Raccoon and Lobster

Ahh..hubris.

The San Francisco MOMA sells a beautiful Mondrian cake for $8 a slice. It’s a museum attraction unto itself:

With my masterful understanding of economic theory, I decided to make my own Mondrian cake, which I could then sell for $7 a slice. Devious! Unfortunately, it is a lot easier to boast about making a Mondrian cake than actually making an intriciate, perfectly square art cake that is worth charging $7 a slice for.

My recipe was a basic white velvet cake and dark chocolate ganache, both adapted from (say it with me now) Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. In retrospect, a denser pound cake would have worked a lot better structurally. My blue and yellow food coloring was hastily purchased from the grocery store and the color concentration was so miserable that after using the entire tube on a quarter-batch of batter, I had only the palest of icy blues. I was able to achieve pureed a decent blue color by pureeing frozen blueberries and mixing it in with the batter and scrapped the yellow cake completely.

The ganache on the bottom of the cake stuck to the wax paper, forcing me to serve the cake on the same messy sheet that I had decorated it on, losing me presentation points right off the bat. Cutting so many small squares left crumbs all over the table, and it was very difficult to get a crumb-free frosting. Any unevenness in pressure in applying the frosting led to deformation of the cake, and the square shape gradually deteriorated into an irregular trapezoid.

The only good thing about a project like this is the sheer quantity of leftover cake you get to eat. There is excess red and blue cake, excess white cake, and two endcaps that need to be sliced off to even out all the strips of cake. Delicious, if a bit sad to look at.

Total creation time was about 3 hours, which included baking three cakes in two batches.

White Velvet Cake from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes
3 large egg whites (90 g)
2/3 cup milk (160 g)
1.5 teaspoon vanilllla extract
2 cups cake or AP flour (200 g)
1 cup baker’s sugar (200 g)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened (113 g)

The recipe above makes one 9×2 round cake, I scaled it up to a 9×2 square cake which entails multiplying everything by 1.27.

Whisk the egg whites, vanilla, and a few tablespoons of milk together until combined.

In a large bowl, beat together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until well combined and any clumps are broken up. Add the butter and remaining milk and slowly increase the speed to medium and beat for 1½ minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. The batter should be light and fluffy.

Add half of the egg mixture and beat for 30 seconds, then the other half and beat for another 30 seconds. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a cake tester comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center, about 30-40 minutes.

One batch of batter can be divided into two standard 9″ loaf pans to make the blue and red cakes. Mix in either food coloring or a fruit puree until desired color is reached and bake.

Cool completely before frosting.

Dark Chocolate Ganache
12 oz dark chocolate (62%)
5 oz heavy cream, warm
2.5 oz unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, remove from heat and add in the heavy cream, stirring until even in color and texture. Allow the chocolate to cool until warm to the touch and and gently stir in the butter and vanilla. Ganache will thicken when allowed to cool. To apply in thin layers, I ended up drizzling warm ganache to get an even application and then smoothing it out and scraping off the excess with a spatula after it thickens upon cooling. This helps to avoid stirring up any crumbs from the soft cake.

There is something about making a pretty looking pie that I have not yet learned. Crusts slide around and develop mystery holes. Toppings ooze. The whole thing is very frustrating.

Choosing this pie was an attempt to avoid some of the headaches of a proper fruit pie. Dark chocolate ganache serves as the base, while meyer lemon curd adds a sweet, tangy kick.

I still need to work on perfecting my decorative crust technique, but the flavor combination worked delightfully well. Another perk: every ingredient was something I’ve made before. The pie crust recipe is the same one that worked so nicely for the apple pie and the ganache and lemon curd are the same recipes, with mild adjustments. I’ve been progressively decreasing the amount of butter and sugar I use when I make lemon curd to make increasingly tart curds. It gets balanced out by the crust and the chocolate, but if you like less lemon-ness in your lemon curd, keep using the old recipe or adjust the sugar and butter to taste.

All Butter Pie Crust via Shuna Fish Lydon

Makes enough for a pie bottom

1 cup of all purpose flour (I used 9.2 oz)
2 tablespoons sugar
4 oz butter, cut into equal pieces and frozen
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
ice water

Assemble all dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Use paddle attachment on mixer and drop the butter in a few pieces at a time. When the chunks of butter are slightly larger than pea size, dribble in ice water until the dough just begins to come together. Do not wait until it forms a ball. It is ready when it stops looking dry and barely starts to bind to itself.

Stop the mixer and turn it on to a lightly floured work surface. Flour your hands and  just push the dough together into a ball. The dough is ready to use immediately without resting.

Roll out the pie crust and press into your pie pan. Line the crust with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or beans. Bake the crust at 350°F for about 15 minutes, or until the crust begins to turn golden. Remove the paper and weights and dock the bottom of the pie with a fork and return to the oven for another 15 minutes, until the crust is a nice golden brown.

Chocolate Ganache

1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
7 oz / 200 grams dark chocolate, chopped

Whisk the egg yolk and sugar until well combined. Melt the chocolate and cream together in a double boiler and remove from heat. Add the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture, stirring until smooth and the sugar is dissolved.

Extra Tart Meyer Lemon Curd

3/4 cup Meyer lemon juice
zest from said lemons
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
6 ounces butter, cut into small pieces

Heat a saucepan with about an inch water over medium high heat. In a metal bowl large enough to function as a double broiler, whisk together the juice, zest, sugar and egg. When the water is simmering, turn the heat down to low and place the metal bowl over the saucepan. Whisk the lemon mixture until it thickens about 5 to 6 minutes. You should be able to coat a spoon and draw a clean line on the back with a finger. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the butter one piece at a time, letting each piece get fully incorporated before adding the next. Strain the curd through a sieve or tamis to remove the zest. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled. Keeps for up to 1 week. Stir before using.

Lemon Curd Pie with Chocolate Ganache

To make the finished pie, simply layer the ganache and then the lemon curd into the pie. Refrigerate to let the curd firm up, at least 1 hr, before serving.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m not really one for sweets. My preference is to bake and then give away any desserts I make, as I’m usually sick of whatever it is by the time it comes out of the oven. Between checking the batter and testing for doneness, I’ve usually had enough. My mother started complaining about losing her sweet tooth when she was in her twenties, and her mother used to do the same to her, so it with a strong sense of family tradition that I grump to my pups about how I just don’t have an appetite for sweets anymore.

And yet it came to be that after baking these cookies last night, I forced The Boyfriend to join me in a midnight cross-town schlep to give these damn things away. Even in the course of wrapping them up for the delivery, a few of the chocolate devils managed to find their way into my mouth. And somehow during the car ride over, the plate got lighter again. I managed to save some so that I could take pictures in the sun, but as I sit here typing, my mouth is suspiciously covered in crumbs.

I just ate another one. Dammit.

The last time I made these was for a cookie exchange, and they were flown across the continent not long after coming out of the oven so I was spared this horribly delicious fate. This time, I had no one ready to remove them from my presence and I had ran out of chocolate chips and was forced to use chopped Valrhona fèves to make them even more tempting. Help. Another one just found its way into my mouth.

World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan via Smitten Kitchen

makes about 40 cookies

1¼ cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons or 150 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (120 grams) packed light brown sugar
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
½ teaspoon fleur de sel or ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup  (150 grams) chopped Valrhona fèves or chocolate chips.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking soda and set aside.

Cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the salt and vanilla and mix to combine. Add the flour mixture to the batter and pulse a few times to combine, covering the bowl with plastic wrap or a towel to prevent flyaway. Stir in chocolate.

Gather the dough and divide into two. Roll each half out into a smooth log about 1½ inches in diameter and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 3 days (you can shorten the cooling time by sticking it in the freezer for 20 minutes immediately after wrapping and then moving it to the fridge for 30-40 minutes).

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Slice the cookies into ½ inch slices and bake for 12 minutes. Dough will still be soft. Serve warm or at room temperature with milk.

Do me a favor and click  to see the large version of this picture. Please.

I don’t really care for Valentine’s Day, but once I saw the recipe, I couldn’t resist making this rich, fudgy, chocolate cake. I just can’t stop baking from this cookbook. The cakes that come out have great texture and flavor and the pairings with frostings and glazes are spot on. If you are looking for a cake recipe book to buy, this one is it. Just stock up on eggs and butter and renew your gym membership first.

Double Chocolate Valentine from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9 x 2 cake pan with a cake strip, coat the bottom with a thin layer of shortening and top with a sheet of parchment cut to shape. Butter and lightly flour the inside. Turn the cake upside down and tap to remove excess flour.

Whisk together the cocoa and boiling water until smooth and cover and let cool to room temperature. Whisk together the egg yolks, the 3 tablespoons water and the vanilla until just combined and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until well combined and any clumps are broken up. Add the butter and the cocoa mixture and slowly increase the speed to medium and beat for 1½ minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. The batter should be light and fluffy.

Add half of the egg mixture and beat for 30 seconds, then the other half and beat for another 30 seconds. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a cake tester comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center, about 30-40 minutes.

Ganache Glaze

Scald the cream and pour it into a bowl over the chopped chocolate. Whisk until smooth and set aside. By the way, if you taste the ganache glaze by itself, it will seem a little too dark. Paired with the cake though, the two complement each other beautifully.

When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes into the top and brush half of the glaze onto the cake. Wait 10 minutes and flip the cake onto a flat surface covered with plastic wrap. Remove the parchment paper and brush the remaining glaze onto the cake. Cool until the chocolate is firm to the touch, at least 1 hour.

If the chocolate is set you can now transfer the cake by flipping it onto a flat, plastic-wrapped plate, and then again onto your final cake destination*.

Cover the cake with fresh raspberries (one of the perks of living where I do is that fresh raspberries are available at the farmer’s market in February) and dab with warmed red currant jelly.

*Final Cake Destination would be an awesome movie. Or a truly terrible one.

And…we’re done. The final bundt was an adaptation of Kiss My Bundt’s Red Velvet Bundt, as published in the LA Times and found via The Food Librarian’s epic Thirty Days of Bundt.

As I am apparently in a storytelling mood, here are a few random factoids before we get to the recipe.

Numero uno: I am, and always will be, against food coloring for the sake of food coloring. So, no dye.

Item II: It used to be the case that Devil’s Food Cake and Red Velvet were the same thing. The names used to reflect the ginger color that resulted from a reaction between (alkalized) cocoa powder and acidic buttermilk. Then at some point they diverged and Devil’s Food Cake meant chocolate cake and Red Velvet was cake with red food coloring and eventually there was not so much chocolate in the Red Velvet cake, and plenty of red dye instead.

C) There is no C.

Four. Funny story about Dutch processed cocoa, aka alkalized cocoa. When I made my first batch of Red-Headed Stepchild Velvet Cupcakes, I used non-alkalized fancy cocoa powder, because The Boyfriend is a chocolate snob. When I offered him a warm cupcake fresh out of the oven, he said “It’s good,  I can still taste the baking powder.” Well, you can clearly see from the recipe that there is no baking powder, so I retorted hotly that in the course of running errands that day, I had run out of time to travel to the nega dimension to buy nega baking powder to counteract the complete absence of baking powder. Later, I realized he was tasting the tang of buttermilk (which, by the way, tastes nothing like baking powder) and I switched to alkalized cocoa. Thus ended his Monday-morning backseat guessing of the cupcakes.

Extra Chocolatey Not-Red Velvet Bundt Cake adapted from Kiss My Bundt recipe

I upped the cocoa powder in this recipe quite a bit and ended up with a rich chocolate cake. You can adjust back down to one tablespoon of cocoa for the original recipe or split the difference and go with two.

1¼ cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups flour (I used 11.5 oz)
1¾ cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon fine salt
3 tablespoons high-fat cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and set aside 10 cup bundt pan. Combine oil, buttermilk, eggs, vinegar, and vanilla and beat well. In a separate bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined. Pour into bundt pan and bake until a tester comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before inverting. Let cool at least one hour before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups powdered sugar, sifted

Beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until well combined. Gradually add the powdered sugar and beat until well combined and frosting is light and fluffy. Apply frosting. Let me know if you figure out how to do this on a bundt shape without looking like a hot mess.

Are you ready for National Bundt Day? The Food Librarian is. And thanks to her, I am too. She is baking a bundt for every single day of the month leading up to November 15, and the itch for me to bake grew stronger and stronger until I suddenly found myself with a bundt in the oven as well. The Boyfriend and I are very excited.

He requested chocolate cake, and so chocolate cake it was. I was under some time pressure so I looked for a fast and easy recipe that didn’t require room temperature ingredients or other planning ahead. This recipe is actually from the Food Librarian’s bundt archives. Apparently she made it four times in one week, she liked it so much. With that kind of endorsement, how could I not try it? The Boyfriend had thirds. Several friends had seconds. There was not enough cake to go around. I think I can safely say that it was a success.

Cinnamon Chocolate Bundt Cake via The Food Librarian

1 cup water
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup butter
5 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 cups (I used 9.3 oz) all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs, beaten
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375°F.  In a small saucepan, bring the water, oil, butter, and cocoa powder to a boil. Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the boiling mixture to the flour mixture and stir well. Add in the buttermilk and baking soda. Combine the eggs, cinnamon and vanilla in a small bowl and add to the batter. Stir until just combined. Pour into a greased bundt pan and bake for
30-35 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan before removing.

Edit: The bundt pan is from Williams-Sonoma and despite what it says on the site, it is available in stores.

So, I have this problem. Well, I have many problems. But I’m talking about one in particular today. If I sit down and write a blog post and hit send, that’s all well and good. If I write 90% of a blog post and then get interrupted at some point, or save it to finish later, no one is ever going to see it again. Which is why these pictures of cupcakes have been up on flickr for almost 3 weeks now and you still don’t have a recipe.

So I thought maybe I’ll just post the damn recipe and tell you stories about cupcakes later.

These are red velvet cupcakes minus the red food coloring. The acidic buttermilk reacts with the cocoa to create a reddish tint, which is how the original cupcakes got their name. The actual un-dyed color is really more of a ginger shade.

Red-Headed Stepchild Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

10 oz All Purpose flour
5 tablespoons cornstarch

Alternately, use 12.5 oz cake flour instead of the AP flour and cornstarch

1½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon dutch process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1½ cups vegetable oil (I use olive oil for this so it’s healthier)
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar

Preheat oven to 350°F. Sift together dry ingredients. Beat together wet ingredients until smooth. Mix wet and dry ingredients and beat until uniform, about 2 minutes. Pour into muffin tins lined with cupcake liners, bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Makes 12 jumbo cupcakes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

You’ve probably noticed by now that I make a lot of cream cheese frosting with slightly varying proportions of butter, cream cheese, and sugar depending on the specific dessert. For this one, I used

8 oz cream cheese
8 oz butter, softened
~1 tsp vanilla (does anyone actually measure vanilla? I always just eyeball it)
About 2 cups confectioner’s sugar

Sometimes a well intentioned blog post goes awry when the outcome is so delicious that it gets devoured before you can take a proper photo. There were only 9 misshapen cookies left when I took this picture, and I chose to snap two pictures and stuff them in my mouth instead of spending more time making them look more photogenic.

Cocoa Shortbread

1 cup AP flour
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300°F. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in butter with pastry cutter. Add vanilla and shape into a ball. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch and cut with cookie cutter. Bake on parchment paper lined sheets for 20-25 minutes, until firm. Let cool.

Chocolate Mousse
1 1/2 cup Heavy Cream
8 oz Semisweet Chocolate Chips

Heat 1/2 cup of the cream until almost to a boil and pour into a bowl over the chocolate chips. Stir until smooth. Whip remainder of the cream and gently fold in chocolate mixture. Refrigerate until ready to use.

When cookies are cool, smear mousse on cookies to make sandwiches. Alternately, for maximum gluttony points, serve mousse in tiny Le Creuset cocottes and use cookies as spoons.

You can, of course, just make the Sourdough Chocolate Cake without going to the extra step of making bite-sized chocolate covered cake-and-frosting balls. This recipe makes a light, moist cake that tastes nothing like sourdough, but does conveniently lessen the amount of starter in your fridge. Good for when you just don’t feel up to making Sourdough Hippo Biscuit Surprise.

Sourdough Chocolate Cake adapted from King Arthur Flour

1 cup (8 ½ ounces) sourdough starter, fed and “rested”
1 cup (8 ounces) milk or evaporated milk
2 cups (8 ½ ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 ½ cups (10 ½ ounces) sugar
½ cup (3½ ounces) vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
2 large eggs

Combine starter, milk and flour and let rest 2-3 hours until just bubbling. In second bowl, combine remaining ingredients, beating well after each egg. Gently add starter mixture, taking care not to fold too much to deter gluten production.

Pour into greased 9×13 cake pan or two 9″ rounds and bake at 350ºF for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick/butterknife/cake tester comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting
2 packages cream cheese (16oz), softened
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
Confectioner’s sugar to taste, I use about 1 1/2 cups instead of the recommended 3

Mix well.

Now it’s time to make cake balls.

After cake is cooled, crumble into a large bowl. Mix thoroughly with frosting and roll into large gumball sized balls.

Now here’s where I get into trouble because my chocolate tempering skills are terrible. The chocolate on these cake balls never set properly and so I have no good advice to give you. They’re still delicious, but they are damn messy.

What I did: melt semi-sweet chocolate chips in double boiler, remove from heat, add more chocolate chips, stir, dip cake balls in chocolate, rolling with a spoon and scooping out. Let cool on parchment paper and refrigerate until chocolate is hardened. What I need to do: learn how to temper chocolate properly.

You may want to follow bakerella’s advice and use chocolate bark. Me? I’m going to keep trying to temper chocolate and eating the rejects, Lucy style.