Nemesis

« A flourless chocolate cake that goes by the name Chocolate Decadence ore Chocolate Nemesis. It could also be called The Dark Slab. :) »

I've been baking lately, but I've been too distracted and lazy to write about it as once I get home from work and walk the dog, I begin the slow drift of falling asleep on the sofa. I've been working my way through the same book for over a week now, too. Largesse is my middle name. Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. :)

In my spate of baking ennui, I noticed a friend had tried to make a chocolate cake with disappointing results. With a name like 'Chocolate Nemesis', I was curious and started poking around on the net and was amazed to find that this single recipe was responsible for countless angst-filled laments about wasted expensive chocolates and ruined dinner party desserts. This cake has four ingredients, how could people go so consistently wrong and not lynch the authors of the recipe/cookbook? Good question.

It is a flourless chocolate cake in its most basic form and, while you need to follow the directions carefully, this is likely one of the easiest cakes you can possibly make. I consulted my hefty tome of pastry and found a recipe almost precisely like the one causing all the flopped cakes except that it didn't call for overbeating the eggs, fleshed out little details like buttering the pan and lining it with baking paper and, most importantly, it included the all-important refrigeration. It has to be cold to set firmly for removing from the cake form and cutting.

So, no nemesis, just a rich chocolate cake that is easy, easy, easy to make. Take no shit from bad cookbooks and bad recipes, especially ones that seem to circulate around the net like wildfire. When you read through a recipe, it should have enough detail so that you aren't asking questions like what pan to use or how much water, etc. If you have more than one item left in doubt, keep looking for a better recipe. Bad cookbooks with bad, untested recipes really should get sent straight back to the publisher with a pointed critique as they keep on churning out these lame cookbooks as though they are completely unaware that some folks might actually try cook something from them. It's a pet peeve of mine.

Chocolate Decadence, a.k.a. Chocolate Nemesis

Makes: 1 10-in/25cm cake with 8-16 servings
Time: 20 minutes prep + 30-40 mins bake + 2-8 hours refrigeration
Source: The Professional Pastry Chef

• 7 oz or 200g sweet dark chocolate (70% cacao)*
• 7 oz or 200g unsweetened chocolate (85%+ cacao)*
• 3/4 cup or 150ml water
• 6 oz or 170g granulated sugar
• 2.25 sticks or 255g butter, room temperature
• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 3 oz or or 85g granulated sugar

1. Generously butter the inside of a round 10-inch/25cm cake pan or springform pan. Cut baking paper to fit in the bottom of the cake pan, place on the bottom and butter the top of the paper as well. Set pan aside.
2. Chop chocolate into small pieces and place on a sheet of baking paper. Slice butter into small pieces, too, and place on baking paper.
3. In a saucepan big enough to hold the chocolate and butter, bring the water and 170g of sugar to a boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat and quickly stir in the chocolate until it is completely melted and smooth. Add the butter and stir in until melted and the mixture is again smooth. Set aside and allow to cool until it is only warm to the touch.
4. In a large bowl, whip the eggs with the 85g of sugar at high speed until it is light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Do not whip the eggs as you would for a sponge cake as too much air will make the cake dry, crumbly and difficult to slice. Slowly pour the cool or warm melted chocolate into the egg mixture. Try to pour it down the side of the bowl and not directly onto the egg mixture. Mix together gently and well.
5. Pour mixture into prepared pan and carefully place it into a pan filled with a small amount of water and add water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. If you use a springform pan, wrap the pan in a layer of aluminum foil to prevent leaking.
6. Bake immediately at 175C/350F for about 30-40 minutes or until the top feels firm. Be careful not to overbake the cake. Allow the cake to cool for an hour and then refrigerate for a minimum of two hours or, even better, overnight.
7. To remove the cake from the pan place in a shallow pan of warm water and run a knife carefully around the edge. Invert onto a plate and gently tap around the top if it is slow to unmold. Remove the pan and carefully peel off the baking paper. If you used a springform, run a warm knife around the edge, remove the band, place a plate on top of the cake and flip over onto the plate. Remove the bottom and then remove the baking paper on top.
8. Using a thin, sharp knife dipped in hot water, slice the cake while it is cold and allow to warm up before serving. Serve with a raspberry or strawberry sauce/puree and sour cream.

* You can also just use 400g/14oz of 70% semi-sweet/bittersweet dark chocolate instead.

A Neverending Learning Process

« Hummingbird cake with cream cheese frosting and dried pineapple flowers. (yes, that's really a flower made from pineapple.) »

Since work has been making for long days at the office, seemingly the only thing I can do that's remotely interesting, aside from rant about the various unpleasantries of my current project, is bake which I put a lot more thought and enthusiasm into than may be readily apparent or wise to admit to. It's still snowing like hell here so there are worse things than staying indoors while waiting for winter to finally bugger off.

One of the more appealing parts of finding recipes and making them is researching the history behind them as well as learning new methods or techniques. Also, I enjoy making the traditional local foods as a way to get to know the culture, but reversing that and inflicting non-fennicized versions of American foods on my colleagues is both entertaining and, at times, mystifying when they don't receive something as well as I was convinced they might. It's a neverending learning process. :)

Pineapple and banana have been frequent additions to Finnish desserts and main dishes for quite a few decades now, almost to the point of being a bit of a cliché. Pineapple is popular. Really popular. So, I was thinking I'd find a cake recipe with banana and pineapple from the US and see if it would be tasty or find out if their popularity might be limited just to Finnish cakes. I found something called Hummingbird Cake, a cake that I'd never heard of in spite of quite a few sources on the internet claiming that this cake is among the 10 most popular in the US. The cake originally appeared in Southern Living Magazine, a popular magazine throughout the US in spite of the name, in 1978. There doesn't seem to be an authoritative source as to where it might have come from before the magazine published the recipe though The Food Timeline does a good job of gathering what little is known.

I suspect that the name has everything to do with how very, very sweet this cake is as well as the tropical fruits it contains. One of my colleagues spent five years living in Chicago and returned to Finland late last year and we often compare notes on our perceptions of the US and of Finland. Perhaps one of the most interesting things that both of us noticed and agree on is the Finnish sweet tooth. Candies, sweets and cakes, both of us agree, have a much higher profile in daily life than they do in the US or, at least, the part of the US that both of us have spent the greatest amount of time in; the Midwest. There have been various articles in the Helsingin Sanomat in the past few years that also tend to support this observation in that the amount of sugar consumed per capita has skyrocketed in the past few decades, possibly due to the plenitude and availability of candy. My colleagues all really liked the cake and so I had that warm fuzzy feeling of choosing/guessing well.

The cake and the frosting are easy to make, but the pineapple flowers really are a beautiful addition if you have the time and patience for them. The flowers would really be perfect if you make individual hummingbird cupcakes with frosting and a pineapple flower on top of each. People don't think they're really pineapple until they start to eat them as the core looks just like the center of a daisy. I wasn't very impressed with the way the 'flowers' looked from the original directions from Martha Stewart and had the thought that, since the center looked so realistic, why not try to cut them into flowers and was really happy with the way they turned out. I made them the night before I baked the cake, which is likely a good idea since the time may vary for the pineapple to dry out.

I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it as it reminded me somewhat of banana bread that my mother used to make. It is a heavy cake both in that I built some muscle carrying it to work and that it doesn't take more than a small slice to get your fix. The nuts in the cake also make it necessary to have a very sharp knife to cut through the cake neatly.

Hummingbird Cake

Serves: 16
Time: about an hour for the cake + bake time
Source: Southern Living Magazine

• 3 cups or 7dl all-purpose flour
• 2 cups or 4,75dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup or 1,75dl vegetable or sunflower oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla/vanilla sugar
• 1 8oz or 225g can crushed pineapple, undrained
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25dl mashed/pureed ripe bananas
• cream cheese frosting (recipe below)
• dried pineapple flowers (directions below)

1. Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Grease and flour 2 or 3 9-inch/23cm cake pans. Mash ripe bananas in a bowl with a fork and chop pecans into small, but not fine, pieces. Set aside.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add eggs and oil until dry ingredients are just moistened. Add vanilla, pineapple, pecans and bananas, stirring until combined.
3. Pour batter evenly into 2 or 3 round cake pans.
4. Bake at 350F/175C for 23 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes, remove from pans and cool completely on wire rack lined with baking paper.
5. Spread cream cheese frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Decorate with dried pineapple flowers. Store in refrigerator.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes: 3 1/4 cups or 7.5dl

• 1/2 cup or 113g butter, room temperature
• 8oz or 225g cream cheese, room temperature
• 16oz or 455g powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup or 1,2dl chopped pecans (sprinkle between cake layers)

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended. Beat at high speed until smooth; stir in vanilla.

Dried Pineapple Flowers

Makes: about 2 dozen
Time: about 3 hours - prepare 1-3 days in advance

• 2 large pineapples (about 1kg) (the recipe works best if the pineapples are not quite ripe).

1. Heat oven to 225F/110C. Line a couple baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper.
2. Peel pineapples with a serrated knife (Remove "eyes" using a very tiny melonballer, or paring knife if you don't plan to use a flower cookie cutter for shaping them.) Cut crosswise into very thin slices and place in a single layer on prepared baking sheets. Bake until tops look dry, anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.  Using tongs, flip slices over and continue to cook until reasonably dry, about an hour or so. Arrange on a wire rack and leave to cool and dry a bit more for a few hours. (note: A convection oven is an advantage for faster drying so use it if you have it.)
3. When slices are cool and dry, take a small metal flower-shaped cookie cutter and press into dried pineapple. Use a rolling pin on top of the cookie cutter to press firmly. Set cut flowers aside on the wire rack. When the flowers are dry, but still a bit pliable, hold the center of the flower between your thumb and forefinger in one hand and pull the petals of the flower upwards with your other hand to give them a more realistic look.
4. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3 days.

Tunnel of Fudge

« The cake. The icon. The Tunnel of Fudge. »

Nordic Ware is celebrating their 60th anniversary this year. Nordic Ware is perhaps best known for the tube pan called a Bundt® pan. Forty years ago, Ella Rita Helfrich submitted a recipe to the Pillsbury Bake Off Contest that used a Bundt® and mysteriously formed a soft fudge core inside a chocolate cake. The cake won and launched not only the Bundt® pan into the mainstream, but helped to create an icon of hospitality for the next decade. I can't think of a single party or social event in the 70s that didn't include a Bundt® cake of some sort or another. Cake mixes were all the rage and with the Bundt® pan, anyone could turn out a pretty cake in an hour with little effort.

I suppose that the advent of gourmet food, a.k.a. Nouvelle Cuisine, in the 80s caused the cakes fall from grace as America discovered pine nuts and blackened anything. Even now, with all the prancing TV celebrity chefs who seem to appeal mostly to those who don't cook, the cakes are seen as too simple, too pedestrian, too 70s that even a chocolate wine port sauce couldn't sex up enough. Food snobs killed the Bundt® cake. It was an unjust execution.

Food fads come and go, but classics like the Bundt® pan are always around for those who tire of silly trends and return to the tried and true. For the 60th anniversary, Nordic Ware has created a special anniversary edition of the Bundt® that is a little bit larger than the ones presently made and, best of all, it also features a set of handles, that were inexplicably removed years ago. It's a pity that H. David Dalquist, the man who, with his wife, created the Nordic Ware company and the famous pan, died early last year and will miss the celebration. The Washington Post featured an article, Let Them Eat Cake, that is a wistful epitaph of the creator of the cake pan that no kitchen should be without. I know it's just a cake pan, but no other tube pan is quite the same as the classic Bundt®. It's an icon. It's a cake. It's a memory of a time when the cake was the safest option on a buffet table filled with cheese balls and jell-o.

To celebrate, I thought I'd make the infamous "Tunnel of Fudge" cake that was so incredibly popular when the cake mix for it was introduced. I originally tried it in my Nordic Ware 'cathedral' Bundt® pan a month or two ago, but my impatience turned the cake into a chocolate volcano spewing molten goo as Jarkko and I tried to stent the flow surging forth from the fractured cake. I tried it again in a regular tube pan with a bit more patience with much more success. Impatience is not a virtue.

The tunnel of fudgy goo in the center of the cake is a wonder of baking chemistry as a large part of the butter, sugar and cocoa are driven inwards by the heat of the pan. It's a very dense, slightly dry around the edges, and very chocolaty cake that is best enjoyed with a large glass of milk. Happy 60th birthday Nordic Ware! Forty-five million Bundt® pans are out there, lurking in the dark reaches of kitchens around the world, waiting for their owners to remember the joys of simple, lovely Bundt® cakes.

Tunnel of Fudge Cake

Serves: 16
Prep Time: 35 min (Ready in 4 hr 30 min )
Source: Pillsbury

Cake:

• 1 3/4 cups or 4.2dl sugar
• 3,5 sticks or 400g margarine or butter, softened
• 6 eggs
• 2 cups or 4.75dl powdered sugar
• 2 1/4 cups or 5.5dl all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup or 1.75dl unsweetened cocoa
• 2 cups or 4.75dl chopped walnuts (NOT optional)

Glaze:

• 3/4 cup or 1.75dl powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup or 3/4dl unsweetened cocoa
• 4 to 6 teaspoons milk

1. Heat oven to 350F/190C. Grease and flour 12-cup/28dl Bundt® pan or 10-inch/25cm tube pan. In large bowl, combine sugar and margarine; beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually add 2 cups powdered sugar; blend well. By hand, stir in flour and remaining cake ingredients until well blended. Spoon batter into greased and floured pan; spread evenly.
2. Bake at 350F/190C. for 45 to 50 minutes or until top is set and edges are beginning to pull away from sides of pan. (Since this cake has a soft filling, an ordinary doneness test cannot be used. Accurate oven temperature and baking times are essential.) Cool upright in pan on wire rack 1 1/2 hours. Invert onto serving plate; cool at least 2 hours.
3. In small bowl, combine all glaze ingredients, adding enough milk for desired drizzling consistency. Spoon over top of cake, allowing some to run down sides. Store tightly covered.

Apple Scrooge

« Fresh, warm apple pie with a layer of almond paste on the bottom and an almond crunch topping. It's a pity the net doesn't have smell-o-vision. :) »

I like to think of myself as a reasonably open-minded and adventurous eater as I am usually willing to try anything once as long as it's dead, not moving or otherwise too alien like, say, eyeballs. There are some foods we all grow up with that tend to imprint their characteristics early where they become a sort of platonic form by which all future versions are judged for perfection and authenticity. For me, these would include BBQ, cornbread, spaetzle, chili dogs, corn dogs and apple pie. Maybe marshmallow peeps, too, but noone outside the US has been crazy enough to try making those. I haven't had decent BBQ and cornbread since I left the midwest with the exception of the Blue Ribbon pulled pork in Arlington, MA.

Lots of places around the globe offer something they like to call apple pie but which offends my inner platonic ideal of apple pie-ness. Finland, and Scandinavia in general, often serve something that would be more appropriately called "Thick Crust Topped with an Apple Sliver" or maybe "Apple Tart" since it's often a cake or a thick sweet crust topped with a single layer of thinly sliced apples. Apple pie implies that it is, well, a pie brimming with apples. Apples are plentiful all year long and they're pretty cheap, too, so I'm not sure why the Nordics are so stingy with the healthiest and tastiest part of the pie. It can't be because it doesn't taste good as I made two of these pies and they were quickly hoovered by my colleagues without so much as a crumb left behind. :)

On the boxes of almond paste I bought when I was home for the holidays, there was a recipe for apple pie that I had a feeling would be popular around these parts since it featured an almond paste layer on the bottom and chopped almonds in a struesel topping. I saved the box and finally gave it a try and I almost didn't take the pie to the office as I was considering keeping it all for myself. I made my own crust since the sorts of frozen ready-made dough I've used before have been rather rubbery and tasteless. I'm not sure how it's possible to have so much fat with so little taste, but frozen commercial doughs seem to have it down to a science. I used a recipe for flaky pie crust from the The Professional Pastry Chef again with excellent results on the first try with a minimum of effort. If you've got time to peel the apples, you've got time to make a simple pie crust in 10-20 minutes.

Be careful not to overbake the filling as it's difficult to tell when the apples are done on this pie due to the topping. The slice of pie above was just a wee bit over the line at 1 hour 10 minutes baking time so 1 hour really should be the maximum baking time in a pre-heated oven at temperature.

Just say no to scroogey apple pies drowning in syrupy sweet vanilla sauce. The generous amount of apples between a bottom layer of flaky crust and almond paste and a crumb topping are fabulous and do not require anything else save perhaps some restraint to refrain from eating it with your hands straight out of the pie pan. :)

Almond Apple Crumb Pie

Serves: 8-12
Time: 20 min prep + 1 hour bake
Source: Odense almond paste box

Shell:

• 150-200g almond paste, room temperature
• 1 fresh (see recipe below) or frozen pie shell

Filling:

• 3 medium granny smith apples
• 3 medium golden delicious apples
• 1/4 cup or 1/2 dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup unsweetened, dried cranberries or raisins (optional)

Crumb Topping:

• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup or 1,2 dl all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup or 1,2 dl uncooked oats
• 1/2 cup or 1,2 dl brown sugar
• 6 tablespoons or 85g cold butter, cut into small pieces
• 1/4 cup or 1/2 dl chopped almonds

Cut pie dough into two pieces. Roll one portion into a circle large enough for your pie pan. Let rest for a few minutes and place into pie pan. Press lightly into the pan. Trim the edge, leaving a bit of excess around the pan, with scissors and roll the trimmed dough overhang under with your fingers so that it is even with the edge of the pan. Crimp the dough to create a fluted edge or make a pretty 'sheaves of wheat' edge that looks pretty and is easy to do. Set aside.

Peel, core and slice apples. Squirt a little lemon juice on the slices to reduce browning. Combine apple slices in a bowl with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cranberries/raisins. Set aside to macerate.

Preheat oven to 375F/190C.

In bowl, combine topping ingredients and mix together with a fork or pastry blender until crumbly.

Roll almond paste between 2 sheets of baking paper to form a disc that will fit in the bottom of your pie shell. Trim with a knife to form a smooth edge and press into the bottom of the unbaked pie shell.

Stir macerated apples and spoon into pie shell, arranging apple slices so that they lie flat and close together. Spoon crumb topping evenly over the apples.

Bake for 50-60 minutes until golden brown and bubbly.

Flaky Pie Dough

Makes: 2 10" pie shells
Time: 10 minutes prep + 1-2 hours chilling
Source: The Professional Pastry Chef

• 360g or 13oz bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 225g or 2 sticks cold butter, cut into small pieces
• 70g or 5 tablespoons cold baking margarine or shortening, cut into small pieces
• 80ml or 1/3 cup ice cold water

Combine the flour and salt in a bowl. Add the firm butter and shortening to the flour and pinch butter with your fingers or cut in butter with a pastry blender until fat is the size of small pebbles.

Add the ice water and mix with your hands until the dough comes together, but still a little lumpy. Gather dough into a ball. Flatten into a disc and place in the refrigerator to rest for 1-2 hours. This step is important to allow the dough to hydrate.