Happy Birthday, JB

Photo by Avi Glickstein.

In Julie & Julia, Julie Powell describes her friend Isabel's wedding cake as 'vertiginously sloppy,' a description I think is very apt to this cake (and most cakes I make). JB's birthday cake (and Rob's before hers) was a pretty straight rendition of this cake. It's stupidly easy to make, especially the addictive peanut butter cream cheese frosting, and usually garners hyperbolic response. I highly recommend it.

Photo by Avi Glickstein.

Photo by Avi Glickstein.

Getting Underway

 The wedding cake planning begins in earnest. A few weeks ago, I met with the bride and groom, and with the bride's parents. We had ourselves a minor cake orgy. In the end, I made them three cakes to taste: a pretty straight version of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache (and candied cherries), from Rose's Heavenly Cakes; a seven layer cake modeled on this one, and frosted on the outside with the same caramel ganache, and a version of Rose's Chocolate Passion wedding cake, which uses a German Chocolate cake base, a milk chocolate soaking syrup, and was filled with passionfruit mousseline buttercream and passionfruit curd, then glazed with Rose's Dark Chocolate Laquer Glaze. This last, which is light and spongy and resembles an extremely upscale ho-ho or ding-dong, was the winner. 

Now I find myself deep in calculations, mathing it all out on a monster excel sheet, bustling away. Wish me luck as the temperature climbs toward 99 farenheit.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: White Velvet Cake with Caramel Cranberry Chocolate Ganache

Photo by Matt Korahais.

This week's cake was on the quick and easy list, and quick and easy it was. I had made the White Velvet Cake (egg whites only, very tender) a few times from the Cake Bible back when I was testing cakes for Stacey and Avi's wedding, and as I remembered, it was simple and snappy. The frosting was supposed to be milk chocolate ganache, but I only had a giant bar of dark chocolate and didn't want to be wasteful. Still, to keep it from being too bitter, I added some cranberry almond caramel left over from my attempt at Maury Rubin's Caramel, Cranberry and Almond Tart.

It's getting eaten, but slowly. Not the most exciting cake but solidly good, a basic, a birthday cake...or, as Jill said, 'A good cake to mash into ice cream.' It's a reminder of how far I've come since the days when I could bake mean bread but had no clue how to turn out a perfect white cake.

Happy Birthday, Christina's Dad

It's been a while since I featured a guest post, but it was worth the wait. This one is a sweet doozy (yes, more cake) from an old friend and one of my most faithful readers and troubleshooters, Christina.

Hello Second Dinner readers!  Katya lived across the hall from me way back during our freshman year of college . . . and I have lots of fond memories of Katya that involve food.  She baked cookies in the grimy dorm lounge, hosted latke parties every Hanukkah, and spent lots of time talking with me about Vidalia onions and pomegranates.  So I’ve been following her adventures here with interest.

I just entered a period of "funemployment" after three years of long hours at work, and so I’m making up for lost time in the kitchen.  Now, I’m a pretty good cook and an okay amateur baker.  But even though my cakes always taste fine, they look like they were beaten with the ugly stick.  Uneven layers, cracks, crumbs in the frosting – can you say "hot mess"?

Imagine my surprise when I was able to produce the following for my dad’s birthday.

For the first time ever, I managed to bake a cake with a lovely shiny coat of frosting and no messy crumbs poking through!  I was so ecstatic that I had to share my good news with Katya, who kindly offered to display my efforts here. 

I followed the chocolate layer cake recipe featured at Smitten Kitchen (using the adaptations for 9-inch cake pans) and it baked up like a dream.  The layers were nice and even, and super-moist.  I made sure to thunk the pans on the counter a few times before baking as per the tips over at SK.

Things always go awry for me once it comes time to frost, probably due to my lack of patience.  I’m bad at crumb coats and always have trouble spreading buttercream without ripping off layers of crumbs and getting them scattered all over the place.  So, this time, I made sure to bake the cake the day before my dad’s birthday in hopes that the layers would be easier to work with at frosting time.  I cooled the layers completely before wrapping them in plastic wrap and then left them in the fridge for 24 hours.  I also decided to try a chocolate sour cream frosting (again featured at Smitten Kitchen) in hopes that I would find it more amenable to spreading. Well, it worked like a charm.  Frosting this cake was practically effortless since the frosting was so light and easy to work with.  Nary a crumb peeked through AND it was absolutely delicious.

My dad loved the cake and thought it tasted even better on day two than on the day it was cut.  I think the taste of the sour cream kind of mellowed out a little and melded better with the cake layers.  But the best thing about this cake is that it has magical properties.  We were able to keep this cake under a dome in the fridge for TWO weeks with no signs of it going bad or getting a stale taste.  (My mom can’t eat chocolate and I am limiting my consumption of sweets, so there was a lot of cake left for my dad to tackle.)  This is the everlasting gobstopper of birthday cakes!

Many thanks to Katya for letting me guest blog and share my cake-baking excitement.  At her urging, and with some trepidation, I will attempt pane genzanese next!

Clean-Out-The-Crisper Cake

Late last night, I found myself feeling slightly freaked out and deeply in need of a comforting activity. Obvious choice--bundt cake.

There is something so peaceful about the assembly and baking of a simple plain cake, preferably in the homely clean lines of a bundt pan. As I chop and measure, a calm and concentration sets in, the world settles into manageable categories, and usually by the time I've washed the dishes, the kitchen smells sweet.

Fear of disrupting this zen baking headspace is one of the reasons that I have had my reservations about food-related entrepreneurial ventures, much as I'd like to find a way to make something so enjoyable somewhat lucrative. (I do happily take commissions, though. See here, and here.) This uniquely relaxed and vulnerable state I reach is also responsible for  my entirely irrational and often completely hysterical reactions to the smoke alarm. As Matt said, '...it's yelling at you while you do the thing you do to calm down.'

Well, last night, I needed to go to the baking place. I had a vague idea that I'd like to make a French yogurt cake. Poking around for some fruit to go on top, I came face to face with some other occupants of the crisper drawer--specifically a bag of two month old turnips and beets.  Remembering the success of the beet cake, I decided there was no reason that turnips couldn't take on the moistening role that zucchini and carrots often do, and began to look around on the internet for the right recipe.

I was hunting a recipe that could use what I had in the house (no chocolate, little butter), be made in a bundt pan, and would feature grated or chunked fruit, for which I could substitute my turnips.  I settled on this Apple Cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe calls for six chunked apples--I used four, and made up the difference with about a cup of grated turnip and carrot. I also replaced 1/4 cup orange juice with 1/4 cup lemon juice.

The end result was exactly what I'd hoped for, sweet, salty, seasonal, and thrifty. And now I don't have to stay up nights worrying what to do about all those CSA turnips.

Clean-Out-The-Crisper Cake
Adapted from Mom's Apple Cake on www.smittenkitchen.com.

Note: I have adapted this recipe, but it follows closely the general spirit of Deb's original (which   is,  of course, also an adaptation). I include my version to illustrate the adaptive possibilities of the cake, and to encourage further experimentation. I'm sure I'll never make it the same way twice.

Ingredients:

• 4 small apples
• roughly 1 cup of grated mildly colored and flavored vegetables (turnips, carrots, zucchini, etc...)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 5 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup vegetable oil (could probably use a little less)
• 2 cups sugar (ditto)
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 4 eggs

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Grease a large bundt pan.

Core apples (and peel if you must, I never do), and chop into rough 1/2 inch chunks. Grate the vegetables. Toss both chunks and gratings with cinnamon and sugar.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensure that all ingredients are incorporated. (Deb has a note in the comments on her site about the somewhat unorthodox order of ingredient addition in this recipe. I'll just second her assurance that it works.)

Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apple/veg over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apple/veg on top. Bake for about 1 1/4 hours, or until a tester comes out clean, it seems that baking times vary for this one.