Freckleicious

There comes a time in a baker's life where she has seen about the interwebs such culinary hilariousnesses as the Polka Dot Cake and has herself become ready to move into the realms of Very Silly Insides.

I've done marble cake, and don't get me wrong, I love it.
I have also already dabbled in what I like to call the Internal Cheetah cake (right), which is created by strategically placing blobs of chocolate pound cake within vanilla pound cake. Pound cake is good for this sort of thing because it isn't too runny. However, the baking process creates convections of its own which means no matter how round your blobs started, they won't remain so.



 
You can see some batter convection in the Internal Cheetah cake, but I re-learned this lesson in quite a dramatic way the first time I made buttercake rainbow cupcakes. Th.e cross section completely belies the technique that I used to make this cupcake, where originally carefully layered colours turned into a riotous (and tasty) volcano of hues! I doubt I could recreate this colour combination even if I tried.
By the way, the frosting on top is Butter Roux frosting, which I am led to believe is the real true original frosting for Red Velvet cake, and is seriously my favourite.



So clearly to avoid batter convection, and the difficulty of colours mixing in unbaked batter, the only answer is to cook the colours first.  Thank you, polka dot baker.

There is always an impetus for innovation. In more industrial areas, such an impetus might be war. When cake is your thing, its birthdays.

A good friend of mine has a certain, very well known proclivity for an antipodean chocolate known as Freckles. They consist of a blob of chocolate sprinkled liberally with hundreds and thousands (or rainbow nonpareils for you posh foreigners). I am not a fan, in general terms. This is because freckles are by and large made with the crappest compound chocolate known to man.
My friend does not care about my chocolate distinction, and has been known to eat a bag at a time, generally with a bottle of wine on a Friday night. And she was the birthday girl.

 

What do you give a woman who can eat a bag of freckles at a time?

A Freckle Cake.

But an ordinary cake, covered in (flinch) commercial freckles... well, it seemed like cheating.
That's when I decided that there should be freckles on the inside.

Here's how it happened:

One batch of cake mixture is divided into six and coloured up! I used square pans because I was planning on cutting the cooked cake into little cubes. 

Funniest ingots ever.

I cubed up the coloured cakes and carefully mixed them together, trying to avoid creating excess crumbs. After that, another batch of white cake mix (I used Betty Crocker's white cake which is made with eggwhites only, and I made it from scratch - no boxes of cake mix in this house, unless its for cake batter ice cream, which is another blog in itself!). I spooned a thin layer of white cake mixture into the pan, sprinkled it with cubes, then repeated twice more, finishing with a white cake layer. And then into the oven!

Here is the finished product with its top levelled off. The confetti center looks amazing. To amp up the chocolate component, I layered the confetti cake between two layers of devil's food cake - Betty Crocker again, that old cookbook is so wonderful! Ganache was the filling of choice - see here for a recipe)

What does one do about freckles when one hates compound chocolate with the fire of a thousand suns? One uses Lindt milk to make one's own. I spread melted chocolate onto a large sheet of bake paper and sprinkled a ton of hundreds and thousands over, then left it to set hard. Then, I cut it into rectangular shards. It was a bit breaky - that many little pearls of sugar can cramp chocolate's style, but no matter!

The tops of the cakes were covered in Ganache and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Then the sides were also ganached and decorated with freckle bark to create the very silly freckle castle you have seen above.

 

 

And there it is, sliced in all its rainbow glory! I still have no idea how the photographed piece managed to have four orange confettis all in a row!

The twice baked part of the cake was still as moist as its surroundings, and obviously, the hilarity of the confetti center was worth all the effort!

Happy birthday to Freckle lovers everywhere!


XXX
K

Gluten Free is Nutty!

Readers of this blog might have guessed that I don't normally hold with gluten free. Its kind of a religious position, and for me it is indefensible because of the happy fact that I don't have to. I posses cells which will synthesise the blessed enzymes which process that most useful  (from a baking perspective) of proteins with few ill effects (accepting for the moment that getting fat is not an ill effect).

Not everybody is so blessed. I have come to know and love people who range from the celiac to the general common or garden anti-glutenite, and I have come to look upon their lives with awe (how can you really not eat cake?) and pity (how can you really not eat cake?).

Sadly the answer appears to be "I can't eat it because if I do, a number of seriously unpleasant things happen in my body". I can only sympathise. Life is spectacularly unfair. But I am here to help.

I still refuse to enter into that area of molecular gastronomy which requires weird mixes of GF flours which all taste like paper, or worse, the addition of vegetable (read: tree) gums as gluten impostors. But I am quite prepared to go nuts while I tackle the problem of gluten free cake.

And here's one:

Gluten free Hazelnut Nutella cupcakes

Cupcakes

200g of caster sugar
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla
200g hazelnut meal
100g rice flour
2tsp baking powder.
Nutella (a jar. you won't need a jar but you might want to eat it by the spoon while baking and that's OK with me).

Beat the eggs and sugar with the vanilla until light and creamy - all the sugar should be dissolved and the mixture should have tripled in volume. Fold in the hazelnut meal, rice flour and baking powder.

Spoon into 12 muffin cases, top with a blob of Nutella.

Bake at 180 for about 20-25 minutes, ice with whipped ganache or flavoured buttercream when cool.

Ganache

100g dark chocolate (about 60% cocoa solids has a nice sweetness for ganache)
100ml pouring cream (45% milkfat or thereabouts)

Heat cream over double boiler or in microwave until nearly boiling. Remove from heat, add chopped chocolate. Stir gently until chocolate is all dissolved and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Let cool.
When room temperature, beat with electric mixer until the ganache starts to lighten in colour. Don't beat too much - this will cause the mixture to seize - still delicious but not so pretty.

Big cake

You can also make a single cake out of this - divide the mixture between two 20 cm cake pans lined with baking paper (bottom AND sides), and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for the 35 minutes. You want to bake the big cakes slower and a little longer to assist the proteins in the eggs to congeal - a faster baking time results in the centers falling. A very sad state of affairs.
Sandwich these together with ganache.

I have plans for this cake. I am seeing it layered with ganache and then coated with ruffles of strawberry powder-infused Italian buttercream. I'll let you know how that goes.

K

xxx

Victoriana

I've been quiet for a little while, chiefly because I went through a (two week) phase where I didn't feel like making or eating (shock horror!) cake.


Back in the saddle again...

My reawakening in cake form has come in the guise of Victoria Sponge.

This little number has a few different names. To the Americans, it's Pound Cake. To the French, Quartre Quarts (literally four quarters). And in England, its Victoria Sponge.

I don't know if Queen Victoria had anything to do with it, but it is certainly a regal kind of cake. Moist, rich, golden, and luscious.

Or maybe the elitist English just like to obscure in the cake's name what the French and Americans put right out there. The recipe.

It's too simple. Pound cake: put in a pound of each ingredient. Quartre Quarts: There is four ingredients.

What have all (real) (and when I say Real, I am excluding the egg, gluten, sugar, and generally ingredients free types) cakes got in them?

Flour. (Well, self raising).

Butter.

Eggs.
Sugar.


Now, admittedly, a pound (or about 500g) of each makes a hell of a large piece of sweet comestible, but you get the picture. The secret is equal quantities of each.


I knew about the Victoria Sponge as a consequence of the immortal line of Helen Mirren in Calendar Girls, which said something like: if it's a really important occasion, you should get yours from Marks and Spencer. Fair advice to the uninitiated.

I was actually initiated, however via the book Cake Chic by Peggy Porschen, she who made Stella McCartney's wedding cake and assays some of the best sugar flower and piping action in the business. Victoria Sponge is a classic, stable (unless you open the oven door) cake which can replace the ubiquitous chocolate or traditional fruitcake insides of a sugarpasted cake. And its really very delicious in its buttery sweet simplicity.

The method is simple. Weigh ALL the ingredients so that they are completely equal. This means everything depends on the weight of your (broken) eggs. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in eggs, stir in self raising flour until combined. You can put in flavouring like vanilla or lemon zest if you like, or remove some of the flour and replace it by weight with cocoa. Put in oven 180 degrees C, DO NOT open door. Like any other spongecake, this sucker will fall faster than Newton's proverbial apple if you interrupt its even temperature while baking. But curiously, though its called a sponge, it is actually quite a dense, medium crumbed cake. Perfect for sugarpaste, but not what most people think of as sponge per se.

However, there are subtleties. For a cake which is going to be richly iced, and layered with sweet things like jam, actually, margarine is better than butter. Less cloying. Some ladies swear that the ideal is half and half butter and marg. I am unconvinced on this in general. I go with butter unless I am making petits fours, which are buttercreamed, jammed, and dipped in fondant icing. The marg cake somehow carries all this sweetness better than the butter one.

More interesting though is what happens when you don't just mix in the flour, but let your standing mixer beat it on high speed for a few minutes. That's when the real sponge part starts to emerge. Beat the buggery out of the thing (a technique I learned from the Betty Crocker cookbook - which does sensationally fluffy, high rising cakes), and the baked mixture does come out far more sponge-like. Perhaps this is what Marks and Spencer do.

I have made simply HEAPS of this recipe over the past year or so. It layers up with jam and marscapone for a new take on the traditional jam and cream sponge.

It makes brilliant marble cake.

It takes on ground pistachios and makes them its own.

It gobbles up coconut.

And recently, it made a new friend: the Blood Orange.

I've decided to share.


BLOOD ORANGE SYRUP CAKE WITH BOOZY BLOOD ORANGE CREAM CHEESE BUTTERCREAM
The cake below makes a 10cm square cake, so if you want to make a 20cm cake, you need to multiply this by three.


Break 2 eggs and weigh them - its about 50g each, but check!
Weigh out equal quantities of softened unsalted butter, caster sugar and self raising flour.
Grate the zest of one blood orange.


Beat butter and sugar together until very light and creamy. Add orange zest and 1/2 tsp of vanilla bean powder (or 1 tsp vanilla essence). Beat in the eggs, one at a time.
Sift in flour, and beat for at least 2 minutes. Life is easier with a standing mixer rather than a hand held beater.


Line a baking tin with bake paper. Spoon the mixture into the tin (it is quite thick) and smooth the surface. Bang the tin a few times against the bench to help settle the mixture and remove any air bubbles.


Bake approximately 50 minutes at 160 degrees C for a 10cm cake. 20 cm cake takes around 1 hr 10 min.


DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN for the first 40 minutes at least. The cake is done when quite golden and risen (the top may crack a little), and a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.


While the cake is baking, make the blood orange syrup.
Squeeze two blood oranges and weigh the juice. Add the same weight of sugar. Add a drop or two of orange oil (or a tsp of zest if you can't get orange oil). Heat the mixture, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Bring to boil once sugar is dissolved. Boil 1 minute then remove from the heat. When syrup has cooled slightly, add 1 tbsp Grand Marnier liqueur (or if you have none, vodka would be OK).

While the cake is still hot, pierce it all over with a skewer, then brush about half the warm syrup over the cake, letting the syrup soak into the cake between brushings.

Let the cake cool completely then split into three or four layers.


While the cake is cooling, make the blood orange cream cheese buttercream.


For a 10 cm cake use the following quantities: triple them for a 20cm cake.
75g cream cheese, softened
75g unsalted butter, softened
300g icing sugar, sifted
remainder of the blood orange syrup.
Beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth and creamy. Add the icing sugar and beat until light and very fluffy. Add syrup, beat until well combined.


If you had three layers of cake, divide mixture into thirds and spread over each layer, or divide the mixture into quarters for four layers.

Sandwich the layers together, and spread the remainder on the top of the cake. Decorate with more grated blood orange rind. Refrigerate the cake until the buttercream has set, or it will ooze when you try to cut it. 

Enjoy!

Chic Cake Chick

xxx

Macaroon Swoon

To be honest, I always thought hand made macaroons were made of coconut and coconut only.
Gooey mounds, baked til they are tinged with gold, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.

If you thought that too, you were wrong.

My understanding of the true depth of macarooness was a very slow dawn, and it came pretty late in life. My first non-coconut macaroon came from Gran Paradiso in north west Italy. It was hazelnut, two perfect little golf ball like rounds sandwiched together with ganache. God it was good. I haven't had one before or since, though I have tried to make them. Haven't cracked them yet.

But this blog is about macarons Gerbet: Gerbet Macaroons. I'm not going to call them macaroons anymore - it's disrespectful.  These frenchy-french almond based delicacies can only be called macarons. What's the Gerbet all about? Well he was the 19th century french pastry chef who thought them up. If you google Gerbet macarons, you will find that they are the subject of a not insignificant global obsession. There are cookbooks, blogs, web pages, and consumers dedicated solely to these little morsels. According to that textbook of mine - The Fundamental Techniques of the Pastry Arts - Gerbet macarons are "considered to be the ultimate in contemporary macaroons".

You can see immediately why everybody loves them. They are super, super, SUPER photogenic. Dinky. Chouette.
And they are as enticing on the palate as they are to look at. Smooth crisp shells. Little frothy-looking "feet" below the shell. Lightly chewy and soft in the middle, they are sandwiched together with something creamy and fabulous. They crack softly when you bite them, and dissolve into your mouth.

I came to these macarons very late in life. This year in fact.  I met them a lot once I knew about them, chiefly at the Lindt Cafes in Melbourne and Sydney. There, they call them Delice. They make like a million flavours of them, tinted in a flowerbed palate to match their taste. Peach, Blueberry, Strawberry, Chocolate, Pistachio, Champagne... I could go on. They are sensational, and sensationally expensive, something like $2.50 each. Of course the trouble with them is: choosing one.  Or two. Or three. The champagne ones are my favourite. And the pistachio. And the champagne.

Swoon...

Back when I was still the glowing owner of The Fundamental Techniques, (as opposed to being the slightly cynical owner that I am now), I found they had a recipe for Gerbets.  It reads ridiculously simple. Stiff beaten egg whites, sugar, finely processed ground almonds. Combine, pipe out, let them sit for a bit, bake, hey presto. I wondered to myself why on earth these things were selling for so much moolah if they were so stupidly simple to make.
Huh. I can do that. How hard can it be, I thought.

For the record, the reason why I'm good at making cakes, and knitting, sewing, painting, and all the other stuff I clutter my time with, is that my general approach to these matters is: how hard can it be?
I recommend it as an attitude to be adopted in all situations - with the following rider. If you're going to inquire as to a tasks difficulty with a devil-may-care toss of your head, you do have to accept that just occasionally the answer is going to be: Hard.
Sometimes the answer is: Very Hard.

My first attempt at Gerbet Macarons was such an occasion.

Here they are.

Smooth shells? Nope. Cracks. Holes.
Frothy Feet? Nope.
Crisp outer? Er.... after a fashion...
Chewy inner? Not bad...
Filling? Yes, that's a winner but that is french buttercream with raspberry puree and there is nothing wrong with that.
Impressive first attempt? Hell no, but they were good enough to fuel my own little itty bitty obsession with les macarons.

Clearly the recipe was lacking. I did some more research.

In Global Baker by Dean Brettschneider, I found additional recipes for these little puppies, but the recipes were pretty similar - slightly different quantities, and no great impartations of wisdom on the trick to making the buggers happen right. Well, there was, there was this idea that you have to let the macarons sit for an hour or so once you have piped them out, so that they develop a skin - the supposed secret to the smooth crust. Only I'd tried that. Skin = nope. There's a possibility that Auckland is too humid for skin development, because I'd left those little green blobs for more than the recommended time, and I could see no evidence of this magical promised membrane.

Dissatisfied with the lack macaron secret disclosure, and unwilling to put another load of almonds and egg whites to the test without a drastically different approach, further afield I went. I did what all desperate cooks do: I consulted the www.

And after a little surfing, I happened upon a small pocket of genius. I shall impart the location of this pocket immediately, because it contains essential basic macaron research, and was clearly penned (metaphorically) by the Archangel Gabriel himself. It commences at: http://www.syrupandtang.com/200712/la-macaronicite-1-an-introduction-to-the-macaron/.
Read it all. I would personally like to honour Duncan Markham for his scientific dedication to the pursuit of macarons. It saved me a whole universe of work.

My second attempt was therefore according to Duncan Markham's Italian-meringue recipe. I am not afraid of Italian meringue. I have a kenwood mixer and a digital thermometer, and its only a little bit of hot sugar syrup. Zero scaredness.
And the results looked like this:

Purrdy. Vanilla macarons with chocolate ginger ganache. Nice feet. Gorgeous shells.
But on the biting, there was a problem. There were air pockets under all the shells just as Duncan relates.

I thought I'd used the right temperature - but there were the holes to prove me wrong. Hmm.

Thence began an investigation of the true heating qualities of our oven. With the aid of a candy-thermometer-onna-string, I measured (massively accurately of course - not) the temperature at both the front and the back of the oven. I didn't need to do multiple readings in order to find some kind of statistical significance; not when the initial readings showed a 15 degree difference between front and back!
The short of it is, in exchange for 500 odd dollars, and after a rigmarole of electricians and whatnot which is actually worthy of a blog all of its own, we got new seals for the oven.

Third attempt.

Here's the Italian meringue just before the dry ingredients went in. Ground almonds are too coarse, they need to be pulsed in a food processor with icing sugar (used as a glidant!) until they are very fine.

Here's the mix halfway through mixing. Its comforting to know that you don't have to be as gentle with the mixture as you do with say an angel food cake which needs its flour gently folded in a tablespoon or two at a time.

And here's what it looks like when the mixture is just combined.

This time I wanted to have my macarons and eat them too, so I split the mixture into two for individual flavouring. I made Duncan's Italian meringue recipe again, folding cocoa into one half of the mixture and pistachio essence and a little colouring into the other. While he says that you don't have to be scared about pounding all the air out of the Italian meringue, Duncan does warn against over mixing. If you want to make different flavoured batches, I would recommend you do them separately - no matter how much of a pain in the butt this is!  I'll show you why in a little bit.

So you put the mixture into a big piping bag with a plain round nozzle and pipe out inch wide rounds. They settle a bit and the tips from the piping process sink back into the blobs until they are smooth and shiny.

Skinning actually occurred this time - after about an hour and a quarter, the surface seemed slightly gelatinous in texture and not sticky. It was a dry day so perhaps that's why it happened. I noticed that Duncan is equivocal about skinning, but I don't believe in messing round with the methods anymore so I think unless I am in a hell of a hurry, I will always leave them.

And then the baking: the prescribed temperature for no-air-pocketness is 160 deg C in a fan forced oven, and since we'd had our oven fixed, I was much more confident that setting the dial at 160 would actually lead to a temperature close enough to 160. As luck would have it, this was right. 

A quick check on a very warm macaron proved that 160 is the magic number. Crisp. Chewy. No pockets. We have success.

Well sort of. Duncan warns against over mixing and he shows you what happens when over mixing occurs. And so can I: sticky arses. Here are the arse variations I had from my batch of pistachio shells:

Moral of the story, mix til combined and no more. And if they are sticky, a little mist of water on the underside of the baking paper really does work.

Fillings.
Having previously made raspberry french buttercream and ganache, I was keen for something a bit different - something which could be flavoured two or three ways so I could have chocolate and pistachio macaron combos.
Considering my recent foray into mousseline with the Panama Torte, I thought that perhaps I would have a go at a non-chocolate variety of mousseline.

Sans chocolat, mousseline is simply creme patisserie with butter (at a ratio of around 1:3.5) whipped in. It makes an incredible macaron filling, because as it ages (and macarons get better as they get older, if you can let them sit around that long) it becomes more and more cream-like. So your macarons become MORE luscious. Brilliant!

I folded some ground espresso and melted lindt into some of the mousseline, flavoured another portion with pistachio essence, and folded four berry jam into the final lot. Actually the berry jam caused the mousseline to split, and I can't work out why - there was a fair non-lipid component which should have grabbed on to the jam, but it didn't. Severe beatings did serve to re-emulsify the mixture. I gather though, that if you want fruit flavoured mousseline you need to make a creme patisserie substituting the milk for fruit pulp. Sounds weird - I haven't been bold enough to try it yet. Also, we haven't quite finished the last batch of macarons, even though I made them a week and a half ago. The best flavour combos were double pistachio, mocha chocolate, berry pistachio and berry chocolate. For some reason the choc/pistachio combination seemed to wipe each other out. At least that's what my Chief Taste Tester (Mama!) says.

About three egg whites and  a couple of hundred grams of ground almonds gives you upwards of 40 macarons. At $2 or more each... they are definitely worth making!

A little trip to Panama - with substandard insurance!

Chocolate. Rum. Almonds. Could we really ever go wrong?


I've made a few Victoria sponges in the last week or so and for my mum's birthday, I thought it would be nice to make a foray into the realms of true patisserie: an extravagant, rich, expensive ingrediented creation called a Panama Torte.


Unfortunately I didn't know that I would be doing it when my mojo was on the blink.


It's not just MY mojo to blame though. A while ago I shelled out a sizeable chunk of money on a sizeable chunk of cookbook, called The Fundamental Techniques Of The Pastry Arts, produced by the French Culinary Institute in New York. It looks like a textbook. It feels like a textbook. It was the price of a textbook, but when it comes to "fundamental" there are a few pieces missing.


Like them telling you you can bake pastry - puff, croissant, danish - in a moderate oven (180 deg C). Let me set everyone straight right now, THIS DOESN'T WORK. You get a rotten rise/puff because there is not enough steam created between the layers of pastry for it to push up the layers. Thence, the butter that you have carefully laminated between the layers leaks out. Yuk.


Like them leaving out quantities for ingredients here and there.


Like them taking photos of the products being put together that somehow bear only a vague resemblance to the photos of the finished product, or indeed the description.


This is an advanced text indeed. You need to apply your own knowledge to the directions. Such as, in the case of my Panama Torte, dusting the surface that the cake is turned out onto with icing sugar. Quite a lot of it.


No. Not just MY mojo.


But I'm getting ahead of myself.


What's a Panama Torte?
Well, its a chocolate almond sponge base, sprinkled with dark rum syrup and layered with chocolate mousseline (more on that later).
With a twist. It's also a roulade, placed on its end, so that when it is cut, you have concentric vertical layers. Groovy.
So it looks like a regular cake until you cut into it. And then, it just looks like patisserie heaven.
And look at the ingredients... Actually, before I show you the ingredients, I'd better issue a health warning, and also tell you that Shark Fin tablets do NOT remove cholesterol.

Ground almonds, melted chocolate, unsalted butter, more chocolate...

The sponge is not difficult, but very step-oriented. There are a lot components. There is a lot of beatings. My lovebird, Hola Bella Margarita likes recipes like this - she sings along with the mixer, and the mixer was working overtime on this sponge.
First, a French meringue is made - this is a mixture of egg whites and caster sugar, whipped up til peaks form. I say french meringue, because actually, there are three meringues - French, Italian, and Swiss (despite my earlier trashing, this is one of the many genius gems which The Fundamental Techniques Of the Pastry Arts actually does impart. In patisserie apparently, you have to take the grainy with the powdered). French is the straight egg whites and sugar. Italian is smoother with egg whites and hot sugar syrup. Swiss, ever rigorous and complicated, requires egg whites and sugar, beaten together over a gentle heat to a specific temperature. Now you know.
The second step is to beat egg yolks (heaps of them!) with sugar until that is pale, fluffy, and creamy. Rum is added to this. A whole lot of melted chocolate is added to this. It smells divine!
The third step - fold the chocolate yolk mixture into the meringue.
Finally, fold ground almonds and flour into the rest.


This mixture is spread out over baking paper on two cookie sheets to make a flat, thin sponge.


A few minutes in the oven = gorgeous.


Mousseline. I know you are impatient to find out about this. You should be!
I never knew about this before The Fundamental Techniques and I met. Now I do, and we are Best Friends Forever.
I talked about french buttercream in my blog on the raspberry cake during Wedding Cake Week. That was hot syrup into egg yolks, followed by butter. Mousseline is one step further.
First, you make a sweet custard with egg yolks, milk, sugar and a little custard powder (yes, there are places in french cuisine for custard powder and even cornflour! Who knew??).
Broken up chocolate is added to the hot custard and beaten until the mixture is just warm. Then, an OBSCENE amount of unsalted butter is gradually added, and the mixture whipped until pale and fluffy.


And. Oh. My. Light, smooth, chocolaty. It's not sweet, and it's not fatty, and it's not... bad for you...
...
...
.
Okay, it's so bad for you. But on the tongue, it just melts away, a one way ticket to a happy place.


So. Now we get into the theory of what happens next. I'll give you the theory stepwise. And then the reality.


First, though, a disclaimer. I might not actually describe the FULL horror. My ego won't stand for it.


Theory:
Turn the sponges over onto clean sheets of baking paper.
Reality:
This works, until you want to lift them back off the baking paper. I will sprinkle liberal amounts of icing sugar onto that baking paper before turning the sponges out next time. Failure to do so led to issues I would rather have not had, described below.


Theory:
Generously brush rum syrup on sponges.
Reality, I forgot, and slapped some mousseline on the sponges before I remembered this. I scraped the mousseline off and repaired the situation. I'm not however convinced that the word "generously" was really appropriate, as over-wetting the sponge might have assisted with issues I would rather have not had, described below.


Theory:
Spread a layer of mousseline onto the sponges.
I am happy to report this was not outside the reaches of my mojo.


Theory:
Cut the sponges lengthwise into 7cm strips (or the required height of the finished cake).
Reality:
I, in my ultimate wisdom, fancied that a 13cm high cake would be rocking.
I.
Was.
Wrong.
More on that later.


Theory:
Roll a first strip into a tight roll.
Reality:
Nooooo! The sponge is what I like to refer to as achy-breaky and every rolling attempt leads to another break. Eventually I had to slice the paper the sponge was sitting on so that I could do a sushi-type rolling action with this seriously crumbling sponge. This, a palette knife, and a whole lexicon of colourful language, at least got me into some semblance of a roll.
Swear and repeat.

Theory:
Pick up the next strip and wrap this around the first roll.
Reality: Yeah Right.
I had to continue sushi style with an ever increasing 13 cm long squishy breaky nightmare, my hands coated in mousseline. There are no photos of this. Thank goodness. Though there were breakages, read: there weren't really any parts that didn't break, the thing did actually come together.
ONLY IT WAS TOO LONG!!! it looked ridiculous at 13 cm long and about 12 cm wide. I stood it on end. It gently began to sag.

At this stage it seemed reasonable to enter into a phase of all-out panic, and this I did. For those who know me, I do all-out panic with some aplomb.

Theory:
There was no freaking theory for this. I had to theorise on my own, and FAST, before there was a major catastrophe. 400grams of Lindt was tied up in this disintegrating tower of Pisa and it wasn't on special when I bought it either.  I needed rescue. I cursed The Fundamental Techniques, and not just because its guidelines for evaluating your success only extended to the soft flexibility of the cooked sponge (check) and the smoothosity of the mousseline (check). There were no guidelines saying "The cake doesn't break up like a co dependant relationship when you try to assemble it".

Theory: (mine this time)
The thing was too tall, so the only remedy was to chop it in half. With enormous trepidation and some more speaking-in-tongues I took my biggest knife and did this. Not too bad. I stood one half on its end, and wondered how to get the (mostly broken) other half to be friends with it.

There aren't any photos of how this happened. I was up to my wrists in mousseline and bits of cake. Lets just say, I carefully peeled, mousselined, and reapplied as much layerage of one half as I could to the other.
Too soon to tell, but I have medium hopes at this point that it will still cut quite well.
Of course, the inner part of the roll was unteasable smoosh at this point, and the only good thing I can think about this fact is that it was seriously tasty.

Muttering and trembling (okay not really but I want to instill some kind of drama here) with residual adrenalin, I shunted the cake into an 18cm tin to help keep it together, and refrigerated it awhile. I was super (super) delighted to discover the mousseline intended to set quite firm, making the next task, coating it and making it all smooth easier.

Now we can have some more visual documentation. Here is the cake with its full mousseline coat. You would never know what happened to get what is underneath.

At this stage, I shall pause for a little more Fundamental Techniques Frustration.
This book shows the cake, coated with mousseline and then (probably) a good 5mm coat of whipped ganache. It is then sprinkled lightly with cocoa.
The description however, mentions no mousseline coat and suggests that you should sprinkle cake crumbs (WTF kind of decoration is that for such a sexy cake?) on the top and press them on the sides. How you are meant to get the crumbs to stick to an un-mousselined exterior is beyond me. Anyway even if I was minded to go with their lame description rather than the seductive picture, I had had enough of crumbs.

Ganache it was. Bar and a half of lindt, equal hot cream, melt, stir (boy, I sound like Gordon Ramsay).
I thought with the richness of the cake already that whipping cooled ganache would result in a lilly-gilding effect - too much chocolate. Yes, there is such a thing.
Instead, I poured the cooled but liquid ganache over the cold cake, letting it ooze down the sides (the cake is on a wire rack so the leftover ganache just drips through, and if you have been smart enough to put a plate underneath, you can reuse this collected ganache. Yes, I was that smart).

A word to the wise. I don't really think that the cake you pour ganache over should be refrigerator cold. I think (albeit in hindsight) that it should be room temperature, just like your ganache. A cold cake will cause the ganache, particularly on the sides, to set too quickly, which leads to sides with oozy drip marks. Marks which you then have to try and smooth. Very boring. Best to have everyone the same temperature to avoid this.

If you ever come across gold or silver powder (real metal, it's edible - or perhaps I should say its not inedible, because as a chemist I hold no belief that the body actually does anything in particular with it), I recommend you buy it. It's not all that expensive (less than 10 dollars for a little bag) and is very cool. Not only can you mix it with a little vodka and use a paintbrush to apply it to icing, but you can also "blow" the powder onto unset ganache, where it spreads over the surface and gives a perfect liquid metal look. Just try not to sneeze while you're doing this!

Here is the finished cake, ganached, gold and silvered, and decorated with sugarpaste flowers. The wavy lines were made with a nifty cake comb, a piece of plastic with grooved edges which you can use to put texture into icing.

Just for the record, sugarpaste flowers do absorb moisture, and will eventually collapse, so its best not to put them on until just before serving the cake. Not that it matters, because although they are technically edible, I wouldn't eat one. They are made of food, but they are not really Food.

But the proof of this pudding is in the cutting. Chocolate cakes do best when cut with a hot knife, and in this case, I am definitely not going to pussyfoot around with a cold one!

And here she is - vertical layers of deliciousness.

Happy birthday mum... And many more!

Commenting...

I am off home shortly to commence the Panama Cake that Mum is getting for her birthday tomorrow. Happy birthday Mummy, 77 years young. That Elizabeth Arden skincare you used religiously in younger years has served you PROUD! :-)


A few people have complained that they can't seem to comment on these blogs and so I reveal for your viewing pleasure, how to do so.
First, you have to love me enough to sign into Blogger. You can do this for instance with a gmail email address and password.
If you don't have one of those, then you need to love me enough to get one. Its really simple. Go to http://www.gmail.com/ and register for an account.
After that all you have to do is click comment on the bottom of one of the blogs, select your "profile" - ie google account, and type away!


If you have a sign in for Blogger you can also become a "follower" of my blog and stay up to date with cake!

For those unable or unwilling to sign up proper like, I've also added a few "quick reaction" buttons at the bottom... including Recipe Please! If I get enough recipe requests I will CONSIDER imparting my knowledge to you in a quantitative manner :-)


Kadri
xxx

Raspberry Love

After days if not weeks on raspberry skepticism in the lead up to Wedding Cake Week: - that is the true lust-like WANT of a raspberry cake without any reasonable idea of how to achieve one (a bit like having a crush on a movie star), I am happy to report that the razz crush cake is now my favourite. My other other favourite that is.

I made another one this week, and as I previously noted, being incapable of not putting frou on cake these days, was not satisfied to leave it in a state of cake-nakey or "nacakedness". However, I couldn't be bothered with the whole making frenchy french buttercream business, or pureeing and sieving the seeds out of the raspberries.

Dilemma.
I had half a box of Philidelphia cream cheese in the fridge though.

I quite dig the addition of cream cheese to icing. I'm not talking about cream cheese icing, although that is good, particularly when dosed with lemon zest and whipped with sour cream, that is the business and no mistake. But cream cheese icing goes a lot further than just carrot cake (or for the americans in the audience, red velvet cake - not that I believe on the basis of my meagre research on the topic that cream cheese icing is the appropriate topping for red velvet cake no matter what Martha Stewart says, I firmly believe in butter roux icing on that topic... but I digress).

I mean YES, by all means wadge that stuff on whatever you fancy, by all means feel free to add melted white chocolate to it in about a 4:1 cream cheese:chocolate ratio. Feel free to add 70% lindt chocolate to it also, not that I have done this, but whilst I am thinking about it I have to admit I am personally feeling freer and freer on the subject.

Feel free to add crushed strawberries.

Feel free to add lemon curd. Or passionfruit curd for that matter.

Or raspberries.

The thing about cream cheese in general as regards its place in baked goods (or on them for that matter), is that as a general rule you have to soften and beat that stuff until it is smooth. One has no desire for lumpy baked cheesecake. If you wanted it lumpy, you would have put ricotta in it. And the thing with cream cheese is that it WILL NOT go smooth if you beat it with something runnier.

I was reminded of this as I started making the icing for my razz crush cake. I softened the butter first, didn't I. But I didn't fancy dirtying another bowl to soften the cream cheese, did I.
I didn't.

I mean, I did my best to achieve smoothosity. I smashed it about a bit and then added icing sugar in order to increase shear forces (bit of physics in there), but frankly, it was not homogenising. The upshot of which is that I wound up with small flecks of whole cream cheese in the mixture.
Not to worry, methought, this is only for my own private noshing. I tipped in the frozen berries, (crushed frozen - so in little bits), and gave it a mix.

Oh Purrrdy like a field of flowers!!! Now I had icing with little flecks of white and little flecks of pure raspberry.
H.E.A.V.E.N.
It is from these incompetencies that great discoverys flow.

I split the cake in half and put half the razz cream cheese inside, then the rest on top. When you cut a slice it just looks like the girliest high tea cake in the universe. Which it is. And the fresh raspberry flavour smashes your brains out.