Alpha Bakers: Double Damage Oblivion

This world is full of some very serious chocolate lovers. I am not one. I love chocolate as much as some of the next guys, but there are guys out there for whom a dessert without chocolate might as well be a flip flop. When offered soup, a friend of mine has the habit of answering, 'No, thank you, I don't need a beverage.' I have many friends who react in the same way when offered pie--pie being all very well, but utterly beside the point. This cake is for those people.



You know, those people. The ones who need a flourless cake sandwiched between two layers of light, fudgy cocoa cake lined with ganache to be happy. The ones who'd like some cake with their cake, please. This cake is for them (although it could be improved by a layer of chocolate mousse, maybe).

So, what you see here is what you get--a thin, eggy, flourless cake layer inside of Rose's Deep Chocolate Passion, a light oil and cocoa confection that has served as the base everything from wedding cakes to cupcakes. The flourless cake, the Chocolate Oblivion, is very rich and bitter (at least with the chocolate I used), and the Chocolate Passion is essentially an improved Hostess product. Light and simple. I can't speak to the ganache because I followed the variation and used heated and strained raspberry preserves, rounded out with a little pear jelly, to glue the whole confection together, and, there you have it.

Done and done. The workplace did not complain. I am going downstairs now to investigate the leftovers, and there will probably be some, as it was very intense, but nobody quarrels with chocolate around here.

Alpha Bakers -- Double Chocolate Oriolos

Lovely chocolate wafers. Like many of the best buttery cookies, these 'Oriolos' are made in the food processor, so although the small size of that appliance limits the size of the batch. I mixed this half batch up with almonds and cacao nibs replacing toasted walnuts (I had imprudently used all my toasted walnuts in some zucchini bread just hours earlier), and let the dough mellow in the refrigerator for 48 hours. I chose to roll them out on a very humid 81 degree day, so the final cookies squashed a bit flatter than I'd intended--next time I'll make sure they have more heft. The results were pleasing, though, if fragile.

Also, I did make, though don't plan on posting about, the BlueRhu pie from a few weeks ago. It was excellent, but more and more I think doing anything with rhubarb beyond roasting it (even pie!) is a waste.

Where in the World is Tuesdays with Dorie?

Tuesdays with Dorie, a fixture of my life for over two years, is fast winding down. Although I’ve nearly stopped blogging TWD recipes, and clearly don’t adhere to a Tuesday baking schedule, I still feel a certain regular resonance from that big dirty cookbook with the melted cover. This resonance takes the form of a kind of proprietary fondness, a connection to the tome that goes beyond following printed instructions toward a goal of dessert.

As the good bloggers hurtle their way to the finish line, I remind myself that it’s the journey that makes things interesting. In the interest of making up somewhat for the last few months, a brief overview of the unphotographed portions of the journey. Many were missed, but along the way…

Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet: Very soft, and popular. I found it overly sweet but a good companion to other ice creams of the moment, especially passion fruit and black pepper.

Salt and Pepper Shortbread: I make these all the time, they’re a popular Valentines Day cookie in my house, as well as being the go-to choice when out of eggs. It may say something about me that even when out of eggs I’m well stocked with cocoa.

Flip-Over Plum Cake: Buttery crisp-edged, very sweet. Lives somewhere between crisp and clafoutis. Ate it at all hours with a spoon.

Basic Biscuits: Basic. Excellent. Any excuse to make biscuits is warmly welcomed.

Bittersweet Brownies: Whipped up this November recipe quickly the other night. The only alteration I made was to sub in about ¼ cup of Bustelo grounds for the instant espresso powder. This made a big difference in the taste and seemed to leave the texture unaffected. Matt, who should be pretty jaded on the subject of late night desserts by this time, got misty-eyed on being told that hot brownies were available at 11pm, a condition that he described as ‘one of the best things that could happen.’ The morning-afters went to Jill, who had them for breakfast.

The TWD group is continuing the fight in the coming year with an earlier Dorie Greenspan collaboration--Baking With Julia. A companion volume to the PBS show of same name, this book contains contributions from a variety of American cooks and pastry chefs. While the writing will remain Dorie's, I'm looking forward to changing it up with this eclectic collection.

I've been very remiss, obviously, on the photo-taking front, but while you imagine all the the desserts mentioned above, you can admire this shot that my sister dug out of the archives from our 2008 trip to Uganda.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Miette's Tomboy

Perhaps the most adorable cake in the whole Heavenly Cakes book--Miette's Tomboy is the signature cake of its eponymous bakery. It's also really really really good. It's an oil cake, made mostly with cocoa but also with one ounce of chocolate dissolved in boiling water. The cocoa I used was a very special dark cocoa that I got at Sahadi's--it's so black that it looks blue in the mixing bowl, and it makes a very very dark cake.

I actually made this cake for the first time a few weeks ago, when the rest of the group did, but I never got around to frosting it before we ate it. Since it was little (6 inches), I figured there was room to try again. Also, the first time I didn't really properly beat the egg (one egg doesn't beat so well in the large bowl of my old mixer, so this time I tried the smaller bowl), and so the cake sank dramatically in the middle. This time it had much more height, though there was still a dip. The mixer also can cause problems for making mousseline buttercream, as I often have problems getting the sugar syrup in without it crusting on the sides of the bowl. This time was a win, possibly the best and fluffiest mousseline I've ever made (tilting the bowl to get a better temperature read on the sugar was also wise). Matt had a slice (after a very dedicated photo session--he said it was fun to shoot) and said that it tasted very similar to an Oreo cookie. I haven't tried it yet, but based on various scrap samples, I'd agree. The piping--well, I got carried away by the leftovers and so the top wasn't flat. But it's pretty cute, no?

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Trader Joe's Fail

Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache.

Deep, dark, cocoa madness. Well, sort of. In an after-work haze, I forgot to buy cocoa one night at Sahadi's, my beloved Middle Eastern import store (which so doesn't even begin to describe it). The next night, attempting to save time, I opted for the Trader Joe's across the street from Sahadi's, as I had other business there. I picked up a tub of cocoa (so labeled, so it must be, right?) from next to the tea, and brought it home. I didn't expect it to be great quality, but I did expect it to be...well, cocoa.

It was not cocoa, which TJ's apparently also sells, but a hot chocolate mix. I didn't really realize this until the cakes were already in the oven and I was measuring it out for the ganache and saw the sugar crystals. Thus, the cake wasn't as dark and rich as it could have been, but it was still the right kind of gooey all-American cake. I'd actually made the cake component of this recipe once before, for Matt's father's birthday cake last summer. I paired it with a mocha Italian buttercream and some David Lebovitz style candied cherries (one of which betrayed me with pit fragments--grr). It's a very solid base cake for all kinds of shenanigans.

I have to get some more cocoa. Rose's Heavenly Cakes is nothing without cocoa.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Cradle Cake

I know I've been AWOL, there's been travelling and reconstruction. But I keep on making cake. The star of last week was Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cradle Cake, adapted from a Pillsbury Bake-Off winner--simple pound cake encased in a pecan walnut dacquoise. This is excellent breakfast cake.

 There was something about it that reminded me of supermarket pound cake, in the best way possible.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa Madeleines

It was a quiet day, and I found myself a little uninspired by the Tuesdays with Dorie pick of the week, which was meant to be chocolate madeleines, filled with marshmallow fluff and dipped in chocolate ganache. I made it as far as the cocoa madeleines, but no further. This will be one I'll have to come back to.

I've been having a somewhat lazy week, interspersed with bouts of household activity. I've vacuumed, laundered, and tidied, but am pretty reluctant to leave the house. The calm before the storm, perhaps.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa-Nana Bread

This one went quickly--I didn't take a picture. In short, it was a banana pound cake made with cocoa. Overbaked, and a bit dry, but we dipped it in milk and ate it and enjoyed it. I didn't put in the extra chocolate chips that Dorie's recipe called for--it was good but not particularly noteworthy, I'd rather do plain banana bread with chocolate chips. If it's your kind of thing, though, the recipe is here.

As Matt put it, Dorie is taking care of him this [coming] month. Upcoming recipes include chocolate chip cookies, brownies, chocolate bundt cake, and honey wheat cookies. Expect to see them all here if we don't eat them first.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake

I made this week's TWD anniversary pick a few weeks ago, for Matt's birthday. We didn't have a party, so it turned out to be a lot for us to eat alone, but it was delicious, filled with pear butter and frosted with hazelnut whipped cream. I left out the optional addition of melted chocolate and the result was very simple and light. The recipe can be found here.

Delicious Goo

What is this wonderful mess? Guess...Yes it is. I made marshmallows. Real ones. This is one of the few times I'm willing to suspend all my food additive iffiness, because you just can't really make this kind of candy without really going all out on corn syrup and white sugar. And it is gooey and delicious. And easy. To make these, I used an Alton Brown recipe recommended by Artisan Sweets.

They are basically sugar, salt, corn syrup, gelatin, vanilla extract, and water. Heat em, whip em, dry em and coat them in tapioca starch and powdered sugar, and then cut them up and eat them! They work! They are marshmallows! Matt used them for raw s'mores and I put them into my cocoa. Actually, I made cocoa especially for them. Now I am consumed with plans to make them thicker, higher, and better flavored...Any ideas? Coffee flavored and cocoa dusted comes to mind via Martha Stewart...