4 posts tagged “cake”
And then there was the lemon cake. The meyerless lemon cake I wrote about on this very blog almost 2 and half years ago. The tart, fragrant, lemon cake that I started longing for when we were in the midst of packing to move in mid-February. Not a great time for extensive kitchen usage. By April we were settled in enough in our new digs that I was able to bake a cake. But now that cake, with it's tangy, sweet glaze and candied lemon slices seemed practically austere in comparison to the fluffy white Dinkel's cake. So I decided to whip up some creamy frosting and convert the recipe to cupcakes (easier for transporting to Deerfield where we shared them over dinner with my college roommate Heidi, who was also expecting, and her family).
When I spotted a cute little bag of meyer lemons in the Jewel last week - and let me just digress for a second to say, how weird is it that they have something as esoteric as meyer lemons yet they don't have any cupcake liners except for ones with Disney princesses on them?? Oh Jewel, you fickle bitch. Anyhow, when I saw the lemons I decided to ressurect the cupcake recipe for my weekend's social activities - a meet up with some other Chicago area moms & babies, and brunch at my friend Juliet's with her family. I'm happy to say that not only do pregnant ladies love these cupcakes, they are also popular with mothers, fathers, and most children.
Meyer Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from Domino and Bon Apetit
Ingredients:
14 Tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter
4 large eggs, separated
1¼ cups sugar
2/3 cup buttermilk
6 meyer lemons
2 cups cake flour or all purpose flour
1¼ teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 8-ounce package of cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions:
Set out 6 Tablespoons of butter and the package of cream cheese to come to room temperature.
Preheat the oven to 325° F.
Melt the remaining 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) of butter in saucepan. Set aside and let cool.
Using a microplane zester, zest 5 of the lemons. Set aside 1 teaspoon of zest for the frosting. Squeeze the juice from the zested lemons to yield about 1/2 cup of juice. Set aside.
Line 2 cupcake pans with paper liners. (Or if you only have 1 pan, you can just bake them in 2 batches, just make sure to let the pan cool to room temperature before pouring in the 2nd batch of batter.)
In a mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, beat egg yolks with 1 cup of the sugar until thick and light in color, about 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in buttermilk, lemon juice, and zest.
Sift together cake flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer until they hold soft peaks. Then add ¼ cup of sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
Fold half the flour mixture into egg-yolk mixture, followed by half the egg white mixture—so you don't deflate the batter. Repeat with remaining flour and egg white mixtures.
Take about 1 cup of the batter and stir it into melted butter. Gently fold butter mixture into the rest of the cake batter.
Spoon batter into cupcake liners in pan, up to about 1/2 an inch from the top. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until toothpick stuck in center comes out dry. Allow cupcakes to cool in pan for 15 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack.
While the cupcakes are baking, make the frosting and garnishes. Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar. Beat in reserved 1 teaspoon of lemon zest and vanilla.
Use a canelle to carve long strips around the remaining lemon and then use your fingers to twist the strips into tight coils. Set aside curls.
Squeeze the juice from the lemon and fold it into the frosting, then cover and refrigerate until firm enough to spread, at least 30 minutes.
When the cupcakes are fully cooled, use a cake decorating tip spiral peaks of frosting onto cupcakes, or simply spread frosting on with a knife. Garnish with lemon peel curls.
makes about 20 cupcakes
However, we wily Jews can make lemonade out of any lemony situation, and have found a way to have our cake and eat it too, even during Passover.
The Torah says you're not allowed to eat any wheat, barley, rye, spelt, or oats that have come in contact with water for more than 18 minutes before being cooked. But if you mix together flour and water and cook it before 18 minutes elapses, then grind the resultant crackers back into powder, you can use that for baking cakes, dumplings, pancakes, or basically anything you like. This magical get-out-of-carbo-jail-free substance is commonly known as matzoh meal.
I will admit that I was not too optomistic about the prospect of a matzoh meal cake. The only Passover cake I'd heard of previous to this week was matzoh meal sponge cake. I was not enthused. I don't even like regular sponge cake - it's dry, rubbery, and tasteless. So taking dry, tasteless cake and substituting matzoh meal for the flour did not seem like a great culinary idea.
However, the idea of substituting ground nuts for the flour did seem like a good one. I made an almond cake a few weeks ago that was absolutely divine (soon I will get around to posting about it, I promise!) and something rich and nutty sounded like just the thing for Jorie's and my Sephardic-inspired seder menu. Fortunately epicurious.com has a wealth of great sounding non-sponge cake Passover dessert recipes. I decided to put two of them to the test this week.
The first one was a Honey Nut Cake, pictured above. Basically it's ground almonds and walnuts mixed with sugar, eggs, oil, and a little tiny bit of matzoh cake meal, baked, and then soaked in a honey-orange syrup. I tested this dessert on our dinner guests, Heather and Johnny, last Saturday night. Nutty, sweet, sticky, and vaguely Greek-seeming, this cake went perfectly with the yummy dessert wine Heather had brought from her collection. Everyone reached for seconds, so I considered the dessert a success.
Recipe note: If by any chance you cannot find matzoh cake meal (in Chicago look for it at Dominick's on Division) you can make your own by pulsing regular unsalted matzoh meal in a clean coffee grinder until it resembles the consistency of flour.
Honey Nut Cake
from A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking by Marcy Goldman via epicurious
Ingredients:
Cake
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
3 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon finely minced orange zest
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon ( or 1/2 teaspoon for a more pronounced cinnamon flavor)
1/2 cup matzoh cake meal
1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts or almonds
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
Soaking Syrup
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup orange juice
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously grease a 7-inch round layer cake
pan (if you do not have one, you can use a round foil pan of the same
or similar size available in the supermarket baking aisle).
Cake:
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, using a wire whisk, beat the granulated
and brown sugars with the oil and eggs until the mixture is thick and
pale yellow. Stir in the remaining batter ingredients. Turn the batter
into the prepared pan.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the top is light brown and set. Cool for at least 20 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the Soaking Syrup.
Soaking Syrup:
In a medium saucepan, combine the ingredients. Heat to dissolve the
sugar and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, until the mixture becomes syrupy.
Cool well.
Pour the cooled syrup over the cooled cake, poking holes in the cake
with a fork, to permit the syrup to penetrate. Allow it to stand for 2
to 4 hours to absorb the syrup. I prefer to refrigerate this cake so
that while it is absorbing the liquid, it is also firming up. Also,
chilling the cake offsets its sweetness and makes it easier to cut.
Serve it on splayed muffin liners.
Serves 10-12. To serve more, double the recipe and bake it in a rectangular 9x13 pan (or 2 round cake pans).
adapted from Gourmet magazine via epicurious
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups walnuts (51/2 oz), toasted in a 275 degree oven for 15-20 minutes and cooled
1/2 cup matzo cake meal
8 large eggs, separated, at room temperature for 30 minutes
1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh orange zest
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 oz bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), coarsely grated using 1/4-inch teardrop-shaped holes of a box grater, or just pulsed in a food processor if you find grating a candybar as much of a pain in the ass as I do.
Instructions:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.
Insert bottom of a 10 inch springform pan upside down (so that turned-up edge faces down for easier removal of cake). Grease well and dust with matzo cake meal to coat.
Pulse walnuts with 3 tablespoons matzo cake meal in a food processor until nuts are finely chopped (be careful not to pulse to a paste). Add remaining 5 tablespoons matzo cake meal and pulse until mixture resembles a grainy flour.
Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until they form soft peaks. Add 2/3 cup sugar a little at a time, beating until whites just hold stiff peaks.
Beat together yolks and remaining 2/3 cup sugar with 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large bowl at medium-high speed until thick and pale, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer or about 5 minutes with a handheld. Fold in nut flour, then zest, juice, and vanilla. Fold grated chocolate into batter gently but thoroughly. Fold in one third of whites to lighten batter, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.
Pour batter into greased and dusted springform pan, smoothing top, and bake
until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center comes out clean, 50
minutes to 1 hour. Cool in pan on a rack 15 minutes, then run a thin
sharp knife between cake and side of pan. Remove side of pan and cool
cake completely. Invert cake onto rack and run knife between cake and
bottom of pan to remove bottom, then flip onto a plate. If you like, top with lightly sweetened whipped cream.
Serves 8-10
Baking has always intimidated the hell out of me. Cooking is a fluid process, full of chances to taste and adjust along the way. With baking, you miss one teaspoon of some crucial powder at the beginning of the process, and your whole recipe is a disaster. And substitutions are way easier in cooking too. Don't have any butter? Saute in oil instead! Out of green beans for your stir fry? Throw in some broccoli or whatever you find in the produce crisper! But just try using margarine in your cookie dough and you will be left with spongy, tasteless lumps where your chocolate chip cookies should be. And cookies are supposedly one of the easiest things to bake!
I pretty much gave up on baking when I moved to Chicago. When I first got here, I lived in a tiny studio apartment that had an ancient 3/4 size oven that you had to light with a match. Having only cooked with electric ovens up to this point, I had never really considered the process of lighting a gas oven. The first thing you do to bake something is turn the oven on, right? So I turned on the gas, and searched for my matches. I found a little paper booklet for the restaurant where I was waitressing at the time, tore off one little cardboard strip and tried to strike it. The match wouldn't light. I tried again and it tore in half. OK, fine. I pulled off another match. This one I managed to light. I opened the oven door and leaned down to the little hole my landlady had shown me for lighting the oven. And then, all of a sudden... FOOOOOOOM! For a split second, I was engulfed in a fireball. Instantly, it receeded into the oven, and hummed away as if nothing was the matter, just doing it's oven job, nothing to see here, move along, people. I gingerly closed the oven door. As my hand moved away from the door handle, I glimpsed gray dust on my wrist. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that my arm hair had been sizzled away. Oh, god, my hair. I reached up and felt my hairline. What was formerly wispy baby hair was now short and spiky. And what about my eyebrows and eyelashes! Would I look like a bald-faced cancer patient? I walked over 8 feet to my bathroom. Thankfully only the inner quarter of one eyebrow had been burnt off, and there was still enough stubble there to give a decent impression of brownness until the hairs grew back. It could have been worse. Still, I refused to make any dish involving an oven for the next four years.
In a later apartment with a self-lighting oven, I finally ventured back beneath the stove as I discovered the joys of broiling. And soon I was baking - potatoes, chicken, even lasagne! But still cakes and baked desserts were beyond my comfort zone. With cooking I could correct my missteps. But baking? I was nowhere near being a perfect enough cook to try that.
But recently I have had a cooking epiphany: you don't have to do things perfectly to bake good desserts either. NYT restaurant critic Ruth Reichl says in her wonderful memoir, Tender at the Bone, "I discovered the secret of every experienced cook: desserts are a cheap trick. People love them even when they're bad. And so I began to bake, appreciating the alchemy that can turn flour, water, chocolate and butter into devil's food cake and make it disappear in a flash. Boys, in particular, seemed to like it."
Case in point - my Valentine's day dessert. I had planned to make vanilla bean loaves, a cake recipe from the Hi-Rise Bread Company in Massachussets, published in good old Cooking for Mr. Latte. I ran into several hurdles along the way. First of all, I got started a lot later than I intended to. My plan was to make the cakes in the morning, but due to gratuitous romance on my husband's part and gratuitous dawdling on my part, I didn't get started until late afternoon when I was already supposed to be focusing on the dinner courses. I went to the cabinet to get out my two loaf pans, but found I only had one, so I had to halve the recipe. No big deal so far.
Then I realized I was supposed to start with room temperature butter and eggs. My eggs were in the refrigerator and most of my butter was in the freezer. I stuck 1 1/2 sticks of frozen butter in the microwave for a minute, hoping to soften them a little. My microwave is notoriously low-powered - after a minute, the butter was still rock hard. I tried one more minute - and found a puddle of melted butter surrounded by some soft lumps. Argh. I used a tablespoon to measure the lumps, which turned out to be only one stick's worth of butter. I saved the melted butter for my risotto and threw in half a stick of butter from the refrigerator. Half ultra-soft butter and half cold hard butter - that should even out to room temperature, right?
Then I realized I was supposed to cream the vanilla sugar and butter with a stand mixer's paddle attachment - I don't have a stand mixer. I only have a hand mixer, and the beaters are distinctly un-paddle shaped. Consequently, the butter/sugar mixture did not get fluffy as directed. No matter how long I mixed it, it remained sort of crumbly and granular. Even when I mixed in the eggs and vanilla bean, it didn't get smooth, it just formed this kind of liquidy, lumpy batter. Not pretty.
I didn't have time to fret since I was having risotto issues and dealing with my shallot marmalade and duck at the same time. So I just proceeded to the next step, sift the baking powder and salt together with the flour. I plumbed the depths of my flour cannister, but was only able to come up with 3/4 cup of flour, and I needed 1 1/4 cups for even my halved recipe. Not worried yet, I checked the freezer. Whenever I buy a bag of flour, I fill my flour cannister and put the rest of the bag in the freezer, to prevent bugs from getting into it. Well, when I opened the freezer, all that was there was WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR! AAAAAAAAAArrgh! Who ever heard of whole wheat flour in a cake?? OK. Fine. Whatever. I used half a cup of the whole wheat flour to supplement the rest of my white flour and sifted it together with the salt and baking powder. I combined the powders with my gross looking chunky batter and the mixture looked marginally better. Somewhat heartened, I poured it in my one loaf pan and baked in the oven.
Then about half an hour later I realized I forgot to add the vanilla extract. D'OH! The whole point of the cake was that it was saturated with vanilla flavor - with vanilla-infused sugar, a vanilla bean AND VANILLA EXTRACT in the batter, and vanilla bean syrup brushed on top. I decided to just add the extract to the vanilla syrup that I was making to glaze the cake with. At least that part of the recipe would be extra vanilla-y. I was so burnt out on this dumb catastrophe of a recipe that when the cake was done, I didn't even bother cooling it on a rack and brushing with the syrup. Instead I just poured the entire pot of syrup over the cake into the loaf pan and let it sit there until I was ready to deal.
After a couple glasses of wine, what turned out to be a delicious meal, and some sweet nothings from my Valentine, I was ready to check on the condition of my botched dessert.
Turns out Ruth Reichl was right - even with all my myriad mistakes, the cake was still pretty darn scrumptious. And boys in particular do like it.
Impossible to Ruin Vanilla Bean Loaves
adapted from the Hi-Rise Bread Company in Cambridge, Massachussets
Ingredients:
3 sticks unsalted butter
4 1/4 cups sugar
4 vanilla beans
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
8 large eggs
3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions:
THREE DAYS BEFORE BAKING, make vanilla sugar. Split one vanilla bean, scraping the seeds into 2 1/2 cups of sugar. Place the split bean pod in the sugar and stir well.
ONE HOUR BEFORE BAKING, bring butter and eggs out on countertop to warm to room temperature.
Heavily butter two 8x4x3 inch (or similarly sized) loaf pans and preheat your oven to 325F.
Using an electric mixer, preferably a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and vanilla sugar until the mixture is pale and fully. Scrape one vanilla bean and flick its seeds into the mixture. Add the vanilla extract and the eggs and beat to mix.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Add to the batter and mix just until smooth, using a spatula to scrape the sides and the bottom, making sure everything is well blended.
Divide the batter between the two buttered pans. Bake for 30 minutes, then turn the pans around and bake until a cake tester or skewer comes out almost clean, another 25 to 40 minutes.
While loaves are baking, prepare the vanilla syrup. In a small pan, dissolve 1 3/4 cups sugar in 1 cup of water over medium heat. Add the 2 remaining vanilla beans and stir so their seeds and fragrance disperse. Take pan off heat.
Place a baking rack over a baking sheet. When the loaves are done, cool for 10 minutes on baking racks, then turn them out of their pans and set back on the racks. Brush loaves generously all over--bottoms, tops and sides--with vanilla syrup. Repeat the brushing process a couple of more times as they cool. These cakes store and freeze well.
Makes 8 generous servings of cake (about 16 hearty slices)
Unfortunately they did not have meyer lemons at the store, so I had to make do with regular lemons. I also added one orange to the recipe since I've heard that meyer lemons are sweeter than regular ones. I don't have a lot of baking experience but the cake turned out great - it was light, moist and super lemony. My only regret is that my glaze did not turn white like in the magazine photo. But I would definitely make this again. Between the four of us, we devoured the whole thing while watching an episode of Lost projected onto a movie screen in Nate & Tasha's swanky media room. A perfect ending to the week.
Meyer Lemon Cake when you can't find Meyer Lemons
(makes one 9-inch cake)
8 tbsp. unsalted butter
4 large eggs, separated
3¼ cups sugar
2/3 cup buttermilk
4 lemons
1 orange
2 cups cake flour*
1¼ tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 2/3 cups confectioners' sugar
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 325° F.
Melt 1 stick of butter in saucepan. Cool and set aside.
Zest 2 of the lemons and the orange. Set aside zest. Squeeze the juice from the zested lemons and orange to yield about 2/3 cup of juice. Set aside.
Butter and flour a 9-inch cakepan or Bundt pan.
In a mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, beat egg yolks with 1 cup of the sugar until thick and light in color, about 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in buttermilk, 1/3 cup of citrus juice, and zest.
Sift together cake flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer until they hold soft peaks. Then add ¼ cup of sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
Fold half the flour mixture into egg-yolk mixture, followed by half the egg white mixture—so you don't deflate the batter. Repeat with remaining flour and egg white mixtures.
Take about 1 cup of the batter and stir it into melted butter. Gently fold butter mixture into the rest of the cake batter.
Pour into buttered and floured 9-inch cake pan or Bundt pan, and bake for about 50 to 60 minutes until cake is lightly brown and pulling slightly away from the edge of the pan.
While cake is baking, make glaze and candied Meyer lemon slices. For glaze, combine the remaining citrus juice (about 1/3 cup) and the confectioners' sugar in a saucepan. Heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved. Set aside.
For the candied slices, cut Meyer lemons widthwise, in ¼ inch slices, and discard end pieces. Remove seeds. In a saucepan, combine 2 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer five minutes. Add lemon slices and simmer about five more minutes, until fruit is soft but not falling apart. With a slotted spoon, remove slices and place on waxed or parchment paper.
When the cake is baked, cool in the pan for 5 minutes, and then invert onto a cooling rack.
With a long toothpick, poke the top of the cake to make about two dozen small deep holes. Slowly spoon the warm glaze over the cake, allowing to sink in before adding more. Poke extra holes if needed, eventually using all the glaze.
Arrange the candied lemon slices in a random pattern on top. Cool the cake completely and serve.
*PS I didn't use cake flour either. This is only like the 3rd cake I've ever baked - I'm don't have the frame of mind/amount of cabinet space to own cake flour yet. But all-purpose flour worked just fine.
