Alpha Bakers -- Black and White Brownies

Brownies need frosting like this country needs Donald Trump. In. No. Way. In order to make any 'frosted-brownies' type recipe, I have to perform some mental gymnastics and turn the brownies into 'cake' in my head, thus negating their particular brownie qualities (dense fudginess, crackly top, ease of transport) but permitting them into the category of 'things that are acceptable with frosting'.

Mental tumbling achieved, here's the week's baking. It started with a pan of...cake. Brown fudgy...cake. Gently underbaked, minus the suggested pecans, and full of cream cheese and butter, the...cake...was baked and slipped into the refrigerator to cool. A loose, light, custardy white chocolate buttercream followed. The final touch was to be a bourbon ganache, but I resisted. And resisted. The whole thing was already sweet enough. It was one more step on a Saturday night. In the end, though, I couldn't resist the visual of the black and white layers, so I whipped up the chocolate ganache, adding a tablespoon of Portuguese cherry brandy.

The final product was very rich, very creamy, and in general the kind of thing that my workplace approves of, while they go and ignore perfectly delicious plum kuchen. I allowed a few of the twelve year olds to try it, and they told me that the white stuff was good but the chocolate ganache was 'kind of gross.' I'm assuming that the combo of very bitter chocolate and brandy wasn't for them. Then they stole a co-worker's string cheese and ran off.

Two year olds are so much more on my level than twelve year olds. Also, the Prospect Park Carousel has an excellent soundtrack. When every song began, little S, on the right, said 'I like this song!' His taste is questionable, as he followed that with a pretty rock'n'roll rendition of the Music Together classic 'Hello Everybody,' but at least he can appreciate quality.

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.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Rose Red Velvet

Just a little red velvet cake, chilling out at work.

Most people who know me know that my personal dessert pantheon looks something like PIE! CUSTARD! FRUIT! COOKIES! ... cake. Every now and again, though, I get a strong urge to bake and frost something tall, fluffy, and all-American. Red Velvet cake, while not my favorite, fits the bill perfectly, with the additional perk of being covered in cream cheese frosting, which I prefer over buttercream. I have made Rose's white chocolate cream cheese frosting before, and found it a little grainy and thin. For this batch, I used a recipe from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, a shelf staple at my house.

I made this little fella and took it to work last week, where messy as it was (I undershot the confectioner's sugar quotient needed for the frosting), it was appreciated.

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?

Tuesdays with Dorie: Devil's Food White-Out Cake

When I go to type 'Tuesdays with Dorie' into the post title, a long list of remembered possibilities shows up. I've been doing this a while. Lately, my Tuesdays with Dorie adventures have been a little sedate, half-recipe quickies thrown together out of a sense of duty, usually at the last minute. They've been good the last few weeks, but unmemorable. I keep it up, though, not out of guilt, but out of the real pleasure I get from a project continued, from the real effort to stay with this book, get to know this book, and not just flit off to one of my million other cookbooks. I'm spending some good time with Dorie here, learning her style, expanding mine, tweaking (why does everyone in the blog world seem to think this is spelled 'tweeking'? That drives me mad) and just letting the TWD current carry me.

This week's challenge, while quick, but anything but half strength. A full sized layer cake covered in billowy marshmallow can only be called full on baking. I hadn't given the cake much thought at first, but when a newly-vegan friend mentioned last week that it was her birthday, I thought I would do what I often do, and try to use my TWD assignment for an occasion, killing the proverbial two birds (except vegan-the proverbial seitan in the hand?). I searched out a bunch of vegan recipes and advice on substitutes, and somewhere in the investigation I lost sight of the original recipe and just made a new one, entirely forgetting that the plan had been adaptation. The vegan cake was surprisingly successful, especially given that it consisted largely of beets and soy yogurt, and I'll get to that in the next post, but the devils were not satisfied. They wanted their cake the way they wanted it.

In the blur of getting up to frost the vegan cake on Sunday morning, the devils finally had their say.The Devil's Food White-Out Cake just had to be made, and I had to be at rehearsal by noon, so it had to be made fast.

Luckily, it's a pretty simple recipe, and I'm getting pretty good, so I just whipped it out. Often baking in a hurry leaves me with mediocre product, but this time I was in the zone and my guardian devil was watching, and the results were near perfect. The cake is a simple devil's food, with both cocoa and melted chocolate, and it bakes quickly. The frosting is an Italian meringue, where a thick hot sugar syrup is whipped into a pile of already-whipped egg whites. I have had varying success with with this method, but this time it was perfect. When the syrup is added, the egg whites nearly double in height, and it's truly satisfying (and so light, compared to classic buttercream).The final product, sprinkled with crumbs from the layer trimmings, was a triumph of classic American cake, huge and sweet and ridiculous and squashy. The vegan cake looked elegant and slightly appalled next to this fluffy sticky monstrosity, but both were appreciated at rehearsal.

Mystery Frosting Quiz

In the preliminary negotiations re: Jessica's birthday cake (and believe me, cake is no light diplomatic matter around here), she mentioned that she loves the icing that used to be found in old school Italian-American bakeries. According to her, this treat is not a straight buttercream, not a stiffened whipped cream, and it used to be sold packaged in stores when we were young. (Update: Jessica says it was not packaged in stores, but available on supermarket sheet cakes). My inquiries have yielded very little decisive info except the fact that large bakeries use wholesale quantities of gross-sounding products like 'Sweetex' and 'Bright White.' I have a feeling that this icing lives differently in the memories of everyone, and if you asked ten people they'd all say they remembered it and each be describing a different one. So far, I have one recipe I think might get me close, and I'll say no more until it comes to the test.

But, this seems like an excellent opportunity to open up the question, in the manner of the wicked son. What does 'old-fashioned Italian bakery sheet cake frosting' mean to you? Got a recipe? A memory? Please share. Your contributions could prevent an international incident.