Pretty in Pink - Daring Bakers July Challenge

The July Daring Bakers Challenge was organised by Peabody of Culinary Concotions fame, who chose Strawberry Mirror Cake.

A colleague recently left her job to move back to her hometown and during the time we worked together she became a good friend to me. I wanted to make something special for her farewell morning tea and I thought that the mirror cake would be perfect for her since one of her favourite colours is pink.

It’s winter in New Zealand right now so the only strawberries in the stores are imported from the US. I couldn’t find frozen strawberries so as per the allowable ingredient deviations I opted to make a raspberry mirror cake. Wouldn’t you know it on the day I chose to make the cake I went to the supermarket for some fresh cream and saw Australian strawberries at a very reasonable $3.95 per punnet. I chose to stick with the raspberries because I needed to free up the space in my freezer.

I have come to the conclusion that the degree of difficulty of a Daring Bakers challenge should be measured by the number of bowls you dirty during the process. Mirror cake is certainly up there with the best of them. I dirtied 2 bowls for my Genoise sponge, 1 for the syrup, 3 for the Bavarian Cream and another for the mirror – total bowls used = 7 and let’s not count the saucepans.

Getting started....

What went wrong along the way and what would I do differently?

1. I didn’t have a pan suitable for making the sponge so I just used two round cake pans. I think it was a better way of doing it – no wastage.

2. I queried the baking temperature of the sponge because it was hellaciously hot (450 degrees F) and other recipes I’d read were 100 degrees lower. Of course I didn’t query this until I was about the start baking so went with my gut feeling (which turned out to be incorrect) and baked my sponges at the lower temperature. They still turned out OK. A little tip for contact lens wearers – do not be too hasty to peer into the oven or else your contact lenses will feel like they have melted to your eyeballs. I expected them to be all crinkly round the edges when I took them out but I guess they’re made of stronger stuff that I thought.

3. This was really my first attempt at working with gelatin and I had no idea what to expect. The instructions said “Sprinkle the gelatin over the strawberry puree in a small bowl and set aside until spongy.” What spongy meant I didn’t really know. The raspberries I used were pureed straight from the freezer and I worried that my gelatin wasn’t going to do it’s first dissolving bit so I scooped off as much as I could without disturbing the puree. The top had gone a bit wrinkly but I wouldn’t have described it as spongy. I thought it would be a good idea if the raspberries were at least at room temperature so I stirred up the stray bits of gelatin and nuked the puree and tried again. Seemed to work OK.

4. When making my Bavarian cream I think I may have been dangerously close to curdling my mix. I blended it with the gelatin mixture but there was no sigh of it being remotely like the texture of softly whipped cream and I panicked and added some more gelatin (previously softened in water of course). When I layered all the components and put the cake in the fridge to set for the allocated 1-2 hours I was not at all surprised to find that my Bavarian layer was a little on the firm side – oops.

5. Unlike my lucky US counterparts I do not have a fridge with an icemaker and one tray of icecubes wasn’t going to go very far so I just used a bowl of cold tap water to cool my Bavarian cream

6. When it came to making the mirror I didn’t have anything to drain my berries through and sorta kinda maybe just a little bit pressed down on them to extract the juice which of course is what gives you a foamy appearance and why the recipe says not to do it! Fortunately, because I had used raspberries and the colour was very dark it wasn’t too noticeable.

7. In hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have spent $40 on a bottle of booze just to used a couple of tablespoons in this recipe. I don’t think you could taste it. I’m pleased that I hadn’t splashed out and got a slightly more expensive but delicious sounding “raspberricello”.

The verdict – a heck of a lot of faffing about with all the steps involved in creating this masterpiece but I would describe it as gorgeous, impressive, and delicious.

Special thanks to Lis for helping me out with my post this month. You're a doll!

Hay Hay it's Donna Day #10 Cheesecakes

The prodigious Peabody won the hosting rights to the lastest round of HHDD and chose cheesecake as the theme.

I am so indecisive and I'm such a procrastinator that I usually miss deadlines by the time I have selected my recipe. I knew that I wanted a baked cheesecake because I didn't want to mess with gelatine but other than that I could have gone in any direction. I thought I was onto a good thing by asking my work pals to choose and there were a few interesting contenders; a Russian fudge cheesecake or a baked cheesecake with caramel apple topping - both from Cuisine magazine or raspberry and milk chocolate cheesecake from Taste magazine. But then, as fate would have it, the April Taste magazine arrived in my mailbox last week and on the cover was a picture of the cutest little cheesecakes you've ever seen.

Due to copyright I can't share the recipe here but you can check it out online in April by going to Taste and searching for cheesecake. I can tell you though that the cheesecakes contained all the usual suspects - cookie crumb base (in this case ginger flavoured), cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla, lemon rind and of course raspberries. The swirl idea is a great way to improvise and I imagine that a wee dollop of chocolate fudge sauce or caramel sauce would be an interesting variation. In real life the cheesecakes didn't look so yellow but hey I'm a crap photographer - get over it.


I'm still on a healthy eating kick and didn't dare try any of the cheesecake (OK so I might have licked the bowl) so I brought it in to work to share. There were a a few cheesecakes left over I said to one gal who had missed out during the day that she should take a couple home and share one with her husband. Let's just say he didn't get to try any - I guess they must have been good.

French Yoghurt Cake

I’ve found myself overstocked with yoghurt after three weeks of freebies that the people from Yoplait gave out at the end of the Manawatu Striders 7km run/walk series.

I came across an interesting recipe for a French Yoghurt Cake on various blogs and websites and thought I would try it for myself. I was particularly attracted to the fact it was described as an excellent breakfast cake and that requires no frosting. Apparently it is one of the first things young French girls learn to bake. There’s no difficult measuring involved because you use your empty yoghurt pot for everything other than the baking powder. As I frequently do, I surfed for recipes and then created my own by picking out the most common measurement across the various recipes. In this case the widest variation was in the amount of oil. You can check the other recipes out yourself if you wish:
Chocolate and Zucchini
Orangette
Let’s Cook French
from the BBC
Happy Burp
My Treasure…My Pleasure



French Yoghurt Cake

Ingredients
1 pot (mine was 150g) yoghurt – any flavour
2 pots sugar
2 eggs
½ - 1 pot oil (use a mild one such as canola or grapeseed – I used Alfa One rice bran oil)
3 pots all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
Flavouring as desired eg vanilla, cinnamon
Diced fruit, chocolate chips etc

Method
Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl but do not overmix
Pour into a greased and lined cake pan and bake at 180 C/350 F til done.

My comments and observations:
The first time around I used 1 cup of oil and accidentally (I didn’t realise this til later) used a lite/diet yoghurt.
To enhance the raspberry yoghurt I added some chopped dried strawberries, a handful of fresh blueberries that were rolling about in the bottom of my fridge and a handful of frozen raspberries.
The cake browned quite quickly but there was a definite wet spot in the middle so I had to cover it with foil until it was done. I used an 8” x 8” pan and figure it took 20-30 minutes. I tend to test my cakes when I start to smell them baking and I always set my timer for about 10 minutes less than any recipe suggests.
The cake turned out moist and tender and the raspberries were a delightful tangy surprise. If anything I thought the cake could have been a little less sweet.
Second time around I used a rich, sweet, lemon yoghurt and because it was a creamier style I cut the oil back to ½ a pot
I cut the sugar back by 1 tablespoon per pot
To enhance the lemon flavour I added ¼ cup fresh lemon juice and some lemon zest
Lastly I added a couple of pots of frozen blueberries
I had the same sticky middle and unfortunately ended up overcooking the cake by the time the middle was done. Next time I’ll use a ring tin as I think the texture could stand it.
I don’t know if it was the reaction of the lemon juice with the baking powder but my second cake turned out much taller than the first one.

Overall I think the cake has vast potential and the mixture seems to be forgiving. I very much like the no brainer method of dumping everything in together and of course that I don't have to mess around with icing. I’ll give it a couple more tries before deciding whether it will be a permanent addition to my baking repertoire.

Imagine the variations....
Blueberry yoghurt with berries, almond extract and ground almonds
Plain yoghurt with chocolate chips and vanilla essence and perhaps a mashed banana or two
Apricot yoghurt with chopped dried apricots
Peach yoghurt with sliced peaches and cinnamon
Berry yoghurt with raspberries and white chocolate