Nothing says lovin’ like fresh from the oven….

Here goes...I'm the one of the two of us who doesn't know what he's doing -- at least from a studied point of view....

My grandmother used to peel apples in one long string and my other grandmother used to lament her husband's inability to clean fish scales out of the sink once he'd processed the days catch.

So, I come from a family that cooks, but I know nothing from a book. Or, from class -- except the one J and I are taking now. So, I take baby steps.  Try things that might work, or might not.

My previous experience with creating cakes from a box worked, so why shouldn't this one?

I started with a boxed cake -- plain white. I added a package of chocolate chips, one cup of pumpkin pecan butter.

One of my friends gave me this. It rocks. A bit of pumpkin, a bit of pecan and a lot of sugar. How can you possibly go wrong?

I baked these as cupcakes. Even used the cool foil cupcake liners.

I used a cream cheese frosting (of course, from a tub) to create a cinnamon frosting. I added a 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Honestly, I may have used a bit more cinnamon. The frosting was a bit strongly flavored and I needed the cinnnamon to get a bit of the taste. They frosted quite nicely. See the following picture.

The texture of the tops was quite nice, but we'd expect that from a boxed cake. What I didn't expect was how hard and tough the bottoms of the cupcakes were.  They seemed dry and not at all the moist deliciousness that was the cupcake tops.  Odd that you could have two completely different textures in one cupcake.  Even odder -- if that is even a word -- is the ones in a foil liner were moist all the way through.  I assume that I over cooked them.  But, surprisingly, I didn't burn them.

Don't they just look beautiful? That's them up at the top of the blog.

Robb

Good Charlotte, An Angel

Well, as usual, it all begins with the next recipe in the Cake Bible. This time, it started on page 120 the Genoise Classique. Boy that sounded pretty. The most complicated thing about this recipe was learning how to pronounce "beurre noisette" (according to dictionary.com: bur nwah-zet" . I can't get the midwestern out of my voice for the first word.

From the Genoise Classique, we move on to CB pg 179 and the Chocolate Chip Charlotte. This is photographed in the book, which I find is a great help. Sorta like a puzzle box having the picture on it so I know what I'm supposed to be making. Unlike a puzzle, I rarely get it exactly right in baking. But looking at the picture at the top, you have to say it looks mighty fine.

We also have to make one of our favorite frostings: Ganache (pg 279). This is so easy. Chop the chocolate and add it to warmed cream. Stir. Damn, it's easy and it's good!

We make a syrup, it's a part of the original Genoise recipe. Then, the fun whipped cream with nuts, chopped chocolate (in our case, mini morsels) and a touch of gelatin.

Nothing in any of these recipes was difficult, and all of the instructions up to the 6th step of the Charlotte were easy to follow.

At step 6, Houston we had a problem. Ok, it wasn't nearly as bad as being trapped in space until you possibly burn upon rentry. But there was a moment when I thought, "How the Hell does this actually work?"

After J cut the edges to form a point to keep the top from being a wad of cake dough, I was "supposed" to lay them in the bowl with the chocolate facing out and the points all meeting at the bottom of the bowl. I have to say that I'm more of a bull in the China shop sort. I barrelled on through, hoping that at some point, it would all make sense.

The trouble is I can't barrel through and chat and when J said, "It's gotten quiet in here, it's starting to be work." I realized she was right and all that was missing was my tongue sticking out as I tried to write. Growing up I always thought of myself as Charlie Brown. It seemed to me that everyone was so mean to him, especially when he tried to do something good and bring home that sad under loved Christmas tree. Then, when Linus gets up and recites the real meaning of Christmas... I need a hanky.

The Chocolate Charlotte was not, however, hanky inducing. It came together with a bit of

barreling through and a pause, and a bit of a redo, but it turned out quite nice. About half way through (ok, about an hour into our 3.5 hour baking session), we thought we'd not finish the charlotte until next week. So, we made the Chocolate Lover's Angel Food Cake (pg 160). J had made it before and thought it would be a quick one to whip up and that way we'd have something to show for our day's work.

Well, here it is....

Somehow, we spent the next hour and a half (while the Angel Food cake cooled and the ganache cooled on the genoise) looking at blogs. Thanks everyone for your comments on the Lemon Meringue Pie entry. This Daring Bakers thing could get awfully addictive. We looked at pictures from J's Mom and her homemade Twinkies, made from an actual Twinkie baking kit, complete with a plastic Twinkie the Kid!

We got to look at J's dad's wonderful baguettes. Ok, that sounds a bit dirty, (you can stop giggling now). There is something about seeing someone create a thing of beauty, whether it be a Twinkie, a baguette, or variations on a theme like the lemon meringue pies to inspire you. John's photos inspired us so much that when we get back together in two weeks, we are going to make those baguettes. They are from the latest Fine Cooking issue, to which we all three subscribe. The link takes you to a picture and a video of how to shape the loaves, although the recipe is available only through a subscription. An additional subscription even for those of us who pay dearly for a hard copy subscription every year. No, we didn't have our complaint fall on deaf ears at Taunton Publishing or anything, really. Don't get us started.

I am away next week on baking day, heading to North Carolina for to meet with folks at a salon outside of Charlotte. I can hardly wait, I've never been to Charlotte. (Seemed fitting to bring up since we made a Charlotte and I'm going to Charlotte.)

See you soon.

Robb

Who you callin' a fruitcake?

Well everyone, this will be short. M and I are about to head over to J and K's house for dinner. Sort of a pre Thanksgiving dinner as M and I are heading to Indianapolis (see previous post's pic of my home state). The folly isn't that we are flying on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the folly really is that we are driving to Indianapolis. Yes, driving. All 753 miles of it. In, according to Google, 12 hours. Somehow, I doubt that time will be right.

Anyway, J and I baked today. We realized we hadn't seen each other since our last installment on cheesecake. Remember all that superfluous information about a bain marie?

We still haven't figured out what to do with all that left over cheesecake. Although, if there is a way to incorporate it into something, I bet we find it. Julian suggested using it in a buttercream. That sounds completely interesting. Wonder how that would come together.

This time we baked the Less Fruity Fruitcake (p 66). We finally found all the fruit cake mix candied orange, lemon, cherries and pineapple and citron that we could handle. I bought the fruit cake mix and J bought the citron, interestingly we independently picked up 4 tubs each. We'll be ready for future candied fruit needs!!

This recipe rocked. I thought the rum added just a hit of spice, and warmth. It definitely brought out flavor. This is the first recipe, I think, where we got to cream the butter and the sugar. It was brown sugar, but we did get to cream. Honestly, if you've made any regular cake, this followed that method. After the creaming, add the dry ingredients in thirds with the milk/molasses mixture in between.

Then scoop into muffin tins and bake. This was so simple and the results were so outrageously good that both J and I thought we'd do it again.

It is so good, that I'm taking all the little beauties with me to my family in Indiana.

I'm sorry for the rush on this, but I was afraid I'd forget to write it if I waited for us to get back from Indiana.

One last thing, I had a idea flash while standing in line at Wal Mart. I call this cake:

The Cheater's Cake

1 box of yellow cake mix
1 can of pumpkin, (15 oz or so)
1 bag of chocolate chips (11 or 12 oz or so)
1 tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice

2 tubs of cream cheese frosting

To the cake mix, add the chocolate chips, stir to dust the chips. Then add the pumpkin. Continue adding all the ingredients called for in the instructions for your particular boxed cake mix, leaving out any liquid. After you have incorporated all the other ingredients, add the liquid (water, milk) a little bit at a time. When the batter seems to be right for cake batter, stop adding liquid. (When I did it, I only used 1/2 of the water.)

Pour into two 9" round cake pans.

Bake according to package directions. Then cool.

Frost with tubs of cream cheese icing.

Changes from first attempt: I found that 1 tub wasn't quite enough to really frost it. And the cake could use a bit of Pumpkin Pie Spice to add a bit of zing.

It's the first cake in a long time that M and I ate all of. It was quite nice.

Well, that's all for this pre Thanksgiving post.

Bake through, or since it's the holidays, Eat Through.

Robb