Heavenly Cake - Deep Chocolate Rosebuds

ב''ה

I am deeply passionate about these 'rose buds.' Maybe it was because I was out of baking for so long, maybe it was because I had not had a really good chocolate cake in a while, maybe it was Paris... Whatever the reason, these cupcakes were absolutely moist, delicious and gooey.

Ganache.

The batter had a marvelously delicate color and wonderful texture.

Ready to toast.

Toast em' up!

Lovely quasi-volcano cakes. Every one loved them!

Heavenly cake - Quail Egg Seduction (cup)Cake(s)

ב''ה

This may be my last baking post for a little while as it looks like we are going to have to move. I'll post when I can.

In direct contrast to dear fellow Heavenly-Cake-Baker Raymond's scathing review, I thought this had an exceptional, indulgent flavor. Really something special. The 5 7/8 cup cake pan did seem a little esoteric though and I could not figure out how to adjust the recipe for a regular nine inch or loaf pan. I decided to just go for cup cakes. Kids love cupcakes and you can just keep baking them until you run out of batter. In the morning before work I almost never have time to actually take out a knife, cut a piece of cake and find appropriate packaging for it. A cupcake, on the other hand, is pre-proportioned, self contained and can be thrown into a lunch bag in the usual mad rush.

In addition, the last cup cake wrappers I found in the store are patent pending as they do not dull their colors as they bake and can be baked independent of a cupcake pan, on a baking sheet (if you wish.)

These little lovelies came 15 in a $9 package so I decided to triple the recipe. What would I do with 10 leftover eggs? Still not sure what to do with the whites...

Mis en Place: One bowl for the yolks, one for the whites and one for checking for blood spots. You can se how the yolks bled a bit into the whites. The whites stubbornly stuck to the yolks and it was only after much cajoling and pulling at the whites with my fingers that they came apart. Still some white got into the yolk and vis-versa. I put the eggs in warm water to take of the chill since I did not have time to wait for them to get to room temperature. A trick I learned on the Joe Pastry site. :) 

I used India tree castor sugar which seems to have an almost molasses-y aroma. Very impressed. Perhaps it helped with the final outcome we got.

The eggs in their vanilla-cream bath. Luscious, rich, thick texture.

Close up of some fine work done on an Italian sculpture. Err, I mean the batter...

They took about 20 minutes to bake. They did not last long and got rave reviews.

Slightly crumbly but a tender and moist crumb. Amaretto whipped cream went  along nicely.

To those of my readers that are interested in the Kosher side of things, here is a little reading on the Kosher status of quail eggs etc.

Heavenly cake - Mud Turtle Cup Cakes

ב''ה

These cupcakes were delicious. The complex flavors played together nicely on the palette. Despite their flavor, the cupcakes were slightly on the dry and crumbly side. This caused them to labor under the weight of the the chocolate and the caramel and did not have a smooth entrance into the mouth. The cake and condiment could not be eaten properly together without it falling apart.

Cup Cake Batter. The sour cream really added something. Perhaps I should have added a tap more for extra moisture. Perhaps all purpose flour would have been better than cake flour in lending the necessary strength to the cupcakes. 

Shayna, as always, was very eager to help.

The cup-cakes.    

Ganache.

Caramel. It got a little hard, by mostly it was nice and chewy.

For the life of me, I could not see wasting that extra good caramel and just putting a circle in the center. Besides, the cup-cakes turned out humped.

I also took my first foray into the wonderful world of Maggie Glezer's formulas, starting with the Acme bakery style baguette.

She eschewes Peter Reinhart's idea in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" of opening the oven door several times to spray water. Instead she either recommends a pressurized hose or  spraying the loaves themselves with water right before putting them in. Since I am so used to spraying the walls, I actually sprayed the walls when I just put them in but then did not open the oven until it was time to turn them. I'll admit to over baking these a bit. However the crust was still terrifically crisp and her method seems to work nicely.

This recipe uses a poolish and a preferment and has a wonderful flavor, better, I thought, than the BBA pan a l'aciene. Her mixing method also produced this wonderful open crumb. I'm sold! :)

Heavenly Cake - Free Choice Cake - Chocolate Butter Cupcakes

ב''ה

I somehow did not realize that I already made this. My excel file with all the cakes I baked had this marked as 'no.' At any rate it came out much better than the first time and we all enjoyed these immensely.

Here is a list of cakes I still need to bake to catch up with Marie:

She Loves Me  Cake

Spice Cake With Peanut Buttercream

Marble Velvet Cake

Rose Red Velvet Cake

Black Chocolate Party Cake

German Chocolate Cake

White Gold Passion Genoise

Fruitcake 

Chocolate Rasberry Trifle

Ginger Cheesecake with Gingerbread Crust

No-Bake Whipped Cream Cheesecake

Tiramisu

Yellow Butter Cupcakes

Plum Round Ingots

Deep Chocolate Rosebuds

15 cakes in all.

I actually wanted to do the Tiramisu and even was going to pipe my own lady fingers. However, the eggs that I placed on the counter every evening in hopes of inspiration languidly taunted me as I plotzed down in a stupor from a hard days work. 

Hopefully next time. :)

Heavenly Cake - Chocolate Butter Hiccups

ב''ה

I was not so impressed with these cup cakes. At least the way they turned out for me. The Hershey's cocoa I used seemed a bit off in terms of flavor for this and the texture was almost like hard-boiled egg yolk. It could have also used some sort of frosting or buttercream. It was still yummy however, and got eaten up. You can not go too wrong with chocolate and butter. ;)

This is the best pic I have of them, the others did not come out for some reason. Must be that virtual darkroom in my digital camera having hiccups...

Mis en Place:

These were fairly simple to make. Not to many steps. I added two table spoons of water to the cocoa to help the texture. It may not have helped in this case. At least it was not dry.

This is before I smoothed them.

The missus and the "Ez Man" enjoyed them, Ken'ayna Hora. :)

Later:
O.K. Finally got one of the pics!

Heavenly Cake - Peanut Butter Ingots (with ground almonds)

ב''ה

These were fabulous!

Mis en place:

Toasted Almonds.

Flour mixture. I did not get every last powdered sugar ball!

Beurre noisette.

Keep it warm... ;)

Mix mix...

Ready to go.

The unique thing about these seems to be the ground almonds and the beurre noisette which change this from a regular peanut butter cake to someting "Heavenly."

Heavenly Cake - Whipped Cream (Cup) Cake(s)

ב''ה


Ok, so one of them came out looking like the elephant-man, nu. It still tasted good. It seems as if they had some kind of volcanic reaction. I blame global warming.

Ruthi got quite excited about these:

I forgot to put in the sugar until these were already in the pan. I had to scoop it all out again and remix with the sugar. In the end these were not too sweet anyways. I thought this would go really well with a chocolate frosting (which I did not have time to make...)