Persimmon Pudding Cake

After the success of the persimmon bread I made I decided to try out a persimmon dessert recipe: persimmon pudding cake. It's as easy to mix up as the bread was-easier in fact as there are no dates to pit and chop!

Sherlock wanted in on the baking action

I do love persimmons but they are a bit of a pain to work with. Often if I can find persimmons with perfect skin I just chop them into quarters and give them a whir in the food processor. However this last trip to the market didn't result in the nicest of persimmons; they were all fairly heavily damaged so I had to skin them before tossing them in the food processor.

Despite my annoyance with the state of the persimmons; I love the cozy feeling I get from baking in the autumn and winter. Part of it is that the window in my apartment doesn't seal so it's freezing in my kitchen. Strong wind often forces it open, knocking over my electric kettle and making a mess of my (admittedly only sometimes) clean counter. So keeping the oven working, especially when it emanates the rich, warm aromas of cinnamon and clove not only heats up the kitchen but makes the entire apartment feel that much warmer.

Using fleur de sal, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove

This recipe by Simply Recipes is a nice, quick little bake that results in a really moist, slightly spongy cake that I enjoyed not only as dessert but for breakfast. Aside from anything involving bacon, dessert for breakfast is one of my favorite things. I had to use a few short cuts from the original recipe skipping spices that I don't have but it still turned out pretty well, especially when highlighted with fresh whipped cream. Although what doesn't fresh whipped cream improve?

Persimmon Pudding Cake (adapted from Simply Recipes)

• 2 cups Hachiya persimmon pulp (about 4 persimmons)
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp fleur de sal (or 1/2 tsp regular salt)
• 2 tsps cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp clove
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (or pecans)

1.  Preheat oven to 400F.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the persimmon pulp, eggs, melted butter, milk, and vanilla (I used Tahitian).
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients (expect the nuts).
4. In three additions, incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet then fold in the nuts.
5. Bake in a square pan for about 50 minutes*.

*My cake ended up more cake than pudding so I think I let it bake a little too long. Maybe check it first at 40 minutes then keep an eye on it.

Orange Cake with Mascarpone Frosting, Pomegranate Seeds, and Candied Orange Peel

Last week I was blown away by the revelation that you can whip ganache. I don't know how I didn't know that but it changes everything. This week's revelation is mascarpone frosting.

I love baking under just about any circumstances, but I love being challenged with an ingredient. I visiting friend requested something with pomegranate and after some puzzling we decided on an orange-pomegranate combination. As an added bonus they're both winter fruits so I was able to get fresh, seasonal produce from my favorite local market.

I dream of one day having my own house built. the kitchen will take up a good chunk of the floor plan and will include double ovens built into the wall and simply acres and acres of counter space. In the meantime I made do here with a mini oven borrowed from my neighbor and only enough counter to put the cutting board. Baking usually requires a fair amount of shifting as everything that normally lives on top of the mini oven has to be taken off and put on the range or the small space between the sink and the counter. However for this recipe I needed not only the oven but also the range and the number of steps it involved outnumbered my mixing bowls requiring me to do a complicated dance of rearranging, mixing, washing, cooking, and baking.

A complicated dance that takes place in a space as small as my counter allowance and that usually also involves dodging Sherlock who, if not monitoring my actions from her perch atop the microwave is usually trying to climb up my legs.

Aside from the flavor, which was rather marvelous, one of the best things about this cake is the bright colors! Like many of my past cakes it wasn't the most well decorated creation ever but the intense colors of the pomegranate seeds and candied orange peels made up for it.

Recipe (adapted from BBC Food):

To decorate:

• 1 orange
• seeds from 1 pomegranate
• 50 g/1 3/4 oz sugar

For cake:

• 1 orange
• 275g/9 3/4oz self-rising flour*
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 275g/9 3/4oz sugar
• 275g/9 3/4oz butter, softened
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp cinnamon

For frosting:

• 50g/1 3/4oz butter, softened
• 175g/6oz powdered sugar
• 250g/9oz full-fat mascarpone cheese

Instructions:

1.  Zest the orange (I use a plain old vegetable peeler and chop the resulting strips small). Place in a small pan and pour boiling water over the zest. Add half the sugar and let boil for just a couple minutes. Strain out the zest, arrange in a single layer as much as possible on non-stick paper, sprinkle remaining sugar over it, and set aside. To seed the pomegranate, I prefer the water method but do whatever works best for you. Set aside the seeds.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
3. Zest the second orange. Using a food processor, combine zest and sugar to make orange sugar. This isn't necessary but I think it's a nice touch.
4. Separate the fruit from what remains of the orange peel and chop up the fruit in a food processor (or if you don't have one mash it up however you like). Set aside.
5. Blend the orange sugar and butter with food processor, stand mixer, or hand mixer until fluffy and add eggs one at a time. Blend in the dry ingredients. Finally fold in the mashed up orange.
6. Separate the mixture between 2 8in baking pans and bake at 180C/350F for about 30 minutes. After the cakes are done, turn off the oven and put in the orange peels that you candied earlier. With the oven off they won't cook but the heat will help dry them out a lot faster than just leaving them lying about.
7. While the cakes cool put together the frosting. Blend the butter and powdered sugar. BBC Food says until "smooth"...I got no smooth, just powdered sugar that resembled damp sand. If that's what you get don't worry about it, you're fine. At wet sand stage blend in the mascarpone cheese. 
8. To assemble the cake: if your cakes rose/you have mad slicing skills halve the cakes to make four layers. Divide the frosting between however many layers you have, stacking them with frosting and pomegranate seeds between each layer. Top the cake with frosting (and frost the sides as well if you have enough) and decorate with pomegranate seeds and the candied orange peels.

*I don't have self-rising flour so I substituted with regular flour and some additives. For every 8oz of regular flour add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt. It worked fine but my cakes didn't rise very much so I made a two, not four layer cake.

Toddler on Assignment: Dark Chocolate Cake

Our family had a birthday celebration yesterday, and I enlisted #MimiAkidi's help with cake preparations. She spent the day terribly excited not just about making a cake, but especially about eating it. 

I started the cake in the morning, by pouring the boiling water over the cocoa powder to let it bloom and let Mimi help me to whisk it and bring it together. In the interest of my own sanity, I did the rest of the cake while she was napping, as baking is a bit of restorative mental therapy for me as much as it is fun for her. But, I prefer to bake alone. 

The recipe I used is a pretty well-known one from Williams Sonoma. The best chocolate cake I've ever had was a W-S box mix I made for a friend about 8 years ago. I decided to make this one from scratch for my husband, and it doesn't disappoint!

First, pour boilin water over the cocoa, and let it cool. It's almost like pudding, but don't do what I did and taste it, because...just don't. Trust me on that one!

Then, cream the butter and sugar, pour in the cooled cocoa mixture, and add eggs and vanilla. 

Alternate additions of flour and buttermilk, until you have a light and creamy batter. 

Pour into a well-greased by ft pan (or two 8" rounds) and bake for 55 minutes at 325 (if using rounds, 45 minutes at 350). 

Invert onto a plate, and cool completely. 

Then, as your toddler would wake up smelling the baking cake, enlist her help in decorating. I chose the most toddler friendly way, and opted to just do powdered sugar. 

Mimi takes her baking very seriously. 

Add candles, and your finished cake is ready to eat!!!

Strawberry Basil Cake with Balsamic Frosting

It is strawberry season! The strawberries we get here are gorgeous and I could eat them on their own a kilo at a time; but that does not mean that I don't like a strawberry dessert from time to time. I've played in the past with strawberry cupcakes and balsamic frosting and strawberry basil sorbet and this time decided to combine all the flavors.

Finally got a real measuring cup!

Even though I got an oven sometime ago it is only recently that I've really started baking. Part of the what's held me back is how difficult some key ingredients are to get; like vanilla. Sure I could buy vanilla beans at a spice shop, over pay by about 300% for a bottle of good vodka and make my own...but I just cannot pay that awful mark-up on alcohol. Luckily for me I found Simply Nicki's. She makes peanut butters, vanillas, extracts, and all sorts of good things. When I lived in the US I was a devotee of Mexican vanilla but Nicki turned me onto Ugandan vanilla and it is fantastic. I think I need to get some Tahitian vanilla from her as well.

The last few years I have been very picky about the ingredients I use for my desserts but that was not always the way! When I was younger I was unaware that there even was a difference between baking powder and baking soda. We (i.e. my dad) planted a ton of strawberries every year so strawberry short cake was a pretty common dessert in our home. Heck there were days when that's all dinner was too! I remember once, I must have been in middle school, I wanted to make the biscuits for the shortcake. They came out of the oven and were gorgeous. Fluffy, just the right shade of golden brown...I was so impressed with myself. Then we put the strawberries on them. Everything turned purple and started to fizz. It was a little like eating Pop Rocks. That's when I learned that baking powder and soda are two very, very different things!

I promise you really do need baking powder for this!

Recipe:

• 400 ml flour
• 1 1/2 Teaspoon baking powder 
• 1/8 Teaspoon salt
• 150 ml olive oil
• 175 ml sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 Teaspoon vanilla
• 100 ml milk
• 1 1/2+ Cups sliced strawberries
• 2+ Tablespoons chopped basil*

• 230 grams cream cheese (or labne)
• 115 grams siftened butter
• 3+ Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 100 ml powdered sugar

1. Sift (or not, I'm lazy so I don't) the flour, baking powder, and salt then set aside.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk or beat together the oil and sugar. Then beat in eggs one at a time then the vanilla.
3. Into that add, in 5 parts, the dry ingredients and milk (flour-milk-flour-milk-flour).
4. Fold in berries and basil.
5. Bake in greased 8x8 pan at 190C for about 20-25 minutes.

*Don't be afraid of the basil! I always forget that basil's taste is much milder than the scent and I chickened out and didn't put in enough.

Fondant, Gum Paste, and SUGAR!

Today, I went to the 25th anniversary East Anglian Sugarcraft Exhibition, with some of my friends here in England. It was a bit on a whim, as we happened to catch a sign while driving last night, and decided that we would check it out today. What a great idea! 

The entry was a little expensive if you ask me, at five GBP, but in the end, the exhibition was quite surprising, and the craftsmanship was pretty incredible. Apparently, in the last 30 years, sugarcraft has become quite popular in England, and there are many people who take part in this art. As soon as we arrived surrounded by a sea of fondants, royal icing, and gum paste, and mostly just sugar. Andrea would have been in cake decorating heaven. 

One of the first things I saw was this painting on marzipan. I can not believe the level of detail here, and that this was painted with cocoa!

I was beginning to feel pretty hungry looking at these tea cakes. Can you believe that all of this is sugar?!

Each of the druplets on these blackberries are rolled and painted by hand! 

Yes, these carnations are completely made of sugar.

I loved how glassy these flowers looked. The woman at the club table told me they were made with some sort of sugar snowflake. 

I just loved the detail on this one. Beautiful!

This cat mask was really cute, and it looked so satiny!

This club entry was my hands-down favorite. It was called, "The Bearlyweds." There was so much to look at here, and each detail was so well done. I went back several times to keep looking. Check out the following photos of some of the details below:

Church Clock Tower:  Note the detail of the stones and bricks...

Dreamy Cake

While Lauren gave me 'spicy' presents, my friend Sarah, who started this whole word thing, gave me 'dreamy' presents; one of which was an instructional cake decorating book, Cakes to Dream On. While I figured  most of them were quite beyond me, I decided that if I used the shape of one and tried for the decorations of another, I just might have a chance.

Coconut lime butter cream frosting. YES!

I fell in love with one of the cakes decorated with gum paste flowers that look like they've been quilled. So on top of all the Sriracha things I made over the long weekend, I also decided to try my hands at making a dreamy cake. I immediately ordered some dowels and gum paste and spent a good chunk of Saturday dying gum paste and making flowers. By the time Siricha Sunday came around...TA DA!!

From Cakes to Dream On

No, I lie. That's the cake I tried to make, well the decorations anyway, that shape was well beyond me. Gum paste dries out freakishly quickly and I couldn't make the multi colored flowers because they'd dry before I got the next part done. Also I'd get sick of kneading color into the paste so I ended up with really pastel colors. I'm thinking I just need to set aside a big chunk of time to play with the gum paste.

What my quilled gum paste flowers actually looked like.

On to plan b! My friend Dunja gave me a fondant recipe that actually did not sound heinous so I decided to continue with the fondant plan and just decorate with it.

A fondant recipe that calls for honey-interesting

I have to say that I was pleased by the fondant even before tasting it. It was so smooth and pliant and I just knew it would be easy to use. I started with a pale green and separated it smaller amounts to darken the green. I figured if the quilled flowers were a failure, then I should go with shades of green fondant to emphasize the lime-yness of the frosting.

There was a lot of powdered sugar going on

What truly sucked was that because it was so unbearably hot, I had my floor fan in the kitchen, but I had to turn it off while working with the fondant. To make sure nothing sticks, you need to cover your work space with a lot of powdered sugar. And obviously I couldn't have a fan pointed at a table of loose powdered sugar!

Cutting out darker green fondant leaves

All in all I was pretty pleased with the cake when I finished. Sadly it's probably the best decorated cake I've ever managed to turn out. I really need to pick a skill, like gum paste, and sit down and work on it over and over until I've got it; rather than deciding willy nilly that I'm going to do it for a cake I'm making today.

Not too bad!

Recipes:
Coconut lime cake adapted from My Baking Addiction. Instead of cupcakes I used one each 8-inch, 6-inch, and 4-inch round pans. The recipe was enough for all of them.

Fondant:

• 50 grams of butter or margarine (Dunja told me margarine but I used butter-worked fine)
• 1 soup spoon of light colored honey
• half a bag of plain gelatin
• 30 ml hot water
• vanilla
• powdered sugar as needed

1. First dissolve the gelatin in water and set aside
2. Melt honey in a small sauce pan but be careful not to boil it
3. Once melted, remove from heat, add the butter, vanilla (or other flavor, I also used coconut), and gelatin
4. Add powdered sugar in small batches. Dunja said mix by hand but I cheated and used the bread hook on my Kitchen Aid. If you're mixing by hand, keep adding sugar until you get a pizza dough-like texture. If you're cheating like I did, add sugar and mix on low-medium until the fondant pulls away from the sides of the bowel and wraps around the hook.

The fondant was really easy to work with and, shockingly, not bad tasting! We didn't even remove it from the cake before eating!

Easter Dessert Celebration

In my rush to say what a marvelous time I was having on my latest travel adventure I completely forgot to post about my Easter dessert celebration. Similar to my sugar coma birthday (in idea if not scale) I had some friends over for dessert. I gave up all junk foods during Lent and what I missed the most was sugar. So the day before I left the country for 2.5 weeks I decided to make a bunch of desserts.

I started out making what I call a Chocolate Covered Strawberry cake. This is the same as the White Chocolate Passion Fruit cake of a few years ago but with strawberries. This one is more fun though because you can put the fruit between the cake layers-a little hard to do with the neon yellow goo that is the passion fruit.

Between the two layers of cake I spread first a generous amount of ganache then put strawberry slices into the ganache. I let it sit a little while in the fridge to cool before putting on the second cake layer and more ganache. Once the top layer hardens it's ready to be covered with the white chocolate mousse.

Next I made German Chocolate Brownies. I used a box brownie mix (I think they're really good) and added shredded coconut and pecans. Then I made caramel as I did for the Rita Hayworth cake and poured it into the brownie batter.

Lesson learned: next time I'll pour the caramel in strips the short way rather than the long way. More caramel per square that way.

I also made raspberry macaroons with a recipe I got from Smitten Kitchen. Hers turned out much prettier than did mine but they still tasted good. I used frozen raspberries instead of fresh ones and I wonder if that was the difference. I'll have to try making them again soon. It was a really easy recipe since you're just blending things in a food processor which I appreciated as mine rarely gets a workout.

 Adding the sea salt to the coconut

 Then almond extract

 Next egg whites

 Finally raspberries

 I have a feeling my batter was too wet because of the frozen berries so I also had a hard time scooping it out onto the parchment paper-and I had to bake them longer than her recipe indicates.

In addition to these I also again made the lemon goat cheese cake with wild blueberry compote (from Sugar Coma), dipped strawberries in chocolate, cut up some of the left over caramel and put it out with fleur de sal and melted chocolate, and put out some cheese (which I didn't make).

Thanks to everyone taking home leftovers I didn't waste anything and the few pieces of things I was left with I ate for breakfast and lunch before leaving on my trip!