Redux: DB: Dorie's Perfect Party Cake

If you perused the Daring Baker Blogs in March, you know we were challenged to make Dorie's Perfect Party Cake. And if you perused enough of our blogs you'd have noticed a fair number of us had troubles getting our cakes to rise anything more than a galette. Dorie did hear of our troubles and passed on a note, suggesting we not try self-raising flour, use AP flour (less two tablespoons) and that her cake flour of choice was Swans Down.

Some people were able to use her advice and came up with some happy little slabs. I didn't see the note until it was too late, so I wound up with very dense, thin cakes, not really high enough to bisect to make a quadruple layer cake. Partly because I wasn't thrilled with the result, partly because I was surprised to find a recipe in Dorie's Baking tome that didn't work, and partly because I was worried that the key to this recipe was a very specific brand, I wanted to try this cake again.

Last week I made three half-recipes--one using my usual Five Roses AP Flour, one using my usual Robin Hood Cake and Pastry Flour and the last using Swans Down. All were made the same day, with each cake baking away on its own in my mum's oven. The only changes I made from the first go-round were switching to vanilla from lemon and using milk instead of buttermilk. I also timed all the beatings so they were all made in the same way. I'd not tried anything like this before, so I was curious as to how the cakes would differ.

Here they are with heights
Top: Cake and Pastry Flour - 1.25" high
Left: AP - 1" high
Right: Swans Down - 1" high

Um...the dimples on the surface of the C&P Flour cake are not the result of a cat stepping on it--those are MY finger prints (yes, my initial doneness test is to touch the top of the cake).

Wow...look at that AP cake. All pockmarked and lumpy. In fact, by the time it totally cooled, it sank...I wound up with a bit of a crater.

Even though the C&P flour cake was the tallest, if I decided to slice off the dome, it would have been about 1" tall, the same height as the AP cake; the Swans Down domed slightly, but not enough to lose much height.

Well, there you go...none of my cakes were tall enough to slice through the middle as they were supposed to.

But this dawdle is about more than height..it's also about taste and texture....

I didn't actually get to try the C&P slab as I gave it to Dear Friend, iced with some cream cheese icing, coconut and gold dragees. Here's a picture of the original cake It tasted quite nice and the crumb was a bit denser than many other cakes, but wasn't really heavy.






The other two flours told a different story. The layer on the left is the Swans Down and the one on the right is the AP. Hands down, the Swans Down had the best texture of all three--almost velvety in its yielding crumb.

The AP Flour was much heavier and even though my cake tester came out clean it was obvious it should have been in the oven a wee bit longer, which contributed to its heavier nature.


At the end of this experiment I'm still not sure what's wrong--maybe I'm not making the cake correctly and that's why the slabs didn't rise all that much. I will say that I'm glad I tried the Swans Down Flour. My "everyday" cakes will still be made with my usual flours, but when I have a special cake on the menu, I know which flour I'll reach for...

cheers!
jasmine

Related Post: Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

There's custard...

...and then there's custard.


I'm not going to sugar coat things or wax too nostalgic about My Darling One: the man was an unwilling cook who relied heavily on Bachelor Chow: big box frozen foods, insta this and canned that. Don't get me wrong: when he did cook from scratch, it was very good -- spaghetti, lasagne, chicken oporto, and I'm told his trifle (I never got to try any as there was never any left for me to try--he took a full bowl to the office at Christmas, and it came back disappointingly empty). Those dishes appeared every so often, but mostly, if he made me a meal, it was usually what is known as Bachelor Chow.


When time came to clean out his pantry, a bachelor friend took much of the BC, a few things were kept (rice, pasta, oatmeal) and the rest was binned. One of the few things I kept was a cannister of Bird's Custard--a staple of the aforementioned trifle.


As someone who's only made...um...real custard, I was curious about this white cornstarchy mix that's famous for transforming into an unnaturally yellow pudding and sauce. I mean, how difficult is it to make custard? (Answer: Not very, as is evidenced by my ability to turn out a pretty yummy vanilla ice cream.).


Well...I made some to go with some individual apple crumbly crispy things.


Would I sound terribly boastful to say my home made custard is yummier--richer, vanilla-ier and, well, oomphier than the powdered purveyance? The colour didn't help matters much--I don't think mine comes anywhere close to that particular shade (unless I dribbled in some colourant).


That's not to say that the cannister will find its way into the bin. I have a few recipes that call for a spoon of custard powder here and there to flavour fillings or cookies...and besides, sometimes truly instant pudding is what a soul needs.

The individual apple crisps were the main point of dessert, no mere vehicle for the sauce. I don't really follow any real recipes when making them: half to a whole tart apple, peeled and sliced, with a spoon of jam or maple syrup in each ramekin.


The topping is really easy (and uses pinhead oats)--this amount was fine for six individual ramekins. Please note I'm pretty free-wheeling when it comes to making this...sometimes there's more flour and less oats, sometimes put spices in sometimes there's barely any butter...it all depends on my mood...and my pantry:


25g plain flour
100g brown sugar
40g rolled oats
15g pinhead oats
50g soft butter (or more, or less, depending on your mood)



Rub the topping ingredients together and spoon over apples before baking.


cheers!
jasmine

On My Shelves: The Sweet Melissa Baking Book

Thanks to the kind people at Viking Studio/Penguin USA, I found a copy of Melissa Murphy's The Sweet Melissa Baking Book in my hot little hands.

The Sweet Melissa Baking Book: Recipes form the Beloved Bakery for Everyone’s Favorite Treats
By Melissa Murphy
Viking Studio (Penguin Group USA Inc)
240 pages; $27.00


I’m a bit of a sucker for baking books. Big, little, pie-centric, cake-focussed, full-colour and glossy, home made and photocopied, around the world in 400 pages, wham, bam, bake it ma’am—if I’m not careful my rickety shelves would tumble under the weight of those instructions that list piebirds, spring-form pans and recommend strips of baking parchment. They don’t have to be patisserie-perfect, but it’s usually a treat to read tips and tricks of those who’ve dedicated a part of their lives in pursuit of all things made of fat, flour and sugar (with the occasional fruit or nut tossed in for good measure). Melissa Murphy’s collection of her bakeshop’s treats, The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, gives fans—and those of us who’d like to be fans, but for want of a transporter aren’t—the ability to turn our home ovens into satellites of her famed patisserie.

A graduate of New York’s French Culinary Institute, Melissa Murphy is the chef-owner of the Sweet Melissa Pâtisseries in Brooklyn, New York. Her bake shops have been featured in such publications a Food and Wine and The New Yorker, and she has contributed articles to such magazines as Bride’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and Pastry Arts & Design. Sweet Melissa Patisseries won the 2007 Zagat Marketplace Award for "Best Tarts and Pies" in New York.

Murphy’s 100-plus recipes are sectioned into six: breakfasts, snacks, cakes, fruits, special desserts and candies, all (I assume) from her pâtisseries. Photographs are few and far between—eight full-colour images illustrating a handful of recipes along with half a dozen black and white bakeshop shots—treats in their natural habitat, if you will. The limited illustrations may turn off some potential book owners and perhaps some of the inexperienced or even insecure home bakers, but I think the focus on text is exactly where it should be.

My proclivities lead me not to care what a food stylist does with a slice of cake or the lighting glinting off a fresh berry. I care more about the taste and ease of preparation; the latter is directly linked to the quality and clarity of written instruction. Murphy’s instructions are generally well-considered and ordered making it easy to attempt any of her sweet (and the occasionally savoury) treats. The recipes are easily adaptable to the baker’s palate as she sometimes offers variants to main recipes. Her Chocolate Orange Macaroons (p74) morph into Lemon Macaroons, while her Sweet Muffins recipe (p4) comes with four filling suggestions—Fresh Peach, Strawberry Muffins with Fresh Lemon and Rosemary, Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble and Pear Cranberry Muffins with Gingersnap Crumble.

Murphy’s text offers hints, tips and professional advice—things that many home bakers seek out. Some sections have dedicated pages of advice: in “It’s Somebody’s Birthday!: Special Layer Cakes” Murphy’s seven-page introduction includes words of wisdom about assembling layer cakes, both split and unsplit layer cakes, while “What Will We Do With All This Fruit?” includes four pages that discuss flour, fats, water and techniques for pastry-making. Many recipes include “Pro Tips” such as how to make your own vanilla sugar or what sort of bread to use in bread puddings.

For the most part, this is a good book but there are a few caveats. The first is a general warning about sweetness. Yes, I know this is a baking book, filled with lovely sweetie cakes, squares and pies, but I found the treats to be a bit too sweet for my liking. In each of the sweet recipes I tried, I could have very, very easily reduced the amount of sugar by about 25 per cent and not have undermined the yumminess of the final product. Related to this is my second concern: in this day and age where focus is put on childhood obesity, the rise of Type Two Diabetes and the general free-wheeling of sugar in the North American diet, I found “After-School Snacks” bordering on irresponsible—parents I know would not make these available to children between home time and supper because they’d be so wired (and yes, I know these really are treats and hopefully no parent would regularly provide these goods to their children, but to call them “after school snacks” is really too much). The final thing I didn’t care for was the lack of baking times and temps in the pie recipes. I suppose Murphy thought that as bakers would follow the pastry recipes found on other pages, they’d naturally flip back and forth—I found it annoying and would prefer to have the oven and timer info with the actual recipe. Oh, yes, add my usual displeasure about the use of volume metrics for flour, sugar etc.

And which recipes did I try? This is a book of temptation, to which I succumbed:

Butterscotch Cashew Bars (p54)
Incredibly easy but far too sweet—the butterscotch topping could be halved or quartered and attain a sweet-salty balance. Murphy suggests the quantity was sufficient for 24 bars, written—I cut it into 30 bars and still found it too sweet (even my sugar-loving colleagues thought it was sugar overload).




Carrot Cake with Fresh Orange Cream Cheese Frosting (p 114)
Moist moist moist and not heavy like many carrot cakes I’ve tried. The orange zest in the cream cheese frosting was delicious. I’ve since returned to the frosting recipe, cut down the sugar a bit and substituted extract for zest. The cake will probably be a regular star from my kitchen…probably as muffins.

Double-crusted Caramel Apple Pie (p 156) made with Flaky Pie Dough (p137)
Murphy recommends plain flour for the crust, instead of pastry flour. The crust was flaky enough and wasn’t at all chewy. I will give her full points for the caramel sauce instructions. I have never been able to make an edible caramel before, but I followed her instructions and produced a luscious caramel sauce that rivalled (and dare I say surpassed) any I’ve had from the shops or restaurants.

Savory Muffins: Bosc Pear, Blue Cheese and Walnut Muffins (p8)
This is a variant of the only savoury recipe in the book—which is why I made them. Oh my word these were good—the flavour combination is classic and just ever-so elegant.

The Sweet Melissa’s Baking Book is a good general-purpose sweetie baking book. The flavour combinations are fresh and inspired and will make anyone who follows her instructions a favoured baker.

So how does it rate?
Overall: 3.75/5

The breakdown:
Recipe Selection: 4/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5
Yum factor: 4/5
Table-top test*: Pretty much lies flat

Kitchen comfort-level: Novice-intermediate
Pro: Good kitchen tips make these sweet tips accessible to even neophyte bakers.
Con: A little heavy handed with the sugar, but easily fixable.

* I was reminded that a cookbook writer friend judged a cookbook partially on its ability to lie flat on a table, without without (eek!!) cracking the spine. Hey…who really wants to fight to keep a book open while trying to sort out its instructions?

cheers!
jasmine