The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Tuesdays With Dorie: The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

This week's challenge was chosen by Mary of Starting From Scratch  - "The Most Extraordinary French Cream Tart" from Baking, From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pgs. 331-332. 

(I made mine with the "Sweet Tart Dough" on pg. 444.)

The first of my Tuesdays with Dorie!

I actually doubled the recipes.  Our nephew and his girlfriend just closed on their first home, and I thought this tart would be part of a nice housewarming gift.  And, of course, I would then need a second tart to keep for the family.

I've made lemon curd many times, and this lemon cream is similar in some ways, but oh so very different in mouth feel.  It's soft and smooth and light and lush.

**(I'm just writing out the directions for a single tart, though all my pictures will have twice as much of everything.)

Oh, and as is often the case, my daughter, Julia, helped out.  Dorie's instructions are in normal type, my own notes will be in italics.

Here's what you will need:

1 cup sugar

grated zest of 3 lemons

4 large eggs

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from 4-5 lemons)

2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons (10  1/2 oz) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-size pieces, at room temperature

1 9-inch tart shell made with Sweet Tart Dough (page 444), Sweet Tart Dough with Nuts (page 444), or Spiced Tart Dough (page 447), fully baked and cooled

Getting Ready:  Have an instant-read thermometer, a strainer and a blender (first choice) or food processorat hand.  Bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a saucepan.

Put the sugar and zest in a large heatproof bowl that can be set over the pan of simmer water.  Off the heat, rub the sugar and zest together between your fingers

until the suar is moist, grainy and very aromatic.

Whisk in the eggs,

followed by the lemon juice.

Set the bowl over the pan and start stirring with the whisk as soon as the mixture feels tepid to the touch.  Cook the lemon cream until it reaches 180 degrees F.  As you whisk--you must whisk constantly to keep the eggs from scrambling--you'll see that the cream will start out light and foamy,

then the bubbles will get bigger, and then, as it gets closer to 180 degrees F, it will start to thicken and the whisk will leave tracks.  Heads up at this point--the tracks mean the cream is almost ready.  Don't stop whisking or checking the temperature, and have patience--depending on how much heat you're giving the cream, getting to temp can take as long as 10 minutes.  (Sorry, no pictures here - hard to hold a camera with a thermometer in one hand and a whisk in the other.)

As soon as it reaches 180 degrees F, remove the cream from the heat and strain it into the container of the blender (or food processor); discard the zest.  Let the cream stand, stirring occasionally, until it cools to 140 degrees F, about 10 minutes.  (Since I'd doubled the recipe, and neither my blender nor my food processor had the capacity, I used my stand mixer from here on out.)

Turn the blender to high (or turn on the processor) and, with the machine going, add the butter about 5 pieces at a time. 

Scrape down the sides of the container as needed as you incorporate the butter. 

Once the butter is in, keep the machine going--to get the perfect light, airy texture of lemon-cream dreams, you must continue to blend the cream for another 3 minutes.  If your machine protests and gets a bit too hot, work in 1-minute intervals, giving the machine a little rest between beats.

Pour the cream into a container, press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.  (The cream will keep in the fridge for 4 days or, tightly sealed, in the freezer for up to 2 months; thaw it overnight in the refrigerator.)

When you are ready to assemble the tart, just whisk the cream to loosen it and spoon it into the tart shell.  Serve the tart, or refrigerate until needed.

And for the Tart Shell:

Ingredients:

1  1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (9 tablespoons) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk

And the directions:

Put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. 

Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in--you should have some pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and some the size of peas.  Stir the yolk, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition.  When the egg is in, process in long pulses--about 10 seconds each--until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds.  Just before you reach this stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change--heads up.  Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.

To Press the Dough into the Pan:  Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom.  Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan, using all but one little piece of dough, which you should save in the refrigerator to patch any cracks after the crust is baked.  Don't be too heavy-handed--press the crest in so that the edges of the pieces cling to one another, but not so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture.  Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, perferably longer, before baking.

To Partially or Fully Bake the Crust:  Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. 

Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust. 

(Since you froze the crust, you can bake it without weights.)  Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the crust for 25 minutes.  Carefully remove the foil.  If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon.  For a partially baked crust, patch the crust if necessary, then transfer the crust to a cooling rack (keep it in its pan).

To Fully Bake the Crust:  Bake for another 8 minutes or so, or until it is firm and golden brown.  (I dislike lightly baked crusts, so I oftenkeep the crust in the oven just a little longer.  If you do that, just make sure to keep a close eye on the crust's progress--it can go from golden to way too dark in a flash.)  Transfer the tart pan to a rack an dcool the crust to room temperature before filling.

(I had issues with the crust - totally my own fault.  I should have rolled the dough out rather than just pressing it onto the pans.  My shells came out a bit lumpy in spots, thin in others, and therefore overcooked where they were thin.  You can see that particular problem in the shot below.)

I kept that one for us and gave the better shell to my nephew and his girlfriend. 

Anyway, I filled the tart shells a little bit before the 4 hour minimum chilling time was up, partly because of time constraints at home, but also because my son whacked his toe on the leg of the dining room table and he was on the verge of tears.  I said "I know what would make that feel better!  Lemon tart!"  And he nodded in agreement.  So I filled the shells at that point.

And my son forgot all about his pain...

And my daughter enjoyed the fruits (intended pun) of her labor.

And here's the tart we brought to Joe and Emily.

Couple other notes -

Exactly halfway through the first 25 minutes of baking the tart crusts, my kitchen was filled with the most wonderful buttery cookie smell.  And once the tart shells were out, my son came drifting into the kitchen, led by his nose, and wanted to eat the shells right then and there.

I had some of the cream left over - probably because my tart pan is an 8" and the rectangular pan is about the same in volume.  But that's okay. 

There's hardly any of our tart left now.  My husband had some, I'd had some with the kids, and we all agree it's one of the most delicious lemony creations we've ever tasted. 

And really pretty easy to make, too.  (Apart from my own self-created problems with the crusts.)  I'll definitely make this again.

Thanks Dorie!

Bittersweet Chocolate and Ginger-Lemon Poached Pear Tart

Years ago Bill and I used to frequent a tiny restaurant featuring the cuisine of Northern Italy.  The name of the place was Nonna Cherubina.

The husband and wife - Luigi and Stephania - who owned and ran the place (and lived above it) were warm and kind and welcoming.  We always felt like family there. 

There were a few years - after we'd moved to a different neighborhood and had two babies - when we didn't go out to eat there at all.  And then, a few years ago, we discovered that Nonna Cherubina had closed.  I heard that Luigi and Stephania had moved to Spain.  And that was the end of a little period in our lives.

The food was fabulous, every time.  So were the desserts.  One evening one of the desserts offered was a pear and chocolate tart.  I tried it, and it was delicious.  I never forgot it - the uncommon combination of flavors, and the simplicity and beauty of it.

Well, a while ago when I was making my poached pears for this post, I started thinking about that pear and chocolate tart.  I didn't remember it perfectly, but I thought I could at least make something kind of similar.

So here's what I came up with.

First, I poached the pears.

I didn't poach them whole, like I'd done for that other dessert.  And I didn't use red wine this time, either.  I wanted them white, to better contrast with the dark chocolate.

For the poaching liquid, I used 3 cups of water, 2 cups of sweet wine (2 different kinds that Bill's nephew brought back from Germany recently),

 

1/2 cup of sugar, the peeled zest of a lemon, and about a 1 inch knob of fresh ginger, sliced,

and two teaspoons of vanilla. 

I put all of that in a pot and brought it to a boil.

While the poaching liquid was heating up, I peeled two firm pears...

And then sliced them in half...

trimmed the ends off slightly, and continued to slice each half lengthwise, into 1/8-1/4 inch thick slices.  (I cut around the little seed area where necessary.)

And when the poaching liquid had reached a boil, I added the pear slices and let the liquid come back to the boil.

Once the liquid reached a boil, I shut the heat off and just let everything sit there for an hour and a half or so.  I didn't want to cook the pears too much - they were thin slices and I didn't want them to turn mushy.

I removed the pears from the liquid and put them in a smaller bowl on the counter to finish cooling down, and then I removed any remaining pieces of ginger and lemon peel, covered the pears with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge.

Next up - the crust.

I wanted nuts in the tart crust - I figured they would add some crunch, and nuts go great with both chocolate and pears, so why not?

I used 3/4 cup of ground almonds, 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp of salt, 1  1/2 tsp brown sugar, 1 stick of unsalted butter (chilled and cut into little cubes), 1/4 cup of vegetable shortening (also chilled, also cut into little cubes), and somewhere around 6-8 T of ice water to make the dough. 

First I combined the almonds, flour, salt, and sugar in the food processor and pulsed to combine.

Then I added the chilled cubes of butter and pulsed 5-6 times.

And then the shortening and another 5-6 pulses.

To that I gradually added the ice water - a tablespoon or two and then a pulse...tablespoon and a pulse...until the dough just came together.

I wrapped the dough in plastic and put that in the fridge to chill.

After half an hour or more (I don't remember exactly), I took the dough out of the fridge and divided it in half.  I rolled the first half out so it was large enough to line my 8" round tart pan...

I folded it into quarters...

Placed the dough so that the point of the fold was in the center of the tart pan...

Unfolded the dough and pressed it gently into the corners of the pan...

And then trimmed off the excess.

I did the same thing, more or less, with the other half of dough and my rectangular tart pan.

And then, since I was going to prebake these tart shells, I docked the dough with a fork. 

Docking means piercing the dough with many small holes so that steam can escape while it's cooking and you won't end up with a great big pastry bubble in your pan.

I baked the shells at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

And last, but certainly not least - the chocolate part.

I made a bittersweet ganache - actually, I made a LOT of a bittersweet ganache.  I still have half of it in the fridge.  It calls to me in the night...

Anyway, here's what I used:

1 quart of heavy cream/whipping cream (same thing)

24 oz good bittersweet chocolate

4 T unsalted butter

4 T sugar

I put the cream, sugar and butter in a pot and started heating it on medium.

 

While that was heating up, I broke my chocolate into pieces an put them in a large stainless steel bowl.

Once the sugar had dissolved, the butter melted, and the cream mixture started to boil, I poured all of that into my bowl of chocolate.

Then I stirred it and stirred it...

and the chocolate melted and melted...

(yum)

And once the chocolate was all melted, and the mixture was nice and dark, I poured it all through a strainer (just to get any tiny bits of unmelted chocolate out) and then poured the ganache into my two tart shells.

I let these sit out on the counter until the ganache had completely cooled and was starting to firm up a little bit. 

I dried off the pear slices on some paper towels and then arranged them on top of the tarts. 

 

I could have used more pears, I suppose, and really overlapped them tightly so they'd look like a flower or something, but the ginger-lemon flavor of the pears was pretty strong, and I didn't want to upset the balance between that and the chocolate.  And also, I only had 2 pears anyway.  heh heh.

I put both tarts in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours before slicing them and serving.

Julia and Alex had some after dinner last night.

They both liked it.  In fact, Alex just asked for a piece a moment ago - for a snack.

The spicy tartness of the pears, the smooth and rich chocolate ganache, and the crispy, nutty tart shell.

It's not exactly the way I remember the other tart,

 

but I'm still pretty pleased with it.

Mini Blueberry Pies

My kids have been, well, clamoring for blueberry pie.  Not because I make such a fabulous blueberry pie, mind you, but because they watch Noggin.  And on Noggin, when the main program of the half hour time slot is finished (about 7 minutes before the half hour is actually up) the rest of the time is filled by the songs and antics of Mr. Moose A Moose and his sidekick, Zee, a sort of Harpo Marx in blue feathers.  One of the little filler bits involves a search for the right number of blueberries to make someone's (Moose's aunt?  I don't remember.  Or I've blocked it out.) famous blueberry pie.  And, since this is geared toward preschoolers, the number of blueberries the recipe calls for is...four. 

While that may seem a rather skimpy amount of fruit for any size pie, Moose sells it so well that any time they see that little bit, my kids develop an overwhelming desire for blueberry pie.

So when Julia and I were at the grocery store on Monday, we got a bunch of frozen blueberries - I use Wyman's frozen wild blueberries pretty much exclusively, unless I'm buying (or picking) fresh, local berries.  Wyman's are the wild berries - tiny and bursting with flavor.  And I know I sound like a commercial, but I just really like them.  And so do my kids.

I decided it would be more fun and cute (yes, that's influential at times) to make mini pies.  Initially I was going to use very mini tart pans - each little bitty pie a perfect mouthful of crust and fruit.  But then I decided to go with standard sized muffin tins instead.  Not a perfect mouthful, but a very nice little serving size.  And cute.

So here's what I did.

First of all, I made it quite clear that if they wanted pie, my kids would have to help.

Sorry, kiddo, but you gotta earn your blueberries.

She saw my point and set to work with a better attitude.

Alex helped, too.

 

We measured out ingredients for the pie crust.  Again, I used the "American Pie Dough for Fruit Pies" from Cook's Illustrated Magazine's book The Best Recipe.

2  1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

2 T sugar

12 T unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/4 inch pieces

8 T vegetable shortening, chilled, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

6-8 T ice water.

I put the flour, salt and sugar in the food processor and pulsed a few times to combine.  Then I added the pieces of butter and pulsed 5-6 times.  Then I added in the shortening...

And then my kids were singing and dancing on their chairs.

Must have been the anticipation of pie.

Yeah, that was it.

Despite the distraction, I managed to finish the dough.

I wrapped it in plastic and put it in the fridge to chill, and then we started in on the filling.

I used 4 cups of blueberries, 1/4 cup of tapioca, 1 cup of sugar, and a little lemon zest.

While Alex combined the blueberries and lemon zest...

Julia whisked the sugar and tapioca together.

Then they took turns blending the sugar mixture with the blueberry mixture.

The blueberries needed to sit for about fifteen minutes - to allow the tapioca to soften.  So while things were sitting in that bowl, we got the dough out and made our little pie crusts.

I used a 4" round cookie cutter - it's the largest circle I have -

and the circles of dough fit nicely in the muffin tins.

I also cut out little scalloped-edge circles to use as tops.

By this time, the children were exhausted from all the hard work, and they had gone downstairs to rest their weary bones.

I filled up the little pie shells (20 of them) with the blueberry filling and topped each with a little bit of butter.

And because I thought the little round tops would cook faster than the rest of the pies, I didn't put them on the pies initially.  Instead, while the mini pies started out in a 400 degree oven, I put all the smaller dough circles on a cookie sheet, brushed them with a wash of egg yolk, and sprinkled them with sugar.

I put this tray in the fridge while the pies cooked.

After 20 minutes, I turned the oven down to 350 and cooked the pies for another 30 minutes.

I took the pies out, then baked off the little lids, and then set them on the pies.

And I'll admit it - these aren't the prettiest things I've ever made.

A few changes I'd make next time around (and as long as Moose A Moose is counting blueberries, there'll definitely be a next time) would be these:

I would drain the juice from the blueberries before mixing them in with the sugar and everything else.  If this was for a standard sized pie, it wouldn't have mattered so much, but with these, I think there was just too much liquid.

I would also just go ahead and put the little lids on from the start. 

I'd also make the bottom crusts larger, so they'd come up higher than the rim of the muffin tin. 

However.

All those mistakes acknowledged, I will say, these were pretty yummy little pies.  Julia ate one.  And Alex ate two of 'em that night - warm, not long out of the oven.  He polished the first one off, a look of bliss on his little purple-stained face.  "Mom?"  He asked.  "Could I have another one?"   

And that was really the whole reason for baking them in the first place. 

Happy St. Joseph's Day!

I made a bunch of mini-zeppole for my husband to bring into work this morning.  I was a bit surprised to discover that I didn't have enough pastry cream for the amount of pate a choux shells I'd made.  The shells were about 2" or so in diameter, by the way, and the recipe I posted made about 54 shells.  So, if you're going to make these, I would either reduce the size of the pate a choux recipe or increase the pastry cream. 

Personally, I'd go for the pastry cream increase.  There's never too much pastry cream in the world.

And what, you may ask, am I going to do with the remaining shells?  Well, even though I've got pate a choux listed under "Desserts" over on the right, you can use them for sweet OR savory items.  You can add herbs or grated cheese to the pate a choux and then fill them with some sort of cheese mixture, like goat cheese or a smoked salmon and cream cheese and chive mixture.

Gotta go.  I'm getting hungry.

Update:  ACK!  I forgot a little dollop of whipped cream on top - something for the cherry to perch on.  See what happens when you don't plan well?  At least they taste pretty good.

Zeppole - One Version

 

Depending on who you ask, this may or may not be the correct kind of zeppole with which to celebrate St. Joseph's Day (March 19th).  I've read that traditional zeppole are actually fried dough tossed in cinnamon sugar.  Sounds good to me, actually. 

But here in Rhode Island, the zeppole we looked forward to are crisp pate a choux puffs usually filled with pastry cream or ricotta cream and topped with powdered sugar and a maraschino cherry. 

So that's what I've made.  Sorry I'm getting the recipes out so close to the wire.  But zeppole taste just as good on March 20th, or any other day of the year. 

To make the versions I made, you'll need recipes for Pastry Cream and Pate a choux, which, coincidentally, are the two posts previous to this one.  Funny how that worked out, huh?

If you're doing this all in one day, make the pastry cream first so it has time to chill while you bake the pate a choux. 

When you have the batter made for the pate a choux, place a large star tip in a piping bag and fill with the batter.  Pipe little rosettes on your parchment-lined paper.  Keep them level as much as possible, so they puff up evenly.

Here's a quick tutorial on piping rosettes...

Kind of down and around and around....

Once the rosettes are baked (brown on the outside, dry inside), take them out of the oven and allow them to cool completely before you fill them.

Next, fill a piping bag with pastry cream and use a narrow round tip.

(The tip in this photo is too big for the size zeppole I made.  Use something smaller.)

Next, make a little hole with the tip and fill the pate a choux with the pastry cream. 

(See what I mean?  That tip is way too big.)  (Sorry.)

To finish - dust with powdered sugar and top with a maraschino cherry.

If you're not going to serve them until later on in the day, refrigerate them. 

But, of course, it's important to sample one, at least.  You know.  To make sure they came out okay.

Pate a choux

Here's what you need:

8 oz unsalted butter (2 sticks)

1/4 oz salt

1/4 oz sugar

1 lb (one pint...two cups) milk or water

10.5 oz flour, sifted (bread flour preferably, or all-purpose if you don't have bread flour)

1 lb whole eggs (about 8-9 large eggs)

Here's what you do:

Place the butter, salt, sugar, and water/milk in a pot.

Bring to a boil.

Add all the sifted flour at once.

Stir with a wooden spoon

for about 5 minutes or until the mixture forms a ball that does not stick to the inside of the pot.

At this point, cook for an additional 3 minutes, stirring so nothing burns.

Remove from the heat and place the mixture in a mixing bowl.

Mix on low speed until cooled slightly.

Add the eggs gradually; mix on low speed; make sure each egg is fully incorporated before the next addition.

After about 2/3 of the eggs have been incorporated, check to see if the dough needs more.  Run a finger deeply through the mixture; if the trough does not close, add additional eggs (still one at a time, and check again after each addition). 

If the trough closes quickly, too many eggs have been added.  The trough should close slowly.

When enough eggs are fully incorporated, pipe into desired shapes on parchment-lined sheet pans.

Bake at 400-425 until brown on the outside and dry on the inside.

Pastry Cream

Here's what you need:

2 lbs whole milk

8 oz granulated sugar

pinch of salt

1.25 oz cornstarch

1/3 oz cake flour

4 oz egg yolks

2 oz whole eggs

2 oz unsalted butter

vanilla extract to taste

Here's what you do:

First - make sure you have the following items -

a large heavy-bottomed stainless steel sauce pot

a wooden spoon

a ladle

a wire whisk

two rubber spatulas

an ice water bath (a large metal bowl with equal parts ice and water - large enough for the sauce pot to fit into - and not so much ice water that it will overflow when the pot goes in.

Okay, now, here's what you do with everything:

Place 3/4 of the milk, about half of the sugar, and all of the salt, into the stainless steel pot. 

Stir to distribute sugar and salt.  Bring to a boil.  Do not stir.

(Before the milk comes to a boil) Place flour and cornstarch in a bowl.  Add remaining sugar

and milk.  Whisk together to get rid of any lumps of cornstarch.

When smooth, add eggs and yolks, and whisk together.

When milk mixture has come to a boil, shut off the heat and - whisking constantly with one hand, ladle half the milk mixture a little at a time into the whisking egg mixture.  This is called "tempering" - you're slowly bringing the eggs up to temperature, slowly so they don't become scrambled.  Once about half of the milk has been whisked in, pour the mixture in the bowl back into the remaing milk in the pot - still whisking.  Turn the heat back on and switch to the wooden spoon.

If you've used a rubber spatula to scrape any of this, toss that in the sink and use a clean one going forward.

Cook the mixture on medium heat, stirring CONSTANTLY.  The mixture will be very liquidy at first,

but gradually it will thicken. 

Once the mixture is pretty thick,

start tasting it.  (Don't stop stirring).

Pay attention to the taste and mouth feel - if you taste or feel any chalkiness, keep stirring.  The chalkiness is the uncooked flour. 

Once there is no longer any chalky taste or texture, remove the pan from the flame (and shut the flame off), stir in the butter until melted completely.

   

At this point, place pot in the ice water bath and keep stirring.

When the mixture cools a bit more, stir in vanilla to taste.

Once the mixture has cooled, scrape it into a bowl or other container

and place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream.  This prevents a skin from forming.

Refrigerate until needed.

 

Lemon Sponge Pie with Chocolate Pastry Crust

For our Corned Beef Dinner I made a double batch of this Lemon Sponge Pie recipe, but instead of a standard pie crust, I made one with cocoa powder.  Chocolate and lemon go nicely together, so I figured I was onto something with the flavor combination.  The other nice feature is visual - the dark crust frames the golden yellow filling - it punches up the lemony yellow by providing contrast.

I made 2 tarts and 2 pies, and I should have just done 3 items.  On one hand, I wanted to make sure there would be enough for everyone.  (We were a total of 9 on Friday  night - and 3 were children.  I'm not sure WHY I expected us to go through that much dessert, but I just knew I didn't want to run out.  It would have been bad form, I suppose.) 

I made the dough for the crust on Thursday.  I'll give you the measurements I used, but if you've got a favorite pie crust recipe, I would say you're probably safe just adding some cocoa powder to the flour.  I used a quarter cup of cocoa powder for a 2-crust pie recipe, and it worked out nicely.  I like cocoa powder because you get a rich, chocolate flavor without any added sweetness.  You might have a bit of sugar in your crust recipe, and odds are the filling is pretty sweet, too, so you don't need any additional sweetness.  Just the rich chocolate flavor is fine.

Enough babbling.  Here's the chocolate crust info:

Oh - the recipe I used this time was from The Best Recipe, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine.  Cook's Illustrated approaches recipes from a test kitchen point of view.  Very scientific in the way their cooks sort through all the possible ways to make something - like a pie crust - and explain what happened as they tried various proportions, cooking times, and processes.  It's a great magazine for people that like to know why.  The book is a compilation of all of these experiments and explanations. 

I have used their method for cooking roast beef (seared brown on the outside and the slow-cooked in a 200 degree oven - it's sublime) and I've tried various recipes from Cook's Illustrated over the years.  I trust them. 

So here's the pie crust they have designated "The Best."

American Pie Dough for Fruit Pies

(For one double-crust 9 inch pie)

2   1/2 cups all-purpose flour,

plus extra for dusting dough and work surface

1 tsp salt

2 T sugar

12 T unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

8 T all-vegetable shortening, chilled

6-8 T ice water

(and for my chocolate crust - 1/4 cup cocoa powder)

And here's what you do:

1.  Mix flour, salt, and sugar (and cocoa powder) in food processor fitted with steel blade.

Scatter butter pieces over flour mixture, tossing to coat butter with a little of the flour.  (Because I had doubled the recipe, I didn't have room in my food processor to cut the butter in.  So I put it all in my larger stand mixer.)

Cut butter into flour with five 1-second pulses.  Add shortening and continue cutting in until flour is pale yellow and resembles coarse cornmeal, with butter bits no larger than small peas, about four more 1-second pulses.

Okay, I need to interrupt here because at this point I stopped following the Best Recipe's method.  Their recipe says to pour the flour/butter mixture into a bowl and sprinkle the ice water on top, and use a rubber spatula and a folding motion to work the water into the flour without overworking it.  I didn't do that. 

Also - with the cocoa powder in there, your flour isn't going to be pale yellow.  It's going to be brown with flecks of white (shortening) and yellow (butter).

To continue - I added the ice water, a couple of tablespoons at a time, to the flour mixture.

Drizzle water, then pulse.  Drizzle, pulse.  It really didn't take much water or many pulses to achieve a workable dough.

Form the dough into a ball

wrap in plastic,

and refrigerate at least half an hour before rolling it out.

Okay, now let's say some time has passed.  In my case, a day, as I made mine on Thursday and baked the pies/tarts on Friday (with help from my petite assistant, Julia).  Before you mix up the filling, you need to roll out the dough and get it into your tart or pie crusts into their pans and back in the fridge so the dough can stay chilled.  (If the dough is room temp when it goes into the oven, the already-warm fats will quickly and your crust will be kind of gummy beneath the filling.)

Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it in half if you're making two pies/tarts, or in quarters if, like me, you're making four.

Lightly flour your work surface and flatten one portion of dough slightly with your hands,

and then roll out your dough to the desired shape.  (One of my tart pans was rectangular, the other one and the two pie plates were round.)  Use flour sparingly to prevent the dough from sticking to your work surface or the rolling pin, and turn the dough in between rolls to keep the thickness and the shape uniform.

I rolled my dough out to about a quarter inch thickness or so.  The dough is rather fragile, so once you've got it the right size and shape, you can roll the dough back onto the rolling pin

and then unroll onto your pan.

Gently fit the dough down into the inner corners.  If it's a tart pan, trim off the excess right along the edge of the pan...

and if it's a pie pan, trim the dough to a uniform length of excess along the edge of the pan.  Tuck the dough edge under and press together.  Crimp the edges with your knuckles or fingers...or press down with the tines of a fork.  Whatever makes you happy.  I like to practice my crimping.

My assistant thinks my crimping still needs some more practice.

Okay - now get those pans back in the fridge and make the filling....

I've posted the recipe for Lemon Sponge Pie before, but what the heck - it's worth repeating. 

My mom got this recipe from a friend years and years ago, and for a while it became my birthday cake - because although I like to decorate them, I don't really like to eat them all that much. 

Here's what you need:  (keep in mind that in all the pictures, you'll be seeing a doubled version of this recipe)

3 T unsalted butter

1  1/4 C sugar

4 eggs, separated

3 T flour

a dash of salt

1  1/4 C milk

Grated rind of two lemons

1/3 C fresh lemon juice

And here's what you do with it:

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg yolks,

flour, salt, milk, lemon peel and juice. Set aside.

In separate, VERY CLEAN, dry bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff

but not dried out.

Fold the meringue

into

the lemon mixture

and pour into your pie shells.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes.

Lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake until golden on top, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. This will be about 45 minutes or so, depending on your oven.

Let cool on a rack, and then put it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

A little story for you from last night.  We served up the lemon sponge tart with some fresh whipped cream (a half pint of heavy cream whipped with about a teaspoon of vanilla and two tablespoons of sugar), and someone said it was delicious, or very good, or something along those lines.

And Julia, without looking up from her plate, said "Thank you very much." 

"I made it all by myself," she added. 

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cheesecake

This was one of the two cakes made for my husband's birthday last week. 

My husband loves fresh cherries, and I had a bag of frozen cherries, so I thought I should incorporate them into something.  At first I was going to mix them into cake batter...but then I thought...cheesecake!

I didn't have a specific recipe - I kind of winged it with what I had in the fridge and the freezer and the pantry.  I had some cream cheese...I had an 8 oz container of mascarpone (that I hadn't needed when I made the Chocolate Tiramisu for one of my Valentine's Day posts...and frozen cherries...and chocolate chips. 

Now, personally, I'm a plain cheesecake kind of person.  I like some other flavors or toppings now and then, but if I could only have one kind ever?  Plain, NY style cheesecake is what I'd want.  But it wasn't my birthday.

So here's what I did.

First, I made a crust for the cheesecake.  Actually, not a crust.  I didn't have (oddly enough) ANY cookies or biscotti or anything like that to pulverize and mix with melted butter to make a typical cheesecake crust.  So then I thought - I just won't make a crust at all.  And then I thought that might not be socially acceptable, so I thought...hey, I've got sliced almonds...and sugar...and melted butter...that would taste good.

So I took about a cup and a half of sliced almonds and toasted them in a pan until they started to turn golden, and then let them cool a bit.

I melted about 2 tablespoons of butter.

I put the cooled almonds in my food processor, added about 2 tablespoons of sugar,

and pulsed to combine them and grind up the almonds a bit.

Then I poured all that into a bowl

and combined with the melted butter.

I used an 8 inch springform pan, and I wrapped a couple of sheets of foil around it (underneath and up the sides) so that water wouldn't get in later.  (Cheesecakes are often baked in water baths.)

I poured the almond mixture into the cheesecake pan,

spread it around so it covered the pan evenly, and patted it all into place.  Then I put the pan in the fridge while I made the batter.

When I decided to make cheesecake, I took out all the possible cheesecake components so they could start to come to room temperature.  (Those that were in the fridge, that is.)  Here's what I ended up using:

12 oz neufchatel cream cheese

8 oz mascarpone

2  6-oz containers of yogurt (one was blueberry, one was strawberry - both were Stoneyfield Farm, lowfat).  (Why yogurt?  Because I didn't have any more cream cheese or mascarpone, didn't have sour cream, and knew this cheesecake would need a bit more of something in the dairy dept.  Why blueberry and strawberry?  Because that's all that was left in the fridge.)

1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs

zest of one lemon

1  1/2 tsp vanilla

12 oz frozen cherries (thawed)

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

I also got a large cake pan (larger in diameter than the springform pan I had prepped for the cheesecake) and set that aside.  I also set the oven to 350 degrees F.

Okay.

First thing to do, if for some reason (like, oh, not planning ahead) your cream cheese and mascarpone aren't softened yet, is to put them in your mixing bowl and beat them until they are smooth and soft and creamy.  If you don't, you'll have lumps of cream cheese or mascarpone in the cheesecake.  It doesn't ruin it, but it's not necessarily desirable.

Once you've got those two softened, add the yogurt...

and then the sugar...and the eggs

and the vanilla.

When the batter is nice and smooth,

stir in the cherries and lemon zest

and the chocolate chips

and combine well.

Pour the batter into your chilled springform pan and set that in the center of the larger cake pan.

Pour about an inch of water into the pan and place in the center of your oven.

Shut the oven door, set the timer for an hour, and go find something to occupy your time.

After an hour, go ahead and look at it.  It's not ready yet, which you can see if you jiggle the pan ever so gently.  There's still a lot of motion in there, right?  Not done.  So shut the oven door and check it again in about 30 minutes.  It's probably getting closer, but it's still not there, I bet.

Since you're using a rather gentle cooking method (the water bath), it's not going to suddenly be overcooked in another five minutes, so go ahead and let it cook another fifteen minutes or so.  Keep checking until the center barely moves (or doesn't at all), and then carefully take it out of the oven.   If you bring the whole thing - cake pan with VERY HOT water and springform pan - work slowly and carefully and set the whole thing down somewhere flat as soon as you can, just to avoid spilling any hot water on yourself.

Next, remove the springform pan from the water and set on a rack to cool. 

Remove the foil, too, by the way.  You should probably put a towel or paper towels under the rack - there will be drippage.

It's going to take a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time for the cheesecake to cool.  In fact, unless you're up early in the morning making this, don't plan on eating it until tomorrow.  After it comes to room temp, then you need to refrigerate it for a good long time - 6 hours or so, or overnight.  Yes, it was silly of me to make this ON Bill's birthday as a birthday cake...but I wasn't really thinking that far ahead when I started in.  I just thought - CHEESECAKE! - and I was off and baking.  Fortunately we had that other cake to eat on Bill's actual birthday. 

Anyway.  You've let the cheesecake cool to room temperature and you've refrigerated it for at least several hours or overnight.

When it's time to serve, the first thing you'll need to do is run a knife around the cake to separate it completely from the sides of the springform pan.  Then pop the hinge on the pan

and lift it off.

   

The easiest way (well one of them) to slice the cake is to run your knife under hot water before you make each cut. 

Wipe the knife clean in between cuts as well.  This way the cake won't stick to the knife and pull against the rest of the cake.

Not that it will taste any different.

Now some feedback...

Bill liked it a lot, and since I'd made it for him, that's really all that mattered.

Alex bravely tried a bite, but he didn't like it.  It's a texture thing.

Julia liked it.

My sister, her family, and some of her husband's friends who tried it also liked it.

My parents liked it.

And me?

Overall, I was surprised and happy with how well it turned out.  The "crust that's not a true crust" was fine, but it's a different texture from a traditional crust, so there's a bit of mental adjustment needed.  (Or not.  I think I'm the only one who had any mental adjusting to do.  Figures.)  The texture of the cheesecake was creamy and light, and the cherries added a nice burst of juicy fruitiness throughout. 

I'm not sure if I'd put the chocolate chips in again.  I guess I just don't like hard bits of things in my cheesecake, but that's just me.  I used mini chips, which I think was a better move than using the standard size, but maybe if I did this again, I'd make the following changes - I'd make a cookie crust, and then melt a layer of chocolate over the crust, chill that til it's hard, and then pour the cheesecake batter over the top and bake it.  Or...I'd serve it with a drizzle of chocolate ganache.  A healthy drizzle. 

Or maybe I'll make something without cherries...maybe steep toasted hazelnuts in some cream for a while and add that to the batter...with a ribbon of ganache running through it and more chopped, toasted hazelnuts on top...or in the crust...or both...and some whipped cream. 

Or maybe I'll just satisfy my purist heart and make a plain one.

Sigh.

To borrow from Sondheim, "so many...possibilities."

 

Super-Easy Mango Upside-Down Cake

Bill's birthday was earlier this week, and I ended up making not one, but two cakes for his birthday.  Why?  Because Alex doesn't like cheesecake.  Simple as that.  Plus, I was feeling creative and two cakes just seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do.  I also made a rather yummy dinner.  More on that in a later post.

Why is this cake "Super-Easy?"  Because a) I used a boxed cake mix in the pantry, and b) I had a bag of frozen mango on hand and didn't have to go shopping for anything special.

Here's what you need:

A 12-oz package of frozen mango chunks, thawed (or you can cut up some fresh mangos if you feel like it)

2 T unsalted butter

2 T white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

a box of golden cake mix

2/3 cup of water, 1 stick of softened butter and 3 eggs (for the cake mix, per the package instructions)

zest of 1 lime

2 cups confectioners sugar

1 T vanilla

hot water

Tablespoon or two of sweetened shredded coconut (optional)

an 8" square cake pan with 3" sides (or, if you want to, you could use 2 8" or 9" round cake pans and have one layer be the "upside-down" part and the other just a plain layer)

Got all that?

Okay, first, you put the 2 T of butter, 2 T white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar in a pan and melt everything together.  When it starts to bubble, add your mango chunks to the pan.

Stir together and let it simmer a bit. 

While the mangos simmer, grease the sides of your cake pan.

After a few minutes of simmering, pour the mangos and caramel mixture into the cake pan   

and, if necessary, rearrange the pieces of mango so they are distributed relatively evenly across the pan.

You can let that sit while you mix up the cake batter per the instructions.  Also - preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Pour your cake batter on top of the mangos and smooth it out with a spatula so the batter completely covers the mango layer.  Be gentle - you want the mangos to stay on the bottom of the pan.

Now pop that in the oven and bake until - you know - a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.  This will take a while, as you're cooking more cake batter in the pan than if you were baking two layers.  Figure on 45 minutes to an hour.  But make sure you check with the knife. 

(you can see a couple of my stab marks in the picture above)

Let the cake cool on a rack for 20 minutes at least.  Pick out a serving plate.  Run a knife around the edge of the cake to make sure it's all separated from the sides of the pan.

Now the fun part:  Place the serving plate upside down on the pan. 

Hold the plate and cake pan together and after saying to yourself "nogutsnoglory," flip them over and set them back down on the counter.  The cake pan should now be upside down and on top of the serving plate, and more importantly, you should have felt the cake release from the pan and land on the plate.

Carefully lift the pan straight up... 

and there you go.  You can see a few stray cake crumbs up in the middle of the top of this cake (in the picture above) - a few pieces of mango stuck to the pan and I had to put them back on top, but you know what?  They'll still taste the same.  And it's not all that obvious unless you're self-critical like I am and you actually point it out to people. 

Let the cake finish cooling.

Now, my son wanted to decorate this cake, but it's not really something you want to cover up with frosting.  Not when it looks like this on top:

So I figured we could make a glaze and Alex could drizzle that over the top and that would constitute the decorating. 

So I grated the zest from a lime.  Why?  I was thinking mango...tropical...lime... and so that's why.

I put about 2 cups of confectioners sugar in a bowl and gradually added hot water while Alex stirred it together.  I wanted a relatively thick glaze, and I added a bit too much water at first and had to add a bit more confectioners sugar to thicken it up.   Then I added in the lime zest, vanilla and the shredded coconut and had Alex give it a final whisk.

At that point Alex decided he didn't feel like decorating the cake after all.  He said I could handle it, and hopped down from his chair and left the kitchen.

I just drizzled the glaze back and forth across the top of the cake on a diagonal, and decided that was enough. 

Here's how it looked from the side:

 

A few candles...a round of Happy Birthday (which we sang the way Alex's kindergarten class sings it - "Happy birthday to you, cha-cha-cha, Happy Birthday to you, cha-cha-cha...and so on...with accompanying hip-wiggling.  It was kind  of fun.)...and dessert was served.

Alex didn't like the mango part.  Julia wasn't really feeling well so she just had a little taste and said she was full.  But Bill liked it, and so did I.  Some of the caramel part baked up into the cake, and the whole thing had a slightly dark, cooked sugary taste.  Pretty yummy.

And, like I said, super easy.

Cakes - Thomas the Tank Engine - Calvin's Birthday 1996

My nephew was a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan when he was little.  I remember him saying it like this - "Thomas the Tank-gen" - for a while.  He knew all the names of the engines, and had a bunch of the books...and for his birthday, he wanted a Thomas cake. 

Now, even back then, I had become a bit of a creative snob and didn't want to use a character cake pan, but my I guess I realized Wilton had done a better job of creating the pan than I might do freehand, so when my sister handed it to me, I used it.

And then - horror of horrors, when it came time to decorate the cake, I was suddenly reliving a 6th grade oil painting class I took...

I had taken painting lessons and art classes since I was nine or ten, I think.  But all the painting I had done was in acrylic.  So this class in oils was a huge culture shock.  Acrylics dry fast, oils don't.  Acrylics are thin, oils are thick.  Acrylics liked me, oils most certainly did not.

One of the assignments in that class was to find a picture of either an old person (lots of wrinkles) or an "ethnic" person.  I swear, that's how I remember it being phrased.  So in some magazine with pictures of the old west (I think), I found a portrait of a Native American gentleman.  His skin was aged by the sun, and he wore these fur wraps around his two braids.  He had a somber and interesting face, so that's what I chose.  He seemed "ethnic" enough for the assignment.

I had no problems with him, for the most part.  Until I had to do the eyes. 

Now, in my acrylic experience, I actually did a pretty fair job with eyes.  I have (somewhere) a head shot of a leopard or jaguar, and the eyes look really good.  Or they did when I was eleven.  Glassy and real.

So it came as quite a horrible surprise to me to discover that I wasn't so good at it with the oils.  With acrylic paint, if I screwed up, I could just paint over it.  With oils, more paint meant more layers, and oil layers are thick layers.  Now that I think about it, I also hadn't done a lot of human eyes, either, and that could have contributed to the problem.  But mostly I blame the oils.

My somber and dignified Native American gentleman had Marty Feldman eyes when I finally gave up and flung my brushes at the wall.  Really.  Three-dimensional eyeballs bulging from this otherwise not awful - and flat - portrait. 

It haunts me still.

And so, when I was doing Thomas, I did fine with all the little train details - I just copied the picture that came with the pan.  Got his little bulbous nose and his innocent smile okay. 

But the eyes.  The eyes...

I just could not get them to look, well, Thomasy.  I hated the eyes.  Hated them.  Insipid, popping, Thomas eyes.

I finally had to give up and put the icing down.  My sister was probably pulling it away from me while I was still trying to make the eyes look correct.  I cursed my lack of skill.  I cursed Thomas.  And I cursed oil paint, too, just because.

Well, the birthday party took place - the cake itself, by the way, was strawberry, per Calvin's request, with chocolate frosting underneath all the decorative stuff - at my sister's house.  Kids and balloons and parents and cameras.  Calvin sitting in the birthday boy seat at the head of the table in my sister's dining room.  I brought the cake in while everyone sang Happy Birthday, and I swear those horrible eyes were looking right at me, mocking my lack of talent and skill, laughing at me...

I set the cake down in front of Calvin, and he said these magic words:

"That's the best Thomas I ever saw!"

Did I tell you he's my very favorite human on the planet? 

And here's that cake:

Stop looking at me, Thomas.  Just stop it.

Valentine's Day Ideas: Chocolate Tiramisu

 

I made Tiramisu for the first time about...um...maybe 9 years ago for Bill's birthday.  I wasn't new to the family any more, but I still felt self-conscious about some things, like making dessert.  Anyway, Bill requested tiramisu, so I found a recipe and did my best.  I wasn't happy with how it turned out - it was too liquidy - but there was no time to make something else, so that's what was served.  Bill's nephew Joe got the first serving.  He was oh, maybe 15 or something at the time.  He took one bite and sang out "RUMMMMM!" and I cringed.  No wonder it was so runny.  But everyone loved it - probably because of the rum. 

I've made it a few times since over the years, and if I can give any advice to you out there, it would be this:  USE THE CRISP LADYFINGERS IF AT ALL POSSIBLE - THEY'RE CALLED SAVOIARDI.  And I put that in all caps because it makes a huge difference in how liquidy your dessert turns out.  I also put it in all caps because I actually did NOT use them when I made this dessert, and while it came out nice - tastewise and all, it was seeping coffee.  And why?  Because I used the soft, cake-like little ladyfingers the bakery at the local Stop & Shop makes, and they are like starving sponges when you dip them into the coffee...and then they are like mush .0000002 of a second later.  So it is worth it to take the time to FIND the Savoiardi if you possibly can.  I shouldn't have been such a slug.

Anyway.  That's enough of that. 

One of the issues with making Tiramisu is the whole raw egg thing.  Traditional recipes call for egg yolks, that are just beaten with sugar but not cooked, when making the creamy filling part.  Other recipes avoid the eggs completely, which solves the salmonella worries, but takes a few too many steps away from tradition for me.  The best compromise I have seen is to make a Zabaglione, also spelled zabayon, which is a smooth, light, custardy sauce made of egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine.  When you make the zabaglione, you place the yolks, sugar and wine in a double boiler, or a bowl set on a pot of simmering water (the bowl must not touch the water, however, or it will cook the eggs too much.)  Anyway, while the mixture is over the water, you whisk and whisk like there's no tomorrow, and what you're doing is incorporating some air in the mixture, which lightens it, and you're also very, very gently heating the yolks and killing any pesky salmonella critters that might be hanging around.  The texture of the final product is soft and foamy and voluptuous. 

So.  First thing you need to to is make the zabaglione.  Oh, and since it's for Valentine's Day, how about a chocolate zabaglione?  (If you don't want chocolate, leave out the cream and chocolate in this recipe.)

Chocolate Zabaglione:

You'll need...

4 T heavy cream

1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate (either chips, or chopped up)

6 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar and a pinch of salt

1/3 cup Marsala wine

In a small saucepan, scald the cream (heat it to almost a boil) and stir in the chocolate chips

until they are melted and the mixture is smooth.

Remove from heat and set aside.

Combine the yolks, the wine, and the sugar and salt in a bowl

and set the bowl on a pot of simmering water. 

The water should only be about an inch deep, and the bowl must not touch the water, so the shape and size of the bowl you use is rather important.

Whisk the egg yolk mixture constantly for about 4-5 minutes.  The texture of the mixture will change - it will thicken and increase in volume a bit as well. 

Remove the mixture from the heat, and stir in the melted chocolate/cream mixture. 

When combined, pour into a shallow pan (I used a glass pie plate) and cover with plastic wrap.  Place in the refrigerator until completely chilled.

While the zabaglione is chilling, you should assemble the following:

8 oz mascarpone (an Italian cheese similar to cream cheese) (room temp if possible)

1/2 heavy cream

2/3 cup sugar (separated into two 1/3 cup amounts)

2  1/2 cups espresso (warm, not hot)

1/4 cup dark rum (optional)

25-30 crisp ladyfingers (Savoiardi)

Place the heavy cream in a mixing bowl and beat until it starts to thicken.  Slowly add in 1/3 cup sugar and continue beating until firm peaks form.

   

Fold the cream into your mascarpone.  (* It's helpful if the mascarpone is soft, otherwise you're folding a soft texture into a rather firm texture, and you could end up with lumps of mascarpone if you're not patient and careful.)

   

Then fold the chilled zabaglione into the cream and mascarpone mixture

and set aside.

Add the rum (if you're using it) and the other 1/3 cup sugar to the espresso and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

You'll also need an 8 x 8 inch baking pan, or a standard sized loaf pan, or, if you want to be Valentine-silly like me, you can use an 8" heart-shaped cake pan.  Whatever shape you decide on, you want to line it with plastic wrap so that the plastic hangs way over the edges of the pan.  (Why?  Because you're eventually going to unmold this onto a serving plate of some kind, and the plastic keeps the tiramisu from sticking to the walls of the pan.  That's why.)

Okay.  Now, one at a time, dip the ladyfingers in the coffee mixture and arrange on the bottom of the pan. 

Spread one third of the zabaglione

on top of the ladyfingers.

Continue with more ladyfingers,

zabaglione, ladyfingers,

and the final layer of zabaglione.

Cover with the ends of the plastic wrap

and chill for 6 hours.  Yes, 6.  Okay, 5 will work, too.  But if you are going to unmold this dessert, you need to give it plenty of time to set first.

(The spatula is yours to do with as you wish.)

   

When you're just about ready to serve, get about half a cup of heavy cream, some sugar (maybe 2 tablespoons) and orange extract if you have it.  If you don't, vanilla is fine.  Whip the cream like you did earlier, adding the sugar when it starts to thicken, and stirring in a few drops (use it very sparingly, you just want a hint of flavor) of the orange extract at the end.  If you want to get fancy, get a piping bag with a large star tip and fill that with the whipped cream.  If you don't want to bother with that, you'll just need a spatula to spread the cream with.  Also, you'll need some cocoa powder in a sifter, and either shaved chocolate or mini chocolate chips. 

Take the pan of tiramisu out of the fridge.  Have your serving plate ready. 

It should be bigger in diameter than the pan.  Carefully peel back the plastic wrap covering the tiramisu. 

Place the plate upside down on the pan. 

Slide your hand under the pan, and hold the plate in place with your other hand.  Now, in one quick, bold, fearless motion (I always say "No guts no glory" at moments like this - I know, I'm weird.  But it's my way of psyching myself up.) flip the plate and pan over.  Set them down on your work area and if the pan looks like it isn't nicely centered (if you care about that), now is the time to gently slide it where it needs to go. 

Then, remove the pan. 

And then carefully peel away the plastic wrap.

Now if, like me, you end up using the softer ladyfingers (you can also use pound cake if you can't find any sort of ladyfingers), and you find the tiramisu is seeping coffee onto your plate, set a few paper towels around the plate so the edges of the towel are touching the coffee.  They'll soak up whatever liquid is there while you decorate the top.

Yay - you're almost done!  Now, either spread or pipe the whipped cream on the top of the tiramisu.

(You can do the sides, if you want to, but I like the look of the layers.) 

Then dust with cocoa powder

and sprinkle your chocolate shavings or mini chips on top and - TA-DA!! - you did it!

Now serve some up...

and, of course,

enjoy.

 

Cakes - Coffin Cake - 1996

And of course there's a stoy behind this one, too.

Actually, this (now that I'm thinking about it) was my original idea for a Halloween birthday cake for some coworkers, but then after I came up with the idea, someone affiliated with our company drowned while attending our company's annual convention, which, that year, was maybe in Mexico or somewhere - some place on a beach, anyway.  It was awful.  Horrible.  And making a cake in the shape of a coffin was suddenly not a very tasteful idea.  So that was when I came up with the Spider Cake idea. 

I'd already made the coffin lid out of gingerbread, though, and I'd bought the other decorations for it, so I made it up and gave it to the son of a friend of mine, whose birthday was right around Halloween somewhere.  He was turning 10, if I remember correctly, so something creepy and gross was perfect for him.

The cake was a 13 x 9 cake.  The cake mix was for a white cake - I'd mixed in a lot of food coloring to make it red.  Bwa ha ha ha. 

Anyway.  I covered the cake (cut in the same shape as the coffin lid) in chocolate frosting. 

I had painted the coffin lid with brown royal icing and my cake notes (yes, I have index cards with the cake pictures) say "woodgrain w/royal icing."  I am not sure if that means I used some kind of comb or something to create a woodgrain directly in the icing, or if I'd painted the woodgrain pattern on with another shade of brown.  And when I look at the picture, either or both of those ideas could have been used.  I don't remember.

To assemble it, I placed the cake in a shallow, disposable aluminum foil pan.  I had a few gummy worms crawling out of the coffin - they helped prop up the coffin lid nicely.  I surrounded the cake with crumbled chocolate cake "dirt," and added more gummy worms and some little black plastic house flies here and there.

The worms go in...the worms go out...

Valentine's Day Ideas: Poached Pears with Syrup and Creme Anglaise

For many reasons, the poached pear is one of my favorite desserts.  First, just look at it.  The color, the jewel-like tone - very elegant.  Second - it's fruit!  It's an ordinary pear, transformed.  It's Cinderella at the ball.  Okay, that's a bit overboard, but still.  Poaching takes the pear to a new level.  The pear's natural sweetness is enhanced by a long, leisurely bath in sugar and water and wine and spices, and at the same time, the pale color is replaced by this rich purpley hue.  The fruit is juicy and light - a satisfying, but not bloating, way to end a meal.

Have I rhapsodized enough?

Okay.  To make the whole display you see in the picture above, you'll also need (in addition to the recipe I'm about to share) the following two recipes:

Creme Anglaise

and

Florentines.

Now.  Let us poach.  Oh, and before I forget, you either want to make these in the morning to serve in the evening, or make them the day before. 

You will need:

3 cups dry red wine

3 cups water

1 lb, 8 oz sugar

1 cinnamon stick

3 whole cloves

A large sauce pot

And - 4 pears - ripe, but firm, with no bruises (if possible), and, also if possible, stems intact.

(Now, depending on the size saucepot you have, you may need to increase the other ingredients in order to cover the pears while they're in the liquid.  Just increase proportionately, as best you can.  It doesn't have to be perfect.)

Place the water, wine, sugar, cinnamon stick and cloves in the saucepot and bring to a boil.

While the poaching liquid is heating up, you'll need to peel the pears.  You need to peel every little bit of skin off, but leave the stem on.  (It's also a good idea to remove the core carefully through the bottom of the pear.  And slice the bottom of the pear so it stands up nicely, if you are planning to serve the pear upright on the plate.  In this photo session, I COMPLETELY FORGOT to core the pears.  This is what happens when your mind is not entirely on the job.)

Anyway, once you've peeled your pears completely...

here's a swell trick I learned.  Get a brand new nylon scrubby thing - those green ones you use to scrape stuck-on food off your nonstick pans.  And by gently scrubbing the surface of the pear, you can remove those "peel lines" so your pear will look like this:

Oooooooooh!

Pretty cool, huh?

Do that with all of your pears, and then core them and level off the bottom if you want to. 

Once the poaching liquid reaches a boil, place the pears in the liquid.  This is when you need to make sure the pears can be completely submerged.  Yes, they'll float to the top if you let them, but just check by pushing them under a bit.  If there's space, you're in good shape.  If not, add at least some more water.  If you need a lot more liquid, also add some more wine and sugar.

In order to poach (and color) the pears evenly, you need to keep them submerged.  The poaching liquid is too hot for you to stand there and do it manually, plus you'd be standing there for a really long time, so the best things to try out are items like pot lids or pie plates or cake pans.  I had an 8" cake pan that fit perfectly in the pot and kept all four pears under the level of the liquid.

Let the pears simmer while you do other things, like wash the floors, or do all your laundry, or watch your car or something.  Really.  Just check on it periodically.  As the liquid reduces, the temperature will creep back up, so you'll have to lower the temperature a bit from time to time.

And while you're checking on the simmer status, it's also interesting to check the color of the pears every now and then.

Early on, they'll start to absorb the color of the wine, and they'll begin to turn pink.  But after a few hours...

They'll look like this.

Once they achieve the color you're looking for AND they are soft but not mushy, shut off the heat, remove the cake pan from the liquid, and allow the whole mixture to cool.  Put the cooled pot of liquid and pears in the fridge for either several hours or overnight.

The pears, at this point are done.  You've still got all this liquid, though, and it'd be a shame to waste it.  So...what should you do?

Make a syrup!  Follow me...

Remove the pears from the liquid and place in another container in the fridge.  Put the pot of liquid on a burner and heat it back up again.  If you want to, you can add other spices or flavorings as well.  I put raisins in mine. 

Heat the liquid to boiling and then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer and simmer and simmer until the liquid has reduced by at least half.  As it cools, the liquid will thicken because it is now - voila! - a syrup. 

And now, if you want to be fancy, pour some syrup on your plate, and some creme anglaise, add your pear, garnish with some raisins and a florentine (or other cookie, if you prefer).

And beware.  If you're not careful, someone will try to swipe some.

 

How is it, Julia?

And really.  Who's more honest than a three-and-a-half-year-old about her likes and dislikes?

No one. 

(P.S. To see another poached pear recipe idea, click here.)

Valentine's Day Ideas: Bananas Foster Napoleons

I like Bananas Foster, but to me it's lacking something.  Maybe I was too strongly influenced by my 5 trimesters at Johnson & Wales.  When plating desserts, we were taught that the dessert needed 4 components:  the main item, a sauce, a garnish, and - my favorite - a crunch component.  Which is probably why when I wrote up that idea for Boca Negra Hearts it also included a sauce (actually two), a garnish (the raspberries) and a crunch component - the florentine heart.  (Of course, I ignored that whole 4-part thing with the Creme Brulee and the Cannoli, but hey, rules are made to be broken.  At times.

Anyway, for me, Bananas Foster needs something else.  So here's what I came up with:

You will need:

1 package frozen puff pastry dough

2 ripe bananas

Good vanilla ice cream

2 T unsalted butter

2 T white sugar

2 T brown sugar

4 oz banana liqueur

2 oz rum

Ready? 

Okay, either in the morning or the day before, make the puff pastry hearts.  (Or circles or rectangles if you prefer - I just thought, you know, hearts...valentine's day...)

You want to thaw the puff pastry dough in the fridge the day BEFORE you plan to use it - I mean, say you are going to make this dessert this Thursday.  Take the puff pastry dough from the freezer and put it in the fridge on Tuesday so you can make the hearts on Wednesday. 

Once the dough has thawed, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Unwrap the dough and dust your work surface with a little flour.  Roll the dough out to help smooth out any creases.  Cut out whatever shapes you plan to use, and place them on your baking sheet.  Place them in the fridge for half an hour.

When you're ready to bake them, first, brush with an egg wash (1 egg + a tablespoon of water, mixed together) to give them a nice shine.

Slide them into the oven and shut the door.  Unless you meant to take a picture of them first, in which case, just open the door, crouch down, and snap a picture.  Like this.

The package of puff pastry dough should tell you how long to bake them for - I believe these cooked for 20 minutes.  You want to make sure they are cooked through - not just pretty on the outside.

Allow them to cool completely, then put them in a ziploc bag until you need them.

Now for the bananas. 

First, place your butter and the two sugars in a pan and set your heat on medium. 

As they start to melt, stir them together to blend.

While that's going on, peel and slice your bananas.  Traditionally, the bananas are sliced lengthwise, and then cut in half cross-wise.  But I cut them into "coins" instead.

When your butter/sugar mixture is nice and bubbly,

add the bananas,

and add in the banana liqueur and the rum.  Now, usually when Bananas Foster is made tableside in a restaurant, the waiter will flambe it with the rum.  I wanted to, but I hadn't thought about it when I selected this pan, and I couldn't tilt the pan into the flame without the banans and sugar spilling out.  So I just put the rum straight in and let it all cook on medium low while I got the rest of the dessert ready.

First, get out your ice cream so it can soften a bit.

Next, with a sharp knife, separate the top from the bottom of each of 4 puff pastry hearts.  Place the bottom of one heart in the bottom of a bowl.

Top that with some ice cream...

and then top that with a second bottom slice of puff pastry heart.

And then...when the bananas are soft and look kind of like this...

Spoon half the banana mixture on top of the puff pastry and ice cream...

and finish with two top halves of the puff pastry hearts.  Like so....

Repeat with the other two split puff pastry hearts, some more ice cream, and the rest of the bananas.  Serve immediately.

Now that I think about it, this would also make a pretty yummy breakfast, too.

 

Cakes: Autumn Cake #1 - 1996

Another birthday cake for a coworker.  I did a lot of them during this period of a year or two.  And actually I did three versions of this cake - another one for a friend of mine, and the third was for a bake sale raffle at work.

Anyway - basically with this one I was still learning how to play with fondant and food coloring, and also how to make decorations with royal icing.

So for this cake, I colored some lumps of fondant ("lumps" - yeah, all these technical terms...) in different colors - autumn leaf colors, basically.  green, yellow, orange and red.  And then I smushed them together into one lump and rolled them out into one big patchwork piece of colors. 

Looking at it now, it strikes me as kind of garish.  I'd do something different.  But it was fun.

Anyway, so that was the background for the other stuff - the royal icing leaves.  I had bought a little set of cookie cutters that included 4 or 5 different leaf shapes and a pumpkin.  I traced the leaf shapes to use as templates.  Then I placed the templates under parchment paper (which is translucent) and piped the outline of the leaves with royal icing directly onto the parchment.  (Royal icing won't stick to parchment when it dries.)  And then, I filled the leaves with thinned royal icing in a different color.  (I was using the same colors I'd used for the fondant, with the addition of brown.  I also cut out leaves from the scraps of fondant. 

When the royal icing leaves were dry, I glued them all over the cake with dots of royal icing.  (Royal icing is so handy!)  And I surrounded the cake with the fondant leaves, probably to hide my less-than-perfect trimming of the fondant that covered the cake.

And this is what it looked like:

Oh, yeah, and inside, the cake consisted of two layers of lemon cake alternating with two layers of yellow & chocolate marble cake.  The frosting between the layers was chocolate.

Valentine's Day Ideas: Chocolate Hearts with Raspberry Coulis and Creme Anglaise

Here's something to make if you've got time to prepare for it and if you really want to strut your culinary stuff this Valentine's Day.  It's got chocolate, it's got Valentine's Day colors (red, white, and, um, chocolate), and it's very, very, very yummy.

There are four recipes you will need to make in order to put this whole thing together.  All of them can be made a day or two in advance.  And, just to make it nice and easy, all of them are listed on this site.

You'll need to make:

Boca Negra

Raspberry Coulis

Creme Anglaise

Heart-shaped Florentines (see the pictures in my post).

(All these recipes are posted below, just keep scrolling.)

Once you've made all of those, here's what you do.

First, have your coulis and the creme anglaise nearby, with a small ladle or spoon ready for each.

Have one of your heart-shaped chocolate-filled Florentine "sandwiches" nearby as well. 

And a few fresh raspberries are a nice addition as well.  I used a few of the frozen ones that didn't fall apart once they thawed.

Get out your Boca Negra out of the fridge, and, using a heart-shaped cookie cutter or a knife, cut out a heart about 3 inches wide. 

Now, on your dessert plate...

1.  Ladle some of the raspberry coulis first.  Swirl it gently to cover the center portion of the plate.

2.  Place the boca negra heart on the plate so that the two curved parts are at about 10:00 and 12:00.  (Symmetry is uninteresting on a plate.)

3.  Ladle some of the creme anglaise so it is draped across the right side of the heart.  Don't cover the whole thing.  Think scarf, not shawl.

4.  Lean your florentine heart cookie against the boca negra heart so the right curve of the cookie is at about 2:00.

5.  Garnish with the raspberries.

6.  Step back and marvel at your creation.

7.  Now go and get the utensil of your choice and dig in.  After all, you should make sure it tastes good before you serve it to anyone else, right?

Creme Anglaise

Also know as English Cream or English Sauce.  It's the base for vanilla ice cream, too. 

This is a cooked sauce - you make it in a pot on the stove - and is thickened only with egg yolks and cream.  It can be used, like I said, as a base for vanilla ice cream, and you can also give it other flavors, either by infusing it with nuts, or adding extracts or spices, fruits, etc.  It's basically a great launching pad.

Here's how you make the basic sauce:

First, assemble the ingredients -

4 oz whole milk

4 oz heavy cream

2 oz granulated sugar

a pinch of salt

2  1/4 oz egg yolks

vanilla extract - to taste

You will also need the following (and it's best to have everything measured out and in the right bowls, with the right tools, before you begin, as things will happen rather quickly once you get under way):

a sauce pot

a small bowl and a whisk

a ladle

a rubber spatula

a wooden spoon

a candy thermometer

a medium bowl

a second spatula

an ice water bath (a big bowl with half ice and half water)

a mesh strainer

a third bowl

Okay.  Once you've got everything measured out, place the milk, cream, about half the sugar, and the salt in the sauce pot. 

Set the pot on a burner but don't turn it on yet.

In the small bowl, put your egg yolks and whisk them together to combine.

The vanilla won't be used until a bit later - set that aside along with the water bath.

Have everything nearby while you are at the stove.

Okay, ready?

Turn on the burner to medium high and scald the milk mixture (which means to bring it to ALMOST a boil - you want to see little bubbles around the edges of the milk in the pot, but you don't want a rolling boil.

Now shut off the heat. 

Have your bowl of egg yolks and sugar next to the stove, with the whisk in one hand.  With the other hand, ladle out some of the milk mixture

and - while you whisk the yolks with the first hand, slowly pour the milk mixture into that same bowl with the other hand.  Do that once more with another ladle of the milk, still whisking.

Now pour the egg mixture from the bowl into the pot with the rest of the milk and stir continually with the wooden spoon.  (Turn the heat back on to about medium.)

 

(That whole drama was what's referred to as "tempering" the yolks.  You're gently and slowly warming them up with a bit of the milk so that they don't become scrambled eggs when you pour them into the pot on the stove.  Don't be discouraged if you see little bits of coagulated egg in there - it takes a while to learn to do this perfectly.  I haven't made this in ages so I'm very rusty.  And besides - that's what the mesh strainer will be for.)

Okay, now it's a good idea now to put the candy thermometer in the pot with the milk mixture now if you haven't already.  Another bit of drama when you're making this is that the mixture MUST NOT be heated beyond 180 degrees F.  If it does, you've cooked the eggs too much and you might as well fry up some bacon and have breakfast.

So - stir with the spoon and stare unblinkingly at the thermometer.  When it gets to 175, go ahead and take it off the stove, as it will keep rising quickly and you might cook it too long.  Pour the sauce directly into the medium-sized bowl and place that on the ice bath RIGHT AWAY to stop the cooking process.  Stir the sauce with your SECOND spatula to help bring the temperature down as quickly as possible.

(Why two spatulas?  No one likes extra dishes to wash!  It's because you were using the first spatula to scrape the UNCOOKED egg yolks into the pot, and now you have to use a SECOND spatula because you are working with a COOKED product and you don't want any contact between the raw and the cooked.  You know, like you wouldn't place your fully roasted chicken on the same unwashed board you had used for the raw chicken when you were patting it dry with paper towels, would you?  I didn't think so.)

Okay, so the mixture has cooled somewhat.  At this point, if you feel it needs to be strained, go ahead and strain it into that third bowl I mentioned earlier. 

Or a measuring cup like in the picture.  (And look at that lovely mess in my sink.  I need to frame these shots better.) 

And look - this is what might be left in your strainer -

See?  Little teeny dots of cooked yolk.  Not big at all, but not desirable in your finished sauce.  Which should look like this:

And once that's done, add some vanilla, stir it in, and taste the sauce.  Need more vanilla?  Add some.  Once you've got the flavor straightened out, put it back in the ice bath if necessary and keep stirring it until it's completely cooled.  Now you can cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until you need it.

And I'm sure I can come up with a couple of ideas for you.

Raspberry Coulis

A coulis, prounounced "coo-LEE," is an uncooked fruit (or vegetable) puree.  Very simple, and very bright, fresh, alive in taste.

I'm using raspberries in this one, but you could do the same thing with any other berries, or other fruit.  I haven't done a vegetable coulis, so you're on your own there.

Okay, I used a package of frozen raspberries, which I thawed in a bowl. 

Raspberries are wonderful for fruit sauces served with dessert.  Their tartness is a nice contrast to the sweetness of the main dessert component, whatever that may be.  And the color is gorgeous. 

Once they've thawed (if they were frozen), you need to strain the.  Place a mesh strainer over another bowl and pour the raspberries into the strainer.  With the back of a spoon or a rubber spatula, scrape and press and stir the raspberries around until you've strained all the juice out and into the bowl below, and all you have left are seeds and maybe some of the bits of skin from the berries.

Here's what you've got left:

Beautiful color, huh?

So now you taste it.  And depending on how the puree tastes, you may want to add a bit of sugar to sweeten it a little, and maybe some lemon juice, which will give the raspberry flavor just a bit more oomph and brighness.

And that's all there is to it.  Put this in the fridge until you're ready to use it.  Serve it with ice cream or with something...something chocolate, perhaps.

Boca Negra

Boca Negra means "Black Mouth" and refers to the dark, dark chocolate of this nearly flourless cake.  The recipe is from Baking With Julia.  Here goes...

*****************************************************************

12 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (use your favorite)

1 1/3 cups sugar

1/2 cup bourbon (or any alcohol - I used Grand Marnier most recently.)

2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces, at room temperature

5 large eggs, at room temperature

1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Lightly butter a 9 inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment or waxed paper; butter the paper.  Put the cake pan in a shallow roasting pan and set aside until needed.

Put the chopped chocolate in a medium bowl and keep close at hand. 

In a 2 quart sauce pan mix 1 cup of the sugar and the bourbon

and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a full boil.

Immediately pour the hot syrup over the chocolate and stir with a rubber spatula until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth. 

Piece by piece, stir the butter into the chocolate mixture. 

Make certain that each piece of butter is melted before you add another.  (note - you might need to put the bowl of melted chocolate over a warm water bath, just to keep the whole thing warm enough to melt all the butter.)

Put the eggs and the remaining third cup of sugar in a medium bowl and whisk until the eggs thicken slightly.  Beating with the whisk, add the eggs (slowly) to the chocolate mixture and whisk until well blended.  Gently whisk in the flour.

Pour and scrape the batter into the prepared pan, running your spatula over the top to smooth it.  Pour enough hot water into the roasting pan to come about one inch up the sides of the cake pan.  Bake the cake for exactly 30 minutes, at which point the top will have a thin, dry crust.

(You can also bake this in a springform pan, as you can see in the pictures I've included here - just be sure to wrap foil around the bottom and sides so the water from the water bath won't seep into the cake.)

Remove the cake pan from its water bath, wipe the pan dry, and cover the top of the cake with a sheet of plastic wrap.  Invert the cake onto a flat plate, peel off the parchment, and quickly but gently invert again onto a serving platter; remove the plastic.

     Serve cake warm or at room temperature.  You can serve with whipped cream...a fruit sauce...whatever appeals to you.

     Once cooled, the cake can be covered with plastic and kept at room temperature for 1 day or refrigerated for up to 3 days; bring to room temperature before serving.  You can also freeze it for up to a month.

*****************************************************************

You can also bake this in an 8 or 9 inch square cake pan, and after it's cooled, chill it until firm, then cut it into 1-inch square bites. 

Enjoy!

Valentine's Day Ideas: Cannoli

I love Cannoli.  The creamy not-too-sweet filling, the crispy shell....It's one of my favorite pastry/desserty foods.  And unless you go to a good bakery, the stuff you find (or at least the stuff I've found) is kind of...well, it's not good. 

My kids wanted to know what Cannoli was, actually, though I know they've had it before.  They were watching an episode of Curious George, and apparently Curious George loves Cannoli, and lucky for him, there's a restaurant owner in town who will make some for him at any time.  Fortunate little monkey.

So I told the kids I'd bring home some cannoli, but neither one of the two big grocery stores had any, and the smaller, better grocery chain actually DID have some - mini cannoli - some of the shells dipped in chocolate, some not - so I brought some home one day and the kids and I each had one after lunch.

Alex decided he didn't like cannoli at all.  And I'm not surprised - he's got a thing about certain textures, especially if they're at all white.  (Like mayo, sour cream, cream cheese, mashed potatoes, and - cannoli filling.)  Julia kind of liked it but abandoned the small thing instead of finishing it.  Of course, they both had the ones with chocolate dipped shells and colored sugary dots on the ends instead of chocolate chips or pistachios, so I thought that might be it.  But I had one of the plain ones - and I didn't like that either.  I don't know what the filling was made of, but it just didn't taste right.

So I thought - dammit - I'll make my own! 

I went online and found some cannoli recipes - which included recipes for the shells.  I know you can buy the shells, but if I was gonna do this, I was gonna do it all the way.  And I actually have a set of metal cannoli tubes, so why not? 

I found a Mario Batali recipe that sounded good, but actually, there must have been a typo in the instructions for the dough for the shell because it didn't come together as a dough should.  So I messed around with it and was moderately successful.  I didn't exactly make his filling, either.  I modified it based on what I thought the kids would like - so no candied fruit in there. 

And you know what?

They came out pretty good.  My husband loved them.  So did Julia.  Alex?  Not really.  It's still a texture thing with the filling. 

Ready?

Like I mentioned, you'll need a set of metal cannoli tubes. 

Or can also buy cannoli shells if you'd prefer.

For the dough, you will need the following:

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

4 T cold, unsalted butter

12-14 T marsala wine.  (Or more - the humidity or lack of it will affect how much wine you need, so add it bit by bit.)

Whisk together the flour, cinnamon, sugar and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl.

Add in the butter in small pieces, and cut it in as you would if you were making a pie crust - either with two knives, or a pastry cutter, or in a mixing bowl or food processor by pulsing again and again until the mixture looks like coarse sand. 

You want some small lumps of butter remaining - you don't want it all perfectly combined.

   

Next, you add in the marsala wine, a little at a time, and continue to pulse until the dough starts to come together if you squeeze it in your hand.  Work the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic.  Refrigerate for an hour.

Now for the filling:

2 lbs ricotta cheese

1 cup superfine sugar

2 T vanilla

1/2 cup (or more) tiny chocolate chips

zest of half a lemon

Combine all of these ingredients in a bowl

and mix well.

Now comes the exciting part.

Heat 2 quarts of oil in a pot to 350 degrees F.

Make an egg wash using only the white and a bit of water.  Keep nearby.

While the oil is heating, remove the dough from the fridge, cut it into quarters, and roll out one of the quarters of dough on your work surface as thin as you can.  Ideally - about 1/16 of an inch thick. 

Cut out 4" circles and, with the rolling pin, roll each into an oval shape.  Wrap the dough around a cannoli tube, brush one edge with some of the egg wash and overlap with the other edge.  Press together a bit so they adhere.  Next, flare the dough at the ends of the tubes a bit to help keep them from curling back over the ends of the tubes while frying.

They should look sort of like this.

* (I say "sort of" because the dough ends really should overlap a bit more than they do in this picture.)

Anyway, once the dough has reached temperature, gently place a couple of the cannoli tubes in the oil.  They will sink to the bottom.

Now, I was expecting that, just because a lot of foods initially sink to the bottom of the oil and then rise as they cook.

So I also thought it perfectly normal to see this after a minute or so:

And then I realized that the dough had opened (because it wasn't overlapping enough - lesson learned) and the tube was still at the bottom of the oil.  The same thing happened with the other one a moment later.

So my first batch of shells looked like this:

Misfits, all of them.  Even that one in the back that almost looks okay - isn't. 

So - I tried again.  And this time I made sure to overlap the ends by about 3/4 of an inch and to seal them well.

I got better as I went along.  And fortunately the ones that looked funny still tasted good - that hint of chocolate and hint of cinnamon is wonderful.

Anyway - when you're ready to serve them...

Put some of the filling in a piping bag with a wide round tip or in a zip loc bag with one of the corners cut. 

Pipe the cannoli filling into each shell.

Now pour some mini chocolate chips in a bowl (you do have some left, don't you?)  You could also use chopped pistachios.

Press each end of the cannoli in the chocolate chips. 

Dust the cannoli with confectioners sugar.

And serve.

Valentine's Day Ideas: Creme Brulee

Okay, this could be considered cheating, since I've already posted the recipe before, but this time I've made it in a smaller batch, and - best of all - I took pictures.  So now you'll REALLY want to make it.

And honestly - it's one of the easiest things in the world to make.  Really.

AND - it's a good choice for any sort of special occasion dessert because the texture is smooth and rich and creamy and silky - in delightful contrast to the brittle sugar surface.

You'll need a few things - about 6 4-oz ramekins,

a baking pan or cake pan big enough to hold all the ramekins with at least an inch between each one, and a little butane torch.  The one I have is similar to the one pictured here. 

Why ramekins?  Why not just some other little bowls or dishes?  It's because those little ridges around the sides of the ramekins help distribute the heat of the water bath (or bain marie) more efficiently and enable you to cook the custard thoroughly.  Cooking in a water bath is a more delicate method than, say, just roasting something in the oven or cooking it in a pot on top of the stove.  It also keeps the custard from drying out during the cooking process.

Okay.  For the batch you'll see in the photos, here are the ingredients and measurements: 

3 oz egg yolks (about 5 yolks from large eggs)

1  1/2 oz granulated sugar

vanilla extract to taste (1/2 - 1 tsp should be enough)

1 pound (a pint) of heavy cream

(and additional granulated sugar for later)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F, and place a rack in the middle of the oven.

First - whisk together the yolks and the sugar

Then add in the vanilla...

 

And the heavy cream.  (By the way - there is no difference between "whipping cream" and "heavy cream" - they are the same thing.)

Strain the mixture and remove any foam on top.  Pour into your ramekins.  You want an equal amount in each one.  So if, like me, you are a little heavy-handed with the first one or two, you may only need 5 ramekins instead of 6.

And place the ramekins in your cake pan.  Pour water in til it reaches about halfway up the sides of the ramekins.  You can either do this before you place the pan in the oven or after - depending on what you feel most comfortable doing.

Bake the custard until it has set, but there is still a little wiggle in the center if you jiggle the cake pan.

   

Remove the pan from the oven (Careful!  That water is hot!!) and then remove the ramekins from the water bath and place on a rack to cool.

When cooled to room temp, place them in the fridge and chill them completely - overnight is best.

~~~~~

While that's chilling, just wanted to say you can feel free to use another flavoring instead of vanilla if you wish.  And of course there are plenty of other creme brulee options - chocolate would seem the obvious choice for Valentine's day, and that's fine if that's what you want.  But to me, this version - just a little vanilla - is the best.  You don't need chocolate or something else distracting you from the silky rich flavor and texture.  Just my opinion, of course. 

~~~~~

Okay, the ramekins have been in your fridge overnight, and you're ready to play with fire.

First - sprinkle a layer of granulated sugar on the surface of one of your custards.  Not too thin a layer, not too thick.  Swirl the sugar around gently to cover evenly.

Now - fire up your torch and carefully cook the sugar - move the flame back and forth across the sugar - if you leave it in any one spot too long, you won't have Creme Brulee, you'll have Creme Blackened.  Some brown is okay, but you don't want it really really dark.

And once that's done, you're ready to serve.  Or, you can put it back in the fridge for a few more hours, depending on what your time constraints are.  However, if you leave it in the fridge, the moisture in there could soften the bruleed sugar, and you'll need to get the torch out again before serving so you get that nice candy-like surface.

Want to try some?

You know, just to see how it tastes?

Of course you do.

Cakes - Spider Cake #1 - 1996

This one was for a couple of coworkers who share a Halloween birthday.  I wanted to do something in keeping with the spooky them of the holiday, and this is what I came up with.

I could have done a better job of displaying the spiders, I think...but so many of these cakes were just experiments - I made everything up as I went along.

Okay - well, part of the deal in making cakes for people at work was that I needed to have enough cake for everyone.  So to solve that issue, the base is a 13 x 9 inch chocolate cake that I covered with fondant.  I tinted it green.  Why green?  Well, it's not JUST green, it's "Juniper Green."  So I'm thinking I recently bought some new food coloring shades and I wanted to play with them.  Actually, considering that the two loaf-pan shaped layers on top of this first layer were tinted with "Aster Mauve" and "Delphinium Blue" confirms it.  Hahaha.  No other reason for the colors at all except that they were new.

The other new toy I must have purchased right around this time was a piping tip that had lots of tiny holes in it and could be used to make grass or fur with your icing.  So that's how I did the spider bodies.  I made two chocolate cupcakes.  I wrapped them in brown fondant.  I made little fondant spider heads.  And I piped brown frosting through that tip to give my spiders furry bodies.  The legs were the only inedible parts - I used big brown pipe cleaners. 

And the other decorating was Charlotte-inspired - I piped spider webs on the loaf-pan layers and the green layer, and in the webs I did the "Happy Birthday" thing for each of the two people. 

I will tell you that when I was making this cake, I'd made my spiders, and had positioned them on the cake, which was on a work stand in my little apartment kitchen.  And every so often I would catch one of them looking at me....it was a little creepy until I got used to them.

And here they are:

Kind of cute, aren't they?

Cakes: Coffee Cup Cake - Meredith's Birthday - 1996

This is one of my favorite cake creations of all time.  Well, all of MY time, anyway.

First, a little background....

I used to go down to my sister's house on the weekends a lot back around this time.   Early in the morning, or sometimes overnight.  We'd have coffee in the mornings.  Natalie was a baby, Calvin was a round-cheeked toddler...and a terrific new bagel place had opened up in town, and they also had flavored coffees.  Sometimes I'd bring Calvin with me to pick out the bagles and coffee for the morning. 

Anyway - as I said, Natalie was a baby, and she didn't go to bed cooperatively or sleep through the night...so coffee was verrrrrrrrry important as early in the morning as possible. 

That's one thing.  The other is, and I think I've already mentioned this in one (or both) of the other posts about cakes I've done for my sister, the cake needs to be CHOCOLATE. 

Okay.  Now ALSO, around this time period, or maybe the year before, I'd bought a book that included all sorts of cool Christmas-themed ideas - not just decorating, but baking, cooking, gift-giving, whatever.  And in there - the sole reason I bought the book - was a recipe about making bowls out of very firm gingerbread.  And I thought those were really cool.  I know I made bowls one year, as part of the cookie-giving thing...not sure which year.

So that's the background.

And so when I was thinking about some sort of theme for my sister's cake, I thought about coffee.  And came up with the idea of making a giant coffee cup out of gingerbread, and filling it with cake.

So here's the very short version of a several-day process:

First I made the gingerbread coffee mug.  I made the gingerbread dough (the same dough used for these gingerbread houses) according to the directions and formed the mug shape over a stainless steel mixing bowl, baked it, and also made a handle and a saucer. 

I used royal icing to glue the handle to the cup, and then I used thinned royal icing, tinted light blue, to paint the cup and saucer.  I used a darker blue icing for the splatter design on them, which was fun - just tipped the brush in it and shook or drizzled the darker blue onto the lighter blue. 

For the cake, I baked probably four 8" layers of chocolate cake.  Then I lined the same stainless steel mixing bowl with plastic wrap.  I cut the layers of cake to fit in the bowl, and in between them I layered a mixture of raspberry jam and chocolate frosting.  Once I had all the layers set up, I just (carefully) pulled the whole thing out of the bowl - the cake layers cradled in the plastic wrap - and set it down into the coffee cup.  I used the plastic wrap (rather than just assembling the cake inside the cup) to keep the moisture of the cake from seeping into the gingerbread and turning the whole thing into a blue soggy mess.

Next, I melted some chocolate and made a circle on a piece of parchment and let it set.  Then I drizzled melted white chocolate in a swirl on top, to represent the half & half she takes in her coffee.  When that was all dry and firm, I set that on top of the cake.  And that was that.

I especially like how my nephew has his fork all ready.  "Come on, Mommy, stop staring at it and cut me a piece!"

Actually, I think to serve it we removed the disc of chocolate on top and then pulled out the whole chocolate cake thing in the plastic wrap, and just cut that up.  She kept the cup for quite a while, until the icing "paint" started to flake off.

(And, of course, I'm noticing that I committed one of the cardinal sins of photography - there is a lamp growing out of my nephew's head.  Hahahahahahaha.  Ah, well.) 

 

Apple Fritters

Remember the clamcake recipe I mentioned recently?  Well with a few alterations, I changed it into an apple fritter recipe.

Why?  Of course there's a story behind it.  Bill had a sore throat last week, and as a teacher, that presents quite a problem - especially when he's teaching huge chorus classes.  So he took two days off and returned to work on Thursday, and I, being the happy homemaker/nurturer/loving wife/really annoying individual that I am, decided to make him a nice soothing, comforting dinner.

I figured I'd roast a chicken and serve it with cous cous and spinach - the spinach would be sauteed in olive oil and then mixed - still over heat with a couple of beaten eggs and some grated parmesan. 

Well, the only whole chickens at the grocery store that day were little 3-4 pound ones - not the size I wanted.  But there were sales going on, and so I bought a 10-pack of chicken thighs.  And I sort of cooked them the same way I'd do a whole chicken - I cut up onion and mushrooms and scattered them around the pan, and placed the thighs, skin side up, on top, and sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper, which gives you a nice crispy skin.  In addition to that, I also chopped up fresh tarragon and parsley (that I'd packed away in olive oil in the freezer at the end of October), garlic, and lemon zest and mixed them all together and tucked them between the skin and the flesh of the chicken thighs. 

I baked them at 375 degrees F, for probably about an hour.  Then I set the chicken aside and made a gravy with the drippings and mushrooms and onions, a buerre manie (which is just a blend of flour and butter, mashed together, that acts as a thickener.  The good thing about mashing the flour and butter together is that the fat of the butter coats the flour particles and you don't get lumps.  You just want to make sure you continue to cook whatever you put it in so there's no raw flour taste.  It's different from a roux, as a roux is a cooked mixture of butter and flour - cooked first to get the desired flavor and then you add the liquids, etc.) where was I?  Oh yes, and some white wine and salt and pepper and dried tarragon. 

Alex liked the cous cous and the chicken.  Julia liked the cous cous and the mushrooms in the gravy and a bit of the chicken.  Bill liked all of it.  So did I.  I was really pleased that the chicken skin was crispy.

But what's this got to do with apple fritters?  Not much, I admit.  But I had also wanted to make a dessert that would be soothing.  And to me, warm = soothing.  But then, so does cold.  And Bill likes apples.  And cinnamon is yummy with apples.  And we still had frying oil on the stove from the clamcakes.  And hmmm...what if I substituted....  And from all that disjointed thinking came my experimental apple fritter recipe.  I have no pictures - sorry 'bout that.  But I have testimonials from Bill and Alex.

Bill:  (Eyes wide, mouth full, head nodding) "Mnhrrmmm!"

Alex:  (Politely chewing and swallowing first) "These are so, so good!  Can I have another one?  Can I have it for my snack tomorrow?  (and the following day) "I wish I could have that for my snack every day!"

Anyway - here's what I concocted:

First, you'll need...

1 cup flour, 1 T baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 T sugar, and 1 tsp cinnamon - whisk these together to combine.

In a separate bowl, you want an egg and 3/4 cup of apple juice.

You also should start heating up your oil.  You want it to come to 375 degrees F.

And finally, peel a Granny Smith apple, and remove the core.  Dice it up into small pieces - 1/4 inch dice if you're really motivated, otherwise a bit bigger is okay. 

Combine the flour mixture with the egg/juice mixture and blend into a nice batter.  Stir in the diced apple and let it stand for about 15 minutes.

While the mixture stands and the oil heats up, get a plate with several layers of paper towels, a large slotted spoon, and a second plate with several layers of paper towels ready.  And in a medium bowl, mix together some confectioners sugar and cinnamon.  (I didn't use measurements - I used what was left of a bag of the sugar - maybe a pound, maybe less - and several good shakes of the cinnamon.) 

Okay, when the oil is at the proper temperature, scoop about 1/4 cup of the batter at a time into your hot oil, until you have 4-6 fritters-in-the-making.  Turn them over while they fry, so they brown evenly.  When they're a nice dark golden brown, remove from the oil and place on one of the plates of paper towels to drain briefly.  It's a good idea to cut one of them in half just to make sure they are cooked through.  And then, of course, you should sample it to make sure these are palatable.  Toss the whole fritters in the mixture of sugar and cinnamon and then place them on the other plate with paper towels.  Keep them warm in either a low temp oven or a warming drawer (if your oven has one).  Fry off the rest of the batter in batches, tossing in the sugar/cinnamon and holding them in a warm place until you're ready to serve.

I scooped some vanilla ice cream into a 4" ramekin and put the ramekin on a plate with two of the apple fritters and serve. 

Try them - they're pretty yummy and pretty simple as well. 

Cakes - M & M Birthday Cake - 1996

I sat near a girl at work who loved M&Ms.  So, just for fun, I made her this birthday cake.

It's 2 8" rounds of chocolate cake and one 12" round.  Layered - 8-12-8 with chocolate frosting between the layers.  Then I carved it into the shape of an M&M candy, covered that with frosting, and then wrapped the whole thing in fondant that I'd tinted green.  Then I iced the "m" on the top with royal icing and surrounded the whole thing with mini M&Ms.

Cakes - Dad's Birthday - 1996

One of my first baking assistants was my sister's son, Calvin.  He was three when he helped me make this cake for my father for his birthday.  The cake was probably carrot cake or spice cake, and it was covered with a cream cheese frosting.

I made stencils of the tracings of Calvin's hands, and we dusted the hand patterns with cocoa powder.  The rest of the decorating was done with green colored frosting. 

Not much else to tell about this one.  I'm pretty sure it tasted good.

Cakes - "Who's the Genius?" - 1996 (I think)

This one has a little story.

This is the slightly shortened version.

My cousin, Steve, had gone to Chicago on business.  While he was out there, he had shopped at a Warner Brothers gift store and brought home a black plastic "bomb" with a fuse coming out of the top - like in the cartoons.  There was writing around the top of the black ball - "Who's the Genius?"  And inside, Steve told me, was a tee shirt.  Cool packaging. 

And it was empty.  Steve was stunned (and annoyed at spending money on an empty plastic ball), and I thought it was incredibly funny. 

Now...to add some background - Steve and I are the same age - I'm a month older - and we've known each other since we were twelve.  We've always had a friendly sort of rivalry in terms of who's smarter - I'm probably the crueler of the two of us.  He's much better natured. 

So - the empty plastic container struck me funny on a few levels.

And so, when it was time to make his birthday cake, I had the perfect subject matter.

I don't even remember what kind of cake was inside.  Probably chocolate.  I do, however, remember grinning like a fool the whole time I was making this, the whole time I was icing it in black, and writing "Who's the Genius?" around the top. 

And honestly?  He's much smarter than I am.  But don't tell him I said that. 

Cakes - Natalie's First Birthday - 1996

I have no notes on this one, and I'm thinking it might not even be chronologically correct in my little photo album of cakes...but oh well. 

We skip ahead a few years to my niece's first birthday.  I used a Wilton teddy bear pan that we must have borrowed from someone because I don't have it here.  I think it may have been borrowed from Beth...Beth?  That sound right?  Mere, do you remember?

Anyway, the cake pan came with pictures of suggested decorating themes...I think you could decorate the bear as a cheerleader, or, as in this case, a ballerina.  I don't remember the other choices.  My sister went with the pinkest, girliest one because, well, she had a girl!

Somewhere I have pictures of Natalie - bald little Natalie - with pink frosting on her face and her mouth and eyes wide open in surprise or delight or a sugar rush.  Very cute. 

I think the cake was chocolate...if my sister was choosing the flavor, then it was definitely chocolate.

Gee, this is a really exciting and informative post, isn't it?

That could be because I had some sort of snobby aversion to the cake pan - not just this one but any character cake pan.  I don't know - I get weird like that at times.

But anyway - there you go.  I'm looking ahead at the next couple of pictures, and one of them is DEFINITELY way out of order here.  Oh well.  I will just follow along anyway.  Even though it will bother me.  I'm so easily bothered....

Cakes - Jack O' Lantern Cake - 1992

This was the first, um...representational cake that I can remember making.  It's the first one I photographed, anyway.  It was for my sister's birthday, and I remember feeling rather clever as I put this together.  It's 4 layers of chocolate cake (always chocolate when it's Mere's birthday) with chocolate frosting in between.

I particularly remember how important it was to me that I achieve the CORRECT shade of orange to match the pumpkin I was copying.  I only had one of those little 4-packs of liquid food coloring, and I think I probably added red and yellow a drip at a time, stirring thoroughly after each addition before deciding what it needed more of.

The stem is an actual pumpkin stem - I think it fell off a pumpkin that I was picking up.  I know I soaked it in hot water for a while, maybe with a dash of bleach in there to kill any little germs or bugs hanging around.

It's a jack o'lantern on one side, and on the back it says "Happy Birthday Meredith."  I piped the black on top of the orange...but if I were to do it again, I would probably cover the cake with fondant instead of frosting...and I'd actually cut out the eyes and nose and mouth so there would be that 3-dimensional element that's lacking in this one.  I think I remember scooping frosting off the face of the pumpkin when I did this one.  I'd try to make the bottom of the pumpkin more rounded and realistic too.    

But still...not a bad start to my little hobby.

Cakes - Lemon Sponge Pizza Cake 2007

Okay, well the third of the 3 birthday cakes I did last week was actually a pie.  A Lemon Sponge Pie - actually a triple version of it.  I used puff pastry dough as the crust, but that really wasn't necessary - I'm still not exactly sure why I used that instead of just a regular pastry crust.  Sometimes my ideas just drag me along behind them and I don't ask questions.

The story behind this one really sort of begins years ago, when I used to make a lot of birthday cakes for the people at work.  Our dept manager actually paid me to do this for everyone, which was nice - nice of him and nice for me.  So I these cakes for a few years until someone (as I understand it) from some other department complained (why?  nothing better to do?  no cake for you?) and that ended the fun.

Anyway, D. had been the recipient of, I believe, 3 of my cakes over the years, and so, since I'm leaving soon and feeling kind of nostalgic, I offered to make a cake.

Why pizza?  D. had indicated that instead of the usual bagels and cream cheese, or store-boughten cakes that have been provided to birthday folk recently, he'd rather have pizza.  Or lasagne.  So another girl in the dept decided to make lasagne, and I offered to make a cake that looked like a pizza, as a surprise.  And that was how it began. 

I used a large (14") cake pan for this.  Two boxes of frozen puff pastry dough.  Triple the Lemon Sponge Pie recipe.  And I forced the family to eat pizza for dinner on Halloween just so I'd have an actual pizza box to use for presentation.  (Okay, "forced" is a bit of an exaggeration.)

Anyway, here we go...

First thing I did was to line the pan with the puff pastry dough.  I had to cut and paste (so to speak) the rectangles of dough, but it didn't take long, and two boxes was the perfect amount.  I curled the edges under to create the edge of the pizza crust, and then put the pan into the fridge to keep the dough chilled.

Next - the pie filling.

Per the instructions, I combined the butter, sugar and egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon zest, milk, salt and flour, and set them aside.

In a separate bowl, I whipped the egg whites until stiff.

And then folded them into the yolk/lemon mixture...

   

...until combined.  (You want to do this as gently as possible, so as to leave as many air bubbles as possible intact.)

And then pour it into the pie shell.

And slide that into your 375 degree oven.

Now - with puff pastry dough, you really need the oven temp to be higher than that - in the 400s - in order for the fat to melt and create enough steam quickly to puff up the layers of dough. 

But the pie recipe calls for a starting temp of 375, so that's what I went with, because I didn't know what another 50 degrees or so might do to the filling.  Maybe I'll try it some time with a single-sized pie, but I wasn't about to experiment on this one.

Anyway, I baked it at 375 for about 25 minutes - longer than the directions called for, but I figured the extra time was justified due to tripling of the recipe.  Then, per the recipe, I dropped the temp down to 300 and baked until the top was golden brown - about another hour. 

Voila!  As the pie cooled, the filling deflated a bit and dropped down til it was about level with the crust.

After it had cooled to room temperature, I put it in the fridge until it was thoroughly chilled.

In order to achieve the pizza look, I needed something to look like sauce, something to look like cheese, and some sort of topping.  I picked pepperoni - because it was the easiest thing to recreate.

I bought two boxes of raspberry FruitaBu.  After carefully selecting a round cookie cutter, each rectangle of smushed fruit provided me with two pieces of "pepperoni."

I wrapped the disks of fruit in plastic wrap so they wouldn't dry out or get stuck to anything and moved on to the sauce. 

I had picked up seedless raspberry jam for this.  I spooned some into a bowl and mashed it up with a fork until it was liquidy; then I spooned it around the edge of the pizza, where the filling met up with the crust, and randomly swirled some of it toward the center of the pizza. 

For the cheese...well, originally I was going to do some sort of brulee thing, in order to mimic the mix of yellowy cheese and darker, more well-cooked cheese on top of a pizza.  But since the lemon sponge already had that mix of shades, I just applied apricot jam all over it to make it look kind of, well, greasy.  And then I added the pepperoni, and set the pan in the box.

Will that be pick-up or delivery?   

Cakes - Calvin's Birthday 2007 - Chili Pepper

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I had several birthday cakes to do for the same date.  One of them was for my nephew, Calvin.

Now, because I'm like I am, I have to state, before I show any pictures, that I wasn't 100% happy with how this one came out, but I should really just shut up about that because they're all learning experiences, and I already know what I'd do differently if I were to do this one again.

I decided to do a chili pepper because every time Calvin and his sister, Natalie, are at our house, my husband asks Calvin if he wants to eat a chili pepper, or some sort of really really spicy fiery hot sauce or something, and because Calvin is male, he says yes.  It's become a tradition to set your mouth afire at our house, and he seems to look forward to it.  I think it's some sort of male rite of passage.  Once he eats enough chili peppers, he'll grow a full beard and his voice will drop 8 octaves.  He'll be a MAN.  Just like my husband, the MAN.  The two of them sit there and eat tiny bites of a fresh pepper from the garden and then make panting, "hoooooooo...haaaaaaaaaa" kinds of noises, and their eyes water profusely, and their faces contort in pain.  Then they take another bite.  And try to coerce me into joining their little testosterone competition and then sneer at me because I'm too sensible to join in. 

Male bonding.  It's a beautiful thing.

Anyway, to get this cake made, I took two boxes of spice cake mix and left out the oil called for and substituted a 14 oz can of pumpkin puree.  I baked this in 4 loaf pans of various sizes, and they were my raw clay, so to speak.

Actually, I only ended up using 3 of the 4 loaves. 

First, I sliced each one in half through the middle and slathered on some canned chocolate frosting.

Then I trimmed them a bit and laid them out on the pan in the basic chili pepper shape I was copying.  Here's the pepper -

And here's the cake -

I used a plastic straw to support the part that sticks up over there.  It didn't really work well, but oh well, that's one of those learning experiences I mentioned.

Next up - coloring the fondant.  I chose green over red because I'd have needed an entire little jar of red to get the right shade, and I didn't want to spend an eternity kneading the color into the fondant.

By the way, Julia wanted to help, so I gave her some green fondant and a rolling pin and let her go to town. 

I rolled out the green fondant into a long, sort of sock-shaped piece...

and draped it over the cake.  Now, the problem was that I had more fondant than I needed, and I really hadn't thought about the logistics of the end part of the pepper that curled up.  So that's where I ran into trouble.  First off, the straw poked through the fondant, so I took that out.  But that end of the cake was so fragile that I couldn't really do much else other than to wrap the lengths of fondant around it and try to form the pointy end.  And here's how it ended up:

I sort of camouflaged the wrinkled end with "Happy Birthday Calvin" - but unfortunately I didn't take a picture of it at that point.

I am, however, rather proud of the stem end:

 

And that's the story of that cake. 

Cakes - Meredith's Birthday 2007

My sister's birthday is on Halloween, and as I have frequently done over the years, I made her birthday cake.  We had dinner at my parents' house on Friday, and actually it was a double birthday dinner - for both Meredith and for my nephew, Calvin, who, without any regard for his mother's feelings, has turned fifteen.  He's grounded until he stops this nonsense.

So actually I did two birthday cakes for the dinner - one for Mere and one for Calvin.  I also had a cake to do for someone at work who ALSO has a Halloween birthday, but he took his birthday off and so we had his cake on Friday, too.  And I had a really fun time getting all these cakes done.  I haven't done a lot of cakes in the past few years, but maybe I'll start drifting back into it.  We'll see.

Anyway, for my sister.  I think she's my favorite cake recipient.  For one thing, she always wants chocolate, and it's nice to bake for someone with such excellent taste.  The other reason, the main other one, is that I can lead her to believe I might do some sort of creepy cake, say, about her foot.  It's fun to torture her.  She's my baby sister, after all.  I've had a lifetime of practice.

I actually did toy with the idea of doing a foot-related theme - or a missing toe-relate theme - or something along those lines.  Halloween is the perfect opportunity to make creepy or gross cakes, after all.  But then I had another idea.

She took up crocheting around a year or so ago, and she's made hats and scarves and granny squares galore.  She made herself a hat - this one:

And for some reason, this hat has become a source of humor between the two of us.  And I can't really explain why, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

So that was my plan.  To make a hat cake.

The cake was (needlessly) five layers.  I have a fear of not making ENOUGH, so I make too much.  But that's okay - Mere was happy to bring home the leftovers.  Three layers were chocolate cake - just plain ol' chocolate cake from a box mix.  I used two boxes of mix, and three round cake pans - the 6", 8" and 12" ones.  And because this cake was for my sister, I wanted it to be extra specially yummy, so I made two layers of Boca Negra - 8" and 10". 

The Boca Negra recipe calls for bourbon, but I used some strong coffee instead.  It worked just fine.  Once those two layers were nicely chilled, I started to assemble the cake.  It was actually the last one I put together, and I have to say, even though it took the longest, it was also the most fun.

Here's a glimpse into my world this past Thursday night...

First - a look back at a bit of the Boca Negra in production...

That's the melted chocolate and the hot coffee and sugar syrup in there, and the lumps you see are some of the butter as I stir it in. 

That's the rest of the butter, room temp, cut into chunks, waiting to join the fun.

Here's one of the two pans of Boca Negra just before I placed them in the oven...

And here's one after it baked in the water bath for about 45 minutes....

Words CANNOT describe how absolutely sublime this is.  You'll just have to go make some for yourself.

Anyway, on to the construction of the cake.

I started with the 12 inch layer of regular cake, part of the top sliced off so it would be flat...

And on that I smeared some seedless raspberry jam, because raspberry and chocolate go oh, so very nicely together...

And onto that, I unmolded the 10 inch Boca Negra.  Now, when you make the Boca Negra, you line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper to prevent the cake from sticking. 

Something else to keep in mind is that if you have refrigerated the cake most of the day, it's going to be rather difficult to unmold it.  I hadn't thought of that when I was starting to assemble the hat, so after my moment of panic, I ran a towel under really hot water and sat the pan on that for a minute or so.  Then I held the edge of the pan against the edge of the first cake layer and then - IN ONE FELL SWOOP - inverted the pan onto the cake.

And - nothing happened.  At least not immediately.  But then I felt a barely perceptible change in the weight distribution in the pan, and next thing I knew, the Boca Negra had slipped right out and onto the first cake layer, nice and neat.  PHEW!

I peeled off the parchment, and spread a layer of Nutella on top.  Because hazelnut goes oh, so very well with raspberry and chocolate.

And then the 8 inch layer of cake and some seedless raspberry jam...

And then the next layer of Boca Negra and a smear of Nutella, and finally the little 6 inch cake layer.  Once all the layers were stacked, I carved the whole thing into the shape of a very large hat:

And now, as I'm looking at it, I notice that it's sort of listing to the left...I could make some sort of joke about that being an accurate representation of the shape of my sister's head, but I won't do that because it's not, and and plus she's a black belt in karate and she'll hurt me.

On to the actual HAT part of the adventure.  I set up my laptop on a counter near the work area and pulled up the image of her hat:

And I stared at it for a while to try to figure out how in the heck I was going to recreate THAT.  I get these CLEVER ideas...and then I have to actually figure out how to execute them.  I really question my sanity at times like these.

The best thing to do in a situation like this, is to take it slow.  Stare at the picture for a while...put some cake pans away...get a glass of water...check your email...you know - important creative stuff like that.

I decided I could at least make the colors.

   

I used fondant to construct the hat - I use it on a lot of my cakes.  I actually used to make it from scratch, years ago when I had tons of free time and no children.  Then I discovered that they actually sell the stuff ALREADY MADE!  I'm so with it.

Anyway, I decided on 6 colors - two shades of pink, one each of purple, blue, green, and yellow.

   

I started with the darker pink.  I used two different versions of pink - "aster mauve" and plain ol' "pink."  I smeared a glob (technical pastry chef term - don't mean to show off but the lingo is just a part of me at this point.  Oh, and no, I'm not a pastry chef, really.) of each color onto the white fondant, and then began to work the color into the fondant.  It can be messy, especially if, like me, you use a ton of food coloring from the outset AND you don't wear gloves. 

See those stains?  They don't wash out immediately.  And anything in the red family (or black, which, in the world of food coloring, is also part of the red family - and if you don't believe me, smear some black food coloring on your hand and then rinse it off.  Told you.) will leave pink stains on your hand or your work table or your countertop.  They will eventually come out, but not right then and there.  I went to work the next day with really pretty blotches on my hands.

Anyway - I basically start the coloring process by folding the dough over onto the blobs of coloring and then pressing down on it with the heel of my hand.  Then fold again and press, and smush it together with my hands, and squeeze it - okay, there is no real simple process.  Just do your best and try to keep the coloring off your hands as much as possible.

The lighter pink was just the aster mauve.  I also used juniper green, delphinium blue, a mix of delphinium and violet for the purple, and buttercup yellow for, yes, the yellow.  I think I may have added a dash of copper to it also.   And here they are:

Next step...how the heck do I crochet with fondant?  I can't even crochet with yarn.  So I stared at the picture some more...

And some more...

And some more...

 

And more,

...until my eyes hurt.  And I still didn't really know what I was going to do...but I figured, since it would involve crocheting or at least some sort of fondant faux-crocheting, I should make strands of some sort.

So I did that.  And they looked like this:

I actually tried a number of different methods to make the hat.  I will even admit that yes, I rolled a strand out fairly thin and tried to - yes - crochet it.  It kept breaking.  And oh yeah, I sort of lied when I said I couldn't crochet.  I am able to crochet a single chain, miles and miles long if necessary.  I just have no idea how to turn that into a hat or anything else.  But I figured it's a cake - it's not expected to be an EXACT replica.  At least not by anyone else except me. 

So first I smushed strands together in pairs - blue and pink, green and the other pink, purple and yellow.  Then I just sort of started at the base of the cake and made loops and ripples and squiggles, working my way around, joining the next strand pair to the one before it.  After this set, I made more fondant ropes, and this time I smushed three colors together, and then did the same loops and ripples and squiggles around the hat again.  It still didn't look as...well, as color saturated as I thought it should.  So then I started braiding.  And that's what did it. 

I pressed the strands together in pairs first, and then braided the three resulting strands into a braid.  And THEN I smushed the whole thing together into one single multi-colored strand.  And that, visually, was the best I could do.  (At least that's what I told myself.)

And now, the moment you've been waiting for (if you're still reading) - I give you, the hats:

I just laughed every time I looked at it in the fridge.  And the family seemed to get a kick out of it as well.  Yay.  Most importantly, it tasted really, really good.

You know, now that I've recapped the process, I'm thinking I could have just used the braided strands as they were, rather than squishing them together.  But I didn't at the time because I was trying NOT to make it look like a giant braid.  It was crocheted, dammit!  It must be ACCURATE!

I'm so goofy sometimes.

Lemon Sponge Pie

(from my old blog...)

My mother got this recipe from a friend of hers, and for years it's been my "birthday cake" of choice. Served it chilled, with some fresh whipped cream (or not) it's perfect on a hot July day.

Creme Brulee

(originally from my old blog...)

2008 note - if you want to see pictures of the process, go here.

Tuesday night when everyone was over I made Creme Brulee,