Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

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

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

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

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.