Sunday, December 25, 2011

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

In Iraq and Syria it was called Zingol.

In Turkey it was called Bilmuelos.


In Greece it was called Lokomades.


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


In Tangier it was called bunuelos.

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.




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.


See also  this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fried_dough_foods

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Blue Velvet Cake (Chanukah Cake)

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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.







Monday, December 12, 2011

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.





Monday, December 5, 2011

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... 

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Out of commission this week. Here are some other goodies.

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12 cakes to go! :)

I sprained my thumb on the pumpkin pie. No baking for me this week. Luckily, I baked a few things before it happened. Don't know if I'll make it to the wedding cake next week. It may have to wait until I get up to it...

:)

Double decker apple upside down cake. Served with maple-syrup/bourbon whip cream. I finally got to try the macoun apples with this! 


Pate Ferment Baguettes.

Blood orange curd.


My new method of transferring/flipping over cakes is simply to use another pan. It works really nicely. Also, I now use my hand to place the second layer on top of the curd/cream on the first layer. It is a delicate operation and it seems to give some good control over it. Also, none of the curd gets wasted that way. You can simply lick it off. ;)
Aren't they purrrty?

De Cake!


Ez man found the 72%!




Sunday, November 13, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Golden (Mango) Genoise a mistake I found and a $135 sponge cake :)

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This was a fabulous cake that took a bit of work. I had to work myself up to make this. I had bakers block, if there is such a thing. Look down to the buttercream pic to find out the mistake I found. I could not find passion fruit and don't have to much time anymore to go looking for it. I would have definitely enjoyed this with passion fruit. When I find some I think I'll make this cake again (or at least just the curd!)  I love passionfruit! :)

Mis en place:

'Omi Girl' was with me for moral support. 


I already have numerous genoise posts already on this site so I only took a picture of the batter.

Requisite toaster pic. I baked two genoise cakes so the cake would be nice and high and use up all of the buttercream. Rose's buttercream recipes in this book are always enough for two layers.


Mango Puree. I put dole frozen mango chunks in the blender after it defrosted a bit.

The mango curd (pretty fab!)

The white chocolate custard. I guess the white chocolate I had was not the highest quality. It seemed to curdle and would not mix well with the melted butter. I did finally melt in to the egg though...


The buttercream. O.K. Here is the mistake I found. The recipe calls for 6 oz of cream cheese which should be 170g. However, 6 ounces was only 123g and the 170g was for the full 8oz package! I know it is not a big mistake but I feel pretty good for having spotted it! :) I get the feeling though that Rose has not been following our posts and will probably miss this. Oh well.

Components. 

Composing.

Ready for the swirl!

I enlisted my wife's help to do the final swirl as my attempts were not very good...

Ta da! Or as my little girl says, "da la!"

I have been making Bert Green's Special Sponge cake from the Cake Bible every Friday recently for the holy sabbath. After the Sukot Holiday I had my Etrog (citron) left over. This year I payed $125 for it. It is used in the holiday prayer service. Everyone wants a nice one without booboos so the prices are quite high. Mine was from Calabria Italy.

This is what it looks like on the inside: As you can see it ain't no lemon! At any rate I used the juice (it only gives very little and zest for the sponge cake.

We love Burt Green's sponge cake! :)

Here are some challahs I made.




Monday, October 24, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Marble Velvet Cake

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A fairly classic marble cake with a terrific soft texture.


The batter.


The cake.

Some braided round (and raisin) challot I made for the sukkot holiday.


Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Karmel Cake

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The idea behind this cake is pretty simple really. Caramel with cake batter. It was very good although the flavor was a bit subtle. Goes down right with a cup of coffee. It definitely would have been much better with muscavado brown sugar. I wonder how this would taste with regular white sugar caramel?


This was the first time I used a sugar thermometer. It has always been difficult for me to tell how caramelized brown sugar is. I doubled the recipe so it took a good half hour or so to really get to the right temperature.


Some of the candies that formed in the bottom of the caramel.

The caramel. I actually made this parve, so I used soy milk and margarine.


The batter.

I got some tunneling so I am thinking it might have to do with doubling the baking powder. I should have used a little less. Since I doubled the recipe and baked it all in a 2" pan I probably should have followed the rule of decreasing the baking powder the larger the cake is.