Category Archives: Cakes

There’s an app for improvisation

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Cooking for one? Frustrated with recipe adjustment? You want to improvise but not quite ready to just “wing it”?  You want a fritter batter (for one or two) but the recipe serves six?

Using something other than measuring cups and measuring spoons can give you a lot more freedom in the kitchen. How to Cook without a Book will help you get away from the frustration of looking at the recipe that serves six and wondering how to modify it for you (and the cat). If you know cooking techniques (e.g. sauté or braise) you are well on your way to using that recipe for inspiration and adapt it to your needs and taste. If you want a good start on learning techniques, I would recommend you check out Michael Ruhlman’s Twenty that includes not only the techniques but important ingredients as well: water, onions, acids, eggs, butter, and flour for a start.  Now to take improvisation to the next level of freedom from recipes: using ratios of ingredients.

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking Cover ImageThe Ratio (link below) is devoted to explaining and working with ratios in the kitchen.  Topics in this book include batters (cake and bread), stocks, roux, sauces, and even sausages. Measuring by weight  (though not required) does simplify this process–and eliminate washing all those measuring cups and measuring spoons. Adjusting the amounts of main ingredients is straight forward, but this approach does mean that you will need to adjust seasoning by tasting–rather than simply mathematically.

There is an app that will put all this at your fingertips (links below). Let’s say your gardening neighbor has just gifted you a BIG bag of zucchini. You might think you can use some of them to make fritters as the main course for your supper. You can go the Google route–find a butt-load of recipes, most of which serve six, or you can use this app to check batters–and you’ll see a button for fritter batter. The “details” tab will give you more specific information: e.g. that each 4 ounces of flour and liquid will hold together two cups of garnish (your shredded zucchini) and that would make about eight nice, big fritters and some seasoning suggestions for both sweet and savory. This app is NOT free ($4.99 from Google Play via Ruhlman Enterprises); there are some issues with it–but I think it’s worth that small price.

The issues: The egg part of the ratio, since eggs come nicely packaged right from the hen. I learned the “ratio” approach from my grandmother she taught me to make a “pound” cake or “four parts” cake–since the egg was premeasured, we worked in egg weights and use an equal weight of each other ingredients–flour, sugar, and butter. This is easy if you use scales, but if not, then here are some ways to deal with the egg part of the ratio.

Weights of various grades of eggs for the USA and for other countries can be found in Wikipedia; additional volume information can be found on Get Cracking . Using this site you can find that a large egg (called for in most recipes) weighs 2.0 to 2.25 ounces (56.7 to 63.7 grams) and volume of 46 mL (3.25 tablespoons). Cup equivalents of eggs are found at The Incredible Edible Egg. Some recipes (custards and some sauces) will call for egg yolks only. To help on these calculations you need to know the weight of the yolk of a large egg is 17 grams or 0.60 ounces. Weights for other egg sizes can be found at  the {convert to} site. From this same  website you can convert that 1 yolk into cup measure: 0.07 cups, which is equal to 0.56 fluid ounces, or 1.12 tablespoons, or 3.37 teaspoons of egg yolk. (I doubt that you’ll be doing this kind of conversions–but it can be done.) Just to be complete,  the weight of egg white from large eggs is = 33 grams = 1.2 oz. The information for other sizes/grades of chicken eggs, as well as duck, quail, and turkey eggs, is also given.

Now suppose you want to make a small amount of custard (e.g. for quiche) you can use the calculator of this app to determine how much liquid you need. To do this by weight, enter 56.7 in the “eggs” and set units to grams. Now set the liquid units to grams as well–and the calculator will tell you to use 113 grams of liquid. (You’re saying you could have done that in your head–true, but now you click the “details” tab, and you’ll get a kind of “master” recipe with more instructions.)  Want Crème Anglaise using only egg yolks? Use the weight of the number of egg yolks, and the calculator will spit out the amount of cream and sugar you need, as well as the total weight. For two egg yolks, you would need 136 grams cream and 34 grams of sugar.

More on using ratios:

Happy improvisation with ratios! A son gôut!

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Recipe: Apothic Dark Red Wine Cake

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I like this wine–just for drinking, and can imagine that this will be awesome.

Wine by Ari

Apothic-Cake-2-3-620x775

 

I came across this amazing recipe for Apothic Dark Red Wine Cake from Chasing Delicious.

Apothic Dark Red Wine Cake

Ingredients

  • 6 ounces flour
  • 2 ounces cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 8 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 14 ounces vanilla sugar (or granulated sugar)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1⅓ cup sweet red wine (try Apothic Dark)
  • 1 cup cinnamon red wine sauce, recipe below

Instructions

  1. Preheat an oven to 350°F.
  2. Butter and flour or grease a bundt pan. Set aside.
  3. Mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.
  4. Beat the sugar and vanilla together until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
  5. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then the vanilla, mixing well after each addition.
  6. Add half of the dry mixture and mix in well. Pour in the wine and mix…

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Blood oranges….

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blood orange slice

blood orange

I have to say that for the most part, I hate shopping–except food-related shopping. When I do food-related shopping, I almost always come home with something that was not on the shopping list (Yes, I do make shopping lists, but I don’t really do meal planning.)  do sometimes venture in to the food store without a list, though I do try not to go food shopping when I’m hungry. Sometimes I go to the grocery store impulsively and spontaneously–triggered by some extraneous event.

My last such foray was triggered by sitting at the counter of Hope Valley Diner discussing food with another regular lunch customer–also a foodie.  What sent me to the grocery store was his mention of a chocolate cake from Fresh Market: namely chocolate ganache cake.That definitely got my chocolate imagination going–after all ganache is basically chocolate and cream, maybe some butter–but it’s really serious chocolate–adult chocolate.

Being in need of a chocolate fix since I’d been indexing all morning, I detoured by the Fresh Market on my way home (it really wasn’t more than a half mile in the opposite direction) hoping that I would find chocolate ganache cake by the slice. So–my intent on entering the Fresh Market was to obtain a single slice of chocolate cake.

As I walked through the entrance into the vestibule I was immediately faced with packages of California-grown Moro blood oranges. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of walking away from blood oranges, so there was the first “additional” item, so I really did need to get a basket though I hadn’t thought I needed one.  Now the blood oranges were not individual–they came in a little easy to carry bag–meaning that I now had several blood oranges.

Continuing on my way to the bakery section, I detoured though the produce (around the edge of the store).  That took me past the Bolthouse juices. (Yes, I find daily grapefruit, orange, etc boring too many days in a row.) I noticed a couple that I’d not found at my Harris Teeter market, so those (Daily Golden Vedge and the Stone Fruit Smoothie–still haven’t found the Mango Ginger + carrot) )got popped into the basket.

I made it to the bakery counter after a brief detour around the cheese counter and the seafood salad bar. I first noticed a whole chocolate ganache cake–shiny top as you’d expect from ganache, very dark, with the sides of the cake covered with dark chocolate shavings or chopped. Thankfully, there was a single slice of this luscious looking cake in the case. That got put into the basket with a sigh of relief–after all, THAT was what I came for! I made it back past the chocolate bars and other candy without adding anything more to the basket, checked out, and headed for home.

Blood Orange and Sage Sparkling SodaOnce home I had a blood orange–and realized that I was going to be eating or juicing blood oranges for a bit. Though straight blood orange juice is certainly not a hardship, serendipity has a way of intervening. While I was perusing my favorite blogs, what should I find but a gorgeous photograph and a recipe for blood orange and sage sparkling soda.

The image at the left is from Snixy Kitchen blog–just too gorgeous not to “plagiarize” with attribution, and share. I’d not thought of the combination of sage and orange, but with the “imagery” of the blood orange I’d just eaten, and a brush of the sage wintering on my deck, I knew I had to try it. This as a beverage is definitely a keeper–I’m sure that I’ll be making sage simple syrup again, and I have to think this would make a great sorbet as well as something to put in a glass and drink.  This combination of orange and sage also has me thinking about veal, pork, maybe chicken….Thank you, Snixy Kitchen for a great combination!

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Now if you’re wondering about the chocolate ganache cake?  Well, I ate it before it even occurred to me to take a picture, and I haven’t found a chocolate cake image that even comes close–so I’ll have to go with words: very, very dark, moist, with ganache between the layers and as icing, not too thick.  Dark chocolate chips/shaving on the sides, not too sweet, but sweet enough–adult chocolate–absolutely luscious.  That’s probably where I’ll go look for my next chocolate fix.

For chocolate lovers….

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I just have to share this post from Spoon, Fork, Bacon for Double Chocolate Pound Cake!  Pound cakes are my favorite in almost any flavor, but then add chocolate, and I’m likely to eat way more of this than I should. I’ve not made it yet, but it’s on for the weekend.

Cake is in the oven…

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…and I’m waiting, none too patiently for it to be done–it smells heavenly: buttery, coffee-y, nutty, with a little caramel-molasses-like overtone from the brown sugar.

(It’s a very easy cake to put together–you don’t even really need to use a mixer–but since it was sitting there on the counter, I did use it.)

The recipe from Promenade Plantings called for walnuts.  I have to confess to not liking English walnuts–even when good and fresh they have a bitter overtone that I don’t like, so I substituted pecans in the recipe since I really like them.

The house is smelling SO good–it smells like it needs some good dark chocolate–hmmmm, coffee, chocolate, and nuts.  If it tastes like my nose tells me it will, I may try it with some chocolate bits in it too. I can already tell that waiting for it too cool is going to be some sort of ordeal!

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Finally, it’s cool enough–just couldn’t stand it any longer. All the time I’ve been smelling it, I’ve resisted making some ganache–so far successfully, but the longer I smell that cake….

OMG, is that every good! Tastes every bit as good as I though it would–and as it smelled. It doesn’t scream coffee at you either–I suspect that even non-coffee drinkers would like this.

I’m enjoying it with a big glass of cold milk right now, but I definitely want to try it with coffee–probably with my breakfast coffee in the morning. This could be habit-forming!

A cake I want to bake

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You can tell from the posts here that I don’t do a lot of desserts. I usually satisfy my sweet tooth with fruit (dried or fresh) or dark chocolate. Sometimes something like the brioche filled with chocolate ganache. I will admit to really liking so-called “pound cake” or pâte à quatre-quarts; otherwise, I pretty much leave cakes and pies, and the like alone; but then there are some like the bay-infused pound cake (which is fantastic by the way), or the lavender-lemon cake….you get the general idea.

Browsing about on one of the blogs that I follow (Promenade Plantings), I found a recipe for a coffee and walnut cake that looks like one that I might really like, so I though I’d pass this link on to all of you who don’t want gobs of terribly sweet icing or gooey glazes.

This image is from Promenade Plantings. If you think that looks delicious a click here will take you to the recipe for a cake that makes me want to bake–and make some espresso and sit and visit with friends and neighbors.

Coffee and Walnut Cake (13)

from Promenade Plantings: Coffee walnut cake

A must-try dessert

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Since I’ve gotten Trillian installed I get all these quick updates from Twitter and Facebook zipping across my desktop. This one, given that it’s berry season,  looked like something I should pass on.

I’m not usually “into” cakes particularly, but I do have a weakness for good pound cake, especially with fresh berries, figs, and good ice cream.  (Good pound cake means one that does not shy away from the good stuff like butter.)

It’s from David Lebovitz. If this recipe is anywhere near as tasty as the recipes in The Perfect Scoop, it will be a real keeper! Take a look at this Bay-leaf-infused Pound Cake!