Speakeasy Cake
April 26, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Posted in book review, cakes & tortes, sweet things | 14 Comments
Here’s the third recipe I made from Melissa Murphy’s cookbook The Sweet Melissa Baking Book (well actually the fourth–the ice cream in the photos is her brown sugar vanilla ice cream, and it is divine). It’s a dense, moist chocolate cake that she calls the “Speakeasy” because of a whopping 2/3 cup of brandy in the batter!
It’s a cousin of Dorie’s Almost-Fudge Gâteau, but not quite as dark and fudgy. If you prefer semi-sweet chocolate to bittersweet (and like a little booze with your chocolate), then you will like this one.
Speakeasy– makes one 8-inch cake
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the cake:
6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup brandy
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
For the chocolate glaze:
6 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
½ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
Before you start:
Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter an 8 x 2-inch round cake pan. Line the bottom with an 8-inch round of parchment paper.
To make the cake:
– In a medium bowl set over a pot of simmering, not boiling, water, melt the chocolate with the butter and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the brandy until smooth. Set aside to cool.
-Separate the eggs. Place the yolks in a large mixing bowl, and the whites in an electric mixer bowl.
– Add half of the sugar to the bowl with the yolks and whisk until thick. Add the chocolate mixture to the yolks and whisk to combine. Sift the flour, cinnamon, and salt over the chocolate batter and stir to combine.
-In the bowl of the electric mixer fitted with the whip attachment, make a meringue by whipping the egg whites until foamy. In a slow steady stream, add the remaining sugar. Whip until the whites hold stiff but not dry peaks.
-Briskly stir one-third of the meringue into the chocolate mixture to lighten the batter. Gently fold the remaining two-thirds of the meringue into the batter until no streaks remain.
– Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Spin the pan to level the batter. Bake for 80 to 90 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. (Do not do the skewer test until the cake has been baking for at least 70 minutes or you will deflate the batter!) Remove to a wire rack to cool before glazing. (Steph’s note: I made a half-recipe in a 6-inch cake pan and it took only 40 minutes to bake.)
To make the glaze:
– When the cake is cool enough to glaze, coarsely chop the chocolate and place it in a medium bowl.
-In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the heavy cream until scalding, or until the cream is steaming and tiny bubbles have formed along the edges. Do not boil.
-Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let stand for 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth. Stir in the corn syrup.
To complete the cake:
-Place the cake upside down on a rack set over the prepared cookie sheet.
-Pour the glaze over the cake, letting the glaze spread itself. You may have to push it over the sides a bit, and use a small metal spatula or butter knife to smooth the sides. Try not to touch the top though, so it will be glossy and unmarred. Let the glaze set at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Once the glaze is set, transfer the cake to a serving plate.
*The cake keeps in a cake saver at room temperature for 2 days. For longer storage, refrigerate for up to 1 week.
Taste&Create VIII: Greek Feta and Tomato Pasta
April 24, 2008 at 1:07 am | Posted in events, pasta, savory things | 8 Comments
For Taste&Create VIII, I was hooked up with Teresa from I’m Running to Eat. Teresa is an avid runner and cooks healthy meals for her family. I had no problem finding something from her blog to highlight here, but I cringe to think of Teresa’s reaction to the billion-calorie sweets I post– sorry Teresa!
From Teresa’s site, I chose Greek feta and tomato pasta, a recipe that she says is a favorite, and although it’s vegetarian, even the carnivores in her family love it. Since I eat a mainly vegetarian diet, but R could live off steak, that sounded perfect for us.
This came together in a snap. It’s one of those dishes where the sauce is basically made in the time it takes the pasta to cook–I love that! Rather than the thin spaghetti the recipe calls for, I used farfalle here. I wanted to take advantage of the last hurrah for fresh tomatoes before the cold sets in in Sydney, and used cherry tomatoes on the vine, cooked just until they burst. And since I had a giant bunch of basil on the counter, I tossed some in at the end. My favorite part of this dish, though, was the feta, which just barely melted from the heat of the pasta, and turned really creamy.
Thanks Teresa for a great dinner (or lunch…I’ve made it three times already, actually), and Nicole from For the Love of Food for hosting T&C!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Bill’s Big Carrot Cake
April 22, 2008 at 5:08 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 47 Comments
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting…I probably don’t need to say much more than that.
But of course I will. Carrot cake is a favorite here, but not made nearly enough, so I was glad when Amanda of slow like honey gave me the excuse I needed to get grating, by choosing Bill’s Big Carrot Cake as this week’s TWD recipe. This one is *big* and loaded with carrots (of course), coconut, walnuts and dried cherries.
As per usual, I set out to do a half recipe of this cake, only to realize that I don’t have three 6-inch cake pans. Crud. I thought about making two larger layers and possibly splitting them into four, or using my 6-inch springform as the third pan, but I decided that this amount would probably fit perfectly into my quarter-sized sheet pan (my favorite and most useful sheet pan). So instead of a round cake, I baked a sheet cake that I cut into three strips (the baking time was reduced, of course). Once layered up with icing, it made a rectangular cake that I could cut into thin slices or chubby squares.
Armed with some tips from a great post by Joy, I made a gorgeous cream cheese frosting. I flavored mine with vanilla bean paste and orange zest, rather than the lemon juice that Dorie uses. This cake is tall, and moist and delicious…a winner of a carrot cake. And since I just did a half recipe, I made the whole thing, cake and frosting, easily by hand.
You can find this recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and on slow like honey. Thanks Amanda, and of course thanks Bill! Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
Mom’s Banana Apple Bread
April 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm | Posted in book review, breakfast things, cakes & tortes, events, muffins/quick breads, simple cakes, sweet things | 58 Comments
Well, not my mom’s. I’m guessing Melissa Murphy’s mom’s, since it’s in her new cookbook The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. You know, I really don’t like bananas in their raw form (not even in smoothies), but once they are baked into something sweet, it’s a whole ‘nother story. R does like to have bananas in his cereal, but sometimes he buys more than he can eat. When that happens, I wrap them up and stash them in the freezer…after I’ve accumulated a few, it’s time for banana bread, cake or muffins!
What makes this particular banana bread extra-special are the bits of caramelized apple throughout. Most banana bread has a pretty good shelf life and can even get better after a day of so. This one is no exception, as the sweet apples just meld more into the spiced bread.
I was so happy with this, that I’m entering it into Sydneysider Not Quite Nigella’s Banana Bread Bakeoff event. If you have a favorite banana bread recipe, go check out her bakeoff, too.
Mom’s Banana Apple Bread– makes one 1 1/2-quart loaf pan
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the apples:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
For the banana bread:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
¼ cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups very ripe mashed bananas (2 to 3)
Before you start:
Position a rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter and flour a 1 1/2-quart loaf pan.
To make the apples:
Preheat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and brown sugar and heat until bubbling. Add the apples and cinnamon and sauté until golden and tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
To make the banana bread:
-In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt.
-In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
-In a small bowl, combine the orange juice and vanilla.
-Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the orange juice mixture, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each flour addition. Stir in the mashed bananas until combined. Then stir in the reserved apples.
-Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes before unmolding onto the rack to cool further.
*Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. The banana bread keeps well wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 3 days. For longer storage, freeze well wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 3 weeks. Defrost (still wrapped) at room temperature.
Snickerdoodles
April 16, 2008 at 4:40 pm | Posted in book review, cookies & bars, sweet things | 17 Comments
I think that snickerdoodles are totally underrated. Sure everyone loves them, but if asked to name a favorite cookie, I bet very few people think of them first. They don’t have chips, or nuts or raisins, but their beauty is in their old-fashioned simplicity…and in their adorable crinkly tops.
When I first thumbed though The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy (see here for my review), her recipe for snickerdoodles was the first that I wanted to try. This is such an easy cookie to make, and you don’t even have to have any fancy ingredients. The effort to reward ratio here is really in the baker’s favor. The recipe makes a lot– three dozen cookies if you use her one ounce size guideline. That’s too many for us to eat at once, but cookie dough freezes beautifully. So in a few days, I can thaw out a bit more dough and bake a few more of these sweet, cinnamony and slightly chewy cookies. Lovely!
The smell of cinnamon and butter baking in the oven is so good– I should manufacture a snickerdoodle-scented room spray.
Snickerdoodles– makes 3 dozen cookies
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the dough:
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher saltFor the cinnamon sugar:
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ cup sugar
-In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs and mix until combined.
-In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Add to the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. The dough will be soft and too sticky to roll. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
-Position a rack in the top and bottom thirds of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
-For the cinnamon sugar: Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
-Using a 1-ounce cookie scoop, or a tablespoon, shape the dough into balls and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
-Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten them slightly with your fingertips so that they stay put. Bake for about 12 to 13 minutes, or until the bottoms are slightly golden in color. These cookies are supposed to be chewy, so do not overbake. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
*Snickerdoodles keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. For longer storage, freeze well wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 3 weeks. Do not uncover before defrosting.
Book Review: The Sweet Melissa Baking Book
April 16, 2008 at 2:08 pm | Posted in book review | 7 Comments
I had a little treat waiting for me in my mail pile the other day: a copy of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. I’ve never met Melissa herself, but do have a very personal relationship with her shop. Before moving to Sydney last year, I lived in Brooklyn Heights. When I first arrived on the Brooklyn scene in 1996, there wasn’t really anywhere to get a great slice of cake or a beautiful tart (and I was too busy sitting in a cubicle to be making things myself). Then one day a couple years later, as I was running errands in neighboring Cobble Hill, I noticed a little storefront with wedding cakes in the window…it was Sweet Melissa Pâtisserie. Finally–just what the neighborhood needed! It was cute and small, but had places to sit down and have tea and sweets from real cups and plates, and best of all: a display case full of gorgeous treats! Melissa even had her French Culinary Institute diploma framed on the wall. Fast forward a few more years, and I myself was a graduate of FCI’s pastry program. I trailed for a job opening at Sweet Melissa just a couple of weeks after graduation. Well, I didn’t get the job (I had no professional kitchen experience at that point), but I kept up my monthly tradition of going for dessert at Sweet Melissa’s (after dinner at the sushi place next door) right up until I moved to Sydney.
Now, back to the book, which, for obvious reasons, I couldn’t wait to crack into. From time to time (otherwise knowns as always) I still find myself homesick for Brooklyn, so looking through this book was almost comforting for me. Melissa says that her goal is “…to make everyone’s favorite desserts better than they’ve had them before.” Even if your not familiar with her shop, you’ll still be familiar with many of the desserts in her book. There aren’t many photos, but if you’re like me, you’ll recognize many of her recipes as things you grew up with and still crave. And she has plenty of things in the book that are uniquely hers as well. These are things that you will want to make, and even though she takes no shortcuts, her directions are so clearly written that you’d be hard pressed to mess them up!
Melissa’s six chapters cover the gamut of sweets, from ‘Dessert for Breakfast’ to ‘Sunday Supper’s Grand Finale,’ with cookies, layer cakes and fruit desserts along the way. And the final chapter, ‘Favorite Gifts: Truffles, Brittles, and Candies,’ is really special. Who wouldn’t think you were amazing if you made them honey cream caramels?? Melissa also includes ‘pro tips’ that will make home bakers more confident in the kitchen and offers us quick snippets of why these recipes are special to her.
I’ve already made a few things from the book, and all with great results! You’ll get to see those as separate posts as I’m able to write them up…so stay tuned.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Marshmallows
April 15, 2008 at 5:31 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 53 Comments
The word of the day is althaiophobia: a fear of marshmallows. And no, I didn’t make that up.
I’m kinda afraid of marshmallows. Not really the marshmallows themselves, but the gelatin inside them. When I saw that Judy of Judy’s Gross Eats had chosen marshmallows as this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, I was a little frightened. I really wanted to participate, but I really didn’t want to use gelatin, and after the agar-agar disaster of ’07, I wasn’t too excited to try that again either. Luckily, this time of year the Kosher section of the supermarket is pretty well-stocked, and I was able to pick up a box of fish gelatin. I’d never used it before, and wasn’t sure how to (the package labeling is in Hebrew, so it didn’t help me out a lot). It’s a little more granular than regular gelatin, but I decided to treat it the same way, since I didn’t have any better ideas.
I went with Dorie’s ‘Playing Around’ instructions for cappuccino marshmallows, and based on some advice from other TWDers, just stirred in the cappuccino mixture at the very end to keep the marshmallows from deflating. I set them in a glass baking dish rather than a baking sheet, which just seemed easier to me, and made them nice and tall. I wasn’t sure if they would set up or not with that gelatin, so as soon as I tipped the mix into the dish, I immediately left the house and went to the movies (if you haven’t seen ‘Lars and the Real Girl,’ you should!). If there’s one bad kitchen habit I have, it’s that I must endlessly poke and inspect things that I should just leave alone.
I was really pleased with how they turned out! They were soft and squishy and high. Now here’s the cake plate shot, à la Dorie.
You can find this recipe on Judy’s Gross Eats— thanks Judy! It’s also in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
TWD Rewind: Gooey Chocolate Cakes
April 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 Comments
This cake was not too photogenic, but it sure was delicious. While I was away, the Tuesdays with Dorie gang, led this time by Leigh of Lemon Tartlet, made Dorie Greenspan’s Gooey Chocolate Cakes. I knew I wanted to whip them up myself as soon as I was back home. And poor R hadn’t had a homemade dessert in weeks, so a little chocolate gooeyness seemed like a good place to start.
In her opening description, Dorie notes that these cakes are fairly ubiquitous at this point. In fact, at one restaurant where I used to work, we had a very similar molten cake on our menu for private parties. We’d do up giant batches (sometimes over 100, depending on the size of the party) of individual ones, also using disposable aluminum cups as Dorie suggests. Here, quantities were a bit more manageable…I only made two!
If you’d like to make up these little ultra-chocolatey cakes yourself (and it’s easy, I promise!), the recipe is on Lemon Tartlet and in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Brought to you by the letter E
April 10, 2008 at 5:32 pm | Posted in other stuff | 7 Comments
So, I am finally back from my vacation. I love to travel, but after being gone for almost a month, I must say it feels pretty good to be back at home. I’ve really missed being in the kitchen, but before I start throwing flour around, spilling milk and accidentally dropping eggs on the floor, I need to unpack and do about 5,000 loads of laundry.
Before I can even do those things, though, I really need to give an overdue thank you to four special ladies. Joanna in the kitchen, Indigo at Happy Love Strawberry, Danielle at Make No Little Meals and Laurie the quirky cupcake have all rated my blog E for Excellent!
With people that I actually know, I’m pretty much in the closet about this blog. Even my family would think I was a total freakshow if they knew that I basically keep a diary of and take a hundred photos of everything I eat (they have enough other accumulated evidence that I am freakshow as it is!). Maybe I should get over this embarrassment, but I am always wishing that my posts were more eloquently written or that my pictures were sharper or better styled. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one ever commented here, so I am truly surprised that anyone would call this stuff ‘excellent!’ Joanna, Indigo, Danielle and Laurie–thank you so much! Things like this encourage me, not just to keep at my little blog, but to keep trying to make it better.
OK, teary acceptance speech now over! There are so many blogs that I think are excellent, but I’m going to single out just one and pass this along to a blogger whose site I have been reading since the start. Tracy at Cake Batter and Crumbs, I give your blog an E for Excellent!
Daring Bakers in March: Perfect Party Cake
March 30, 2008 at 12:16 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 94 Comments
If you´ve looked at this blog lately, you´ll notice that the sweets in most of my recent posts stem from the same source– Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan is turning into one of my most used cookbooks on the shelf! This recipe also comes from that book, but this time my post is not a result of Tuesdays with Dorie, but of the Daring Bakers. Morven from Food Art and Random Thoughts chose Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake as the March DB challenge.
Morven gave us basically free reign to flavor and fill our cakes however we liked, but I wanted to basically stick with Dorie’s version (which she actually accredits to Nick Malgieri), just to give the recipe a fair shot. I used the cake and buttercream recipes as they were written. Instead of using raspberry jam though, I filled my cake with blueberry preserves.
If I had one “issue” with this cake, it would be that I didn’t have enough buttercream for a good coat of frosting on the outside. I must have gone too crazy between the layers– oops!– and what I wound up with was more like a crumb coat. What to do?? I wasn’t about to make more buttercream, so I decided to toast my coconut flakes. Of course I didn’t get a pristine snow white cake like Dorie’s, but it desperately needed a little camouflage.
I know I must have said this a million times before, but OMG I love cake, and wow, was this good! The buttercream was outstanding, and the cake was really moist (and the jam helps keep it that way). I liked the instructions in the cake recipe to rub together the lemon zest and sugar. This is something we always do with citrus in the restaurant where I work and it really helps bring out the flavor in the zest.
Thanks Morven for this month’s challenge! For the Perfect Party Cake recipe, check out Food Art and Random Thoughts. And for the complete list of DBers, check out our great big blogroll.
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