Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

This is an amazing cake! It is from Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”. As she describes it, it is rather like a chocolate version of gingerbread, dense and moist and aromatic and amazingly flavorful. I think that pretty much sums it up. That all said, I don’t make this very often because it is a bit of a pain to make. You have to add the dry ingredients a tablespoon at a time alternating with boiling water. It really isn’t hard to do, but it’s tedious.  I got over that tonight though, because I know that once I take one bite of this delicious cake it will all be all worth it. This is great served with vanilla ice cream, fresh berries and white chocolate sauce or just plain (which is what I usually do).

P.S. I'm sorry I haven't written for a while, I started the second semester of my junior year of college last week and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  But I've managed to crawl out from under them and I'll be posting plenty more soon.

New Year's Eve Trifle

This is similar to my Thanksgiving trifle, but better.  Instead of store bought pound cake, I used my home made pound cake.  (And lucky me I had a whole extra pound cake left over!)  I know I said that store bought pound cake was fine for trifles, and it is, but wow homemade pound cake is really good!  I layered the cake with raspberry jam, sliced strawberries and homemade chocolate mousse (the type made with whipped cream and melted chocolate, rather than the egg based type).  The trifle dish fit three layers of cake/jam/berries/mousse.  I just piped some whipped cream dollops on top and topped the dollops with strawberries.

Leftovers, they aren't just for casseroles!

I had left over pound cake from New Year's that was getting a little stale, so I didn't want to eat it plain.  I also had left over ganache from the anniversary cake which I needed to use for something and I didn't want to make truffles.  So I melted the ganache in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water and added some warmed up skim milk until it was a very thin sauce.  But I decided it needed more, so I mixed in some cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg...sort of a spiced hot chocolate taste to it.  Then I cubed up the left over pound cake, put it on top of some vanilla frozen yogurt and poured a ton of the chocolate sauce over it. YUM!

P.S. I'll post a photo at some point, I promise.

Anniversary Cake, con't

 

This is the Anniversary Cake I posted photos of before.  It is a chocolate genoise cake, a traditional French sponge cake, imbibed with Frangelico, a hazelnut liquor, covered in a chocolate ganache, and topped with marzipan roses.

A genoise is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, like an American sponge cake.  It is actually quite dry and, when made properly, light.  I mention made properly, because I had some trouble in that area.  Genoise is not an easy cake to make (or at least not the easiest) and this was my first attempt.  Everything went well at the beginning.  I was able to use the bowl of my new Kitchen Aid (thank you mom!) over a pot of boiling water to heat the eggs then transfer them to the mixer.  They fluffed up just as they were supposed to.  My problem came as I folded in the dry ingredients.  I forgot to turn the bowl periodically, so when I went to pour out my nice light batter, I found a large pocket of unblended dry ingredients.  To mix them in after starting to pour the batter, I had to deflate it significantly.  This meant that my cake was a little too dense, didn't rise as much in the middle as it should have, and had large 'tunnels' in addition to the small delicate air bubbles that it was supposed to have.  It still tasted excellent and I didn't really want to make another cake, so I used it.

As I said above, I imbibed it with Frangelico.  I used it because I thought the hazelnutty vanilla taste would be a nice compliment to the chocolate cake, not to mention the marzipan roses.  I was right, if I do say so myself.  And like my cookbook said, the dry genoise sucked it right up.

I coated the cake with a layer of ganache (basically heavy cream and melted chocolate).  The trick to getting a nice even, thick layer is to freeze the cake for 30 min before you pour the ganache on it, that way the ganache hardens quickly, thus it doesn't pour off the sides too much.  To get a even and bubble free layer, it is important to mix the ganache as little as possible before you pour it on the cake.  The more you mix, the more air bubbles get trapped, which will pop on your cake when you spread on the ganache.

Finally I made the marzipan roses.  These were easier than I expected, though they were still hard.  The trick is to work with it between 2 layers of plastic wrap.  That way it doesn't stick to anything, and you can make it as thin as it can be.  Anyway, I'm not going to give a blow by blow description of making a marzipan rose.  If you want to know, post a comment telling me so, and I'll post the instructions.  Basically, I made a cone of marzipan to attach each carefully hand made petal to.  I flattened one edge of the petal more than the others to make it realistic but still stable.  Each successive row of petals had to be slightly larger than the one before it, to make the rose look like it was blossoming.   I made one open blooming rose, one slightly open bud, and one closed bud, which I arraigned on the cake.

It took many hours to make all this and so little time to eat.  If it wasn't so delicious, it would almost be sad to eat it.

Homemade Pound Cake

I have made pound cake before, but never just plain old traditional pound cake.  It was a little tedious (but mainly because the cook book I was using has all the quantities in grams/ounces, so I had to weigh all the ingredients).  It is flavored with a bit of orange and lemon zest, so it has a subtle, mild, citrus taste that was really excellent.  Interesting trick to make a good looking pound cake: about a third of the way through cooking, cut down the center almost end to end.  This will make the crack that forms along the top of the pound cake even and nice looking.  Also, if the cake browns too much before it is fully cooked, you can tent it with some tin foil.  I didn't end up having to do this, but my cook book says it will work (and experience with Thanksgiving turkeys tells me they are right!)

I made this to use in the trifle I made for my New Year's party, which I will write about later.

Cream Cheese Mints (with recipe) a.k.a Christmas Cookies, con't

I made these mints for Christmas, but I also make them year round.  They are festive, but also delicious and not specific to the holidays, so why not!  They don't taste like cream cheese at all, it just acts as a nice base for the sugar and mint.

The only problem with them is the recipe is affected by the weather.  If it is dry out it takes as much as a cup less powdered sugar than if it is humid or damp.

Ingredients:
8 oz full fat cream cheese (yes it should be full fat, the low fat just doesn’t work quite as well)
6-8 cups powdered sugar
3/8 tsp good mint extract
Food coloring (optional)

With an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or by hand with a wooden spoon if you are feeling like a work out) mix together the cream cheese and the powdered sugar, adding the sugar in 1/2 cup at a time. Once about 75% of sugar is fully incorporated, add the mint extract.  Mix well and continue to add the last quarter of the sugar.  When the dough it finished, add food coloring if you want (I often just leave them plain, they are so pretty when they are a pure, snowy white).  If you don't think they are minty enough, you can add more mint extract now.  Mix on a very low speed until the color (and extra flavor) is mixed through.  The dough should be soft enough to mold into balls but not sticky--almost like play-doh.

Here’s where it gets fun. Using a small ice cream scoop or a melon baller or your hands make shooter marble size balls of the dough. Put them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet with a little space between them (you’ll need it later). Once you have done about a dozen, flatten the mints slightly with the tines of a fork to make them a thick disk with nice little ridges on them. Continue until you have used up all the dough.

Leave them to set on the counter for at least 4 hours. Once they have hardened on the outside (not like hard candy hard...in fact hardened may not be the right word, but trust me you’ll know when it happened, even if I’m not describing it well) feel free to stack them and store them on a plate covered with plastic wrap in the fridge. Don’t worry, you don’t have to get them in the fridge right away, in fact if you have the space, leave them out over night, then you’ll know they are set properly when you go to store them.

If you don’t have time to wait, throw them in the fridge on the baking sheets. They firm up enough to eat, but they don’t get the nice coating that makes them stackable and keeps them from turning back into soft pliable balls of dough when they are out of the fridge for any length of time.

What I do, is put a dozen or so in the fridge so I can have mints soon (about 30 minutes) and leave the rest to set on the counter (about 4 hours, give or take depending on the temperature of your kitchen). That way I have the instant gratification of eating what I’ve made in less time than it takes to bake a cake and still have the nicer, properly (and patiently) prepared mints too.

Makes about 90 1-inch diameter mints

White Chocolate, Cranberry, Pecan, Oatmeal Cookies a.k.a. Christmas Cookies, con't

These are the white chocolate, cranberry, pecan, oatmeal cookies I made for Christmas.  It may seem like an odd combination, but it is darn tasty!  The tartness of the dried cranberries balances the sweetness of the white chocolate chips.  The pecans are very nice with both flavors.  The recipe called for walnuts or pecans, I personally like pecans more and I think the flavor is a little nicer with the cranberries, but walnuts work too, I'm sure.  As for the oatmeal, it is quick oats so it has a texture similar to a normal (not oatmeal based) cookie, but it still has an oat-y taste.

Orange Butter Cookies a.k.a. Christmas Cookies, con't

I flavored these buttery Christmas cookies with a hint of orange extract.  The flavor was subtle, but still distinct.  I dyed them green and coated them with egg wash to make them look like Christmas trees (of course the cookie press shape helped with that!)  They really did look green in person and even in the photo.  But for some reason when I uploaded it, it made them look lighter and browner...sorry about that.

Anniversary Cake

Details coming soon, but for now here are some photos of the anniversary cake I made for my mom and pops.

A close up of the marzipan roses

The whole cake

Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies a.k.a. Christmas Cookies, con't

Mini cookies

These are the chocolate chip cookies I mentioned in the Christmas cookies post.  I found the recipe in Martha Stewart's Cookies.  They have less butter and brown sugar than normal chocolate chip cookies, plus they have baking powder.  All together, this makes the cookies cakey and lighter than normal chocolate chip cookies.  I have to admit I really like the cakey-ness.  If I sound surprised, it's because I am.  I love a good old-fashioned gooey chocolate chip cookie, but I love these too.  The photo above shows the mini version of these cookies I made this Christmas.  The photo below shows the normal size ones I made over the summer.  (They are the same cookie, but more than twice the size and a little less puffy.)

Normal size cookies