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Monday, April 25, 2011
The minute I poured the cake into the baking pans, it didn’t seem like it would end well.
Martha’s recipe called for six layers (three cakes cut in two), and I could tell by how little batter I had to divide between the three pans that that wasn’t happening. Plus, I had promised a spare layer to the kids, since they’re no fans of coconut.
And the cakes seemed a little too short, and a little too done when they came out of the oven. I considered stopping right there and calling it a night.
But then I cooked up the custard filling.
Oh, divine.
I slathered and stacked the layers, then put the cake in the fridge to set. And rather than making the frosting, I went to bed.
I can’t imagine doing any complicated sweet-making on a blustery long workaday Monday, so when I got home, I frosted the cake with premix. Sorry, Martha. I like tough recipes, but not tonight. Good thing the flaked coconut helped with the aesthetics.
I have to say, with Martha's recipes, you have to read closely. This one called for three six-inch cake pans. Who knew they even came in that size? I used nine-inch pans. Even though my cake ended up being three layers, it looked snowy beautiful. A good thing, since it’s supposed to snow tonight.
This cake? It’s sweet, like coconut custard pie. It’s better than I thought it would be given the troubled start. I think I like it just fine. I don’t think I’ll make it again, though. No fans of it on the home front.
Reading companion: Coconut Poetry magazine
-Sweetcakes
Friday, April 22, 2011
There’s a lovely, inherent indulgence to good chocolate. Combine good chocolate with a tart fruit like raspberries, and you have a classic, irresistible pairing. And then add sweet mascarpone, one of my favorite additions to anything.
I made this cake on a busy Sunday, a day in which I also woke up with a wee hangover, played tennis anyway, had an amazing brunch, weeded the flower bed, cleaned the patio, poured dirt to cure in the new box garden, and did a few metric tons of laundry before settling down for a delicious dinner of salmon and asparagus grilled by the chef of the house. This was followed by dessert and the premier of a new "run through the forest, fight a lot of people” series on television. So, a beautiful, busy day with lots of texture. A beautiful cake with lots of texture, too.
Recipe: This one was mottled together.
Began with a box – Duncan Hines Triple Chocolate Decadence Cake. (No shame in starting ahead of scratch.)
Raspberry marscapone filling: Mix 8 ounces of mascarpone cheese, 6 ounces of raspberries, two teaspoons lemon, and sugar to taste.
Frosting: From a recipe I found and lost online. ‘Twas a pretty standard powdered sugar, bittersweet chocolate, vanilla and butter combo, whipped until incredibly creamy. I always use the best quality vanilla and chocolate that I can find.
Topping: mini chocolate chips surrounding the outside ring, and topped with fresh raspberries.
Reading companion: High time someone writes the quintessential chocolate poem. While we wait for that, there’s “Like Water for Chocolate” or the luscious movie “Chocolat” with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.
-Sweetcakes
Tease:
A new post coming up for Poppyseed Angel Food Cake. Here is your pre-eating, reading companion. (Because I love Anne Sexton at least as much as Angel Food Cake or is it the other way around?)
The Angel Food Dogs
by Anne Sexton
Leaping, leaping, leaping,
down line by line,
growling at the cadavers,
filling the holy jugs with their piss,
falling into windows and mauling the parents,
but soft, kiss-soft,
and sobbing sobbing
into their awful dog dish.
No point? No twist for you
in my white tunnel?
Let me speak plainly,
let me whisper it from the podium--
Mother, may I use your pseudonym?
May I take the dove named Mary
and shove out Anne?
May I take my check book, my holographs,
my eight naked books,
and sign it Mary, Mary, Mary
full of grace?
I know my name is not offensive
but my feet hang in the noose.
I want to be white.
I want to be blue.
I want to be a bee digging into an onion heart,
as you did to me, dug and squatted
long after death and its fang.
Hail Mary, full of me,
Nibbling in the sitting room of my head.
Mary, Mary, virgin forever,
whore forever,
give me your name,
give me your mirror.
Boils fester in my soul,
so give me your name so I may kiss them,
and they will fly off,
nameless
but named,
and they will fly off like angel food dogs
with thee
and with thy spirit.
Let me climb the face of my kitchen dog
and fly off into my terrified years.
down line by line,
growling at the cadavers,
filling the holy jugs with their piss,
falling into windows and mauling the parents,
but soft, kiss-soft,
and sobbing sobbing
into their awful dog dish.
No point? No twist for you
in my white tunnel?
Let me speak plainly,
let me whisper it from the podium--
Mother, may I use your pseudonym?
May I take the dove named Mary
and shove out Anne?
May I take my check book, my holographs,
my eight naked books,
and sign it Mary, Mary, Mary
full of grace?
I know my name is not offensive
but my feet hang in the noose.
I want to be white.
I want to be blue.
I want to be a bee digging into an onion heart,
as you did to me, dug and squatted
long after death and its fang.
Hail Mary, full of me,
Nibbling in the sitting room of my head.
Mary, Mary, virgin forever,
whore forever,
give me your name,
give me your mirror.
Boils fester in my soul,
so give me your name so I may kiss them,
and they will fly off,
nameless
but named,
and they will fly off like angel food dogs
with thee
and with thy spirit.
Let me climb the face of my kitchen dog
and fly off into my terrified years.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Or at least to say a word or two about them. All sprinkles are not created equal. For texture and color, the supermarket shaker varietal will do fine. But if you are serious about flavor, and lucky enough to have a Graeter's in your area, their "sprills" actually taste, and taste good. The chocolate taste just like chocolate.
You'll hear about them again when I discuss cooked icing, my deep love for marshmallow fluff and gourmet marshmallows and the good marshmallow creme at yes, Graeter's ice cream.
I am no Martha Stewart and my version of chrysanthemum cake is slightly less ambitious than hers--which I found by looking for the Italian Meringue icing I will be posting about later and well, wedding cakes: a minor, recent interest of mine.
My chrysanthemum cake started as a birthday cake for Mr. Poppycakes, whose simple request was "no loopy extras just a good old-fashioned chocolate cake with maybe some nuts." I believe he refers to my recent obsession with rosewater, orange blossom water, Penzey spices (in particular, their cinnamon and cardamon) and well, the poet in me who decides to invent forms within my cakes (wait until you see the cake that prompted one of my favorite foodies to proclaim "nothing says dessert like a fetus") There's a not-so-tantalizing-tease to hold you!
But I digress. This cake began then, all devil's food and traditional. Save for the fact that I wanted a little nut paste (marzipan was a little denser than I wanted) between layers one and two and for the next layer, I used a very dark chocolate icing with a dash of almond extract. The result was a subtlety of flavor in the fillings that actually made the chocolate cake moreso.
I melted some Ghiradelli's deep chocolate morsels and dipped the edges of some of my slivered almonds and I found, on our holly tree as it was March, some leaves for molds. I made a few chocolate leaves and found that I preferred the natural leaves themselves for the palette of the overall cake (dark midnighty brown, cream, beige and forest green).
Sometimes, I like a cake to have a bit of that homemade wonky-ness to it. Something beautiful but not bakery-precise makes my mouth water when I look at it. (Although Sweetcakes' lemon cake is the ultimate in perfect, gorgeous perfection, I could lay down and die in those folds, enrobed in tart glaze and call it all we know of heaven).
This two-layer stack of sin passed the "traditional chocolate cake" test for the birthday boy and the need to play a little with the process for me.
Until next cake,
Poppycakes
Base recipe: Hershey's Perfectly-Chocolate Chocolate Cake
Reading companion: Chocolat by Joann Harris
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Which I didn’t make with Meyer lemons. And the cake, or rather, the glaze, was incredibly tart. Intense. Puckery. Would I do that again?
Probably.
It was fabulous in its sharpness. At least says my inner hedonist, who is usually the one in control around here. It also was a hit in the swimming pool (aka the garden level of our funky old office building—where the creative team resides). The bundt pan I used is a dramatic thing: the glaze was scattered with lemon zest, the cake itself moist but not too. So by all accounts, a cake for the cake book.
But still, the Meyer lemons might bring a sweeter, softer taste to the whole thing. Maybe next time if I cut the lemon juice with some orange juice to tone it down there might be a more well-rounded citrusy flavor to the glaze.
All of that to say, I learn as much in following the recipe as I do in my tweaks to it. Deliberately, to add my own twist, or simply for convenience. (Where was I going to find Meyer lemons on a snowy Saturday in April?)
Vonnegut says when you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time. My cakette companion and I will prove that right.
Recipe: Kathleen’s Gonna Want Seconds Cooking Blog via Pinterest
Reading companion: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
-Sweetcakes
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