Pumpkin Cake

Sometimes I just need to get rid of the can of pumpkin and some of the ten bags of nuts that have managed to accumulate in my cupboard.  Luckily, the Pumpkin Cake was the perfect thing to get rid of some unused ingredients.



Before starting in on Rose's Heavenly Cakes, I had never realized how much a quick roast in the oven improves the flavor of nuts.  It's really amazing how the flavors are drawn out and made infinitely more delicious after a swift roast.  The walnuts smelled and tasted heavenly after coming out of the oven.



The cake isn't anything very special.  The batter is simple to put together.  Rose's recipe makes use of the Nordic Ware 3D Pumpkin Pan, but I'm cheap and a regular bundt pan does the job just as well.



The buttercream for this came together perfectly, but it somehow began to melt a bit after standing in my kitchen for a few minutes.  It went onto the cake a little...  weird.



I'll be the first to admit that this doesn't look like it's going to taste amazing.  That color is just unappetizing.  Rose adds orange food coloring to her pumpkin-shaped cake, but again, my cheapness prevented me from doing this.



Fortunately, the cake inside was delicious and moist.  The contrast of the light-colored frosting and the darker cake was surprisingly nice to look at.  My only complaints with this cake are that the pumpkin flavor wasn't very strong and that it was a bit too sweet for my taste.  Other than that:  SUCCESS!

Genoise Rose

Only three times in my life have I made something that was so horrible, so disgusting, that I had to straight-up throw it out.  Unfortunately, the Genoise Rose cake was one of those times.  I'm big enough to admit that in two of those instances, the fault lay entirely with me.  I messed up.  My bad.



Everything started several months ago when I made what I optimistically considered a great find at a local Goodwill Store.  A rose-shaped bundt pan for only $8.  Sure the exterior paint looked like crap.  Sure it needed a really good scrub.  But a pan is a pan, right?



Flush with a sense of victory from my amazing find, I went home to try making the beautiful Genoise Rose cake featured in Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

As I poured the batter into the scrubbed and greased pan, I began to have doubts about the provenance of this cheap piece of bakeware.  Someone was probably just moving and didn't need it anymore.  Or a family member died and their kids didn't want it.  Or someone had finally decided to clear out the clutter in their kitchen.  Right?  It couldn't possibly be one of those... cursed pans I've heard so much about?  Right?



Wrong.  The cake fell to pieces in the pan and clung like a needy girlfriend to the center core.  This meant that I had to reach my claws into the cake to pull it out in disgusting chunks.  The resulting cake was... not pretty.  I ventured to sample a bit and found that it was also not tasty.  At all.  It was, in fact, pretty horrible.  So I choked back tears of shame and disappointment and into the garbage it went.

It was only then that I discovered the true curse of this pan; the reason why it had been abandoned at the Goodwill.  The thing is completely impossible to clean.  No human digit is small enough to get into the nooks and crannys of the rose.  No sponge or brush could dislodge every bit of clingy cake.  Even an obsessive scrubbing with a toothbrush couldn't get into every crevasse.  The thing is disgusting and a breeding ground for mold and other living organisms.




A few months later, I decided to make a second attempt at the Genoise Rose, but this time I used a normal bundt pan.  The results were significantly better tasting and just better to look at.



This cake is brushed with a triple-sec syrup to give it an orange-y sweet flavor.  To be honest, this cake could have used a bit more syrup.  The outside was moist and tasty, but the inside was still a little dry.



People still ate it though :)

Guest Post: Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Hello all. Dirty Chef's Hat, here. I've been invited to offer up my own baking extravaganza for this blog, so, without further adieu, here goes!

I've been making the Joy of Cooking's banana bread recipe for about 10 years now. I first made it with a hand-crank mixer, which gave me blisters like you wouldn't believe. I also managed to use those first batches as trade for full meals that I couldn't afford at the time. Who said that the barter system was dead?

For those of you wondering what the recipe is (as written), here ya go.

Now, this is a perfectly good recipe. But I'm not one who enjoys a huge chunk of banana in only some of my bites. I like to go all out with the banana-y flavor. I also happen to enjoy cinnamon and chocolate. I mean, who doesn't? So let's start with the recipe modifications:

1) Toss your mushy bananas into the mixing bowl along with the flour, sugar, etc. Then mix that in with your electric mixer. This will almost turn the bananas into a puree, and really spread the flavor.

2) Toss in some cinnamon. I don't really measure, I just mix enough in that it adds JUST a touch of cinnamon flavor.

3) Mix in around 4-5 oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips per loaf. You can't go wrong here. Just spoon them in and mix.

The end result in your bread pan should look like this.

Bake away just like the recipe tells you, and then slice into a warm loaf of heaven when done (and slightly cooled). If it's fresh out of the oven, the chocolate chips are amazing.

Deep Chocolate Rosebuds

I received a couple of baking items as gifts last X-mas.  One of them was the rose-pan from Nordicware.  I was completely thrilled when I found out about this gift and I couldn't wait to get home and try it out.



My previous experience with rose-shaped pans was not so great and will be the subject of the next blog post, so I was a little concerned about using this one.  All of the little crevices on this pan are perfect places for things to stick and cause problems during baking.  But I figured that I should soldier on regardless.  To christen this pan, I chose to use the recipe for Deep Chocolate Rosebuds from Rose's Heavenly Cakes.



The recipe is basically a chocolate cupcake with a ganache center.  Ganache is one of my buzz words - it's all I need to hear to get really excited to try out a recipe.  Unfortunately, the ganache in this recipe refused to set up properly, which resulted in the finished cakes looking a little weird.



The dark spots on the rosebuds are from where the ganache spread to the edges of the cake.  The cakes still tasted great, but they didn't have that molten ganache center that I wanted.  I suppose next time I should try to use less cream in the ganache and maybe set it in the freezer for a few minutes before putting it in the pan.

Speaking of the pan, it worked far better than I had anticipated.  The cakes popped right out of their crevasses onto the cooling rack.  I was honestly surprised by how easy it was.




And then I packed up a few of these to take down to a wine tasting at Boordy Vineyards.  The afternoon was full of wine, chili, and tasty cakes.  A great day!

Chocolate Raspberry Trifle

Every X-mas my Mom puts together a trifle for our traditional holiday desert.  This year, I wanted to try my hand at creating the X-mas trifle.  I decided to use the recipe for the Chocolate Raspberry Trifle from Rose's Heavenly Cakes.



To illustrate how flippin' complicated this thing was, the picture above is my working copy of the recipe.  That's five index cards jam-packed with my chicken scratch.  For reference, most cake recipes that I feature on this blog take up only one to two cards.  The epic fruit cake of epic epicness required three.



It was something of a luxury to be working in my Mom's kitchen for a change.  Her kitchen is easily twice the size of the one in my tiny apartment and has TONS more counter space and an oven that actually works reliably.  She's also got way more kitchen equipment than I do, including a trifle dish.  Which, you know, is kind of necessary when you're trying to make a trifle.



The cake for the trifle is a genoise, which depends on warm egg yolks, whipped into a froth for its texture and rise.  Above are the eggs before being beaten.  And five minutes later, they more than quadruple in volume:



And then there is cake!



These cakes don't really rise a whole lot in the pan and I was a little wary about splitting them into layers, but I figured I'd give it a try.  A couple of the layers fell right apart as soon as they were cut, but I wasn't too broken up about it.  After all, they're going to go right into a trifle dish and get covered with puddin' so who cares?



The layers are covered with a raspberry-liquor syrup and then raspberry jam and then fresh raspberries and puddin' are sandwiched between each layer.  The whole thing is then topped with raspberry-flavored whipped cream.  The end result is really awesome.



So in the end, the trifle came out beautiful.  Each layer was thoroughly saturated in raspberry and chocolate flavor.  Rose's recipe for creme anglaise is also one of the best things I've ever eaten.  Seriously, I could just spoon that stuff into my face all day long.  Too bad I'll have to wait until next X-mas to try out the strawberry trifle from Rose's book.  I'm looking forward to it though!

30 Whoopie Pies

To celebrate my general love of baking this X-mas, and to let everyone know who is truly important in my life and who I wish would go die in a fire, I decided to make whoopie pies for my friends and also for those co-workers that I don't want to murder on a regular basis.  Since I've written about whoopie pies here before, I'm going to gloss over most of what went down.



This was my first experience with attempting to increase a recipe on this scale.  Unfortunately, before I even started baking, I was running into problems.  It was uncomfortably close to the holidays and my local chain grocery store had somehow managed to run completely out of flipping unsalted butter.  The had miles upon miles of salted butter, but when it came to the unsalted stuff, they only had super-expensive organic shit.  I was in a time crunch and so, after a wrestle with my inner cheap-face, I went ahead and picked up the more expensive stuff.



Above:  A dangerous amount of boiling sugar.  Seriously guys, this much molten-lava sugar was completely frightening the shit out of me.



Above:  What four quarts of meringue looks like. 

Below:  What ten pounds of buttercream frosting looks like.  I had to use both hands to lift this delicious disaster.



I'm a little proud that the only item I over-bought on for this recipe was the buttermilk. 

Which is still in my fridge. 

Almost three months later.

Maybe I should combine it with my left-over creme de menthe and they can form a disgusting monstrosity that will never ever be eaten.



And this is roughly half of my whoopie pie bounty laid out across my kitchen counter.  I wrapped each one in plastic wrap and then placed it inside a small holiday-themed gift bag.  That day I was the weirdo carrying a tote-bag stuffed with cake into work.  I felt like Santa.  Santa in the bizarro-world where he only gives people cake.



I've not got much more to say about whoopie pies.  They're delicious.  They're not too difficult.  People like them.  I love them.  I've been encouraged to try out different flavors of whoopie pie, but this is such an all-around perfect recipe that I'm not sure I want to mess with it at all.

Mystery Cake with Tomato Ganache

I'm a fan of using atypical ingredients in baking.  When I saw the recipe for a chocolate cake using Tomato soup in Rose's Heavenly Cakes, I jumped at the chance to try it out. 

This picture was taken before I realized I had pulled the wrong can of tomato-thing out of the cupboard.  I realized my mistake before it was too late, but forgot to take another picture.  But seriously, this looks disgusting.  Tomato soup, chocolate and cream?  Yuck.  Just, yuck.



The completed ganache didn't look too bad.  However when I tried a taste of it, all I got was the sickeningly-sweet flavor of tomato soup.  Even long after, the tomato taste lingered on my tongue and was not exactly the awesome-est thing I've ever eaten.



This cake also used a scary three and a half sticks of butter.  Honestly it kind of felt like overkill when I had everything laid out for my mise en place. 



The cake layers turned out fluffy and moist due to the tomato soup.  Everyone who tried the cake raved about how delicious it was and nobody was able to guess what the mystery ingredient could be.  Unfortunately, I knew what it was and so all I could taste when I ate this cake was the tomato soup.  Just tomato soup all over the inside of my mouth.  And the after-taste.  Ugh.  Have I mentioned that I don't really like tomato soup?  Taking that into account, this cake might have been a mistake.

But since no one else was bothered by the flavor and most people seemed to like it, I consider this a general success.  Maybe not one which I will ever attempt to repeat, but a success nonetheless.



And holy shit, but my camera is a piece of crap.  I hope everyone reading this is enjoying how it refuses to focus on the massive cake-y object in the foreground and instead has captured my dish soap and knife block in perfect focus.  I think it's about time to upgrade my hardware...

Macaron Dominance

I'm gonna call it.  I am officially declaring myself to be the Queen of Macarons.  All others must bow down before me.  And I am certain that there is absolutely no way that I will ever be struck down for my hubris.  Ever.



X-mas (It is my policy to only refer to it as X-mas.) is a magical time.  A time of joy and cheer.  And apparently a time for cookie parties.  What is a cookie party?  A cookie party is a wondrous event at which gaggles of young to middle-aged ladies gather to exchange cookies.  Everyone brings a different type of cookie and everyone goes home with an assortment of whatever was brought.  This year, I was invited to two separate cookie parties, which required the creation of a total of 9-dozen cookies.  That is 108 cookies for those of you who unable to do maths.  And that is a shit-ton of cookies for those of you who are unable to do visualization of quantities of things.



Riding high on my previous victory over the macaron, I decided to produce two types of macarons for these events, both infused with sufficiently X-mas-y flavors.  Hmm...  The quantity of hyphens in the word 'X-mas-y' is making me rethink my commitment to the term X-mas.  Regardless, we soldier on.  The two flavors I chose were cinnamon/nutmeg and cranberry.  I modified a basic buttercream frosting recipe by adding a teaspoon of both cinnamon and nutmeg for the former and a quarter-cup of cranberry jelly for the latter.  This left me with most of a can of cranberry jelly which I ate with a spoon for dinner one night.  What?  That isn't sad at all.  I just love cranberry jelly. 



Determined not to spend $13 on a pound of almond flour again, I resorted to ordering my almond flour from Amazon for approximately $4 less per pound.  Normally, I would balk at the idea of obtaining grocery items from the faceless internet, but my frugality overrode my squeamishness.  Also, it's flour.  Unless it gets bugs it doesn't really go bad, right?



Fortunately, unlike the film Titanic, my flour-acquisition came in on time and under budget.  Also unlike the film Titanic, it's really good flour.



For the cinnamon/nutmeg flavored macarons, I used the basic macaron recipe and dusted the tops with nutmeg before throwing them in the oven.  For the cranberry ones, I added a few drops of red food coloring.  Interestingly, the addition of even a few drops of food coloring caused the batter to be significantly runnier.  Both images above and below are of pre-baked macaron shells.



This image was taken mere seconds before I accidentally jostled the cooling racks with my elbow, sending delicate macaron shells flying everywhere.  Shattered shells all over my kitchen floor.  Quelle horreur.  Luckily, I habitually over-bake and there were enough salvage-able shells left over for me to meet my party-imposed cookie quota.



Following the Bostini episode, I have become a firm adherent to the ways of the Dollar General.  A quick trip to the store yielded a cheap yet serviceable serving tray for my macarons.  Delightful!



The zillion macarons I made were both beautiful and tasty as all hell.  And elbow-jostling aside, the process was relatively without hassle.  Following this victory, I am prepared to accept the title of Queen of Macarons.  Kneel before Zod!

Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

 

Just to give you an idea of how far behind I am in posting these things, Roue's birthday was in November.  I made this Devil's Food cake for Roue's birthday.  It is now February.  I am a lazy bum!  Huzzah!




The ganache for this cake was theoretically simple, as all ganaches are, but it was unique in that it featured caramel as a major player.  Also, I am terrified of caramel.

First of all, I'm always worried that I haven't got the sugar temperature exactly right and as a result my caramel will turn out too light or too dark.  Second of all, it is scary as hell when you pour cream directly onto boiling sugar and it foams up and spatters like crazy all over the place.  I have a real fear of getting burned by cooking-spatter.  Seriously, do not ever ask me to deep-fry a thing.  I will have a panic attack.



As you can see below, I got a little impatient and - as predicted - my caramel ended up far lighter than I would have liked.



Although it's not as though the color matters much when you mix it in with dark chocolate to make a ganache.




And while the ganache sets, it is time to work on ze cake.

 

If I remember correctly (And why would I?  It was like three months ago.), these layers came out very dense and fluffy but felt a bit fragile when I de-panned them.



And I do remember correctly that the ganache was disconcertingly runny.  It kind of oozed down the sides of the cake the entire time I worked with it and didn't stop oozing until it was eaten.



I sometimes get comments on the little patterns that I make in the frosting on the top of my cakes.  Really, it's as simple as running the frosting knife or spatula or whatever over the top in an arc a few times.  It is obscenely simple.  But hey, it looks pretty right?  And it tasted awesome!  Very dense and very rich but not too sweet.  I consider this one a win all around.

Oh yeah, and Roue liked it too.