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Archive, Cookies, Fall, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Molded Cookies

Spiced Cardamom Cookies

November 21, 2010 6 Comments

Since the HCB assignment this week had peanut butter in it, which I am allergic to, I decided that I would take the week off. However, after seeing my fellow bakers’ comments about Chocolate Genoise Cake with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache, I am seriously thinking that I will have to bake the chocolate genoise after all.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a photo of some cookies I made a few weeks ago. This is my interpretation of Martha Stewart’s Spiced Cardamom Cookies. I’ve had these cookies on my Must Try list ever since I saw them in her Holiday issue two years ago. I know, it is pathetic that it has taken me this long to get them done. In my defense, however, I just haven’t had a lot of spare time due to the job I have had and I have also been dealing with some challenges in my life for almost that same amount of time. So now that I am working a job that can be “left at the office,” and I have finally accepted the fact that I am going to be learning patience with these trials for the unforeseen future, I decided to try them.

Now I do have to state for the record that Martha Stewart and I have a love/hate relationship. Some of her recipes are great, and some of them just really do not work. This one, however, is a definite keeper. The dough was easy to mix up and also to work with. I used an impression mat that I have for fondant. It’s not quite as nice as Martha’s but it worked out okay. The cookies went together quite quickly and I think it would be a fun project for kids to do. See Martha’s recipe here.

The squirrel cookie cutter is made by Marimekko and I bought it last winter when I was in Minnesota. I thought it was the perfect cutter to use for fall and went really great with the walnut cookies (also seen on Martha Stewart but I used the recipe from House on the Hill.) (You can find the walnut recipe here. Since I made these cookies for some children that can not have nuts, I filled them with chocolate buttercream.)

The cookies turned out great and my family has already requested that I make them again. If you are looking for something fun and unique, definitely give these a try!

Archive, Cakes, Cheesecake, Cookies, Fall, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Ginger Cheesecake with Gingerbread Crust

November 15, 2010 5 Comments

This week we had another free choice as to what we wanted to bake. I looked through the list of the cakes Marie baked before the group officially started and narrowed down what I wanted to try. The cake that caught my eye was the Ginger Cheesecake with Gingerbread Crust. This cheesecake is a perfect fit for this time of year because it has ginger and cardamom added to it. And not only that — the cake is encircle with gingerbread cookies! Now what could be more adoreable than that?

To be fair, the gingerbread cookies are optional in this recipe. If you want, you can purchase gingersnaps and grind them up for the crust. But seriously, the gingerbread cookies are the funnest part of this recipe. So for me, there was no question on whether or not I was making them.

The gingerbread dough was easy to mix up. The dough is flavored with molasses and the spices of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. The dough is put in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm up. When I took it out later in the day, the dough was easy to work with and rolled out nicely. I cut out the small gingerbread boys and girls and then cut out squares to be crushed up for the crust. The crust is made by adding butter and a little salt to the cookie crumbs. I elected to leave out the salt since we are watching the sodium in our home.

The cheesecake itself went together quite easily also. One unique part of this recipe was the addition of ginger juice. To acquire ginger juice, you take a large piece of fresh gingerroot and grate it. Then you squeeze the grated ginger to extract its juice. (The gingerroot is then disposed of. ) The main components of the cheesecake batter are cream cheese and sour cream.

The cheesecake is baked in a water bath for an hour and then left in the oven with the door closed for another hour. Then you cool it on a wire rack for another hour before putting it in the fridge overnight. So this dessert definitely has to be made the day before you want to serve it.

To serve the cheesecake, run a hot knife around the inside of the pan to release it, and place on a serving plate. Then you press the gingerbread cookies around the outside. You can use jam to adhere the cookies a little more securely to the cheesecake.

My family really liked this cheesecake. The ginger flavor was quite strong but not too much. It was refreshing to have something a little out of the ordinary and these spices just feel like Thanksgiving to me. And if you make this cheesecake, don’t leave out the cookies because they were our favorite part of this dessert (I’ve already received a request to make more).

Archive, Cakes, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

November 11, 2010 2 Comments

I’m a little late posting this week’s HCB project, the Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake. My tardiness is not because this was a difficult cake to make but just because I ended up working more than expected and didn’t get my post finished. The cake itself went together quite easily.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Add the liquid ingredients.

Add the almond cream (the most difficult part was finding the almond paste).

Add the pear.

Bake and eat!

The results: Very tasty! It was simple but good!

Archive, Cakes, Desserts, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

The Bostini

October 31, 2010 9 Comments

Today’s assignment with the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the Bostini. I have been waiting impatiently for this recipe to come up since the first time I thumbed through Rose’s beautiful cookbook. The picture of a mug full of pastry cream, topped off with a small cake on top and covered in hot fudge indeed looks heavenly. This recipe is basically a sophisticated variation of Boston Cream Pie, with orange added to the cake for an extra twist.

There are basically three parts to this recipe: First, the Orange Glow Chiffon Cupcake Batter, the Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream Sauce, and finally the Chocolate Butter Glaze. However, none of these steps takes an extensive amount of work so don’t let that discourage you from attempting this dessert.

The Orange Glow Chiffon Cupcake Batter went together very easily. This is an oil based cake so once the dry ingredients are mixed, you add oil, egg yolks, orange zest, orange juice and vanilla. The batter thickens up nicely. In a separate bowl, you make a meringue which is then folded into the batter. The result is a light orange batter which pours easily into the cupcake pan. The instructions call for a silicone pan but since I don’t have one, I used my aluminum pans and I lined the bottoms with parchment. The full batter recipe yields 12 cupcakes and so I decided to halve the recipe to end up with 6 cupcakes. Now I do not understand what happened, but out of my half recipe of batter I actually came out with 12 cupcakes. This is really weird and I do not understand. Last week when I made the 8 cup version of angel food cake batter I also ended up with way too much batter and ended up filling a loaf pan with the extra. Anyway, the cakes baked up nicely.

The next step was the Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream Sauce. This sauce is supposed to be a cross between pastry cream and creme anglaise. The first step was quite interesting in that you scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar and salt mixture and mix it up with your fingers which I have never seen done before. This mixture is heated with heavy cream until it comes to a simmer. Then there is a quick exchange when you mix some of the cream into the egg yolks and then put the egg yolk mixture back into the cream. I didn’t get any pictures of this since it was rather quick moving and I was afraid if I stopped to take pictures Iwould have a curdled mess on my hands. The sauce is then heated a few minutes longer and it becomes very thick. After straining the mixture you put it it directly into custard cups and refrigerate. Now I seemed to have the opposite problem I did with the batter because with the pastry cream I again made a half recipe which should have yielded six servings. I had 8 oz. cups rather than the 6-7 oz. cups, but I only needed to make 3 Bostinis so I figured I would have plenty left over. I barely had enough to fill 3 of the glasses and even then I didn’t fill them as full as I wanted to. I really am not understanding what is happening with these measurements and yields.

The last step couldn’t be easier. Basically you heat the butter in a saucepan and when it is simmering you add chopped chocolate. The recipe calls for 62% chocolate. Normally I use Ghirardelli chocolate but this time I tried Nestle Chocolatier. The sauce came out shiny and smooth. My mouth was watering.

To serve the Bostini, you please a cupcake upside down over the custard and then top with fudge glaze. Since I didn’t have quite enough custard I put an extra layer of cupcake in so that I could still have a nice dome above the glass. This did make it a little difficult to eat though. Next time, I think I will actually put that extra layer of cake in the middle of the creme and add a layer of glaze. That way, it will break up the custard a bit and in my opinion it will be even better.

We were very pleased with the Bostini and look forward to having it again. It is definitely a showpiece dessert that tastes as great as it looks.

Archive, Cakes, Desserts, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes, Summer

Angel Food Cake with Lime and Coconut

October 25, 2010 9 Comments

This week’s baking project was the basic Angel Food Cake that could be dressed up any way we wanted. Since I was planning to cook Thai food on Saturday night, I thought it would be fun to keep that theme going. I did a little bit of looking on the internet and decided to make an angel food cake with lime and coconut, since those are two predominant flavors in Thai Cooking. (I found that recipe here: http://www.squidoo.com/angel-food-cake-recipes)

Since there are so many different sizes and shapes of angel food cake pans, Rose provides a recipe that uses one egg white per one cup batter so that the reader can easily multiply the recipe to the size of the pan. The pan I have is 8-cup capacity, or half the size of a full sized pan, so I multiplied the recipe by 8.

The first thing is to make a meringue by beating the egg whites and sugar to stiff peaks. Then the dry ingredients are added and folded in a little bit at a time. Once in the pan the batter should be about 1/2″ from the top of the pan. Now I’m not sure what happened with mine because I ended up having enough batter left over to fill a small loaf pan.

We have a fairly new toaster oven that has a convection oven setting on it and I decided I wanted to give that a try. Since I’m fairly new to the whole convection thing I decided to bake it at 325 as I’ve heard that you should reduce the temp when using convection. I wasn’t sure how long to bake it but I was thinking about 20 minutes. I watched the cake rise a few inches above the pan and then it started shrinking back into the pan. Since I had read in the instructions that this is typical, I didn’t worry about it. It appeared to be done after about 23 minutes so I removed it and set it on a raised cooling rack. We had some shopping to do so we left for a few hours. When I came back, I noticed that the cake was now far below the top of the cake pan by about 1-1/2 inches or more. So I’m not sure if this is an indication of it not cooking long enough or what. The bottom of the cake also seemed very moist even though it felt done. If anyone knows, please leave a comment for me.

The lime custard is made by mixing 2 eggs, 2 egg yolks, 1/2 cup sugar, 6 T. lime juice, 2 tsp lime peel and 1/2 cup butter together in a double boiler and heating to 160 degrees. Then you strain the custard and refrigerate until completely cool (I made mine the night before we were going to have the cake). After it is completely cooled, you beat 1 cup whipping cream and 1/2 tsp vanilla to stiff peaks and gradually add 3 T. sugar. Gently fold the whipping cream into the lime mixture.

I cut my angel food cake into third horizontally, and filled it and frosted it with the lime custard. Then I pressed toasted coconut onto the outside.

I got rave reviews on this cake! The flavor of lime went perfect with the light texture of angel food cake. It was also the perfect complement to the Thai food. We will definitely be making this again and very soon I am sure.

Next week is the Bostini and I can hardly wait. I have been drooling over this recipe since the first time I looked through Rose’s book.

Archive, Heavenly Cake Bakers

Nutrition Info on Many-Splendored Quick Bread

October 19, 2010 4 Comments

I was surprised to find out that quite a few other people were interested in the nutrition information for the HCB recipes. Maybe I will just go ahead and figure it up from now on and include it in my post. We use BigOven software (PC based version not online version) to get the info. Thanks everyone for reading and posting comments. Here it is:

Nutrition info for Many-Splendored Quick Bread:

Serving Size: about 3 oz.; Servings per Recipe: 10

Calories 341; Calories from fat 161 (47% of tot cal); Total Fat 17 g (saturated fat 2 g); Cholesterol 43 mg; Sodium 282 mg; Total Carbo 40 g (dietary fiber 2 g sugars 16 g); Protein 6 g

Vitamin A 141%; Vitamin C 5%; Calcium 12%; Iron 27%

Archive, Cakes, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Many-Splendored Quick Bread

October 18, 2010 6 Comments

Although I didn’t have to work this weekend, I kept myself pretty busy catching up on some housework and doing a little baking project of my own. ThereforeI was happy that this week’s HCB project was a quick bread that is on the Quick and Easy List. It was indeed pretty quick to throw together. I think that grating the zucchini and carrot were the most time consuming part which didn’t take long at all.

The flavor components are of course the zucchini and carrot and also include a banana, instant oatmeal and walnuts. The ingredients make it sound pretty darn healthy don’t you think? I am curious to know what the nutrition information looks like and am wishing that Rose had included that in her book. I know — I’m probably the only one in the world that wants nutrition info for a cookbook on cakes. But with all of hubby’s health issues lately it is something we have had to focus on more and so I really do think it would be helpful to have.

Anyway, back to the quick bread. First step is to toast the walnuts. Next, you mix the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, you make the batter and you can just throw all the ingredients in the KitchenAid and mix it up. Add in the dry ingredients and the nuts and you’re done. This recipe make one 8-1/2″x4″ loaf.

The flavor is pretty good, although not wow. However, if it is a somewhat healthy kind of snack to eat, then it might be a good thing to have on hand. I will be figuring up the nutrition info on this and then making a final analysis.

Archive, Cakes, Chocolate, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Molten Chocolate Souffle and Lava Cakes

October 12, 2010 1 Comment

Mmmm. . . . chocolate! I’m so happy we got to do a nice deep chocolate cake this week.

I’ve tried making molten chocolate cake before but I always seem to have trouble getting a nice gooey middle without the cake itself being underdone. Rose has solved this problem by using chocolate ganache in the center so that it will stay liquid. This seems like a pretty basic idea and I’m just wondering why in the world no one else has ever done this. Kudos to Rose for coming up with a brilliant idea.

The ganache needs to be made a few hours ahead of time so that it can hold the shape of a ball. Now I will be honest here — I read through the instructions and the whole saran wrap in an egg carton thing just sounded like a whole lot of work and mess to me. Therefore, I decided to do this step my way which I think worked just fine. I made the ganache by heating the cream and pouring it over the chopped chocolate. Then I put the bowl of ganache into the fridge overnight. The next day when I was ready to make the cakes, I scooped the cold ganache from the bowl using a small scoop.

The cake batter is made by melting chocolate, cocoa and butter. Then eggs and creme are mixed into the chocolate. The last step is to make a meringue from egg whites and sugar, which is also folded into the chocolate.

I was really wishing I had some small brioche pans or other decorative shaped pan. Since I did not, I used a muffin pan. The cups are filled three-fourths full and a ganache ball placed in the center. The instructions say specifically not to push the ball down into the batter. I baked the cakes for about 12 minutes and let them cool in the pan for about half an hour. The cakes were very pretty and puffed up when I first took them out of the oven but after cooling, they fell. The ganache seemed to be coming out of the tops of my cakes which I guess then becomes the bottom so I guess that’s okay.

I served the cakes with a little sweetened whipped cream and they were very well received. I thought that it was a nice cake texture and really loved the soft ganache inside.

Archive, Cakes, Desserts, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Perfected Caramelized Pineapple Pudding Cakes

October 4, 2010 7 Comments

This project was full of frustrations. Not only did I burn myself on the caramel which resulted in a trip to the ER and blisters on my thumb and index finger, but after all that, the caramel is just too solid to work in the way it indicates it should in this recipe. In the end though, I think I ended up with a pretty nice dessert.

The first step in this recipe is to make Creme Anglaise. This sauce went together quite easily and I was actually thinking the cakes were going to be a breeze to make. The sauce is made by scalding cream and milk and then pouring it over eggs and sugar with a touch of nutmeg. Then you pour the sauce over cubed brioche which I had made a few days earlier (see my previous post). The brioche is refrigerated anywhere from 2 hours to 12 hours.

The next step is making the caramel. Now I have made caramel quite a few times and I feel pretty comfortable with the process. However, this caramel seemed to harden up almost immediately. I put it in the measuring cup and then poured it into my ramekins. The first four were just fine but by the time I got to 5 and 6, the caramel was solid before it spread out on the bottom of the ramekin. No problem I thought to myself, I’ll just pop it in the microwave since Rose suggested doing that while still in the measuring cup. When I took it out of the microwave it was all bubbly and thick but hadn’t spread out. Now this was the point that I did something very very stupid and I can’t even tell you why. But I poked my finger into the caramel to spread it out on the bottom of the ramekin and I don’t think I need to say that the caramel was VERY hot! It’s one thing to accidentally spill hot caramel on you which results in a burn, but I can not believe that I actually put my finger right into the boiling hot caramel. Well, my baking was done for that night.

So tonight I figured I’d whip this dessert together. Hubby helped me by coring the pineapple with the corer we bought this summer. I have to put a plug in for this nifty little gadget since I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth it to buy it. But we have really used this a lot and it saves so much work when you eat pineapple. Since I decided to go ahead and core the pineapple first, I had to alter the instructions just a bit. I made the syrup and then just put the slices in to roast. I was having trouble with the thermometer in such a small amount of liquid so I just used my own judgment on when it was ready. My ramekins were the perfect size to put the pineapple rings in and I thought it would be pretty just to leave them whole so that is what I did.

The next step is to drain any creme anglaise not absorbed by the brioche. Mine didn’t seem to have any extra which may have been due to the fact that it soaked an extra day. All I know is there wasn’t any leftover to use as garnish. The soaked brioche is spooned into the ramekins and baked in a water bath.

I baked the cakes for about 35 minutes, when the internal temperature was 160 degrees. I let them cool about 5 minutes and then unmolded them onto a plate. The caramel was still hard and was just a disk that was stuck in the bottom of the ramekin. My caramel must not have been dark enough because it looked anemic when I removed it and put it on top of the pineapple cake. I was trying to figure out whether to just throw it out altogether when I decided that I could take the torch to the caramel to brown it up a bit. So that is what we did and tried it with the disk on the top of the pineapple as well as to the side. Still, the caramel itself really didn’t taste that great and was rock hard. After eating our little cakes and quite liking the taste of them without the caramel, we had an idea. Why not forget the caramel altogether and just put a little turbino sugar on top of the pineapple and caramelize the sugar. So that is what we did and I think out of the three options, the last one is the best.

Archive, Bread, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Classic Brioche

October 2, 2010 No Comments

I wasn’t able to make the Chocolate Tomato Cake with Mystery Ganache this last weekend because Hubby was unexpectedly in the hospital. I am happy to say that we are finally home and all is as well as it can be until he gets the liver transplant.

Wednesday afternoon I decided to see what our project was for this weekend and it turned out to be Caramelized Pineapple Pudding Cakes. A very key ingredient for this recipe is a loaf of brioche which can be store bought or homemade. Since Rose provides a recipe for the brioche, and also because I know that I won’t be able to buy it in my small town, I decided to go ahead and make the brioche. I have been wanting to try making this bread for a while now. I saw a recipe in a magazine some time ago and actually bought a cute little brioche pan but with wedding cake season and all I just haven’t had the time.

Rose says that this recipe is an “easy, enjoyable dough to make,” which I was really hoping was true. I have made a fair amount of yeast breads in my time, but I have always used active dry yeast. The Classic Brioche recipe calls for instant yeast, which is not available at my grocery store. A quick google search yielded information that the two can be interchanged as long as the active dry yeast is proofed before using. I had to modify the recipe a bit.

The first step of the recipe calls for making a dough starter or sponge. I combined the water (warm), sugar and yeast together so that it could proof before adding it to the flour and egg. While I was waiting for this to happen, I read ahead in the directions and found out that in the second step you use an additional 1-1/4 teaspoons of yeast which is combined with dry ingredients. I decided that I had better add the yeast from this step into what was proofing in step 1, so I went ahead and added an additional 1-1/4 teaspoons of yeast. After I could see bubbles forming in the bowl, I added the rest of the ingredients for the starter.

Step two is to mix dry ingredients for the dough and put them on top of the sponge and allow it to rest for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. After letting it rest you add eggs and beat it with the dough hook and incorporate the butter. The dough then raises for another 1-1/2 to 2 hours or until doubled. At this point I deviated from the recipe because it was getting late and I hadn’t realized that it was supposed to raise an additional two hours before putting it in the refrigerator. I was tired and didn’t want to stay up another two hours so I put the lid on the KitchenAid bowl and stuck it in the refrigerator.

Friday night I took the dough out of the refrigerator and let it warm up at room temperature for about an hour. I shaped the dough and put it in the pans to raise. I wasn’t sure how much dough my brioche pan would hold, and thinking that it would only hold a half recipe of dough, that’s what I used and put the rest in a small loaf pan. (I later found out that my 7″ brioche pan will hold the same amount of dough as the 8-1/2″ loaf pan.)

The dough raised very nicely so I put on the egg glaze and slashed the tops. I baked the loaves for about 20 minutes at which time the two small loaves had an internal temperature of 190 degrees. The large loaf took another five minutes to finish baking. I let the loaves cool for about 10 minutes before unmolding them and they came out very easily. We decided to take a sample and we were very pleased. Hubby even tried some preserves with his.

I am quite pleased with the recipe and intend to make this again.

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