Cake Bible - Cordon Banana Cake

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Have not posted in a while. Still have about 10 cakes to get through in Rose's Heavenly cakes. :)

Here is the cordon banana cake from the cake bible.

I doubled the recipe and baked it in a bunt pan. I also used muscavado sugar instead of regular. It came out delicious but a bit on the chewy side. I think that the caster suger must tenderize it a bit. I made a simple ganache to cover it.

Some of Rose's brioche I made.

I went to a sephardic conference. Cookbook authors Pupa Dweck and Stella Cohen spoke. Stella was a real doll, she stole the show.

Stella Cohen, author of Stella's Sephardic Table. She gave out some of her home made marzipan and other treats when you came over to her table afterwards to browse her cookbook.

Pupa, author of Aromas of Aleppo

These were just so fab. From a sephardic wedding in Deal we went to. I had to post.

...And the cake. Boy do I feel inadequate.

Mamul and home-made Halva

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Mamul are basically middle-eastern doughs stuffed with lightly sweetened pistachio filling with a hint of rose water. The powdered sugar on top helps add the extra sweetness this needs.

Ground, shelled pistachios. When you blanch salted pistachios, most of the salt gets dissolved. I was afraid they would be too salty. They were just fine.

I did not shape these 100% properly but you can buy a special tool for crimping them. My brother brought me this one from the Holy Land.

 You wrap them like this and then crimp.

Halva is basically ground a sesame candy. It has its own unique flavor. Gruff, lingering, potent sweetness. These I added chocolate ganache to because it was falling apart.

I poured hot soft ball stage sugar into the running food processor that had the tehina, cardamom and cinnamon. I waited too long in between pours and that caused the sugar not to mix in 100% properly. The result was a delicious crumbly mess. These things are supposed to be one solid block. Sooo, I mixed in the ganache. Sometimes they marbleize it anyways.

For anyone who has had store bought halva, please note that home-made is far superior. It just has a better texture and flavor than the store bought. Using good quality organic tehina also helps get the best flavor and richness.

Ghraybeh cookies - deceptively simple, not so easy to master.

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These naughty little sephardic tidbits are deceptively simple. With 4 ingredients, (sugar, flour, butter, pistachios - and I added lemon oil) they are one of THE most difficult doughs to work with 

First, crack, blanch and de-skin pistachios.

'Omi Girl' was with me for moral support.

'Geula' parchment paper has some pretty unique features. I am not sure what "No scrab cleanup" is, nor why that cleanup would move from the freezer to oven and then to the microwave. However, it sounds pretty nifty and I am sure it will come in handy one of these days. However, this particular parchment paper can not be used for baking steaks. Oh well, can't have everything...

Clarified, um, margarine. (Sorry, this had to be parve.)

La-di-da, when I finish with this it will be a nice, smooth easy to work with dough, right?

Wrong! This is about as together as it got, even after I added an extra half of a cup of margarine ghee.

Here are some pointers, (since I learned this the hard way.)

Roll only with your fingertips!

Use the bench scraper to periodically scrap off the excess dough from the board so it will roll smoothly. Don't use your hands to transfer it to the cookie sheet, use the bench scraper or a spatula.

From right to left, this is how you roll it. Crumble into a ball. Roll it out. When long enough. start gently picking up the roll and folding it little by little inwards, being careful to bend it as evenly as possible. If it is not evenly rounded enough or if you handle it just a tad to hard, it will break. Over lap the fat end over the thin end.

This dough is so fragile. CHILL IT! Even this does not help completely. Sometimes, when you are just about finished rolling it out it will completely fall apart on you and you will have to start again. Um, and again and sometime again.

To get the pistachio in without breaking it, make the incision with the bench scraper or a knife. I also remove a smidgen of the dough to make room for it. Be careful not to put the pistachio in too loosely as they tend to fall out after the cookie is baked.

You can see I got better as I made them from the bottom right to the top left.

I used a modified version of the recipe in Arromas of Allepo who in turn seems to have taken in directly from the original Deal Delights (red) cookbook.

Sephardic/Middle-eastern Chanukah Fried Doughs From Pizmonim Project

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Here is a nice list I found. I looked up and links to each recipe and posted it under each one.

In Egypt it was called Zalabya or Loqmat El Qadi.

 http://www.golden-recipes.com/free-cooking-food-zalabya-breakfast-recipe.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loukoumades

http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/1471478-Luqmat-al-qadi-Zalabia-or-Lokomadis-in-Greek-

In Iraq and Syria it was called Zingol.

 http://www.arifgumus.com/fatih/not1/zingoltatlisi/photo6.htm

In Turkey it was called Bilmuelos.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Hanukkah/At_Home/Foods/Bimuelos.shtml

In Greece it was called Lokomades.

http://greekfood.about.com/od/friedconfections/r/Loukoumades-Loukoumathes-Greek-Honey-Puffs.htm

In Morocco it was a donut called Sfinz, topped with powdered sugar or glazed with honey.

http://libyanfood.blogspot.com/2010/12/libyan-dougnut-sfinz.html

In Tangier it was called bunuelos.

 http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9985629

http://rollybrook.com/bunuelos.htm

This was the only traditional Sephardic item shared by almost all communities for Hanoukah.

26) I mentioned the custom of eating a special type of Fried dough that was sweetened with syrup or Powdered sugar.

I have just found out that the Lebanese Jews do the same thing and they call them Awamat.

 http://mideastfood.about.com/od/dessertssweetspastries/r/awamat.htm

The Syrians and particularly those from Damascus have a special pastry called 'Atayif for Hanoukah. It is thin round dough which is stuffed with nuts and sugar and folded in half and deep fried. It is then drizzled with a sugary syrup while hot and served up fresh.

http://egyptopia.com/Atayif+with+Mixed+Nuts_43_218_30_777_en.html

See also  this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fried_dough_foods

Heavenly Cake - Blue Velvet Cake (Chanukah Cake)

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Try blue, it's the new red...

I doubled the recipe, so if I wanted navy blue I should have used 2 bottles of coloring instead of 1.

Flour and stuff...

The Mrs. was with me for moral support.

Toaster shot.

Again, I doubled the recipe and it did not have enough batter for two pans.

Double the frosting recipe. It really does not make a lot. I used a mixer instead of a food processor.

Heavenly Cake - Spice Cake with Peanut-butter Cream

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This was a pretty good cake and the flavors played off of each other nicely. I think the peanut flavor could have been slightly toned down.

I thought this was a faily unique buttercream since it has powdered sugar and you use the food processor.

I made it a two layer cake. Again, doubling the recipe did seem not fill the two pans properly. It seems as if the recipe was made for 1 1/2 inch pans.

Heavenly Cake - Southern Coconut Cake

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This was a fantastic cake. Both the cake and the frosting were fantastic! Several people who do not usually like coconut said that they liked this cake.

The Italian meringue. I doubled this and cut the butter in half. Maybe next time i'll double the creme anglais as well.

My wife got me a real coconut. :) So I got to use 7.9 oz of fresh coconut milk. The freshly grated coconut has a wonderful soft texture but it is very hard to grate properly without wasting any of it.

Coconut creme anglais. Yum!

O.K. I did not cut it properly, but that is not why I am showing this picture. Since I baked this in the toaster I did not want to bake it in two pans. the batter was about 3.5 lb but 1.5 lb of it did not seem to fill half the 2 inch cake pan like the recipe says it should. I find this often happens with Rose's two cake pan recipes. I end of pouring it all in one pan but it is a bit too much for it. At any rate, usually I get a lot of tunneling because of this. However, this time the tunneling was minimal. I did use a cake strip, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

The cake was a bit warm still so the frosting in the middle melted a bit. It was a really yummy cake warm though.

11 cakes to go. Since my wife did the grooms cake maybe I can count that as the wedding cake. Na. Where is the fun in that? ;) Perhaps one of our single family members will get engaged for us...