The Dorie Experience #5

Dorie Recipe Number Five: Perfection Pound Cake
The taste reminds me of: Simplicity embodied by cake.
My favorite part of making this: Watching the butter and sugar cream in my kitchen aid mixer.
Spontaneous rhyme: "Pound" rhymes with "round" as in "you better share this cake with lots of people so you don't become too round."
Would I make this again: Yes, although next time I will watch the baking time a little more closely. This cake was actually a little dry (I've had trouble getting cakes done lately).
Best consumed with: Tons of fresh berries and whipped cream!

Wedding Cakes

Here are photos of the cakes at our wedding:

The bride and groom have snowboards :)

The groom's cake :)

Tuesdays with Dorie Post Number 19: Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes

Eat more chocolate! Save a pumpkin! Thankfully, this week's recipe Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes was chosen by Clara of IHeartFood4Thought and is a recipe that has no pumpkin! Imagine the horror that we pumpkins feel each year as millions of us are consumed in pies, cakes, bread and other seasonal travesties.

What a wonderful fall treat. Seasonal cupcake paper, festive orange sprinkles....please...enjoy a chocolate cupcake this fall. Pumpkins everywhere thank you for your understanding during this difficult time of the year.

Tuesdays with Dorie Post Number 16: Caramel Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Greetings, I am C-3PO, human cyborg relations. I am afraid I am not much of a story teller, but I have been summoned from the far corners of the galaxy to share with you the tale of a Caramel Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake and how it came to be.
The cake was born of chocolate and butter and flour, and its creator referred to the great book of culinary reference: Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Truly, Dorie Greenspan is a Master Jedi of baking. The recipe was chosen by Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy, and has been created by the many Jedi apprentice bakers of the Tuesdays with Dorie clan.

Creating a chocolate cake worthy of space travel is no easy task. In order to achieve light speed, a cake must be small and aerodynamic, and so the cakes were made miniature by way of muffin pans. Nurtured by the warmth of the oven, the cakes grew to gargantuan size, and when they came from the oven, they had baked onto the top of the pan. And so the chocolate cakes separated, the saucer sections destined for space travel without the burden of the bulky cargo bottoms.

Those who enjoy chocolate must have room for cargo, so the separation was not destined to last.
And so the delightful but ominous caramel sauce was harvested. Caramel sauce hails from the seventh moon of Napecuas, and must be collected when it is deep and amber in color. The trip to Napecuas is treacherous as the Empire is ever watchful of caramel traders. The caramel was not quite ready to be collected, and turned to a thick crusty glaze. It did its job well though, as it served as an adhesive between the saucer and cargo sections of the chocolate cake space ships.
Crusted with peanuts and blazoned with the thick layer of Napecuas caramel, the chocolate cake craft will provide many in the Rebellion a reliable way to travel the galaxy. And that is the tale of the Caramel Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake. If you will excuse me now, I believe that I hear the faint call of Ewoks and they can be ever so demanding.

Tuesdays with Dorie Number 15: Almost-Fudge Gateau

Poor Frodo, he has become bewitched by the power of the precious......yet again.....

This is not common knowledge, but Frodo has a serious chocolate addiction problem.

He can't seem to get enough of the stuff, and the Almost-Fudge Gateau sent him over the edge!

Technically, this week's recipe for Tuesday's with Dorie is Creme Brulee. The recipe calls for the use of a butane torch, and I do not own one. The option was given to make a previously done recipe, and so we rewind to the Almost-Fudge Gateau recipe featured on pages 218 and 219 of the baking mega-book, Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. The recipe was originally chosen February 19, 2008, a bit before my time :)

This cake is scary good, and those who cannot handle serious chocolate desserts should only consume this confection with extreme caution.

Frodo was not careful, and in his chocolate induced haze failed to notice something sinister. Who will carry his burden? Who will ensure that the ring is destroyed? Methinks Sauron is behind the chocolate!

Tuesdays with Dorie Number 14: Dimply Plum Cake

Cue Sappy Music.....Now....

* * * *

Ah, ladies and gentleman, please join me for another riveting session of "Can this Cake be Saved?" Today's session is brought to you by Butterbur's Butter, found in all major supermarkets across the country. Better Baking Begs for Butterbur Butter.

Today we visit with Rigby of "Butterbur's Bistro" and the "Dimply Plum Cake". The setting of the scenario is simple: a small kitchen, an iPOD playing the musical stylings of CAKE, and the massive book "Baking: From My Home to Yours" by Dorie Greenspan. It should have been an ideal afternoon.

Rigby: The recipe looked so ideal, so perfect. Mix a few ingredients here, add a few ingredients there. Perfect.
Dimply Plum Cake: Yes, but you were distracted. You never listen.
R: I do enjoy CAKE...
DPC: At my expense.
R: Honestly, I was sure that everything was included in the batter. I did wonder why the batter was so thick when I poured it into the pan though...
DPC: [sniffles]
R: At least I realized my mistake before you had been in the oven too long...I tried to make it right.
DPC: Imagine being all warm and cozy, tucked into your 350 degree paradise, when you are wrenched back into the loud frenzy of the kitchen and ripped apart.
R: You needed oil.
DPC: humph!

What do you think gentle readers? Can this cake be saved? Tune in next week for the conclusion of this session.

* * * *

This week's recipe was the Dimply Plum Cake, and was chosen by Michelle of Bake-En. As I am sure you have gathered by now, what should have been a fairly simple cake to throw together ended up being a panic moment (please refer to my stressed assistant above). I had the full cake assembled and in the toaster oven when I happened to glance over the recipe and realized that I had not added any oil. I had a moment of furious internal debate: should I leave the poor thing alone and hope for the best or try to correct the mistake? I opted for the latter choice, and had a mess on my hands as I removed plum halves from fudge-like cake batter. The oil didn't mix in as well as I hoped, but at least it was there. Back into the oven...fingers crossed, breath baited. The only excuse that I can offer is that my brain was so frazzled from running/walking a 10K race today, that there wasn't anything left for cognitive clarity.

"And there was much rejoicing."

The timer went off, and cautious jubilation! It appeared that I had a cake! Of course, there was a taste test involved, and the cake did indeed pass inspection. There was much rejoicing. Perhaps the next time I make this cake, I will follow the directions a little more closely.

* * * *

Here is the cake the next day as part of my breakfast with a good strong cup of coffee. I think the cake was even better for sitting overnight, and it was perfectly complimented by my coffee.

Oreo Inspired Cupcakes

Butterbur's Bistro is going retro today! I have had "The Family Circle Cake and Cooky Cookbook" on my shelf for a few months now, and haven't gotten around to trying anything from it. The book was published in 1953, and is chock full of recipes, ideas and nifty retro photos.
I made the Family Circle Cupcakes, however, I have been wanting to make cupcakes that were "Oreo inspired". I used the base recipe, but added melted chocolate to part of the batter and layered the cupcakes. If I try this again, I will be more careful with the proportions...I didn't quite have as much vanilla batter as I would have liked.
I also used a butter icing recipe from this cookbook. The recipe called for heavy cream, and I think it may be my new "go to" recipe for butter cream. It was so good!
I topped the cupcakes with crushed Oreos. The picture shows Oreos on top of the cupcakes, but that didn't work as well as I had hoped.
Here are the recipes:

Family Circle Cupcakes

1 cup sifted cake flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk

1. Grease 12 medium-size muffin-pan cups (or use fluted-paper baking cups placed in muffin pan).
2. Measure cake flour, baking powder and salt into sifter.
3. Cream shortening until soft in medium-size bowl; add sugar gradually, creaming after each addition until mixture is well blended.
4. Stir in egg and vanilla.
5. Sift and add dry ingredients, alternating with milk; blend until smooth after each addition.
6. Pour batter into prepared baking cups, filling half full.
7. Bake in in moderate oven (350 degrees) about 20 minutes, or until centers spring back when lightly pressed with fingertip.
8. Cool cupcakes completely in pan on wire cake rack; loosen around edges with knife, remove from pan.

**I found 20 minutes to be a little too much time in the oven.
**I melted 2 0z of bittersweet baking chocolate, and added it to about 2/3 of the batter.

Butter Frosting:
1/3 cup butter or margarine
4 cups (1 pound) sifted confectioners' (powdered) sugar
5 Tablespoons cream or undiluted evaporated milk
1/8 tsp salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Cream butter or margarine until soft in medium size bowl with spoon or with electric mixer set at "cream".
2. Add sugar gradually, alternating with cream or evaporated milk, creaming well after each addition.
3. Stir in salt and vanilla; beat frosting until light and fluffy.

Tuesdays With Dorie Post Number 8: Black and White Banana Loaf

This week's recipe selection "Black and White Banana Loaf" was chosen by Ashlee of A Year in the Kitchen. If you would like the recipe, it will be available at Ashlee's blog.

I was excited about the recipe for this week for two reasons: 1) I have a brand new bread pan purchased a couple of weeks ago and 2) I had some bananas in a rather sad state that found new life in this cake. My oven does not like cakes, having a tendency to brown and burn the sides of the cake and to leave the middle doughy, so I baked this in my little toaster oven.
I haven't used a marbling technique in a very long time, and enjoyed mixing the banana batter with the chocolate and alternating blops of dough in the bread pan. The flavor of the chocolate is wonderful....melting bakers chocolate is truly a wonderful thing!
This cake is rich, delicious and well worth making!

Daring Bakers Challenge Number Two!

This month's challenge recipe was chosen by Chris of Mele Cotte. The recipe was Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream. I have not made an actual layer cake in, well, longer then I can remember. When I looked at this recipe, I was a little worried because there were so many steps, and most of them were processes I was unfamiliar with. However, there is a reason that it is called a Daring Baker's Challenge, so, onward ho!

My very first step was waiting for my hazelnuts to arrive, via an order through E-bay (they really do have everything). I didn't order them as early as I should have, and they took awhile to get to me (according to package tracking, the hazelnuts had an extended stay in Chicago....) so it pushed my timetable for baking a little closer to the end of the month....which made me nervous.
The first interesting moment for me was with the cake. I baked mine in an 8-1/2 by 1-1/2 pan, but realized when I had most of the batter in the pan that perhaps I should have opted for something a little larger. I was so freaked out about the batter that in my panic, I reached for a loaf pan and dumped the excess in there. So then I had a round cake, and a rectangle cake. Now, I had the foresight to flour and line the round pan, but the loaf pan had been a moment of desperation, so when I tried to remove the hazelnut loaf, it wouldn't come out. Too make an already long story short....I ended up accidentally dropping the loaf cake in the sink. That should have been a sign for me. I did end up with a round cake, but the middle seemed a little less then satisfactory (stupid oven).

By the way, if you drop a measuring spoon in the mixing bowl while it's running, it will eventually spin back out. It is a little messy though.
I don't know if any of you had trouble when you went to make your hazelnut praline, but for some reason, I am unable to melt sugar. I used two different pans, and lots of time (and a little patience), but I never could get my sugar to melt nice and slow like the recipe said. I ended up cranking up the heat considerably, but then instead of melting on the outside first and then the middle, mine melted in the middle first, but not on the outside. I, of course, stirred. Don't stir. It is not pretty. The hazelnuts did find their way in and were coated, and it did make a brittle in the end.

Assembling the cake was a hoot as the cake was not very tall. The top layer was the nicest because it actually came off in a nice coherent pieces. The middle and bottom layers were not so nice. My praline buttercream ended up becoming a "glue" that conveniently helped to shape and hold these layers of cake together.
I loved making the Ganache. It was the best part of the recipe, and something I will definitely try again. This was my first time working with this kind of technique, and I loved the way it looked and tasted. My form is very sloppy, so the top of the cake looked nice, but the sides, well at least they taste good.
I topped the cake with lots of hazelnuts. Eating a slice is like eating pure sugar....which is a bit much for me. It reminds me of the fancy cakes you see in the expensive bakeries that cost lots of $$$ and you only get a very tiny sliver. Well, there is a reason that the sliver is so tiny. If you ate anything larger you might enter a sugar induced coma!
I enjoyed making the cake and learning the processes, but I think I will be more apt to make last months Danish Braid again before I would attempt this dessert.

Be sure to check out all the other Daring Bakers creations! Visit the blogroll!

5 min Chocolate Cake

This may be the most diabolical thing known to man....chocolate cake that you can make in your microwave in 5 minutes!!! Ah, the madness!!! Ah, the insanity!!! Ah, the convenience!!! Once again, there is a reason for exercise....must work off all the mugs of chocolate cake....hmmmm....

Anywho, I found the recipe from Dizzy Dee. There are many fantastic pictures to guide you through the process. I didn't want to consume quite that much flour and sugar, so I halved the recipe as follows:

2 Tablespoons flour (I used whole wheat, gotta sneak healthy in there somewhere)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder (I wanted to lighten the cake up a bit)
1 egg white
1 Tablespoon oil (again with the healthy, I went with olive oil)

I mixed the dry, then added the wet and microwaved for 1 minute 30 seconds. You can get away with a smaller cup with this half recipe. Yum!!

Yogurt Cheesecake

4 cups well-drained non-fat yogurt cheese
2 cups Sugar
6 egg whites, or 3 eggs
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. grated fresh lemon peel (zest)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 Tbs. sifted cake flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray the sides and bottom of a 2-quart soufflé dish with nonstick cooking spray. Whip yogurt cheese with sugar, egg whites, lemon juice, lemon peel, vanilla and cake flour; do not overbeat. Pour into prepared dish and set into a large pan of hot water. Bake for 1-1/2 hours or until cake is browned and cracked. Turn off oven and leave cake in oven for 1 hour longer. Remove cheesecake from water bath and allow to cool in dish on a wire rack for 1 hour. Place serving platter over dish and invert. Chill until ready to serve. Serves 10-12.
Per serving: 326 calories, 14g protein, 66g carbs, 1.5g fat, 266mg sodium, 4% calories from fat.

This recipe made a delicious basic cheesecake. I was amazed at the amount of yogurt cheese it called for. Since I had never made cheesecake using yogurt, I cut the recipe into fourths:

1 cup well-drained non-fat yogurt cheese
1/4 cup Sugar
2 egg whites
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. grated fresh lemon peel (zest) omitted
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
2-1/4 tsp. sifted cake flour

I followed the directions for mixing and baking, although I did leave it in the oven for an extra 30 minutes, and it never did brown. I poured it into a casserole dish that was a little too big, so after I removed it from the dish, I used biscuit cutters to make "cheesecake circles". I then rolled the edges in shaved chocolate. I also took some of the cheesecake and rolled it into small balls that I put in the freezer. After the cheesecake was frozen, I dipped them into semi-sweet chocolate to make candies. Delicious!!!

Mocha Cocoa Cake

If you are a fan of chocolate, this is the recipe for you! Not only is it healthful (yogurt, canola oil, and no eggs), but this cake is moist, rich and positively decadent! I have found that it bakes well in both cake pans and cupcake pans, and it is a cake that holds well for a few days. Enjoy!

• 1 ¾ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 c. granulated sugar
• ¾ c. unsweetened cocoa powder
• ¾ c. nonfat plain yogurt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 5 Espresso (7 ½ ounces total)
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ c. vegetable oil
  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9-inch Bundt pan.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl. In another large bowl, mix together the sugar, yogurt, espresso, and oil until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture and mix together just until blended. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, smooth with a spatula, and bake 30 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool 10 minutes before removing from the pan.8 servings

Cupcakes take about 15 - 20 minutes in the oven.

Carrot Cake for a Crowd

Sugar, what sugar? You won't miss it in this cake!

Recipe taken from Get the Sugar Out by Louise Gittleman

Serves 8 to 10

• 3 large carrots
• 1 large egg
• 3/8 cup oil
• 1 8-ounce can crushed pineapple in its own juice
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Scrub and grate the carrots. Measure 1 cup and set aside. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with cooking spray. In a blender, combine egg, oil, pineapple and juice, raisins, and vanilla. Process until raisins are finely chopped. Measure the flour, spices, salt, and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Stir well. Add blended mixture and grated carrots to dry ingredients, mixing until batter is uniform. Spread batter into pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool. Refrigerate.

Calories: 272

Notes: When cut into bars or squares, this cake holds together very well (is dense).