Wait, what did you say?

  

  
When I said I wanted to make one of these, David thought I said I was going to bake a Stalin. So I laughed at him and said yeah, I'm gonna bake a tiny gingerbread dictator. "Five Year Plan", David says, in a silly Russian accent.

I thought it was funny.

Stollen is not bread, it's a yeast-risen cake. It tends to be quite dense, and it has candied fruit in it. I think it is related to panettone, which is another thing I may try to make someday. Right after the lefse.

For the dough:

2 1/2 tsp yeast
2/3 c warm milk
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
3 cups bread flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
pinch of allspice
2 cups mixed dried or candied fruit, cut into little bits

You may also want:

6 oz marzipan

1 oz brandy or rum
1 T butter
lots of powdered sugar

You can proof the yeast in the milk, if you want, but I use instant yeast so I don't bother. I put all the ingredients for the dough except the dried fruit in my bread machine for 20 minutes. After 15 minutes, I put in the dried fruit so it didn't get ground to paste by the beaters.

If you don't use a bread machine, you can do the mixing by hand, just be aware that the dough is extremely sticky. Unlike normal bread dough, this will not form a neat, easily handled ball. It will have a texture more like Jiff peanut butter, but springier.

Let the dough sit until it has doubled in size. Once the dough has risen, gently deflate it a bit then flatten it out on a well oiled cookie sheet. Squish the marzipan into a shape that fits well on slightly less than half the dough, then fold the dough over and pinch it closed around the marzipan. Let it rise until it has nearly doubled in size, then pre-heat the oven to 375. Bake the stollen at 375 for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 300. Bake for another 30-40 minutes.

Remove the stollen from the oven, and pierce the crust thoroughly with a fork or other sharp pokey thing. Put the brandy and butter in a small container and microwave just long enough to melt the butter. Stir or shake to emuslify the mix, then brush over the stollen. Generously coat the loaf with powdered sugar, then cover loosely until cool.

Notes:

1. I used a combination of candied orange peel, dried cranberries, raisins, and dates in mine. Some people use chopped nuts, too, and some recipes call for mace or cardamom. Feel free to flavor it the way you like it, it's your cake!
2. There is no reason you have to put marzipan in it, or cover it with brandy and sugar. But I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to. (Some people prefer to make a drizzle of icing out of confectioner's sugar, which does make it less messy.) If you do go for powdered sugar and hooch, be very generous with the sugar. Most of it will tamp down into the steam from the warm cake.
3. The loaf will not get very brown. Don't worry, it's not supposed to. Stollen should be moist, not crunchy.
4. It takes a very long time for this dough to rise. The high concentrations of fat and sugar in it inhibit the action of the yeast, so you do need to be patient. This recipe took me nearly 6 hours to make.
5. Ohmigod this is insanely delicious.

Do you remember the first time you ever encountered fruitcake? That rather horrid, soggy, mortar-like confection that never gets eaten but always turns up at christmas?  Wasn't that a great disappointment?  It always had those shiny red and green bits of candied fruit, and smelled alluringly boozy, and tasted like car exhaust and rubbing alcohol. I kept trying to eat it for years, hoping that one day, I would find a fruitcake that tasted as good as it looked.

My search has ended. This cake is tender and rich, delicately sweet, meltingly chewy. There is just enough fruit to make each bite a little different from the last. It has an alluringly boozy aroma all right, cuz dammnit, I put actual booze on my fruitcake. The coating of sugar compacts into a thin, ever so slightly crunchy crust that dissolves almost instantly in your mouth. Glucose euphoria.

I am 37

  

  
I celebrated by doing nerdly innocuous things all day. Like go to the Portland Nursery to buy apples, and ride my dreadful bike. I went over to my brother's house, which had no electricity, and had family dinner, and we were all glad that a) the self-destruction of his electric meter did not result in anything worse, that b) my brother in law had cooked the turkey at his house, c) that a gas grill makes really good roasted cauliflower and d) cake.

The cake is an improved version of the banana cake I made before.

Banana cake 2

1 package TJ's freeze-dried bananas
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk

Pre-heat the oven to 350.
Butter & flour a 9 x 12" pan

Pulverize the bananas in a food processor until they are a very fine powder. Cream the butter, sugar, and banana powder together until the mixture is very smooth and light. Add the eggs and vanilla, and continue to beat until the batter has an even fluffy texture. Sift in the dry ingredients alternating with the milk, mixing gently but thoroughly between each addition. Spread the batter in the pan and tap it gently on the counter so that any big air bubbles pop out. Bake for about 25 min, then allow it to cool before removing from the pan.

The previous post on this subject covered most of the important points, but there are a few things I should point out:

I used the same cream cheese frosting as I did the last time I made cake, although I forgot to mention at the time that the strawberry portion needs an additional 2 or 3 tablespoons of water. The strawberries reconstitute very rapidly, and will make the frosting too thick and sticky to spread without a little more liquid.

This cake did not rise as much as the other one. I think my oven is getting worse. I made this, and the top of the batter did not cook at all well. It still tastes good, but the upper stratum of each cake layer is a smidge under-done. Regardless, I think that the formula I used this time is an improvement over the last one.

I have slightly mixed feelings about this cake. On the plus side, the insides of this version are much more visually appealing, I think. The freeze-dried bananas don't brown the batter the way fresh ones do, and the contrast with the pink icing is better. On the minus side, this still needs either an electric mixer to get more air in the batter, or more leavening. The cake is quite dense, rather than fluffy, but I'm not going to be too picky.  More importantly, it has a subtle but rich banana flavor which is enhanced by the frosting.

Banana Cake

  

  
I had a jones, of no origin, for banana cake. I googled 'banana cake recipe', and chose the one that said "best ever banana cake recipe", of course. I wasn't going by the title alone, the recipe had 900 reviews and counting, which were overwhelmingly positive. Either it's a foolproof cake, or somebody has waaaaay too much time on their hands to write nearly a thousand spurious recipe reviews. I'm betting on largely foolproof. After my misadventures in baking recently, I did a little technical research on the behavior of cake, which I put in the notes at the bottom.

Of course, I couldn't possibly make myself follow the recipe. The original calls for buttermilk and lemon juice. The buttermilk I didn't have, so I swapped in an equal amount of greek yogurt, and the lemon juice is presumably just to keep the bananas from going brown. It was already too late on the browning prevention, so I left it out.

3 medium-large, very ripe bananas
3 cups AP flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup greek yogurt

Preheat oven to 300.

Butter and flour an 11x15 cake pan.

Cream the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla together. I used my food processor. Mix in the yogurt.

Sift in half the dry ingredients and mix into the batter.

Puree the bananas and pour half into the batter. Mix in the bananas, then do the rest of the flour, then the bananas.

When everything is thoroughly mixed and there are no streaks or bumps, pour the batter into the pan and spread it out evenly.

The side bar on the recipe said that the cooking temps might be anywhere between 275 and 325, and the time somewhere between an hour and 1 1/2 hours. The lack of specificity made me a little anxious, especially since I have had poor luck with my baking lately. I ended up with 1 hr 15 min at 300.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting  

1 packet cream cheese
1 stick butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 or 3 tablespoons water
3 cups powdered sugar
1 packet trader joe's freeze-dried strawberries

Mix all the frosting ingredients except strawberries until you have achieved a smooth consistency, somewhere around that of very soft peanut butter. Put the strawberries in a food processor and process until they have turned into a fine powder. Make sure the bowl of the machine is perfectly dry, or the berries will turn into glue. Reserve half the frosting, and mix the berry powder into the other half to make a pink and white cake.

Some notes:

-I lined the bottom of my cake pan with waxed paper. It really helps get the cake out. Butter the pan, cut a piece of paper to fit, press it into the bottom, butter the paper, then sprinkle everything with flour. Tap the excess flour out before putting in the batter.

-I had my heart set on a cake with layers, and was a little worried that the cake would come out with a large bump in the middle of the pan, making it unsuitable for cutting and stacking. I needn't have worried, as it turns out. The low cooking temperature seems to result in a very even rise in the cake.

-Make sure the cake is completely cool before trying to frost it. I made the cake one day, covered it and put it in the fridge, then frosted it the next day. I obviously don't have a very skilled frosting technique, but here is what the experts say- 1) Stack your layers, then trim the edges to make a perfectly geometric cake. 2) Spread a thin layer of frosting over the raw edges, then wait for about 5 minutes for it to set up. This will glue down the crumbs, then you can put a thicker, nicer-looking layer on top.

-What's it mean when they say "cream the butter and sugar", anyway? Well, what they mean, apparently, is that the butter & sugar should be beaten together until the sugar dissolves, and there are enough microscopic air bubbles thrashed into it, that the mixture appears to have gotten paler than it was before. I think I got that part right, thanks to modern technology. Recipes usually don't say to add the eggs at this point, but I did it anyway, because as I understand it, the important points are 1) dissolve the sugar and, probably more importantly, 2) create those tiny bubbles in the batter. Yes there is a leavening agent (baking soda), but the tiny air pockets are a key factor in creating a light, fluffy, cake. In the oven, the heat causes the tiny bubbles to expand, and then the batter sets up around the air pockets. Unlike cookies or brownies, which are dense, crunchy or gooey as the recipe calls for, in cake the trapped air bubbles result in a food item composed largely of air.

Setting aside the fact that my decorating job looks like it was applied by a 3rd-grader, I'm fairly pleased with the result. It's really a cake. It has layers, with frosting, and it's pink, my favorite flavor. And boy is it banana-ey! I had a hard time convincing myself not to eat it for breakfast today.

Fallen Chocolate Souffle Cake

A number of years ago, someone gave me a subscription to Gourmet Magazine. I got tired of tripping over the stack of mags and finally clipped out the recipes that I thought I'd be likely to use within my lifetime. Now that the magazine is defunct, I sometimes wish I'd kept the whole things, until commonsense kicks in and I realize that way lies the path to an appearance on Hoarders.

Instead, I present to you, this cake. I am happy to say that I have no idea which issue this recipe came from. Oh. Haha- there  it is at the bottom of the clipping. February 2004. How serendipitous.

12 oz bittersweet chocolate. I used most of one of those Pound Plus dark chocolate bars from TJ's.
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, although I ignored the 'unsalted' part as usual, and used salted.
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar- That's 12 tablespoons, which becomes relevant during the instructions.
5 large eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup AP flour

Pre-heat oven to 350. Butter a 9-inch springform pan. The instructions say to line the bottom of the pan with a circle of buttered wax or parchment paper, but I think that's silly. I just dusted the buttered pan with cocoa powder, since the bottom of the pan comes out and makes a perfectly good thing to serve with.

Melt the chocolate & butter in a double boiler over barely simmering water. You could do this in a microwave, but you risk over-heating the chocolate and curdling the batter. I like the double boiler method, because it is a bit slow, but more controlled.

While the chocolate is melting, separate the eggs. Put the whites and the salt into a fairly big mixing bowl and whisk the bejebus out of them until they make soft mounds around the whisk. Add 6 Tablespoons of sugar, whisking between each one to prevent the eggs from deflating. Continue whisking violently until the whites form stiff shiny peaks and there is no separate liquid left in the bowl.

Keep an eye on the chocolate. Stir it a bit every once in a while. As soon as the chocolate is melted, take it off the heat. If you stick your finger in it, it should be pleasantly warm, that way you know it isn't too hot for the eggs.

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar & vanilla together, then drizzle into the chocolate. Then whisk in the flour.  Once the chocolate & yolks are combined, give the whites one last beating to take up any liquid that has separated out. Mix about a third of the whites into the chocolate to lighten the texture, then gently fold the chocolate mix into the rest of the egg whites.

The instructions say to bake it for 35 to 45 minutes, but I am suspicious of my oven's functionality. I actually raised the temperature to almost 375, and went for about 40 minutes. Since it is a souffle related thing, I can't keep opening the door to look at it, and I felt little anxious about it. I guess I should get a new bulb for my oven light. Sigh. As you can see, the point of the thing is that it poofs up quite a bit in the oven, then falls down as it cools and forms a macaroon-like crust. Let it cool for a good 10 or 15 minutes before you take the sides of the pan off.

It looks pretty good, but it came out a little dry. 5 minutes less in the oven, I think. The topping definitely is a plus.


Strueberry Glue

a cup each of frozen strawberries & blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

Put the berries & sugar in a little saucepan on medium. As soon as it begins simmering, mix the starch with a teaspoon of water and stir it in. Wait til it thickens, and remove from heat.

I liked a number things about this recipe right off the bat. It uses the entire egg, for one thing. I am not totally against recipes that use uneven quantities of whites & yolks, but I'd rather not have leftover bits and parts in the fridge. Also, it allows you to adjust the degree of sweetness quite a bit. I didn't add quite the full amount of sugar called for. I prefer more chocolate and less sweet, the older I get. The recipe does not call for anything exotic or expensive, which is unusual for a Gourmet Mag recipe, neither does it require an unusual investment of time, technique or bizarre equipment. An electric mixer would be a nice thing to have for the egg whites, but it took me very little time to do it by hand and I got a good upper-body workout at the same time.

And Happy Mardi Gras!

Cake.

I've had discussions with several people, on totally unrelated occasions about the particular magic of the word 'cake'.  I agree. Cake is a good word. It implies so many wonderful things that when somebody says "Oh, it'll be cake" they mean it'll be too good to be true, possibly better than you deserve, and in any case, there will be lots of fun and goodness to be had.

It also means something is easy, which cake isn't, always, except for the eating part. But with the aid of modern technology, cake is really not that daunting an achievement. And damn, sometimes I do miss celebrating mardi gas.

King Cake

For the dough:

1/2 cup water
15g dry milk
10g instant yeast
about 4 1/2 cups flour- I used all purpose, but I wonder now if I should have used bread flour.
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp punkin pie spice
10g salt- this is about a scant teaspoon
1 tsp vanilla
3 whole eggs
4 egg yolks
1 stick of butter

the filling:
about a cup each of lightly toasted pecans and whole dried dates, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup oatmeal. Chop everything in a food processor. The oatmeal is really just to keep the dates from turning into paste. It should be slightly chunky.

I put the dough ingredients in my bread machine. I had to add quite a bit of flour when it started kneading; I think I measured the flour wrong to begin with... But don't worry! It'll be fine. This dough should be about 25% softer than a dough you make regular bread with. You may think that it will be too sticky to work with, but there is so much butter in the recipe that it really isn't a problem.

I just let the dough machine do its thing, and when it beeped to tell me the first rising was done, (that's about an hour) I floured my counter, turned the dough out onto it, and rolled it out into a rectangle about 15x24 inches. Then I took the filling and pressed it firmly into the dough, right up to the very edges. It's ok if some falls out the sides, but you probably don't want any unadorned patches in your cake. You can eat the bits that fell out while you wait for the thing to rise.

Roll the dough up along the long axis of the rectangle. As you roll, flour it a bit so it doesn't stick back down on the counter. The middle of the roll will probably be rather thicker than the ends, so gently stretch the dough out. You need your cake roll to be at least 2 feet long. Have a greased sheet pan ready, as well as a small oven-safe dish, also oiled. Put the little dish on the sheet pan and wrap the cake roll around it. This will keep the ring shape from closing back up. Tuck the ends in and let it rise for about another hour.

The recipe this is based on said to bake it with the little dish in place to keep the ring shape, but upon reflection, I decided to take the thing out before baking. I also slashed it and gave it a bit of an egg wash, which I'm very glad I did because it made it so pretty I was literally taken aback.

Bake at 375. Mine took almost an hour. If you can make yourself refrain from flapping the oven door open the way I do, it will take less time, but you should cover the cake with a sheet of foil once it's nicely browned or it will get burnt. I'm pretty happy with how it tuned out, but I think I overcooked it. Other notes: I read a recipe for boiled frosting, which tastes good, but just slid off the cake. Just do the thing where you mix a couple tablespoons of lemon juice with an enormous quantity of powdered sugar and it'll do better. This dough seems to be a nice all-purpose brioche. I bet it would make a great french toast loaf. And the filling is not traditional. Almond paste may be what is supposed to go in it, but I liked this an awful lot. Fill it, or not, with whatever you like.