a new cake

xt and i made a cake for boonleng's birthday.

every time a new cake is to be made, i learn something new. something new about the proportions of cake to filling. the textures that go well, the textures that don't. new methods to do old things.
the layers of the cake from bottom up are: a hazelnut 'feuilletine' base, a layer of dark chocolate mousse with strawberries, vanilla sponge, dark chocolate ganache, and vanilla sponge.

we discovered the secret to a cheap and easy way to create a hazelnut 'feuilletine' base like the one u find in chocolate royale from sweet secrets! the trick is to use loacker hazelnut wafers, crush them up and bind them with just enough nutella. after pressing them into the base of the cake ring, we used a thin layer of melted chocolate brushed on to waterproof the crushed wafers.

then we put strawberries in a poured mousse over it. this mousse recipe is really a chemistry feat! it uses only water and chocolate. we all know a little moisture will make melted chocolate seize, but a lot of water will mix with chocolate to make a thin sauce. this recipe comes from french physical chemist Hervé This. the idea is to thin out melted chocolate with water, then whisk while chilling so that the water breaks up into small globules and disperses into the chocolate, forming a stable emulsion that is thick and moussey, and retains the pure flavour of the couverture chocolate, because only water was added to it.

the vanilla sponges were made using the CIA recipe. i think i did this before, but now i've made a new note to the recipe: sift the flour twice, and sift it over the whipped eggs, otherwise they will easily sink into the eggs without getting folded in properly, leading to lumps of dry flour in the cake.

the dark ganache was a dorie greenspan recipe - the one in her tarte noire. just chocolate, cream, and butter. so simple and tasty.
the icing was an italian buttercream dotted with vanilla seeds. the recipe is from the CIA book too.

italian buttercream refers to buttercream where you first make an italian meringue, then beat butter into it. i suppose there you could make swiss buttercream, but the book doesn't have such a recipe. swiss might be easier because you just have to warm the whites with sugar before whisking; italian requires cooking sugar to a 240F syrup, and then streaming it into medium-peak whites to create the meringue.

but it supposedly creates the most stable meringue. and after all that butter went in, the buttercream just became so heavenly. then i added in vanilla paste and it went speckled.
icing the cake was so much better this time, compared to all my previous attempts. the buttercream was just so smooth and easy to use. did the crumb coat first, then the icing proper. i also used the icing set that sonya/tiffany/clara previously sent over to pipe borders. arranged raspberries over the top, and then piped some tiny rosettes. (need more practice for piping.)
and the cake cut! the 'feuilletine' felt like a real feuilletine, crunchy and so satisfying; with full hazelnut flavour from the nutella too! the mousse layer needs to be thinner, more subtle, instead of being a thick wodge; this implies that instead of a layer of whole strawberries, they should be halved. cake layers were still quite hard after hours out of the refrigerator (for some unknown reason).

but i loved the cake. a small slice would be very pleasing. sometimes, maybe single is better than double. but maybe we just got used to single.

christmas is coming

the end of the year is coming yet again.

made panettone for christmas! and this was a recipe that used a sourdough starter. so i spawned it out of my nigella sourdough.
starter and yolks going into the first dough. then with lots of butter, and left overnight to ferment.
more yolks go into the first dough. and then sugar, and then a lot more butter, and then honey. amazingly, the weird order of these ingredients going in still yielded a strong dough. intially, it kept sticking to my hands, though it was really strong and stretchy. but i tried slathering butter on my hands, and managed to handle the dough perfectly!
the dough was so silky and satiny. i used some vanilla paste in the sweet glaze, so it looked really pretty, dotted with vanilla seeds.
and into the oven. the recipe says panettone tends to collapse on itself after coming out of the oven. so the solution is to skewer the molds and then hang the breads upside down as they cool. these turned out so soft and fluffy, i think because they are rich in yolks, like challah; and rich in butter, like brioche.

and a painting project, from start to end:

is there something wrong if initially when you watch a show, you cry, but when you rewatch it you don't feel anything anymore.