Obliviate!

In the Harry Potter books, Obliviate was a spell that would erase the memory of the victim. It played quite a significant role in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, both funny and sad. I would hope, were I ever to find myself facing down the Obliviate charm, the memory of these little truffle cakes would be spared.

November 6, 2009
Name of cakes: Baby Chocolate Oblivions
Occasion: Heavenly Cake Bakers
Constituents: Chocolate. Sugar. Eggs. Butter. Good Times.

This is my first bake-along with the Heavenly Cake Bakers. I have been enjoying Marie's (aka BBC's) adventures as she bakes her way through Rose Levy Beranbaum's new cookbook Rose's Heavenly Cakes. Recently she invited others to join her and the Heavenly Cake Bakers was born.

These Baby Oblivions are simply the Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte from The Cake Bible repurposed as cute little individual servings. I have no complaints about that. This cake has always been a delicious and decadent hit!

The only real difference between the two recipes, is that the Babies use a higher percentage chocolate, and thus, a little bit of sugar has been added. I will confess that most of the time I bake the Torte I've used a darker chocolate (62%-ish) without adding sugar and it has been freakishly good. So initially I wasn't planning on adding the 3 tablespoons of sugar, but then things went a little off script.

First off, I wasn't going to buy a silicone cupcake pan as I have a bunch of silicone cupcake cups. I figured I could use the cups inside my metal cupcake tin, skip the metal rack (since I guessed it was to stablise the silicone pan), and not have to buy any new bakeware this week. Then of course I couldn't find my cupcake tin. What the fudge, people? Have any of you seen my cupcake tin? Let me know.

I bought a new metal cupcake tin, came home and turned on the oven. I pulled down my favorite dark chocolate, and noticed that I didn't have a full pound. So I pulled down my favorite semi sweet chocolate, and noticed that box was almost empty. Combined I was still in need of 100 grams, and I was resolved not to leave the house again. I searched my pantry, and found my old roommate had left behind a unsweetened baking bar. So my Babies have an approximate percentage breakdown as follows: 75% dark chocolate, 20% semi sweet chocolate, and 5% unsweetened chocolate. I added a little more than the 3 tablespoons sugar called for just in case.

The cupcake tin fit in my 12x18 pan, and I actually have a 9x13 pan and it fit nicely on top of the cupcake tin. I was worried about that. I also bah-humbugged the need for silicone gloves (if I was using the silicone pan and the wire rack I believe it would have been absolutely necessary). Luckily there were no mishaps.

Hey, did anyone else have a leftover batter? I had enough to fill a little ramekin which I baked in my toaster oven. All the Babies, including the rogue ramekin, are currently chilling in the refrigerator. I am totally having that rogue for breakfast tomorrow. (Yeah, I said it. Breakfast.)

(tomorrow)
The silicone cups released the Babies easily and nicely, hooray! The extra batter that I baked in the ramekin took a lot more coaxing, but it finally slid out without leaving too much behind. I whipped up some cream and my roommate and I dug in.

Mmmm. So good. So soft, so creamy, so chocolaty! And so freakin rich! Annmarie couldn't even finish her little Oblivion Baby, and the ramekin full of Oblivion I'm trying to eat is winning. I didn't make the raspberry puree this time around which is a bummer. The whipped cream is a wonderful companion but (in my opinion) these Babies need a raspberry chaperone as well. I'm sure I have some in the freezer! I guess the Obliviate charm wouldn't be such a bad thing after all; I'd be able to finish that ramekin. (Don't worry, I finished it later on in the day. Everything's gonna be allll-right.)

Oblivion Torte, previously.

A Shout Out to the Cloud Creator

I have been largely displeased about how to list my blog labels for a long time now. I tried a list, but it got long and unwieldy. I tried using a google search toolbar but it didn't work the way I wanted it to. I tried Blogger's tag cloud, but it was ugly. Really ugly.

I have a satisfying tag cloud over on my other blog and I tried copying and pasting the code from there to here, but it was way too complicated for me to understand. I'm not a programmer, I just like to dabble!

After doing a search for html for tag clouds I found the exact same webpage that I used for my other blog. And I am quite pleased. I hope you spend some time admiring my tag cloud--maybe poke around in my ingredient list and find something new to read!

And for those of you readers with a Blogger blog who would like a cool tag cloud, check out phydeaux3's tag cloud hack. Best blogger hack ever. So far.

A Fig Cake for Dad

My parents have two fig trees in their backyard and they have been inundated with figs since September. Mom hit fig fatigue by the time I arrived in late September and hadn't been eating very many of them. Dad still dutifully picks and eats figs daily. Both of them would gift figs every time they saw anybody else who likes figs. ("Did you bring Sal figs this week? How about John? And Jesse? Shall we bring more figs to the girls at the club? Hey, do your friends like figs?")

I, however, am not a fig fan. My father asked daily if I wanted any figs, and daily I turned him down. I think he hoped that if he kept on me I would eventually relent. Nope, sorry. I don't want any figs. Ever.

In the last two weeks of my visit I plunked all the baking books I brought with me down on the table in front of my dad and told him to pick something for me to bake for him and Mom. I suspected he would choose some chocolate-chocolate bomb like he usually does but instead he zeroed in on Dorie Greenspan's Fig Cake for Fall and that was it. Well, I thought, at least I won't be endangering my own waistband with this one.

October 17, 2009
Name of cake: A Fig Cake for Dad
Occasion: Too Many Figs
Constituents: Poached figs atop a lemony cornmeal-yellow cake with a sherry-port reduction (sounds fancier than a sherry-port sauce)

Since this was Dad's cake, I employed him to round up the 18 ripe, yet firm, figs necessary for this cake. He skipped 'round the corner of the house, climbed his trusty ladder and within minutes handed me a bowl of freshly picked figs. He seemed so pleased to help that I asked him to prepare the figs for poaching. Dad gruntled a bit about being second in command but set to work cutting off the stems and splitting the fruit in half. After he placed the prepared figs in a bowl he wandered off. So much for helping out!

Mom had a musty old bottle of port on the bottom shelf of a cupboard next to an equally musty bottle of sherry. I've never had port before, so I asked my parents if the stuff was still good. It passed their test, so into a pot with some honey for poaching. There wasn't enough port so Mom yelled from outside to use the sherry. This was way outside my cooking/baking expertise, and since it was Mom and Dad who would be eating the cake later on, I did as she advised.

A word about the honey: Mom and Dad took a trip to Greece last May, and high up in some monastery in Meteora they bought a large jar of honey. Apparently it was made right there, and when they found out I needed honey for the cake, Dad got all excited about me using the Greek honey. He exclaimed to mom, "see! I told you we would use it all up!"

(I didn't use it all up, but I'm guessing they had some argument about what would they do with such a large jar of honey, and probably about who was going to give up the space in their suitcase for it.)

The figs poach for about 20 min, until soft but not falling apart. They are then removed from the liquid and set aside. The liquid continues to cook down until it is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. I let the liquid work while I put the rest of the cake together.

The cake batter is a simple yellow cake with the addition of lemon zest, more honey, and cornmeal. My mom doesn't have a zester or a microplane so I had to peel and chop the lemon zest by hand. That was an experience.

The batter is prepared by first creaming the butter, sugar and lemon zest. The eggs are added, as is the honey and vanilla extract. By this time everything looks curdled and sad, but thankfully Dorie warns of this. After mixing in the dry ingredients the batter was thick, yellow, and delicious. It is poured into a 9 inch springform, the figs are scattered across the top, and the cake is baked for almost an hour.

I was really unsure of how things were turning out. Actually, I felt pretty confident about the cake but I wasn't sure about the sherry-port sauce. It smelled weird to me. Not knowing what port (or sherry, or port + sherry) taste like and disliking figs, I couldn't tell if the sauce was good or yucky. I asked my parents to come in and sample the syrup and Dad told me it tasted like "port and figs." Okay, thanks Dad.

When I pulled the cake from the oven it looked beautiful. I mean, as beautiful as a fig cake to a non-fig lover can be. Mom and Dad said it looked just like the photo in Baking From My Home to Yours so I took a photo of both:

Dorie recommends serving the cake with either whipped cream or vanilla ice cream alongside the cake and sauce. Dad opted for a thick coat of Reddi-Whip (ugh), Mom and I a little bit of ice cream. I took a thin slice--I had to try it, even if I was wary.

The cake had a nice textural crunch from the cornmeal. It was moist and substantial without feeling heavy or dense. The lemon zest played nicely off the sauce, which I was surprised to discover tasted very grapey, almost like grape juice. I have no idea if Mom's dusty bottle of port was a good quality port, or if all port sauces taste grapey, or if port in general is grapey. But this sauce was grapey. And the figs? The figs were...figgy. I would have enjoyed the cake more if it was without figs. Mom and especially Dad enjoyed the cake and the cake's flavors, although I don't think they liked the cornmeal crunch too much. I advised Dad to share the cake with his fig loving friends in order to keep from eating the whole thing, but he seemed hell bent on eating the whole thing himself. I guess that's a pretty good endorsement for this cake!

Caramel Peach Grunt

Well folks, fall in the San Francisco Bay Area is a different ball of wax. The days have been dry, sunny, and warm with lovely cool evenings. This is pretty much the best time of year to be in San Francisco proper, and over the weekend we enjoyed beautiful warm days with a light breeze. Warm! No fog! I always feel sorry for the tourists who come to SF in July, not expecting it to be cold, foggy, gray, and windy. The beautiful time in San Francisco is September and October, people. Please remember that when planning your trip.

Ah, all this time with my parents must be rubbing off on me, as I opened this post with a paragraph about the weather. They love to talk about the weather. They struggle to stay awake through the news so that they can get the weather report, and then they go straight to bed. They only call me up if they've heard the weather in Portland has been doing something interesting, otherwise they stick to forwarding me emails about amazing photography and funny stories.

As you may have gleaned from my ramblings, I am visiting my family for a while. My parents still live in my old hometown on the peninsula and my sister and her husband live in SF, about 45 minutes apart from each other. I am bouncing back and forth between both places while I am here, and currently I am back in the suburbs after a weekend in The City with my sis. (Yes, locals call SF "The City" and NOBODY calls SF "Frisco." Ignore at your own risk.) This afternoon my sister and her husband drove me back down here and mom made us an awesome dinner. In fact, every dinner mom has made since I've come home has been awesome. God, I love my mom.

September 27, 2009
Name of Dessert: Caramel Peach Grunt
Occasion: Dinner with the Family
Constituents: Peaches, stewed in a caramel sauce with a drop biscuit top

On Friday, before I left for SF, Mom and I were talking about Sunday's dinner and cleaning up the stacks of papers that my dad likes to leave everywhere. In the stack was a newspaper clipping that my mom pulled out and started telling me about. She began to explain the existence of things called crisps, cobblers, pandowdies, and grunts. I laughed, and told her I was already acquainted with these things. Her clipping, it turns out, was part of the press for Rustic Fruit Desserts and included the recipe for the Caramel Peach Grunt. I have been dying to make the grunt, and when mom heard that she asked me to make it for Sunday's dessert. Yesssssss!

We were scheduled to arrive at Mom and Dad's around 5 pm, so Mom bought me the peaches and then fretted that I wouldn't have time to put it together before it got too late for Michele and Mike to get back to the City. I assured her it wouldn't take much prep time and could be baking while we ate dinner, but she bought a pre-made pie crust just in case.

A grunt and a slump are pretty much interchangeable terms, both denoting fruit cooked on top of the stove instead of baked in the oven. This technically isn't a true grunt as it is finished in the oven, so that the biscuit top gets nice and toasty. But who's counting.

First off, the peaches are macerated in some sugar in order to release some of their juices. After sitting for about 20 minutes, the juices are strained off for later and the fruit tossed with a bit of cornstarch and salt.

Next, a caramel is cooked in a deep ovenproof skillet. Once dark amber, which because I am anxiously watching the pan seems to take forever, the peach juices and a little bit of butter are added and brought back to a boil.

The peaches and a little bit of vanilla are added, and left to simmer until the peaches are cooked through.

In the meantime, a buttermilk biscuit dough is made. It is sticky and pillowy, so the biscuits are dropped onto the fruit and the whole thing is popped into the oven until the biscuits are cooked and the juices are thick.

We chose to serve it with vanilla ice cream, which I believe is almost necessary with cooked fruit. My sister is on the opposite camp and had her ice cream separately in another bowl with chocolate sauce.

I found the caramel to be very pronounced, with a boldness that did pair well with the fragrant peaches. The biscuit was a little bit of a wallflower for me, but it did provide a nice chewy something to contrast with all the soft and showy fruit and caramel. Interestingly, I discovered that I liked this dessert much better without the ice cream!

Everyone loved the dessert, and found it to be a great end to the evening. Mom kept repeating her astonishment that it only took about an hour to put together. What can I say, except that Rustic Fruit Desserts is awesome?

Most importantly, about six hours after my sister ate the grunt, she went into labor and lookit what got born Monday mornin'!

evilcakenephew!!

A Roundup of Things I Baked This Summer

I guess I have been a very uninterested blogger this summer--well let's face it, I go through a rough patch every year, don't I?--and I thought I'd finally lay these baked goods to rest.

And without further ado....

July 13, 2009
A Cheesecake for the Doulas

RLB's famous cheesecake, right out of The Cake Bible.

Rose recommends baking the cheese cake without a graham crust to prevent it from getting soggy. She then adds that if you want a graham cracker crust to pat it on afterward. I tried that once, and it was a big crumbly disaster.

So this time I did it the old fashioned way. And that created enough leftover batter to make me a tiny little personal cheesecake.

It was a little undercooked in the middle, but really, who cares? Well, I did, but we ate the entire thing anyway. I think this was the meeting where we had three different desserts. Good meeting.

August 02, 2009
Hooray I'm Off Call! Cupcakes

I was on call from March through August this year, and I was looking forward to a break. The last birth I attended was a three-day sucker during the heatwave that fooled Portland into thinking we were in Arizona. For once, I was really glad to spend three days stuck at OHSU. (Hooray for cold L&D wards!)

I cheated and tried Dr Oetker's chocolate cake mix. Not bad, but a little dry. I defrosted a few buttercreams (one from 2006, but it was still good!) and that's the story. Easy as pie, and even more rewarding.

August 03, 2009
Carlotta's Peanut Butter Birthday Torte

Carlotta saw my blog post about Dorie Greenspan's Peanut Butter Torte (from another good doula meeting) , and asked if I would make it for her birthday. Of course I would, and I did.

This is the only photo I have of her torte:

She had to pull photos from the other torte for her blog. Sorry Carlotta. But happy birthday!!

September 14, 2009
Dorie Greenspan's Cinnamon Squares

Oh, to be lazy, here's a wonderful article written by Dorie about her favorite spice, cinnamon, and these cinnamon squares.

They have long tempted me, these squares. And so for this month's doula meeting I finally gave these a try. Thank god for the doula meeting.

Hoo-boy, I decided to go whole hog and do the cappuccino variation, where you infuse espresso into the milk (and you already use instant espresso for the filling). After two squares of cake I was jittery as all hell. But it was so good!

Our resident midwife brought along an excellent plum cake. A two-cake meeting. Awesome.

September 19, 2009
Dorie's Buttery Jam Cookies

I cleaned out the refrigerator as I am about to go on a very long vacation, and I found SIX jars of opened jam. Six. Jars. Opened.

Sigh.

What the heck was I going to do with all that jam? And on the eve of my trip?

I opted for cookies. I could give some to the Jellos and take the rest home to the family. Plus, it would hopefully polish off a jar of jam.

The Buttery Jam cookies did NOT polish off a jar of jam, but they are pretty darn tasty. They are cakelike and tender, and if you don't use an overly sweet jam the cookies are just sweet enough. The jammy flavor is a little muted but regardless I can't stop eating them. I used raspberry jam and the cookies are faintly pink. Very cute.

Tuesdays With Dorie member Randomosity and the Girl has posted the recipe.

That's it, fellow bakers. I'm off to California for the next month. I've got my baking books all packed; we'll see what I bake up!

Woo-Hoo!!

Look what I picked up today:

I'm so excited!!!!

Gluten Free Plum Slump

Ah, rustic desserts. You are an awesome book. I haven't even had you for a week and I have baked two recipes from your pages. And both were really awesome. In fact, this slump which I made gluten free is already a favorite dessert of all time.

August 15, 2009
Name of dessert: Gluten Free Plummy Slump
Occasion: A windfall of plums!
Constituents: Plums, stewed, with a gluten free dumpling top

Stewed plums doen't sound very appetizing, but you have no idea.

Slumps are apparently a New England thing, which would explain why a West Coaster like myself has never heard of them. The colonists were trying to replicate their beloved puddings and came up with cooked fruit topped with dumplings, simmered gently on the stove. I am glad they did, because this was delicious.

My roommate came home on Friday with a bag full of plums that he picked from a tree on a vacant lot. The peach and blackberry pandowdy was finished, so it was definitely time to make another rustic fruit dessert. We chose the Stone Fruit Slump and called Annmarie to come over and eat slump and watch Lars and the Real Girl.

macerating plums

Obviously we had to convert the dumplings recipe to a gluten free one since Annmarie was coming over. That was pretty easy, I am glad to say! The dumplings were a nice, toothy compliment to all the soft and juicy fruit. Not that they were hard or dense--they had proper dumpling texture--I'm just saying that the texture was a nice foil for the soft fruit. It was oddly satisfying, which is why I think I like it better than the pandowdy we made a couple of days ago.

We ate it as soon as I pulled it off the burner with a little bit of cold creamy vanilla ice cream which was wonderful. Each of us had a couple of servings apiece, and I had some for breakfast as well.

Hey, it's mostly fruit so it can't be all that unhealthful, right?

I will post the recipe since I adapted it to make it gluten free, however you're going to need a couple of GF baking mixes. I keep large batches of both of these mixes in my pantry.
Brown Rice GF baking mix: 2 parts fine ground brown rice flour, 2/3 part potato starch, 1/3 part tapioca flour (For a large batch, use 6 cups brown rice flour, 2 cups potato starch flour, and 1 cup tapioca flour.)
White Rice GF baking mix: Pretty much the same formula as the brown rice mix above, but with finely ground white rice flour instead of brown rice flour. Same proportions. I get my white rice flour at any asian market; asian rice flour is ground much finer than many American rice flours.

Why do you need both? Well, to my mind, the brown rice flour mix is a good substitution for all purpose flour, where the white rice flour is comparable to cake flour. This is just to my mind, not based on the protein profiles or any other chemical compositions of any of these mixes. The original dumpling recipe calls for 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1/2 cup of cake flour, presumably to keep the dumplings tender. So I decided to do the same thing, but with brown and white rice flour mixes. Gluten free bakers, it is up to you. I bet you could use all brown rice flour mix. Or whatever flour mix works best for you. This is how I chose to convert it.

Gluten Free Plum Slump
adapted from Rustic Fruit Desserts by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson

Fruit Filling

• 4 1/2 pounds plums or mixed stone fruit (apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines) fresh or frozen, pitted (8-9 cups or 3 pounds prepped)
  
• 1/4 to 1 cup (5 1/4 to 7 ounces) sugar
  
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
  
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
  
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1/2 a lemon)

To make the fruit filling, slice the fruit over a bowl so you can collect the juices. Slice each fruit into 10 to 12 pieces, depending on the size of the fruit, and drop the slices into the bowl. Separately, rub the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a small bowl, then add to the fruit and gently toss to coat. Gently stir in the lemon juice, then scrape the fruit and juices into a 10 to 12 inch nonreactive, deep skillet or a wide 5-quart saucepan or Dutch oven. (Actually, I don't see why you can't just cut and collect the fruit in the pan you're going to cook them in--less to wash in the end.) Whatever pan you choose, it must have a tight fitting lid. Let stand for 15 minutes. During this time, the fruit will release some of its juices and the sugar will begin to dissolve.

Meanwhile, make the dumplings.

Gluten-Free Dumplings

• 1 cup brown rice GF flour mix
  
• 1/2 cup white rice GF flour mix
  
• 2 tbsp coconut flour
  
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
  
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
  
• 1 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
  
• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
  
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
  
• 1/2 cup (4 ounces) cold unsalted European-style butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  
• 1/2 cup cold buttermilk

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add the butter and toss until evenly coated. Using your fingertips or a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the size of peas. (Try your fingers, it's fun!) Add the buttermilk and stir just until the mixture comes together; it will be a slightly sticky and wet dough. Set aside.

Cooking the Slump
Being the fruit mixture to a low simmer over medium-low heat. You will need to stir occasionally to prevent the juice from sticking to the bottom of the pan; but do so gently to avoid breaking down the pieces of fruit. Simmer for about 2 minutes, until slightly thickened. Remove from heat.

add the dumplings

In 8 portions, place the dough atop the fruit, distributing the dumplings evenly over the surface. Return to the stovetop and bring to a gentle simmer over low heat. Cover with a tight-fitting lid and continue simmering for 18 to 22 minutes, or until the dumplings are puffy and cooked through to the center. Remove the cover and let cool for 15 minutes before serving. (We ignored this and ate it right away. The only difference was that the juices were really soupy instead of thick. Still tasted good.)

after 22 minutes!

They say that the slump does not keep well so you need to eat it all up. I say, keep it in the pan you cooked it in and refrigerate. It was still good today, after a reheat in the microwave. I also recommend a little vanilla ice cream, or a small drizzle of heavy cream. It goes well to offset the tartness.

if we had waited 15 minutes the juices would be thicker. we weren't patient enough.