Cakes and Cakes!

Baking phases come and go in waves. Inspired by my decorating session with Kristen and Jill, and by the ever-rolling tide of birthdays that fill the spring and summer months in my families, I've been making a lot of cake.

I've also been thinking more about cake, in the sense of giving more thought to the creation of unusual or special taste/texture combinations, rather than just following someone else's recipe. It's easy to over-reach in this vein--most people are happiest with pound cake and whipped cream, or devil's food with fudge. While I'm more than happy to whip up whatever makes the birthday person happiest (my preferred birthday cake is, I'll remind you, biscuits with whipped cream and ample berries), a birthday is a good excuse to work up a new speciality, or a surprise.

When planning a cake, I usually begin with a few pointers from the intended recipient or their spokespeople (i.e. 'Joe loves everything chocolate, but hates nuts.' 'Jane was really excited about some custard she had last year in Italy.') Sometimes, though, people give me too much freedom, and my imagination takes some bold leaps. This year, I was asked to make a birthday cake for my cousin Sophie, to be served at a family reunion. When I asked about her preferences, I was informed that she was a 'good eater,' and liked everything, and that I shouldn't consult her since it could then be a surprise. While the phrase 'good eater' is more associated in my mind with two-year-olds and meat animals than with my lovely 25-year-old cousin, I took the point. The options were endless.

My first idea was a riff on this ever-popular birthday cake, stolen from Smitten Kitchen and wildly popular among my friends (requested for 3 separate birthdays in 2012, if you're counting). Instead of chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting and peanut butter chocolate ganache, I would alternate layers of chocolate and banana cake, and top it with the peanut butter cream cheese frosting. For the cake layers, I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipes for 'Miette's Tomboy' and banana cake, from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. For sanity's sake, I made six-inch cakes. The result (above) was great but a little on the tooth-achingly sweet side (my co-workers disagreed).

Using the remaining layers from the first cake, I made another. Same cakes, different buttercream. To add a little more austerity (heh) I made a caramel silk meringue buttercream. Not austere at all, actually, but the burnt sugar does cut the richness a bit.

This was an easier cake to work with, and more stable at warm temperatures than the cream cheese, but I did get some comments noting that the buttercream was overkill, and that a thin chocolate glaze might be more appropriate. However, this comment did come from someone who has frequently suggested that strawberry ice cream and/or pie would be better with chocolate, so the grain of salt was firmly in place.

It is true, though, that buttercream can be very very rich, and maybe it was all just shaping up to be a bit too much. I considered all-banana, with mango buttercream, but got some late-breaking news that banana might not be the birthday girl's favorite.

After toying with this for the better part of two weeks, I ultimately decided to simplify. For cake, I went all chocolate (double recipe of Miette's tomboy, baked in 8" pans, split into four layers). Late at night, I made the final choice: orange or strawberry buttercream? For a five year old's birthday party (or mine), I would have gone with strawberry, but I was assured by several sources that orange would be more elegant and more generally preferred. The final cake, pictured below after 25 puncture wounds, was chocolate with orange mousseline buttercream, orange curd, and pistachio cream (from a jar that has been taking up cupboard space--more on cleaning out the cupboard shortly).

Birthdays are one thing, but I also make cakes for no reason at all when I get in this mood, as witnesseth the following masterpiece--Almond Shamah Chiffon (also from Rose's Heavenly Cakes) cake with an apricot mousseline. This is a slightly moister chiffon cake made with almond flour. I think people were a little bit frightened by the lipstick redness of the buttercream, but the cake layers, moistened with a light soaking syrup, were perfectly textured.

Lessons with Kristen II: Petit Fours

Petit Fours (© Jill Frutkin)

 Some of my loyal followers (is anyone still reading this blog? hello? hello?) may be under the entirely mistaken impression that I'm a baking master. After all, I make a lot of cake. And it looks pretty nice on this blog.

I'll admit it, I have some skills, including making things that taste fabulous, and other things that obey the laws of chemistry, but there's one area that I haven't come close to mastering. This area, arguably the most important in pastry, is aesthetics. I make bundt cakes. I make pies, and my three layer cakes aren't a complete disaster, but when it comes to inspired and masterful presentation, most of the baking population of the world leaves me in the dust. Marzipan flowers and shining ribbons? Fondant animals? Elegant composition? Cakes that resemble anything other than cake? This is another world altogether.

The truth is that I'm not that aesthetically gifted in any area of my life. Framed pictures would lean against the wall forever if I were left to my own devices when I move. I can dress myself, but am baffled by daily fashion. I never plate anything.

The upside to this general visual vagueness on my part, though, is that I'm quick to appreciate and admire the efforts of others, to marvel at their superpowers, and, at least in pastry, to be happy to learn from them with minimal ego, and go about squishing out buttercream roses and marzipan flowers with abandon.

Of my many aesthetically gifted friends, there are one or two who share my particular brand of dorkiness*, and some of the most beautiful cakes I've seen in the last few years have come from the hands of Kristen. Like me, Kristen is more or less self-taught, although she decorated cakes professionally for a few years. She's a talented and in-demand actress, but in the quieter parts of her schedule has managed to become an exceptional baker and decorator. (Really, buy her cakes.)  Kristen's work goes beyond rote skill--she's imaginative (my downfall as a baker), and visually inspired by a wide range of beautiful things.  Still, because she's a perfectionist, she isn't satisfied with what she knows, she wants to make her cakes better and better. After talking cake at parties for a few years, we decided it was time to take our combined talents into the kitchen. Modestly, she called it a skillshare (I teach texture and taste, she teaches making stuff pretty), but I think I'm getting the best of the deal. Watching Kristen bake is a revelation--her fingers and her mind move so quickly.

A lovely evening: Ladies Bake  (© Jill Frutkin)

Also she's beautiful and funny and interested in stupid chemistry and makes killer grilled cheese.
Our first meeting went straight to the basics--buttercream roses and yellow cake. For our second, Kristen suggested petit fours. For flower painting and other general prettifying, we brought in Jill, who loves to mess with things and get sticky.

The evening was a much-needed respite from a long week, with Chambord Royale, glittery dust everywhere, and much weepy watching of NBC as a friend's block became the epicenter of a citywide manhunt (no more on this for now, if there's one thing I learned from the news media this week, it's that there's no shame in waiting a goddamned minute to share how you feel and what you know (or don't) about a complex and painful event. I did not learn this by example). In the process, we made some quite lovely little cakes.

Traditional petit fours seem to be some sort of genoise, cut into small squares, sometimes filled with jam or soaked in syrup, and then covered in some kind of frosting--marzipan, fondant, poured fondant. Kristen was interested in trying poured fondant, made from sugar, corn syrup, and water. This kind of icing is easy to make but somewhat difficult to work with, as it hardens VERY fast. For the base, we used this almond cake from Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets.

I was rushed and a little scattered in making the cake, so it probably came out a bit more dense than it could have, with a few tunnels, but anything that is mostly almond paste will never be bad. The real work of decorating was concentrated in the marzipan flower making. Using marzipan, food coloring, and some nifty little flower-punchers, we made little flowers, and then Jill painstakingly painted each flower with gold dust and popped dragees in for the centers. I learned how to pronounce dragee. 

The layout.  (© Jill Frutkin)

The finished products were a little haphazard, as we'd all had a bit of cava by that point, but perfectly lovely, no thanks to me. But now I know more things, and I can't wait to see what our next project will be. Meanwhile, my mother was on an entirely different edible art quest--details to come. I'll just say that it involved Shackleton, celery, gummi penguins, and, of course, Jell-O.

I can't say I'll ever be a perfectionist, but I am lucky to share the world people who care passionately, and make good art.

*Can't stop baking.