DIVINE Chocolate Cake

We celebrated the Wizard's birthday tonight in the back yard. Once again we had pulled pork sandwiches* with cole slaw, corn on the cob, watermelon, a few chips, and some delicious baked beans brought by friends (need to get that recipe!).

Dessert, though, oooooohhhhhhh. I made a recipe that's been in my queue for quite a while: Chocolate-Buttermilk Layer Cake. It appeared in Portland Monthly in February of 2008. Instead of both filling and frosting it with ganache, I cut the cake into four layers and used ganache for all three layers of filling, and frosted the top and sides with Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting. We also had The Cupcakes, also with cream cheese frosting, because we had enough guests that just one dessert I thought would not be sufficient. As it turned out, just the cake would have been enough if I had cut it in the small pieces its richness warranted. The size pictured is too big even for a chocoholic like me, and even with vanilla ice cream to cut the richness.

Chocolate-Buttermilk Layer Cake
adapated from Portland Monthly Mag

3 C unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 T baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 C cocoa powder, sifted
1 1/3 C canola oil
1 1/2 C buttermilk
3 large eggs
1 1/2 C freshly-brewed, extra-strong hot coffee (I made instant coffee at about 150% the strength recommended on the jar)
1 t vanilla
16 oz bittersweet chocolate (24 oz if using for one layer of filling and top and sides of cake)
1 C heavy cream (1 1/2 C if using for one layer of filling and top and sides of cake)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

2. Put dry ingredients in bowl of stand mixer, and mix with paddle attachment at low speed to combine. Keep mixer on low speed and add oil, buttermilk, and eggs one at a time. Add hot coffee in a thin stream, pouring down the side of the bowl. Add vanilla, scrape sides of bowl with rubber spatula, and mix just until smooth. Divide between pans and bake until a toothpick comes out of the center with moist crumbs, 40-45 minutes (original recipe says 30-35, but the cake wasn't close to done at that point). Let cool in pans 10-15 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely, peeling parchment off bottoms of layers but putting cakes right side up on rack.

3. Put cream and chocolate (chopped if necessary) into a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for one minute. Stir well, then microwave for an additional 30 seconds. Stir until all the chocolate is melted and the mixture is glossy and dark, zapping another 15-30 seconds if absolutely necessary. Let cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

4. Trim cooled cakes just a little, so they're not too domed, then carefully cut in half horizontally with a serrated bread knife. Before separating the layers, cut a small notch in the side to line up when reassembling the layers after filling, since almost no one cuts that perfectly. Put one bottom layer on a cake plate, placing strips of waxed paper under the edges. Top with one-third of the ganache, and spread to within one half-inch of the edge. Place matching top layer, lining up notch, and top with another third of the ganache. Repeat with second split layer of the cake. Put filled layers of cake in fridge for 15-30 minutes to set ganache a little before icing.

5. Apply crumb coat of cream cheese frosting to sides and top of cake. Refrigerate for 15 minutes more, then spread remaining frosting on top and sides of cake. Refrigerate a couple of hours before serving.

*You don't need a recipe for the pulled pork, right? I bought a boneless Boston butt (big pork shoulder roast) from our favorite farmers' market pork purveyor, and coated it with a little oil and salt and pepper. I made a big fire in one side of the grill (charcoal, of course) and seared the snot out of it last night, then moved it to the cool side for 60-90 minutes. Around midnight, I put it in a roasting pan, covered it tightly with foil, and moved it into a 250-degree oven overnight. At 9 this morning I wrapped it tightly in foil and put it into a cooler to rest and cool slowly until this afternoon. It was just cool enough to handle, so I separated out the fat and the crispy parts with my fingers, then shredded the meat with two forks. I mixed in a little sauce, and served more on the side. This time the sauce was bottled (Cook's Illustrated's top choice, Bulls-Eye, now made without HFCS!), but last year I made a ketchup-based sauce from a Cook's Illustrated recipe. The coleslaw was made using the recipe on the side of the bagged coleslaw package. Maybe for a future year (we'll have this for the Wizard's birthday every year as long as he goes along) I'll make a fancier scratch coleslaw, and bring back that scratch sauce.

Northwest-Indian Fusion

Or at least my attempt. For our book group meeting to discuss White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, I chose an Indian-inflected menu. Oh, it was nothing like the women in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, slaving all morning to put on a lunch spread of many dishes. I made a Salmon Biryani, substituting skinless Columbia River Chinook filets for the chicken in the Chicken Biryani recipe, skipping the browning step. I'm pretty sure they don't have salmon in India (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), but if they did they would put it in a biryani like this. The raita (yogurt sauce as it's called in the recipe) was divine as always. I served it with Curried Cauliflower:

Ginger-Curry Cauliflower
adapted from Real Simple magazine

1 head cauliflower, broken into bite-sized florets
2 T olive oil
1 T unsalted butter
2 t grated fresh ginger root
2 t curry powder
1 t turmeric
1/2 t kosher salt (recipe originally calls for 1/4 t, but it wasn't enough)
1/4 C fresh bread crumbs
1/4 C chicken broth (optional; I've made it both with and without and it turned out fine either way)
1 T fresh parsley, minced (optional; if I'd remembered to save any of the mint and cilantro from the other menu items I'd have used that instead)

Steam cauliflower until fork tender. Heat oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add ginger, curry powder, turmeric, and salt and cook for 1 minute, stirring frequently. Add bread crumbs and cook another minute. Add cauliflower (and broth, if using) and cook until any liquid is absorbed and cauliflower is well-coated. Remove from heat and toss with parsley or other herbs, if using.

We had a palate-cleansing simple salad of baby greens, dried cherries and hazelnuts in balsamic vinaigrette, then finished with mixed berries (raspberries, boysenberries, marionberries and blueberries, purchased at the farmers' market that morning) over vanilla ice cream. Yum!

More Rhubarb

Rhubarb season is still going strong, and will be for quite a while yet. If we weren't leaving on vacation this week, I'd probably make and can Rhubarb-Ginger Jam, and Rhubarb-Ginger Chutney. But alas, no such luck, although maybe with another sort of luck the rhubarb will still be good when we get back from our travels.

This week I had two rhubarb dessert plans involving rhubarb, so I went to the garden and pulled a few of the largest stalks.


First up, for a movie screening we attended Friday (of Nobody Knows: the Untold Story of Black Mormons) was a remake of Rhubarb-Ginger Tart, which I first invented a couple of summers ago. This time I baked it in eight smaller tart shells, doubling the original recipe, and I remembered to take pictures.

Here is the rhubarb macerating with the sugar, cornstarch, salt, and ginger:


And the baked tarts (which were a huge hit topped with vanilla ice cream):


I also decided to try rhubarb ice cream, based on the Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream I made, once again this year, for the end-of-season potluck. I made 2.5 batches of the Sweet Cream Base, then mixed in one recipe of the Stewed Rhubarb, and froze it in my big ice cream maker. It was none too rhubarb-y; next time I'll try it with a slightly bigger batch of Stewed Rhubarb--definitely not double, but maybe 1.5 times as much.

The rhubarb macerating before stewing:


The eggs, sugar and milk before heating to 180 degrees over medium heat:


The finished product:


The cake we ate it with (the Fluffy Yellow Cake I used in the Rhubarb Cream Cake, with the chocolate frosting that accompanied it in Cook's Illustrated):

Macaroons Again

I used the last of my leftover egg whites for another double batch of macaroons today, this time from whole roasted almonds. I haven't filled any with ganache yet, and they are already incredibly delicious. Roasty, chewy, really, really nutty. I've eaten about a dozen (they are only 1.5" across) already.

PS They were even better with the ganache!

Rhubarb Cream Cake Variation

Had a pleasant surprise at the farmers' market on Saturday: local Hood strawberries! Not as good as they'll be in a couple of weeks, but still almost-indescribably delicious. So I modified the two rhubarb cream cakes I made this weekend to include some. I still used the rhubarb-custard mixture for the top and bottom layers of filling, but changed to middle layer to a little of the cream plus sliced and sugared strawberries. We saved a few pretty strawberry halves for the top.



Here's a shot that shows how unstable the cake can be when cut. I stabilized the cake I made to give away on Saturday with a few bamboo skewers, which I'd highly recommend if you want to avoid severe layer slippage as seen here.

Almond-Hazelnut Macaroons

I make macaroons a lot (basically whenever I have leftover egg whites), but I've never posted the 100% complete recipe here (I did sort of post it, but the details of making them came out in the comments, and at least one important detail was omitted).

I detest coconut, and so never really ate the macaroons most commonly available here in the US. In Russia, though, I bought a hazelnut macaroon on the street, and LOVED it. In the last few years fancy bakeries have started making them here in Portland. One popular place makes them in pastel colors with delicate flavors and buttercream filling. They're good, but fairly insubstantial. I like something with a bit more oomph: crunch, chew, and nut flavor. So, it didn't take much convincing for me to try the recipe for macaroons in The Dessert Bible. I've deviated from the original in ways that some might consider pretty major, most notably by using a) roasted and b) natural (not blanched) almonds. This is all by way of boosting the nut flavor; I'm afraid I wouldn't like traditional macaroons using raw blanched almonds nearly as much.

One reason I've made so many macaroons is that I had a huge amount of diced roasted almonds I'd purchased several years ago (I can feel the Laundry Queen cringing!) at a deep discount directly from the Blue Diamond growers' collective. I'd been storing them in my freezer (where you should always store all nuts, raw or roasted), but they really needed to get used up. After several recent batches (using up the egg whites generated as a side product of the Rhubarb Cream Cake), I finally ran out of diced roasted almonds while measuring out the nuts for today's batch! Fortunately I had several pounds of roasted hazelnuts on hand, so used almost half hazelnuts this time around. These macaroons are probably my favorite ever. Ever.

Chewy Nut Macaroons
adapted from The Dessert Bible

1 3/4 C nuts, preferably roasted, either with or without skins, with at least half of the nuts almonds
1 1/4 C granulated sugar
pinch salt
3 egg whites, at room temperature
1 t almond extract (or vanilla extract if using other kinds of nuts)

Ganache Filling:
3 oz bittersweet chocolate
2 T heavy cream

Process nuts with sugar and salt in food processor until finely ground. Add egg whites and flavor extract, and process until batter is smooth. Transfer to a pastry bag, and pipe 1.5-2.5" circles of dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheets. Let sit at room temperature for at least an hour and not longer than two. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Bake macaroons, one sheet at a time, until firm, fragrant, and just starting to brown at edges, 30 minutes on insulated sheets. Let cool completely before peeling off parchment (otherwise you'll leave cookie on the paper).

To make ganache filling, put chocolate and cream in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for 30 seconds. Stir thoroughly, and microwave in additional 30-second increments as needed, stirring well in between, until perfectly smooth. Sandwich cookies around a little ganache filling, and let it set before eating if you want to avoid chocolate oozing.

I regularly make these in a double batch, but I think trying to do more at once would severely risk quality (not to mention overworking your food processor!).

Rhubarb Cream Cake

No, I haven't been posting much lately, but this one is worth the wait. I first made this cake last week for a church fundraising auction, and it went for $50. Time constraints meant I didn't photograph it, and since someone else bought it I didn't get to taste it, either. Reports from the eaters were favorable enough, however, to warrant making it again. I didn't take pictures of the process, but here is the final product:



Mmmm, let's look a little more closely:



I'll tell you right now, it tasted every bit as good as it looked. And yes, I use the past tense advisedly--our barbecue crowd polished this thing off in a matter of minutes.

This cake was inspired by a recipe from a couple years back in Cook's Illustrated for Strawberry Cream Cake. I've never actually made the cake with strawberries, but I did make it once with mixed berries (raspberries, boysenberries, marionberries) (huge hit, polished off in its entirety by 7 people), and once with peaches. The peach version was tasty, but not nearly so much as the berry version. It struck me that the tart/acidic punch of the berries was a key component in what made it so good. And what fruit is more tart than rhubarb? But I didn't think the original cake would translate directly into a rhubarb version, so some changes would be necessary.

The berry cream cake has exposed whole berries lining the edges of the filling layers, and no frosting on the sides. But rhubarb doesn't lend itself to this treatment, so I decided I would frost the sides of the cake. The frosting for the original cake was whipped cream stabilized with cream cheese, and it is perfectly dreamy. I knew for sure that I wouldn't tinker with that. The cake in the original recipe was a single layer of chiffon, cut into three layers, but I thought a bit softer cake would better complement the strong rhubarb. So I switched it out for two layers of Fluffy Yellow Cake (also from Cook's), each cut into two layers. For the filling, I used two recipes from The Cook's Dessert Bible: stewed rhubarb and pastry cream. Then I mixed them together for a rhubarb pudding filling.

Now, with pudding, cake, and cream, this cake ends up more or less a trifle without the bowl. The filling tends to make the layers slip, so maybe it would be better in a bowl as a trifle. But however you put the elements together, it's delicious.

Make the rhubarb and pastry cream the night before, so they have plenty of time to chill before assembling the cake.

Stewed Rhubarb
adapted from The Dessert Bible

1 lb rhubarb, trimmed, cleaned, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 C sugar
2 T honey
2 T lemon juice

Combine ingredients in a medium saucepan and let sit, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb has released its juices and most of the sugar is dissolved, a couple of hours. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Remove lid and keep simmering, stirring very occasionally, until thick and jammy, 15-20 minutes.

Pastry Cream
adapted from The Dessert Bible

1 pt half and half
6 large egg yolks (reserve whites to make macaroons later!)
1/2 C sugar
3 T flour
1/8 t salt
2 t vanilla

Heat half and half on stovetop or in microwave until just about to simmer. Whisk together flour, sugar and salt, then whisk dry ingredients into the egg yolks in a medium saucepan until smooth and pale yellow. Very slowly add the hot half and half to the yolk mixture, whisking constantly.

Put pan on stove over low heat and heat until mixture reaches 180 degrees, whisking constantly (no kidding, CONSTANTLY, or you will regret it). Strain into a bowl, stir in vanilla, then put waxed paper or plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the pudding and let cool.

Fluffy Yellow Layer Cake
adapted from Cook's Illustrated, March/April 2008

10 oz (about 2 1/2 C) cake flour
1 1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
3/4 t table salt
1 3/4 C sugar
10 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 C buttermilk, room temperature
3 T vegetable oil
2 t vanilla
6 large egg yolks + 3 large egg whites, room temperature

The eggs are easier to separate when cold, so put three whites in bowl of stand mixer, three whites in container to save for making macaroons later, and six yolks in a four-cup Pyrex measuring cup with the buttermilk. Let sit for a couple of hours to come to room temperature.

Melt butter and let cool slightly (it took 30 seconds plus just a little stirring to melt room temperature butter in my microwave). Preheat oven to 350 and prepare two nine-inch round cake pans (either baking spray, or butter and flour; the original recipe calls for lining the bottoms of the pans with parchment as well, but I had good luck without). Whisk together flour, 1 1/2 C sugar, baking powder, soda and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk butter, oil and vanilla into measuring cup with buttermilk and egg yolks.

Beat three egg whites with whisk attachment until foamy, then gradually add 1/4 C sugar with mixer running. Scrape sides of bowl, then beat at medium-high speed until mixture just forms stiff peaks (it should still look moist, not dry). Scrape beaten whites into a small bowl, then return mixer bowl to machine.

Dump dry ingredients into mixer bowl. With mixer running at low speed, gradually pour in buttermilk mixture and blend until just incorporated. Scrape sides of bowl, then mix on medium-low speed until smooth, 10-15 seconds. Remove bowl from mixer, and use spatula to gently mix in one-third of the egg whites to lighten the mixture. Then gently fold in remaining egg whites just until no streaks remain. Divide batter between pans, drop pans from 2 inches to dislodge big air bubbles, and put pans in the oven on the middle rack. Bake until a toothpick just comes out clean, about 30-32 minutes, rotating pans after 15 minutes. Cool on rack in pans 10 minutes, then take out of pans and cool completely on rack, at least an hour.

Cheesy Whipped Cream
adapted from Cook's Illustrated, May/June 2006

8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 C sugar
1 t vanilla
1/8 t salt
1 pt heavy cream

Beat cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and salt in stand mixer with whisk attachment until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and add cream in a steady stream. Stop mixer to thoroughly scrape sides, and mix at medium speed until just blended. Then increase speed to medium-high and beat until mixture forms stiff peaks.

To assemble the cake, use a serrated knife to cut each cake layer in half horizontally, holding knife steady and rotating cake. Stir together rhubarb and pastry cream. Put one cake layer on serving plate and top with a thick layer of rhubarb pudding (less than one-third of the total; there will be some left over). Repeat with remaining cake layers. Using a straight icing spatula, spread a thin layer of cheesy cream over the sides of the cake. If it's warm in the kitchen, chill the cake for 10 minutes, then apply a thicker layer to the sides. Scrape remaining cream onto the top of the cake and use spatula to spread to edges. Refrigerate whole cake for a couple of hours before serving.