exams:

This is the ultimate chocolate lover's dessert, and it is surprisingly easy to put together.

Lesley Stowe has the recipe on her website. There is even a youtube video on how to put this together. For those reading this via FB, you won't see the video embedded below, so just click on this link.

Notes:

The youtube video uses half the recipe on Lesley Stowe website.

I prefer a taller cake/ganache so I multiply the recipe by 1.5 on the website to fill a 6-cup loaf pan. This will make 16 very generous servings. A 6-cup loaf pan measures 8"x 4" at the bottom and tapers to 8.5" x 4.5" at the top.

I do not use Cointreau or Grand Marnier, and my friends who have made it with those ingredients say there is not much difference between my alcohol-free D by C and theirs.

While Ms Stowe recommends 62% to 70% cocoa dark-chocolate, I personally prefer 50%. At any rate, use the best chocolate available (Callebaut or Valrhona) and certainly do not go below 50% or your D by C might not mould well. Set in the fridge overnight (not four hours), unmold, then cut with a knife warmed over a running hot tap.

When I first made the raspberry splash, I did not strain it. It was alright. However, it was absolutely divine after having been strained. In retrospect, I actually feel slightly embarrassed that I served the unstrained raspberry splash.

A friend and classmate of mine has started a fabulous food blog (Hi Mel!). Check it out.

Mother-in-law's Birthday Cake Part 2

2010-01-01T10:14:00.011-08:00

Here is the cake I made for Pat's mom:

We had all his family over at our place, and what fun it was! Pat made some slow-cooked ribs and pasta with his trademark roasted red-pepper Oyama sausage sauce. His sister, another foodie in the family, brought over the finest coleslaw I have ever tasted. She was the one who introduced me to Rose Levy Beranbaum's books some years back. The Cake Bible, in particular, is life-altering (if you're a baker) and is pretty much the only cookbook I use for cakes.

On to last night's cake.

Over the last four days, I made four génoise layers which were brushed with syrup, filled with lemon curd and slathered with lemon white chocolate buttercream. The next series of pictures shows the cake at different stages:

The white chocolate lemon buttercream is from Rose Levy Beranbaum's new book, Heavenly Cakes (pages 46 to 47). It starts with a white chocolate custard base made of eggs, butter and white chocolate that is cooked over a bain-marie, a process that is very similar to making lemon curd. For tips and pointers on making this buttercream, see the notes at the end of this post.

I've always been The buttercream is one of the best I've tasted and it spreads and pipes like a dream:

One of my colleagues taught me how to pipe roses over our lunch break. It is surprisingly easy. The key is smooth yet stiff buttercream. Watch the embedded video (or, if you are viewing this post through my facebook profile where the embedded video will not work, click on this link to take you to youtube):

Some hints: the wide end of the piping tip is at the bottom, and it is easier to transfer the rose if you pipe roses on squares of parchment attached to the nail with a dab of buttercream. Here is one of my piped roses:

The family was happy with the cake, despite my mistake of not using enough syrup to moisten the génoise layers, which were consequently on the dry side. The buttercream was a definite highlight, with the rich vanilla flavour of white chocolate pairing very well with the crispness of lemon. We finished off the large bottom layer and I packaged the small tier for Pat's mom to take home.

I will definitely make these again and I will probably use buttercake instead of génoise. Ms Beranbaum has a new recipe in Heavenly Cakes that calls for almonds and sour cream - promising for a Valentine's Day project. In the mean time, I will be diving deep into my new year's resolutions and deeper yet into my studies. See you in February!

Notes:

Ms Beranbaum specifies the end-point as 140F, but I cooked my custard to 160F to kill Salmonella. To hasten the process, I do not whisk after the eggs are added - this causes temperature to dissipate. Instead, I use a heat-proof silicone spatula to slowly but continuously stir while scraping the bottom of the bowl.

Do not be concerned if after the chocolate and butter have melted there appears to be some mild curdling. By the time the custard is done, the whole mixture is smooth and creamy.

After cooling the custard for 15 minutes, I press a Saran wrap on its surface and refrigerate it for at least a few hours. This works well for me because I like to make up cake components over a series of days.

The custard is beaten into whipped butter. For this, I start with fridge-cold butter, which I first soften with the Kitchen Aid flat beater. When all the butter is clinging to the sides of the bowl, I switch to a whisk beater and begin whipping.

After the custard is added, the mixture may appear curdled. But as with most buttercreams, you only need to whip at a higher speed setting for a bit longer to reconstitute the emulsion.

I piped my roses on parchment squares which were affixed to the flower nail with a dab of buttercream. These were then quickly chilled in the freezer, which made transferring to the cake oh so easy.

Mother-in-law's Birthday Cake Part 1

2009-12-28T12:58:00.013-08:00

My mother-in-law is celebrating a major birthday on New Year's Eve and I am excited to make her cake. True to form, I was wracked with indecision right from the get-go. What flavour should the cake be? What should it look like?

Pat simplified things by asking his mom what flavour she prefers. Lemon it is. Now all I need is to settle on its appearance.

I decided early on that I wanted a two-tier cake although I did not want to hew too closely to formal wedding cakes. This needs to be whimsical. I perused my blog to look at my past work and began sketching:

Up top is the lemon curd cake that I have made on several occasions over the last couple years. I like the dots and stripes that festoon its surface. Below it is a swirly chocolate cake. I'll have to decide later which direction I'll go. In the meantime, I went ahead and the baked génoise layers.

I mistakenly used an 8" pan instead of 9"; baking without my usual early morning coffee is my excuse. An 8" layer will not stack well with the 6" cake - visually, the proportions would be off if the smaller cake was placed on top and centre. Clearly, the layers will need to be stacked off-centre:

The bulk of the work was done today - baking, making the filling and buttercream, initial assembly and crumb-coating. Here is one of the cakes after the crumb-coat:

Now all that needs to be done is put on the final coat of buttercream and some finishing flourishes.

Notes:

This is a new buttercream from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes. It starts with a white chocolate custard base that is incorporated into whipped butter and flavoured with lemon curd. A definite find!

Some génoise pointers can be found in this post.

Summer, Fall and Holiday 2009

2009-12-27T12:07:00.016-08:00

Wow, that was a long baking hiatus!

Thanks for all the emails asking how I'm doing and when I'm going to post again. My med school exams didn't finish until the 21st of December, so I almost wasn't able to bake - almost.

First, a bit of catching up.

Pat and I moved to a new place this summer and while we are totally in love with the condo, the tiny AEG oven broke my heart a little:

The usable internal space is about 13" x 14" x 15" so I spent some time in the summer trying to scale down some of my tried and tested recipes. So, there was quite a bit of baking during this time. Here are a couple pictures, a strawberry tartlet on the the left and a plain génoise on the right:

I found that tarts, pies, as well as sponge and foam cakes bake very well in this new oven. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for buttercakes. Somehow, buttercakes tend to stay wet in the middle, and if I bake it through the cake begins to shrink by more than 30% in volume when I take it out of the oven, which is a sure sign of being overbaked. On a convection setting, the oven temperature calibration is spot-on, but about 20C too low on conventional baking. I've corrected for this, and use a baking stone to help keep bottom heat, with only so-so results.

Anyhow, on to holiday baking:

These are Dorie Greenspan's simply amazing sable cookies. The recipe is available from the NY Times. It is akin to shortbread, differing only by the addition of egg yolks which gives both crunch and tenderness, setting off the nutty flavour of mildly browned butter. These chic beauties fed me all throughout my exam review period (basically all of December).

Again, because school interfered with my baking scheduling, I was not able to turn out a bûche de Noël this year. I will have to be content with memories of last year's log and those cute little meringue mushrooms:

My bûches are compiled on this page.

This year, I went for another favourite, Cooks Illustrated's lemon tart which is improved by Maury Rubin's tart shell. The recipe for the tart filling is the exact same one featured in Leite's Culinaria and the tart recipe can be copied from the LA Times.

Notes:

Ms Greenspan says the secrets to really sandy sable cookies include not overcreaming the butter and sugar, being very gentle with adding the flour (which is added all at once), and ensuring that the dough gets adequate resting time in the fridge (at least two hours). I am going to highlight another advice: these are amazing on the second day when the flavours have set, so plan ahead.

I am in the middle of planning a cake for a family celebration this NYE. I think it's going to be a génoise with lemon curd and Rose Levy Beranbaum's new white chocolate custard buttercream. So there are a few posts out of me yet before I head back to school.

The best flourless chocolate cake

2009-07-23T12:20:00.005-07:00

Actually, the heading should be "The best ~~flourless~~ chocolate cake."

Yes, it is flourless and as far as chocolate cakes go, this one is simply incomparable. The texture changes from light cheesecake to mousse as you sample from outside to in. Every bite is as good as the Callebaut chocolate that went in it.

Here's the unbelievable part to it: only 290 calories and 17 grams of carbohydrates per 1/16th slice!

While 1/16th may not seem like much, this cake packs a wallop of dark chocolate that it is sure to leave even the most fervid chocoholic totally sated. An equivalent "regular" flour-based cake with ganache and buttercream will easily break 500 calories and carry an absurd carbohydrate gram count.

I once made a 1170-calorie per serving dessert which was fabulous, but this one is even better.

And even better news - it freezes well. There is no danger for dieters and carb-counters such as myself of slicing away at the cake portion by portion until the whole cake is consumed. I've stashed away the rest of this cake, and I am resolved they will only be thawed out for my once a week cheat/reward day.

The recipe is from Baking Illustrated and was developed by Alice Medrich.

Notes:

I used 8 ounces of 60% chocolate and 8 ounces of milk chocolate.

It is imperative that you use an instant-read thermometer to determine doneness. I've overbaked this cake a couple times in the past because I did not use an instant-read thermometer. Those were quite awful.

Take it out when the centre is 140F. It will still be very soupy. Don't fret - it will look just like the first picture after 12 hours in the fridge. According to Baking Illustrated, 140F is a key temperature because the cake will continue to cook after it is taken out of the oven, killing Salmonella.

Farewell posts

2009-06-26T16:00:00.001-07:00

(first in a series of three)

Two years ago I had a phone conversation that went like this:

"I'm so stressed out. I have a year to finish these prerequisites, work full-time on top of that, and THEN apply to medical school and wait for almost another year to see if I get in."

"Have you tried doing something to keep your mind off this? Why don't you take up rock-climbing or train for a marathon or start baking?"

So, I picked up a copy of Baking 911, a cookbook that remains as my first and true love. It is perfect for anyone who has ever baked puck-hard cookies or anyone who has ever uttered an expletive first thing after opening the oven door.

I really enjoyed baking, and as soon as my early efforts began to improve, I started this humble blog. Over the next few months, I discovered Daring Bakers which pushed me to new baking heights. I've made some wonderful friends there, as well as over at Tuesdays with Dorie. (See my Tuesdays with Dorie baked goods here). In fairly short order, the name of this blog "Occasional Baker" was no longer appropriate. One of the sardonic friends I keep jokingly asked, "How's your blog, 'The Obsessive Baker'?"

Eventually I got the good news that I had been waiting for from UBC Medicine. After the heady few months that followed, I realized that I had the time to either bake or blog, but not quite both. Also, my interest has now turned to fresh, local foods and I am now, once again, an occasional baker. Going back to that phone conversation two years ago, I have now signed up to train for a marathon (a 2-year plan).

Baking remains a great stress reliever for me, and I very much enjoy sharing with new classmates and friends. This will continue. However, the demands of maintaining a blog - the meager couple hours required to shoot pictures, post-process images, and write something useful (which was always my aim) - directly competes with study time, so I now feel that this baby should be put to bed.

In this first of my last three posts I look back at the past year, which I feel is my best:

French macarons

If that comment about being an obsessive baker needs to be justified, this would be its strongest case. French macarons are incredibly difficult to turn out perfectly - with the frilly feet and smooth domed top. After seven batches, I finally turned these out:

The moral to this: perfect baking is over-rated. Honestly, even the macarons that were cracked or feet-less tasted the same as these beauties. I have never made macarons since, and I am ever thankful that there is a French patisserie nearby.

Dark chocolate cake

Everyone needs a good chocolate cake once in a while, and this is hands-down the best because it is easy, fool-proof, and a guaranteed crowd pleaser. There is no recipe in my blog post but it is from The Cake Bible which you should own if you do not already. Also, the author demonstrates this recipe over at youtube.

French lemon cream and classic tarts

I am a bit of a lemon tart snob. Tell me that there is any bit of flour or cornstarch in the filling and I will turn away. (Well, I will take a large forkful of the "lemon tart" and then turn away). Lemon tarts ought to be made with baked lemon curd. It is best when served naked except perhaps for a dusting of sugar - no berries, no meringue, no creme chantilly on top. The star is the lemon, and the shortbread crust its sole supporting companion.

Imagine the best baked lemon curd tart you have ever had (picture on right). Now imagine it tasting even better and speaking fluent French (picture on left).

Lemon curd cake

Underneath the curd and buttercream is an exquisite find - the White Chocolate Whisper Cake from The Cake Bible.

Lemon bundt

This bundt cake is intensely lemony, thanks to the generous addition of minced, macerated lemon rind. I applied the two-stage mixing technique I learned from The Cake Bible, which simplifies the cake-making process so much.

Recently, I made this cake again and had problems getting it out of the bundt pan. I realized that I missed a crucial step: applying baker's grease to the pan. I merely used a non-stick spray, which as I found out doesn't always work. I have never had any problems with baker's grease on the other hand, and I encourage anyone with a bundt pan to make up a batch - your bundt cakes will release with a golden crust each time.

Brioche raisin snails and sticky buns

I have always feared using yeast, but not after these incarnations of brioche, the most cake-like of breads.

Ricotta polenta cake

The recipe has two uncommon ingredients for cakes. Ricotta, which is the whey by-product of Romano cheese making, and polenta, the Italian name for cornmeal.

Bûche de Noël

Through two years of baking and blogging, I am thankful for all the friends I made and the new family traditions that I started. Of the latter, I am sure that I will be baking bûches de Noël year after year.

Up next on Occasional Baker

I simply cannot close this blog without sharing with you the best tart crust ever: a shortbread crust that remains crisp yet fork-tender even after days in the fridge.
Revisiting Martha's Birthday Cake. An ambitious project from two years ago, which I will make again for Patrick's birthday in mid-August. Will it be better this time around? Come and join me for this blog's finale.

Back in June

2009-04-23T08:07:00.002-07:00

Thanks to all of you who have been reading my old blog entries. I appreciate the emails asking if I will still write or if I am alright. :)

I will be back - just have to survive some exams first.

Have a great Spring!

Clafoutis

2009-03-09T07:49:00.008-07:00

A few classmates from medical school and I had a potluck dinner last night as part of our Wellness Initiative group. Absolutely everything was fantastic.

For my share, I made clafoutis with white chocolate and wild blueberries. It is the same clafoutis I made a few weeks ago:

The original recipe is from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia. Like Vij's: Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine, this cookbook is written by Vancouver restaurateurs and it has all our local critics raving.

I remember very well how incredible the clafoutis at Provence Marinaside and was delighted to see that the recipe has been published.

Writes the couple: "We once took it off the menu but soon customers begged us to bring it back!"

I was one of those customers. I remember telling the waiter very pointedly that it was a mistake that they had taken it off the menu. Actually, I told more than one waiter that since I repeatedly asked for this dessert (I used to live right above their restaurant so I was a regular).

I immediately tried the recipe as written but found that an 8-inch tart pan wasn't quite enough to hold the rich clafoutis batter. Also, the original recipe uses a tart crust that was not blind-baked I found the lingering slight taste of raw flour unappealing.

Remembering how glorious the dessert could be, I decided to tweak the recipe. I originally posted it here and it has been a work in progress since. The latest incarnation follows below.

Clafoutis with white chocolate and wild blueberries
(updated March 11, 2008)
adapted from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia

For the pastry shell: Use Dorie Greenspan's sweet tart dough or your own trusted tart shell recipe. Roll out the dough and place in an 8" pie dish or an 11" tart pan. Line with foil, and blind bake with pie weights for 20-25 minutes at 375 F. Remove the foil and weights. Return the shell into the oven and bake some more until the bottom of the shell begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Let the crust cool to room temperature.

For the filling: Chop 4 to 8 ounces white chocolate (white chocolate can be very sweet, so judge according to your taste) and set aside.

Whip until barely stiff 1 cup heavy cream, then set aside in the refrigerator.

Cream 2/3 cup of sugar and 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, then slowly add one egg. If the mixture curdles, whip at a higher speed. The mixture should be homogenous and airy.

Fold in 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (spoon lightly into cup then sweep). Fold whipped cream into the batter in three portions. You can be fairly heavy-handed with the first third because the batter is quite stiff, but be gentler with folding the last two thirds.

Scatter 2/3 of the chopped white chocolate onto the crust. Dollop and spread one third of the batter. Press in 1 1/2 cups wild blueberries and scatter the remaining white chocolate on top of the berries. Dollop and spread the last two thirds batter, leaving a free one-inch margin all around.

The batter will spread as it bakes. To avoid overflowing, there should be a bit more batter in the middle than around the margins.

Bake at 350 F for 50 to 65 minutes, or until the clafoutis is puffed, golden and still slightly jiggly at the centre two inches. This will set some more with the residual heat of the ceramic dish. Cool to room temperature. Run a thin spatula around the rim of the clafoutis; this will make serving easier and more neat.

Chill in the refrigerator for two hours or serve at room temperature.

Dorie Greenspan's Génoise

2009-01-20T00:01:00.005-08:00

A Tuesdays with Dorie event

Have you ever set out to make a dessert in the face of a time crunch?

If so, you must have - armed with some forethought - diligently prepared each component a few days in advance, making sure that these will keep in the refrigerator. And, if you're like me, the one thing you probably didn't anticipate are the other hungry fellows who live with you and raid the fridge in your absence.

That is the gist of why I only have the génoise for this week's TWD event, the Berry Surprise Cake on pages 273 to 275 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Having baked a few génoise cakes in the past, I was not so much daunted at the thought of having my cake fall, which I have been told, foam cakes are apt to do. I personally think the fear mongering around foam cakes is unfounded.

I can imagine in the past when the foam batter was beaten by hand - continuously up to half an hour or more - that the génoise might have acquired its reputation as a capricious prima donna. Kitchen Aid stand mixers now make easy work of creating the foam batter.

There is a "secret" to getting it right: the warm sugar/whole egg mixture needs to be beaten to the point that a thick, billowing, rope (the oft-used term "ribbon" isn't quite enough) falls from the whisk when lifted. This rope should coil over itself and dissolve very slowly back into the batter. Most cookbooks will direct letting the Kitchen Aid rip at medium to medium-high speed for 5 minutes; I find that it takes me about 8 minutes to reach this state. In any case, it is best to ignore the advised time and go with the appearance of the batter - this is almost never less than 5 minutes.

A common cause of consternation is folding. A génoise batter is nothing more than a large bubble held together by egg proteins that have become arranged in an orderly manner because of the energy it received from vigorous beating. Folding must be done gently, evenly and quickly on one hand so the bubble doesn't burst, but also thoroughly so no unmixed flour remains. This description makes it seem harder than the task really is. Many professionals use quick and apparently strong (to a casual observer) strokes when folding. But because I am not a pro, I like to fold this way (if video is not visible, click on this link):

Without the filling, I wasn't be able to assemble the Berry Surprise Cake. However, I dug out some leftover plain butter cream in the freezer to which I added some pureed preserved peaches and came up with this:

Thanks to Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen for choosing this recipe. Please visit the other blogs participating in Tuesdays with Dorie.

Notes

A génoise is endlessly adaptable and is a remarkable contrast to butter cakes in terms of its composition. The right amount of soaking syrup is essential so that the génoise comes to life.
Instead of making one 8-inch cake, I divided the batter between two 6-inch round pans. The baking time was about 25 minutes.
A sturdy cake, it tolerates carving before it is soaked with syrup. Here is a sketch of how I was going to excavate the middle of the genoise to make room for the filling:

Instead of just using clarified butter, use browned butter (beurre noisette). It gives the cake a deeper, richer, nuttier flavour.
To add the clarified butter or beurre noisette: fold all of the flour into the foam in three portions then take a cup of the foam and mix it with the beurre noisette, and finally fold that mixture into the foam. The batter will deflate slightly.
It is fascinating to watch a génoise bake. In the final stages of baking, the génoise batter is somewhat sunken in the middle and has the appearance of a buttercake that is ill-fated and bound to fall. Then, in the last few minutes, the middle catches up and domes slightly. The cake flattens perfectly when it is taken out, and all is well.

Return to Tuesdays with Dorie

2009-01-06T00:01:00.007-08:00

Playing Around with the French Pear Tart

I am excited to have the opportunity to rejoin Tuesdays with Dorie, the worldwide group of food bloggers who pick and compare recipes from Ms Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. This week's recipe, the French Pear Tart on pages 368 and 369, is chosen by the author herself, so I just had to join in the fun despite the lack of canned or fresh pears at Vancouver's newest Urban Fare.

In a pinch, I pitted some preserved cherries and assembled the tart. Here's a slice:

Sweet cherries are nestled in a nutty, custard-like almond cake (frangipane) altogether held in a buttery shortbread crust (pâte sucrée).

Making the crust and frangipane cannot be any easier. The ingredients of each are just whirred together in a food processor. The threat of running out of these components is ever present: it is ever so tempting to just spoon out a dough of the shortbread crust, or a dollop of the frangipane. They are simply that good!

Incidentally, this week is the beginning of my Host, Diseases and Infections block in school, and I must point out that spooning raw dough or uncooked frangipane carries all the risks that come with eating raw eggs. So, save these for the tart.

Because the cherries are the main players in this dessert, I chose these wonderful non-alcoholic preserves from Mission Hill:

With all its dimples, this tart appears more casual and has a more relaxed elegance than the original pear version. It is reminiscent of another French home-baked comfort, the clafoutis.

I thoroughly enjoyed my last stint with TWD and am thankful that I am in good company once again. (Thanks, Laurie). Please see all my previous TWD baked goods by clicking on this link.

Notes:

Ms Greenspan will have pictures and the full recipe posted on her site.

Pâte sucrée is basically a sugar cookie. Don't expect flaky pastry, think shortbread. The dough is very forgiving, easy to pat onto a pan or rolled for a more refined looking tart. Scraps can be re-rolled and re-used or can be dipped in sanding sugar to make cookies.

Here is a video showing how to press crumbly dough onto a tart pan.

The shell is best when baked to a deep golden brown. When you are nearing that perfect dark shade, stay close to the oven. The time it takes to go from perfect to burnt is very short.

Sides are browning faster than the rest of the shell? Fashion a shield with foil or take a shiny aluminum tart pan one size larger than the one being used (without its bottom) and invert it over the baking shell.

To prevent a soggy bottom, I partially blind-baked the crust, then brushed some beaten egg white on its surface then returned it briefly to the oven for five minutes to allow the egg white to seal the crust. I then proceeded to cool the crust, fill and bake as usual.

Please visit Tuesdays with Dorie blogs. Click on "TWD-all" on the upper left to expand the list of TWD bakers, then click on anyone to view.

Bûche de Noël

2008-12-26T12:30:00.013-08:00

My mom is coming over for dinner, and I was happy to be relieved of main course duties, which Patrick has taken over. Right now he is busily slow-roasting red peppers and Roma tomatoes and the scent of thyme is permeating our house. He is going to use those in his chicken-apple sausage pasta sauce for tonight's penne dish.

All his efforts leave me free to put together tonight's bûche de Noël.

While this cake can be assembled in one day, I find that the process is (only) enjoyable if spread over two or three separate days.

Make the meringue mushrooms on the first day.

On the second day, prepare the white chocolate mousse followed by the chocolate sheet (recipe below). Fill the cake with mousse and roll using the parchment. Refrigerate the roll overnight wrapped in parchment and a kitchen towel.

On the morning of the third day, make the chocolate ganache. When the ganache is frosting-like in consistency, assemble the cake. The frosted cake can chill in the fridge, but it tastes best if it has been set out for a couple hours so the ganache is at room temperature.

The sheet cake is based on Rose L. Beranbaum's Cocoa Soufflé Roll. Instead of separating the egg whites and yolks, as with a soufflé, I whipped the whole eggs and sugar, like a génoise. This method will result in a more deflated final mixture, so the amount of eggs was increased slightly to compensate.

Chocolate soufflé sheet
adapted from Rose L. Beranbaum's The Cake Bible

28 grams Dutch-process cocoa
1/4 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla
100 grams sugar
4 large eggs
a pinch cream of tartar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 400 °F. Line a 10" x 15" baking sheet with parchment and coat evenly with nonstick spray.

Mix the first three ingredients together in a measuring cup. Leave uncovered and set aside.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together in the bowl of a stand-mixer. Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water (the water should not touch the bowl). Continue whisking for three minutes, or until the egg mixture is hot to touch. Add the cream of tartar Quickly transfer the bowl onto the stand-mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and immediately whisk at medium speed for eight minutes. The eggs will thicken, and will fall from the whisk in voluminous ribbons.

Pour a quarter of the mixture into a bowl; into this smaller portion, whisk the cocoa mixture and melted butter until smooth.

Fold the cocoa/egg/butter mixture into the larger portion of whipped eggs. The mixture may appear soupy - not to worry.

Bake for 10 minutes. Cool in the pan. Loosen edges with a thin spatula and invert onto a rack lined with parchment. The sheet will be about an inch thick out of the oven and will fall to about half an inch, the perfect thickness for rolling.

Sugared rosemary provides a punch of colour.

For an even more festive look, I intend to plate slices of this bûche with some preserved cherries. No, no, never Maraschino. Instead, I will be using these wonderful non-alcoholic preserves from Mission Hill:

Happy New Year to everyone!

Notes:

Patrick's pasta utilises ingredients from Granville Island Public Market, and it's gonna be great. Oyama sausages are always wonderful and the selections are forever varied - a reflection of the family business' deference to the seasonality of good food.

I am discovering that ganache icing is not for the impatient (that is, not terribly suited for me). Knowing that it takes a while for the proper consistency to be reached, I tried to rush the ganache by using an ice bath, which made it granular. I was able to salvage it with a quick 15-second zap in the microwave. If you are not keen on waiting, consider the chocolate Swiss meringue icing I used last year. It turns out lighter than ganache but it is just as delightful.

Initially, I wanted to have a white bûche de Noël. I was going to make an almond génoise filled with lemon curd and iced with meringue which I was going to finish by torching. The génoise recipe I used, it turned out was perfect for a tort but not so much for a rolled sheet. It cracked severely as I tried to roll it. That batch is now in the freezer waiting for some flash of creativity. Failing that, it might just get eaten as is - one good thing about baking mishaps is that few things really go to waste. Patrick has already taken some of it, stuffed it into a ramekin, piled more curd on it and slathered it with left-over white chocolate mousse.

No, no, never Maraschino. Why ruin it with those ubiquitous supermarket mummified cherries? Buy the sweet Rainier cherries when they are in season during the summer and preserve them, or try Edible British Columbia, purveyors of artisanal food products from all over BC.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T15:09:00.003-08:00

The bûche de Noël components are finally finished.

This time 'round, I used a sheet of chocolate soufflé - a departure from the génoise rolls of the past couple years - and it is luscious! I will be putting it together on Boxing Day (December 26th), so check back later.

Here is a solitary meringue mushroom, the first of many to sprout on the bûche.

Thanks to all those who have stopped by this humble blog through out the past year.

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Lemon curd cake for friends

2008-12-20T14:08:00.009-08:00

This is the view from my window:

On a day like today, I really miss sunnier times such as earlier in April when I made the French lemon tart pictured below.

Fortunately, I had the perfect excuse to make a batch of lemon curd for a gathering with friends last night.

I contemplated making the tart again, but since the occasion was also a bon voyage of sorts, I decided a cake would be more appropriate.

I had made this cake a couple times before, and I'd have to say it is my favourite.

The layers - Rose Levy Beranbaum's White Chocolate Whisper Cake - is ethereal and is the kind that can be enjoyed simply on its own. Sweet notes of vanilla from the white chocolate is suitably complemented by the tart lemon curd.

My evening with friends turned out wonderfully - great food and fun conversations were had near a cozy fireplace.

Notes

The recipe for White Chocolate Whisper Cake is in Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible. It seems to be a well-loved recipe since a Google search yields many sites that feature it.

Martha has the classic proportions of lemon curd, and her recipe is my stand-by.

When cooking lemon curd, make sure to use a non-reactive pan (i.e., not metal) to avoid an off taste.

The trick is getting the curd to reach that thick consistency without having the eggs scramble. Those who are very careful will resort to a bain-marie, which stretches a five-minute endeavour to half an hour.

My suggestion is to place your pan directly on a stove set to low:

Have a silicone or rubber spatula. Slowly but continuously stir the egg/lemon juice/sugar mixture, making sure that the spatula is scraping the bottom and sides of the pan. Start at a low setting and when the mixture starts getting thick begin to scrape/stir more aggressively.

If stirring is too quick at the outset, the mixture loses heat and it will take longer to cook; if stirring is not quick enough towards the end, the bottom might begin to scorch.

There are several ways to determine if you have reached your endpoint. The safest and easiest way is to use an instant-read thermometer. When it registers 160 F, the curd is ready. For the more intrepid, the end point is when a spatula draws a line into the curd when the bottom of the pan is scraped.

Have a wonderful Holiday, everyone.

Up next: my annual bûche de Noël and meringue mushrooms. Check out last year's rendition.

This baker's almost back

2008-12-08T16:41:00.009-08:00

I have a couple more exam weeks to go - the first one this Wednesday - but I refuse to carry on being totally consumed by course work so today, I decided to have a Provençal-themed dinner to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

On the menu tonight

Seared beef tenderloin with demi-glace and peppercorn jus
Oven roasted tomatoes with herbes de Provence
Carrots

And for dessert

Clafoutis with white chocolate and wild blueberries

The entire menu is from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia. Like Vij's: Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine, this is a collection from Vancouver restaurateurs and it has all our local critics raving.

I remember very well how incredible the clafoutis at Provence Marinaside and was delighted to see that the recipe has been published. Writes the couple: "We once took it off the menu but soon customers begged us to bring it back!" Yes, I was one of those customers. I remember telling the waiter very pointedly that it was a mistake that they had taken it off the menu. Actually, I told more than one waiter that since I repeatedly asked for this dessert (I used to live right above their restaurant so I was a regular).

I immediately tried the recipe as written but found that an 8-inch tart pan wasn't quite enough to hold the rich clafoutis batter. Also, a tart crust that was not blind-baked was used and I was displeased with the slight taste of raw flour.

Remembering how glorious the dessert could be, I decided to tweak the recipe, and it follows below.

Clafoutis with white chocolate and wild blueberries
adapted from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia

For the pastry shell: Use Dorie Greenspan's sweet tart dough. Very lightly press the crumbly dough onto and up the sides of a deep 8" ceramic pie dish. Freeze for at least half an hour. Line with foil, and blind bake with pie weights for 20 minutes at 375 F. Remove the foil and weights and let the crust cool to room temperature.

For the filling: Chop 9 ounces white chocolate and set aside. Whip until barely stiff 1 cup heavy cream, then set aside in the refrigerator. Cream 2/3 cup of sugar and 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, then slowly add one egg. If the mixture curdles, whip at a higher speed. The mixture should be homogenous and airy. Fold in 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (spoon lightly into cup then sweep). Fold whipped cream into the batter in three portions. You can be fairly heavy-handed with the first third because the batter is quite stiff, but be gentler with folding the last two thirds. Scatter the chopped white chocolate onto the crust. Dollop and spread one third of the batter. Press in 1 1/2 cups wild blueberries. Dollop and spread the last two thirds batter, leaving a free one-inch margin all around (the batter will spread as it bakes).

Bake at 350 F for 50 to 65 minutes, or until the clafoutis is puffed, golden and still slightly jiggly at the centre two inches. This will set some more with the residual heat of the ceramic dish. Cool to room temperature. Run a thin spatula around the rim of the clafoutis; this will make serving easier and more neat. Chill in the refrigerator for two hours or serve at room temperature.

Wish me well for my exams and see you in a couple weeks.

See you all in December

2008-10-26T08:49:00.005-07:00

How time flies!

I recall writing my last entry in August. Shortly after, I received this:

and everything else between then and now is a great big blur.

The past year was one of creation, learning and decadence. Take the Bostini Cream Pie below that weighs in at more than a thousand calories a serving.

If it weren't for this blog, I probably would never have discovered bostock unless I suddenly found myself with spare money, time and a ticket to France. Bostock is basically stale brioche slathered with frangipane and encrusted with sliced almonds that is then toasted. My next blog entry will delve into brioche.

Yes, there will be more blog entries, but I will defer until December. Right now, there is a pile of work and studying ahead of me. Speaking of work - I find it hard to use the word especially since I am so enthused at all that I am doing. My professors are all extremely passionate about teaching, and everything is just so interesting. Excuse me for gushing.

Anyhow, please be back in December. There will be brioche. There will be another bûche de Noël (please see my bûches from the last two Christmases). Thank you for everyone who still keeps dropping by this little blog and for all your emails asking when I will write again.

TWD Rewind: French Brownies

2008-08-12T00:00:00.002-07:00

This week on Tuesdays with Dorie, baking bloggers will make Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream, a delectable treat chosen by Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiousity. Options were given to make ice cream with or without a machine, or to select a past recipe.

As much as I love ice cream, the prospect of running to the freezer to stir frozen custard every twenty or so minutes as I do not own an ice cream machine and will not be purchasing one anytime soon made me turn to Ms Greenspan's French Chocolate Brownies instead.

How could something so American be French? Well, the story goes that Ms Greenspan was making fondant for dessert. She had the flash of inspiration to throw in some flambeed raisins to the batter, and came up with something that her French guests happily mistook for brownies.

This is my second sojourn in fondant cakes. The first incarnation on this blog appeared last April's fools as the gooey chocolate lava cake also called a fondant au chocolat:

Looking at the fondant au chocolat above, you can just imagine how intensely creamy this would be when baked as a brownie.

The crisp exterior crackles when cut and reveals an exquisitely fudgy centre:

As for the flambeed raisins and nuts? I skipped them. I'm a bit of a brownie purist and think that large chunks of nuts, cream cheese, marshmallows and other frills are excessive to the point of being gaudy. Rather than extending my ingredients list, I would rather upgrade quality. Use Callebaut chocolate, please, and leave the ubiquitous Baker's brand to gather dust on grocery shelves..

Notes:

Thanks, Dolores, for hosting this week's event. Please excuse that I am choosing a past recipe.

Hardcore brownie traditionalists will specify unsweetened chocolate only - a stipulation that I find results in a one-dimensional taste and far too limiting.

A thin, crackly crust can be achieved by not beating the eggs.

Stir the brownie batter as little as possible for a fudgy result.

Brownies are always better slightly underbaked. Take it out when there a tester inserted into the centre pulls out with lots of moist crumbs. If it pulls out with batter on it, then a little more baking is needed.

The higher the cocoa percentage, the quicker the brownie will bake.

Brownie failed to set? Don't worry - you are on your way to the fudgiest bars ever. Cool the pan to room temperature, cover with foil or Saran, then pop in the fridge for a few hours to overnight.

Some other exquisite brownie recipes: Nick Malgieri's Supernatural Brownies, Alice Medrich's New Classic Brownies, Dorie Greenspan's French Chocolate Brownies, and my first love, Martha's Fudgy Chocolate Brownies.

This blog's a year old

2008-08-07T12:16:00.018-07:00

I'm celebrating that this blog is now a year old. To celebrate, I made a cake for a co-worker:

I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's Perfect All American Chocolate Cake and paired it with an adaptation of Martha Stewart's Rich Dark Chocolate Frosting. The frosting is a departure from my usual Swiss meringue buttercream, which never yields a dark shade of brown. No eggs used in this one, just an inordinate amount of chocolate:

Three sticks butter, teaspoon salt and quarter-cup confectioners' sugar were creamed until fluffy with a Kitchen Aid mixer. A pound of melted and room-temperature cooled dark was slowly stirred into the creamed butter. Flavour was intensified by slowly adding in a cooled mix of six tablespoons of Dutched cocoa dissolved in six tablespoons of hot espresso.

I found this frosting to be slightly tricky so I jotted down some notes below.

Another departure from my usual style, I did not tort this cake into four layers. RLB's cake (seen above wrapped airtight in Ziplock, where they were frozen and thawed) is incredibly good so I wanted my tasters to have more of it in proportion to the frosting and filling for every bite.

I fiddled a bit with the frosting, not sure if I wanted it to come down in thick swags along the sides of the cake or to go with my favoured spatula swirl. I went with the first option, but after fiddling too much, I knew that I was no longer in a state that's Zen enough to make relaxed swoops of frosting. Spiral swirls it is, I decided.

Notes:

The key to the frosting is getting it to the right consistency. Pull some frosting onto the inner sides of the bowl in which it is being mixed. If the frosting holds up and doesn't drip down, it is ready to use. When done correctly, this frosting spreads, swoops and swags like a dream.

Starting with butter that's soft but cold and making sure that the melted chocolate and dissolved cocoa mixture are on the cooler side of room temperature helps in getting it right the first time.

If you end up with a frosting that's too liquid and it drips when you test it agains the inner sides of the mixing bowl, pop the frosting in the fridge. Stir and scrape the sides of the container every 20 minutes.

Now, if you've overshot and the frosting has become too solid, try vigorously stirring the frosting with a spatula, pressing the frosting agains the side of the bowl. If it's still solid, turn your stove on and lightly wave the bowl a foot above the flames (or heated elements). When a bit melts at the sides, take the bowl away from the heat and stir again.

The All American Chocolate Cake is fragile when mixed according to RLB's instructions - or at least, in all my attempts. Instead, I mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ingredients in another. To the dry ingredients, I mix on low cut pieces of butter until sandy and well blended. I add the wet ingredients in three parts, mixing on medium-high for two minutes and scraping in between. Thanks to Nick Malgieri for this technique.

Gearing down for September when I will be attending UBC medical school, I will maintain this blog with bi-monthly posts. I find baking and blogging calming so I don't see any reason to say goodbye just yet. Thanks to all of you who have been browsing on to my humble blog and please keep coming back.

I can tell I'm excited about September because I seem to be inclined to paste images of the rod of Asclepius these days.

Next week: Tuesdays with Dorie.

French Macaron

2008-06-30T15:31:00.014-07:00

There are few pâtisseries in Vancouver and I walk by one everyday when coming home from work. La Baguette et L'Echalote Bakery is right on Granville Island and I have dropped by on numerous occasions to browse and sample. I had my first French macaron at La Baguette, and I would have been content to just purchase this sweet treat if it were not for the blatant price-gouging. Each macaron sells for CAN$3.25!

Indignant at having to pay so much, I was determined to make my own. How hard could it be. After all, I only need egg whites, confectioner's sugar and almonds.

Well, nothing has caused me more baking consternation. After seven batches - no less - I finally produced macarons with the requisite smooth, flat top and frilly feet. Eat your heart out, La Baguette:

I immediately turned to Martha's Baking Handbook, which is the only cookbook I own that has a macaron recipe. Odd enough, the first tray of this first attempt was somewhat successful - it had a smooth top and feet, albeit thin ones - but the second tray from the same batch all cracked and had no feet at all.

Numerous blogs advise that folding is everything, that consistency is key so I though the second batch must have been overworked somehow. I realised at this point that there is a little more artistry to these goodies than meets the eye. So, I launched another attempt, this time folding ever so slightly less than the first time. Now, both batches cracked, though my discs had higher feet.

Thinking that the recipe was suspect, I foraged around using Google and found that most recipes actually hew to same proportion of ingredients though baking times and temperatures varied widely. Several batches ensued - low temp, high temp, oven door ajar, convection bake, regular bake, folded more, folded less. All with patchy results. By my sixth attempt, I was disheartened to note that my very first attempt actually had the best result and every succeeding effort had progressively worse ends.

Then, I Googled "foolproof macarons" and stumbled on Jef of My Food Geek. His macaron used an Italian meringue instead of the French meringue that I've been using. I followed his recipe and eventually produced two perfect trays:

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. My first attempt at Jef's recipe actually still produced the all too familiar cracked discs of meringue. It was on the second attempt that I succeeded:

After my first go at Jef's method, I shook a clenched fist up at the summer skies through my kitchen window and loudly threatened that I will never touch macarons ever again.

After I regained my cool, I surveyed what ingredients I had left. After all these attempts, I was running low. There were no more eggs, but I had a box of pasteurized egg whites (for a now long-forgotten high-protein, low-carbohydrate regimen); I had no ground almonds, but had a tub of whole raw almonds.

I pulsed the ground almonds into a paste along with confectioners sugar and some egg whites then proceeded to make the Italian meringue. My heart sank when the meringue from the boxed egg whites would not form very stiff peaks and I had to be content with medium-stiff peaks. I folded the almond paste and meringue together, piped discs (a task that I have become quite good at after all these attempts) which were baked at 280°F on a convection setting.

Suddenly, all was well!

Luckily, I still had some leftover Swiss meringue buttercream in the freezer. After a two-minute stint in the microwave on 10% power, all I needed to do was stir the filling to a soft, smooth consistency. Here are some lemon buttercream filled macarons:

Notes:

I am taking a break from Tuesdays with Dorie and will be slowing down a little for the month of July. Please watch out for my posts on July 15th and 30th. In August, I plan to return to weekly blogging.

Here in summary are my twists to Jef's foolproof recipe: use of pasteurised boxed egg whites, whole raw almonds, a medium-stiff Italian meringue with peaks that droop lightly, folding only until the mixture is homogenous, baking at 280°F on a convection setting for 18 minutes. Also, I kept the spacing tight (probably about 1 cm space in between discs). If I were more calmly composed and had I been predisposed to another litany of attempts, I wouldn't have changed so many variables all at once so I would actually learn what I did right. Maybe the effect of all these changes were synergistic.

Forget Silpat, forget parchment. Go with those thicker, non-stick aluminum foil. Throughout all my trials, these were the only ones that gave perfect release. Be sure to let the meringue discs cool for about five minutes on the baking sheet. Ease them off by gently prodding on the reverse side of the foil.

To get accurate discs, lightly press a cookie cutter (about 4.5 cm diameter) on the aluminum foil. Stagger the discs by piping alternating rows of four and three discs, spacing them by about 1 cm. When you pipe the meringue, know that they will have a slight spread, so don't fill the entire marked out circles. It'll take a couple tries to get this right.

To flatten the tiny peaks, rap the baking sheet on a flat surface; I like to drop the sheets flat on the floor from about a foot height. This will spread the discs a bit more so don't fill the entire marked out circles on the sheet.

I made about 20 macaron sandwiches. The cost of all the ingredients used for all of my attempts is still lower than if I had bought the same number of macarons from La Baguette et L'Echalote. Patrick, ever the pragmatic one, reminds me that I am not including my hours and capital to this pricing, but I am convinced that the thrill of triumph definitely tips the cost analysis to my favour. Besides, mine tastes better.

While macarons are traditionally and artificially coloured to match the filling, I prefer to show the speckles of almond skin on the ivory meringue discs and allow the filling to provide the sole punch of colour.

La Palette's strawberry tart

2008-06-10T00:01:00.001-07:00

A Tuesdays with Dorie event

Thanks to Marie of A Year in Oak Cottage for choosing an immensely doable recipe this week. Inspired by a La Palette Cafe in Paris, this tart has few components - for my version an almond pâte sucrée crust, some strawberry jam from Summerland, British Columiba, and fresh strawberries from the Okanagan Valley. Put together at the last minute, the finished tart is such a looker:

I have yet to make it to Paris and the recipe for this week's TWD intrigues me. A New York Times review of La Payette piques my interest even more. After a few Google searches, I came upon Peter Hilton's website where he writes about his many travels. Mr. Hilton names La Palette as one of his favourite restaurants and the photo below was taken by him (released under a Creative Commons License). Click on the photo below to enlarge.

To start, I made a pâte sucrée crust with ground almonds added. Done correctly, this will look like a loose sandy-pebbly mixture that comes together with slight pressure. I patted this onto an eight-inch tart pan.

I was happy to have Summerland Sweets strawbery jam, which in my opinion is the best available in Vancouver. Edible BC sells it at Granville Island and also via their online store. A good amount of this ruby-red jam was heated slightly over the stove then poured onto the still-warm crust.

Washed, trimmed and cut strawberries were then heaped generously over the cut shell. Ms Greenspan likes to serve this with crème fraîche, just the way they do at La Palette.

Notes:

The recipe was shared by Ms Greenspan on Serious Eats. Click here.

Pâte sucrée is basically a sugar cookie. Don't expect flaky pastry, think shortbread. The dough is very forgiving, easy to pat onto a pan or rolled for a more refined looking tart. Scraps can be re-rolled and re-used or can be dipped in sanding sugar to make cookies.

Here is a video showing how to press crumbly dough onto a tart pan.

The shell is best when baked to a deep golden brown. When you are nearing that perfect dark shade, stay close to the oven. The time it takes to go from perfect to burnt is very short.

Sides are browning faster than the rest of the shell? Fashion a shield with foil or take a shiny aluminum tart pan one size larger than the one being used (without its bottom) and invert it over the baking shell.

Please visit Tuesdays with Dorie blogs. Click on "TWD-all" on the upper left to expand the list of TWD bakers, then click on anyone to view.

Celebrate good times

2008-05-29T21:07:00.011-07:00

I'm slowly catching up with all the comments left on my previous posts, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for all the kind words. Truly, the blogosphere is a community!

First, I would like to thank The Daring Bakers for the friendship and mentorship they have thrown my way. It is with sadness that I am leaving DB. This year started off busy and I can only see it getting busier. I will always be a fan and reader of many DB blogs. For all my Daring Bakers challenges click here.

A second thanks goes to the wonderful folks at Tuesdays with Dorie. I am thrilled to have been one of the pick of the weeks for my Florida Pie. I will not be leaving TWD anytime soon. After all, I still need to bake.

Here's to all my DB and TWD friends:

The two chocolate cakes use the Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible. Using Ms Beranbaum's technique inhibits gluten strands from forming, resulting in an ethereal if a bit fragile texture. With the delicateness of Ms Beranbaum's cakes, spreading a stiff frosting on to the surface can sometimes cause it to tear. Also, because I often tort my cakes to have a four layers, I want my cakes to be slightly more sturdy. To this end, I increase my mixing times.

Ms Beranbaum usually mixes the first bit of liquid with the dry ingredients and butter for a minute and a half followed by three additions of the remaining liquid for 20 seconds each. I instead mix the first stage for a full two minutes followed by three one minute mixings. I hit upon the idea after reading Nick Malgieri's Perfect Cakes where he uses two minute intervals. His cakes are wonderfully sturdy but I did miss the texture of Ms Beranbaum's cakes.

My mixing times are a good compromise: the cake is slightly more dense, just as velvety, and sturdy enough for torting and icing with stiff icing. When I pull them out of the oven, the cakes are usually domed if don't use wet cake strips but they flatten perfectly on cooling.

Once again, I used my favourite Swiss meringue buttercream (SMBC). Please refer to my discussion on SMBC for details. There is something comforting in seeing the butter and Swiss meringue curdle and then slowly become silky as the mixer beats on. Room temperature melted bittersweet chocolate is folded into the buttercream, resulting in a luxurious frosting. (Click on the picture to enlarge).

Notes:

According to Nick Malgieri, a two-stage mixing method is appropriate when the weight of sugar is equal to or greater than the weight of flour. I have yet to run into a recipe that runs contrary to this.

Unbleached flours do not work with two-stage mixing. However, Kate of A Merrier World has found that microwaving unbleached flours can make them behave as though they were bleached.

Cool room temperature butter and liquid ingredients are a must when employing this method.

To proceed, whisk all dry ingrdients in the Kitchen Aid bowl. Then whisk all the liquids in another bowl. Add the butter, cut in tablespoon pieces, to the dry ingredients then mix on low speed for one minute until the mixture looks coarse and sandy. Add half the liquid ingredients then mix on speed #4 for two minutes. Then, add the remaining liquids in three portions, scraping then mixing on speed #4 for one minute after each addition.

Cake strips are good to use. However, you don't need to buy them. Cut an old towel into strips, soak in water, then wrap in aluminum foil. Pin to the sides of the pan.

Think of your own personal Zen when icing cakes. Fussing with buttercream tends to create a less pretty cake.

Pecan honey sticky buns

2008-05-27T00:00:00.001-07:00

A Tuesdays with Dorie event

First of all thanks to Madam Chow of Madam Chow's Kitchen for choosing this delectable treat for TWD:

While everyone might declare their own sticky bun recipe as the best, Ms Greenspan's uses a rich brioche dough so hers is just slightly more special. Incidentally, this is the same brioche dough that was used for Brioche Raisin Snails, my first TWD event. The picture below shows the base dough, a brioche Nanterre below it and the snails on the right. (Click on the image to enlarge).

A benefit of being a TWD member is the opportunity to build on techniques learned from previous events. For instance, after learning that a filled roll of dough is impossible to cut neatly if it is warm, I made sure this time around to chill my raisin and cinnamon sugar filled brioche log prior to cutting it. Also, recalling as well how unflavoured dental floss worked well for this task, I employed it again.

I froze most of the sticky buns and placed eight pieces in an 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pan that was filled with honey caramel and pecans. After a couple hours rest, these were touching each other and starting to surge up. These turned a deep golden brown colour in the oven with the hot caramel bubbling up the crevices between each stick bun. Click on the image below to enlarge.

Sticky buns need to be unmolded right after being taken out of the oven.

This is one of those moments that is truly rewarding to a home baker: to be the first to see how these golden rows of filled brioche are crowned with praline and enrobed in rich honey caramel. Soon its aroma - cinnamon, earthy and floral notes - wafts and entices.

At the same time, this is also one of the most trying moments for a home baker. The buns are burning hot and a steely will is required to wait for these to cool.

I love these sticky buns. The size is modest - probably about a 2-inch square - not gargantuan as are most store-bought varieties. What perfect excuse to reach for just one more piece. Honey provides far more complexity than just the one-note sweetness of sucrose. The crunchy sides and pecan praline crusted top contrast very nicely with the soft brioche, which was neither dense nor overly bready. All at once, this gooey treat is warm and spicy, buttery and sweet.

Notes:

When baking with raisins, it is always best to use a plump batch. Plumping a dried out bunch is easy - steep in hot water for five to ten minutes, then drain well. This has the added benefit of leaching off excess sugar, allowing more of the raisin's flavours to come through.

Cutting with dental floss. Slip a piece of floss under the filled brioche log, then make an overhand knot. As you pull the floss with a quick, smooth and strong manner, the log will be cut very neatly.

Here's a secret: because of all the sugar and spice involved in sticky buns, you can take shortcuts with the brioche dough. Try this quick and easy brioche recipe by Nick Malgieri. I'm sure Ms Greenspan wouldn't mind that I'm endorsing her good friend. Now, of course, if a brioche loaf is desired, nothing beats the multiple, long slow rises in developing aroma and flavour.

Ecstatic!

2008-05-15T11:20:00.007-07:00

You guys have been such great support to me.

I want to share some really good news: I was accepted to the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine. I will be a medical student this September.

There is no cake to show with this post, but there will be later... as soon as my nerves settle and I am able to measure flour and other ingredients accurately.

My take on Florida pie

2008-05-13T01:00:00.004-07:00

a Tuesdays with Dorie event

First of all, many thanks to Dianne of Dianne's Dishes for selecting Florida pie as this week's Tuesday with Dorie treat. The recipe can be found posted on Dianne's blog. I used three elements of the recipe - hot meringue, key lime filling, and the fabulous coconut cream - to come up with something just a bit more dressed up.

Unaware of the salient characteristics of good key lime pies, I was surprised to learn that true key lime fillings are yellow in colour, not green. Green filling is made with artificial colouring, and understandably this is frowned up by aficionados of this dessert.

Key limes are smaller, more tart than regular limes, and give yellow juice. These were indigenous to Malaysia and were transplanted by the Spanish to the Florida Keys during the 1500s. In the 1920s a hurricane wiped out key lime orchards. They were subsequently replaced with the easier to cultivate and harvest Persian limes, although key limes persisted in people's backyards. Most key limes on the market nowadays come from Central America.

The components of this pie reflect its history. The recipe preceded the Overseas Highway by over a century so fresh milk was unavailable. Since cows were few in the keys, cooks had to use condensed milk. It also has a quaint heritage, like many American desserts: a ship salvager named William Curry, who is a self-made millionaire and was also known as rich Bill, had a cook named Aunt Sally who created or perfected this recipe in the late 1800s.

To make the Florida pie hew closer to my taste, I substituted ground almonds for the graham cracker crust. In retrospect, I probably should have toasted the almonds to get a more deeply golden colour.

I loved the coconut cream and to me it is the best part of this dessert, so I was a bit generous with this layer. However, I omitted shredded coconut from the hot meringue (Ms Greenspan added this for symmetry of layers).

It's amazing how the tartness of the key limes was effectively counterbalanced by the normally cloying sweetness of condensed milk. The filling has just the right balance of citrus tang. The coconut cream makes this even more luscious and rich. Then, there's meringue for levity and an almond crust for a bit of crunch.

A great make-ahead, this dessert is dinner-party gorgeous when served my way and just downright homey as a true pie with a graham cracker crust. Either way, this is one truly refreshing dessert.

Notes:

These notes were updated May 29th for clarity.

Because I wanted this served in a glass, I had to come up with a way to have the egg yolks in the filling reach a pasteurization temperature without baking. I took a chance on placing the egg yolks and half the condensed milk over a low flame and whisked gently but constantly until I reached 160°F. By this time, the filling was really thick. Then, I proceeded to add the rest of the condensed milk, followed by lime juice added in dribbles as my hand mixer was set to low.

To get a smooth coconut cream, I used a food processor to grind the sweetened shredded coconut. On medium-low heat, my cream reduced in 15 minutes after it started to boil.

When working with meringues, make sure utensils are scrupulously clean and that there is no trace of yolk in the separated whites. Any bit of oil or fat will break the surface tension required in forming meringue, and the result is a limp fluff that will not stiffen no matter how long you beat it.

Because a cooked meringue is used in this recipe, this will be less likely to weep when placed in the refrigerator. Baking 911 has great tips on this subject.

Incidentally, I love cooked meringues. So much so that I wrote an entire paean to it.

Please head on to Tuesdays with Dorie for everyone's Florida pies.

Lemon bundt cake

2008-04-30T20:16:00.024-07:00

Before anything else, I would like to thank everyone who wrote such kind words on my previous post. My heart is very much warmed.

In the 1950s H. David Dalquist created an aluminum baking pan that was based on the cast-iron kugelhopf molds of Eastern Europe. The baking pan was relatively unknown and sales were slow until the 1960s when a slew of Pillsbury contests that eventually spawned bundt cake mixes, pushed it out of obscurity. Fast-forward to the 1980s and 1990s, the bundt was seen as quaint and eerie, somewhat reminiscent of Stepford Wives. The bundt mixes were discontinued, and the pan once again gathered dust in kitchen shelves everywhere.

However, for the last half decade the bundt has been enjoying a small renaissance of sorts, gracing magazine covers, and appearing in well-loved tomes such as the popular Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan which devoted a section to it. The new affection is well placed. bundts are generally easy, feed many and need no decorating (or maybe just a simple dusting of powdered sugar). What's not to love?

An inviting option for spring and summer - no temperature-sensitive buttercream or frosting, which can be cloying in warmer weather, is needed - bundts pair well with whatever fruit is in season. At the earliest opportunity for a picnic I will be sure to serve slices of lemon bundt with some sun-sweet fresh Okanagan berries. Incidentally, I recently served a new favourite lemon bundt as a goodbye gift to a really cool co-worker.

One of two persistent problems often come with lemon cakes: either the cake loses the bright citrus taste of the juice added in the batter, or if the lemon flavour is preserved invariably by the addition of more lemon juice, the cake becomes so tender it falls apart with the slightest nudge of a fork.

Cooks Illustrated solved these problems by creating a recipe that relies on a generous amount of lemon rind to take advantage of the natural limonene and other oils in it. I decided to tinker with this recipe even more to make the process easier and the results more consistent.

Here is my take on CI's Lemon bundt Cake (January 2006 issue).

Preheat your oven to 350 °F. Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan. Zest and juice three medium organic lemons. Mince the zest to a paste (there must be two tablespoons of this paste) and add three tablespoons of the juice to it, reserving the remaining juice for making a lemon syrup later in the recipe. Allow the mixture to stand for 10 minutes to soften the fibrous texture of the zest.

Use organic lemons to avoid unwanted chemicals in the cake. Inspect that the lemons are ripe but not soft and that there is no visible mold (which happens quickly with organic lemons because of the absence of those protective chemicals).

After 10 minutes, add 3/4 cup of low-fat buttermilk, three large eggs, one large egg yolk, one teaspoon vanilla extract, and half a teaspoon of lemon extract to the zest mixture and whisk together until fairly homogeneous. This mixture needs to be at room temperature.

Whisk all the dry ingredients - 15 ounces of all-purpose flour (I used bleached though CI specified unbleached), 14 ounces granulated sugar, one teaspoon baking powder, one-half teaspoon baking soda, and one teaspoon table salt - in a Kitchen Aid stand-mixer bowl. Add 18 tablespoons of room-temperature butter and turn KA to stir speed for one minute until the mixture looks pebbly and sandy all through out.

Add one-third of the liquid ingredients to the dry, and set KA speed to #6 for two full minutes. Stop the mixer. Add another third of the liquid, stir for a few seconds, then beat for one minute at speed # 6; repeat for the last third of the liquids. Stop the mixer and scrape the bowl and beater well. Finally, return to speed # 6 and beat to aerate for one minute. Scoop the batter into a well-greased and floured bundt.

In my oven, this baked perfectly after 57 minutes.

To make the syrup, take the remaining lemon juice and add an equal volume of sugar stir both in a measuring cup and zap it in the microwave for one minute or until it is bubbling. Keep a close eye on this process to avoid a messy clean up. Take care, this syrup will be very hot. Immediately brush the syrup all over the unmolded, warm cake. Let the cake cool for a minimum of two hours, longer is better. When completely cooled, it is ready for its dusting and close-up:

Notes:

This cake is fluffy on the first day and will be more like pound cake the next day. I prefer to serve this cake after a day's rest. If the syrup is used and the cake is well-wrapped, it can be kept at room temperature for four days.

CI's version used the traditional creaming method but I opted for the two-stage method. I found no difference in the outcome of taste and texture. The advantages of my choice are ease (less bowls to clean) and consistency of results (the success of the creaming method depends on one's skill at maintaining the emulsion of creamed butter and liquid ingredients, so results can be variable for an occasional baker).

It is important in the two-stage method that all ingredients are at room temperature (65 °F to 70 °F). The batter will not form a proper emulsion otherwise.

Temperature is important as well should you choose the creaming method. If the components are not at the same temperature, the batter will curdle (e.g., the cold eggs will cause the creamed butter to solidify and lose all the bubbles worked into it). This is not a disaster because the batter will come together on the addition of flour but the cake will not be as light or lofty as it would be if the batter remained well emulsified all through out. Invariably, the difference is discernible only to those who eat a lot of cake. (Needless to say, I cannot tell the difference).

Read this page from Baking 911. It is full of tips when working with bundt pans. Make sure to read the tip on unmolding cakes at the bottom - it works magic!

Fluted polenta and ricotta cake

2008-04-29T00:01:00.004-07:00

A Tuesdays with Dorie event

First off, thanks to Caitlin of Engineer Baker for this selection. The recipe can be viewed on her blog.

While improvisation is anathema to bakers who for the most part rely on precision, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie is a product of Ms Greenspan's wholesale and impromptu rejigging of a magazine recipe. And the outcome is perfect.

The recipe has two uncommon ingredients for cakes. Ricotta, which is the whey by-product of Romano cheese making, and polenta, the Italian name for cornmeal. Ms Greenspan was incredibly astute to have added butter thus avoiding a dry cake which the combination of ricotta and polenta would presumably produce.

In the same intrepid spirit that produced this recipe, I made some improvisations of my own. Plumped and Limoncello-flambéed raisins were substituted for figs, which I adore but Patrick loathes. Moreover, while Ms Greenspan used melted butter, I opted to use the fat in its softened state and employ the two-stage mixing method. The result is a luxurious and thick batter:

Butter coats flour to prevent gluten from forming, thus helping create a tender cake. When melted, it distributes evenly but does not form the air pockets that softened butter makes when creamed. Baked goods using melted butter tend to be more dense. I wanted a lighter cake so I leaned toward using butter as a soft solid. The two-stage mixing method also aids this aim.

April 25th is the day that Patrick and I met and this was the cake we celebrated with. It is just right for the event: understated yet special, homey and warm through and through. It has all the symbolisms of a rich relationship, what with that sweet honey, the sultry golden crumb of polenta and the longevity that the wine-steeped dried grapes portend.

When I presented this to him, his immediate reaction was, "What, where's the chocolate?!"

One bite, and there were no more doubts.

Notes:

While I usually write down all that I've learned at the end of my posts, today I would like to take a personal turn to honour another person close to my heart.

Five years ago on April 27, I lost my only sibling to leukemia. She was seventeen.

What can I say... cancer's a bitch.

I wasn't a baker when she was around, although we did try to bake a few times and produced puck-hard chocolate chip cookies, which we relished anyway.

There is not one thing that I have baked and blogged about that I had not thought of sharing with her if she were still around.

Elisa, I miss you so much.

Balance

2008-04-20T17:02:00.006-07:00

Writing an exam this week, so I'm putting blogging on the backburner until next week. Just a quick post this weekend to blab about a few things I'm excited about ~

Many have commented that my baking is not really "occasional" so this blog is a bit misnamed. Yes, I admit, I spend quite a bit of time with Ms Empire Red.

And there are muffin tops everywhere in my household...

So this weekend, we finally forked up a handsome sum for an Octane Q35 Elliptical Trainer.

A little known thing about me is I am a cardio freak.

Oh, who am I kidding.

That statement should read: I used to be a cardio freak. It's been four months since I hit the seawall after being put out commission by a couple of running injuries that has cost me more than a dozen trips to the physiotherapist. Apparently, my derrière is under-developed (a complete surprise to me, by the way) and the muscles I injured were done in by overcompensation.

Good thing this contraption has a resisted squat option, which should help. Click on the image below for a closer look.

What I like most about this elliptical trainer is its modest footprint - only 27" x 68" (to 79" when live). It is also the least expensive model that comes with not much in the way of bells and whistles, which is a good thing.

I firmly believe that the more features something has, the more features there are that will likely need servicing at some point in the future. It might not have escaped your notice that the most commonly non-functioning gadget at a gym is the contact heart rate monitor on cardio machines. So I am glad to dispense with that. I can put two fingers over my carotid for ten seconds, count, then multiply by six.

See you all on the 29th for Tuesdays with Dorie.

The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

2008-04-08T01:25:00.008-07:00

A Tuesdays with Dorie event
To complete the two-part series I started in March, I present on the left, once again, the lemon tart from Baking Illustrated, and on the right, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie project, Ms Greenspan's lengthily but aptly named treat.

Not meant to be baked, cold lemon cream is spooned into a room-temperature blind-baked tart shell, which like the tart from March is also a pâte sablée. Ms Greenspan notes that the contrast in textures - the crunch of the crust and the smoothness of cream- as well as in temperatures make for a heightened experience.

Whipped heavy cream can be added to this lemon cream but it best shines as a star by itself, even without the cookie crust. It can be particularly hard to resist taking a spoon to an entire batch. "Lemon cream dreams" is how Ms Greenspan fittingly describes this creation.

What's unique is that unsalted butter - oh, about 21 tablespoons - is incorporated into the curd after the curd is cooked instead of before which is more typical. Also, the aid of a blender is solicited for the task. The process is similar to making mayonnaise or mounting a sauce (monter au beurre), and the final product is a silky cream that maybe soupy in the beginning but firms up nicely in the refrigerator after four or more hours.

This technique allows the butter to stay in emulsion because it is being whisked vigorously as it melts. Milk solids that normally separate from the fat mostly stay as they are, creating a luxurious mouthfeel as well as creating a characteristically pale colour.

I came upon a batch of Meyer lemons at Granville Island Market that was deeply-orange, and I thought that this would be a perfect starting point to get a slightly more hued result.

Wanting to demonstrate with this blog entry the process of making this outstanding lemon cream, I dropped by the market again to see if Meyer lemons were available. Alas, the lady at South China Seas Trading Company - purveyor of all things rare here in Vancouver, BC - informed me that they received only one box of the lemons and they promptly sold out.

Perhaps on another occasion.

Notes:

Thanks to Mary from Starting from Scratch for hosting this week's event and for her great choice!
The recipe, featured on Global Gourmet, will also be available on Mary's blog. Please head on to Tuesdays with Dorie to see everybody's creations.
A discovery by Rose Levy Beranbaum lead me to play around with Ms Greenspan's recipe. I whisked in four tablespoons of soft butter into the eggs and sugar before adding the citrus juice, and true enough, the reduction in egg residue upon straining was substantial. The remaining butter was then blended in as usual, and there was no detriment to the lemon cream.
Unlike a traditional pie crust, pâte sablée can stand on its own as a sugar cookie. In fact, cookies actually descended from pâte sablée. Re-roll the scraps. It can be handled fairly vigorously without risk of toughening the dough because of all the tenderizing sugar in it. Cut out shapes for cookies, crust the top with sanding sugar and bake until light brown.
To avoid an "off" taste, make the curd using a non-reactive pan (and of course, non-reactive bowls, spoons).
The recipe for this cream is a hand-me-down from Pierre Hermé. He continues to blend the curd after all the butter is added for 10 minutes, instead of three as what Ms Greenspan directs.

Tuesday with Dorie: Gooey Chocolate Cakes

2008-04-01T07:01:00.003-07:00

Fondant au chocolat. I cannot remember when or where I first broke its crust to become acquainted with its dark centre - all flowing and molten, insistent and lusty.

It would be an absolute travesty if one's first fondant au chocolat - more familiar nowadays as a lava cake - was the type that came out of a box which demands only a short sojourn in the microwave.

The encounter would be that much poorer, that much more reduced.

Gone will be the seduction of that brown mound which begins to tease the moment it is taken out of the heat of an oven:

Lain on a bed of crème anglaise, it beckons, begging unrelentingly to be taken.

Anticipation gives way as the pristine blanket is sullied by a warm break of chocolate. Indulgence becomes pressing. And the ensuing delight is unutterable.

Notes:

Thanks to this week's host, Leigh from Lemon Tartlette, for this Tuesdays with Dorie selection.
Look at our lovely new logo created by Carrie, of Carrie & the Koehmstedts:

It can be tricky to make the cakes gooey. Since the recipe makes 6 servings, I suggest you use one to test baking times. Invariably, this will be less than the 13 minutes that is mentioned. Under-baking is key. (For my cakes, I used ramekins and the perfect baking time was about nine minutes).
The higher the cocoa percent of the chocolate you use, the faster this thing will set. I use milk chocolate to make sure I have lots of goo. This tip also works for brownies - if you want fudgier brownies, use lower percent cocoa chocolate.
Instead of scattering chocolate pieces over the batter, try piling a mound of it over the individual cups then pushing these mounds slightly in.

Perfect Party Cake

2008-03-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

After sitting out January's Lemon Meringue Pie and February's French Loaf, I am excited to participate anew in this month's Daring Bakers challenge, Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake (Baking: from My Home to Yours).

Ms Greenspan's recipe finishes with a full two-minute beating at medium speed, which defies what I expect of buttercakes made with the creaming method.

Usually, this method first entails the creation of an emulsion of butter/egg followed by the gentle incorporation of dry and wet ingredients in an alternating fashion that typically ends with the dry components. The last addition of flour is followed by a 15-second light stirring/folding, and not more. A heavy hand after all the flour is added almost always results in a tough cake, a result of the stimulation of flour gluten which gives the chewy texture desired in bread.

Despite its deviance from this norm, however, the resulting cake is melting and tender and at the same time sturdy enough for carving (often difficult with delicate white cakes). I am intrigued.

My guess is the beating creates a lot of structure in the batter which confers sturdiness, and yet there are plenty of sugar and baking powder in the recipe as well as incorporated that weakens the structure enough to give an exquisitely tender texture. Perhaps these paradoxical qualities arise from the tightrope balancing act of strengthening and weakening the gluten structure.

I wanted to achieve loft with this cake, so I decided to see what would happen if I baked half the batter in a stainless steel bowl measuring 6 inches around and 4.5 inches deep.

In my oven, this cake baked full in the bowl after about 55 minutes. The photo below shows the successful result ofding to my experiment. This party cake is about 4 inches tall before torting into layers and filling, and just a bit more after:

I am happy that we are once again using Swiss meringue buttercream - my workhorse. During last December's challenge (Bûche de Noël), many Daring Bakers expressed much consternation about curdling SMBC. Had the group made this cake before the bûche, there would have been less hand-wringing last Christmas.

Good cookbooks - such as Baking - walk novice bakers through making SMBC and point out that curdling is normal and expected. It is merely a stage in the process. When this happens, the mixer speed needs to be stepped up to re-emulsify the mixture. The result - without fail - will be a luxurious, satiny buttercream.

The next set of four photos shows the proper meringue stiffness before butter is added, then the curdled stage after the butter is incorporated, reconstitution by increased whipping, and the final outcome.

Click on the collage above for a close-up. For a bit of science and lots of blurb on Swiss meringue, I invite you to read my post, Paean to Swiss Meringue.

The cake was filled with raspberry jam that I passed through a fine sieve to strain out the seeds. Prepackaged seedless raspberry jam does not taste as good as the variety with seeds so I take this extra step. To complete this cake, I mixed some toasted shredded coconut with untoasted bits and then crusted the sides of the cake with it. The top was swirled with SMBC - a simple yet effective aesthetic do.

And the taste? Well, I have not had a bite - this cake was gifted to a friend.

(Update: My friend just left a voicemail on my cell phone saying that the cake was "ethereal" and the best she's had "in recent memory." Gosh, them arty words flatter me. I knew Ms Greenspan will not let me down.)

Notes:

First of all, a special thanks to this month's host, Morven from Food Art and Random Thoughts. The complete recipe for Perfect Party Cake is posted on her site.
The success of a buttercake made via the creaming method relies on the formation of a butter/egg emulsion that is able to hold the many air bubbles that form when sugar is beaten into butter (usually as a first step, before the addition of eggs). These bubbles expand with the heat of the oven and give the cake loft.
Creaming technique (as well as spent leaveners) is suspect when one's cake does not rise.
It is probably worthwhile to experiment with another blending method for making this cake. I suggest the two-stage method, an industrial technique popularised for home use by Rose Levy Beranbaum in The Cake Bible and can be used for cakes with a high-ratio formula, which Ms Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake follows. Nick Malgieri, from whom Ms Greenspan inherited this recipe, assures the reader in his Perfect Cakes that the two-stage method can be followed for high-ratio cakes.
To refine one's creaming technique, I recommend Flo Braker's The Simple Art of Perfect Baking. Her method is so fastidious, the resulting butter/egg emulsion looks like billowy mayonnaise.
Baking 911 offers an exhaustive list of all that can make a cake go wrong.

Tuesdays with Dorie

2008-03-18T00:00:00.023-07:00

Baking: From My Home to Yours (2006), the latest outing by prolific and multi-awarded cookbook writer Dorie Greenspan, is easily her most accessible and familiar tome. She veers away from her status quo of stylized Parisian pastries and hews closer to America. It is a personal favourite and I knew that it was only a matter of time before Ms Greenspan - or her cookbook - would have its fan club.

This now exists as Tuesdays with Dorie, a group founded by Laurie of Quirky Cupcake with of 80+ bloggers (and growing) from all over the world devoted to trying every single recipe in Baking. As a debut entry to this group, I present my rendition of Ms Greenspan's Brioche Raisin Snails:

This treat requires an investment of time. There are three components to make: plumped and flambéed raisins, pastry cream, and brioche dough that needs an overnight rest in the refrigerator. The quantities of each component are more than ample, however, as only half recipes are needed.

An intermediate skill in baking and pastry-making comes in handy for this project. The pastry cream is the easiest component, and there are subtleties that need to be recognized in flambéing and especially in turning out brioche (see "Notes" section below). These do not take kindly to short cuts - I know this first hand. My first batch, made in a hurry, used brioche dough that had not adequately rested. They were leaden in weight and, well, unpalatable. It is good that I had dough and pastry cream to spare for a second iteration. The first and next pictures are the results of this recursion.

I rarely return to any yeasted recipes and I initially thought that this one would not be an exception. Ms Greenspan calls for a trinity of yeast-heat-patience; I have plenty of the first two but not quite enough of the last virtue. Or, more accurately, I am always pressed for time so the demands of multiple slow-rises are hard to accommodate.

However, I was so intrigued by brioche doughs that I just had to make another batch. The results of this third rendition - even more improved - are shown over the next few photos.

Consulting several cookbooks, I found considerable variation in brioche recipes. A Google searchyielded even more fascinating and promising collection: a master recipe from Paula Wolfert, modified considerably by Nick Malgieri who created a quick and easy version, and updated by Rose Levy Beranbaum (see her basic brioche).

Ms Greenspan's brioche, made with a cup and a half of butter, tastes luxurious and is worth every calorie. Admittedly, this does not hold at bay the guilt that wells up inside me as I take a bite into these pastries and wonder if those three sticks of butter will somehow find their way onto my waist.

These snails are delectable for sure - the brioche is buttery and the pastry cream luxurious. The biggest surprise comes from the flambéing raisins. Ms Greenspan is spot on when she says this little fillip adds great flavour.

I remain an ardent fan of Baking: From my Home to Yours and invite you to view my other Dorie Greenspan posts: Devil's Food White-Out Chocolate Cake, Dressy Chocolate Loaf, and Best Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Notes:

Special thanks to Jaime of Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats for suggesting this wonderful Dorie Greenspan appreciation group blog.

More love for Ms Greenspan can be read over at Weekend Cookbook Challenge.

The full recipe for these Brioche Raisin Snails can be found on pages 56 to 57 of Baking, which is available through Amazon, or try checking out the hostess' site (Thanks, Peabody!) where a version of the recipe is posted. Peabody's blog is also a sight to see - be prepared to be amazed.

Pastry cream. Don't sweat this. Two key things: temper the egg yolks slowly, and whisk continuously through the entire process. To get rid of the cornstarch taste, be sure to cook the mixture for a further two minutes after it has thickened and boiled - you should be whisking quite vigorously at this point.

Flambéed raisins. It is worth the effort. Your raisins will not flambé unless they are hot. Caution: never add liquor to a pan on a burner. Take the pan off the burner, add the liquor, then return to the burner (keeping your hands and face away from the pan contents. the pan must be under an burner hood for the next step. Use a long match to light the raisin and liquor. Lastly, the liquor needs to burn off, stir with a long spoon if you wish, but know this step takes a while.

Brioche. I will defer to Ms Greenspan's instructions as written. Rest the dough at least 10 hours in the fridge (according to Cooks Illustrated). A dental floss can make cutting the filled and rolled dough easier. Slip a good length under the rolled dough then make an overhand knot over the dough. When the knot is made it will have cut through the dough neatly.

Please browse on to Tuesdays with Dorie and see everyone's beautiful works.

Two lemon tarts, part 1

2008-03-15T14:12:00.012-07:00

I was really looking forward to making a lemon meringue pie for the January Daring Bakers Challenge which was hosted by Jen, a fellow Canadian Baker. However, life took over my leisure time and I was not able to participate. Then last week an opportunity came to make two lemon tarts, so I will be blogging about two different tarts this week and next.

Up first is the Classic Lemon Tart from Baking Illustrated. The recipe is also available in the Holiday 2007 Cook's Illustrated and is featured over at Leite's Culinaria where the filling recipe can be downloaded.

The January DB challenge had a cornstarch-assisted filling, which I usually avoid. I wanted to use lemon curd instead, which meant I would not be making a pie. A deep dish lemon curd pie would be strange and a tart would be more appropriate.

A proper tart is thin, maybe an inch tall at the most, and it is at the same time homey and chic. Its shell, a pre-baked pâte sablée, must be fit to share the stage with a modest amount of filling:

"Curd" is not quite the correct term for lemon... well, curd, because it is smooth and silken, the opposite of curd. It is probably more of a gel.

When eggs are heated, their proteins unravel. Proteins are made up of chains of amino acids (polypeptides) that usually fold and cluster onto itself. These clusters become linear when heat is introduced. When they become linear, water is able to arrange around them and this is helped by some of the amino acids which bear a charge. This net effect is an increase in order, which is not a favoured state - it needs energy input (like the heat of the stove) to retain its form.

When the energy is taken out the polypeptide strands re-coil to an extent and squeeze out the water that was so neatly arranged around them - this is curdling, the bad kind that you wouldn't want in lemon curd.

What the lemon juice does is it decreases the pH of the environment so those amino acids, which are charged depending on the pH, retain their charges and continue to repel each other and have a much harder time re-coiling. Pectin, a type of dietary fibre from the zest and bits of pulp, aids gelatinization. The result is smooth lemon curd (after straining, of course).

The Baking Illustrated crew, keen on testing these principles, was able to get similar results using rice vinegar. Vinegar curd, anyone?

Finish the gel in the oven after pouring it in the pastry shell, and you get a sunny lemon tart.

Next week, how a good lemon tart becomes even better - thanks to Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Hermé. Here's a sneak peek:

Notes:

Recipes: the filling is from Baking Illustrated as featured in Leite's Culinaria and the sweet tart pastry shell (pâte sablée) is from Baking: from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan as featured in Serious Eats.

Unlike a traditional pie crust, pâte sablée can stand on its own as a sugar cookie. In fact, cookies actually descended from pâte sablée. Re-roll the scraps - it can be handled a lot without detriment - and cut out shapes for cookies.

Don't be surprised that the Leite link is a recipe for lemon bars. It uses the same curd as the tart. It has just the right balance of pucker and sweet, and it sets up nicely without becoming gelatinous.

Instead of whisking the curd as it cooks, which whips too much air into the mixture, stir continuously with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula instead. The incorporated air will expand in the oven and may cause an overflow. Also, whisking makes the mixture lose heat, so it will take you longer to reach the desired temperature of 170 °F.

To avoid an "off" taste, make the curd using a non-reactive pan (and of course, non-reactive bowls, spoons).

Pre-bake the shell and make the filling. Pour the filling into the still warm shell and return both in the 375 °F oven for 10 to 15 minutes. You want the lemon tart to jiggle slightly in the centre when shaken. Cool and allow to set at room temperature, about an hour.

Updated March 16, 2008: After the lengthy discussion of the biochemistry of lemon curds, I forgot to mention how much I actually loved how it tasted. The staff of Cooks Illustrated managed to produce a curd that is bracingly lemony and not too much at that. Its smooth and rounded pucker is balanced by the bite of the shell which offers a most welcome sweet reprieve.

Glad to be back!

2008-03-09T18:38:00.009-07:00

First off, I would like to thank everyone who wished me well. Today I had my medical school interview at UBC. All in all, I thought it went well. For the most part, I am glad that the whole application process is over. To celebrate, I dove into this puddle of chocolate:

Still enamoured with Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible, I selected the Golden Almond Butter Cake as my base. The cake is a snap to make.

I remember very fondly the chocolate sauce from my first Daring Bakers Challenge - the 1,170 calorie per serving Bostini Cream Pie - so I decided to use it again. To make the sauce more viscous, I let it cool to room temperature before slathering it on the almond cake layer.

Lately, I have been measuring my dry ingredients by weight, save for the small amounts of salt and leavening. I'm not sure that the results are that much improved - this attests to the fact that measuring by cups and spoons is sufficient if done correctly (and that is the caveat).

The bigger advantage, in my opinion is the speed that I am able to put a batter together. Take away the chore of sifting into cups and one shaves off lots of precious time. I could also see how the results would be more consistent when ingredients are measured by weight as there is more uncertainty involved in measuring by volume.

And the interview? Results won't be known until mid-May to early-June. Thanks again for your well-wishes, and I would like to ask once more for your good intentions.

Notes:

Exciting new posts are coming: a survey of some of Vancouver's bakeries, and a Daring Bakers challenge at the end of the month that I am thoroughly revved up about.

My cakes are now baked in 6" x 2" tins, available at Ultimate Baker. I find that any recipe for 9" x 1.5" or 8" x 2" tins can be halved to fit my new smaller tins. I use visual cues for doneness: I wait for the centre of the cake to catch up with the sides. When this happens, I give the cake another 5 to 8 minutes before testing with a skewer. If the cake is at all jiggly, I do not under any circumstance poke the cake. The one time I did, I had the most spectacularly fallen cake. I ought to have taken pictures.

Wish me well

2008-02-04T18:06:00.001-08:00

I have a very important interview that I'm preparing for and it's taking up much of my time - which is why my blogging has slowed down.

I will be taking the next three weeks off and will be back at the end of February to pick up where I left.

In the meantime, please send your good intentions and prayers my way - I am all at once nervous, excited, and grateful for the bright possibilities ahead of me. It feels like the culmination of years of work and sacrifice is so imminent, and it is good!

And, oh, please have some cake ~

Notes:

The cake recipe is available on Rose Levy Beranbaum's site. Use her recommended pan size and baking times, or split the batter between two 6" x 2" cake pans and bake for about 25 minutes.

Take half this chocolate buttercream recipe from Martha Stewart. Slather half of it (so use only a quarter of the recipe and freeze the rest) on the cake and then gloss it up with a light blow-dry. Pile raspberries. Very Valentines, no?

Best wishes for Valentine's Day.

See you at the end of February.

Occasional baker on a diet 2008

2008-01-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

Time to mind my weight. There was enough baking in December and early January (aha! there lies the source of my problem) so I still have plenty to talk about over the next weeks. Follow my progress with the ticker at the bottom of this page.
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Chocolate sheet cake

Before I start, I'd like to thank you guys for your comments and e-mails. My heart swells!

As my cookbook collection grows, I am realizing how seminal Rose Levy Beranbaum's the Cake Bible is, and deservedly so. Her cakes are some of the most moist and velvety I have ever sampled. One I tried recently is her "Sour Cream Buttercake." The recipe is available on her blog.

Like all her butter cakes, this is an incredibly adaptable recipe. I wanted to take some cake to work, so instead using a springform pan as called for in the recipe, I poured the batter in an 8" x 8" x 2" foil pan.

The baking time was somewhere around 30 minutes, but I rely more on visual cues when altering pan sizes. Butter cakes bake faster at the sides with the middle catching up and doming slightly at some point later. Once this happens, I count eight minutes and then I consider testing the cake with a skewer.

Sheet cakes are incredibly easy. There is only one layer. The frosting does not have to be level, plumb and square at every viewing angle (the hallmark of a fastidiously iced layer cake). Just take some chocolate frosting, pile it on, then take a dinner spoon and swirl the tops.

The resulting dark sea of chocolate will be a sure-fire crowd pleaser.

Notes:

Here is a good resource for pan size substitutions.

When I tried the recipe in the 8" x 8" x 2" foil pan, the cake rose high and threatened to overflow. In the end, there was enough structure in the cake to prevent it from spilling. However, to be on the safe side, I would recommend just filling the pan to half-full.

On testing with a skewer: if the centre is still jiggly do not proceed with piercing the cake. It is very likely to deflate.

Paean to Swiss meringue

2008-01-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

Meringue is a fascinating application of biochemical principles. Whipping weakens the hydrogen bonds that keep amino acid chains in compact globular forms, causing them to unfold. The strands of amino acids then form a lattice around the bubbles of air and allow water to arrange in a more orderly fashion. This gives the whites a stiff but shapeable consistency.

My favourite, Swiss meringue, is made by heating egg whites and sugar over a bain-marie to a temperature of 160°F and then whipping the mixture using a stand mixer for about 5 to 10 minutes until the whisk holds a bec d'oiseau (bird's beak) when lifted. This indicates that the proper stiffness has been reached:

Swiss meringue is stable because the eggs are partly cooked which holds the albumin amino acids in their unfolded state. Unlike French meringue, which is the simple beating of sugar and whites together, the Swiss foam structure is more stable and not prone to weeping. Weeping occurs when the amino acids refold thereby releasing water that was previously orderly arranged around the unfolded amino acids. This is a handy tip for making toppings: switch to Swiss and that meringue pie will not seep water.

Also, Swiss is less fussy than Italian meringue, which is made by adding hot, boiled sugar syrup to beaten whites. There is something contrived, in my opinion, when something as simple as meringue begins to demand a candy thermometer, impeccable coincident timing (you will need to have soft-stiff beaten whites by the time the sugar syrup reaches 240°F) and a level of dexterity to safely pour the syrup in a thin but steady stream into the whipping stand mixer. For all this effort, it is still debatable whether the whites reach the required pasteurization temperature of 160°F because much of the heat of the syrup is lost to the bowl.

All three meringues can be piped into different shapes, such as mushrooms for bûches de Noël as shown in the preceding photo. The type of meringue to use is not so much an issue for baked-through confections - French will suffice though Italian and Swiss are more pliant.

I first discovered Swiss meringue when I made Martha's birthday cake for Patrick. It piped very easily and looked spectacular after being torched. Recently, I used this frosting for our anniversary cake but this time eschewing the use of a pastry bag. I merely swirled the airy mass around the sides then up top, then torched the circular ridges left by my spatula.

Probably the best application is Swiss meringue buttercream (SMBC). Easy, endlessly adaptable, and decidedly grown-up (yet good with kids), SMBC is my favourite icing. It is also rich and decadent so only a small amount is needed when frosting, otherwise the cake may become too cloying.

Many are put-off by the curdling that occurs at some point when butter is mixed into the meringue. As I have written in a couple posts, this is not fatal. More whipping at a higher speed for perhaps another three minutes (maybe longer or shorter) will consistently bring the mixture to a silky smooth consistency. Please refer to the discussion mid-way through this post and the video towards the end of this entry.

SMBC can be frozen for a couple months. I make sure it reaches room temperature before I whipping it smooth or pulsing it through a food processor so that it does not become grainy (this situation would be a mistake, and one that may be difficult to remedy). The latter method produces a buttercream the consistency of mayonnaise. My left-over chocolate SMBC from December was processed this way and used on a small cake which I then complemented with a handful of raspberries. This is shown on the photo below. Also shown is SMBC flavoured with mango purée, which results in a textured frosting that is ideal for a homey approach to cake decorating. Click over the photo to enlarge.

Notes:

Oil and fats are the enemies of meringue. The slightest bit anywhere (bowl, beaters, hands) will mean that the meringue will not form. There is fat in yolks, so there must not be a trace of it. Once, I couldn't figure out why my meringues would not form - it turns out that my silicone whisk was to blame. Silicone and plastic utensils can have oil residues on them that are hard to wash off.

To make Swiss meringue, combine 1 cup of granulated sugar and 4 egg whites in a scrupulously cleaned bowl of a Kitchen Aid mixer. Whisk continuously over a bain-marie for 3½ to 5 minutes - until an instant read thermometer registers 160°F. Transfer the bowl immediately to the stand mixer and whip at high for 5 to 10 minutes until a bec d'oiseau can be formed when the whisk is lifted.

If pasteurized liquid egg whites are used, you will only need to whisk over the bain-marie until the mixture is hot to touch and the sugar has completely dissolved.

For the longest time, I couldn't get my meringues to dry completely. It turns out that a generous dusting of confectioner's sugar before the meringues go in the oven helps a lot.

On the history of meringues, European cooks in medieval times created egg white foams by beating it with a stick, however it wasn't until the 1600s that the first documented confections of egg whites with sugar was published (D. Muster). Then in 1720, the Swiss pastry cook Gasparini "invented" meringues as we know it (P. Montagné, Larousse Gastronomique, 1988). Another couple centuries later, came the most famous incarnation of meringues - the pavlova.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-05T20:15:00.001-08:00

A Filipino New Year's Eve banquet is a happy mix of good food, optimism, and superstition. Many among my kin regard polka dots as auspicious because it evokes the image of coinage, and therefore prosperity. A table of plenty is also a must because it portends a year of contentment.

Taking polka dots and decadence as a theme, I decided to serve a redux of Patrick's birthday cake for our pre-New Year's Eve dinner:

This time around, instead of a génoise I picked Rose Levy Beranbaum's White Chocolate Whisper Cake from the Cake Bible. A last-minute epiphany for 2007, it is without exception the best white buttercake I have ever tasted. White chocolate gives it a firm but melting mouthfeel as well as provides a sweet and mild vanilla perfume. Lemon is a particularly suitable flavour to accompany it, but I do not think that it would have been impoverished by being served on its own.

Of course, the crisp and tart freshness of lemon is most welcome. The bright yellow curd alludes to the return of sunny days - months away from now. Oh, Spring! Ah, Summer!

I had the pleasant opportunity of being able to make two different lemon curd recipes for this cake (loads of free time, it seemed, the last couple weeks of December).

Martha Stewart's lemon curd is bright yellow, firm and deeply citrus which made it, well, perfect for flavouring the Swiss meringue buttecream. Dorie Greenspan's lemon cream is light, lemony and makes for a lilting filling.

The two curds were mixed together to create just the right consistency of curd that will form rounded domes when piped - a too stiff curd would have made tails when the piping tip is lifted.

Wishing everyone a bright 2008!

Notes:

On the subject of Swiss meringue buttercream, the nemesis of many Daring Bakers for last month's challenge, I found a great instructional video from Dyannbakes. She reassures her viewers that curdling buttercream will come together into a silky mass with more beating.

Incidentally, Dyann also made a bûche de Noël last month. Her website is a treasure trove of baking advice. I separate eggs the way she instructs - and it is fool-proof. If it were not for her, I would not be using parchment cornets.

To pipe dots and domes, use a parchment cornet filled with curd. Snip only a small bit at the tip, hold the cornet about ¼" or less above the surface at 90°and apply a steady pressure until the tip is slightly buried in the extruded curd. Stop and pull away. If the curd is the right consistency, any formed peaks or tails will dissolve into the body of the dome. Otherwise, thin the curd with drops of lemon juice or pat the peak down with moistened fingers.

Daring Bakers Challenge: Bûche de Noël

2007-12-23T15:54:00.000-08:00

This month's DB Challenge is a festive yule log. Hosts Lisa and Ivonne, both founders of Daring Bakers, took a génoise from Nick Malgieri's excellent Perfect Cakes, a tome that I've been meaning to purchase (hint, last-minute Christmas gift-givers), and a luxurious buttercream from The Williams-Sonoma Collection: Dessert.
Ivonne owns Cream Puffs in Venice, and the recipe can be found in this post. Lisa can be found at La Mia Cucina. Both blogs dish up passionate writings on food among other subjects, and I am an avid reader.
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My mother was over last night for an early Christmas dinner. A picky eater - and she says the right word is "discerning" - my mother needs to be asked in advance what she would like to have for dinner. In a prior phone conversation she intoned, "anything for dinner is alright, but be sure to make the dessert good."

So, I made a bûche de Noël with a chocolate génoise sheet, filled with white chocolate mousse, frosted with Swiss meringue buttercream (SMBC), and adorned with French meringue mushrooms:

Now, I have never known my mother to ever finish her serving of dessert but last night she did exactly that. Halfway through the course, she and my aunt were taking pictures of the bûche with their cell phones. My heart was fat with flattery.

The most fun part of this endeavour was making the meringue mushrooms. The challenge recipe uses French meringue, which is the usual variety that does not require heating egg whites and sugar over a bain-marie. I almost always prefer Swiss meringue but the lightness of the French variety is a welcome change albeit one that I will not adopt in the future. It must be true what they say that once you've had Swiss there is no turning back.

It surprised me to read the many posts of fellow Daring Bakers expressing much consternation about curdling SMBC.

SMBC is my workhorse. I am not at all particularly careful with making sure that my butter is at room temperature, nor do I gingerly push tablespoons at a time into my Kitchen Aid. Yet, I have never made a batch that I have had to throw out. SMBC is about as adaptable and forgiving as frosting could be so I decided to investigate why there were unfavourable reports this month from my fellow DB'ers.

At first glance, I recognized the recipe as the same one that I use: 4 egg whites, 1 cup sugar, 3 sticks of butter. Then, it struck me that the written directions were a bit meager consisting only of two numbered items.

Instructional books often walk novice bakers (and I consider myself to be one) through making SMBC. Many authors point out that curdling is normal and expected. It is merely one stage of the process. When this happens, the mixer speed needs to be stepped up to re-emulsify the mixture. The result - without fail - will be a luxurious, satiny buttercream. The next set of four photos shows the curdled stage, which occur sometime after all the butter has been added to the meringue, reconstitution and final outcome. Click on the collage for a close-up:

Having been tipped by other DB'ers that the coffee buttercream is pale, I opted to add some melted chocolate to get a darker shade of brown and more importantly, to get some more chocolate in my dessert.

This year's bûche in some ways is a refinement of last year's giant version. I find it striking when dark cocoa génoise is embraced by white chocolate mousse so it is repeated this year. Sugared rosemary underscore the evergreen/woodlands theme, and chocolate cherry from Tickleberry add sparkle to this festive treat.

Happy Holidays to everyone
and see you all in the New Year!

Notes:

Curious about the bûche de Noël? See this Wikipedia article.

The white chocolate mousse recipe is from Martha Stewart, everything else can be found in this post.

Rolling the génoise from the short edge minimizes the chance that it will split. Many also swear by pre-rolling the génoise while warm, then unrolling it again later when it is cool so it can be filled. I have one caveat to add: when unrolling, do not attempt to flatten the génoise, it will for sure split.

A lot of eggs were used here. Brush up on egg safety here.

The Daring Bakers is now hundreds strong, and there are that many more gorgeous yule log blog posts this month on the web. Please have a browse at the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

All my Daring Baker Challenges are compiled here.

Espresso cookies get a revamp

2007-12-20T22:02:00.001-08:00

Knowing that we were having a potluck at work today, dubbed as an annual "eat-a-thon," I decided to bake a batch of my espresso cookies yesterday.

I've always been a fan of thick chewy cookies - and the original recipe gives just that - but food fashionistas told me that what's vogue these days are thinner cookies that are crisp and craggy around the periphery but has a bite in the centre.

Wanting to please those who have their fingers on the pulse of all things hip and up and coming, I tweaked my cookies just a touch to make it more svelte and edgy:

To induce more spread, I used superfine sugar instead of plain granulated and increased the white chocolate to an even eight ounces. Having long switched to Dutched cocoa exclusively, I was taken aback that I wrote the recipe stipulating natural cocoa. Without adjusting the leaveners, I substituted Dutched cocoa. With less acid in the batter to react with baking soda there was less puff. The higher pH also resulted in a wonderfully dark cookie instead of last year's more ruddy shade of brown.

I wanted the espresso to be even more assertive so I increased the Medaglia D'Oro and brought the total to a whopping 2½ tablespoons. To balance the flavours, I doubled the salt to 1 teaspoon. Lastly, I used a #50 disher to scoop rounded doughs (which is probably a scant two tablespoons) and baked the cookies at 400°F for six minutes. They were very fragile and crisply set around the edges when fresh out of the oven and were perfect after an hour of cooling, with the slight centre dome falling flat.

My colleagues were very complimentary, and thin cookies are starting to grow on me.

Notes:

Here is the ingredient list re-written:

2 c all-purpose flour
½ c Dutched cocoa powder
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 tsp vanilla extract
2½ tb Medaglia D’Oro instant espresso powder
2 large eggs, room temperature
¾ c superfine sugar
¾ c packed light brown sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
8 oz Callebaut white chocolate, chopped into ¼ - ½ inch chunks

Directions can be found in this post.

On the 8th of December

2007-12-11T21:42:00.001-08:00

First of all, I would like to thank Britt of Blue Cafe for having me as a guest blogger. Please see Britt's blog and my review of three recipes I tried from my current favourite cookbook, Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours.

The Arts Club in Vancouver recently put up a production of Stephen Sondheim's Company. It's a musical that I always enjoy primarily because it is filled with sardonic wit. When I first saw the show years ago, I was unabashedly single. I reveled in how it scrutinized the lives of married folk. You know - the tedium and the attempts at flight from tedium which often lead to humourous situations (at least in musicals). Then, invariably, I am let down by the schmaltzy penultimate number Being Alive.

Well, that was then. I am no longer single and now I have Patrick - that someone "who holds me too close, knows me too well." And have one more excuse to make a cake: our anniversary.

This is Rose Levy Beranbaum's Golden Almond Cake baked in two six-inch springform pans (instead of the lone nine-inch cake pan called for). One of the many great aspects of Ms Beranbaum's Cake Bible is it tells you what exactly to expect. Having been warned that this cake bakes with a domed top - which is appropriate for a single-layer treat but not for my purpose - I used insulating cake strips to force flat layers.

Each cake was torted in half to make a total of four layers. One layer was used for "quality control" because changing pan sizes introduces an element of uncertainty to the final outcome of cakes.

The remaining layers were filled with lemon curd and stacked. I always favour a lackadaisical approach to icing so I chose Martha's seven-minute frosting, which is just about as fuss-free as a homemade icing could be.

The tang of lemon curd, restrained decadence of almonds and levity of meringue all combine here, and show off a gorgeous tan to boot. It was a great ending to the dinner that Patrick slaved over for hours to prepare. I enjoyed mulling over the fact that it took me a fraction of his kitchen time to put all this together.

And that dinner? It was... perfect. For so many reasons.

Notes:

Many bloggers are enamoured with RLV's Golden Almond Cake. Baking Beast followed the recipe as written and is exultant. Sandra from Le Pétrin substituted cream for sour cream and has nothing but praises - in French. Aunty Yochana took a photo which shows the fine crumb structure.

I divided the batter into two six-inch springform pans, and wrapped the sides of the pan with cake strips. They baked in 30 minutes and the tops were flat, each is about 1¾ inches tall.

I'm quite taken by how simple and effective taking a spatula around an iced cake could be. The inspiration is from Miette Pâtisserie in San Francisco and Baked NYC. Matt and Christine from the latter bakery demonstrate in this video how to swirl frosting (fast forward to the last 15 seconds of the video, then wait for the third segment to load) .

First day of snow...

2007-12-01T16:34:00.001-08:00

There's no denying that winter is here, and the view outside my window is all covered in powder white:

As a true Vancouverite, I usually need to muster enough courage to brave the flurries and the four centimeter snow cover on the streets. Alas, I was not able to gather the requisite will to step outside and I decided to bask in the winter calm of my apartment and answer this culinary meme that Julie from One Wall Kitchen sent my way.

What is a meme? Wikipedia enlightens as always. In the context of this post, a meme is a Q&A of sorts that ends up being a chain letter.

What were you cooking/baking ten years ago?

Ten years ago, I did not bake. If I did, the results were not what one would call baked "goods." I was a university student then, and my repertoire included pasta and pasta sauces (read: the boxed variety).

What were you cooking/baking one year ago?

Now, we're talking! About a year ago, I was cooking with Madhur Jaffrey, Vikram Vij, and Nancie McDermott. This is the year after Julia, when I turned my culinary gaze from West to the East.

As for baking, the past year was a great learning curve, and I learned from great mentors Sarah Phillips and Martha Stewart - the latter author is slugged by a good few bloggers but I find her Baking Handbook to be incredibly accessible (and a good number of Amazon reviewers seem to agree).

The snack you enjoy the most:

Chewy oatmeal raisin cookies with a glass of warm milk.

A culinary luxury you would indulge in if you were a millionaire:

A Tuscan retreat in Umberto Menghi's villa (cooking lessons included). This CBC article talks about Umberto.

The rest of the money would go to my mortgage.

What do you bake the most?

Banana bread.

Five recipes you know by heart:

Chicken and fennel braised in wine, Creamy porcini risotto, (its easy-to-do cousin) Creamy porcini orzo, beef/pork/chicken in red Thai curry sauce, perfectly cooked white rice. The last item is in my blood. What Flip cannot cook rice?!

One thing you cannot/will not eat:

That which Kathleen Turner insinuates to have served as pâté to Michael Douglas in the movie War of the Roses (1989).

Favourite culinary toy:

My Kitchen Aid Artisan 5-quart mixer, primarily because it is "Empire Red." Can you think of a more supercilious name for a colour?

A must on your “last meal” menu:

Chocolate.

If I'm in pain during my "last moment", morphine will be a must. Failing this, I'll have twice the chocolate, please.

Happy food memories:

My mom, who had to look after my sister and me by herself, would usually go through great lengths to prepare Christmas Eve dinner. I'll never forget the tourtière she made on my first Canadian Christmas about a decade ago. Of course, she just humbly referred to it as a meat pie. But recalling the ingredients, I know now that it was a true-blue tourtière. Anyhow, more than the food, it was the sight of her busily cooking that I remember most fondly because I know that she was going through such fuss just so we could have the best Christmas notwithstanding everything else....

I'm passing on this (totally optional) meme to LizG, I(dot)J, Chou, and AnneMarie, and inviting anyone else interested to join in.

Daring Bakers Challenge # 2

2007-11-26T08:59:00.001-08:00

This month's challenge recipe is Tender Potato Bread from Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour & Tradition Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. Our gracious host Tanna from My Kitchen in Half-Cups has posted the recipe.
All of my Daring Bakers Challenges are compiled here.
__________

Upon seeing this month's challenge, I cringed that I would have to deal with my old foe, yeast. Memories all my failed struggles came rushing back: The over-risen doughs, the leaden hunks of complex carbohydrates, and oh, how can I forget the panettone that overflowed while baking and had me spending Christmas Eve cleaning the oven. I decided, "in Vancouver, good bread is so easy to buy!"

My pants on fire, I wrote a quick thank you note to this month's host, Tanna from My Kitchen in Half-Cups, saying how much I looked forward to completing her challenge. Well, I must apologize for doubting our host, especially because the outcome is just delicious:

Few of the good breads I've bought in my fair city comes close to this bread. It is tender, and my Yukon Golds really come through not only in taste but especially in the deep colour the crumb acquires. And the smell, the aroma of the yeasted dough as it bakes - is all at once exhilarating and comforting.

It is fascinating to deconstruct what happens during bread-making. Kneading of flour and water results in the formation of gluten strands. One can feel the dough change in texture - it becomes more pliant - and temperature under one's hand. Just as amazing is the fact that the yeast eats the carbohydrates and ferments, releasing carbon dioxide. This gas is then trapped by the developed gluten fibers. After the dough is baked, the gas is gone but the structure remains.

For all my exultant paeans now, I must admit that making this bread was not all love. Particularly, this dough is incredibly sticky. A requirement of this challenge was to knead by hand. The dough was so tacky, however, it felt as though it was kneading my hand. I tried to maintain a mantra "push, fold, turn" while kneading, to no avail. I suppose it would have been easier if I added more flour. However, I knew that my likely pitfall would be to add too much flour and produce a heavy bread, so I decided to take the extreme opposite by trying to not add much flour while kneading.

In the future, when I am unfettered from the hands-on requirement of this month's challenge, I know that I will be able to recruit my trusty Kitchen Aid. However, the dough would still need to be shaped and panned and the prospect of dealing with the incredibly sticky mass still loomed so I was not keen on keeping this recipe. Then I had a flash of insight. About exactly a year ago, the blogging world was caught in a no-knead bread frenzy that was sparked by an article written by Mark Bittman in the NY Times. Writing about this phenomenon a year later, Nick Fox of the NY Times states:

"The response to Mr. Bittman’s article was so fervid you would have thought he’d revealed a foolproof way to pick winning lottery numbers. It was a sign of how desperately people want to bake at home, and how painfully aware they are of their limitations."

Next time, I will knead the still knead the dough - its water to flour proportion is not high enough allow gluten development to spontaneously occur in 12 hours as is the case with no-knead doughs - but use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer and then adopt the shaping and baking method used in the article, which is demonstrated in this video:

To test this baking method, I took some dough left over from the first rise and placed it onto parchment scattered with plenty of cornmeal. I then coaxed this dough into a rough log by lifting the edges of the parchment and left it to rise a second time while pre-heating a two-quart Pyrex casserole dish and its lid in the oven. Later, I slid the dough into the pot and baked it covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 15. The result is shown in the next picture.

This loaf has the homey appeal of artisan bread and has the kind of crust that shatters under one's bite and a crumb that is chewy and moist. This is rather serendipitous! When I make this recipe on my time, I will use my Kitchen Aid for the initial kneading and again aiming for a slack and tacky dough, then adopt the handling and baking style shown in the NY Times video.

Please check out all the other Daring Bakers' tender potato bread. There are truly remarkable renditions of different loafs, focaccias, and buns.

Notes:

Doneness can be tricky to judge. An instant-read thermometer is probably the surest way: insert into the middle of the loaf and a reading of 190°F to 210°F is desired.

A cracking crust - a desired but elusive quality in breads - can be achieved when moisture is introduced into the baking bread. Professionals employ steam-injection ovens. Home-users can set up a water bath, or drop ice cubes onto a pre-heated baking sheet placed on a lower oven shelf, or spray water on the bread with a spritzer.

One mistake I made - and this might be visible in the third photo on this page - is I cut into the loaf before it has cooled completely. This results in a damp crumb (even mushy if the loaf is cut very early).

Baking 911 continues to be an indispensable website for me, especially during this challenge.

Rose Levy Beranbaum was also intrigued by the no-knead technique and has expanded on the recipe in her blog for more flavour - which may potentially address David Lebovitz' criticism of the method.

Addendum (November 27, 2007). I used the minimum amounts of flour in the recipe and I kneaded the mass accordingly. Of this, 2/3 went in the pan then baked in the usual way and 1/3 was used in my free-form experiment. The dough was slack, sticky, and soft (really similar to the dough in the video). Parchment paper and cornmeal helped a lot in shaping it (by lifting sides of the paper). I let it rise a second time, covered in parchment. The oven, pot and lid were pre-heated to 450°F. I dropped the dough into the pot, covered it for 30 minutes and uncovered for 15. The internal temperature of the bread was 200°F.

Bûche de Noël

2007-11-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Occasional Baker on a Diet
fourth in a series of eight
Because my baking has been more than occasional, I will be going on a diet for the next few weeks. During this time, I will blog about my very early baking as well as my initial attempts at photographing food. The entire series is compiled here.
This post is also the last installment of the subseries on my past Holiday baking. The entire sub-series is compiled here.
__________

This last installment of my sub-series on Holiday baking is truly special such that I intend to make this a part of our family tradition year after year so long as I am able.

In the spirit of Holiday sharing, I am submitting this post to be part of the Festive Food Fair, a global blogging event that aims to share special Holiday food recipes. I wish the participants of this event - and everyone - a very happy and peaceful holiday and it is my hope that this dessert will make it to your homes.

I look forward to our family gatherings, especially in December. Everyone is festive, we exchange gifts, and when we host the Boxing Day dinner, Patrick and I try to come up with something extra special. For our dessert in 2006, I adapted Martha Stewart's birch de Noel and turned it into the more traditional bûche:

If you are looking for a show-stopper of a dessert, look no further. The dark chocolate génoise forms rings around the luscious white chocolate mousse filling and is embraced by decadent dark chocolate.

Ms Stewart's version has a fluffy white seven-minute frosting on the exterior and is adorned by coconut shaved to look like thick "C's" and toasted to brown. When placed concentrically on the white frosting, the cake looked like a birch log.

Eschewing her invention, lovely as it might be, I opted to use a chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. Why only have fluffy sugared egg whites when you can have that plus butter and rich chocolate?

I found it easiest to mimic the texture of wood bark freehand by using an offset spatula - no icing comb necessary. Notice that the mushrooms are huge. This is a rookie mistake that turned out well. The finished cake is less than ten inches in length but I was able to cut sixteen generous servings, each consisting of a sliver of a cake and one giant mushroom.

Since MarthaStewart.com was revamped, the recipe is no longer easily searchable. However, the site still provides the recipe in full: click here for the entire recipe (a .pdf file will open).

To make my version, do not make the seven-minute frosting. Instead use a chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream by taking this base recipe, omitting from it 1/4 cup of sugar and all of the vanilla extract. Add 8 ounces melted best quality bittersweet chocolate - and I suggest not more than 60% cocoa content - after the butter has been incorporated (let chocolate cool slightly before mixing in).

The best part is that most of the components can be made a few days in advance (and probably should be, if you want to remain Zen). The roulade can be assembled and chilled hours prior, leaving you with only the task of icing the cake closer to service time.

If you try this one out, please let me know. I definitely will be making this one again this year, and perhaps with not such gigantic mushrooms this time around.

Tourtière

2007-11-08T21:38:00.001-08:00

Tourtière
adapted from Lucy Waverman

Crust

Use your favourite non-sweet, fool-proof pie crust recipe. To the flour, add in the 2 teaspoons dried thyme and 1 teaspoon dry mustard before cutting in the fat. You'll need enough for the top and bottom crust of a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate.

Filling

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups chopped onion
¾ pound ground pork
1 ¼ pound ground veal
3 cloves garlic, chopped
½ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons dried savoury
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup beef broth
¼ cup rolled oatmeal
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsely
1 egg beaten

Heat the oil in a skillet. Brown the onions. Add the meat and sauté until no longer pink. Add the herbs and spices (garlic through ground pepper). Sauté for another minute. Add the broth and the rolled oats. Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the filling is thick. If the filling is not thick, add more oatmeal or cook longer. Remove bay leaf, add parsley, and adjust seasonings. Cool completely. While filling is cooling, preheat oven to 450°F.

Fill and assemble the pie. Make 3 or 4 decorative incisions on the top pastry to allow steam to vent. Brush with the beaten egg.

Bake the tourtière at 450°F for 10 minutes, the reduce the temperature to 375°F. Continue to bake for 35 to 45 minutes until the crust is golden. Shield the edges with foil if browning too quickly.

Serve hot or cold, for 8 to 10 people.

To use that trite phrase, this one is truly "from my home to yours" and it's perfect for warming up a cold winter's night.

Cookie exchange this year?

2007-11-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

Occasional Baker on a Diet
third in a series of eight
Because my baking has been more than occasional, I will be going on a diet for the next few weeks. During this time, I will blog about my very early baking as well as my initial attempts at photographing food. The entire series is compiled here.
This post is also subseries # 1 on my past Holiday baking. The entire sub-series is compiled here.
__________

First off, I'm happy to report that the diet's going well, as you can see from my ticker at the bottom of this page. How did I pull it off despite the calorie-packed bostini from last month's Daring Bakers Challenge? Well, the bostini was made early in October, leaving the rest of the month for my obsessive carb counting... which I actually didn't start until last week.

Continuing with this series, I will be posting three of my holiday winners - the recipes that I have baked which have earned rave reviews and I know will be part of my yearly tradition.

Around this time of the year, office cookie exchanges are starting to get organized. For your consideration:

Espresso White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
adapted from Sarah Phillips, baking911.com and Merritt Palminteri

Note: This recipe was updated November 18, 2007 for clarity.

2 c all-purpose flour
½ c cocoa powder (not Dutch-process)
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
3 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tb Medaglia D’Oro instant espresso powder
1 large egg + 2 egg yolks, room temperature
¾ c granulated sugar
¾ c packed light brown sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
7 oz Callebaut white chocolate, chopped into ¼ - ½ inch chunks
1 c coarsely chopped lightly toasted pecans

Pre-heat oven to 375°F (convection bake) or 400°F (conventional). Line baking sheets with parchment.

In a separate bowl, sift together first five ingredients and whisk to combine. Set aside. In another bowl, stir together instant espresso, egg and yolks. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add egg mixture in two portions; mix first portion until incorporated, before adding next portion. Add vanilla. Scrape down sides of mixer bowl, as necessary.

At low speed, add flour mixture in small batches, mixing until almost combined. Do not overmix. Add chopped white chocolate and chopped pecans. Pulse mixer on high three to four times to mix.

Using a #24 ice cream scoop, scoop balls of dough and place 3 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. A rounded scoop of dough using a #24 disher will be roughly equivalent to a 1/4 cup or 2 oz volume.

Bake only until edges are set (centres must still be soft and moist) about 7 to 11 minutes (I recommend 8 minutes if using a #24 ice cream scoop). Turn sheets halfway into baking time.

Do not over-bake, as the cookies will harden too much. The finished cookies will be fragile, soft in the centre and be slightly domed.

Cool on baking sheets for about 3 minutes, before very carefully transferring to a wire rack. The domed, moist centres flatten slightly and become fudgy when completely cool, about an hour. When completely cool, these cookies will no longer be fragile - they will have a crisp exterior and a chewy interior.

Cookies can be stored up to four days in an airtight container.

The recipe is a result of me playing around with Sarah Phillips' Thick with a Chew Chocolate Chip Cookies (the recipe is available in the book Baking 911 or as a premium member of the Baking 911 forum) and Merritt Palminteri's Espresso Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies. The result is a truly scrumptious cookie that gets eaten first if laid out on a sweets buffet. True to what Ms Palminteri said on the video, people will stuff these in their purses - I actually caught a coworker doing this last year.

Note the directions on slightly under-baking the cookies to get a moist chewy cookie. This means that if you are very concerned about egg safety, you might want to try pasteurized eggs (use the equivalent of 2 large eggs).

Give these a try, and if you do, please let me know how it turns out. Next up, a somewhat- healthier-but-0h-so-savoury French-Canadian tourtière and a Bûche de Noël with giant meringue mushrooms.

This baker's daring!

2007-10-28T14:04:00.001-07:00

If you read food blogs, chances are you're already an admirer of the Daring Bakers - a fine group of bloggers who strive for growth in pastry and confection arts through monthly challenges. Well, ladies and gents, I am now a newly minted Daring Baker and this is a photo my DB debut:

I was a long-time lurker on many DB sites because I didn't think I could hack it. In particular, when they attempted Martha Stewart's Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake in April 2007, I just about resigned myself to being a silent fan.

However, the lure of being able to improve my craft was great. I knew that being part of DB means moving out of my comfort zone. Finally, I mustered enough courage to take on this month's challenge, the Bostini Cream Pie.

Mary, our gracious hostess for this month's challenge, has the full recipe on her blog. Her site Alpineberry features elegant recipes and gorgeous photos, and I am an avid reader. The Bostini was the top recipe in 1996 and "maybe for the entire 20 years" according to The San Francisco Chronicle. In case you missed the nutritional info at the bottom of that article, I'm repeating it here –

Per serving: 1,170 calories, 15 g protein, 75 g carbohydrate, 93 g fat (50 g saturated), 561 mg cholesterol, 275 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.

Let me assure you though that this dessert is as decadent as its calorie count! The vanilla custard is deliriously wonderful, and then to pair it with rich chocolate is just... well... toe-curlingly good.

The cake base is an orange-flavoured chiffon baked in a heart-shaped mold. Having made foam-based cakes before (see my génoise), I was not as nervous in tackling this recipe. For those inclined, Baking 911 has excellent info on chiffon cakes. A step-by-step tutorial article is available to registered forum members.

My vanilla custard, which in this recipe has the consistency of crème anglaise, was a different story. Valuable lesson: boiling cream can be dangerous. Once the cream reaches a certain temperature, it will foam and expand rapidly. Turning off the stove will not stop the process once its already going. There is a real potential for burns and an actual messy stove.

I like to work with a lot of heat when on the stove. British thermal units and I are tight. When cooking, I always hear myself saying, "more BTUs, more BTUs." Manifestly not good for boiling cream or making custard. This helpful article from Baking 911 states, "when any custard is made on the stove top, it must be cooked slowly, taking at least 10 minutes." Because of my impatience, the custard curdled slightly. After straining through a fine-mesh sieve none would be the wiser quality and taste-wise, though I must have lost ten percent of the custard.

I urge you to check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll and be sure to see everyone's renditions of the Bostini. It's about challenge as much as it is about camaraderie. This is not at all like that clique of high-strung bakers at the office who turn the yearly cookie exchange into a cut-throat event. Quite the opposite. The support is effusive and the environment friendly. This is why I am proud to display on my blog this badge of honour:

Some random notes ~

The Rake Magazine has a fascinating essay about the closet beginnings of the chiffon cake.
I used only a quarter of the recipe with no deleterious effects (usually, cake recipes do not take well to being divided more than half).
The recipe in full calls for about 13 egg yolks. For an easy way to do this, see this video from Dyann Bakes (hit play then move slider to halfway).
A more open-textured chiffon can be achieved if only the bottom of the baking pan is greased, and if it is inverted over something tall while the cake cools in it.

An ambitious project

2007-10-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

Occasional Baker on a Diet
second in a series of eight
Because my baking has been more than occasional, I will be going on a diet for the next few weeks. During this time, I will blog about my very early baking as well as my initial attempts at photographing food. The entire series is compiled here.
__________

After my very encouraging first attempt at baking a cake, I decided to take on Martha's Birthday Cake in 2006 for Patrick's birthday. I thought this cake would suit him perfectly because it is white, prickly and burnt at the edges:

I remember announcing boldly to several friends that I would be taking on this endeavour. As Pat's birthday approached, I began to get a bit nervous. What have I done? Doubt began to set in. What if it fails? The worst part is, I couldn't back out of the project.

I began reading up on the subject of baking. My first cake was made on the fly, and I didn't think this would work this time around. Eventually, I stumbled upon Baking 911 - hands down the best baking resource on the web, ran by cookbook author and prolific baker Sarah Phillips. So good was the online content, I decided to buy the book of the same title.

"Baking 911: Rescue from recipe disasters" - just what I needed! And as you can see, this 911 call prevented a lot potential disasters:

Of course, it's nowhere nearly as finessed as Ms Stewart's creation. But as said in Baking 911, "perfection is highly overrated."

It is from this book that I gained an appreciation precisely why proper measuring, correct mixing, adequate pan size, accurate temperature and appropriate baking times all matter in making cakes that are consistently better than store-bought. What is so good with this cookbook is that it goes through great lengths explaining these "why's." There is a particularly good section on creaming butter and sugar - all-important in buttercakes - that has been expounded upon even more on the website. There is also a very active forum of supportive bakers on the site, and Ms Phillips graciously answers many posted questions.

This cake also solidified certain baking preferences that I now have. First off is my preference for buttercakes that are made via a creaming step versus the two-stage method (where high-ratio shortening or butter is first added to the dry ingredients followed by gradual addition of the wet ingredients). Also, I love Swiss meringue buttercreams, particularly because of John Baricelli's recipe which was used in this cake. I have since adapted the recipe to make many different kinds of buttercreams.

Ending a gruelling month and a half

2007-10-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I didn't really start my diet; I'll start tomorrow.

For now, I'm going to get this post in. I will resume the series I started below in my next blog entry.

Patrick and I have had a rather exhausting month and a half, and we're both happy to be at the end of it. Tonight we kick back. He's picking up a movie, and I'm going to surprise him with this:

I halved the recipe for Golden Butter Cream Cake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible then divided the batter into two 1.5-cup heart shaped cake pans. The batter filled the pans half full and came right up to the top after baking for 25 minutes.

The dots and letters were made with a parchment cornet filled with dark chocolate. As usual, I don't fuss with precise piping. Gives it a certain je ne sais qua. I'm only kidding. You will notice the guide lines I have on the icing. I thought I was going to write something long and uplifting, but decided for to go for something pithy but loving.

Initially, I was going to write "J ♥ P" as an ambigram to take advantage of the two letters that are probably the easiest to place in an ambigram. I sketched a simple design but decided not to use it - while I was already piping the chocolate!

Once again I used my impromptu Swiss meringue buttercream, this time using orange jam so it is complemented by the small amount of bitter chocolate.

I've now tried a few recipes from The Cake Bible (ahem, yes, on the week when I was supposed to have started the South Beach Diet). I find that Ms Beranbaum's cakes have an extremely pleasing velvety texture. Also, I am happy that with her two-stage method, I am able to mise en place, prepare the batter, bake the cake and clean up the kitchen all in thirty minutes - which is perfect for pulling off a surprise.

Alright, this is it. I will return to posting about my early baking attempts while I go on a diet. (Yes, this time I mean it - I even signed up for a 10K running group).

Next post: How I learned to bake, thanks to the cookbook Baking 911.

Occasional baker on a diet

2007-09-28T14:16:00.001-07:00

first in a series of eight
For the next two months, I will be on the South Beach Diet. Over this time, I will post about my journey to becoming a baker and blogger, starting today with my very first cake.
____________________

This is a Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Ganache from Martha Stewart:

You will notice that this picture has a very different look and feel from the other pictures on this blog. This is because I wasn't blogging back then, and in particular, I hadn't even seen a single food blog at this point. What transformed the way I photographed food was becoming acquainted with La Tartine Gourmande. Click on that link and see how beautiful the pictures are. It is exactly what I want to be when my blog grows up.

I didn't know how to make my camera focus on specific parts of the cake and haven't ever used the macro function on my point and shoot. Or perhaps, I have used the macro function before, but was turned off by how it was sensitive to jitter. I have since discovered that a tripod is very helpful.

Just as helpful is the countdown timer on my camera. I set the camera to a two-second countdown so it doesn't jitter when I push the "shoot" button. I also find that I can make my arms still enough if I use the countdown timer, so I don't have to rely on a tripod. This is useful because most of my recent pictures are taken beside my kitchen sink where I get natural lighting.

Because I couldn't focus or close-up, I had to shoot from more than three feet away. The picture invariably captured all the mess and incidentals all around, which I had to crop out with my cheesy home photo application, thus the hearts all around the picture up top and the swishes on this one:

This was made for our first wedding anniversary in 2005.

The cake itself was moist and very chocolaty, which was very encouraging for a first-timer. If this cake had been an utter failure, I probably would never have baked again.

The ganache is probably the only part that didn't work as well. I pushed it around too much around because it wouldn't neatly flow down the cake. It became stiff so I ended up running my spatula around the entire cake. Thus, instead of the glistening, refined finish I was hoping for, I got a homey looking cake full of spatula-shaped marks which I tried to cover up with confectioner's sugar.

It may not be perfect, but with chocolate and roses, all you see are the good intentions.

Foodie Blogroll

2007-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

and Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pound Cake

I joined the Foodie Blogroll last week. The blog roll is a great, free (as in no-fee) way to network among bloggers who love food and blog about their love of food. In fact, many of the sites I go to on a regular basis are already members. The blog is run by Jen, who makes masterpieces out of left overs. Members can even participate in monthly food jousts where one tries to create something spectacular with three ingredients chosen by previous winners. This month, it's white chocolate, lavender, and pears. Check the link to the Foodie Blogroll on the right and come join us!

Today, I tried Rose Levy Beranbaum's pound cake:

The recipe can be found on starchefs.com and a lemon poppy seed variation can be found on Ms Beranbaum's website.

I'm close to couple decades tardy in discovering Ms Beranbaum's highly regarded cookbook, The Cake Bible. Every other cake author I've read has referenced her in some way, and I've leafed through The Cake Bible at bookstores and libraries before but it isn't until a week ago that I finally bought it.

Ms Beranbaum's claim to fame is her use of the two-stage method in mixing cake batters. Also called the one-bowl method, this manner of mixing begins with combining all the dry ingredients in a bowl, then moistening this mixture with butter and some liquid, followed by a minute or so of beating and the addition of more liquid.

It rose exactly as high as Ms Beranbaum said it would: 2.5" on the sides and 3.5" in the middle. The split occurred naturally, and for those who value a more precise split, Ms Beranbaum suggests taking a sharp buttered blade or knife to cut a six-inch slit down the middle of the batter 20 minutes into the baking time.

The mixing method produces a silken batter, which tastes good. At first, I found it odd that I am beating the batter long after the liquid and the flour have been added together. This is a stark contrast to the creaming method where I take extreme care not to over beat the batter. The addition of butter into the flour deters the formation of gluten, that boon to bread-making and bane of cake-bakers.

The pound cake looks rustic on the outside, but has a luxurious, velvety texture. The crumb is very fine. However, it also tastes like it could be a touch sweeter. I do wonder if people in the '80s - the cookbook was written in 1988 - had less of a sweet tooth. When I bake from the 1975 Joy of Cooking, I always notice how distinctly non-sweet the cakes and pastries are, and have been told that people were less of sugar junkies in the past.

I cut the cake right after it cooled so I can examine it, but it's best to ripen pound cakes for at least a day for best flavour.

My curiosity is piqued. Before, I was certain that the creaming method produced the most tender cakes. Now, I'm not so sure....

Sabbatical is over

2007-09-15T21:22:00.001-07:00

My break from baking ended with this today, a génoise with mango buttercream :

I mentioned in previous blogs that Dyann from dyannbakes.com puts up great how-to videos on her site. I wanted to see if she had a video on how to fold mixtures. She didn't, so I asked her if she could make one, and she responded with this:

This totally made my day. Thanks, Dyann!

Folding is one of the more intermediate level aspects of baking, and I am sure this video will help many occasional bakers, like me. What she demonstrates is perfect for souffles and mousses.

A génoise requires quite a bit more folding to fully incorporate flour into the foam until the batter is streak-free. Unincorporated streaks and lumps of flour will remain as flour in the cake. Folding has to be done gently as well so as not to deflate the batter. The result will be a light, airy batter (a giant bubble really) that bakes into a tall, golden, light, airy and somewhat dry cake.

You'll notice the génoise above rose less compared to my previous attempt. This is because I folded in some warm browned butter into this batter, which deflated it a bit. It's still a tall cake, however, and I quite like how it just came to the top of the pan. Also, the smell, taste, and texture are so much improved with just four tablespoons of butter.

A liberal dousing with syrup and liqueur takes care of the dryness. This workhorse of a cake pairs well with almost everything, especially with a rich buttercream.

To make the icing, I mixed 1/2 cup mango jam to 4 cups of Swiss meringue buttercream. The mango jam is impromptu:

1 large very ripe mango, pureed
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Put all three ingredients in a saucepan. Boil on medium heat, stirring. Jam is done when reduced and thickened lightly. Cool to room temperature, then chill and the jam will thicken quite a bit more. You should have about 3/4 cup. Use half cup for the buttercream. It is important that the jam is not warm when added to the buttercream. If you have peach jam, add 1/4 cup to this mixture and use as filling for the layers.

The buttercream is textured with speckles of mango, so I did not bother smoothing it on the cake. Instead, I casually swirled the end of a large offset spatula around the roughly iced cake:

One of the best attributes of this cake is that it only has anywhere from 60% to 80% of the calories of a similarly iced buttercake (depending on the recipe used for comparison).

If you are inclined toward a more polished finish, I suggest frosting the cake thickly, smoothing all over, then swirling with a large offset spatula warmed with hot tap water and wiped dry with a towel. The large offset spatula will better pick up the icing off the cake than a smaller spatula.

Baked NYC makes a whiteout cake that is an example of a delectably finished swirl.

With much gratitude to Sarah Phillips

2007-08-27T18:03:00.001-07:00

My first génoise

Just one more post for August:

While it is often said that baking is a science, it is not a diminution to say that baking is very much artisanal. Like all things artisanal, baking requires an apprenticeship to acquire knowledge, both salient and subtle, that will ensure success. Usually, this starts as a curiosity in youngsters who gather around another family member.

No one baked in my family, so I came upon the task as blindly as I could. I remember how my mother showed off my margarine-based cookies - all spectacularly flat and threatening to become rock-hard discs as they cooled - to our next-door neighbours. She was proud and I was embarrassed.

I'd like to think I've progressed quite far since, and I owe it all to Sarah Phillips. On page 3 of her book, Baking911: Rescue from Baking Disasters, she says "Perfection is highly overrated." From this page onward, the cookbook was a riveting read! Suddenly I knew where I messed up: basically, at every step.

Ms Phillips' thorough explanations and exceedingly detailed descriptions are also evident on her website, where my apprenticeship continues to this day. Detailed information on an encyclopedic breadth of baking topics are available there. Recipes that Ms Phillips developed can be accessed by registering to be a forum member. There is no fee to register but donations to keep the site running are welcomed. Ms Phillips graciously answers questions posted by forum members, and equally fervent bakers offer more than their two cents as well. The atmosphere is warm and supportive. (Come on join already).

After Ms Phillips praised some of my recent baking attempts, she invited me to try any one of her recipes. I gushed that a mentor has taken notice, and decided to make this:

It's a génoise, and it's my first one. A description of the how's of génoise making is available here and the recipe is available to registered forum members via the first page of the website, Baking 911.

Ms Phillips' step-by-step directions and detailed descriptions of how each stage would look like helped me get over my fear of génoise, which has a reputation for being prone to failure. I really was fearing the worst with this one and yet here it is now, over two inches tall in one pan, no buckling, no sinking:

Best of all, it really was a flavourful cake that I was able to enjoy after brushing with some simple syrup and pairing it with a peach compote. (No pictures of the plated cake, sorry, my camera ran out of juice).

There's not much more I can add to the already well-detailed recipe, but here's little break-down of my process and notes:

I did not go with the usual butter-parchment-butter-flour routine in prepping my pan. Instead, I used baker's grease, which is all-purpose flour, flavourless cooking oil, and Crisco in equal proportions by volume, whipped together until light and fluffy. I made a batch some time ago, and have kept it in the freezer. Baker's grease doesn't freeze, and I usually just wrap my hand in a Ziplock and then grab a tablespoon or so of the stuff out of its container, then prep my pan. I make sure to coat the corners and the centre of the pan very well.

The whole-egg foam was formed after about 10 minutes beating with my 325 watt Kitchen Aid mixer. How ever did people manage to do this by hand?! Flour was then folded into the the foam in three additions, the first two not as thoroughly as the last addition.

Unfolded bits of flour are detrimental to génoise, and there will be pockets of flour if the flour is not thoroughly folded into the foam. I found the pockets were mostly present in the bottom of the bowl as well as in the foam itself.

To prevent myself from frantically folding ("gingerly" folding is recommended in the recipe), I sang a slow, plaintive version of "Moon River" which gave me a good folding pace.

That might have been too much information.

Anyhow, the batter was more than what I put in the pan. I stopped at 3/4 full, because I did not want it to overflow. Here's a picture:

I probably had enough batter left to almost fill the 8" pan that I used. The raw batter was consumed by my brave and voracious helper. Yes, I gave my taster plenty of warnings about Salmonella. Nothing like informed choice... still went for it.

At 25 minutes, the cake looked very puffed:

At about this time, I was patting myself on the back for not filling the cake pan. Maybe next time I will try adding the optional beurre noisette, which will deflate the foam slightly. Or perhaps, try a 9" pan.

I opened the oven and noticed that the centre was still somewhat jiggly so I kept the génoise in the oven for another 3 minutes. The cake was then taken out of the oven, cooled in the pan for five minutes, inverted on to a rack, then immediately inverted top side up and cooled completely. The domed top flattens when the cake cools; the lip that formed around the cake pan edges diminish as well.

Notes to myself, take them if you wish: 1) Baker's grease gives great release 2) Try beurre noisette 3) Keep up good folding 4) Maybe try a different size pan or use two 8-inch pans 5) Check for signs of doneness (no jiggling, sides pull away slightly from pan) since this took longer than the usual time to bake in my oven.

Patrick's birthday cake

2007-08-18T14:27:00.002-07:00

He's going to love this!

This cake was inspired by a similar cake from Martha Stewart's "The Baking Handbook." Her version, as can be expected, has more finesse.

The piped lines, dots and circles are made of lemon curd (double the amounts in the recipe in this link to make three cups), a cup of which was added to this recipe of Swiss meringue buttercream in lieu of the vanilla.

The resulting buttercream is sweet, tangy and has a light, mousse-like quality. But I noticed that it also does not hold up well in my warm kitchen. So this will need to stay in the fridge until serving. In the future, I try mixing lemon oil to my Swiss meringue buttercream instead of using lemon curd in it to produce an icing that is more temperature stable.

Then again, the lemon curd that I used in between the layers and on the surface demands that this cake be refrigerated anyway, so I may leave the buttercream as is, especially because the taste and texture is really lemon cream dreamy (to borrow from Dorie Greenspan, in my now favourite cookbook, "Baking: From My Home to Yours".

A paper cornet was used to pipe the curd. Dyann of dyannbakes.com has a video of how to make a paper cornet.

I didn't intend to be precise because I wanted to make the cake whimsical and homey. In all honestly, my current piping skills do not include precision. Notice how the other cakes on this page are all iced free hand?

This concludes my summer baking. Thanks you to all of you who have read my humble baking blog, and special thanks for your comments and e-mails. I will be back in full force in mid-September (if not earlier). But for now, I will be living up to the "occasional" name of this blog.

See you soon!

Making Patrick's birthday cake

2007-08-13T13:30:00.002-07:00

Today, I made my first failed cake - a yellow butter cake that utilized the one-bowl method. Had it worked out, it would have been a breeze to make. Sigh.

The batter looked and tasted good, but halfway into the baking time I noticed that the middle was baking and browning much faster than the sides (the opposite of what I know usually happens with butter cakes), and that instead of baking into a nice golden, smooth, gentle dome, it was bumpy all over.

Maybe it was my unfamiliarity with the one-bowl technique that is to blame. I followed the mixing times faithfully, which I read is critical to the one-bowl method. Butter was room temp, as were the other ingredients.

The only clue that I have as to what may have happened is that the cake had a heavy and distinct firm layer near the bottom from which the rest of the cake can be peeled off. I searched on over to Baking 911's list of cake problems and their possible causes. There it was listed, "heavy layer on the bottom." Could I possibly have added one too many eggs? Were my eggs too big?

Anyway, I did not have much time to do further postmortem analysis on that cake.

Instead, I ran to an old stand-by from Flo Braker whose book, "The Simple Art of Perfect Baking," is apropos for this situation. I picked her buttermilk cake, which is a variation on her classic yellow butter cake.

Here is the inverted cake:

I used water-soaked cakepan strips that retard heat from the sides of the pan to create an even cake. This cake rose from a 1" batter to a flat cake very slightly over 2" while baking and finally settled to just under 2" after cooling.

This will be tucked away in the freezer and brought out on Sunday for Patrick's birthday.

It is full of promise. I want to make this one simple but special. I am not sure what I'm going to fill and ice it with. Right now I'm leaning on a lemon buttercream icing with lemon curd filling.

It's a good thing Patrick doesn't read this blog too often. I know he'll be in for a surprise!

Summer's (2nd to the) last cake

2007-08-04T14:23:00.001-07:00

The first Saturday in August marks the finale of the HSBC Celebration of Lights, an international fireworks competition that draws hundreds of thousands of suburbanites to English Bay in Vancouver. Every year, in time for the finale, we host a family gathering to celebrate the summer birthdays. So this morning, I finished putting together Dorie Greenspan's Devil's Food White-Out Chocolate Cake.

I modified the assembly by using the fourth layer to produce a taller cake. The crumbs were made from frozen left-over brownies that I had lying around as well as the remaining half of the Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake that I made for my birthday.

The Italian meringue icing is an absolute delight to fluff and play around with.

A Google blog search will reveal that this White-Out chocolate cake is very popular. I for one am now an official Dorie Greenspan groupie!

Having said this, I will now go into a very brief baking sabbatical, and the rest of the recipes in Ms Greenspan's wonderful cookbook, Baking: From My Home to Yours, will have to wait.

I will need to focus on a couple of upcoming exams as well as get back to my gym/running routine. Alas, I do not possess Ms Greenspan's genetics that has enabled her to be a thin pastry chef!

I should be back in mid-September with some fresh baking.

Addendum: Patrick, having seen my blog, insisted that he ought to have his own cake. Twist my rubber arm. There will be one more cake in mid-August.

My birthday cake

2007-07-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

I turn 31 tomorrow, with this:

The cake is Dorie Greenspan's "Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake" cut in half, torted to 3 layers, filled with espresso buttercream (left over from my other chocolate cake), and frosted with Mrs. Milman's chocolate frosting. It is a small cake, measuring about 4.5" x 4" without the icing.

It is glossier than my other cake because I used a blow dryer on it. I rushed the frosting too much by cooling it in an icebath which made it tight. Blow drying the surface a touch enabled me to swoop and swirl the frosting. Looks very homespun anyway. This should look less shiny after its 24 hour stint in the fridge.

Lots to do today, so I leave with one more picture:

Chocolate souffle

2007-07-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

Having recently baked a chocolate cake, I have a bit of chocolate left over lying around the house. With the record summer highs we're having in Vancouver, I decided that I needed to use up what I have left:

The recipe can be found on Michael Chu's blog. I am a fan of his site. His tagline, "Do you have an analytical mind? This is the site to read," speaks to me and he does a great job of demystifying the why's and how's of cooking and baking.

Having said this, I have a couple of notes about his recipe and commentary.

First, I found that the souffle recipe was enough to fill four 5-ounce ramekins (not just two 6-ounce). Also, having had to unexpectedly butter two additional ramekins, I had an opportunity to compare if ramekins coated with butter and sugar produced higher souffles.

Some cooks say that the sugar coating enables the egg foam batter to climb up the surface of the ramekin by grappling on the rough sugar crystals. Others say that the sugar caramelizes on the sides of the souffles and weighs it down.

For this recipe, on this attempt (there, is that qualified enough?), the sugar coating produced higher souffles. Of course, this really was not a science experiment and no variables were deliberately controlled... but at the end of it all, Pat and I finished off two very chocolaty desserts:

Dorie Greenspan's best chocolate chip cookies

2007-07-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

So many bakers call their chocolate chip cookies "the best" and I usually disagree. I believe chocolate chip cookies, more than any other baked goods, are measured against personal nostalgia.

My current preference for chocolate chip cookies is very '90s: thick, chunky, chewy and almost doughy. However, the kind that brings back a flood of memories are those of the toll house variety which is the diametric opposite of the '90s cookie. These are also the kind of cookies that I have never been able to bake successfully. My previous attempts produced results that are almost comical. Once, despite having spaced the dropped dough more than 2 inches apart, I ended up with a pan that had a thin coating of crepe-thin cookies that spread spectacularly and ran into each other.

Yes, chocolate chip cookies are temperamental!

Enter Dorie Greenspan, prolific cookbook writer and accomplished pastry chef, and her thin and crisp at the sides but chewy at the center chocolate chip cookies:

The recipe can be found here, and it is the first one of the toll house variety that I find myself enamored with.

Chocolate to bring in a new blog

2007-07-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

You will notice that my baking tends to spill over my other blog, where it is not so appropriate, seeing as it is called "South Beach Effort." So, I've decided to start a separate blog, one dedicated just to the sweeter things in life.

Yes I know that there is some internal inconsistency in what I'm doing, but I am really only an occasional baker. This suits me just fine because I am really way too busy right now with school work to be blogging actively, so I will only blog when I bake something. An opportunity came two days ago to bake this for my brother-in-law's birthday:

I always look forward to this time of year because I get to hang out with Patrick's family who have long welcomed me into their fold. I love it how we try to get together regularly, and it's always festive when we do. We reconnect and talk about what pains us, share small events as well as big milestones (and there were a couple this year), and what better way to do so than with cake.

The full recipe can be found here.

One other blogger noted that if the original recipe is followed, the frosting can take up to 3 hours to set properly, which is why although Mrs. Milman has been making this for 40 years, I was inclined to shake things up a bit.

Here are my notes and modifications:

1. I only made 1/2 the recipe because I had already filled the cake with an espresso buttercream.

2. Pour the cream into the pan you're going to be cooking in and set it out to room temperature 30 minutes before cooking. This will take the chill out of the cream, and will hasten cooking a bit.

3. I cooked the cream and chocolate chips on LOW (not medium low as the recipe says) for 30 minutes (instead of 35), making sure that no chocolate is sticking to the bottom as I'm stirring. When the chocolate has all melted and the mixture looked homogeneous, I increased the heat *slightly*. If the cream is chilly when you started cooking, this will take longer than 35 minutes.

4. I placed the heated cream/chocolate in a pre-chilled metal bowl and stirred it for a few minutes to rapidly cool the mixture before proceeding with the cooling step.

5. I placed the mixture in the freezer instead of the fridge, and stirred every 10 minutes for the first 30 minutes, then every 15 afterwards for 1 hour and 50 minutes. The idea is to make sure that the whole batch hardens instead of having the sides set and the centre remain soft.

The frosting is done when it is very thick but still spreadable (it should hold furrows and soft shapes sculpted with a butter knife).

When done, the frosting has this texture:

This only seems like a lot of work. Really, only the first 30 minutes requires small vigilance, the rest is... well... a cake walk.

This recipe is ideal for multitaskers. Once I got to cooling the frosting, I was able to work on other things (I used the oven timer to remind me of every 15 minute mark).

Lastly, Ally (Jim's lovely better half)offered a tip that proved serendipitous: to serve the cake after it has sat at room temperature (especially if it has had a sojourn in the fridge). This really brings out the chocolate taste.