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

A tale of two cookies: part two

Where was I?

Oh yes, the second cookie...

So there I was baking butterscotch pecan cookies for the workaversary when I was struck by a moment of brilliance...or insanity (it's sometimes difficult to differentiate between the two):

Why make just one kind when I can make two kinds of cookies?

OOOOH...

I don't know what made me more excited--the idea of offering my colleagues a choice of flavours or the possibility that I might have some left over for ME (the term "ravenous hordes" has been bandied about).

Okay, but what about the second flavour? I was baking at My Dear Little Mummy's as Beelzebub hasn't yet learned to behave like a good little oven, so I was a bit short on options...except for the tub of Nutella I bought on the way over (along with the butter).

For those of you who haven't been enlightened: Nutella is a food of the gawds.

There, now you know. Pass it on.

So there I was, staring at the 400g pot of Nutella, wondering what to do, when it suddenly dawned on me: Nutella cookies.

It may have been the most brilliant thought I'd had all year.

A quick riffle through my Mum's cupboards procured a part packet of milk chocolate chips--she wouldn't mind--she's told me to use up as much of her food as possible while she's away...and I'm a good girl who always obeys her Mummy :)

The only thing was...I didn't have a recipe. Think think think. Nutella is sort of like peanut butter. It had been a while since I last made PB cookies, but I figured I could muddle my way through.

The cookies that emerged weren't cloying. Truthfully, I was worried that they'd take on the supersweetness brought by Nutella, but because I held back (a bit) on the sugar--totally omitted the brown sugar, and just stuck with brown--and added more salt than I'd normally put in a cookie. These weren't chewy as some pb cookies, but they aren't as crispy-dry-hearty as others. They were a nice cross between the two, with a little teeny cakeyness thrown in. I wound up with a chocolaty, slightly nutty-flavoured cookie that went really well with coffee. In that way they were reminiscent of Dorie's World Peace Cookies.

I think they were a hit--I definitely like them. They were very popular in some circles, but others (those poor, deprived souls who weren't brought up with the joys of choco-hazelnut spread) did not go near them. A couple of people who'd never tried the spread ate a cookie...and then another...and then another (even my very young neighbour, who received some of my biscuitty bounty, came knocking on my door--several times--over the weekend wanting the recipe so she could make them with her mum).

Nutella Cookies
Yields about six dozen cookies, depending upon your cookie spoon.

170g very soft butter
200g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 dsp vanilla extract
250ml Nutella
420g plain flour
1 dsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
250g milk chocolate chips (but I suppose you could use an entire packet of 270g)

Preheat oven to 375F/190C and prepare your cookie trays in the usual way.

Stir together the flour, bicarb and salt. Set aside. In another bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and Nutella until smooth. Mix in the flour and then fold in the chocolate chips. You will get a fairly stiff batter.

Drop by teaspoonful onto the aforementioned prepared cookie trays. Press slightly and bake until done, about 12 minutes.

cheers!
jasmine

edit: Thanks Dana! I left out half the info on the sugar and texture...they're in now.

Related Post: A tale of two cookies: part one

Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

Everytime I idly leaf through Dorie Greenspan's Baking: from my home to yours, I stop at page 251 and sigh. It's one of those lovely compositions--slices of white cake, sandwiched between garnet layers of rasperry jam and white buttercream frosting, encased in a snowfall of shredded coconut.

I look at it and think "My, that's pretty...I really should make that some day," and then go off to a different recipe.

When I've charged myself with baking a birthday cake, I flip through this marvellous tome and think "My, that's pretty...I really should make that some day," and then go off to a different cake.

So when our fabulous Daring Bakers host, Morven of Food Art and Random Thoughts revealed this month challenge as Dorie's Perfect Party Cake, I knew my days of wistfully dreaming of whipping up so lovely a creation would be a memory as now this celebratory crumb will have come from my kitchen...or a version of it.

The Perfect Party Cake is not hard to make as Dorie's wonderful prose easily walks you through the steps: two divided slabs, some seedless jam, a mound of Swiss meringue buttercream frosting, all patted down with coconut flakes. Everything about this cake is delicious--the crumb has nice, light flavour and a soft texture. The frosting is sweet but neutral and plays nicely with the lemon, raspberry and coconut.

But the thing is...I'm not a foofy cake person.

And by this I mean any cake that you need to primp and fuss over. I have an ingrained and genetic aversion to crumbcoats and piping bags, which extends to layer cakes.

Just give me a single, naked slab and a fork and I'm more than happy--you don't even have to give me a fork, but mummy taught me that cake is not finger food. If I'm feeling fancy, a plop of ice cream is perfect accompaniment. If I'm bothered to ice a cake, I prefer something that takes relatively little effort--plop and smoosh, plop and smoosh. Easy peasy, pudding and pie.

So here I am, dared to make a slightly foofy, definitely layered cake. It's more than layered--its two baked slabs, split to make four layers. And here I am, even and level-cake slicing challenged. Really...most of my attempts at such beasts have produces wobbly-cut layers whose serrated tops (or bottoms) resemble the bloop-bloop heart monitor machine display screens. At best they are only cut on a diagonal. I don't even pretend the layers will be the same thickness.

But like a true DBer, I put all the above aside and tackled the cake.

I baked twice for this challenge--and by doing so, broke my personal DB rule: one shot, good or bad. My first attempt was during my migraine weekend, during a small relatively pain-free windo. As soon as I took them out of the oven, I set them on the rack to cool and then the searing aches returned and I slunk off to a dark room. Two days later, the slabs were still there...cool but stale. I looked at them--they didn't rise...at all. I blamed Beelzebub and decided to try again later.

Between attempts I'd read various DB accounts, many complaining that the slabs didn't rise. What? Were they all coming into my kitchen when I wasn't around and using the kitchen squatter? Given I just got my power bill, I can (thankfully) say no. A few people thought their leveners were at fault. That could have been my issue, but I use my BP regularly and haven't had any problems with lift before. I read and re-read the recipe in my book and as far as I can tell, I followed everything to the letter.

This, of course, lead me to break a real DB rule...I decided to not follow the recipe to the letter. I used the same ingredients, in the same quantities, but just a little differently. Plus, I decided to switch pan sizes, using my more standard 20cm (8") tins instead of the 23cm (9") ones called for.

So...what did I do differently?

• I whipped the egg whites separately from the buttermilk, with a bit of sugar so I had lovely billowy, soft-peaked marshmallowy clouds.
• Instead of sifting all the baking powder with the flour, I held back about a teaspoon's worth.
• Just before pouring the buttermilk into the batter, I stirred in the reserved bp, to activate the leavening properties
• When adding the wet to the dry, my first addition was half the buttermilk the second was the remaning and the third was folding in the egg whites.
• VERY QUICKLY put the tins into the oven.

Well...the cakes were higher (some of which is attibutable to the volume issue by switching to the smaller tins, but I think my procedural changes helped a bit), but not high enough for me to feel comfortable about bisecting them adequately. I think if I were using a better oven, I would have had better height.

Because I switched it to a two-layer cake, I wound up with a lot more frosting than I needed, so I...umm...made a very thick layer of frosting in between the cakes. Not so thick as it would have replaced a proper third (or fourth) layer, but thicker than I'd normally do.

Of course, after I completed it, we got a note from Dorie suggesting that people use plain flour (just take away two tablespoons of flour from the mix) or a particular brand of flour. Since that note, I noticed the number of triumphant DBers increased. Ah well...it was still a good birthday cake for the exbf.

I do want to try this one again with that flour brand, the ap subsitute and my regular brand. I'm just not sure what do do with all that cake...




To read what the other DBs did with this challenge, take a meander through our blogroll.



cheers!
jasmine


Related Post: Redux: DB: Dorie's Perfect Party Cake

My friend ran away to work on a cruise ship and all I got was...

...a bunch of rotten bananas.

Really.

After a dozen or so years as the stayed, conservative banker, my friend Jen decided to chuck it in for a job on a cruise ship. Well, truth be told, she wasn't all that conservative...but, you know, when your corporate colours are navy blue and cream, how wild and crazy can you be at work?

For the next three or so months she'll be sailing the high seas, doing the Mexico-California-Alaska route, telling people where to find the bingo, the buffet, the formal dining room, the other buffet, the gym and yes, the other buffet. Then she does her real job...telling people people what to do, and how to do it.

The change was a bit of a whirlwind...I think she had 10 days to settle her affairs before she flew out to the States. This meant she had a condo full of food that needed to be eaten or given away. So what do you do when you have litres of alcohol and kilos of food that need to be eaten? You throw a condo-warming-and-going-away party (she never did get around to the condo warming when she bought it six months ago). The rule (which I totally ignored) was to not bring any food.

How could I follow such a missive? I brought a squidgey chocolate loaf and a pina colada ice cream to share. I'm still perfecting the recipe...when it's good enough to be posted, you know it will show up.

A good crowd turned up--most of whom I'd only previously met through stories. Lots of "Oh! You're Jasmine!" with lots of "Oh! You're (insert name here)."At the end of the night when I packed up my things to return home from Toronto, little parcel came with me. A bunch of very, very, very ripe bananas. I of course, forewarned of this post.

So, what do we do with overripe bananas?

Well, I used this opportunity to expand my banana cake repertoire. I have an ol' faithful recipe which morphed from a Nigella recipe--it's fantastic, but I'm always looking for something new.

I found this one from Dorie's Baking: From my home to yours. Unsurprisingly it was excellent (all the recipes I've tried have been fabulous). A good, moist crumb, perfect for tea..or breakfast...or a midnight snack. I topped the cake with a makeshift topping comprised of some of the pina colada ice cream mixed with cream cheese--I thought the tropicallness of the topping matched with dried mangoes I mixed into the batter. Very nummy.

Banana-Mango Cake,

adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Lots-of-Ways Banana Cake, from Baking: From my home to yours.

200g ap flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp vanilla salt
75g softened butter
150g light brown sugar
2 overripe, medium-large bananas, mashed
1 egg
1/2 tsp almond extract
175g yoghurt (one small pot)
125g dried mangoes, chopped

Putting it together:

Preheat oven to 180C/350F and prepare one 22cm/9"round springform pan.

Sieve together the flour, bicarb and salt; set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar, then beat in the egg and almond. Add the bananas and give the wet bowl a good stir. Incorporate the flour and the yoghurt into the wet bowl in alternate additions, stirring after each addition (start off with the flour, then add some yoghurt and then repeat twice more). Fold in the fruit and pour into the pan.

Bake for 45 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out cleanly.

cheers!
jasmine

tags: Dorie Greenspan

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Big white fluffy clouds

I'm not much of a cake decorator. The vast majority of gateaux I make keep unadorned until they are served and then they are accompanied with a scoop of ice cream, some chocolate or caramel sauce, or a big dollop of flavoured whipped cream. Cupcakes usually meet a similar fate.

I find cake decorating frustrating. I know about crumb-coats and all that, but I just am not good at dolloping and smoothing. i end up with mounds of crumb and cream which, in frustration gets showered with coloured sprinkly bits.

I know it's a matter of patience and practice (both qualities of which I'm in short supply) so generally the only time I attempt frosted frippery is when there's a reason: a birthday, an anniversary or, well, I get inspired.

I'm always in awe of the talents some people have when it comes to edible artwork. They don't have to be as ornate as the ones Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes makes, they can just be very simply frosted.

So...when it came time for the exbf's birthday a few weeks ago, trepidation trotted across my toes. His first request was a shoo-fly pie...which I had to veto (things that sweet will set off a migraine)...then was the request for a Cadbury Creme Egg cake (no, not a cake decorated with creme eggs, but the a large mound of fondant enrobed in couverature), which I talked him out of. He finally settled on Dorie Greenspan's White-Out Cake--yes, the one that's on the cover of her Baking tome.

The cake itself was no problem whatsoever: slabs of chocolate chocolate chunk devil's food cake. YUM. It was the frosting that cowed me. I've never made a boiled icing before. I had visions of getting distracted and instead of white, marshmallowy goodness magically appearing, a hardened lump of carbon would be formed at the bottom of the bowl. I am very happy to say that the frosting came out beautifully and reminded me of big white fluffy clouds, all satin-sheened, luminous and (well) gorgeous...if I do say so myself...

Unfortunately, those billowy soft mounds eventually fell prey to my inability to assemble anything close to an elegant cake. All I have to say is thank goodness the recommended decoration was cake crumbs.





cheers!
jasmine

tags: Cakes Dorie Dreenspan

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Cookbook Spotlight: Baking: from my home to yours

Baking: From my home to yours
By Dorie Greenspan
Houghton Mifflin, New York City
Hardcover; 514 pages; C$55/US$40
ISBN-10: 0-168-443336-3; -13:978-0-618-44336-9

Thanks to Sara, the wonderful mind behind i like to cook, I was invited to participate in the next Cookbook Spotlight series. Without hesitation I said yes: I had such a wonderful time with the last title, I’ve been hoping to be invited back. Thanks to Sara and the very kind people at Houghton Mifflin, 25 of us received our very own copies of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: from my home to yours to cook from and blog about.

I nearly spat up my evening tea when I read Greenspan’s introduction:

“Until I was a junior in college, my sole cooking experience consisted of burning down my parents’ kitchen when I was thirteen, after I tossed frozen French fries into boiling oil and covered the pot. For the next half-dozen years, I remained blissfully clueless about all things culinary.”

My eyes vibrated in that way they do when seemingly conflicting thoughts start my synapses firing—“How does someone go from setting her kitchen ablaze to writing nine cookbooks?” was battling with “Will this book be salvageable? combined with a little bit of “OMG, will I have a kitchen by the end of this adventure?” (and yes, there was the “Speaking of which, where is my fire extinguisher?” question thrown in, but I know where all three are).

Greenspan’s story is an interesting one. Married at 19, she was forced to learn how to cook (what 19 year old newlywed student can afford to eat out every meal?). By the time she finished her doctorate in gerontology, she had an epiphany: she actually liked cooking and, more to the point, she’d rather bake than continue a career in academia. With sheepskin in hand, and her husband’s encouragement, she found her way as apprentice pastry chef in a number of famous pastry kitchens. In time, she began writing columns and cookbooks. She’s worked with notable chefs such as Julia Child and Daniel Boulud to pen chef recipes into recipes normal, everyday people could successfully repeat in normal, everyday home kitchens.

As with every cookbook that enters my possession, I read Baking cover-to-cover, with my usual attitude of "can this writer immerse me, hold my interest and make me want to try these ideas of hers?” Will she be a knowledgeable friend who, will via good, clear language find a comfortable place in my kitchen while passing on advice and perceptions based on her own experience or (as I’ve put it before ) esoteric-to-me knowledge. Yes, I want my cookbooks to speak to me and not down to me. I also want to know that the person who wrote them not only understands cooking but has a modicum of common sense.

This book combines Greenspan’s obvious love of all baked sweets with a desire to demystify the sometimes scary world of baking. Her voice is warm and friendly and she injects humour and anecdotes throughout, including the time she was served her own “World Peace Cookies” and how a cake, the “Chocolate Armagnac Cake,” got her fired. She also includes her version of the dessert-maker’s glossary of ingredients, tools and techniques.

Her recipes are divided into six broad chapters: Breakfast Sweets; A Cache of Cookies; Cakes of All Kinds; Pies and Tarts; Spoon Desserts, and Indispensables. Each section is then divided even further. For example, Pies and Tarts has sections devoted to apples; fall holiday pies, and creamy pies and tarts; fruit pies and tarts. Each chapter and section has its own introduction, filled with practical information written in a way to calm the nerves of someone who has never tried that sort of cooking before. If you’ve never tried making a fruit tart before, you may be comforted to read

“At its most basic, a fruit pie or tart is just fruit or dough, give or take some sugar, spice or maybe a little butter.”

It’s this sort of simple, reassuring language helps muster up the courage to bake a double-crusted blueberry pie.

Her recipes are well written and presented in an easy fashion. The technique section is broken down in to logical steps, but also contains sections about tweaking ingredients to make a different, but just as lovely dish. She gives information on how to serve the dessert and how to store it. Not every recipe is photographed, but those that are beautifully done in a manner that denotes home cooking—the image of the mixed berry cobbler that overbubbled in the pan, leaving slurpy drips running down the side is not only gorgeous, but comforting because it isn’t a perfect image.

What I think are the most useful parts of Baking are her lemony-yellow pointer pages. For example, if flaky scones and biscuits elude you, her hints on page 20 tell you all you need to know. Quite honestly, it’s her wonderfully written tips on pie crusts which, I think, solved my pastry-making problems.

There are very few things I fault in this book—and they aren’t the author’s doing.

This book is marketed and sold outside of the United States, but these audiences aren’t taken into consideration when addressing such things as measurement (sticks of butter, lack of Metric measurement, and the habit of using volume measures for things that many people in the world weigh); without a conversion chart, some recipes may not translate well to a non-US audience. Personally, I would have loved to have a recipe title index (either at the beginning of each chapter or at the end)—it would make finding recipes easier. The last point is my own pet peeve with the publishing industry: the Canadian cost has been calculated as if our dollar trades at less than 63 US cents. The Canadian dollar hasn’t traded at that low a level in about four years (currently it is about 90 cents US); if the publisher based the Canadian price at the 01 November 2005 rate, it would be about 85 US cents, or a cover price of about $46 ($9 less than the current list).

Those things aside, this is a really, really good book. I think the highest compliment I can pay any cookbook author is that I keep cooking from it. Most tomes get a few tries and then get shelved indefinitely. Not this one. It stays on my coffee table because I cook from it at every opportune moment (which, unfortunately, have been lacking as of late). Why? Because the results are predictably successful and predictably delicious.

When I review a cookbook, I normally choose four recipes before the book gets shelved. So far I’ve made seven recipes and with plans to bake more. Everything I’ve made has come out perfectly—normally I make notes about adjusting amounts or cooking times or oven temperatures. Often I cross out ingredients and write in things that would work better (proportions, flavours, etc.). I don’t have to do any of that with this book. I know that I can just take this book, pick out any recipe and make it and the results will be more than satisfyingly scrumptious.

Even my MOTHER, she-of-the-snarky-comments-about-all-TV-chefs-and-most-cookbooks, LIKES this book and LIKES everything she’s snuck out of my kitchen. She’s even riffled through pages, marking things she wants me to make for her and her friends. (Okay, maybe that’s another negative—people will want you to bake for them more often now that you have this book).

I consider recipe testing like a good graze at a buffet table: I want to try a little bit of everything. The four I chose were:

Fresh Mango Bread
I’ve never tried mango bread before—in fact, I’d never heard of mango bread before. The recipe reads very much like a carrot cake, and I’m sure one could substitute carrots or courgettes for mangoes. One of the problems living where I do is that we don’t get good mangoes in the bigscarymegamarts—sure they look ripe, but they aren’t. I used canned mangoes instead, in hopes that they would be better than the fresh ones around here. They were (marginally). The bread came out beautifully—dense and very, very moist. It wasn’t too sweet. I ate a slice for breakfast every morning for days and I never got tired of it.

Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies
When I received this book, I had a huge craving for chocolate brownies. I hemmed and hawed over the various options, and settled on this one. How could I NOT make something that’s a tribute to screen legend? I hadn’t made brownies in about 15 years, so I was perfectly out of practice…you would never have known. Dense, slightly coffee-flavoury and fudgey combined with crunchy pecans made these incredibly amazing. The only problem with them is that they disappear very, very quickly.

(I noticed that the wonderful Ruth of Once Upon A Feast also made these. Here’s the link to the recipe she posted.)

Tiramisu Cake
Yes, it’s très 1996, but still. It’s tiramisu. The cake layers were nicely spongey and soaked up the espresso really well, and will be used in future trifley-type puddings. The marscapone-whipped cream filling was amazing. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to put it together in a half-decent way, but Greenspan’s well-written directions helped me turn out a beautiful, delicious cake that everyone in my office raved about.

All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie
If you’ve never made a pie before, and have been afraid to try one, this is a good one to try...as long as you know what types of apples to use. Greenspan doesn’t give any guidance as to the sorts of apples that should be used, which may be a problem for novice piemakers. That said, the spicing was nicely balanced and there was a zippy lemonniness from the zest. Yes, I know that has a lot to do with the apples.

If you’ve never made pastry before, or if every pastry crust you’ve made has been as tough as beef jerky, leaving you to believe that your only option is to buy frozen crusts, this is a good one (“Good For Almost Everything Pie Dough”) to try out. Please note, I don’t have a food processor, so I did it by hand—I’m not a great pastry maker, but I’m not the world’s worst either (maybe second-worst)--the pastry came together perfectly and baked up flaky and gorgeous. In fact, if you need only one reason to buy this book…this pastry crust recipe is it. If you need a second one, then the hints to make a good crust will more than do.

Anyone interested in baking should seriously consider adding Baking: from my home to yours to their repertoire. This book would make an excellent gift for a novice baker of any age. Equally helpful to novice cooks and experienced domestic doyennes, Dorie Greenspan’s Baking will become a well-loved, well-thumbed, and well-enjoyed source of delicious memories.

At a Glance:
Overall: 4.25/5
The Breakdown:
Writing: 4/5
Recipe Selection: 4.5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Yumminess: 4.5/5

Kitchen comfort-level: all
Pro: Well-written recipes that cover a vast number of types of baked desserts.
Con: Conversion charts and recipe index would make this book easier to use.

I hope to have recipes posted in a while, when my schedule slows down a bit.

cheers!
jasmine

tags: CookbookSpotlight: Baking:from my home to yours

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