Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

My mom made me my birthday cake as she always does. This year it was chocolate cake--Thomas Keller's recipe. It was good. Very moist and chocolatey but not too heavy and dense. 

My Favorite Holiday

I love Halloween! It's my favorite holiday. You get to dress up in silly costumes and eat sweets without feeling stupid or guilty (respectively). Because Halloween fell mid-week, I got to celebrate it twice! Once with my friend Katy and her flatmates--it was a Halloween party crossed with a birthday party for Katy's flatmate Lucy. The invitation said come in fancy dress (that's British for come in costume) or come dressed as Lucy. So I decided to try out a costume I've been wanted to do for a few years: Lucille Ball. I found a close to perfect Lucy dress at a charity shop near me. The pearls and pumps were mine already. The real effort was getting my wavy red hair curly and pinned up (I think I used over 30 bobby pins!) The party was good fun even if I don't think any of the Brits there knew "I Love Lucy."

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches

I made these for Sophie and her family. The cookies are the chocolate cream cheese snacking cookies from Baked's latest cookbook. I've made them before and had wonderful feed back. The main thing about these cookies is that people who say they don't like sweets or really chocolatey things like them and people (like me) who would live on chocolate if they could like them. I figured that'd be good since Sophie's parents aren't as into sweets but her sister is and Sophie herself falls somewhere in between.

Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Buttercream~with recipe

My friend Sophie's birthday was a few days before I went to visit her so I had to make her a (belated) birthday cake. I knew I wanted to make chocolate cake (because who doesn't love chocolate birthday cake?) but I was torn between coconut buttercream (since it was such a hit with the coconut macaroons) and peanut butter buttercream. I thought the coconut and chocolate would be nice, sort of mounds bar like. But of course chocolate and peanut butter is a classic combination. I was leaning towards coconut, but I figured I'd let the birthday girl decide. I'm glad I did and I'm glad she chose peanut butter. It was delicious! The peanut butter buttercream was perfect. The taste was sweet and rich and perfectly peanutty--it reminded me of the peanut butter nougat I made in class and for my final exam. The texture was surprisingly fluffy for something made primarily of butter and peanut butter.

The buttercream recipe is:

Happy Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!

From left to right: traditional chocolate chip,
peanut butter chocolate chip,
chocolate-chocolate chip,
 oatmeal chocolate chip

Apparently today is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. Thank goodness I had some balls of frozen chocolate, chocolate chip cookie dough in freezer! So celebrate this wonderful holiday by eating a chocolate chip cookie and perhaps remember to freeze some scoops of cookie dough so that you can always have hot cookies.

Belated Birthday Desserts

In addition to the two cakes, I made quite a few desserts for my party:

Toasted coconut brownies

Mini Brooklyn blackout cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Chocolate, chocolate chip cookies

The brownies were delicious with desiccated coconut giving them a lovely texture. The Brooklyn blackout cupcakes were delicious as usual and the zing of the cream cheese frosting was complemented the deep, dark chocolate cake nicely.

The cookies were surprisingly good. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, the recipe was from Nigella Lawson and she really is a domestic goddess, but I love the chocolate chocolate chip cookies from Death by Chocolate. These might actually be better than the latter. The taste was a little sweeter (which I'm not sure is better or worse...it's just different). But the texture was perfect: a little crisp around the edges but still soft and nearly gooey on the inside (without being under baked).

Milk chocolate caramels with Maldon sea salt

Chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal candies

The caramels and the candies (which are technically no bake cookies, but I think they are more like candies) were both gluten free (as is typical for candies) and were delicious. In fact, the caramels were perfect, which made me really happy because the last time I tried making them they came out yummy but the texture was all wrong and they didn't hold their shape. The cookies/candies, which came out a little crumbly and difficult to shape, ended up richly peanutty and quite sweet with a hint of chocolate and a nice texture from the oats.

Because there were two excellent chocolate cakes, the cupcakes, cookies and brownies didn't get much attention but we sent them home with people as favors and heard good things about them after. Interestingly the candies were popular even with the cakes as everyone's focus. I suppose the small size and the complete lack of similarity to cake made everyone reach for them. Both were well received but the caramels were definitely the star (well the German chocolate cake was the star, but the caramels were the non-cake star). All in all, everything was yummy and there were plenty of leftovers to enjoy after we weren't so stuffed from the amazing food!

Is it Still Slimming if it's a Little Black Cake?

Putting the final touches on the cake

I went to this demo before I started my wedding cake project. I wanted to pick up as many tips and tricks as possible for making a wedding cake. I did pick up some general tricks on how to cover cake layers in fondant and how to stack them. I learned four specific tips I'd like to pass on:

1. Don't try to dye fondant black yourself. Buy pre-colored fondant. It'll save you a lot of work and keep you from dying your hands black.
2. Don't buy circle cutters for making dots, just use pastry tips of varying sizes. We did this in class to an extent, but I didn't realize just how versatile they could be until I saw the drastically different sizes Chef Ron was able to make with them. (I admit I didn't use this trick at school, I never needed dots, but I've used it since.)
3. To make even lines use a straight pin to tack ribbon of the appropriate width to the cake. That way you can line up your decorations by using the straight edge of the ribbon. For scallops, cut a circle of parchment to fit the circumference of the cake, fold it up into an accordion stack and cut a semi circle out of the top (it's just like making paper chains of hearts or little kids holding hands). Unfold it and tack it on. Then use it as a guide just like the ribbon.
4. Everything looks good in black, even wedding cakes. (Okay, that's not so much a tip as an observation. I hadn't expected a black wedding cake to be wedding-y, but with the simple white decorations and the single pop of color from the sugar paste flower this one really was.)

The ribbon and parchment paper guides in use

Chef Ron not only showed us how to decorate the cake, but also how to properly cut and serve it--in slices rather than wedges as you would slice a cake at home. The cake, if I remember correctly, was alternating layers of chocolate and white cake with alternating layers of buttercream flavored with strawberry jam and peanut butter. It was delicious!

Oatmeal, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Scones

Remember the oatmeal and peanut butter scones? These are the same recipe, but vastly improved with chocolate. (Let's face it, chocolate improves nearly everything.) Actually, that's a lie (chocolate does improve nearly everything, the lie is that these were vastly improved by it). The plain ones very nearly as good. In this case, the chocolate did improve it by they did so by changing it into something quite different. The plain scones were delicious, simple, and almost bread like (almost, but certainly denser and more delicious). These were indulgent and richly chocolaty. The peanut butter and oatmeal added dimensions to the deliciousness. I like both, differently. Of course if I do make these again, I'll probably go for the chocolate version--I just love chocolate too much not to choose it.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Scones

These scones are not at all like traditional scones; they are moist, heavy, and intensely peanutty. The oatmeal is barely noticeable as it overwhelmed by the crunchy peanut butter. That's a good thing in my opinion, I like oatmeal but it's often overused in baked goods.

These are from the new Baked Elements cookbook. I love the Baked cookbooks, I've never found a recipe that wasn't well written, thought out, and delicious. Technically this makes chocolate chip peanut butter oatmeal scones, but they suggest leaving out the chocolate and serving it with jam. I'm not usually one to omit chocolate, but I liked the idea. I gave it a shot and, as I hinted at above, they were delicious. I cut them in half and slathered them with raspberry jam--it was like eating a really delicious and even-less-healthy-than-usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Graduation, con't

Sheets and sheets of food...and this was nowhere near all of it.

Oops, I almost forgot to tell you about the food at graduation. Well, actually it's the food we baked for our final exam. I think it is slightly cheeky of them to make us cater our own graduation--we actually have to come in early to heat up and plate all the food. That said, it makes sense, we made a ton of food for our final and it was excellent! All our chocolates (peanut butter nougat and assorted bonbons), our viennoiserie (croissants, danish, and brioche rolls), petits fours (palmiers, macarons, bourbon pecan cookies, and pate de fruits), tarts (linzer tarts and jalousies), and cakes (genoise, lemon chiffon, and chocolate). Unfortunately the lemon curd tartlets and everything made with choux got too soggy in the refrigerator over the weekend.

You see that whole cake behind the tray?
That's my cake!

We had so much food that my cake ended up being used as decoration. On one hand, bummer I wanted to eat it; on the other, very cool that it was nice enough to be decorative!

Final Exam, the Judging

The judging room.

As I mentioned before, the final exam is judged by guest judges. We had five judges come in. Each judge get randomly assigned 4-5 students--they don't know our names until after they judge us. Once they are done evaluating our food and our showpieces, we meet them and they tell us what they think.

My judge was Zac Young! 

I was the fifth person in my group to get judged and the wait to be called in was the longest 20 minutes of my life. Finally, they called me in. My judge was Zac Young--a former contestant on Top Chef Just Desserts and one of the hosts of Unique Sweets (it's on the Cooking Channel, check it out.) I was really happy to have Zac Young judging me because I really do enjoy watching him on Unique Sweets, because he seems nice on the show, and because I'm considering a career in food writing/food media.

My plate for the judge:
 (clockwise from top) a mini lemon chiffon cake, a cherry danish,
a piece of peanut butter nougat, and a lemon curd barquette.

First, he judged my plate. The plate had one of each of the four things we had to make. He said my danish was delicious and baked perfectly. Apparently many people underbake their viennoiserie--I however am "not afraid of the oven." He said my lemon curd barquette was excellent--both the curd and the shell. I'm very happy he liked the shell because I spent a decent amount of time getting them perfectly even; something that is especially difficult when they are so petit. My nougat, unfortunately, was grainy. I knew he would say that, though, so I was prepared for it. He did say that the even shape of the pieces and the smoothness of the coating made it look like they had been made by machine! He only had one complaint about the cake--he wasn't sure what was going on with the rosemary. I explained that it was supposed to match the woodland look of the piece and that it was supposed to be thyme. He got the woodsy-ness of the green herb but was still hesitant to agree with it on a cake. At which point I explained that I like the flavor of thyme with lemon--I would have infused the lemon curd filling with thyme if I'd been allowed to change flavors.

My showpiece: I know I've posted this picture already,
but I want you to have the visual while you read about the judging.

Next he moved to my showpiece. He really liked the overall look. He complimented my use of different materials. I was worried he wouldn't like the lack of sugar work, but he actually liked that I'd had the foresight not to use a material that would be so affected by the weather (summer in NYC is humid and humidity ruins sugar). His one criticism was that my piece could have used more height. I completely agree; it was a bit diminutive. Still, he said my work was clean and well executed and that the height thing is an aesthetic issue not a technique issue and he is judging on technique rather than aesthetic. He also did point out that my basketweave on the small cake was cleaner and nicer than the basketweave on the large cake--I knew that. I used an easier, quicker technique to do the large cake because, well, it was large and the intricate method was already driving me nuts from having done the small cake.

Overall, he had good input and completely fair critiques. He was kind and constructive. I'm happy with my showpiece, I'm happy with my food, and I'm happy with the judging. It was a good last class. I'm going to miss school, but at least I ended on a high note!

Final Exam, the Showpiece and the Food

My Final Exam Showpiece

These last five classes have been the most intense classes of the course, but they were worth it! I am really happy with my showpiece and the food I presented. By the way, I know I mentioned earlier that class theme was "my imagination" and my showpiece theme was "Pure Imagination"--I was planning on a sort-of homage to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  As I started making the piece, I quickly realized that this is less Willy Wonka and more woodland--so I'm going with that!

My showpiece before I put the food on.

One of the most nerve wracking parts of the final exam is transporting the showpiece; we have to carry it down a relatively long hallway. Luckily we don't have to put the food on until we've put the showpieces where they will be judged, so we don't have to worry about it moving or falling--we just have to worry about the showpiece itself. I made my piece relatively small and decently light, so it wasn't hard for me to carry. I glued everything down with either isomalt or chocolate, so I didn't have to worry about things sliding/falling/rolling off.

My lemon curd barquettes floating down a chocolate river.

I am very happy with my lemon curd barquettes/tartlets. They came out perfectly, if I do say so myself! Everything from the tart shells to the smooth finish of the lemon curd to the fresh blueberries on top. The chocolate river (which is hard to see in this photo) came out pretty darn well as well.

My peanut butter nougat on my stand.

I love how the nougat looks and how it tastes, unfortunately the texture is slightly grainy. Also as much as I like how they look, the chocolate covering, while perfectly tempered, was not quite as perfect on the bottom edges as I would have liked. At least they were very evenly sized and coated.

My cakes, waiting to be put on the showpiece.

My cakes survived being stored--the icing didn't get smushed at all! I just piled some fresh berries on, attached my sugarpaste flowers and stuck in some sprigs of rosemary (I wanted thyme, but rosemary came instead.) As you can see I tried two different types of basket weave. The method I used on the bigger cake is slightly less refined, but much easier than the intricate two tip basket weave method I used on the small cake.

A close up of a sugarpaste flower on top of my cake.

My sugarpaste flowers weren't my finest sugarpaste work, but I do really like them. Plus I think they help tie the cake into the whole showpiece.

My nougat on their stand and more sugarpaste flowers.

As you can see, the flowers act as a sort of tie-in as they are all over the piece. I really like my candy and cake stands (even if this one is ever so slightly slanted...oops!) They give height to the piece and integrate the food well.

As you can see, I made meringue mushrooms. I used the technique we learned in class of piping vacherin meringue stems and caps, sticking the pointy end of the stem into a hole carved into the underside of the cap, and dusting with cocoa powder. However I added another element to take it to the next level. I dipped the under side of the caps in tempered dark chocolate, let it harden, and then dipped them into tempered white chocolate. At that point I let the white chocolate set until just about the cutting point (ever so slightly before it, actually) and scored it with a tooth pick so that lines of dark chocolate emanating from a central point showed through--like the gills on the underside of a mushroom cap. You could barely see this detail once I attached the mushrooms to the showpiece, but it was there and demonstrated an attention to detail that I think was pretty impressive.

My pastillage candy canes.

I am really happy with my pastillage candy canes. They came out just how I wanted them to! I also really liked my chocolate spheres. I've never attempted to make chocolate spheres before. They aren't easy. You have to make half spheres, which is rather like making a bonbon shell except instead of filling them, you unmold them hollow and stick them together with tempered chocolate. I painted them with more tempered chocolate so that you couldn't see the line where they were glued together or any smudges from where I was holding the two halves when I stuck them together. After all that work they looked pretty much perfect. Unfortunately, they ended up slightly hidden on my showpiece, but you can see one sticking out from behind the candy canes in the photo above.

Nine months of classes, five days of intense work, and it all
comes down to what the judge thinks of showpiece number 21.

Stay tuned to hear about the judging!

Final Exam, Day 1

My pastillage candy canes

The first hour and a half of the first day of the final exam is devoted to the written exam. After that we start our practical exam. I made my peanut butter nougat so that it can dry out enough that I can cut it and cover it. I also rolled out my pastillage base and decorations--there are a lot! I really don't like working with pastillage, but I'm steering clear of sugar because I'm worried it'll crystalize given the humidity and rain in the forecast. I'm a bit annoyed with my nougat, it's ever so slightly grainy--it tastes great though so I guess I'll have to be okay with it.

Today actually went pretty well. I had an extra half hour because I finished the written section early, so I had time to make the pate sucree for my tartlets (I'd been planing to do it next class.)

I think today was a pretty good start to the final exam and I hope the rest of the exam goes this well.

My peanut butter nougat 

Final Exam, The Assignment

Yikes the final exam is going to be hard! We have to make two cakes or tarts (one 6in and one mini version), 24 chocolates, 24 petits fours, and 24 pieces of viennoiserie. We don't get to choose what we make, instead we are randomly assigned the four recipes we will make. Our final grade is the average of our grade on the written exam, the grade our chef gives us on how we are working during the final exam classes, and the grade awarded by the guest judges who evaluate our exam. The guest judges are real chefs from outside the school; they evaluate us on the taste of our baked goods and on our final showpiece.

I have to make a 6in and a 3in lemon chiffon cake with lemon curd filling and basket-weave buttercream. I also have to make two dozen cherry danish, two dozen mini lemon curd tartlets, and two dozen pieces of chocolate covered peanut butter nougat.

I'm happy about the tartlets, I'm really good at making them. I'm happy with the nougat because it's definitely easier than bonbons and it's really delicious! I'm not thrilled about the danish, because they require a lot of last minute work (as do the tartlets), but they are fine. I like the lemon chiffon cake and it's not too hard to make. I can use the same filling for the cake and the tartlets, so that's not too bad. The real problem with this set of items is that I have to do basket-weave icing on both cakes, which is difficult and time consuming and should be done the last day because it can't be touched up if it get smudged when it is stored. I may do it the second to last day and just store them really, really carefully. Hopefully that'll be okay.

We also have to make a showpiece to display our large cake and half of the chocolates and petits fours. Our theme is "my imagination". Even though it's very open ended, I'm not sure I'm thrilled with it; I'd actually prefer a little guidance. I'm leaning towards something related to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because every time I think about the theme I start humming the tune of "Pure Imagination," the song that Gene Wilder sings when he welcomes everyone to the chocolate factory and shows them the room with the chocolate waterfall.

In the interim, we have our wedding cake project (I'll tell you more about that soon). We started it yesterday and finish on June 4th then we start our final the next class...have I mentioned yikes!

Update: Read about my final exam here.

Peanut Toffee Brittle

This was nice. It's not my favorite thing and it's no where near as good as the peanut butter nougat we made during the same class. It has a fine flavor, but like most toffee was a bit too sweet for me. The nice thing was the texture...we used baking soda to make it porous, which makes it slightly easier on the teeth.

Peanut Butter Nougat

When I saw that we were supposed to make nougat in class today, I was not thrilled. I had flashbacks to the disastrous petit four class in Level 2 when my partner and I ruined one batch of traditional nougat and made a second batch that was only just barely soft enough to be edible. I really didn't want to start Level 3 (today was my first class in Level 3, the last level, by the way) by making nougat that could be used as a hammer. Happily, this nougat was significantly easier to make and absolutely delicious!

The texture was somewhere between nougat and fudge and it tasted like the filling of a peanut butter cup. Once we coated them in chocolate they were even better--I mean, what doesn't chocolate make better?!

Nougat without the chocolate coating--not terribly pretty,
but absolutely delicious!

Chocolate Chip Cookies (with a touch of peanut butter)

This recipe is from the New York Times Desserts Cookbook which is a ton of fun! Really, it's a very interesting cookbook, with a ton of great looking recipes. This is the first thing I've made from the cookbook, and they were excellent. They are basically chocolate chip cookies, but with a little bit of unsweetened peanut butter added in. They didn't taste peanut-y but they did have a more complex flavor than usual chocolate chip cookies. They were nice cookies, not my favorite chocolate chip cookie out there, but I really did like them!

Fudge, con't

     

Fudge is great to give as gifts because, well, who doesn't like fudge?  I cut the fudge into 1in squares and stacked a chocolate peanut square and a peanut butter square in the center of a square of cling wrap and then tied the wrapping with a small piece of curling ribbon.  Simple as that!  Simple, but it took me over an hour to wrap 30 of these.  They were quite a hit, let me tell you!

Chocolate Peanut Fudge and Peanut Butter Fudge

  

Last week I made two batches of fudge to bring into class on Thursday and to my old high school on Friday.

I made Paula Deen's chocolate dummy fudge with peanuts (instead of pecans, to go with the next batch, you'll see why in a minute!)  It is a wonderfully easy recipe, hence the name, and it is really, really good.

I also wanted to experiment with a more traditional fudge recipe, so I looked on the Food Network website and found a recipe for Peanut Butter Buttermilk fudge.  It isn't the really traditional type made on a marble slab, but it is still boiled sugar and liquid (buttermilk, in this case) brought to soft ball stage.  It was fun!  I've never made candy that has been sugar based, so I've never fiddled with soft ball stage or the others before.  Have I mentioned, I had fun?!  This is really good fudge as well, and really peanut buttery!

The two different fudges have really different textures, and not just because the chocolate fudge had nuts.  The chocolate fudge is creamy and needs to be kept refrigerated or it goes all gooey.  The peanut butter fudge is slightly less creamy and a tad bit dryer.  It doesn't need to be kept in the fridge, though kept it there with the chocolate peanut fudge, because it is much more convenient.

Tomorrow, I'll post how I wrapped these to give as cute little goodies to all the teachers at my old high school!