Christmas Re-cap

I'll admit, I'm a little burned out from all the baking I did for Christmas—mostly cookies.

I didn't fulfill my ambitious Christmas baking plans. I am happy with what I got done.

The above cake is a Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt cake from a Cooks Illustrated recipe. The pan is Nordic Ware Gingerbread House Bundt Pan, and I'm super impressed with the quality and the detail. My son and I decorated the cake later, but I didn't get a picture :-(

This is my favorite of the Christmas cakes I made. It's the Paula Deen recipe for Red Velvet Cake and my American Buttercream. I do not recommend making the cake as written, but it's close enough that I plan to work on the recipe. For the decorations I used palettes (thank you Shannon Weber for letting me know the name of the circle sprinkles), star sprinkles, and silver glittery coarse sugar. I feel quite emphatically that Christmas decorations should be unrestrained rather than tasteful.

My favorite of the cookies I made was the Compost Cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar. A good online adaptation of the recipe is a Amateur Gourmet, though I recommend the much more specific original. My mix-ins were potato chips, mini-pretzels, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, toffee bits (yum!), and oatmeal. My husband suggested I rename them Candy Bar Cookies, because they taste like a candy bar. I'll do a full blog post on them someday. :-)

My Dad's birthday is December 25th, and for his cake I made the Chocolate Sour Cream Cake that won my Chocolate Cake Taste Test and a brand-new original Fudge Frosting that I will post soon. It was so good that I'm making the cake and frosting again for my birthday later this month.

How did your Christmas go? Did you try to do too much as well?

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Christmas Checkerboard Cake

When I first started the blog, my dad gave me a really nice checkerboard cake pan set. I've been using the pans, but this is my first checkerboard cake.

I made a three-color cake, using the Tender White Cake recipe from KAF.

I increased the recipe by 1½ times, divided the batter in three parts, and died the batter with gel food color.

I used a portion scoop to fill the rings in the kit. It was fiddly and took some time, but not ultimately difficult.

The cake was for a Christmas party, where I had no idea how many people were coming. There was 26 total, which is tight for a 9-inch 3-layer cake.

I cut two sizes of pieces: the larger was a thin wedge and the smaller was separated by layers.

It made me understand event-style cutting. For a big, round cake, the baker or someone knowledgeable needs to be there to cut the cake. If it wasn't a checkerboard, I might have cut squares.

Sorry it's a short post today. I must admit, I wasn't super proud of this cake. I still can only see the flaws, but I did get complements, and people enjoyed eating it.

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Pumpkin Pie Cake for Thanksgiving

I wanted to try something special for Thanksgiving. I was reading Momofuku Milk Bar and I liked the idea of the Apple Pie Layer Cake. I decided to make a Pumpkin Pie Cake.

Pumpkin Ganache

My starting point was the Pumpkin Ganache from the Milk Bar Cookbook. It's basically a mixture of pumpkin purée and white chocolate, smoothed out with some glucose. I was able to buy glucose at Joann in the cake decorating section. It's pumpkin-y, but isn't spiced like pumpkin pie. I made a double recipe.

To add spice, I made a Cinnamon Brown Sugar Cake, based on the Triple Browned Cake from Completely Delicious. To that recipe I added 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1½ teaspoon ground ginger, ½ teaspoon ground cloves, and ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg. I baked the cake in three 9-inch cake pans.

The original cake has a liquid cheesecake layer; I love pumpkin cheesecake, so I knew the flavors would work together. I doubled the recipe and baked the cheesecake in an 8-inch round cake pan, which has approximately the same volume as two of the 6-inch square pans called for.

The pie crumbs are very easy and delicious. I made a double recipe, but had a bunch left over. I'll save them for another dessert.

I made all the components on Monday and Tuesday, assembled the cake Wednesday, and served it Thursday.

I assembled the cake in my 8" Cake Pan with Removable Bottom. A springform pan would work equally well in place of the cake ring. The Bakery at Wegmans gave me three acetate strips after I called and asked about them. I wouldn't have wanted to make the cake without them, and I didn't have enough time for an online order.

 

I trimmed the cakes to 8-inches by cutting around the base of an 8-inch cake pan. I also trimmed and leveled the tops of the cakes.

I lined the cake pan and put in the bottom layer, then spread the liquid cheesecake over.

I sprinkled on the pie crumbs.

I piped the pumpkin ganache using the cake icer tip because the ganache was the most firm element. I tried to push each element up to the edges evenly, and wiped the inside of acetate after each layer. I then did the same again, adding the next piece of acetate.

I froze the cake overnight, and removed it from the pan the next day.

Instead of frosting, I mixed 1 cup heavy cream, ½ cup sour cream, and ½ cup brown sugar, then let it sit 4 hours in the refrigerator. I whipped it right before serving, the spread it level with the top of the acetate.

The key to making these cakes attractive is to layer very evenly and spread each layer to the edge. I forgot that I was supposed to take the acetate off when the cake was still frozen, so the sides weren't as smooth as they would have been otherwise.

The flavor was the best part. The combination was much better than any individual component. I was very proud, and can't wait to make more cakes like this in the future.

 

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Spritz Cookies without a Press

While watching America's Test Kitchen on PBS a while ago, I learned that spritz cookies can be made without a press; in many bakeries they are piped. Recently I also read Baking with the Cake Boss by Buddy Valastro. It's very good; a baking apprenticeship in book form. Buddy writes that piping cookies, lots of cookies, is the best way to develop your piping skills. He also specifically recommends a canvas piping bag for piping cookies as it is strong enough to not split, so I bought one. Sadly, I forgot to get almond paste, which is necessary for Buddy's cookie recipe.

A note about piping. It isn't nearly as hard as you think, and it's very impressive and a lot of fun. I highly recommend Wilton's Decorating Basics class, which is offered at Joann's and Michaels's. However, if you don't have the money for the class (which cost me about $100 total, with supplies), I recommend using the tutorials on YouTube. This is how Wilton actually trains its teachers.

My hands were hurting last night, so I decided to try the Butter Cookie recipe from ATK's Family Baking Book (I love this book).

I started by whisking together an egg yolk, 1 tablespoon cream, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

In the bowl of my mixer I measured 2 sticks or 8 ounces of very soft unsalted butter, 2/3 cup or about 4 3/4 ounces sugar, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. The recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon table salt, but my one year old recently dumped all of my table salt.

I creamed the ingredients by setting my mixer to 6 and leaving it for a couple minutes. Butter cookies depend on thorough creaming or aeration for their lightness.

I mixed in the liquid ingredients on low, being careful to scrape down the sides.

Next I mixed in 10 ounces or 2 cups of all-purpose flour, again on low. Not a very attractive dough, is it?

The recipe called for a 1/2 inch open star tip, I'm guessing an 8B or 6B? I used a 1M tip, which has fewer points and is also used for drop flowers. You can use any tip that is large enough.

I just played around with stars, lines, circles, rosettes, and drop flowers. If I was making these in advance, I would freeze them at this point.

This is how they turned out after baking.

This illustrates the drawbacks of an uncoated canvas bag. It probably wouldn't be as bad with a less rich macaroon dough or if it wasn't midsummer.

Onto the cookies. It's a pretty good recipe. When I first tasted them, I though "OK but boring; would be better with almonds." However, I then ate a very, very, embarrassingly large number of them. My husband liked the cookies too. I think I'll keep playing with the recipe though.

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