My First Daring Bakers Challenge!

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

Go here to see what I’m talking about:
http://thedaringkitchen.com/

Yay! My first Daring Bakers Challenge! And, since I have a birthday party to go to, I can spread the calories around! I’m still going to try to make a slightly healthier version by using whole grains, though.

I had intended to take lots of pictures as I went, but I am a very messy cook, and I didn’t want smears of flour and teetering piles of pans in background of every picture. So, I wound up not taking any except this one just before we dashed out the door to the birthday party. As you can see, my cake will win no beauty contests. But the taste! Gosh, the taste! Wish there was a taste-hosting site, because you would be licking your screen right now.


I baked the cake and made the icing on Tuesday:

Instead of the sponge recipe listed, I used the “Peach Melba Jelly Roll” from Whole Grain Baking by King Arthur Flour. I scaled that recipe up from 4 to 5 eggs to better match the buttercream & caramel.

1 ¼ c. whole wheat pastry flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
5 large eggs
1 c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
¼ c. + 1 T. vegetable oil
¼ c. + 1 T. buttermilk

I followed the directions from the book for mixing:
1. Mix dry ingredients together.
2. Mix eggs and sugar until fluffy and pale.
3. Whisk oil and buttermilk together.
4. Fold dry ingredients into eggs and sugar until only slightly lumpy
5. Fold in oil & buttermilk.

Since, fortunately, both recipes called to be baked at 400o F, I felt comfortable following the original instructions for baking:
1.Position the racks in the top and centre thirds of the oven and heat to 400F (200C).
2.Cut six pieces of parchment paper to fit the baking sheets. Using the bottom of a 9" (23cm) springform tin as a template and a dark pencil or a pen, trace a circle on each of the papers, and turn them over (the circle should be visible from the other side, so that the graphite or ink doesn't touch the cake batter.)
* * *
5.Line one of the baking sheets with a circle-marked paper. Using a small offset spatula, spread about 3/4cup of the batter in an even layer, filling in the traced circle on one baking sheet. Bake on the top rack for 5 minutes, until the cake springs back when pressed gently in the centre and the edges are lightly browned. While this cake bakes, repeat the process on the other baking sheet, placing it on the centre rack. When the first cake is done, move the second cake to the top rack. Invert the first cake onto a flat surface and carefully peel off the paper. Slide the cake layer back onto the paper and let stand until cool. Rinse the baking sheet under cold running water to cool, and dry it before lining with another parchment. Continue with the remaining papers and batter to make a total of six layers. Completely cool the layers. Using an 8" springform pan bottom or plate as a template, trim each cake layer into a neat round. (A small serrated knife is best for this task.)

Three things I would, in hindsight, change in step 5 for my recipe:
1. Fold ingredients back together before pouring each layer, as the buttermilk tends to separate and form a puddle beneath the batter.
2. Get one heaping cup of batter and plop it in the middle of the circle. Place the cup on a plate. Don’t worry about scraping out the cup or the plate until the last circle.
3. Tilt the pan from side to side until the batter fills the circle instead of spreading it with a spatula.

I realize now that I missed the directions on removing the paper from each layer as it cools. I just let the layer cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then moved it, paper and all, to a plate. I’ll find out later if this is a great labor-saving step, or a recipe for tragedy.

I used the buttercream recipe provided because healthy buttercream just sounds wrong. I guess I could mess about with gelatin and canola oil, but…let’s not. I made it just as the instructions said, except that I wasn’t sure what “4oz (110g) bakers chocolate or your favourite dark chocolate, finely chopped” meant, since “bakers chocolate” makes me think “unsweetened baking choolate” and dark chocolate is an entirely different animal. I wound up using Baker’s Chocolate brand German’s Sweet Chocolate Bar, which tastes like dark chocolate to me. In retrospect, I should have used bittersweet or semi-sweet. I haven’t tasted it on the cake yet, but it’s pretty sweet and doesn’t have a real chocolate punch.


On Saturday, I made the caramel and assembled the cake:

I bought some cardboard cake rounds and covered one with foil. I’ve never done this before and it makes assembling the cake so much easer. I placed one layer on the round, peeled off the paper, covered it with buttercream, and then added the next layer. After I had added all the layers, I placed a 9 inch cake pan on top and trimmed around that. The trimmings were delicious (of course, they make my calorie count, later, inaccurate)!

I have vague memories of making a torte like this from a recipe in a magazine for Christmas when I was in junior high or high school. From what I remember:

1. The layers looked wonky (this is a chronic problem I have with layer cakes).
2. The cake texture was rubbery (although I seemed to be the only person who thought this—my dad liked it, and he’s very honest about his culinary likes and dislikes).
3. The sour flavor of the caramel was weird.

I decided to make a trial run of caramel to make sure I didn’t run into the problems. First, I cut the caramel recipe down to sample size:

¼ c. caster sugar
3 T. water.
2 tsp. lemon juice
¾ tsp. canola oil (for oiling a knife to cut the caramel)

I cooked it in a small saucepan according to the directions and spread the result on (whole wheat, of course!) toast. Ick! It’s exactly as weird as I remember.

So I decided to make a classic toffee instead. After a little experimenting and one burned batch, I used this recipe:

1 stick (1/2 c.) salted butter
¾ c. sugar
½ c. water

1. Cook on medium, stirring occasionally until the candy reaches soft ball (235F/113C) stage.
2. Cook, stirring constantly until the candy reaches soft crack (275F/135C). Make sure to scrape every bit of the pan as you stir so that you don’t wind up with any burned spots.

Next time I do this, I’ll up the sugar to 1 c. because the toffee didn’t quite cover the top layer of the cake and I had to cover the edges with more buttercream.

Because it was hard to peel the paper from some of the layers, I was worried about pouring the toffee on the layer and then transferring it. So, I just cut the cake into sixteenths (I don’t need an eighth of this cake!) and poured the toffee on top. I wouldn’t do it this way again. First (duh!) the toffee strengthens the cake layer, so I don’t need to worry about it breaking in transit after the toffee is added. Second, when I went to cut the cake, the toffee shattered, and the cake kind of smashed, so it wasn’t a very pretty presentation.

The calorie breakdown is pretty brutal, which makes me glad I divided the cake into sixteenths:
Cake:
1 ¼ c. whole wheat pastry flour 550
1 ½ tsp. baking powder 4
½ tsp. salt 0
5 large eggs 375
1 c. minus 1 T. granulated sugar 697
1 tsp. vanilla extract 12
¼ c. + 1 T. vegetable oil 600
¼ c. + 1 T. buttermilk 31

Buttercream frosting
4 eggs 300
1 cup caster sugar 774
4 oz. bakers chocolate 544
2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1824

Toffee
1 c. sugar 774
1 stick (1/2 c.) salted butter 810
1/2 c. water 0

Finish
1/2 c. peeled chopped hazelnuts 361

7656 calories / cake
478 calories / serving for 16 servings

Note: the calories per serving will actually be less if you have a significant amount of trimmings.

Note 2: that this is not the calorie breakdown of the cake exactly as I made it, but as I will be making it next time (maybe for Thanksgiving). I will definitely be making this cake again because, ugly presentation notwithstanding, it was enormously popular and got loads of compliments.

I Love My House at Sunset, Part II

I'm renting my parents' weekend house from them, at an outrageously good price.  Sometimes, I feel a little conflicted about this.  For months, it felt as though I were living with my parents again (not a good feeling) and that they had just stepped out for a bit.  It doesn't feel like it's really mine, the way my old apartment did.  On the other hand, this house holds a lot of good memories for me--a lot of days spent playing board games because there's no TV reception; a lot of time roaming the empty lots next door (now filled with houses--the interlopers!) picking wildflowers; a lot of time sitting on the porch with the extended family, doing nothing but chat and listen to the crickets, and knowing, even at the time, that there was nothing better to do in the whole world. 

I grumble at the lack of storage, the deep cracks in the wood floor from a burst pipe a couple of years ago, and the sieve-like nature of the aged cedar exterior, which lets in bugs large and small.  However, I keep an alarm on my cell-phone set to 15 minutes before sunset, so I can go out each evening and fall in love with my house all over again. 

Once upon a time, this house sat on a cattle ranch.  The owner dammed up a stream to make a watering pond for his cattle.  Oddly enough, there were two ponds--a large one and a small one--with a road in between.  In wet months, the smaller pond overflowed into the larger through our yard, and in dry months it dried up and filled with interesting weeds.  This summer, the neighborhood association drained both ponds, dug the large one deeper, and used the dirt to fill in the small one to make a park.  It will almost certainly be too manicured for me, but see...someday, I want to be married between these two trees, at sunset, with the pond blazing pink behind me.

Just left of the picture above, they're building this pavilion:

And I want to have my first dance there, looking out on the starlit lake.

                   

I Love My House at Sunset

Daring Cook's August Challenge

Oy. This is my first cooks' challenge. I did it on time, wrote it up, then lost it in a computer freeze, and never got around to re-writing it. Bad, Bad Yummy Nutter. Well, here's the super-truncated version.

This challenge was for a paella with cuttlefish and mushrooms. The recipe is here here.

We don't have cuttlefish in these parts, so I made it with scallops.

Here's the sofregit, bubbling away on the stovetop.

Here's the parboiled brown rice. I wanted to mix brown rice and white rice, but they cook at different rates, so I parboiled the brown rice first. Unfortunately, they still cooked unevenly. I cooked until one kind of rice was no longer crunchy, and another kind came out a little...squishy. More experimenting needs to be done.



I made the allioli in a blender.
It tasted bitter, so I added another 1/4 cup of canola oil, and then it was lovely.



Here's the final mix on the stove.


And here it is, "plated"...err...Ziplock containered...pre-portioned for dinners and lunches to come.