Ben Bakes a Cake!

Ice Creams

2008-07-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to try making an ice cream in the style of Jeni's Ice Cream of Columbus, OH. Her flavors are fascinating, but even more interesting to me is that, unlike every other ice cream recipe in the universe, these are thickened with corn starch instead of eggs. Using the vanilla recipe as a base, I did a cinnamon ice cream with a muscovado brown sugar swirl. Okay, I kind of made up the swirl part and it was really more brown sugar chunks than swirls, but whatever... it was a good ice cream. I brought it to a picnic at the park last week with some sugar cones and it disappeared in no time. Not sure if anyone got pictures, but I'll see what I can find. Incidentally, if you ever have $100 to blow on a birthday gift for someone, I can think of worse gifts than Jeni's Signature 9.

With the leftover milk and cream, I threw together a more traditional egg-thickened ice cream with chai latte mix, extra cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and cardamom, and chopped coffee beans. Also not bad, especially considering I just pulled it off the top of my head. I think next time I would try candying the coffee beans, to cut the bitterness a little further. Still have a pint of this left, if you can make it to my place in the next few days. :)

Chocolate Babka

2008-07-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

This is one of the more successful recipes I've done in a while. People really responded well to it, and the final product looked kind of rustic and professional at the same time. This style of babka is basically an extra-buttery challah dough with a giant swirl of chocolate through it and a streusel topping. The filling was made of dark chocolate, cake crumbs (great way to reuse leftovers), and pureed apricot jam for kind of a mild sweet tanginess. Even though the recipe was kind of long, it came together very easily. Definitely a recipe I'd keep on hand to throw together for a potluck or brunch. It'd be fun to try other filling flavors, too, like cinnamon. Speaks well for the new book I got the recipe from, The Art of the Dessert.

Daring Bakers: Opera Cake

2008-05-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was an Opera Cake, but with a slight twist. Traditionally made with coffee and lots of chocolate, this recipe was going for more of a springtime pastel look and taste. The birthday boy, my friend Michael, requested mint and chocolate. To kind of compromise this with the no-chocolate stipulation, I avoided using actual chocolate, but instead made the simple syrup component with a chocolate extract. The syrup was absorbed into the almond cake layers of the Opera Cake, imparting a hint of chocolateyness, but no dark color. I haven't used this extract much, so it was interesting to see the effect it had. For peppermint, I infused dry peppermint leaves into heavy cream, whipped the cream, and incorporated it into the white chocolate mousse layer. I had a really hard time whipping the cream, which should be really simple. I broke it twice and had to go out to buy more. Could some chemical in the peppermint interfere with whipping? I'll have to look it up. Also mixed just a bit of the mousse into the buttercream for a little extra flavor. All in all, pretty successful. I don't think anybody at the birthday party complained.

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops

2008-04-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

The latest Daring Bakers challenge: Cheesecake Pops. Not my favorite cheesecake recipe of all time, but a really cute concept. Clever method to freeze the pops after forming and stabbing them to make them sturdy enough to handle for dipping/decorating. I opted to half-dip them in milk chocolate and half-dip them in dark chocolate. I used Guittard, courtesy of Eclipse. I also topped them with graham cracker crumbs, to better tie in with actual cheesecake. Did a few with Maldon sea salt, because why not? Took some to a picnic potluck and the rest into work, where they were hoarded jealously.

Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

2008-03-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

This was my second challenge from the Daring Bakers site and, lo and behold, I already owned the book that the recipe was from. The Perfect Party Cake is from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The cake part was a very nice, basic white cake, with a tiny bit of a lemon flavor. The filling in the recipe is raspberry jam, but I had a random jar of sour cherry and rhubarb jam that worked out really well. The really new part for me was the buttercream, which I think was a Swiss buttercream, rather than the Italian style I usually make. With the Italian buttercream, you whip egg whites and gently pour in hot, melted sugar. With this recipe, the sugar and egg whites are stirred together over a double boiler and then whipped. For both methods, you finish it off with tons and tons of butter. I really liked this recipe. It was a bit less involved to execute and I thought the resulting buttercream was exceptionally creamy and non-greasy. I put the stripey pattern on the sides with my new cake comb and then Will helped me come up with the pink sugar (reduced cranberry juice tossed with sugar) to decorate the top. I took the cake into work the next day and it didn't take long for it to disappear.

Chocolate Souffle Cake

2008-03-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

This one is from a month or two ago. My condo's social committee had a chocolate-themed potluck event. Well, I couldn't pass that up. And, of course, I had to impress, but also didn't have time to shop for ingredients. I got this recipe from the Tartine Bakery cookbook. (Incidentally, I'm pretty psyched to visit the actual bakery in SF next week.) It's a really interesting recipe. Flourless chocolate cake, so it's super rich. Unlike other flourless chocolate cakes, though, it's souffled, meaning whipped egg whites are folded in right before baking, which give it a lot of lightness and volume when the air bubbles expand in the oven. There's also a step of whipping the egg yolks and folding that in. Crazy. Wasn't sure what to do with the presentation. That's something I need to get better at. Anyway, it turned out to be practically the only homemade thing at the party. Went over very well, I'd say.

Caramel Almond Tart

2008-03-12T21:54:00.001-07:00

Had friends over on Sunday and made this Caramel Almond Tart from David Lebovitz's blog, originally from Chez Panisse. I followed the directions exactly, heating the cream and sugar until it foamed up, then adding the almonds and amaretto, but it didn't seem to react as described. Maybe I should have cooked it on the stove longer to darken/thicken the caramel? It was pretty wet when it went into the oven and took longer to bake than predicted, but it all seemed to work out find in the end. Crispy and buttery and almondy and yum. Nobody complained.

Daring Bakers: French Bread

2008-03-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

So, I recently joined this monthly baking challenge website, The Daring Bakers. Did my first challenge last week, Julia Child's French Bread recipe. Gotta admit, I underestimated this one. Sure, the recipe was 15 pages long, but I've made bread before. No problem. Mostly, it was just time consuming. I didn't plan ahead very well, started it at one o'clock and was basically babysitting a ball of dough until midnight. Kneading it, letting it rise, shaping it, repeat, repeat. And after all that, I end up with these crazy misshapen blobs of loaves. Something happened moving it from the counter into the oven. Pretty gracelessly on my part. You can see in the pics how it looks beautiful until right before the end. Gotta admit, though, it tasted amazing. Best crust I've ever gotten on homemade bread, too. Looking forward to the next challenge, where I'll be a little more careful with everything.

Rice Pudding

2008-02-20T22:32:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I've been craving rice pudding. It worked out today because I had some milk that only had a couple good days left in it and a package of raisins from my mom that I was never going to get around to eating. I usually don't like raisins in my rice pudding (although Craisins are another story), but I figured I could do something to doctor them up a bit. Ended up simmering them with some apple cider vinegar, cinnamon sticks, clove syrup (leftover from some Thanksgiving mixology) and a splash of vanilla extract. Not bad. Certainly aromatic.

Oh, also, I really like to make rice pudding with Arborio rice. It's a shorter-grained Italian rice usually used for risotto. I dunno, it's just got this dense chewiness to it that I like. I probably could have used a little more milk than I did; the pudding came out a little dry. But still yummy.

More Thanksgiving Desserts

2007-11-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

Had lots of people over for Thanksgiving this year, so we needed a lot of desserts. First, a blueberry-swirled cheesecake with blueberry topping. I got a lot of comments on people liking the graham-cracker crust on this. It's just graham crackers, butter, and sugar, so I all I can think is that blind-baking it did some fun caramelizing stuff. Next, a butterscotch pie using this recipe, with a couple extra eggs for thickening. Also used the leftover pie crust from a couple posts ago. And for the big finale, individual baked alaskas with pumpkin ice cream and ginger cake. I've ever made nor eaten a baked alaska before, but I was pretty pleased with the results. It was a little harried getting them all meringued up in the middle of the party, but it was a fun experiment, and everyone who had one seemed to enjoy it.

Thanksgiving 2007 Prep

2007-11-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

Got a head start on Thanksgiving with a couple desserts: Molasses Cookies (very popular a couple years ago) and Vegan Cranberry Upside Down Cake. They look good, at least. Results to be determined.

Blueberry Pie, New Food Processor

2007-11-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

A little pre-Thanksgiving experimentation with a new pie crust recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Instead of being super careful to have frozen solid butter and cutting it into the dough to just the right amount, they worked out a recipe where you can just blend it all to heck, as long as you reserve a little un-buttered flour to toss in at the end. They replace some of the water with vodka, too, to cut down on gluten formation. It was awfully easy, but I can't decide about the results. Nice, but a little dense. I saved half for a Thanksgiving pie next week, so we'll see how it works out a second time. Blueberry because I couldn't resist a giant bag of them at Costco.

Wedding Cake

2007-11-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

Finally, FINALLY organized some pictures of Dinah and Eli's wedding cake. Congrats again, you crazy kids! And thanks to everyone who brought a camera. We ended up going with a white cake with alternating layers of lime and pomegranate curds, iced with white chocolate buttercream. The decoration on top is pomegranate arils and sunflowers from the reception. Candied lime slices ring the base of each tier.

Espresso Training

2007-10-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

This week I attended a series of training sessions at Caffe Calabria, which is going to be the espresso supplier for Eclipse. Calabria is a local coffee bean roasting company with a great reputation and is apparently known all over the world. They're very insistent that anyone using their beans knows how to make the best espresso possible. We had to learn about all sorts of variables that can affect the quality of a shot. After a bit of book-learning, we got to practice pulling shots over and over again. Then we spent a day steaming milk for lattes and cappuccinos. I've never been able to drink a latte or cappuccino straight, but these were so smooth... well, it was impressive. This should mean the coffee at Eclipse will be top notch. I'm looking forward to putting in a shift behind the counter now and then. I think I must be growing some serious tolerance for coffee, because the amount I put away that last day of class really should have had me bouncing of the walls. Instead, nothing. Go figure.

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream

2007-09-20T00:13:00.001-07:00

I know I keep saying this, but I have got to start disciplining myself to write up these projects in a reasonable time. I've wanted to make this recipe since I saw it on David Lebovitz's blog almost six months ago. Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream! Who doesn't love any component of that title. The fun part is that the ice cream is so fancy, but the ingredients are so basic. Sugar, butter, milk cream, etc. It's all in how you prepare them. I did finally buy my first fleur de sel (fancy sea salt). Good stuff. Will just would not let me use regular kosher salt.

I do think I took the caramel to just a little bit too high a temperature. The final ice cream was noticeably bitter in kind of a dark coffee way. Great flavor, but perhaps for a specific palate. A friend of mine said she had some with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and that sounds to me like the perfect complement to mellow things out. In the pictures, you can see how the recipe called for a sheet of hard caramel as a mix-in, which I got to crush up with my mortar and pestle. Don't use that thing often enough.

Wedding Cake Trial Run

2007-07-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, spent tonight assembling the trial run cake for Dinah and Eli. I've been working on the components a bit every night this week. We settled on flavors weeks ago, but I wanted to provide a few decorating options. I'm no artist, but Dinah had some ideas, and I had some ideas, and Will had one or two, and between those I put together a few options on one big schizophrenic cake. I'm driving it up to OC tomorrow for Dinah and some of the rest of the family to get a good look and make the final decisions. And to see my adorable new nephew. You know, from the last wedding I did a cake for.

So, the pictures... the individual white cake layers (the spirals are simple syrup, helps keep the cake moist). Oh, I used a wire slicers to horizontal slice each cake into two layers and it worked really, really well. Way smoother than hand-slicing it with a big ol' knife. Each tier is three layers of cake, with one layer of pomegranate and one layer of lime curd in between. White chocolate buttercream on the outside. You can also see the different decorating ideas I tried. Candied lime slices in various arrangements. Smooth sides, vertical stripes, crazy stippling patterns. Surely amongst all that is some perfect combination of features.

I'll take some live-action cake-eating pictures tomorrow.

Shaker Lemon Pie

2007-06-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Tried out a new cookbook, Tartine by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, with a Shaker Lemon Pie. I'd never seen anything like this before. The filling is just lemon slices, sugar, and eggs. While it's baking in the oven, the sugar candies the lemon and the eggs thicken it into a curd. By the time it's done, you can eat every bit of the lemon, even the rind. It's tart, but really good. I totally want to try it with limes now. I don't know if the Shakers did that too much.

This book is seriously beautiful. I may have to make everything in it.

Taste-Testing Cake Flavors

2007-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

I forgot my camera, but Dinah got some pictures of the wedding cake taste testing. Yes, I numbered the cakes and I had a chart to remind me what was what. None of them were exactly bad, but there were a few clear favorites. Also, oranges? Difficult to slice thin and candy. I can't really recommend it. Limes were a snap.

Trying Out Wedding Cake Components

2007-05-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Dinah and Eli requested something light, summery, and citrusy for their wedding cake and we talked about a few flavor options. I've spent the last couple weeks making (and freezing) all sorts of possible components. A couple spice cakes, a white chocolate cake, a plain white cake, buttercreams from four different books, lime curd, lemon curd, two blood orange curd recipes. Oh, and candied slices of lime. It got to be kind of a lot to keep track of. I had a chart at one point. Ended up assembling 5 different cakes, each with a unique combination of components. Stay tuned for pictures of the taste testing.

Chocolate Muffins

2007-05-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

Made these for Mother's Day, from Harold Friberg's Professional Pastry Chef book. They actually have beets grated into the batter and I had some beets to use up. Portioning with the ice cream scoop is the only way to go with muffin pans. I've never had them come out so uniformly sized. Will did a burnt caramel ganache for the glaze. Brought them to a family party. Positively received.

White Spice Bundt Pound Cake

2007-04-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

Made this White Spice Pound cake from The Cake Bible for a coworker's birthday recently. It's called that because it's basically a plain pound cake with just a little bit of cinnamon, cloves, and cocoa powder. Little enough cocoa that it only counts as a spice and doesn't make a chocolate cake. First baked goods brought to new job! Ok, maybe second. Made and froze an extra 6" cake as a test flavor for the upcoming wedding cake. Also used some blood orange juice to make a glaze. Learned two important lessons. One... when dealing with a bundt pan with especially deep valleys like this one, be sure to fill it up all the way, or it will break right apart. Two... when making a simple, simple (d'oh) glaze, do not absentmindendly dump in all available liquid; gradually add enough to make it the right consistency. There, silver lining!

Orange Chocolate Baklava

2007-03-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

When Michael M suggested a Mediterranean theme for Sunday's dinner, I took the opportunity to try Scharffenberger's Orange Chocolate Baklava recipe from The Essence of Chocolate. The chocolate part is chopped up chocolate bits in the filling. The orange flavor is entirely in the sugar/honey syrup, which is cooked with orange juice, orange peel, and a cinnamon stick, then strained and poured over the just-baked pastry. And let's not forget the cup of clarified butter. Who wants butterfat?

Marshmallows

2007-03-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a gourmet marshmallow site, and having an overabundance of gelatin from our upcoming Jello-themed party, Will and I decided to try making marshmallows from scratch. Super yummy, and turned out to be super easy. Heat up some sugar and corn syrup (we used honey) to soft ball stage, mix in gelatin and whip till frothy. Whip some egg whites and mix them in. Add some vanilla. Pour out onto powdered-sugared pan. Chill. Slice. The end! The honey substitution imparted a slight extra flavor, but not too strong.

I need to stop eating this much sugar all the time. Seriously.

Challah with Chocolate

2007-03-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

I wanted to get through a glut of bread flour and decided to make a simple challah recipe. Garnished with chocolate. I found a recipe for "Honey Challah" in Jeff Nathan's Adventures in Jewish Cooking, a book I got a while ago and somehow forgot about. Bad Ben. Anyway, the recipe turned out well. I haven't made bread in a while. It's super easy to do it with the stand mixer compared to kneading it by hand. I did one loaf (braid?) with the chocolate mixed right into the dough and another loaf with the chocolate just on top. Must use this book more often.

Ice Cream Crazy

2007-03-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

Acting on a tip, I picked up a fancy new self-freezing ice cream maker last week at a crazy discount. Of course, I couldn't decide on just one flavor to break it in with, so, you know, I made them all. Ended up having a bunch of friends over to share the bounty. Avocado, Dark Butterscotch, White Chocolate Ginger. Will made Goat's Milk Ice Cream with Fig and Chocolate and a couple sauces, Mexican Chocolate and Bourbon Caramel. Never anything plain.

I don't have pictures of every flavor, but you can see the new machine and a lot of the intermediate steps. I think the Avocado was technically a sherbet (no eggs). The Butterscotch was from Room for Dessert, but I used dark muscovado sugar instead of regular brown sugar. Really emphasized the brown sugar aspect of the butterscotch flavor. The white chocolate ginger recipe I just made up. Tweaked a basic vanilla recipe by adding melted white chocolate, a little zested ginger, and chopped candied ginger.

Having way more ice cream than I'll ever need to eat left over, I made everyone take a pint home. Now don't you wish you lived closer?