I recently got a copy of David Lebovitz’s most recent book, Ready for Dessert,  and have noodled around a little bit, but wanted to make a few of the cakes.  For tonights dinner, I was looking for something that wouldn’t be too sweet, and might pair well with some of the rhubarb that was begging to [...]]]>

I recently got a copy of David Lebovitz’s most recent book, Ready for Dessert,  and have noodled around a little bit, but wanted to make a few of the cakes.  For tonights dinner, I was looking for something that wouldn’t be too sweet, and might pair well with some of the rhubarb that was begging to be used up.  Pistachio Cardamom cake seemed to be just the thing!

I made the pistachio cake as written and it is pretty easy to pull together.  I baked in a regular cake pan (no cake pan strips) just to see how much it would dome — as you can see from some of the pics that follow, it does dome slightly, so if you like your cakes level, use a strip around the edge.

The other nice thing about this is that it uses plain old AP flour.  David’s recipes are really nicely written — everything is in volume and weight measures (grams!) — this will make converting some of these recipes to gluten-free that much easier!  David’s original recipe calls for a syrup/sliced almond topping, but I decided to split the cake into two layers and put rhubarb compote in between.  I was struck by the contrast between the bright green of the pistachios and the vibrant pink of the rhubarb, and have to confess to a Hello Kitty moment!

The rhubarb compote is pretty easy — make a 2:1 syrup with 1 teaspoon cardamom, 1 teaspoon coriander, with 1 c sugar, 1/2 c water.  When it comes to the boil, add about 3 c chopped rhubarb.  simmer for 3-5 minutes.  If you want it thicker, you can strain off the syrup and reduce in the microwave for 10 minutes on high in a pyrex measuring cup.  Add about 2 T rosewater

Marscapone whipped cream — whip 250 ml heavy cream, 2T sugar, fold in 250 ml marscapone

Rhubarb

One of my favourite desserts is sticky toffee pudding, which I usually steam (not bake), and top with delicious toffee sauce.  I started thinking that [...]]]> With fall weather in full force here, and winter on its way, my food thoughts are turning to comfort food: stews, baked casseroles, and of course, desserts that really feel like dessert!.

One of my favourite desserts is sticky toffee pudding, which I usually steam (not bake), and top with delicious toffee sauce.  I started thinking that it wouldn’t be too hard to modify my usual recipe to make it gluten-free, and as it turned out, it wasn’t.

This doesn’t take too long to pull together, and I guess you could bake it rather than steam it, but I don’t think the texture is the same.  This has a nice fluffy texture, but is incredibly moist, chock full of dates.  The sauce is a basic butterscotch sauce with a splash of good rum added, just because!

Gluten-free Sticky Toffee Pudding

Makes 4 individual puddings

Printer Friendly Recipe (pdf)

Preheat oven to 350 °F.  Put a kettle on for boiling water.

• 2/3 cup whole dates, pitted and sliced
• 1/4 c + 2T warm water
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda

Combine half the dates with the warm water and the baking soda, and let stand for 5 minutes to soften the dates

• 1/4c + 2T packed brown sugar

Combine the remaining dates with the brown sugar in a small food processor, and pulse until the sugar and dates are combined, and the dates are well chopped.

• 1/2 c + 2T gluten-free flour mix* (90 grams)
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 3/8 tsp. xantham gum
• 1/4 tsp. salt

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl, and whisk until everything is combined

• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 T. unsalted butter, melted

In a medium bowl, whisk (or mix with a hand mixer) the egg until it is foamy and begins to lighten in colour.  Add the brown sugar and dates from the food processor, and continue mixing.  Add the butter and vanilla, and the liquid from the soaking dates, and then add the dry ingredients.  Mix well until everything is combined.  Fold in the reserved date slices and portion into 4 buttered and floured ramekins.

Place the ramekins into a baking dish, and pour boiling water around the ramekins until about halfway up the sides of the ramekins.  Cover the baking dish with a greased piece of foil, making sure that the sides are crimped down, ensuring the steam doesn’t escape.

Bake for 35 minutes, until the puddings are puffed and spring back in the centres.  Remove from the water bath, and let cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from the ramekins.

• 4 T. unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 c. brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 c. heavy cream
• 1 T. dark rum

For the sauce, combine the melted butter with the brown sugar in a small saucepan, stirring until the sugar melts and starts to bubble.  Reduce heat and simmer for about 2 minutes before adding the heavy cream and the rum.  The mixture should bubble up.  Continue whisking, and simmer for another 2-3 minutes until the sauce starts to get glossy bubbles.  Remove from heat, and keep warm.

To serve: Invert each pudding to remove from the ramekin.   Divide the toffee sauce among the four pudding, and pour overtop.

* I use a gluten-free flour blend consisting of 2 parts garfava flour, 1 part millet flour, 3 parts potato starch and 3 parts tapioca starch.  Each cup of this blend weighs 144 grams.

For this week, I’m not sure why or how the thought struck, but [...]]]> Last night’s TDN was apples and pears — spirits and alcoholic beverages made with apples and pears.  As luck would have it, I had just restocked a new bottle of Calvados in the liquor cabinet, so I decided to use that as a base.

For this week, I’m not sure why or how the thought struck, but having a hankering for manhattans (maybe its because fall is in the air!), and working with my preferred ratio of vermouth/rye of  3:4, I began thinking of pi (just stick a 1 in between).  So, using Calvados as a base spirit instead of rye, and the 3:4 ratio, I tested both sweet and dry vermouth.  I preferred the sweet vermouth myself, but a version of this with dry vermouth was tasty, but a bit crisper in flavour.   To add in the “1″, I felt like the spicy bite of ginger liqueur, and then I added quite a bit of Angostura to provide a nice herbal note to play off the sweetness of the Calvados and the vermouth.   Overall, I think its a nice cocktail for fall sippin’.

Gotham Spiced Apple Pi

• 1.5 oz. sweet vermouth (3 parts)
• 0.5 oz. ginger liqueur (1 part)
• 2 oz. Calvados (4 parts)
• 1/2 tsp. Angostura bitters

Stir ingredients together with ice until chilled.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a very thin slice of apple.

Last week, I realized that I had not yet tackled the August challenge [...]]]> “The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus:  Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.”

Last week, I realized that I had not yet tackled the August challenge for the Daring Bakers, so I set aside a day to make the Dobos Torte.  If you think you might want to try this one, you can find the recipe on the Daring Kitchen website.

At first pass, the recipe looked complicated, but when I actually sat down and read thru the recipe, I realized that each component was fairly straightforward.  This was one that I had not tried before, so I decided to make the recipe as written — no substitutions.  One kind of cool factoid that came along with the recipe was that it was passed on thru the Budapest Confectioners’ and Gingerbread Makers’ Chamber of Industry.  Who knew there was a Chamber of Industry dedicated to confectionery and gingerbread making!!!

Because I had other things to do during the day, I ended up making this in stages, making the cake layers first, then making the the buttercream and icing the cake, and finally tackling the caramel layer.

The cake layers themselves start out much like a genoise, although the whites and yolks are separated.  Here’s an action shot of the yolks!

And the billowy peaks of the whites…

You spread out the cake batter really thin on sheets of parchment, so they only take about 5 minutes apiece to bake.  Even though you have lots of layers to bake, it goes pretty fast.  I like the neutral flavour of the layers, and I really like the versatility of baking the layers on a sheet pan — you can cut to pretty much any size/shape you want.  I see more of these in my future.

The buttercream was interesting to make, as it starts similar to a swiss buttercream, but uses whole eggs rather than egg whites.  I used Callebault chocolate in mine, and it could have used more chocolate in it.  As it was, it was tasty, but next time I will amp up the chocolate factor.  I think the layers would also be very nice with strawberry buttercream.  One thing about this approach to the buttercream, is that it results in a really silky smooth icing — perfect for frosting.  It’s also nice and light, so the individual layers don’t get weighed down with a heavy filling.

Finally, I made the caramel layer.  One cake layer was kept in reserve,  and the caramel drizzled over the top, to make each piece stiff enough to stand up on its own.   The caramel recipe here calls for lemon juice, and in retrospect, I prefer the straightforward taste of caramel.  I also had read of a number of other people who had problems with the caramel setting up too quickly.  I was working with a cake layer at room temperature, so didn’t have any problem, and could have actually let it cool a bit.

Here’s the final product, with a coating of toasted hazelnuts on the side.  Another change I think I would make next time is to marry more hazelnut flavour throughout, perhaps soaking each layer with a bit of Frangelico, so the exterior related a bit better to the overall flavour of the cake.

This cake keeps quite well, as promised, and is actually best served after a period of chilling, to ensure the buttercream is nice and firm.

All in all, I think that this is one to keep in the cake repertoire, as there are a lot of potential jumping off points.  The cake layers would be easy to change the flavour, and would go with a lot of different buttercream options.  I also like the caramel topping as a quick way to jazz up an otherwise plain cake, and the cake layers for this could easily be cut into different shapes.

Thanks to Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella for hosting this month’s challenge.  Stay tuned to see what daring surprise gets baked next month.

Summer Fest is a four-week, cross-blog celebration co-created (alphabetically listed) by A Way to Garden, [...]]]> So its week 2 of Summer Fest 2009, and we’re onto Fruit from Trees as the theme, and conicicently, I had a bunch of Rainier Cherries sitting in the fridge just waiting to be baked up into something yummy!

Summer Fest is a four-week, cross-blog celebration co-created (alphabetically listed) by A Way to Garden, Matt Armendariz of Mattbites, Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen, and Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple, with guest appearances from Shauna and Daniel Ahern of Gluten-Free Girl, Simmer Till Done’s Marilyn Pollack Naron, and Paige Smith Orloff of The Sister Project.  (description courtesy of Mattbites)

So, without further ado, let the baking begin!

In addition to the cherries, hub also has been hankering for what he describes as “that pastry that tastes like cookies” also known as Pasta Frolla.   I opted to use a whole-grain white flour, milled by Saltspring Island Mills.  It is an excellent tasting product that is white in colour, but not bleached, as it comes from soft-white wheat.  The soft white wheat is also lower in gluten, so is perfect for pastries and cakes.  I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with it and have been really happy with the results!

I know lots of people like the sour cherries for cooking, but we don’t get a lot of them grown around here.  We do get lots of sweet cherries, and a smattering of the Rainier cherries, which I think are really pretty, and look a little bit like tiny nectarines.  I also like the flavour of the sweet cherries — they are the first tree fruit that we get here, and always make me think that summer is truly here.

I’ll just say now that I do pit my cherries.  Some people think that the pits add extra flavour, BUT, I wouldn’t want to break a tooth biting accidentally into a cherry pit   I use this little handheld cherry pitter, which takes a little more time, but goes pretty quickly once you get going.  I ended up spending about 15 mins extra pitting cherries for the tarts.

Pasta Frolla is the sweet Italian pastry that gets used for Crostata.  It’s buttery, but not as flaky as shortcrust.  It also contains quite of a bit of sugar, and some egg/egg yolk, and is a bit more forgiving than shortcrust.  It goes together REALLY quickly with a food processor, but isn’t too difficult to do by hand with a pastry blender.  I did this batch with the pastry blender, as I had been doing a lot of large scale baking recently, and was missing the quiet of working without kitchen power tools.

I cut large circles from the dough, and plopped them into muffin tins, and filled with cherry filling, and then baked until the filling bubbled up.  The cherry filling is fairly basic, punching up the flavour a bit, while still allowing the sweet cherry to shine through.

Ready to enjoy!

Rustic Ranier Cherry Tarts

• 1 recipe Pasta Frolla
• 6 cups Rainer Cherries, pitted
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 Tablespoon Grand Marnier
• 3 Tablespoons Tapioca starch

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine cherries with all remaining ingredients, and stir well to mix, until the sugar is mostly dissolved

Roll out the Pasta Frolla to 1/8 inch thick and cut out 4 1/2 to 5-inch circles.  Place circles in the cups of a muffin tin.

Spoon cherry filling into the pastry-lined cups, and top with a small circle of dough with any remaining.  The Pasta Frolla can be re-rolled up to 2x.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees, and bake for 15-20 minutes longer, until bubbling. (Make sure you put a pan under the tin to catch any drips!!!)

Let cool COMPLETELY in the tins, before removing.  Makes 10-12 rustic tarts

Pasta Frolla recipe (makes a large batch, extra can be kept in the fridge for 2-3 days)

• 3 cups unbleached flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 teapsoon baking powder
• 2 large egg yolks, whisked with:
• 2 Tablespoons heavy cream

Combine the dry ingredients, and cut in the butter the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, with a few larger pieces of butter (the size of small peas).  Mix in the butter/cream mixture until the pastry just holds together.  Add a bit more heavy cream if necessary.  Divide into two pieces, shape into flat discs, and let the dough rest for at least 30 mins in the fridge.