Brioche 2011 and mis en place for a Heavenly Cake

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Well, the cake is not done yet. Here is some brioche I made recently though, for the Shavuout holiday. I have come to the conclusion that Rose's Brioche Recipe is the best! I have made several versions of brioche from 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice' and Rose's is just all that much better.

This is about as far as I got tonight. Mis en place! I'll have to try and finish tomorrow.

And here are some random flowers from our new neighborhood. I was disappointed to see that the fancy big suburban supermarket in our new dig has mostly cake mixes, whereas the overcrowded urban store in our old brooklyn neighborhood had what I can consider now a nice selection of baking supply goods.   

Rose! If you are reading this, we still are only 1/2 hour drive from brooklyn in West Hempstead, LI! You are welcome to drop by anytime. :)

Old link

I have been so overwhelmed. I hope to post something this week if I can. In the mean time here is the link to my attempt at the mud turtle cupcakes.


Mud turtle cupcakes

Heavenly cake - Chocolate Raspberry Trifle

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Here is the link to my Swedish Pear Almond Cake:

Better late than never.

A lovely trifle. Very good chocolate and raspberry flavors. Nothing, when compared in taste to the honore trifle though...

Slicing and spreading.

In case you were wondering, no our kitchen is not set up yet...

The chocolate. It would have been better with a higher percentage chocolate.

 The creme englaise turned out a little weak for my taste.

 The genoise seemed to get a good height but them seemed a little dense. Perhaps it was all the chocolate or perhaps it was because I did not use Wondra, as I usually do.

Checking the raspberries for (non-kosher) bugs by soaking them in cold water and dish soap (found two or three...)

Composing...

Dear old toasty is up and running again.

Tiramisu and Hand Whipping Egg Whites

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We have wanted to make the Tiramisu from Rose's Heavenly Cakes for a long time. This was just fabulous!

It has taken a long time to start and un-pack after then move. First the move, then Passover then a project with a deadline at work. All of the sudden, I check up with the Heavenly cake bakers and Marie is on the last cake! Ack! How did time go by so quickly? I had meant to try and jump back in. Oh well, very glad to continue along with the rest of you HCB who are still going to do it.

Really mad props to all of you Heavenly Cake Bakers who finished and a hefty Mazel Tov! to Marie for orchestrating the whole thing. Not sure how we will continue without your wry wit and encouragement. :)

I still can not find where I packed the camera cord, so you'll have to enjoy my cell-phone shots. 

Mis en place:

Getting to this mis en place took a lot of effort. It went something like this.

"Honey, where is the vanilla?"

"I don't know. But I just found the vanilla sugar and vanilla beans."

 After unpacking a couple boxes:

"Hey I found the Vanilla! Do you know where the instant espresso is?"

"I don't know"

 After unpacking a couple boxes:

"Hey I found the espresso! Do you know where the Sunbeam is? 

"I don't know"

 After unpacking a whole bunch of boxes, tailing the place apart and only in the end realizing that the movers had put it in the attic for some reason:

"Hey I found the Sunbeam!" 

My trusty dairy Oster toaster was, of course, moved by myself in our car, not wanting the movers to mess with it.

Finding Kosher Marsala was a miracle in its own right.

Eggs wine sugar...

The new kitchen window. :)

The "Ez Man" was with me for moral support..." This is at my mothers house. I promised I would make her a Jansci Torta for Passover. I buy the ingredients and ask her where her kosher for Passover hand mixer is. "Oh, I don't have one." Um, how about a whisk? No, sorry. Forks? "Yes, we have forks! You don't mean to say you plan on whipping it by hand do you?" That is exactly what I planned. If Joe Pastry says you can do it, I knew it could be done. At any rate, it was Passover and I was trying to celebrate the idea of the Jewish sage who said "Some people say, if you can't go through, go over. I say, jump over to begin with!" In under twenty minutes in fact! I took pictures with my other camera, but alas, I can't find the cord. :( At first I whipped with two forks back to back. Then i realized that it got very heavy and it was easier to just use one. My sister than came in and, when finding out my mother did not have a mixer, was about to get upset. "I'll whip it for you by hand!" I selflessly offer, saving the day. My arm ached for the whole next day but it was totally worth it! I got lots of praises on the cake, even if I did not get quite as high a rise out of the eggs (I was still able to get to stiff peak stage though.) Roses Passover cakes are the best! :)

Scrambled? Maybe. It came out O.K...

I ended up making a second batch of the espresso mixture since I ran out.

Finding 'Chalav Yisrael' type Kosher Mascarpone was, again, a miracle. Blend until creamy? Hmm, looks more like cottage cheese. Came out O.K...

The finished topping. It was Really good!!!

Easy to make and really delicious! Highly recommend.

The Moove...

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Some of the book boxes.

We are finally moving tomorrow! Our landlord gave us two months to move out. 2 1/2 months later (ahem) here we are. After Passover (18th - 26th April this year) maybe, just maybe I can get back into baking into time to la'bamba!

The new shtub in West Hempstead. No more Brooklyn for us! There is a Jewish saying, Don't do to others as you would not like done unto you. In Brooklyn the saying seems to be 'Trample unto others, or they shall trample onto you!' I'm still trying to figure out if that is implied somehow by the phrase 'fugedaboudit.'

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

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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

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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! :)