Crack Pie

After a very long wait, I have Momofuku Milk Bar by Christina Tosi out from the library on inter-library loan. I have to admit, I'm a little confused by it.

All I can think is at it a very New York, very restaurant kind of cookbook.

I read the New York Times on my IPad, and it amazes me how out of touch New Yorkers can be with the rest of the country. As an example, in a restaurant review, Jeff Gordinier said "even the mainstream diner can expound on the provenance of sea urchin and wild ramps." I know of ramps, kind of a wild garlic, but that's only because I have a brother who hunts in West Virginia and prepares his venison with locally foraged food when he's on a hunting trip. And my only experience with sea urchin is watching my Dad eat it at a Frederick sushi restaurant, and I respect his subsequent judgement that some things are not meant to be eaten, at least by me.

So when Christina Tosi spends four days on the Milk Bar Birthday Cake, which is intended to be a recreation of Funfetti Cake from a box, with canned frosting, I'm a little quizzical.

But I will put my reverse-snobbery aside and actually try making a recipe. We are having the Elders (LDS missionaries) over for dessert and I wanted to try something new and challenging. Milk Bar, with its multi-component recipes is not simple.

I decided that Crack Pie won't be too challlenging to eat (both of the visiting Elders are from Utah), I am also in the rare position of having all the ingredients already, as I keep freeze-dried corn and dried milk in my pantry.

I started by making the oatmeal cookie slab for the crust.

Christina Tosi is very hardcore about creaming butter and sugar. She writes that creaming should take at least 9 minutes with a stand mixer: 2 minutes with the butter and sugars, and 7 minutes after the eggs are added.

I followed the instructions, and the finished cookie dough was indeed very fluffy.

The finished cookie slab was very good. I might try this recipe for a normally-sized cookie, adding in some chocolate chips. All oatmeal cookies need chocolate chips.

The filling is sort of a custard, with cream, dried milk, freeze dried corn processed to powder, light brown sugar, and lots of egg yolks. Think of pecan pie without the pecans, or shoofly pie without the molasses.

After the cookie cooled all night, I crumbled it in a food processor and mixed in (more) butter to make a crumb crust,

then smoothed the filling into the crust.

I baked the pie at 15 minutes at 350 degrees, then 10 minutes at 325. The center is still jiggly, and the cookie crust has melted and floated. Maybe I should have baked the cookie longer? The good news is that it's supposed to be ugly, and powdered sugar covers a multitude of sins.

After 4 hours in the freezer and 1 hour in refrigerator, I served it to the Elders. And we all really, really liked it. The two of us who have a sweet tooth both had seconds, and the one who doesn't have much of a sweet tooth did finish his slice. Really, really good, but really, really, REALLY sweet.

I have to say, this is a once a year kind of recipe for me. I would get very ill if I had this available all the time. This might be a very good potluck recipe though scaled up.

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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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Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the Hesitant

When I was engaged and contemplating making my wedding cake, I tried to work my way through The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. That is a really, really good book, and from it I made my first successful scratch cakes. However, Rose Beranbaum is a New Yorker, and had an amazing distaste for sweets, considering her career.

I made her buttercream and it came out a lot like whipped butter. That frosting was so much work and such a failure that I wrote off homemade frosting for years. I didn't try again until my recent Wilton class, which uses American Buttercream exclusively.

Not too long ago I read BakeWise by Shirley Corriher and Rose's Heavenly Cakes, a more recent book by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I realized that my earlier frosting failure probably wasn't a failure at all, just a disagreement. To a New Yorker without a sweet tooth, the ideal frosting is supposed to be a lot like whipped butter (probably).

Reading Swiss Meringue Buttercream Demystified by Sweetapolita (a name that is a LOT of fun to say outloud–try it!) made me reconsider making buttercream, and the directions in Bakewise convinced me. Thus began my ambitious plan to make several types of frosting and compare them, inspired by All Yellow Cakes Compared by Anna at Cookie Madness.

Briefly, In Swiss Meringue Buttercream, you make a meringue from cooked egg whites and then combine it with butter. I adapted my recipe from BakeWise.

My ingredients are 4 egg whites (mine are from a carton, which might have been a mistake), 1 cup sugar, 9 ounces unsalted butter, 3 ounces shortening, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Please let me take a minute here to admire my new kitchen.

I heated the egg whites and sugar over simmering water to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the held them there for 2 minutes.

I beat the egg whites at the highest speed for five minutes, then on a slightly lower speed until cool. I only got to soft peaks; I think I would have gotten firm peaks with fresh egg whites.

I transferred the meringue to another bowl and washed my mixer bowl.

Switching to the beater blade, I combined the shortening and butter

I stirred in one quarter on the meringue on low speed,then switched back in the whisk and stirred in the rest.

It looked kinda funny, so I kept mixing on low until it was smooth.

We all tried the finished frosting. I could eat it straight. My husband liked it but though it might be better a little cooler (it's still very warm in Maryland). My son liked it "just a little bit," probably because it is a lot less sweet than the American Buttercream he is used to.

Stay tuned for the next episode of The Great Frosting Experiment!

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Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake

A different post today. I'm having my kitchen redone (God bless you, Landlord!), so I made this cake at my father's house. Dad bakes bread and has a very, very cool kitchen. But, I was flustered by not knowing where anything was, so I don't have many pictures.

This cake is for my friend Alysia, whose birthday was Saturday. Her family has a lot of July birthdays, so she asked about a cheesecake instead of a traditional birthday cake. After some discussion, she said that she likes New York-style cheesecakes and the Turtle flavor combination–chocolate, caramel, and pecan.

My inspiration is this beautiful Turtle Cheesecake by Miss Patti at Cake Central.

I'll write about the cheesecake later–today I'm focusing on the elements that make it Turtle.

This blog is all about challenging myself (and becoming rich and famous), so I wanted to make the caramel and chocolate sauces. I used the recipes from The Family Baking Book from ATK.

Dad has a very high BTU cooktop and Le Creuset pots. They have a white lining that makes it very easy to see the color of the caramel. *sigh*

The failed caramel

I hash to throw away my first batch of caramel, as I didn't read the friggin' directions. We live, and, hopefully, we learn.

I put enough water in the pan to cover the bottom, the added 7 ounces or 1 cup of sugar to the middle. I then heated the pan over medium-high without stirring until the syrup was light amber.

I then lowered the heat to medium-low and cooked until it was the color I wanted. I removed the pan from heat and very slowly whisked in 1 cup heavy cream. The first failure was mostly from not adding the cream slowely. Finally, I stirred in lemon juice, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. I have a new-found love of caramel.

I made the chocolate sauce later in my gutted kitchen. It was very simple–I just heated cream and stirred in chopped chocolate and a little corn syrup off heat.

Now we come to the fun part–squeeze bottles! I feel so fancy. I decorated the cheesecake on my kitchen table, in the middle of my living room, while distracting my children with Sid the Science Kid.

I tried doing a layered grid like the inspiration photo, but the relative viscosities of the sauces fought me. I ended up flooding the cheesecake with caramel and decorating with chocolate sauce.

The caramel tasted much too good to leave it at that, so I covered the sides in caramel also. Some chopped pecans, et violà!

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Strawberry Cassata Cream Cake

When I was in college in Cleveland, I was often served Strawberry Cassata for special occasions. It is a strawberry shortcake with cake instead of biscuits. Later, I found out that most people (that is, people from Italy, and people who know people from Italy) think Cassata is a completely different cake, involving ricotta and nuts.

Wikipedia to the rescue! According the the article on Cassata, there is a specific Cleveland Cassata which as I described, based on a baker's kids who didn't like the original. I guess when you are a prominent baker in an immigrant community, your picky kids shape the city's cuisine. And thank goodness for that!

This cake is for my friend Alison, who has a birthday today. When I asked what she wanted, she said "strawberries sound good." I'd just seen this beautiful Strawberry Cream Cake at the ATK blog, and was very excited to try it.

Finding a Recipe

I loved the appearance of the ATK cake, but wasn't interested in their recipe. I'm not a fan of the very eggy genoise. Also, they stabilize the whipped cream with cream cheese, which sounds kinda fishy.

I wanted to try Shirley Corriher's Magnificent Moist Golden Cake from BakeWise. There's a good adaptation of the recipe at Cookie Madness, though I got the book from the library and worked from that. While you're there, Anna at Cookie Madness has an awesomely dorky post on All Yellow Cakes Compared.

This is an amazing cake. It goes beyond moist, all the way into damp. But this is not a perfect recipe. I ended up making it twice (you'll read why in a minute) and both times it overflowed the pan onto my baking stone. Also it calls for heavy cream, which I don't usually keep around. But the flavor is accurately Magnificent.

The recipe uses the unusual dissolved-sugar mixing method. The second time I made the cake went easier, so I'm going to write about that one.

Baking the Cake

I started by whisking the cake flour and baking powder, then set them aside. I put the sugar in the mixer bowl, then mixed in 1/3 cup simmering water (I just brought a small pot of water to simmer then measured out 1/3 cup). I then stirred in the butter (in pieces), artificial vanilla extract (I save the real stuff for icings and custards), salt, and vegetable oil. You can see a little unmelted butter in the picture below.

I mixed in the flour at low speed in three batches.

Now working with a wooden spoon, I stirred in 3 yolks and 2 eggs one by one. Finally I folded in 1/3 cup heavy cream whipped to soft peaks. Experience told me that my 6 quart KitchenAid has a very hard time whipping 1/3 cup of cream so I used my adorable Kuhn Rikon Rotary Egg Beater (about $20) and a glass 2-cup measure. It took seconds.

Shirley instructs quite clearly to bake the whole batch in one 9 x 2-inch round pan. You can see how full it is; apparently I couldn't, or at least couldn't foresee the consequences.

Both time I baked the cake it overflowed the pan. This wasn't a total disaster, as my sons and I ate the cooked overflow.

This is the very first cake my seven year old son has liked. He usually considers cake a vehicle for frosting.

Here is the finished cake, which I left to cool overnight. I promised my son that I would cut the top off for us to eat the next day.

This is what the cake looked like in the morning. I tried to save the cake by cutting off the scarred top, but only got one good layer. So I remade the cake VERY quickly before church.

Shirley says that her cake can be cut into 3 layers. This is technically true, as I was able to do so with the uneaten cake, but the top layer was very thin. For my final assembly I used my three best layers, two from the new cake and one from the old.

Assembling The Cake

I layed out the three layers on baking racks and a cake round. I trimmed and bisected 2 pounds of strawberries, then arranged the most attractive pieces on the edges of the cake, macerating the remainder with sugar.

I didn't like the idea of the puréed strawberries in the ATK cake, so my husband chopped them for me. (I have Rheumatiod Arthritis, and I can't cut up ingredients anymore.) I put the chopped strawberries in the middle of the cake.

On each layer, I piped a quick border of sweetened whipped cream with large Drop Flower Tip (2D), then glopped the rest of the cream in the middle. I used a small icing spatula to smooth the whipped cream.

I assembled the cake after decorating. Never, ever do this. One of my layers broke in the transfer, and I was glad I had plenty of extra cake to patch it with (sorry Alison!).

I had saved my prettiest strawberry as a garnish. I used an instructional video at About.com to learn how to cut a strawberry fan.

Have you had layers fall apart on you, or had a kid eat your cake in the middle of the night? How did you cope? Let me know in the comments.

As an aside, I recently read the 250 words is the sweet spot for a blog post (Food Blogging for Dummies). My posts are often around 1000 words. Should I trim it down, or split my posts? Did you even make it this far? :-)

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Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I have a very sneaky strategy for how to improve my baking and have cakes to write about. I look in my church newsletter for upcoming birthdays. Next I pick someone I know (I'm pretty new to the church), then I ask if I can bake him or her a birthday cake. It's working pretty well so far.

I asked Leah what kind of cake she likes, and her answer was "It's all about the frosting . . . cream cheese frosting!" There was a brief mention of Red Velvet Cake, but I ignored that. I'm from Maryland, where Red Velvet has always been a regional specialty, and I KNOW that you only use boiled milk frosting on Red Velvet. The rest of the country just has it wrong.

I mentioned some other kinds of cake I would be willing to put cream cheese frosting on, and Leah decided on chocolate. I can definitely live with that :-)

I planned to bake the cake late at night when it wouldn't be so hot, then decorate it the next day. Alas, I discovered Lost on Netflix, and the cake did not get baked when I'd planned. I did have a full day left to bake and decorate though, and had a lot of fun in the process.

I used recipes from King Arthur Flour for the cake and cream cheese frosting. I used an adapted Wilton American buttercream recipe for the decorations, as I was concerned with piping the cream cheese frosting.

King Arthur Flour (KAF) has a recipe section on their website, and within that a collection of recipes called Favorite Classics. These recipes are described as "KAF Guaranteed", and they are rock solid. KAF is not the only source of exhaustively tested recipes. America's Test Kitchen (which publishes Cooks Illustrated and Cooks Country) is an obsessive tester, and I have also found very well tested recipes in Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible and Shirley Corriher's BakeWise.

What appeals to me in the KAF Guaranteed recipes is the predictability of their taste. Cooks Illustrated expects one to grind peanuts for the most peanuty Peanut Butter Cookies you can imagine, which are very good. KAF uses peanut butter alone, and you end up with cookies that taste as you expect them to, but better. I guess I'm saying that KAF recipes have a very broad appeal, which is exactly what I want as a starting point.

I made the simple Chocolate Cake. This recipe uses the paste or reverse creaming method, where the fat is mixed with the flour instead of being creamed with the sugar. I find it more predictable than creaming.

I used my digital scale to weigh the dry ingredients, which I highly recommend. I learned to measure like this in a bakery where I worked.

I put my mixer bowl on the scale and pressed the Tare button to set the weight to zero. This can also be called zeroing. I added the specified weight of flour, then pressed Tare again, and the scale was again reset to zero. I then measured the sugar right over the flour, and the scale only measured the amount of sugar I've added. I Tared the scale one more time, then added the cocoa.

I made a mistake here, and didn't sift my cocoa. My sifter is not really a sifter, but a fine mesh strainer, and my strainer was dirty. Cocoa, being a fine solid and a fat, clumps easily and persistent. It ended up being a lot of work to break up the cocoa with a whisk and my fingers, and I still would have done a better job with the sifter.

I added the leavening and salt and started the mixer with the whisk attachment to mix the dry ingredients. I then switched to the paddle and mixed in my very soft butter and oil.

I'd forgotten set my eggs out, so I put them in a bowl of hot water at this point. I put the bowl under a trickle of hot water from the tap to add some circulation.

I microwaved the milk for 60 seconds, which made it pretty hot, then added cold water from the refrigerator to bring the average temperature to lukewarm. Then I added the vanilla. I generally use artificial vanilla in baked goods and real vanilla extract in uncooked applications. All the liquid went in the mixer at once and was mixed. The eggs were then warm, so I added them as directed. Like many reverse-creamed cakes, the batter was very thin.

I prepared the pans with flour-oil spray and parchment rounds. The precut rounds are really handy if you're going to bake a lot of cakes.

The KAF recipe specifies the weight of the batter that goes in each pan, and it came out perfectly :-)

My father is very excited about the blog, so he bought me some Cake Strips (as well as the parchment rounds, and loaned me the cake pans. Thanks, Dad!). You can see how well they worked.

While the cakes cooled I made a double recipe of Cream Cheese Frosting. I learned in cake decorating class to always make more frosting than you think you will need. I mixed the room-temperature cream cheese to soften it, then mixed in the butter and real vanilla extract.

Based on my experience, I added the powdered sugar all at once. In my class we were told to buy 2 pound bags of Dominos pure powdered sugar, the amount needed for a double recipe of frosting, so we wouldn't have to measure. I started the mixer at the lowest speed to avoid recreating the set of Scarface (not that I've seen it), then increased the speed just a bit.

At this point the frosting looks terrible and my mixer is straining. I added milk, a tablespoon at a time, until it smoothed out.

I also made a buttercream, a recipe I will write about at another time.

To turn the cakes out of the pans, I put parchment circles on top of each cake, sandwiched the pan between two wire racks, and flipped them. I flipped them again and leveled the cakes. As noted before, they were already pretty level, but I wanted to be extra careful. Plus, the cake tops with some leftover frosting make a wonderful treat for the baker :-)

I spread some frosting on a 10-inch cake round to anchor the cake, and placed the first layer, cut side down. I frosted generously (it's all about the icing, remember?) then placed the second layer, again cut side down. I did this because it is almost impossible to frost the cut side of a cake without a lot of crumbs in the icing. After frosting the whole cake generously, I put it in the refrigerator to set.

I worked on the decorations next. I was planning to make some daffodils (thus the yellow), but I quickly learned that one should not try to make ambitious buttercream flowers in the dead of summer. So I went to my favorite and most successful flower, the rosette.

After I finished the rosettes I pulled the cake from the fridge and made handwriting guide lines with a pizza cutter, as well as a center line. I already knew from playing around that the middle of Happy Birthday falls in the middle of the first P and between the T and the H., so I started with those letters and worked out. Leah is a pretty easy name to center :-)

I placed the rosettes as evenly as I could and connected them with squiggles, then piped a simple line-and-dots bottom border.

Leah was happy with the cake AND she picked it up, so I didn't have to worry about delivering it without sliding!

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