The beginning ...

...of something good?

You know how it goes. You make something terrific and people say- Ooh, you should sell this! You hear that enough and you start to wonder if you could sell some things. How would it work? What exactly could you sell? Where could you do it? Who would buy your stuff? How could it happen without disrupting your life or costing too much to get started? Etc. Etc.

Let it be said, I'm interested in cooking for money again. Not as a full time gig, however. I enjoy cooking and entertaining, and I enjoy the rest of my life which does include a 1/2 time job teaching. I don't want for that to change. But, how great would it be to have some people who regularly or occasionally bought some baked goods from me or hired me to cater parties?

I've mentioned this to several people in the last couple of months and I intend to put together a reasonable list of things I could offer, including some prices. That's in the works, but not yet ready. In the mean time, if you're in need of any items or catering don't hesitate to give me a call.

One of my dear friends, who has listened to me ruminate on this project, had an occasion this last weekend where my services were exactly what she needed. She'd gotten in over her head a little bit in throwing a birthday brunch for a family friend. The guest list grew and grew and things took a serious turn when she discovered that the menu needed to be kosher for passover. Yikes! No bread for brunch?? What about birthday cake? This put a serious wrench in her well laid plans. We talked and she offered to hire me to provide some quiche and a cake, and she handled the rest.

Kosher for passover is different than regular kosher- the main restriction for us was no flour, no leavening, and for those of you jumping to the logical birthday cake option of a flourless chocolate cake with ground nuts, due to an allergy, no nuts were permitted either! You can use ground matzoh as a substitute for flour, but without time to do a trial run and tweak a recipe, I figured I would use a recipe that I knew. I chose the Chocolate Oblivion cake from the Cake Bible. It's a pound a chocolate, a half pound of butter and 6 eggs. This satisfied the dietary rules, and is darn tasty.

A flat, dark, kind of dull looking single layer simply would not do for a birthday cake. The dense texture of this "cake" made it a little challenging to fancy up. I decided on a raspberry whipped cream piped on top with some pretty fresh raspberries. This was not the time to try new things, since I had to make the delivery in less than an hour, but I wanted to make it even more dazzling. On the second try, a band of white chocolate lattice/scroll work/squiggles whatever you want to call it, worked! It was even sturdy enough to survive the car ride and made it in good shape.

For the quiche, large potato latkes served as the crust, and the filling for one was mushroom, spinach, sun dried tomato and feta. The other was caramelized onion, asparagus and chive. I made a third for our own brunch on Sunday of the remaining fillings and it was really good. I like the Silver Palate quiche custard formula of 1 1/2 cups of cream to 3 eggs. And, if you can use flour, their pate brisee recipe makes a perfect crust.


-Janet

Back to Baking Through ...the Cake Bible

Yes, finally! We have returned to The Cake Bible. Robb and Janet actually got together for a day of baking and made a couple of things: The Scarlett Empress p.177, and Orange Glow Chiffon Cake p.155.

The Empress was OK, we had made the sponge cake and rolled it up with raspberry puree back in, dare I say... October. It sat patiently waiting in the freezer until this past week. This was not a great idea, but when we tucked it away, we thought we'd be back to it in a couple of weeks, not in several months! The texture of the cake didn't suffer, but the flavor did. We decided to push ahead and get it done, even with the not so tasty cake. This spectacle of the Empress is what we were interested in, and we figured it would be just fine if we didn't greedily gobble up every morsel.

The outside of the cake is slices of jelly roll and the filling is a vanilla Bavarian cream. It's a nice idea, an unusual twist compared to a regular buttercream filled layer cake. The flavor possibilities are endless, and all you need is a bowl to use as a mold.

We decided to whip out another cake while we were waiting for the Bavarian cream to set up. In the sponge-type cake section of The Cake Bible are a bunch of chiffon cakes and we chose the Orange Glow Chiffon Cake. Chiffon cakes have all the lovely qualities of angel food cake, along with an improved texture and flavor due to the addition of fat- oil and egg yolks. Go figure, fat makes stuff taste good. I loved the chiffon cake, it needs no frosting and satisfies a cake jones without much trouble.

Happy Baking!
Janet

Cooking Class: Part 2

The second class was so intense in some ways that I found myself with a bit of a furrowed brow and a touch of the headache.

We made the Chile Pepper Raspberry Chocolate Cake. And, damn if it isn't the prettiest thing I've ever seen, well, honestly, it's the prettiest thing I think I've made.

Each of the people in the class (all 4 of us) got to take one home. It's a chocolate mousse cake with a raspberry gelatin middle, that is spiced with a chile pepper simple syrup. And, it's covered in chocolate glaze. The glaze gets poured through a fine mesh sieve which slows down the flow and removes any tiny air bubble that might blemish the smooth sheen. Then snappy tempered chocolate decorations and gold leaf are the finishing touches.

Up until recently, I focused on learning the big things -- what type of cake, what type of filling, which frosting/icing should I use. Really, it's the smaller, detail orientated things that make a more amazing cake.

With the glaze, the sieve works wonders, but so does the even pressure of a spatula. You coax the glaze over the edges, you make the top even and the edges covered. It's such a simple thing you don't think it can be that important, but really, it is. It's what makes the finished cake look, well, finished.

Chef Steenman showed us how to make all the components. First we made the chocolate sponge layer, which is piped onto the cocoa powdered silpat. Have I told you how much I'm not a fan of piping? It seems so fraught with despair. And up till last Wednesday, it was. I practically swoon when watching Chef pipe perfect circles. He shows us what is possible and that is surprisingly encouraging. Really, it's about doing it over and over and over and making mistakes and corrections.
We then made simple syrup and infused it with chili peppers. To this syrup we added raspberry puree and gelatin. We made a deliciously silky chocolate mousse that had a consistency similar to gelato. It was not the fluffy air filled mousse that you might expect. It was rich and egg-y and chocolately. Then we got to assemble the whole lot. Anything you build upside down has to be good, right? In a cake ring- which it turns out is an equipment must in the pattisserie- we first added mousse. Then the raspberry layer which was sandwiched between chocolate disks was added, more mousee, another chocolate disk, more mouuse. The last thing in the mold is a layer of flourless chocolate sponge. Really I think it's just there to give you something to lift the cake off the cake plate. But, it's a light and airy cake like layer that contrasts nicely with the satiny smooth mousse in color and texture.
While the cakes chilled, we learned all about chocolate. Cocao Barry is the brand of chocolate Chef Steenman prefers. He says Vahlronha is the best, but not enough better to justify the 3x greater price. He spares no expense on ingredients: plugra butter, organic milk, vanilla beans from Tahiti, fruit purees from France that are totally unbeleivable. Chef worked in a chocolate factory in France and has pictures of the process of making chocolate from cocoa pod to chocolate bar. He told us about processing differences in Belgium and Switzerland. Fascinating. Then we got into the tempering process and the 4 types of crystaline structrues in solid chocolate and the temparatures at which they melt. He tempered some chocolate to show us how. In concept the process seems reasonable: melt, cool, melt. We'll see the next time we have some chocolate project on our own how simple it really is.

Chef proposed that what makes a quality chocolate isn't just the % of cocoa and cocoa butter, but that the texture is what he's looking for. In the process of grinding the chocolate into paste, there is a step called conching. Near as we can tell it's grinding while the temperature is controlled. The longer you do it, the smoother the chocolate. As Americans we tend to think that if 60% cocoa is good, then 72% must be better. Not so. His dark chocolate is 64% and has the most luscious full flavored taste.

After he finished tempering we learned how to make decorations. He colored some cocoa butter red and splattered it onto acetate strips. Once it was hard we spread a layer of the tempered dark chocolate onto the strips and when they just firm enough, but not too firm, cut shapes on the strips and then set them to cool. Once cool, we peeled the acetate sheets off and were left with amazingly shiny peices of chocoalte with red polka dots. Chef says it should be shiny enough to comb your hair in the reflection!!
Fantastic!! We each took a cake home with such pride. If you are in Mt. Kisco, he is selling these as individual cakes for now. They are just being introduced. The chocolate disks made clean slicing somewhat difficult as you can see.
The individuals are completely amazing- instead of glaze they are chilled and sprayed with liquid chocolate. The chocolate hardens in little tiny sand grain sized dots. They also don't have the disks of chocolate in the interior (at least for now).

I wonder if we will ever be able to replicate the artistry of all this chocoalte work.

Much like Janet's sentiment in her post about bread baking, I also don't like to make mistakes. I do what I can to keep mistakes to a minimum. I remember in my Math Methods Course. One of the teaching assistants said, "Are you stuck? Good, this is where you begin to learn."

It's true. You can't know what your limitations are until you reach them. And, you can't grow past them to you know where they are. Piping is one of my limitations. But, I'm working my way through it.

Robb

Project Lila

Robb and I had a wonderful opportunity to make a cake for the 3rd birthday of Lila, the daughter of our friends Geoff and Hillary. Her birthday was on Thursday December 13th, and the celebration continued through that weekend. Lucky girl!

This post has obviously taken some time, but we've had a lot of real life stuff happening, some of it happy and some of it sad, and we are able to get to writing about this really fun time now.

Lila loves princesses and pink. So, castles, tiaras, pink, pink, pink, polka dots, flowers, whimsy, pink, pink, gowns, frills, etc. swam around in our minds as we thought of lots of possibilities. We hoped to include only edible items, this is obviously a big limiting factor for novice decorators, but we were willing to be pushed to (and beyond?) our limits. We considered that cake that is shaped like a gown, with a waist-up barbie sticking out the top. Seemed too predictable... although we did purchase the pan, and some scalloped edge pans that looked like they might be useful: 6 and 8 inch just in case. We also knew that we wanted sparkle and did I mention, pink? We found some pink gel food color (and a zillion other cool colors, too), flaky edible pink glitter, some pink food spray- yes like pink spray paint, also some really cool stuff called lustre. It's a powder that you can brush on and it's really sparkly. We got some of that in dark and light pink, white and pearl. We knew that we wanted the cake to look top notch and that our frosting skills are ok, but not professional looking. We decided that we would have the best luck creating a smooth cake with fondant. We got some pre-made fondant, and also made some (recipe in the CB pg. 307), and discovered in a practice coloring and rolling session (see the Art Deco cake) that they were virtually identical. And easy to work with- really easy! We were so confident, we didn't give the fondant another thought.

Originally, Robb and I had a design that included two tiers: one 9 inch round, topped with one 6 inch scalloped, each with some combination of cake and fillings, and a pointy princess hat on top. The 6 inch layer was to hover over the 9 inch layer by about a 1/2 inch or so. We figured that we could make the pointy princess hat out of caramel, similar in concept to a caramel cage that we've all seen placed over fancy shmancy desserts. For the cone shaped mold we considered foil, but realized that we'd have trouble getting it smooth enough. We ended up making one out of radiator screen. We thought that would be smooth and flexible and could withstand the hot sugar. We also tried a styrofoam cone covered with foil, and hoped the foam wouldn't melt. We planned to get it colored pink or close enough with all manner of the pink items listed above. We tried it out and for a number of reasons, did not get a good result. #1 we overcooked the caramel, #2 the radiator screen mold was too wide and short, #3 the application of caramel wasn't uniform enough to produce a strong enough caramel network to withstand the prying needed to unmold it, and #4 and most problematic for this project, it didn't color very pink with the stuff we had to work with. I think that it could be done, but we made this discovery on the Tuesday before the party. Yikes! So, we relaxed our restriction about edibility and agreed to use a plastic tiara. That was a tough choice, but a pragmatic one.

Funny how in making this cake, the actual cake part wasn't our focus. We were feeling fairly confident in our ability to make tasty cake and had dwelled completely on the look of it. In our batting ideas around stage, we had talked about an almond flavored cake layer with some kind of pink filling. That would have been fine I'm sure, but like a lightening bolt I was struck with the idea of making the inside look like Neapolitan ice cream. Brilliant! We decided on chocolate, raspberry, and vanilla, with raspberry puree between the layers and the wonderful raspberry mousseline buttercream for frosting (see our July 17, 2007 post for our raves). We still had to pick which cake recipes, so we looked back through our notes of butter cakes and decided that we like the Chocolate Domingo and the White Velvet Butter Cake best. We agreed that we could just color some of the white cake pink and call it raspberry, which we did. The only adjustment that was made to the cake recipes aside from coloring one batch pink, was some brown and red food color was added to the chocolate layer. In a practice muffin-sized version, the chocolate layer took on a slightly chalky look once it was cut. The brown and red made it just enough richer- or my imagination said it worked! Lastly, in addition to the cake layers, raspberry puree and yummy buttercream, I thought it would be good to have an almond dacquoise layer to add a bit of nice texture. Robb agreed once he tried the muffin-sized mock up. I think this may have been his favorite part! (It definitely was. A good crunch in a lovely cake!)

So, we come to Friday night, the night before her party and we have tickets to see Paula Poundstone (right here in Peekskill at the wonderful Paramount Center for the Arts) and we get started on assembly and decoration AFTER the show. We at least had the cake layers assembled: chocolate, raspberry puree, dacquoise, pink layer, raspberry puree, dacquoise, white layer, all covered with a thin layer of the raspberry mousseline buttercream, and the same for the 6 inch layer, except that the scalloped edges got lost in the trimming and it turned out to be round. That's ok in the big scheme of things. But, oh boy, we enter murky territory...

We got the fondant colored pink finally- it took a bit of time and a total scrapping of the first attempt. Fuschia isn't really pink, at least not in the way we wanted. Adding more and more of a color that isn't what you want doesn't magically make it the right color- go figure! Lessons learned- color a little bit at a time instead of 4 pounds worth, and use pink food color if you want to end up with pink fondant! (Ok, I'm a hair colorist and I know this, but somehow after seeing Paula Poundstone, it didn't come to me in a blinding flash, until the 4 pounds were already a lovely shade of a too violet fuschia.)

We had a heck of a time getting the fondant on the cake this time. The Art Deco cake was simple, partly because it was very wide and only an inch tall. So much for smooth sailing. Our 6 inch layer was at least 6 inches tall,and we ended up with a LOT of excess fondant on the sides and had a terrible time trying to smooth it. In fact, we took so much time trying to get it sorted out, it got hard. So, we ended up with a sort of bustle of fondant on one side of the cake, and a couple of seams. We were strategic with some fondant ribbon placement and all in all I think the "bustle" area looked suggestive of flowing hair at the back of the tiara. We stuck on some flowers and dusted the whole thing with the fantastic lustre mentioned above. Some princess ribbon on the tiara added to the flowing look.

Given the excitement of the fondant effort on the 6 inch layer, and that it was past midnight, we figured we'd go with buttercream for the bottom layer. We had a terrific polka dot ribbon and I was especially keen to see it wrapped around the base of the cake; minimalist and classy. We topped it off with a small branch of alstroemeria. (I think this small hand-held bouquet is called a tussy mussy or something similar- from Victorian times.) Lila enjoyed the flowers, carrying them around and then later in the day when she was tired, she got to tear them up into very tiny pieces. What a bonus!


We intended to have the layers stacked, but the pinks clashed and the style was quite different for that to make sense. With the overhanging fondant, we did need a pedestal for the smaller layer, so it was perched on some columns with a fluffy cloud of organza ribbon beneath.


The cakes were well received, the taste was great. And despite being mashed into slices with the side of a dull cake server, it held up pretty well. We had a great time thinking and planning for this one! We learned a lot in the process- found some good sources for supplies and interesting products. To some extent executing this one was less fun- there was even a moment for one of us of laying on the kitchen floor and trying not to lose it. But, we're troopers! We made it through and isn't that what this blog project is all about...

Bake through!

Janet

One cake with no flour... is a cheesecake!

What did we do this week?

It's been a wild wacky end of October. So much so that it's now November.

I spent the last two weekends in Boston teaching a class for a chain of salons. It was all good, but boy is that a long ride from Peekskill to Boston (3 hours). Ok. It's not that long of a ride, but it does take its toll on you when you do it alone.

Guess I'm in trouble since M and I are going to Indiana for Thanksgiving. Well, that's not a big deal. The big deal is that we've decided to drive. That is a 12 hour drive. I'm happy to have some one to share it with. Here's a picture of my home state:



Again with the diversions. What did we do this week? Oh, yeah, the cheesecake. (Glad J wrote the title or I'd have forgotten.)

The Cordon Rose Cream Cheesecake (pg 81) is treated more like a custard by RLB in that she has you do a water bath (a bain marie in French cooking terms). Bain Marie is really a double boiler. I never thought of a cake/custard in a pan half full of water as a double boiler. To me, that is a pot inside a pot. But I guess extrapolated, a pan in a pan is very similar to a cake pan in a roasting pan.

Ok, this'll teach me to search something on Wikipedia:
The term bain-marie originates from alchemy, where some practitioners needed to give their materials prolonged periods of gentle heating, in an attempt to mimic the supposed natural processes whereby precious metals germinated in the earth. It was said to be an invention of Mary the Jewess, an ancient alchemist traditionally supposed to have been Miriam, a sister of Moses. The name comes from this tradition: balneum Mariae in medieval Latin, from which the French bain de Marie is derived, although, in the French wikipedia the coinage of the term is attributed to the medieval German philosopher, theologian, and chemist/alchemist Saint Albert the Great (1193-1280).

Probably more information than any of us need on that subject.

One of the things that J and I noticed was that the recipe had a tremendous amount of lemon juice (3 tablespoons). It was definitely tangy, what with the lemon juice and the 3 cups!!! of sour cream to only 1 lb. of cream cheese.

She suggests adding a tablespoon of cornstarch to help it thicken and not leach water after unmolding. Interestingly enough, we used the cornstarch and it did seep a bit- a lot really.

You do get to incorporate one egg at a time much like when we added flour in the butter cakes. Speaking of butter cakes, this cake also contained no butter. Wow, that has to be a first..... well, except for the vegetable cakes that used oil.

This cake came together with out any fuss or fight. It poured into the prepared springform pan just like we thought it should. It was a bit tangy as mentioned before. We had that wonderful Raspberry Puree (pg 337) from a previous cake in the freezer, and added a lovely swirl of it to the cheesecake. We put it into the bain marie (see long dissertation on that above). Set it in the oven and waited.

While we waited, we discussed our plans for a birthday cake for a young friend of ours (she'll be 3) whose mom asked us to bake a cake for her. Her only requirements are that it be pink and princess-y. I know, hard to imagine a child who likes pink AND princesses. But Lila does.

So excited were we by the discussion of the birthday cake, we didn't notice that the oven was still on and we cooked to the cheesecake for an extra 18 minutes. We then let it cool and refrigerated it overnight as the recipe stated.

I stopped by the next day after tricker or treaters (or in the case of J & K's house, right in the middle of the steady stream) for the taste test.

This wasn't our favorite. It was too tangy, lacked a certain creamy/cakiness, and really seemed off. Now, it could be the overcooking of it. But, since the instruction was to turn the oven off and let the cake sit for an hour immediately after baking, the extra bit of time should not have been a large factor given our complaints. And in fact, one would expect that extra time would create a firmer, perhaps more cake-like consistency. Instead it was a too-fluffy, too-tangy, too- wet, absolutely not New York style cheesecake. That's fine, not every cheesecake has to be NY style, but RLB took pains to describe it as such. This is one instance where not making every variation listed is a very good thing indeed. We would not have been happy with 4 or 5 times as much cheesecake. This one didn't even get distributed, that's how little we thought of it. Currently it sits in the freezer. Who knows maybe we'll need it as an ingredient later on- raspberry cheesecake ice cream?? Cheesecake ice cream doesn't sound any better today than it did when it first came out 20+ years ago.

Personally I like creamy desserts: cheesecake, flan, tiramisu, creme brulee (not as much as one of my coworkers who sometimes sneaks downstairs to have one as a late night snack -- I won't say who, but she knows who she is), but I couldn't get it to like this one. Even with the best Raspberry Puree in the world.

Here is a picture.....


I hope you are enjoying the first bits of real autumn (or is it fall?) at least here in the North East.

Bake Through,

Robb