Fluff cakes for my sweet heart

The thesis is done. I am officially a Master of Food Science. Do you know what this means? I might actually have time to cook again! And cook I have. On this particular weekend morning I woke up with pancakes in mind but a true craving to get creative in the kitchen (something I hadn't done in quite some time). I pondered over this whilst making coffee and it suddenly struck me that what I really wanted was extra fluffy pancakes. But how to achieve that? Well, as any good food scientist worth their salt knows, foam makes for fluff. And what better way to make foam than to use your handy-dandy stand mixer to make meringue out of the egg whites that are already part of your recipe?

Empty meringue bowl.

Batter with meringue *gently folded* into it (must maintain the fluff!)

A cross between pancakes and Soufflé these cakes made for a divine breakfast treat. At the last minute I decided to take half the batter and make them in these silicon heart shells that I got for valentines day. They are officially sweet heart cakes now, all they need is a bit of red food coloring and they'd be almost too 'sweet' to eat. ;)

The results were pretty amazing. Somewhere in the process my wonderful husband (did I mention I got married?) woke up and decided bacon was necessary. Isn't it always? Silly me.

Now, if you are wondering how you might make your very own fluff cakes see directions below.

1) Pull out cook book with pancake recipe (yes you do need to make these from scratch, but trust me it's easy and oh so worth it)

2) In stead of adding whole egg to your batter, separate them and whip your whites into soft peaks

3) Gently fold peaks into the rest of the batter you've prepared in another bowl

4) Cook on in a hot pan just like regular pancakes or in a muffin/cute shaped baking tin*

*if using muffin tins bake a 350 for 15-20 minutes or until toothpick comes clean

5) Serve to your family and listen carefully for phrases like "Oh my god these are the best things ever."

6) Smile and enjoy your awesomeness

Party Prep Day 2!

Okay, so this is a few weeks late. I was packing, sorry. Without further ado, the Stout Cake with mocha frosting! Frosting recipe will be posted soon.

Layer one, ready to go.









Frosting, ready to go.









Ready, set, frost!









My great-grandmother's famous brownie recipe is essentially brownies with fudge-frosting. Three sticks of butter were harmed in the making of this dish. I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to disclose the recipe...


And, the best part: DISHES! I think we did nothing but bake (i.e. dirty dishes) and wash dishes for two whole days. But it was worth it. I'll post the picture of the whole dessert spread once I get it from my uncle.

Chocolate Dessert Party Prep, Day 1

My parents are having a chocolate party for their 50th birthdays, and the menu is: chocolate linzer torte, sacher torte, my great-grandmother's brownies, stout cake with mocha frosting, sugar-free chocolate mousse, angel food cake with ganache, and chocolate cheesecake. We made the two tortes and the angel food cake and the cheesecake today because all of those things will improve over the two days between now and the party. The linzer torte and cheesecake are family classics and the angel food cake was a mix (give us a break here, it's seven desserts!) but the sacher torte is a new recipe, courtesy of Epicurious: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Sachertorte-231043. Tomorrow we're making the rest; I'll post pictures and recipes from those as well.

I'm not going to type up the recipes right now because they're all long and detailed (but not terribly difficult, actually), but I will try to scan them to post later, or just type them when I'm not so tired. (Remind me.)

To entertain you in the meantime, pictures of the linzer torte's construction:
(about to fold the chocolate into the meringue to make, you guessed it, chocolate meringue)

And, completed:

The sacher torte was kindof a pain in the butt to assemble because it bakes in one layer which then has to be split into two layers. Then it gets apricot glaze, which has to soak in for a while, and then chocolate glaze, which is essentially a thin layer of very dark fudge. (But stickier.) And then you have to move it, before the chocolate sets.



Step 1: Split.













Step 2: Apricot glaze between layers and on top.







Step 3: (An hour later) Chocolate glaze.













Step 4: Move to clean doily (it takes four hands). I have a pretty picture of the completed torte, but Blogger keeps rotating it for no obvious reason. I'll mess with that and post it later.

On to the cheesecake! I only took one picture of the in-process because it's pretty much just "Throw everything in the kitchen-aid":















I'll take a picture of the cooked cake tomorrow; I forgot to do that today. It's cracked like the Grand Canyon, but it smells wonderful. (Besides, that's how you know it's homemade, right?)

In other news, my diploma finally arrived!

Ooie-Gooie Vegan Chocolate Stout Cake?!?

Yes you read the title right. This cake is not only chocolaty but also just happens to be vegan and contain beer. The beer is the secret to the oh so wonderful ooie-gooie factor. This has very quickly become my favorite chocolate cake recipe. It's easy, fun, involves some interesting chemistry (my favorite part) and it's unlike any cake I've ever tasted. It's incredibly moist and rich and the beer really only serves to enhance the chocolate flavor. There is a certain element of experimentation with this recipe, I think the flavor could be greatly changed depending on the kind of beer you used. I would love to make one with a Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout but honestly it'd be a waist of a really good stout, I think you are better off just drinking that one ;) Enough chit chat, lets get down to business shall we?

Recipe(makes two 9'' round cakes, three 8'' round cakes, one 9x13 pan or more cupcakes than I care to count)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 tsp. white vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose or pastry flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup cocoa powder (I used dutch process but regular is fine too)
1 tsp. salt
One 12-oz. of any stout of your choosing

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, combine oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
3. In a separate, larger bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt.
4. With a spoon, make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Pour oil mixture into the well. Fold together with spatula until just combined. Pour the beer and water over the mixture. Beat well with an electric mixer on low speed. The batter will be very runny, don't worry, it's supposed to be.
5. Fill desired cake pan almost completely to the top. These cakes don't rise hardly at all so you can fill the cake pans quite full. Two round cake pans take about 45mins to bake but the rule of cake applies as always, stick a toothpick in it and take the cake out when it comes out clean.

Frosting
Now some would argue that no cake is complete without frosting. I would urge them to review the pound cake recipe. This cake can swing both ways, it's great on it's own but frosting makes it that much more indulgent. For this cake rather than make the usual standby of chocolate butter cream, I decided to try an experiment seeing as we had some cream in the fridge that needed to be used. The following is a recipe of my own invention and I dare say I got it right on the first go!

1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 coco powder
1/2 packed brown sugar
1/2 packed powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Combine everything in a large bowl. Beat on high with an electric mixer until the mixture get's a little past the 'hard' whipped cream stage. Remember, you are basically making chocolate whipping cream but you don't want it to be so soft it falls off the cake. Just whip it until you think it is stiff enough to stick but spread easily. Refrigerate for at least an hour before use, this will make it much easier to work with.

As you can see from the header picture we topped our cake with strawberries which is something I would highly recommend.

This really will be one of the best chocolate cakes you've ever had so GO! Make cake! Be happy!

Preciously Perfect Pound Cake!

As we all know it's strawberry season and in my humble opinion, good strawberries require good pound cake. And really, on the last day of exams, what could be better?

Now as far as cakes go, pound cake is one of the easiest, it doesn't even have to be frosted, just topped with fresh whipped cream. The following is the recipe I used, sorry there aren't more pictures, it was just too tasty not to break into right out of the oven!


One cake requires:
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups All Purpose flour (cake flour works too)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract

Instructions:
1.Do not preheat oven! This cake goes into a cold oven because it needs to come to temperature gradually or it doesn't cook evenly.

2.Oil and flour a 9 inch bread pan.

3. Mix flour and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

4.Mix cream, vanilla and almond extract together and set aside.

5.In a larger bowl, using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

6.Add eggs and yolk one at a time, fully incorporating one before adding the next.

7.Add flour mix in three parts alternating with cream mix, start and end with flour. (progression should be 1/3flour mix->1/2 cream mix->1/3 flour mix->1/2 cream mix->1/3 flour mix) Be careful not to over beat but make sure everything is well mixed

8.Pour mixture into baking pan smoothing out the top with a spatula.

9.Put pan in oven and turn on to 350F

10.Bake for 1 hour, take out and let cool 5 mins in pan before transferring it to a cooling wrack.

11.Enjoy with strawberries and fresh whipped cream!!!