Rose's Alpha Bakers: Chocolate Cuddle Cake

Week six of my bake-through adventure with Rose's Alpha Bakers is the Chocolate Cuddle Cake, from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Baking Bible. I'm back in school this semester and had some studying and a paper to write this week so I made an abbreviated Cuddle Cake; I omitted the caramel whipped cream topping and just covered the cake with the ganache. I had some darker ganache left over from my Ischler cookies so I drizzled that over the top in a sort of crisscrossing pattern. Not the prettiest cake I've ever made, but it was chocolatey and delicious!

a very light and tender cake

The cake was a chiffon cake, so it's leavened by beating the egg whites into a meringue and folding that into the batter. The recipe called for what seemed like a lot of sugar, so I was a little worried that the cake would be too sweet, like some chiffon cakes are, but the cocoa powder cut the sweetness and it was just right. 

The cake's texture was extremely light (almost fluffy) and very tender. It was also very moist (some chiffon cakes can be dry, in my opinion); going on day 3, it's still very fresh and moist. My only complaint was that the ganache was very firm when it cooled so it was less like frosting and more like...almost like a chocolate truffle topping. The ganache melted in your mouth, so still delicious, but I would have liked a softer ganache as frosting.

The ganache is made first and set aside to firm up for a few hours. Next time I might add a touch more kahlua because the flavor got lost in the finished ganache.

the ganache called for kahlua...yum!

so easy, but I forgot to add the kahlua when it was in the food processor...
no problem, I'll just stir it in

Now on to the cake!

mise en place for the cake

The cocoa powder is melted with boiling water and the cooled slightly. Then the oil, egg yolks, and vanilla are added.

combining the wet ingredients

mixing the wet and dry ingredients

Then the wet ingredients are added to the dry ingredients and mixed well. I only have one bowl for my stand mixer and didn't want to take the chance of my meringue being deflated by any traces of oil, so I just mixed these ingredients by hand. Whisk whisk whisk!

after whisking for several minutes my batter is smooth and shiny

Now it's time for the meringue. This was actually quite fun and easy to make and was very pretty when done. The egg whites and cream of tartar are whisked until soft peaks form. Then some sugar is added and the mixture is whisked again until stiff peaks form. The final meringue was smooth and glossy.

soft peaks...still very foamy and bubbly

now whipped into stiff peaks...a gorgeous meringue!

When you reach the stiff peak stage, you're ready to incorporate the egg whites into the chocolate batter. Gently fold in the egg whites otherwise your beautiful meringue will deflate.

looks like a snowy mountaintop...so cute!

carefully folding the meringue into the chocolate batter

don't completely incorporate the meringue (until the final addition)
or the egg whites will deflate and the cake will be flat

I had to improvise with my pan set-up because I didn't have the required cake strips (which go around the pan and help it bake evenly)...so I just wrapped a few layers of aluminum foil around the side of my cake and it came out just fine.

Before baking a flower nail (used for making sugar flowers) is inserted into the batter which helps the batter rise evenly.

voila, my handy-dandy flower nail

my finished cake! It even has cracks on the top,
just like Rose said it would.

The cake is cooled upside down on this ingenious cooling rack set-up. Cooling it upside down helps to avoid the dip in the center of the cake often seen in a chiffon cake.

the cooling rack is elevated on the edges of some glasses

and here is my upside down cake, cooling

when the cake is completely cooled, the pan is removed and the
parchment strip is carefully peeled away

now it's time to frost!

My crisscross ganache decoration was a bit messy, but tasted delicious!

I'll just pretend I was going for an avant-garde look

the finished cake is lovely

time for a bite...yum!

Bye for now...

Lemon Hazelnut Dacquoise Torte

This was one of the first recipes I made when I took my first class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts several years ago. Every now and then I think about how delicious it was and wanted to try to make it again. The dacquoise torte is nutty and sweet and the whipped cream filling is light and lemony. Something about the combination of flavors and textures never left me and it was as good as I remembered! Next time I make it I will try whipping the egg whites to a stiffer peak because I felt that my dacquoise discs were a bit flat. But really, who cares since they tasted so delicious!

Recipes are from an Advanced Baking Class at Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.


Ingredients, Dacquoise
6 egg whites
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1 c. sugar
1 Tbls. vanilla extract
2 c. toasted and finely ground hazelnuts, mixed with 2 Tbls. cornstarch
zest of 2 lemons

toasted hazelnuts - smells divine!

I learned a great trick in my class to remove the nut skins. After they are toasted, while they are still warm, wrap up a handful in a clean kitchen towel and rub the toasted nuts vigorously between your hands...and, voila!

skins removed

nuts and cornstarch

pulsed into a fine grind

mise en place for the dacquoise

sugar and vanilla added, definitely should have whipped my egg whites to a stiffer peak though

fold in nuts and lemon zest

At this point I could tell that my dacquoise - which is basically a meringue with ground nuts - was too soft. The mixture was more like a soft whipped cream, rather than a stiff meringue. Oh well, I'll keep going!

all folded together

filling the pastry bag, fitted with a large plain tip

piped into rounds; I made them smaller than the recommended 8"

The dacquoise gets baked in a low temp oven so they get dried out. Mine ended up sadly flat and a little chewy. I can't remember whether the texture was exactly the same as when I made them in class...should they have been chewy or crisp? I tend to think that they should be chewy, due to the nuts.

In an effort to get them to crisp up, I considered whether or not I should have continued to bake the dacquoise - maybe at a lower temperature - but since they were browning on the top at this point, I took them out to cool.

they smell fabulous!

Ingredients, Light Lemon Cream (lemon curd lightened with whipped cream)
5 lemons, zest and juice
4 whole eggs
4 egg yolks
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter (1 stick), cold, cut into small pieces
2 c. heavy cream, whipped

mise en place for the light lemon cream

lemon curd ingredients into a saucepan (although, eek, I should have whisked the
ingredients - sans butter - together first! oops.)

finished lemon curd, strained and cooling in an ice bath

folding in the whipped cream

all done - delicious!

Now it's time to assemble everything. I added some fresh raspberries. I think layering the lemon cream with a raspberry puree would be wonderful as well.

lemon cream, ready to be piped

the middle layer...kind of messy

a star tip creates a pretty top layer

all done!

a mini one

the chewy nutty dacquoise with the smooth lemon cream is a delicious combination!

Bye for now...

In the classroom: petit fours, Jan. 2011

Last weekend, my sister-in-law and I took another class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, Petit Fours with Master Pastry Chef Delphin Gomes. And once again, it was fantastic. Primarily we made pâte à choux and baked it in puffs and éclairs and also made some tiny fruit tarts with pâte sucre and almond cream base.

Chef Delphin taught us his method of making pâte à choux in a mixer instead of mixing, mixing, mixing like mad on the stovetop. It worked wonderfully, of course.

Here is the "mashed potato" stage: water, butter and salt have been brought to a boil (butter completely melted) and added to the flour. It really does look exactly like mashed potatoes! Sixteen eggs are also ready to go into the dough.

mashed potato stage

eggs at the ready

The dough gets mixed for about 1 minute to bring it down to 155 degrees and then the eggs are added, two at a time.

adding the eggs

With the addition of the two eggs at a time, the dough will kind of fall apart before coming back together. Once it starts to come back together, add the next two eggs. You may need +/- an egg. The dough is done when it is smooth and shiny. Another way to test whether it's ready is to take a pinch between your thumb and forefinger and start to separate your fingers. If the dough forms a thick thread as you pull apart, it's ready. Here is our finished dough, ready to pipe.

smooth, shiny, beautiful!

Here are Chef's samples for us to copy. They're perfect...might be hard to live up to that!

Chef's samples...very nice

Here are mine...not too shabby!

looking good so far...

mine look just like Chef's...I wish! Better keep practicing.

After sis-in-law and I piped three trays of pâte à choux, we made a recipe of Almond Cream filling and piped it into tiny tart shells.

tiniest tart shells I've ever seen, filled with almond cream

almond cream tartlets baked and turned out of the tins

The class has been busy. Here are all of our puffs and éclairs, waiting to be filled. Wow, that's a lot of puffs!

are we really going to fill all of these?

éclairs, waiting to be filled

more puffs - the ovals are for the swans

Sis-in-law and I preparing the fruit tarts. Each piece of fruit is dipped into an apricot glaze and then placed on top of the tiny tart.

we only had about 80 to do...how long would hundreds or thousands take?

it was slow going, but we're almost done

meanwhile, Chef made these beauties with lemon curd and meringue

it's all about the presentation...they are pretty adorable all lined up in their little paper cups

Everyone in class is done now. All together we made the tiny tartlets, swans filled with Chantilly cream; two types of éclairs filled with coffee and chocolate flavored pastry cream; and creme puffs filled with four types of flavored pastry cream: rum, cherry, orange and hazelnut. They all look so nice!

swans filled with Chantilly cream

filled with orange pastry cream and topped with fondant icing

filled with rum flavored cream and topped with caramel

filled with cherry flavored pastry cream, topped with fondant icing and drizzled with chocolate

boxed up to take home

more pastries

the tiny ones are so cute!

yum!

a solitary swan...

Bye for now...