Just a quick note, in case it helps anyone. My white chocolate custard completely seized up on me. I’m talking a big lump of white chocolate on the bottom of the bowl with a soupy mess of yellow butter (probably mixed with cocoa butter) on the top. The more I tried to whisk it back together, the worse it got. I even tried with an electric hand mixer. Nothing was going to bring that back together. I remembered something I’d seen Alton Brown say: a little bit of water causes chocolate to seize, but more water will smooth it back out again. I thought, “Hm. Eggs contain water, and they’re also an emulsifier. I’m supposed to be adding the eggs to this anyway. Worst that can happen is I waste the eggs, because the butter and white chocolate are already a total loss.” So, I slowly beat the eggs into my awful, disgusting mess with the electric hand mixer. Tada! Smooth and creamy!
Baby Chocolate Oblivions
I had a rather productive day in the kitchen today, using 3 recipes from 2 different books by Rose Levy Beranbaum, plus one off her website. 🙂 I started out by putting together a batch of Rose’s favourite flaky & tender pie crust. I’d never made this before, since the Pie & Pastry Bible is the only one of Rose’s “heavenly” books that I don’t own, but I saw some mention of the recipe somewhere and decided to try it. I think it may have been in one of Rose’s youtube postings. Jay has chicken pot pie on the menu for later this week, so he needed me to put together the shells. I have to say, the method for bringing together the dough worked really well. Better (and with less liquid) than a lot of pastry recipes I’ve used in the past. The latex gloves are an inspired technique. Once that was resting in the fridge, I started a batch of pizza dough, from The Bread Bible. Left that to rest on the counter, while I put together the sponge & flour mixture for the Golden Semolina Torpedo. By now, the pastry dough had its requisite 45 minutes in the fridge to hydrate, so I pulled that out, rolled it out into the dishes for the pot pies, and stashed them in the freezer. Jay hates rolling out doughs, so that’s the least I can do to help with supper. He does the cooking, I do the baking, so something like a pot pie is a joint effort. 😉
At this point, Jay wanted the use of the kitchen for a bit (more about that later), so I used that time to put together my mise en place for the Baby Chocolate Oblivions, which are this week’s cake in the Heavenly Bakers group. I decided to go with the milk chocolate variation, partly because I happened to have a large amount of milk chocolate in the freezer, and I’m running low on dark.
Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream
This week’s cake is a Pumpkin cake, for Halloween. Rose has a few of the “outtakes” on her blog. I wish my outtakes were that pretty! The cake part of this one is really, really easy, but the frosting has more than a couple of steps. You have to caramelize sugar, make a crème anglaise (which isn’t quite crème, given it contains no cream, but I’ll allow it…), make an Italian meringue, then whip the various parts together with butter.
Here is my finished cake.
Continue reading “Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream”
Almond Shamah Chiffon
I was a little late with this cake. I saw everyone’s posts for last weekend’s Heavenly Cakes project and just couldn’t resist making it myself. It looked so good, and I love Amaretto, and I knew I already had some blanched almonds in the freezer, so what could go wrong, right? All I would need to pick up was the seedless raspberry jam.
Pumpkin Whoopie Pies
I noticed this recipe on the blog of one of the other heavenly cake bakers, and couldn’t resist. The recipe is apparently called “Pumpkin Cookie Cakes”, but I know better. These may not be chocolate with a shortening/icing sugar frosting filling, but they’re definitely Whoopie Pies. I grew up in New Brunswick, which is similar to Maine in terms of our fondness for Whoopie Pies, so they’re one of my favourite treats. Just down the block from the building that housed most of my classes during undergrad at UNB was The Goody Shop, which was a little bakery famous for their Whoopie Pies. I really miss Fredericton sometimes.
Suggestions?
I’ve been asked to come up with something special for the birthday of someone who doesn’t particularly like sweet things. I suggested something dark chocolate, and was told that maybe if it were chocolate, something mousse-y could work.
I pointed to the plum round ingots on Marie’s Heavenly Cakes blog, and was told “add liquor and now you’re cooking!”
Her favourite drink is Campari, and favourite fruit would be citrus. Anyone have any great ideas?
Apple Upside-Down Cake
This week’s cake in the Heavenly Bakers group is Apple Upside-Down Cake. I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures this time, as we were in the process of attempting to deal with a squirrel that had decided that our no-longer-used chimney would make a good entrance to the basement. He (or she, I didn’t look closely) has been trapped and taken to the other side of a river and across a busy highway, so hopefully won’t be making his or her way back any time soon.
Continue reading “Apple Upside-Down Cake”
Heavenly Cake List
To keep track of what’s going on with this project, I copied a list of the cakes from one of the reviews on amazon.com. I’m linking the recipe names to Marie’s version at The Heavenly Cake Place. As dates are set for each cake, I will edit this post to add the dates. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to link the dates to my posts, to whoever Marie decides to feature, whoever “hosts” that week, or the version I happen to like best. For now, I’ve linked the Barcelona Brownie bars to my version, and The Jansci Torta to Faithy’s version, because I like chocolate. 🙂 I linked the wedding cakes to Hector’s previews on Rose’s website.
If I (or rather the person who wrote the amazon review I used) missed any cakes, please let me know. Thanks!
Edit: I’ve moved the list to the link on the right under Pages titled Heavenly Cake List, so that it’s easy to access.
Barcelona Brownie Bars
The Heavenly Cake Bakers are doing Barcelona Brownie Bars from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes this week. I made my version on Saturday, and took them (along with Rose’s butter dipped dinner rolls!) up to my uncle’s place for Thanksgiving yesterday. Not traditional Thanksgiving fare, but Grandma was already supplying pumpkin pie, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. My co-workers can wait until next week for their first taste of Heavenly Cakes. 🙂
Here’s my favourite shot of the (mostly) finished product:
Rose’s Heavenly Cakes is here!
Unfortunately, I had to spend my evening doing this:
and this:
instead of reading this:
I was highly entertained by the packaging. I don’t think I’ve ever received anything marked “EXTREMELY URGENT” before in my life.
eatsndrinks.ca 