dessert

A Fussy Chocolate Cake

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

I was reading Paul Hollywood’s new cookbook, Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round, and his famous chocolate cake recipe is in there. I like chocolate cake. I have several go-to recipes but thought I would try this one. After all, it is famous!

For this cake one needs to have a full container of cocoa powder and three 4-ounce bars of bittersweet chocolate, plus sour cream and heavy cream, and three-plus sticks of butter. It calls for a frosting and a ganache and raspberries, fresh and frozen. My substitutions were as follows:

  1. Unsweetened chocolate for bittersweet as I forgot to look up the difference.
  2. Frozen cherries as raspberries are not in season and are rather expensive.
  3. A completely different ganache using dark chocolate chips and not needing 7 more ounces of bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream which I forgot to buy.

For the cake:

  • 1 ½ sticks butter, softened
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 ½ cups sour cream (plus one tablespoon, which I forgot)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 ¼ cups unsweetened cocoa powder (this is a huge amount!)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 ½ cups frozen cherries

Grease three 8-inch cake pans and line with parchment paper. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. He calls for using the whisk attachment but I used the paddle which I use for all cakes. Scrape down the batter and whisk again. Add the beaten eggs, vanilla, and sour cream with the mixer on low speed.

Stir the dry ingredients together and add large spoonfuls by spoonfuls to the batter while mixer is still on low speed until fully incorporated. Use a spatula to fold in the fruit.

Spread the batter in the prepared pans. This was a thick batter and a bit difficult to spread in the lined pans. Bake for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen slightly and start to pull away from the sides. My cakes took 30 minutes and did not appear to rise significantly but tested as done. Leave the cakes in the pans for 5 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool.

For the frosting:

  • 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
  • ¾ cup cocoa powder (it’s a lot of chocolate here)
  • 5 Tablespoons boiling water
  • 1 ½ sticks of butter
  • scant ¾ cup powdered sugar

Melt the chocolate and set aside to cool slightly. Mix the cocoa and boiling water to form a paste. I had to add an extra Tablespoon of water. In the mixer bowl, beat the butter until very soft and then add the powdered sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and the cocoa paste and beat until smooth. When the cake is cool, spread one-third of the frosting between each layer and on top. Spread around the sides of the cake and let sit for one hour.

When frosting is set, make a ganache and pour over the whole cake. Decorate with the fresh fruit.

  • For my ganache I melted one cup dark chocolate chips with 1/3 cup evaporated milk, boiled for one minute, removed from heat, and then whisked in 2 Tablespoons butter. This needs to be mixed until it thickens. I poured it over the cake a bit too soon and had a bit of runoff. But that cleaned up tastily!

Thoughts:

  • I had expected the cake to rise a bit more than it did. This may be because it is on the mixer for a long time and I may have beat the air out of the eggs or the baking powder was old. I have since tested the baking powder and it is active so that is not the culprit.
  • So this is a dense cake in texture and in chocolate flavor. It is like a fudgy brownie and not cake-like. After three days I felt like I had overdosed on chocolate. And I like chocolate!
  • The cherries were a nice touch.
  • Definitely serve with vanilla ice cream.

Old-Fashioned Custard Pie

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

I like custard: tarts, pies, plain, caramel, the lot. I was wandering the house wanting to make a simple dessert of some sort. I looked up custard in several cookbooks and settled on the custard pie from Pushcarts and Stalls: the Soulard Market History Cookbook. When in St. Louis I like visiting the Soulard Market. Just walking into the spice shop is an olfactory treat.

I had one sheet of frozen puff pastry which I took out to thaw. I thought a puff pastry crust would add a bit of interest to a custard pie. Custard is milk/cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Very simple and most ingredients are already in most kitchens.

  • One unbaked pastry shell
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 cups cream: I had 1 1/2 cups cream so I topped it off with oatmilk.
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • Nutmeg
  • 1 egg white beaten until frothy

I omitted the last two ingredients. I forgot completely about the nutmeg, and did not bother coating the inside of the pie shell with the egg white.

I blind baked the puff pastry in the pie tin. I should have rolled it out a bit to fit better but I did not. This would have prevented a bit of seepage behind the crust. Ten minutes in a 400 degrees F oven did nicely.

Beat the custard ingredients in a mixer with a whisk or just by hand. Pour into the pie shell. Place on a baking sheet (important in case of leakage) and bake for 30 minutes.

In rereading the recipe now I find that I was supposed to reduce the temperature of the oven to 350 for the pie and the higher temperature was for the par-baking of the shell. Well, my pie took 35 minutes at the higher temperature anyway.

It was not that pretty coming out of the oven. So I found a small amount of frozen mixed berries in the freezer and cooked those down with a splash of cranberry juice to make a small compote to serve with the pie.

This was a tasty pie. It is not too sweet and the puff pastry was a nice shell for it. It made it a bit lighter than a regular piecrust. Yummy!

Another Basque Cheesecake

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

It has been a while since I last wrote. I am going to try to write again but in my retirement I have been embracing the “I don’t have to” about schedules and activities. Yes, I do pay the bills and minimally clean the house and get up and dressed every day, feed the dog, cook sometimes, keep medical appointments, etc. I guess there is a lot of things I do but on my own time. I have not been baking a whole lot in the summer between heat waves and camping trips.

I was perusing the New York Times cooking section and they listed a number of favorite fall baking recipes that looked and sounded interesting. This Basque Cheesecake was one of them. I know I have made a Basque Cheesecake before but that was the King Arthur Flour recipe which I apparently altered slightly. It is somewhere in a past blog post. Here is the link for this one https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024483-basque-cheesecake.

I gathered all the ingredients. Well, actually, I wandered off to the grocery store to buy more cream cheese. This calls for 4 ½  packages! I had heavy cream from making pastry cream for cream puffs recently. And 5 eggs which, luckily, have come down in price. Line a 10-inch spring-form pan with parchment paper that extends up the sides. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

  • 1 ¾ cups sugar
  • 36 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 5 large eggs
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • ¼ cup all-purpose flour

Cream the cheese and sugar in a stand mixer. I mixed this for 5 minutes. Add the bit of salt. Then beat in eggs one at a time. Then the cream. Sift the flour on top and mix in. This makes a lot of batter. Pour this into the prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until “burnt” on top. Let cool completely before removing from the pan. This is a large cake so having flat spatulas on hand to help move it to a cake plate will be handy.

Voila!

This is a light cheese cake, not at all dense like New York Style. But it is very pleasant.

Portuguese Custard Tarts

~ nancyruth ~ 5 Comments

The soft food diet my doctor’s office gave me included “cream-filled pie” as an acceptable dessert. Yea! So I made Portuguese Custard Tarts. I first tasted these Pasteis de Nata at the airport in Lisbon when traveling with my daughter to visit my son and his wife in France. One of these was my breakfast along with coffee after an overnight flight. They were so tasty that I brought a package back with me to share with Hubby. We were fans from the get go.

When I was recovering from my multiple fractures sustained in 2023 my Physical Therapist was of Portuguese heritage. When asked about these tarts he referred to them by the Portuguese name and told me of a bakery in another town where they were made and very good. He added though that the bakery makes them for Sunday mornings and runs out quickly. I never got around to explore that option.

I have made custard tarts before but not specifically Pasteis de Nata. https://wordpress.com/post/mykitchenmythoughts.com/8145 and https://wordpress.com/post/mykitchenmythoughts.com/5246.

This recipe is from Food and Wine and was in my news feed as I was scrolling. It did not require fancy ingredients and was straight forward in its directions. https://www.foodandwine.com/pasteis-de-nata-8723092. The only thing I did differently was use 2 % milk instead of whole milk.

  • 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
  • 1 3/4 cups milk
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1 3-inch strip of lemon peel
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 2 tablespoons flour
  • 4 large egg yolks

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. Layer the puff pastry and roll into a log. Cut this into 12 equal pieces. These are to flattened with wet fingers and shaped into 3-inch shallow bowls to fit into the muffin pan and up the sides. Leave these at room temperature while preparing the custard.

Put the milk, butter, cinnamon and lemon peel into a medium sauce pan over medium heat. While this is heating whisk the flour, sugar, and cornstarch in a medium bowl until combined. Whisk egg yolks in a large bowl until smooth. When milk mixture begins to boil , remove the cinnamon stick and lemon peel with a slotted spoon. Whisk in the flour mixture whisking constantly until thickened but not boiling about one minute. Remove from heat. Gradually add the milk flour mixture to the egg yolks whisking constantly. (The recipe instructions states here to strain through sieve into a heatproof measuring cup with spout. I did not do so and am proud to announce I had no scrambled egg bits at all. It was the constant whisking.)

Pour into the pastry cups and bake in preheated oven until golden brown. Then change oven to broiler setting and broil the tops until browned in spots. Let cool in pan for five minutes and then remove to cool on a wire rack.

Making the pastry cups was the hardest part. Next time I will cut circles out of puff pastry or I will roll the sections of puff pastry into flat circles before putting them in the muffin pan. The pastry was a little thicker than I had wanted. It is also important to have the various portions that make up the custard ready in their bowls before hand. The thing is I now have four egg whites in my fridge needing to be used. I had some leftover custard and baked it along with the tarts. We had this later spooned over canned peaches.

These were a hit with Hubby, very tasty. I had one and one-half along with a cup of tea for dessert while watching the Yankees lose the World Series in Game 5.

Another Summer Pie

~ nancyruth ~ 4 Comments

I was reading recipes and came across one with lemon curd and blackberries. That sounded like a fabulous combination and I found blackberries at the store and bought a bunch of lemons as well. Now what to create? What about a lemon curd pie topped with blackberry sauce? (I probably saw these somewhere so the idea is not very original.)

Here’s what I did:

  • made lemon curd: I used a microwave lemon curd recipe from the Allrecipes.com website; there are plenty to chose from.
  • purchased a premade graham cracker crust: in general I do not prefer these but it is summer and these do not have to be baked.
  • made a blackberry sauce with one cup of blackberries: smush these in a sauce pan with a tablespoon or two of sugar and a splash of lemon juice. Thicken with one teaspoon cornstarch and two teaspoons of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes or so.
  • assembled into a pie and chilled for several hours
  • served with whipped cream and fresh blackberries

Whipped cream covers a variety of errors! This was tasty but not pretty. The lemon curd did not set as I expected. Perhaps cooking it one minute longer would have made a difference. Mixing fresh blackberries into the cooked sauce may have also made it prettier that it was. But Hubby and I ate two pieces the first night!

Blueberry Cream Pie

~ nancyruth ~ 1 Comment

My local newspaper sends the weekly advertising flyers in a “food section” through the mail every week. Sometimes there are interesting recipes that I keep to try out. Sometimes there is an article or two about wine or other food issues that are interesting to read. I confess, I mostly peruse the recipes and cut a few out with the intention of making them.

This recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen and was summer appropriate using blueberries. You can find this on their website if you are a member. I found it in my newspaper flyer. I bought a graham cracker crust instead of making my own. I thought that would be the easiest way to take it to share with “the girls” with whom I go to the Cape with for a week each summer.

  • one graham cracker crust
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 4 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 pints blueberries, divided
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 8 ounces cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup heavy cream, chilled: I bought a can of whipping cream instead; this does effect the results.

For the filling, whisk sugar, cornstarch, and salt in medium saucepan until no lumps remain. One is supposed to process 2 cups (1 pint) of the blueberries in a food processor until smooth. Well, I merely used an immersion blender so my blueberries at this point are mushed but not smooth as silk. One is also supposed to strain this blueberry puree into the sugar mixture. I did not. This will effect the ability to pipe the cream later. Bring this mixture to medium heat and cook until whisk leaves a trail that slowly fills in. I cooked this to a simmer and then for 1-2 minutes longer. Whisk in the lemon juice. Reserve 2 Tablespoons of the puree for piping. Stir in the remaining pint of blueberries and spread in the graham cracker crust.

For the topping beat the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in a stand mixture until smooth. I then folded in the canned whipped cream instead of mixing in heavy cream and beating until stiff peaks formed. Put this mixture into a pastry bag along with smears of the reserved puree to pipe decoratively onto the pie. My blueberries got stuck in the tip and my whipped cream was collapsing so my pie does not look as pretty as the pie in the newspaper picture.

But it was fantastically tasty! The girls and I gobbled this down the first evening at the Cape, even those concerned about carb watching and sugar content. I hope to make this again!

Moonrise at the Cape over the Atlantic

Basque Burnt Cheesecake

~ nancyruth ~ Leave a comment

I had seen these on the internet and wanted to make one. Now that the cost of eggs has decreased slightly I figured I could afford to use 5-6 eggs on a dessert. There were so many recipes to choose from so I went with King Arthur Flour. It had the shortest list of ingredients. I did however add vanilla extract and baked it at a slightly lower temperature than the recipe called for. Here is the link: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/basque-style-cheesecake-tarta-de-queso-recipe

  • 3 8-ounce packages cream cheese at room temp
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 5 large eggs at room temp
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream (I used 1/2 cup half-and-half and 1/4 cup evaporated milk.)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Interesting pan preparation: crumple sheets of parchment paper and line the 9-inch springform pan in an overlapping fashion to fully cover the bottom of the pan and then fold up and over the sides over the edge of the pan. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. I used this temperature because I thought 500 was too hot and the other recipe I used for reference had the oven set to 400. Hubby suggested the in-between.

KAF wants the batter mixed until it is smooth and lump free. They suggest an 11-cup capacity food processor. Mine is only 9-cup. So with all the ingredients in the bowl I mixed it in my stand mixer and then used an immersion blender to smooth it out which is the alternative method suggested by KAF. This makes a lot of air in the batter which may account for how light it tasted. Not a bad thing!

Poor into the prepared pan and bake. I set the timer first for 25 minutes but the top was not “burnt” so added 10 more minutes and it was nicely browned and not too jiggly in the middle.

Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack until room temperature before removing from pan. They don’t tell you how to remove the cake smoothly from the parchment paper so mine broke a bit.

I chose to make the Hot Cocoa Drizzle from https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/vanilla-burnt-basque-cheesecake/ just because, with the only substitute being evaporated milk for the heavy cream.

Not Paris Brest: cream puffs instead!

~ nancyruth ~ 7 Comments

I had grand plans to make a Paris Brest for New Year’s Eve. I even looked up how to pronounce it properly along with its history. I thought I would use my French Feasts cookbook as it is “traditional” French home cooking. So this is a decorative ring of choux pastry filled with praline pastry cream.

First to make the pastry cream, or “crème pat” as I hear it said on the GBBO. I make the full recipe from the above mentioned cookbook with a few substitutes. I flavored mine with vanilla.

  • 4 cups milk (used 12 ounce can of evaporated milk with 12 ounces of water, topped off with the oatmeal milk from the fridge)
  • 2 eggs and 4 egg yolks ( I used the 6 egg yolks left over from making meringue for a Baked Alaska dessert for Christmas Eve)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk eggs and sugar. Add flour and mix well. Bring the milk and butter to a boil and then add the egg mixture. Simmer gently over low heat for 10 minutes. Dust with sugar and chill. Be sure to whisk frequently and temper the egg mixture with some of the liquid while cooking before adding it all so to avoid scrambled eggs. This makes a lot of crème pat. I apparently have made this before, or Son has, as there are notations for half of the ingredients written beside the recipe in the book.

I then proceeded to make the choux pastry from this same book. I failed to compare it to other choux recipes from other cookbooks. This called for a full cup of butter and 4 eggs. It cost me 5 eggs as one fell on to the floor. No other recipe calls for this much butter, not Jacques nor Julia. Perhaps it is a typo.

The pastry was tasty but very thick. It was more of a cookie than a pastry. It did not turn out well. It broke into chunks when I attempted to slice it to fill with the pastry cream. I have half this dough in the fridge and plan to roll it out into shortbread cookies as that is the consistency of the dough.

So the next day I went to my faithful Betty Crocker Cookbook and made cream puff pastry dough which I have successfully made before.

  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 eggs

Heat water and butter to boiling. Stir in flour and stir vigorously over low heat until it forms a ball. Remove from heat and beat in eggs all at once. Continue beating until smooth. Drop dough on ungreased cookie sheet in 1/4 cupful. Makes six. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35-40 minutes. Let cool. Cut off tops. Fill with pastry cream. Replace tops. Glaze or frost as desired.

I melted dark chocolate chips mixed with some chopped almonds and teaspoon of oil for the chocolate icing. Yummy!

Now what to do with all that Patisserie Crème I have left in my fridge?

Sourdough Coffeecake

~ nancyruth ~ 6 Comments

I made a sourdough starter using the Cook’s Illustrated (Sept &Oct 2016) instructions. Then I made sourdough bread from a King Arthur Flour sales flyer. None of these have pictures. Since one has to feed the starter each week and there is always the “discard” I decided to make a coffee cake. I used a recipe I had printed from 2005 from Allrecipes.com. (All rights reserved…so I am just posting a picture of the recipe. Someone has since posted a version on that website which is slightly different than this one.)

This is a lovely and flavorful coffeecake. I substituted walnuts and Craisins for the pecans and raisins. I did not make the glaze. This cake keeps well covered on the counter for a week. Then it was all gone!

Miscellaneous thoughts from my kitchen: I started watching GBBO again and am having to catch up several seasons. Sometimes it inspires me to bake new dishes. I want to try Macarons. I think the show refers to all cakes as “sponges” whereas I think of a sponge cake as different than a butter cake. The show I watched recently had the technical challenge to make a lemon meringue pie. Well, I did not make a pie, nor meringue, but a nice lemon curd which I attempted to put into puff pastry (store bought) hand pies. Paul and Pru would not be pleased!

Seasons blessings to all!

chocolate roll

~ nancyruth ~ 2 Comments

Baking with Jacques! I was looking for a “light” dessert and thought a cake roll with jam filling might fit the bill. I was at first thinking of citrus flavors but the Essential cookbook had this chocolate roll which sounded simple enough to make. Well, melting chocolate, separating eggs, whipping egg whites in separate bowl might be a tad fussy but so would being able to roll the cake without breaking. I read the instructions several times to become confident this would not be problematic. Here is my adaptation.

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 6 eggs, separated
  • 4-6 ounces dark chocolate, melted
  • 2 tablespoons very strong coffee

I melted what chocolate I had on hand. I separated the eggs into two mixer bowls. I poured a quarter cup of prepared coffee and added a teaspoon of espresso powder. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare a cookie sheet pan with buttered parchment paper.

Put water and sugar in small saucepan, bring to boil and cook for 2 minutes making a light syrup. Slowly pour this over the egg yolks while mixing vigorously for 5 minutes. This should be fluffy, smooth and pale yellow in color. Add the melted chocolate and mix well.

Whip egg whites into firm peaks. Add one-third of this into the chocolate mixture mixing vigorously. I used a hand whisk to do this in order to mix in the chocolate that had gathered at the bottom of the bowl under the egg yolks. Carefully fold in the remaining egg whites just until blended.

Smooth the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 12 minutes until set. Let cool to room temperature and then cover with plastic wrap. When completely cool this will be filled and rolled.

Traditionally this is filled with whipped cream. I used a jar of Sour Cherry Preserves. It took the entire 8 ounce jar. After removing the plastic wrap, spread the filling on the cake. Then beginning with the longer side roll gently removing the parchment paper as you go along. Use large spatulas to move the cake to a serving platter. I cut it in half to do that.

I am happy to pronounce that this came out nicely. I sprinkle powdered sugar on the top.

Serves 8 and I cut it into serving size pieces and we enjoyed this for 4 nights. It is very rich. Adding a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream would work well here.