Penney’s Palate

I decided to write about the Mextoberfest cake that I made, and realized that I had a few unpublished drafts hanging out on my dashboard. The dashboard says that the last time I edited this post was September 2009. Whoops! And this isn’t the only draft in my dashboard either.

Panna Cotta is one of my favorite desserts to make and eat. It is soft, creamy, a little sweet, and perfectly rich. It is like a pudding, but more decadent. We ate it at a restaurant once and it was garnished with a strawberry with some Vincotto drizzled on top. It was heavenly, so we bought some Vincotto while we were in New York (couldn’t find any here in Charleston) and then I recreated the dish.

I’ve also made panna cotta with honey poured into the ramekins before the panna cotta is poured in, so that the honey is on top once the panna cotta is inverted onto a plate. The dark speckles are the vanilla beans that sunk to the bottom of the ramekin. I like it just as much as the lemon panna cotta, except that it looks pretty ugly.

Lemon Panna Cotta

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
zest of 2 lemons
juice of 2 lemons
1 1/4 gelatin leaves

Preparation
Mix together zest and sugar with fingers until zest has been mixed in well with the sugar.  Add the sugar and zest to a small saucepan with the heavy cream.  Add the juice and bring to a simmer.

Meanwhile, soak the gelatin leaves in cold water for about 4 minutes.  Strain the heavy cream mixture into another bowl.  Squeeze out the excess water on the gelatin leaves, mix gelatin in with the cream mixture.  Pour into ramekins and chill for the day.

To serve, use a sharp knife to cut around the edges of the ramekin. Then invert the ramekin onto a plate and wiggle a little bit until the panna cotta falls out onto the plate. Garnish with a strawberry, or whatever you think looks pretty.

One of my friends has been talking about a Mexican-themed party that he threw in college, and they called it Mextoberfest. The only requirement for entry was that you had to be wearing a sombrero. Other than that, it was just a party with some Mexican eats and beer pong. He has been talking about hosting a Mextoberfest for all of his coworkers, who didn’t know him in college and therefore, didn’t get to experience Mextoberfest. After about a year of talking about hosting it, I finally demanded that he have Mextoberfest right away, and so he did.

I decided to play around with Mexican chocolate and make some sort of cake with it. I ended up combining a cake, buttercream and ganache from 2 different recipes to create my own version of a Mexican Hot Chocolate cake. It ended up being very tall (4 cake layers with buttercream separating each of them), and very flavorful. Tommy declared it my best cake yet. It is called Mexican hot chocolate because the “Mexican chocolate” that can be bought is used as a hot chocolate mix. It comes in hexagon-shaped chocolate disks that have other spices added in (cinnamon and cayenne of some sort as far as I can tell).

I also thought the cake was excellent, but if (and when) I make it again, I would change a few things:

• The Mexican chocolate was not good to use in the ganache. The ganache never set like it was supposed to. And because it didn’t set up, I had to use it as a pourable glaze for the cake instead of spreading it in between the cake layers. The original cake was supposed to be iced in the buttercream, with the cake layers being separated by the ganache. I think I liked using the buttercream for the layering and the ganache as the outside coating though, I just wished the ganache would have set up correctly. Next time I would just use plain chocolate. As you can see from the picture, the ganache was runny after slicing into the cake too. No amount of refrigeration was going to harden this ganache.

• The buttercream icing was supposed to be a Swiss buttercream frosting. But I didn’t want to deal with the egg whites, so I just turned it into a regular buttercream (powdered sugar and butter). I’d probably try the Swiss buttercream in the future though, because I like how soft and fluffy Swiss and Italian buttercreams are.

• I also ran out of powdered sugar for the buttercream. With time running out before the party started, I had no choice but to attempt to make my own powdered sugar by putting granulated sugar into the blender. It worked a little bit, but not all the way, so my buttercream definitely had a slight sugary crunch to it. Tommy said that he liked the added crunch while eating his slice of cake, but I think he just had pity on me that I ran out of powdered sugar.

I really liked the flavor of the cake, I don’t think I’ve ever had cinnamon in a cake before, other than breakfast-related cake like coffee cake. The cake seemed very moist, which is how I like it. I didn’t have any of the leftover cake that was brought into Tommy’s work after the party, so I’m not sure if it retained the moisture days after it was made or not.

The Cake (Cinnamon Vanilla):

Ingredients
2 sticks butter
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preparation
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Cream the butter in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add sugar and continue to mix until fully incorporated and it is light and fluffy, about 4 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Combine milk and vanilla. Add portions of the flour mixture and milk mixture to the electric mixer, alternating, starting and ending with flour. Pour evenly into 2 buttered and floured 9-inch cake pans.

Bake for 40 minutes or until golden. The cake should pull away from the side and spring back to the touch.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients
2 sticks butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
4 ounces white chocolate, melted and cooled
3.1 ounce disk Mexican choclate, melted and cooled

Preparation
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the chocolates. Add more sugar if sweeter frosting is desired.

The Ganache Topping

Ingredients
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 (3.1-ounce) disks Mexican chocolate, finely chopped (I would just use bittersweet chocolate next time)
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 tablespoon light corn syrup

Preparation
Heat the cream in a small saucepan just until simmering.

Place the chopped Mexican chocolate and unsweetened chocolate in a bowl. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate. Let stand for a few minutes, then gently whisk until the chocolate has melted. Stir in the butter until melted, then add the corn syrup. Refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes until stiff enough to spread. With a spatula, beat the ganache to make it smooth and spreadable.

After my baking class ended this semester, I wanted to make sure that I kept on baking. I really liked knowing that every Wednesday, I would be baking for 5.5 hours. I always looked forward to Wednesdays. I decided that I wanted to become as good as Brian at pie-making, so I named this summer “The Summer of Pies (and cakes)”. The cakes are thrown in there because I need to start developing some awesome cake flavors for Tommy’s sister’s wedding cake.

Every week I’d like to make a pie (or cake). I think that sometimes I will make the same pie over again, when it doesn’t turn out quite right the first time. So far I’ve made 3 pies and 1.5 cakes:

• Black and White Chocolate Cake, from the Baking From My Home to Yours cookbook by Dorie Greenspan. I learned how to cut a cake into even layers in class this semester. I turned my spice dolly into a temporary turntable so that I could properly cut the cakes into 4 thin layers. The cake was very even, but I clearly need to work on my piping skills.

• A sponge cake that fell A LOT. So much that I couldn’t possibly use it to make a layer cake, so I chopped it up and turned it into a Strawberry Lemon Curd Trifle. Because of the failure, I’m only counting this as 1/2 of a cake. This was my first trifle and it was a major sucess! I learned that when making a sponge cake (if you have more than one cake pan full of batter to bake as I did), try to position the 2 pans so that they do not need to be rotated in the oven. Rotating them made mine fall, and they never recovered.

• A strawberry-rhubarb pie. It turned out runny but delicious.

• A peach-raspberry pie. It turned out runny but delicious. I’m not sure why my pies are runny. The internet says that I don’t bake it long enough, or I don’t wait long enough for it to cool down. But both the strawberry and peach pies were still runny after spending the night in the refrigerator, so I’m going to try the peach pie again soon and bake it longer. And maybe try to sweat the peaches so that they aren’t so liquidy? I don’t know if I can do that. The peaches for this pie sat in a colander for about 30 minutes before I combined them with the sugar/cornstarch mixture, so I’m not sure what else I can do.

• An apple-cranberry pie with a struessel topping. I precooked the crust and the filling, so I am very optimistic that this one will not be runny. I’m not allowed to eat it until later tonight, so I don’t know how this one will end up. With cranberries in the pie though, it seems like vanilla ice cream should be eaten with a slice of this pie. The partially baked crust didn’t seem to bake up so well. And when I (slowly and carefully) lifted up the weighted foil after baking, some of the bottom came up with the foil, so I had to do some patching on the bottom. I’m not sure why the sides didn’t stay up. Even though it looks ugly, I’m sure it will taste just fine.

So far I’ve been working with an all-shortening crust. I like that it comes out super-flaky, and I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on the crust-rolling-out-preparation. I’d like to experiment and use some combination of butter/shortening (butter gives it more flavor but less flakiness) or a lard crust (which gives it flavor AND flakiness). I’m not sure that I can ever remember eating a crust made from lard. I’m not even sure where to buy lard. I think I can feel my arteries hardening just talking about lard.

I have already posted once about éclairs. But those didn’t turn out so well. They were thin, most of them fell after taking them out of the oven, and they tasted very eggy, a taste that neither Tommy or I like. I tried them one more time after that and got the same result.

When I saw that pate a choux (the dough that is used to make eclairs) were on the syllabus for the baking class that I took this past semester, I got very excited. I was hoping that I would be taught the right way to make the batter, and hopefully learn what I was doing wrong the few times before trying to make eclairs. The biggest problem seemed to be that they always deflated after taking them out of the oven, no matter how long I baked them.

After learning how to make pate a choux in class, I think the three things that I was doing wrong were:

1. Adding the eggs too quickly, and probably too many. I was unsure how to tell when I had enough eggs but not too much, as this was always stressed in the recipes/instructions that I read as being a critical element.
2. Using the wrong recipe. I’m sure if I went back and tried the recipe I was using, I’d have success (especially now that I know how to tell when I’ve added enough egg). But this combination and quantity of ingredients worked for me, so that’s what I’ll stick with.
3. Piping wrong. Probably not wrong, but I like the short/fat eclairs more than the long skinny ones, and I didn’t know how to pipe them fat.

I also learned that I don’t need to mix in the eggs with a mixer, as most of the recipes on the internet instruct you to do. Stirring in the eggs doesn’t require THAT much effort without a mixer… at least I don’t think so. Plus it makes it a one-pot recipe instead of a 2-pot + 1 paddle recipe.

So here is the recipe that seems to work for me. My teacher told me that you can use water or milk, but I used milk and that’s what I will stick with. Milk causes the pate a choux to brown faster and darker than using water, and the milk will also keep the pate a choux on the soft side after it has baked and cooled. If you want crisper eclairs, then use the water. Also, you can use butter or vegetable oil for the fat, but our class used vegetable oil because it is cheaper. So again, the oil worked so that’s what I’ll use forever.

Pate a choux

Ingredients
8 oz milk
4 oz vegetable or canola oil
1/2 tsp salt

5 1/2 oz bread flour

8 oz eggs (4 large eggs) – beaten

Preparation
Add the milk, oil and salt in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer. As soon as it starts to simmer, add the flour all at once. While still on the heat, stir in the flour with a wooden spoon. The dough will form a ball and will look a little like play-do. Continue to stir on the heat until a light film on the bottom of the pan forms. This will only take 2-3 minutes from the time you add the flour. Remove from the heat and cool the mixture for about a minute (so that the eggs do not cook when you begin to add them).

Still using the wooden spoon, add the eggs one by one. After each egg addition, the dough will become runny at first, but continuous stirring with the wooden spoon will eventually cause the batter to come back together. Once this happens, you can add the next egg. When you get close to the end, add eggs by the 1/2 egg portion so that you don’t add too much egg. The dough is ready when you put a small glob between your pointer finger and thumb and pull your fingers apart. The dough should stay together until your fingers are about an inch apart. If the dough does not stick together, add more eggs. I’m not sure what it looks like if you add too many eggs, I think that it is just really runny.

Put the dough into a piping bag and pipe into the shape of your choice. To pipe them fat, you have to begin squeezing out the dough while not moving the bag. The dough will begin to spread out width-wise, at which point you can very slowly start to move the piping bag along the length.  The first few times I did this, my hand was shaky and I ended up with little ridges along the length of my dough, but the ridges went away during the baking process. When you finish piping an eclair, you will be left with a not-so-smooth part at the end. If you bake it like this, it will turn into a very sharp point. After piping out all of the eclairs, dip your finger in water and pat down the rough ends to smooth them out before baking.

And if you mess up, you can scrap the dough up and put it back into the bowl, and then back into the piping bag for a second chance.

The time came this week to make another batch of ice cream.  We finished up the last ice cream about 3 weeks ago, and then Tommy put the core in the freezer about 2 weeks ago, and was sure to give me a verbal reminder (as if I didn’t notice the core taking up 1/4 of our freezer!) that the core was ready for some more ice cream making.  When trying to think of what flavor ice cream I wanted next, I thought through all of the exciting and delicious ice creams I have made so far: buttermilk chocolate, cranberry-lavendar-cardamom, strawberry, coconut, nutella, pistachio… And then I realized, that I have yet to make a “normal” ice cream (I think the strawberry was the closest to normal as it got).  So this time around, I decided I wanted to make vanilla ice cream.

I remembered Melanie’s blog post about a vanilla ice cream that she made way back when, and I put my Google Reader search engine to work until I found it.  I had whole goat’s milk and heavy cream to use up, so I used those instead of half-and-half and heavy cream.  I also had 1/2 of a vanilla bean hanging out in my pantry, so I used that in addition to some of the vanilla.  I scaled the recipe down a bit more, and came out with a nice rich vanilla ice cream.

It was very soft soft-serve consistency right out of the ice cream maker,  but then hardened up slightly in the freezer over night.  I was afraid of it becoming too hard and “crystally”, but it never got to that stage.  It was most definitely, as Melanie put it, happiness in a cup (or bowl).

Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups goats’ milk (or whole milk)
1/2 vanilla bean
4egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Preparation
Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean.  In a medium saucepan over medium heat, heat milk, vanilla bean and seeds until very hot, but not boiling, stirring frequently. Remove from heat , remove the vanilla bean, and set the milk mixture aside.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar.

Very gradually, while still whisking, add heated milk and mix until blended.

Return milk mixture to saucepan and cook over medium heat until small bubbles form around edge and mixture is steamy and slightly thickened, stirring constantly. Do not boil.

Transfer milk mixture into a large bowl. Stir in heavy cream, vanilla and salt.

Cover and chill thoroughly, at least 8 hours.

Assemble ice cream maker according to directions. Start up ice cream maker and add mixture slowly. Churn until thick, soft-serve consistency is reached.

Remove from ice cream maker. Either freeze for further “ripening” or serve immediately.  I ate some immediately and saved the rest for further ripening.

Even though it isn’t Tommy’s birthday yet, I have already made a birthday cake, and we have already eaten it.  We went to Tommy’s parents house last weekend to celebrate, so I thought it was a perfect time to make a nice cake for Tommy.

Tommy had sent me this recipe a few weeks ago after watching Bobby Flay make it on Throwdown.  I was asleep when he was watching it, so all I had to go on was a recipe.  The first thing that I noticed about it was that the cake was covered in genache, instead of the ooey gooey caramel-nut-coconut filling that coats every German chocolate cake I have seen in the past, like this one.

There were a lot of ingredients to buy for this cake, all of which I bought here and then transported up to Wilmington.   I know where to find everything and in what store here, and I didn’t want to bother with the hastle of not being able to find specific ingredients (such as goat milk, dutch-processed cocoa powder, and heavy cream).  I’m very picky about my heavy cream.

On Saturday morning while watching the Tour de France, I started making the cake.  I realized that Bobby Flay’s directions did not include a step to incorporate the flour mixture into the batter.   The directions for the cake seemed a little weird anyway, so I made the cake my way, as demonstrated in the instructions below.  The cakes turned out nice and tall and firm enough to be able to cut them in half and layer without any disasters.  I had to add cornstarch at the end of the filling-making process, because it just didn’t thicken to a spreadable consistency on it’s own.  This step is also included in my version of the instructions below.

The cake was the best chocolate cake I have made yet, and I was very pleased by both the chocolate cake on its own and in combination with the filling.  Tommy has already requested that I make this cake again sometime soon.  The cake was great the same day it was made, but was even better for breakfast the next morning after it had some time to sit in the refrigerator.  I also found that, while the coconut-whipped cream was very very tasty, I didn’t prefer to eat it with my cake.  The cake held up just fine by itself.

German Chocolate Cake

Cake

Ingredients
2 ¼ cups AP flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoons fine salt
1 ½ cups strongly brewed black coffee, at room temperature
1 ½ cups buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons good quality Dutch process cocoa powder
1 ½ cups muscavado light brown sugar
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter two 9-inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.

In another bowl, add the coffee, buttermilk, and vanilla extract and set aside.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat (or in the microwave). Add the butter to the bowl of your mixer and slowly mix in (using the wire whisk) the cocoa powder.  Mix for about a minute, until the cocoa has been incorporated into the butter.  Add the sugars and mix on medium speed until the sugars are dissolved. Add the eggs one at a time, waiting until each egg is incorporated before adding the next.  Once all of the eggs have been incorporated, add 1/3 of the coffee/buttermilk mixture and 1/3 of the flour mixture.  Do not add the next until the first addition is fully incorporated.  Repeat until all of the wet ingredients and the flour has been incorporate in alternating batches.

Divide the batter evenly between the 2 pans and bake on the middle rack until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, about 42 minutes.  My cakes took about 51 minutes to bake.  They went from a jiggly center to a firm center in about 2-minutes’ time, so make sure that you carefully watch the cakes after the 40-minute mark until they are done.  Let them cool in the pans on a baking rack for 20 minutes. Then invert the cakes onto the baking rack and let cool for at least 1 hour before frosting.

Coconut Filling

Ingredients
2 cups whole milk
1 ¾ cup unsweetened coconut milk
1 cup goats’ milk
¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon pure cane sugar
¼ cup water
½ vanilla bean, seeds scraped
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 ¼ cups sweetened coconut
1 ¼ cups toasted coarsely chopped pecans

Preparation
Bring the milk, coconut milk and goat’s milk to a simmer over low heat in a small saucepan.  Add the vanilla bean to the milk mixture while heating it up (keep the seeds out, they will go in later).   Keep warm while you prepare the caramel.

Combine the sugar and water in a medium saucepan over high heat and cook (do not stir) until deep amber brown color.   Remove the vanilla bean from the milk mixture, then slowly whisk in the milk mixture and continue whisking until smooth; add the vanilla seeds and corn syrup. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until the sauce is reduced by half and is the consistency of a caramel sauce, about 55 minutes.   If your sauce does not thicken once the mixture has reduced by half, turn up the heat a little so that the mixture is between a simmer and a boil.  Add no more than 1/4 cup of cornstarch to the mixture and stir with the wooden spoon until thick.

Once the sauce is thick, remove from the heat and whisk in the cold butter, vanilla extract, and  salt and whisk until combined. Transfer the sauce to a medium bowl and stir in the pecans and coconut. Let the frosting cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally before frosting the cake.

Coconut Whipped Cream

Ingredients
1 ½ cups cold heavy cream
¼ cup Cocoa Lopez (coconut cream, which can be found in a can usually on the soda isle with all of the other non-alcoholic mixer ingredients like Margareta mix)
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation
Combine heavy cream, coconut milk, sugar and vanilla in a mixer and mix until soft peaks form.

Ganache

Ingredients
8 ounces heavy cream
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Preparation
Bring cream to a simmer. Place chocolate in a medium bowl, add hot cream and corn syrup and let sit for 30 seconds. Gently whisk until smooth. Let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before pouring over the cake.

Bringing it all together
Slice each cake in half horizontally. Place one cake layer on a cake round or platter and spread 1/3 of the filling evenly over the top, repeat to make 3 layers and top with the remaining cake layer, top side up. Pour the chocolate ganache over the cake, let sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before slicing.  Slice cake, top with a dollop of whipped cream.

It has been a very long time since my last blog post.  That is not to say that I haven’t been baking and cooking like MAD though!  I just haven’t had the time to post.  I would like to start making the time, because I want to get better at both baking and taking nice pictures of the food that I make.

I am most recently excited about my new ability to make macarons.  I have tried twice in the the past, and both times resulted in a gloppy, lumpy-looking almond cookie that was edible but ugly, and nothing what a macaron should look like.   My stockpile of frozen egg whites was starting to get out of control due to all of the ice cream that Tommy and I have been making recently, so I gave macaron-making another go.  I put together all of  my ideas as to why the previous attempts failed, got serious and started again.   The result was plain-but-beautiful macarons that tasted delicious.  I was hoping that I hadn’t just gotten lucky, so I made another batch the following weekend and was successful in that as well.

In the next few months, I want to venture into adding flavor and fillings to my macarons.  And if I continue to make ice cream, I should have plenty of egg whites queued up for my experiments.

Plain Macarons

Ingredients
1 ¼ cups powdered sugar
4 oz (1 cup) almond flour or finely ground almonds (I used blanched almonds and ground them in my blender)
¼ cup plus 2 tbsps egg whites at room temperature (this is about 4 egg whites, depending on how big the egg is)
pinch of salt
¼ cup granulated sugar

Preparation
Allow egg whites to dry out by leaving them uncovered at room temperature for one or two days.

Line baking sheets with parchment.  If it is important to you to make perfectly sized macarons, then draw 1.5-inch circles on the back of the parchment for a guide when piping.  I find it more fun to try to match up the differently-sized macarons in the end for a perfect fit.

Sift the almond flour and powdered sugar. Mix the almonds and powdered sugar in a bowl and set aside.

In a large, clean, dry bowl whip egg whites with salt on medium speed until foamy. Increase the speed to medium-high and gradually add granulated sugar. Continue to whip to stiff peaks – the whites should be firm and shiny.

With a flexible spatula, gently fold in the powdered sugar/almond mixture into egg whites until completely incorporated. The mixture should be shiny and ‘flow like magma.’ When small peaks dissolve to a flat surface, stop mixing.  This should all take about 50 strokes of the spatula.

Fit a piping bag with a 3/8-inch (1 cm) round tip. Pipe the batter onto the baking sheets (in the previously drawn circles if you drew circles).  When  you pipe the batter, leave the tip in the center and let the batter move out. Do not try to “swirl” the batter when piping.  Tap the underside of the baking sheet to remove air bubbles.   Let dry at room temperature for at least 30 minutes to allow skins to form.

Bake, in a 310F oven for 10 to 11 minutes total, rotating the baking sheet after 5 minutes for even baking.

Remove macarons from oven and transfer the parchments to a cooling rack. When cool, slide a metal offset spatula underneath the macaron to remove from the parchment.

Chocolate Ganache Filling
8 oz heavy cream
8 oz bittersweet chocolate

Bring the cream to a boil and pour over the chocolate.  Let sit for 2 minutes, then stir with a whisk until the chocolate and the milk have been incorporated and the mixture looks like shiny ganache.  Let sit at room temperature for at least an hour to thicken.

Pair macarons of similar size, and pipe about 1 tsp of the filling onto one of the macarons. Sandwich macarons, and refrigerate to allow flavours to blend together. Bring back to room temperature before serving.