Chocolate Rebellion

When the opera cake challenge was announced, the hostesses kindly gave some links to some lovely chocolate versions that instigated an incredible craving for me. So I followed the rules with half of the cake and saved the other half for my rebellious plans with dark chocolate ganache.

The joconde is the same and I used the same almond flavored syrup on the cake layers. Even the buttercream fit in with the original limitations — it’s the same recipe (although this batch was the one I had the worst trouble with candy-coated scrambled eggs and my butter was softer and never seemed to firm up as much as the first batch) but this time I used white chocolate and some seedless red raspberry preserves to flavor it. For the mousse layer I departed from the instructions by making mine with whipping cream, 2 oz melted Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate (oh, yum!), and raspberry syrup I made from frozen raspberries, sugar, and a splash of lemon juice. While the raspberry flavor came out nicely in the buttercream, I was disappointed that neither the raspberry nor the chocolate flavor seemed particularly strong in the mousse layer. Finally, I covered it with a glaze of ganache (just cream and chocolate).

In order to get the sides straight and to slice the individual servings, I used a very hot knife to slice the cake, which melted the glaze and smeared it across the mousse. I think next time I would stick to just raspberry in the mousse so it would be a little more intense next to the chocolate glaze. Either that or just go for more chocolate through the whole thing. I think it is dramatic with alternating almond cake and chocolate.

DB Challenge: It’s Not Over Until The Fat Lady Bakes

. . . or something like that. Anyone with internet access and an interest in food blogs knows by now that the Daring Baker Challenge for the month of May, and posted by all the prompt bakers last week, was the Opera Cake in a whiter shade of pale. While opera cake is typically dark with coffee and chocolate, our hostesses and DB administrators extraordinaire, Lis and Ivonne, along with co-hosts Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful, chose lighter colors in honor of Barbara and the LiveSTRONG campaign (she’s also the genius behind Hay, Hay, It’s Donna Day!). In that vein, I chose mango for the flavor of my mousse and used almond in the cake and again with white chocolate in the buttercream.

Part of the reason you could hit the high notes with this cake is the cost of the ingredients. I bought a bag of almond meal for this project and it was nearly $15 and I don’t think there’s enough in it for a second full batch! That makes it even more expensive than my Turtle Cheesecake. Yikes! Of course, for me, it also involved some tragedy. This was a new way of making buttercream and I have to say I wasn’t all that thrilled. When I added the hot sugar syrup to the eggs, I ended up with some long strands of candy coated scrambled eggs in the frosting and it is very delicate (very soft at summer room temp), so if I wanted the creamy smoothness of buttercream with egg, I’d go the meringue route again. For the mousse, I combined elements of the recipe given by our hosts with the mango mousse I made last spring. I melted some white chocolate and stirred it into a mixture of mango, sugar, and gelatine that had been pureed and heated (and then cooled). This mixture I added to the whipped cream. It was still rather soft mousse but held up to the white chocolate glaze because I left it in the fridge for a few hours and the glaze was cool when I spread it over the mousse. The final result is very sweet, strongly flavored with white chocolate, but overall good. Definitely keep it chilled until just before serving it. Would I do it again? Probably not just like this.

Actually, I chose to only make half the recipe this way . . . stay tuned for what I did with the other jelly roll pan of joconde! Until then, go visit other Daring Bakers to see what flavor combos they used.

Challenge Recipe, without my modifications noted (sorry!), after the jump.

SHF #43: Citrus!

When Tartelette announced the upcoming Sugar High Friday, brainchild of Jennifer of Domestic Goddess, with a theme of citrus, Oh! I had so many ideas. Some of them turned out better in my head than in reality. But the one you see pictured here is among the very best and the concept for it belongs to Tartlet 1. Back when the Daring Bakers tackled the Lemon Meringue Pie, Tartlet 1 loved the meringue but not the lemon filling and asked why the ‘lemon meringue’ didn’t mean meringue, like the meringue mushrooms, but lemon flavored. At that time I also had the idea to make an orange meringue pie rather than lemon as I thought it might be more palatable to certain household members.

So I did bake an orange meringue pie, using a pie crust made from chocolate sandwich cookies and using the Daring Baker recipe for the filling except using orange rather than lemon and the same meringue recipe. Because I remembered the meringue being quite a lot for the pie, I spread some on the pie and reserved the rest for the lemon meringue experiment. To the remaining meringue I added 1/2 t. lemon extract and about 2 Tbsp. lemon juice and beat it until it was thick and glossy again. Then I spread a heaping tablespoon of meringue on a parchment sheet and made about a 3-inch circle. Next, I piped meringue around the edge to make a cup. I baked these in a 225 F oven for about 30 minutes. I was hoping they would stay light colored but they did brown. The filling is just strawberries and sugar stirred together. These little meringue cups are my entry to Sugar High Friday. As a bonus, I’ll give you a slice of Orange Meringue Pie too.

Dipping With The Daring Bakers

Once again it’s time to see what the Daring Bakers have been whipping up. This month our hostesses, Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell, selected Cheesecake Pops from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor.  There were mixed results among the Daring Bakers and mine weren’t among the best by any means.  I had trouble with the cheesecake being too soft, despite a longer baking time than the recipe calls for, and I ended up freezing it to get it to stay on the stick and be able to dip it in the chocolate.  Others I rolled in graham cracker crumbs to get that cheesecake taste and texture.  I really like the idea of these and I might try it again with a different cheesecake recipe to see if I can get a firmer texture.  The cheesecake tasted fabulous, though, and was incredibly creamy.  Go check out the other DBs because there were some great results.

Recipe after the jump.

The Daring Bakers Party With Dorie

This month the Daring Bakers tackled Dorie Greenspan’s beautiful Perfect Party Cake (p. 250 of Baking, recipe below). As soon as I flipped through the book, I knew I wanted to attempt this cake some day. I rarely have had a white cake come out completely white — there’s always some ‘golden’ edge, much as I’d like mine to turn out like Glenna’s, it never does. So, while I admired Dorie’s cake, I doubted mine would look much like it. However, I was pleased with the final result.

I baked this for Easter dinner, starting it the night before. My first run through, being quite distracted with making dinner, cleaning the house, kids running around, and not having a functional timer, I overbaked the cakes by 10 minutes. 10 MINUTES on a white cake. No, it wasn’t close to white. After the kids were in bed, I started over. The Husband helped me keep track of the time. It wasn’t completely without a little color, but it was probably the whitest cake I’ve made and it didn’t dome at all, which was nice. It did seem particularly thin; I was hoping it would make thicker layers but I knew as I spread it in the pan that it wasn’t going to be very high. The second one was higher than the first and I think the amount of whipping the butter and sugar was the critical difference. Warm butter, lots of whipping, and mine still never achieved a ‘light and fluffy’ stage, but more is definitely better here.

After the cakes were baked, The Husband convinced me we should go to bed and ‘get up early tomorrow to finish’. These are always famous last words in this house. It never works out quite like he plans. I woke up an hour later than ‘early’ and as I scrambled to make the buttercream I realized that I didn’t have the needed *3* sticks of butter. I had one. Boo. And I wasn’t about to run out to the store b/c I didn’t have time for that. So I punted and made a cream cheese frosting with lemon flavor. It was very good. I think the buttercream would have held the structure of the cake much more firmly and the next time I make this I’d like to try that, but I wasn’t going to bake another this week to experiment. Also, Dorie notes that this cake is best served at room temperature, and I can’t stress enough how significant that is. I regrettably served mine from the fridge, but the next day I ate half a slice before a prayer meeting and finished it afterward and the flavor was *SOOOO* much better after it was warm. So, really, serve this at room temp! It makes a difference.

With the first round of overbaked cake, which was still lovely on the inside, I went with an old standby for ‘ruined cake’ and made trifle from it. I used both strawberries and raspberries and it was especially good with a little blueberry syrup drizzled on it.

Thank you Morven for the excellent challenge! Recipe after the jump.