After considerable sleuthing, after asking lots of friends who wished they had done it, I have found my benefactor. The mysterious copy of Chocolate Cake, 150 Recipes from Simple to Sublime by Michelle Urvater, that appeared in my PO box months ago came from.... (drum roll) my baby sister J.L.! Again, I truly am wild with gratitude for this magical gift and plan to send something chocolate J.L.'s way as soon as the temperature in the large southern state where she lives stabilizes to 2-digit numbers. It's been the hottest summer on record in her part of the universe, but fall weather will come. Someday.
There's a plethora of recipes and techniques for Black Forest Cake. I started out with the one in Michelle's book but quickly strayed as you will soon see. Chocolate Butter Sponge Cake Layers, page 187 in Chocolate Cake was my first attempt at foam cake. There is a great deal of room for me to improve. Adjusting for altitude and tweaking for two round 8 1/2 inch cake pans, I produced two chocolate pancakes.
Longing for a tall and sumptuous layer cake, I awoke at 4:00am the following morning and made my grandmother's Chocolate Prize Cake. This made three 8 1/2 inch rounds. With again, altitude adjustments, these layers were considerably taller.
Never one to leave well enough alone, I assembled all five layers into a leaning, towering, much-too-tall cake. The filling was Chocolate Ganache, Michelle's book page 324, along with canned cherry pie filling. Frosted with whipped cream and decorated with more cherry pie filling on top and with about a quarter pound of grated milk chocolate, this skyscraper of a confection was too high to fit in the covered cake carrier. It arrived at lunch with friends a little squashed. Luckily, these are terrific friends, truly. They have discriminating culinary tastes, but they are generous of spirit, willing to provide this particular baker with an easy audience. Thank goodness.
This cake taught me volumes about confectionery baking. One lesson learned is: foam cake takes practice. The next time there's call for Black Forest cake, I plan to do it this way.
Black Forest Cake
First bake my grandmother's Prize Chocolate Cake.
For this recipe, I thank my middle sister, J.E., who took notes from our grandmother. She (Mom, our grandmother) called this a "good, light cake". She thought the original recipe came from Better Homes and Gardens, but she never made any cake according to the recipe. Always she had some permutation, some plan in mind to bake something better. Here's Mom's version.
1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate - or cocoa powder if that's what you have on hand
5 eggs
1 teaspoon of soda
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 1/4 cups cake flour
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 8 inch pans. (I always add a round of parchment in the bottom of the pans and grease and flour that, too.)
Stir shortening to soften, add sugar gradually, creaming with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Blend in the vanilla and cooled chocolate (or cocoa). Add the eggs, 1 at a time beating well after each . Sift the dry ingredients. Add to creamed mixture alternating with buttermilk.
Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes until the top is springy and a toothpick comes out clean.
Ingredients you'll need after the layers cool:
Cassis or cherry brandy
Wilderness brand MoreFruit Cherry Pie Filling
Batch of Michelle's Chocolate Ganache,
as well as a batch of her Beginner's Buttercream, page 309, but without the coffee
Whipped cream for decorating the top
Milk or semisweet chocolate, grated
The next day or after the layers are completely cool, brush them with a little creme de cassis liqueur or cherry brandy.
Fill between the layers with Chocolate Ganache and cherry pie filling, saving a few cherries to garnish the caketop.
Assemble the layers and ice with Michelle's Beginner's Buttercream frosting, page 309, but leave out the coffee .
Decorate the top with whipped cream, the last few cherries, and the amount of grated milk chocolate that seems right to you.
It's best served the day it's assembled, but will keep for 2 days refrigerated, especially if the whipped cream is dolloped onto each individual serving, rather than applied to the entire caketop.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Chocolate Decadence with Chef M. and her Flan and Phenomenal Caramel Nests - Day 36
How daunting is it to bring your amateur cake to dinner at a real chef's house? Extremely daunting, it's like sticking your little colored pencil sketches of house plants on the museum wall next to a Paul Klee. Or like deciding to sing in public with Cindy Lauper. It's dancing salsa in Puerto Rican bars with men who've been salseros their whole entire lives. I was out of my depth, but I made this cake and took it to dinner anyway.
Packing in from the jeep to Chef M.'s front door, my companion and cake-carrier tripped, sliding his hand right through the Chocolate Decadence Cake. His action gave my cake an artistic but not particularly appetizing look. Chef M. saved the day, for she was of course not without a dessert of her own: a smooth, delicious flan and delicate caramel nests. She plopped out scoops of cake from the untouched edges with a melon-baller, placed a ball of cake on each lovely round of flan, and topped every one of those with an inverted caramel nest dome.
There being tons of similar recipes for more or less this same cake, and there being many cakes not even close but having the same title, I am just compelled to share this recipe. It's bits and pieces of many different versions, an almost flourless, dense but not quite gooey, intensely chocolate chocolate cake.
36th Day Chocolate Decadence Cake
6 ounces bittersweet and
2 ounces unsweetened quality chocolate, melted together and cooled
1 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup extremely strong coffee
2 tablespoons good Mexican vanilla
6 large cage free eggs, separated
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white granulated sugar
1/3cup sifted flour
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, set an insulated cookie sheet on the middle rack in the oven, and generously butter a 10 inch springform pan. Mix chocolate, butter, coffee, and vanilla thoroughly and set aside.
Vigorously and thoroughly beat the egg yolks and both sugars together with an electric mixer. Carefully fold this into the chocolate mixture by hand with a rubber spatula. Fold in the flour.
Using a completely clean and dry electric mixer and bowl, whip the egg whites like Julia Child: fast the first few seconds, then slower and speeding up. Stop when the eggs form stiff, shiny peaks which point down a little at the tips.* Be careful not to over beat the eggs. Using your rubber spatula again, fold a little egg white into the batter. Then fold in the rest. Tenderly pour into your prepared pan and set this gently into the oven atop the cookie sheet. If your altitude is less than 6,000 feet, turn down the oven heat to 350 degrees.
Bake until the center is not so jiggly, and a cake tester comes out with only a little batter on it. Start checking at 35 minutes. It will most likely be ready in 45, but you don't want it to overcook and dry out. Expect this cake to come out of the oven puffy and then fall.
Cool to room temperature and de-pan to serve same day. If you'll serve it the next day, leave it in the pan, wrap tightly with plastic wrap and store at room temp.
* Julia's Kitchen Wisdom, by Julia Child, page 100
Monday, September 12, 2011
Days 34 and 35: Failed Compote Followed by Wildy Successful Southern Comfort Ice Cream
Mmmm...berry season. Knowing an intense unfrosted dark chocolate cake was headed for a dinner party in a large mile high neighboring city this late July weekend, I made my first fruit compote ever in life, Very Berry Compote, Michelle Urvater's Chocolate Cake, page 372. This recipe is simple to make. But if your berries, any of them, are even the tiniest bit over ripe, oh, no! My raspberries fell apart, ruining not the taste but certainly the appearance of this lovely seasonal delight. It was still wonderful at home on toast, topping yogurt, etc., but there was no way to take this to dinner Friday night. Win, win; eat the failed compote at my house and make ice cream to escort the cake to dinner.
Three women climb hard all day, scramble up White Ridge and add an extra peak - Mt. Sherman - just for fun. Those girls are more than ready for a treat. The Silver Scoop in Fairplay is completely ready to provide it. That's where I learned that Jack Daniels Chocolate Chip ice cream might just be as good as it gets. If you follow this blog, you know already that the only flavor even close to good whiskey alongside chocolate is the "whiskey-like liqueur", Southern Comfort. (Background music here is of course Janis Joplin singing "Piece of My Heart".) This is how to make Southern Comfort Ice Cream, which when served next to a great flourless chocolate cake, is believed by some to be even better than Jack Daniels Chocolate Chip.
Southern Comfort Ice Cream
6 large cage free egg yolks
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon good Mexican Vanilla
infinitesimal dash of salt
generous shot of Southern Comfort
First, make your custard. Cream the eggs and sugar. Add the milk and heavy cream. Pour it all into a microwave safe bowl and zap it for 1 minute. Take it out and whip it with an electric mixer. Do this over and over until your custard thickens. It may take a while, depending on your microwave. When you can dip a spoon in the custard, and it adheres smoothly to the back of that spoon, it has cooked enough. Cool to room temperature. Refrigerate covered for hours, until it's cold. Stir in vanilla extract and salt. Add half the Southern Comfort, stir and sample. Add the amount of liqueur that tastes just right to you. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Days 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 - Brownies Go Climbing
You sit on a slab of sun-warmed granite and bite into a smooth, rich brownie, rife with butter and laced with white chocolate chunks. In that moment, you are certain this is nirvana. Cumulous clouds in the distance remind you weather is shifting. You may soon sprint for treeline to stay alive. For this second, however, life is perfect.
Summer hiking is the best, and I do so love to go with people who know where we are and how to get back to the car. Chocolate sustains trekkers when they hike and climb. Aside from that, the right chocolate will influence a hike leader to include you, make the baker essential and welcome on any hike. There is always a place on the trip for "that woman who always brings chocolate".
Determined to be "that woman" and to go places I'd never ever find on my own, I rose extremely early and whipped up brownies on several occasions this summer. Brownies are so very portable, so easy to carry in your pack, nearly smush-proof. Usually Nigella Lawson's Snow Flecked Brownies ( page 46, Feast ) were staples. Climbing companions, 20-something-year-old men, kept asking for these specifically, "that gooey brownie, the one with the white chocolate chips", so they just kept turning up in the top of the backpack. With minor adjustment for altitude, I make them just like Nigella says.
Except when I don't. This time of year, I find myself competing with hummingbirds for every last teaspoon of white granulated sugar in my pantry. Some person keeps making all my sugar into syrup for the birds, tiny beings, but together they sure can eat a lot. One morning brown sugar brownies had to do, and nobody seemed to notice or care. This recipe makes lots of brownies; they went up Eagle Peak and down the Arkansas in the same week, along the east ridge of Pacific Peak, up Handies Peak and Mount Rosa other days.
Winthrop Beach Brownies from Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters, page 201, went out climbing when a man asked for brownies with cream cheese. With the first batch, the bottom layer was fine, and the cream cheese layer was good, but the chocolate batter on top was stiff going on. Consequently, the top layer's thickness was inconsistent, and cream cheese bubbled through in spots. Nobody complained, and the flavor was wonderful, of course, but I wanted defined brownie vs. cream cheese layers. In their beautiful and oh-so-fun-to-read cookbook, Marilynn and Sheila Brass show these looking almost like little layer cakes. Second try, the top layer batter again too stiff, I tried adding a little milk. Don't do this, 'cause your brownies will be too squigy. For this baker, the best cream cheese brownie solution is as follows. Make the Brass girls' Winthrop Beach Brownie batter, doubling the cream cheese filling. Using a 9 x 13 inch pan, put all the firm, strong brownie batter on the bottom. Spread the cream cheese layer over, as the Brass sisters describe. Then get out your New Basics Cookbook, the one by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. Quickly do up a batch of batter for Baby Brownies, page 655, which will be more liquidy, and pour them over the cream cheese filling layer. Bake a little longer than directed by either recipe, for you have double the batch. BUT keep an eye on things, you don't want these overbaked. This is a convoluted route, but it is completely worth the rich, decadent, and clearly stratified little gems you have in the end.
Those Baby Brownies are outstanding on their own, too. They were my go-to brownie before I revealed my fickle character and went over to the white chocolate chip side.
 |
| Claims she's an underwear model, but I don't believe her. I do know she's holding what's left of a pan of Snow-Flecked Brownies. |
Summer hiking is the best, and I do so love to go with people who know where we are and how to get back to the car. Chocolate sustains trekkers when they hike and climb. Aside from that, the right chocolate will influence a hike leader to include you, make the baker essential and welcome on any hike. There is always a place on the trip for "that woman who always brings chocolate".
Determined to be "that woman" and to go places I'd never ever find on my own, I rose extremely early and whipped up brownies on several occasions this summer. Brownies are so very portable, so easy to carry in your pack, nearly smush-proof. Usually Nigella Lawson's Snow Flecked Brownies ( page 46, Feast ) were staples. Climbing companions, 20-something-year-old men, kept asking for these specifically, "that gooey brownie, the one with the white chocolate chips", so they just kept turning up in the top of the backpack. With minor adjustment for altitude, I make them just like Nigella says.
Except when I don't. This time of year, I find myself competing with hummingbirds for every last teaspoon of white granulated sugar in my pantry. Some person keeps making all my sugar into syrup for the birds, tiny beings, but together they sure can eat a lot. One morning brown sugar brownies had to do, and nobody seemed to notice or care. This recipe makes lots of brownies; they went up Eagle Peak and down the Arkansas in the same week, along the east ridge of Pacific Peak, up Handies Peak and Mount Rosa other days.
Winthrop Beach Brownies from Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters, page 201, went out climbing when a man asked for brownies with cream cheese. With the first batch, the bottom layer was fine, and the cream cheese layer was good, but the chocolate batter on top was stiff going on. Consequently, the top layer's thickness was inconsistent, and cream cheese bubbled through in spots. Nobody complained, and the flavor was wonderful, of course, but I wanted defined brownie vs. cream cheese layers. In their beautiful and oh-so-fun-to-read cookbook, Marilynn and Sheila Brass show these looking almost like little layer cakes. Second try, the top layer batter again too stiff, I tried adding a little milk. Don't do this, 'cause your brownies will be too squigy. For this baker, the best cream cheese brownie solution is as follows. Make the Brass girls' Winthrop Beach Brownie batter, doubling the cream cheese filling. Using a 9 x 13 inch pan, put all the firm, strong brownie batter on the bottom. Spread the cream cheese layer over, as the Brass sisters describe. Then get out your New Basics Cookbook, the one by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. Quickly do up a batch of batter for Baby Brownies, page 655, which will be more liquidy, and pour them over the cream cheese filling layer. Bake a little longer than directed by either recipe, for you have double the batch. BUT keep an eye on things, you don't want these overbaked. This is a convoluted route, but it is completely worth the rich, decadent, and clearly stratified little gems you have in the end.
Those Baby Brownies are outstanding on their own, too. They were my go-to brownie before I revealed my fickle character and went over to the white chocolate chip side.
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