Perfect Party Cake with the Daring Bakers

I'm late posting today. Should have posted yesterday. But for some reason, I'm so tired I'm wondering what's wrong with me these days. And D. is leaving in a week. So I'm not much of a poster. But I made the cake, and it really is a great cake. Thank you Morven for the great recipe! The recipe was really easy to follow and must be totally foolproof since I managed to follow it that day. You see, when I saw that this months challenge was a cake I thought GREAT! This will be my birthday cake! And so I decided to make it for my birthday, which was on the 16th of March. That being a Sunday, D.'s parents decided to come visiting on the Saturday (they get to do some driving to get here). On Friday night we went out for dinner with some friends, and ended up at a friends appartment having a few drinks and talking for some part of the night. And on Saturday morning I was going to make cake, which I was hoping to finish before guests arriving at lunchtime. I started out maybe at around 10, and by noon the cake was baked (in spite of my not having two equal sized spring forms so I actually halved the recipe and made it twice) the buttercream was made and some raspberry mixed with sugar and pureed was taken out of the freezer. This must mean that the recipe is almost perfect, since the only thing I can do in such situations is to follow the recipe to the letter (which has lead to disasters before..). And well, my cake wasn't that pretty (it was put together with three people waiting eagerly for it), but my, it did taste great. And the day after, on my birthday, when my mother was visiting it even led her to enjoy something containing buttercream for probably the first time in her life. I followed the recipe also when it came to flavoring, with coconut on the sides of the cake, lemon in the buttercream and raspberry for the second kind of filling. I didn't have any seedless raspberry preserves though (haven't ever seen it), but used some raspberry coulis D. made at some earlier point to go with a chocolate mousse, and from which he had frozen leftovers. The one thing that I did change though was that though I made buttercream for the layers I did put whipped cream on top. That way it looks a lot more like a traditional birthday cake to me, and less frightening to buttercream sceptics like me (and a few others I wanted to serve it too).
I did have some problems with the layers crumbling (and, as you can see, I didn't do a very good job at doing even sizes), but I liked the taste of everything a lot. Lemon really made buttercream a whole lot better.
It feels a bit extravagant to be using 8 egg whites, but that means that this cake will be a perfect way to use up the leftover whites I usually acumulate. This recipe is a keeper!

Again, thank you Morven, and thank you all other Daring Bakers that make every monthly challenge such a good experience!

PERFECT PARTY CAKE
Courtesy of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours (page 250).
Posting date Sunday 30 March.

IMPORTANT NOTICE - RECIPE EDITED MARCH 10TH
(sorry I'm still a bit of a blogger "dummy" so don't know how to highlight in red). For those of you who don't read all the comments or don't have Dorie's book, there were a couple of omissions which some diligent Daring Bakers picked up. If these contributed to a "floppity flops" - my sincere apologies. Please note the changes in bold below - one is the reference to a 1/4 cup of lemon juice and the second is in relation to whisking together the egg whites and milk in the 2nd line of making the cake. I've also expanded on the Update on Playing Around.

Introduction from Morven
I wanted to pick something that had potential for putting your personal stamp on. Although this is essentially a white cake I know there are some lemon haters among us so feel free to use your imagination. If you inner chef tells you that you need to make a chocolate layer cake then by all means do so. See Dorie’s words on playing around below for some flavour combination ideas.

Update on playing around. Yes you can do what ever you want with this cake as long as you promise to use the basic cake recipe and the basic buttercream recipe (if you are doing the buttercream that is) . The filling/frosting flavours are completely up to you. If you don't feel like using Dorie's buttercream recipe (flavoured as you wish) she says whipped cream will do for the filling and finishing and I say... go for it. If you want to use fondant or something else - it's your cake. Bake a square one, a heart shaped one or any other shape you like but please make it a layer cake.

I can't wait to see what combinations people come up with. You can leave out the lemon, put different flavours of preserves in the middle, leave off the coconut - have some fun with it.

Words from Dorie
Stick a bright-coloured Post-it to this page, so you’ll always know where to turn for a just-right cake for any celebration. The original recipe was given to me by my great dear friend Nick Malgieri, of baking fame, and since getting it, I’ve found endless opportunities to make it – you will too. The cake is snow white, with an elegant tight crumb and an easygoing nature: it always bakes up perfectly; it is delicate on the tongue but sturdy in the kitchen – no fussing when it comes to slicing the layers in half or cutting tall, beautiful wedges for serving; and, it tastes just as you’d want a party cake to taste – special. The base recipe is for a cake flavoured with lemon, layered with a little raspberry jam and filled and frosted with a classic (and so simple) pure white lemony hot-meringue buttercream but, because the elements are so fundamental, they lend themselves to variation (see Playing Around), making the cake not just perfect, but also versatile.

For the Cake

2 1/4 cups cake flour (updated 25 March)
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups whole milk or buttermilk (I prefer buttermilk with the lemon)
4 large egg whites
1 ½ cups sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 stick (8 tablespoons or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ teaspoon pure lemon extract

For the Buttercream
1 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (from 2 large lemons)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For Finishing
2/3 cup seedless raspberry preserves stirred vigorously or warmed gently until spreadable
About 1 ½ cups sweetened shredded coconut

Getting Ready
Centre a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter two 9 x 2 inch round cake pans and line the bottom of each pan with a round of buttered parchment or wax paper. Put the pans on a baking sheet.

To Make the Cake
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Whisk together the milk and egg whites in a medium bowl.
Put the sugar and lemon zest in a mixer bowl or another large bowl and rub them together with your fingers until the sugar is moist and fragrant.
Add the butter and working with the paddle or whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat at medium speed for a full 3 minutes, until the butter and sugar are very light.
Beat in the extract, then add one third of the flour mixture, still beating on medium speed.
Beat in half of the milk-egg mixture, then beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients until incorporated.
Add the rest of the milk and eggs beating until the batter is homogeneous, then add the last of the dry ingredients.
Finally, give the batter a good 2- minute beating to ensure that it is thoroughly mixed and well aerated.
Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the cakes are well risen and springy to the touch – a thin knife inserted into the centers should come out clean
Transfer the cakes to cooling racks and cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes, unfold them and peel off the paper liners.
Invert and cool to room temperature, right side up (the cooled cake layers can be wrapped airtight and stored at room temperature overnight or frozen for up to two months).

To Make the Buttercream
Put the sugar and egg whites in a mixer bowl or another large heatproof bowl, fit the bowl over a plan of simmering water and whisk constantly, keeping the mixture over the heat, until it feels hot to the touch, about 3 minutes.
The sugar should be dissolved, and the mixture will look like shiny marshmallow cream.
Remove the bowl from the heat.
Working with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer, beat the meringue on medium speed until it is cool, about 5 minutes.
Switch to the paddle attachment if you have one, and add the butter a stick at a time, beating until smooth.
Once all the butter is in, beat in the buttercream on medium-high speed until it is thick and very smooth, 6-10 minutes.
During this time the buttercream may curdle or separate – just keep beating and it will come together again.
On medium speed, gradually beat in the lemon juice, waiting until each addition is absorbed before adding more, and then the vanilla.
You should have a shiny smooth, velvety, pristine white buttercream. Press a piece of plastic against the surface of the buttercream and set aside briefly.

To Assemble the Cake
Using a sharp serrated knife and a gentle sawing motion, slice each layer horizontally in half.
Put one layer cut side up on a cardboard cake round or a cake plate protected by strips of wax or parchment paper.
Spread it with one third of the preserves.
Cover the jam evenly with about one quarter of the buttercream.
Top with another layer, spread with preserves and buttercream and then do the same with a third layer (you’ll have used all the jam and have buttercream leftover).
Place the last layer cut side down on top of the cake and use the remaining buttercream to frost the sides and top.
Press the coconut into the frosting, patting it gently all over the sides and top.

Serving
The cake is ready to serve as soon as it is assembled, but I think it’s best to let it sit and set for a couple of hours in a cool room – not the refrigerator. Whether you wait or slice and enjoy it immediately, the cake should be served at room temperature; it loses all its subtlety when it’s cold. Depending on your audience you can serve the cake with just about anything from milk to sweet or bubbly wine.

Storing
The cake is best the day it is made, but you can refrigerate it, well covered, for up to two days. Bring it to room temperature before serving. If you want to freeze the cake, slide it into the freezer to set, then wrap it really well – it will keep for up to 2 months in the freezer; defrost it, still wrapped overnight in the refrigerator.

Playing Around
Since lemon is such a friendly flavour, feel free to make changes in the preserves: other red preserves – cherry or strawberry – look especially nice, but you can even use plum or blueberry jam.

Fresh Berry Cake
If you will be serving the cake the day it is made, cover each layer of buttercream with fresh berries – use whole raspberries, sliced or halved strawberries or whole blackberries, and match the preserves to the fruit. You can replace the coconut on top of the cake with a crown of berries, or use both coconut and berries. You can also replace the buttercream between the layers with fairly firmly whipped sweetened cream and then either frost the cake with buttercream (the contrast between the lighter whipped cream and the firmer buttercream is nice) or finish it with more whipped cream. If you use whipped cream, you’ll have to store the cake the in the refrigerator – let it sit for about 20 minutes at room temperature before serving.

Sweet Little Buggers

Yay... It seems as if I'm getting the hang of this. At least a little. And I'm incredibly proud of my creations. I mean, those few actually have a slight resemblance with the pictures of macarons you'd normally see. I'm learning a few tricks, and it seems that I get it a little better each time. The chocolate ones were made a couple of days ago, and they were certainly better than the first attempt, but this new attempt at lemon macarons is even better. The idea is to get somewhat more creative on the flavouring part too, but I needed to know whether I could make them at all to start thinking about that.

Short post tonight, I'm really far to tired. So I'll just share the pictures (and give a lemon macaron to anyone who drops by before I finish them all)
Good night...

Daring Bakers February Challenge - French Bread

So, time to post about another Daring Bakers challenge. This month's challenge was hosted by Mary of The Sour Dough and Sara of I Like To Cook, and the recipe they chose was a recipe for French Bread from a book by Julia Child. Julia Child seems to be one of the most famous food personalities in the US, though the only reason I ever heard of her is that I once bought one of her books on a book sale. It seems as if two of her books were translated to Swedish, one of them the one the challenge recipe is from. Sadly enough, the translation seems to contain some mistakes (one that I'm sure is a mistake is that 70° Fahrenheit certainly doesn't translate to 18° Celsius? but rather about 21° I'd say). The book in question (not the one I bought a long time ago) is out of print, but I found it at the public library. (The title is "Det goda franska köket, del 2".)

The recipe can be found here, thanks to our hostesses (it's really long so I'm happy with linking and not putting it into my post). To Mary and Sara: Thank you for a great challenge!

Now to my bread making. I made this bread a couple of weeks ago. The recipe was really time consuming, and since I wanted to keep true to the recipe I didn't fiddle with the timing. I was really annoyed, and quite sleepy in the end. But I consider it a challenge in itself to keep to a recipe different to the ones I'm used to. At times, you can really learn new things that way...

So, as a personal challenge, I decided to knead by hand (stand mixers were allowed). I hardly ever knead by hand anymore, since it's just very convenient to let a machine do it. The mixing and kneading all went very well. The dough was somewhat sticky, and I guess I did add some extra flour by trying to keep the dough from sticking to the counter by dusting the counter with flour. But the hand-kneading went much better than I was afraid it would. I may have been helped by the fact that air is quite dry here (temperatures below freezing for extended periods of time tend to do that). The recipe makes not very much bread, so the whole dough wasn't that big. And the kitchen was nice and warm, actually so warm that some time into the first rise I decided to move the dough into the living room. D was making chili in the kitchen, and the thermometer started to be steadily above 71°F (I changed the thermometer to Fahrenheit rather than run into troubles with conversions... I have ways to measure almost everything in american units by now, cups, a scale that can do lb and ounces and thermometer... Still don't understand "stick of butter" though.) The living room was cooler, about 68°F so the dough took a little more than 3 hours to rise for the first time. Pictures show it after first (right) and second (left) rise, second time it rose slightly less than first. For shaping, I decided to experiment a little. The bâtard and the triangle shaped one turned out fine, but the supposedly daisy-like thing was to wide for my peel, and sunk to much... I used my usual setup with a baking stone in the oven and water sprayed onto the heated stone right before the bread goes in. I also determined the times with a thermometer, those different shapes required slightly different timing.
The taste was fine too, pretty mild and quite like the "French bread" you can buy (franskbröd). This is not my favourite type of bread, I'm from the north and I prefer the deeper, more subtle tastes achieved by preferments, coarser grinds or sourdoughs (or a combination). But the bread was nice and fluffy, and not at all hard to make except for the investment in time. If I ever make it again I would probably do one or both rises in the refrigerator, overnight and during a working day. But I would certainly recommend anyone who wants a rather cooperative dough that gives a fluffy and good result. And I'm very happy with my hand kneading experiment, which reminded me both of that it's perfectly possible to do it, and that I really enjoy the kneading experience. Thank you again to Sara and Mary who gave us this challenge!

(Now, D is making chocolate mousse... and wants me to help whipping up the meringue. So I'd better stop writing if I want dessert. :) )

Baked stuff

Time to look back here and put something new up. I think I maybe should try to make some kind of posting schedule in order to post more regularly. I actually started this post right before dinner, but I ended up setting the table instead, and here I am with half a glass of wine left waiting for D to make a raspberry sauce for the dessert. (No, I didn't find any fresh raspberries, but our freezer is somehow magically refilled with berries every once in a while. People who pick berries and just give them away are wonderful.) So, what have I been up to lately?

Well, yesterday I had another go at making macarons. Still no perfect results, but it's getting better. You could even spot something almost like feet, at least on some of them. If you're looking closely. And they certainly taste good.

This morning I also made a kind of weird scone, but it was oh so tasty. Especially with the left over lemon curd from the macaron making...

(Oh, sorry, I had to leave for a little while. Dessert was ready.)
So, anyway, today's breakfast was banana scones with lemon curd. I know, it doesn't sound like the healthiest breakfast, but common, it's Sunday. And it seems I'm only keeping D. here for a little more than another month, so I better spoil him. He's leaving for a post-doc beginning in April. Great news! (But I'll miss him.) On the other hand, I get to go visit. In France. Not far from Paris. Hmm.. I can certainly live with that. :)

So, to make not-so-healthy, but good for spoiling someone, scones I did something like this:

Mix 2.5 dl flour, a little oat bran (maybe 1/4 dl, just to add some crunch), a pinch of salt and 1/2-1 teaspoon baking powder together. Add 75 g of butter cut into little pieces. Cut into this until butter pieces are very small (as if making a pie crust or similar). Alternatively, put into food processor and pule until butter is in small pieces. Add 1/4 dl sugar, 1 egg and 1/2 dl milk. Mix together. Finally, add one banana cut into pieces, and knead into the mixture. If using food processor, take everything out and add the bananas by hand (beware of the knifes while getting it out of the bowl!) Bake in 175°C oven for about 15 minutes. Serve with lemon curd (or something else a little sweet, a little sour).

Swedish Mardi Gras Sweets - Semlor

So we are a day early, but we had the smell around all since we made the sweet bread for this yesterday. We just couldn't resist any longer...

Those are traditional Swedish Mardi Gras treats. It's really quite simple. A bun made from sweet bread dough (any recipe could be used, preferably a one that produces a light result.. many traditional recipes contain a leavener with ammonium bicarbonate in addition to yeast to achieve this). Some almond paste. A little cream and confectioner's sugar.

To put them together, cut a bun into two. Remove most of the interior of the bottom part with a spoon. Crumble this and mix with about an equal amount of almond paste. Add some cream or whole milk to get a mixture that holds together somewhat. Put back into the hollow bun. Spoon or pipe some cream, but the hat back on and sift on some confectioner's sugar.

Traditionalists eat it like D. did, in a bowl of hot milk. I prefer eating them as they are. Any way, this is how Tuesdays between now and Easter should be celebrated.


One more comment to add the day after (I just made a couple more for tonight which is, after all, the right day). The bread should of course contain cardamom. This is just the way sweet bread is to me, so I even forgot to mention it. The only time I ever make sweet bread without cardamom is when I make it with saffron, then I might choose not to have cardamom. (And that one time I tried to make cinnamon rolls in Prague, where I just couldn't find cardamom. The rolls didn't turn out as they should - no good idea.)

Can't Stop Munching - Roasted Chickpeas

This is again something I'm sure many people have done a million times or so. But I just did it for the first time ever, so I'm going to write about it. I really shouldn't be sitting here eating... I had a nice and filling dinner not so long ago, and I'm quite full. But while D. was washing the dishes and I was messing around with some bread that I'm making (my project with making enough dough for several loaves but leaving it in the fridge for baking one at a time is turning out great) I realised that we did have a small amount of chickpeas in the fridge that really needed to be eaten. So I decided to try something I had been thinking about for some time. It's quite easy. Turn on oven, rather hot (I used about 200°C). Heat some oil in a pan on the stove, mince a little garlic and pour into the heated pan together with leftover chickpeas and some dried chili. I used some of the chili that I tried to grow on the balcony this summer. (That didn't work, it's far to cold for chili to be out of doors up here, unless you have a nice southern wall or something. It got to grow in our bedroom window instead.) When everything is nicely coated with oil and garlic and chili (or use any kind of spice that goes well with chickpeas I think?) is well spread out, put into the oven for some 15 minutes. I've been eating they cooled down enough to not burn (to much).


Oh... I just emptied the camera to get the chickpea photo and found a few other ones that I took because I considered posting about it but forgot to write anything. Now I decided I'll just share the pictures here. Both are dinners from last week, two of those that turned out good. Onion tart with endive and Rochefort sallad, and a fish which I don't know the English name of (Röding anyone?) with a lemon pilaff, grated carrot and green beans. Yum. Now I almost got hungry again. Maybe some more chickpeas...
Argh.. Blogger's spell checking does not seem to work today. You'll have to do with a non-spell checked post. Hope it's not too bad

Lemon Meringue Pie - The Daring Baker's January Challenge

This was my second DB challenge, and this months challenge was Lemon Meringue Pie. Lemon Meringue Pie is not a standard dessert around here, but my Mom made it a few times in my childhood (she is half American, which means that she makes some food that might not otherwise not have been known to me). I always loved it, so many thanks to this month's hostess, Jen at The Canadian Baker for making it a challenge. Since there is only two of us here, and the recipe seemed to be a rather large one, I choose to make only two fifths of the original recipe. (The recipe used five eggs, so making something that would require a whole number of eggs seemed convenient.) This turned out to be quite a lot for two people anyway!
So, here is what they looked like. Since my only pie form used to be a non-stick thing that some time during December decided to deliver pies with a non-stick coating I decided to go for the free-form tartletts. I was really nervous about how the filling would manage this, never having made a lemon curd before, but everything worked out perfect. Actually, D. thought that I had piled the curd up a bit too high, I think he would have preferred more meringue and less lemon. I must admit that I cheated a bit to get the nice browning marks by using a kitchen torch. Since we ate them almost immediately there was no problem at all with weeping meringue or something like that. The red stuff on top is dried cranberries which I thought looked pretty on top of the meringue. I never had cranberries before, but found them in the supermarket a few days before making the pie and decided to buy them without a plan of what to use them for. Don't they look pretty on top of the white meringue? I hope this isn't cheating, I just put them on top as a decoration.

Would I make this again? I still love lemon meringue pie, but since I had a success with this I actually went on and made some more lemon curd with another recipe I wanted to try. Most of the result is now in the freezer, so next time I will probably be lazy and just use that. I'm still to unsure about translating measurements to know how different the crust was to the one I usually make, but it worked fine, cooked beautifully golden and tasted great. And the meringue was fluffy and tasty, so yes, I actually already made it again for another pie.

Again, thanks for a yummy challenge Jen! Now, I'm looking forward to the February challenge.