Black Forest Gateaux!

Last few months have been very busy for us. We moved to our new place :D, Mohan's parents had visited us, Mohan's cousins visited us, many of our friends visited and we have been busy settling into our new place.

Apart from that last few months many cakes were baked. One such cake was this Black Forest Gateaux!(My favorite when I was in India). Baked by Mohan (Gasp!) for me on my birthday (Double gasp!). It was the most awesome birthday gift- I had the cake and ate it too! Plus I got to boss around Mohan while "teaching" him how to make this cake and he had to listen just this once!

This again made an appearance when I made this for a friend of ours. He is a big fan of pac-man and I had long promised him a birthday cake and a pac-man cake . He happened to be in town for his birthday this year so I made him a pac-man birthday cake! :D

Genoise Au Chocolat/Chocolate sponge cake

3 tbsp Clarified Beurre Noisette

1/3rd cup Unsweetened cocoa, dutch- processed

1/4 cup  Water, Boiling hot

1 tsp  Vanilla Extract

5  Eggs, Large

1/2 cup Sugar

3/4th cup Sifted Cake Flour

• Preheat oven to 350 F
• line 2, 8 inch pans with parchment paper. Grease the side of pan with butter or a baking spray.

• Warm the beurre noisette until almost hot a(110 F- 120 F) and keep warm.
• In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix the cocoa powder, vanilla extract and the boiling hot water so that the cocoa has completely dissolved and there are no lumps.

• In the bowl of a standing mixer add the eggs and sugar. Set over a pan of simmering water and whisk till it reaches 110 F.

• Using the whisk attachment in you stand mixer, whisk the mixture on high speed till it triples in volume. Take around 5 minutes, longer if you use a hand beater.

• Remove 2 cups of the egg mixture and whisk into the cocoa mixture till smooth.
• Sift the flour over remaining egg mixture and fold it in gently but quickly with a rubber spatula or a slotted skimmer until the flour has disappeared
• Alternate: 
  
  • Take out 2 cups of egg mixture and whisk into the cocoa mixture till smooth, and sift half the flour into the cocoa mixture and using a rubber spatula fold in. Sift the rest of the flour into the egg mixture directly. I have had trouble with folding  when I was a novice. I improvised a bit with the current method  and that helped retain the volume. This recipe has no leavening agent so the loss of volume could result in a disk that can be used like a frisbee! only heavier . 
• Fold in the cocoa mixture until almost incorporated. Don't worry if you see some white streaks.
• Fold in the beurre noisette in 2 batches using a large whisk or a rubber spatula just until incorporated.
• Pour immediately  into the prepared pans and bake for 12-18 minutes or until the cake shrinks from the sides of the cake. Try not to open the oven door too much as it could make the cake fall .

• Once done, Loosen the sides of the cake with a metal spatula( I use plastic knife  I don't want to scratch my nonstick pans)

• Unmold at once onto a lightly greased cooling rack. Re invert to cool. trim the bottom and top crusts when ready to complete the cake.

Syrup:

1/4th cup + 1.5 tsp Sugar

1/2 cup Water

1 -2 tbsp Spiced rum

• In a small saucepan with a tight-fitting lid bring the sugar and water to a rolling boil, stirring constantly.
• Cover immediately, Remove from the heat. Allow to cool completely
• Stir in the liqueur. Set aside till needed.

Filling :

Cherries - 1/2 cup chopped up ( I used candied maraschino cherries)

Whipped Cream Frosting:

1.5 cups Heavy whipping cream, cold

1/3rd cup Granulated sugar

• Chill the mixing bowl and the whisk attachment  in the freezer for atleast 30 minutes.
• Add the whipping cream to the mixer bowl and whisk on low speed till frothy.
• Gradually add the sugar and whisk on high speed till it forms stiff peaks. 

Garnish:

Cherries - whole, chopped up and as much or as less you need. Let your imagination run wild

Chocolate shavings - pretty much like the cherries you can have them in what ever shape or size and as much or as little as you please.

Assembly:

• Place one cake on a cake board. Sprinkle half the syrup over the cake.

• Spread almost 3/4th cup of the whipped cream evenly over the bottom layer. Spread the chopped cherries over the whipped cream

• Top with second layer. Soak with the remaining syrup. Spread the remaining frosting on top and sides of the cake.

• Cover the sides of the cake with chocolate shavings ( I got lazy and just blitzed the chocolate in my food processor)
• Decorate with cherries on top.

• Now comes the toughest part. Let the cake soak in for 3-4 hours minimum. The longer it soaks  the better your cake will taste!

Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

Hey! Hope you remember me still! I know have not blogged in over a month.My bad :(. With the winter being very weird (One day it is like a nice spring day, another day it is freezing cold), I wasn't feeling too great. I am back to normal now and hopefully back to regular blogging :). 

I get very excited for birthday's and anniversaries as I can come up with a cake to make for celebrating. I make other big plans, but based on my history of sucking at planning events, I make sure I engage in cake making for these celebrations! For my husband's first birthday, after we got married, I had planned to make a huge cake and have friends over. Then came the anti-climax - we were snowed in a week before D-Day. We couldn't even remove the car out of our apartment complex. So a day before his birthday, I sent him to the grocery store and made him buy the ingredients for his own birthday cake! You see, we are very engaged together in all activities :P. It was a yummy chocolate truffle cake reward for a grocery trip well done and for being the b'day baby.

The endless possibilities makes picking a cake I want to make very hard and it becomes a research project before I settle on one and keep it a secret. So, Mohan plays the guess the cake game for me. He tries to observe the products I am looking up online, or at the store. What books I am refering to and which pages have a lot of bookmarks. I go on tangents during my research, so he cannot really get much out of snooping around :P.

For year two I made Madhuri's Pineapple Pastry Cake. I wanted to finish making the cake and keep it in my friend's fridge so hubby wont see it. I managed to keep it a secret till the eve of his birthday. The husband decided to take off from work earlier than usual randomly, and the party started early with good friends of ours coming over! I was still frosting the cake in the side and was in shock!! So much for my secret cake plans and so much for random unplanned surprizes!

For my Hubby's birthday this year, I managed to keep it a secret till the cake cutting! (Almost!). Mohan and his friend dug into the cake and other agents of inebriation. They loved the cake very much. It had white "chocolate" in it. Thanks to being married to me, I don't even show my husband the light of white chocolate. I love dark chocolate and believe that white "chocolate" is not even chocolate! That being said, I was very surprised with the outcome of this cake. I enjoyed it inspite of it having white "chocolate". This cake was very fun to make, but it was a very lengthy process and I made it over a day. It was so worth it. Every bite was a peek into heaven. So let me not keep you in suspense and show you how I made it!

Recipe source: America's test kitchen TV show

For the Flourless Chocolate Cake Layer:

7 oz Bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6 tbsp Butter, Unsalted and cut into pieces

4 Eggs, separated

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

1/3rd cup Brown Sugar, packed

• Preheat oven to 325 F. Prepare a spring form pan with butter.
• Over a double boiler, melt the butter and chocolate. Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.
• Whisk in the egg yolks, one by one to the chocolate mixture
• Add the vanilla extract and whisk it.
• In the bowl of a standing mixer or a mixing bowl, add the egg whites and salt. Using the whisk attachment , beat on medium speed until frothy.(takes about 30 seconds)
• Add the half brown sugar to the egg whites and beat until incorporated. Add the rest of the brown sugar and continue to beat at high speed until stiff peaks form.
• Take about 1/3rd of the egg white mixture and whisk it into the chocolate mixture.
• Add the rest of the egg white mixture and gently fold it in, ensuring you do not deflate it too much.
• Pour into the greased pan and bake for 13- 18 minutes. The sides should be firm, but the center should be soft but cooked. It took me 15 minutes.
• Transfer the cake to a wire rack to cook down completely. Do not take the cake out of the pan.

For the Middle layer:

2 tbsp Dutch processed cocoa

5 tbsp Hot water

7 oz Bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups Heavy Cream

1 tbsp sugar

1/8th tsp salt

• Whisk together cocoa powder and hot water and set aside to cool
• Melt the chocolate over a double boiler whisk until smooth. Take off heat and set aside to cool
• In a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachement, whip the cream until forthy for 20 seconds.
• Add sugar and salt and beat on medium until it starts to thicken.
• Beat on high speed until the cream holds soft peaks.
• Add the cocoa mixture and 1/3 rd of the whipped cream and whisk it in till incorporated.
• Take the rest of the whipped cream mixture and fold it in gently with a spatula. Until no streaks remain.
• Pour the entire mixture into the springform pan over the cooled cake
• Smooth the top with an offset spatula. Tap the pan on the counter gently to remove any large air bubbles.
• Using a damp tissue wipe the side of the pan to clean the drips.
• Set it in the refrigerator for atleast 15 minutes.

For the top layer:

3/4 tsp Gelatin, powdered ( I used vegetarian gelatin)

1 tbsp Water

6 oz White Chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups of heavy cream

• In a small bowl sprinkle the gelatin over the water. Set aside for atleast 5 minutes for it to soften.
• Place the chocolate in a medium bowl.
• In a medium saucepan heat 1/2 cup cream until it boils. Add the gelatin misture and whisk it until it dissolves.
• Pour over the chocolate and let it stand for a minute. Whisk the mixture until smooth
• In the bowl of you standing mixer add the cream and using whisk attachment beat on low speed till it thickens a bit.
• Increase to high and whip till it forms soft peaks.
• Whisk in about 1/3rd of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture and fold in the rest of the whipped cream gently with a rubber spatula.
• Pour the mixture on top of the second layer. Level it with an offset spatula.
• Tap the pan very gently to remove any air bubbles.
• Set in the fridge for atleast 3 hours. If you want to cover with a plastic wrap ensure the wrap wont touch the surface of the cake.
• Run a knife in the side of the pan to loosen the mousse. Remove the cake pan from the spring form.
• Decorate with chocolate curls. Well, mine look like grated chocolate rather than curls :P
• Enjoy yourself!!!

I am usually a white chocolate hater, but this recipe was really good. The gelatin ensured that the white chocolate din't set hard and the cream reduced the sweetness of the white chocolate. It was very subtle. Don't tell me I didn't warn you,  This is a very rich cake so even a cake crazy person such as myself could not eat a full slice in one sitting. (Shocking isn't it???)

Brown Eyed Susan Cookies/ Chocolate Thumbprints (Eggless)

  I am back to blogging after almost a month!  Has been a crazy moth with a lot of baking and cooking. To top it off, with Christmas and the New Year peeking from the corner, I have lots more baking left to do... Not that I am complaining!
  I made these Brown Eyed Susan cookies last year when I went to meet my best-est friend after 2 years and I made it now for a "Cookie Exchange" event in my husband's office. The only difference is that I made them look neater this year. These cookies had a buttery melt-in-your-mouth texture and the dark chocolate in the middle was absolutely wicked! These were a big hit at the Cookie Exchange and I am happy!

Recipe source: BrowneyedBaker
Ingredients:
For the Cookies : Makes 2 dozen
8 Tbsp Butter ,(unsalted) room temperature
1/2 Cup Confectioners Sugar (Sifted)
1/4 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 1/4  Cup All Purpose Flour (Sifted)
1-2 Tbsp Milk (Only if neccesary)

For the Center
2 oz Chocolate, Chopped (any variety you like, I used bittersweet)
2 tbsp Butter, Unsalted
3/4th Tsp Corn Syrup ( I forgot to add this!!!)

• Preheat your oven to 350 F. Grease your cookie sheet and set aside. You can use parchment paper or a baking mat too.
• In the bowl of your mixer fitted with paddle attachment, Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt until fluffy. you can do this with your hand or with a powerful hand mixer if you don't have a stand mixer.
• Add the flour gradually, in small portions.
• Add the milk only if you feel the dough is really dry. The dough will look crumbly but when you make a ball it will hold together well.
• Scoop out heaping teaspoons of dough to form a dough ball and place on the baking sheet. I placed them about 1 inch away from each other.
• This step was not there in the original recipe- I very lightly flattened the cookie dough  before putting it into the oven. Bake in the middle rack for 8 minutes. Remove from the oven and make an indentation with your finger (Ouch!) or the back of a small spoon or something (I used the nicely rounded bottom of my icecream scoop). This might lightly crack the sides of the cookie, but that is totally OK. Also the cookies will be very soft at this stage so be careful not to disfigure them like I did the first time!
• Put the cookies back into the oven and bake for another 8 minutes. Once baked, place on a cooling rack to cool.
• Melt the chocolate, butter and corn syrup over a double boiler or microwave (at 50% power at 30 seconds interval), until smooth and shiny. You can spoon the melted chocolate into the indentations or you can pipe it in. I used a squeezy bottle it made my life much easier and I got neater cookies. Allow the chocolate to set a bit before you can eat  it all up! While you wait for the chocolate to set on the cookie, you can eat up the leftover melted chocolate (unless you already did that)!

Compliments to the photographer - My Husband, who has clicked these pictures and some others in previous posts. He took such wonderful pictures that I did not even  have to edit them! So much time saved, and reminded me of how crappy my pictures turn out on first take! :-/. I have a loooooooong way to go *sigh*

Eggless Chocolate Pound Cake (FSB)

Here I am with my second post. I started writing it and in parallel was working on a project the night before I was leaving for my 2 month visit to India!! It may have seemed strange that I launched my blog in all that excitement, headed off for vacation 2 days later, and have not been heard from since... or, maybe that’s how it is initially? Maybe be not the one blog in a week type of a scenario for my start?

Well, this might explain some. The reason I started my blog after much procrastination was due to the motivation behind this particular post (I know I have said in other entries and pages there are many that got me to where I am.. but there’s more!). I doubted it would take me a couple of days after I got to India, that I get to complete this entry (as is the case), but the mission was to complete the project by the end of April !! OK, before I start sounding like the person who tried to write about some secret spy mission, with a end of the month deadline on a blog, let me explain the project before you get totally confused.

About 2 months back, my dear friend Madhuri, with her fervor and enthusiasm, came up with this innovative idea for a series of blogger events that would be ‘something totally different’ - Free Spirit Bloggers (FSB), and included me in the mailing list announcing this idea. There I was, seen in a mailing list with some very enthusiastic and inspiring thought leaders in the food making and food blogging society, super excited, but had a slight problem… I did not have a blog to be using, to join a blogger event like this one!

Either Madhuri’s was the final kick-in-the-butt I needed to start my food blog, or this was just plain embarrassing and I had to do something! I had been wanting to do this for some time now whereas I was satisfied with posting some pictures I clicked of the food we make at home, and derived my pleasure talking about, and serving food to people around me when I got the chance - but was I really getting to something with this interest? Don’t get me wrong, I still love that experience and I am sure everyone who enjoys food and cooking, does too... but to take the effort to organize thoughts, recipes and pictures in trying to represent the taste of the food, while also sharing a good recipe, and facing a larger audience on the web, is something that takes some hard work and being inspired, to make happen! It is a bit harder for me than cooking and eating itself! I wondered for a while... did I have it in me? Is there a right circumstance that would present itself.. ‘a while’ here btw, being almost 2 years!!

I think you get the idea.. FSB + realization that I was being a lazy bum, got me to seek some help I much needed, from my husband and Madhuri. This connects back to some other stuff I said here. Believe me, I’ll soon stop talking about why and how I started blogging :P, but for now, I am saying this to myself so I keep myself motivated. Now let’s get to the project at hand.

FSB is a group of 8 bloggers. We will work together every month to pick a theme and share 8 recipes based on that theme, but only at the end of the month (still wondering what this post is doing coming out mid-month?!- I am late posting, as I was leaving for a 2 month trip to India, and no this is not an example of IST :P). While each recipe can be quite different, and sometimes not even the same general dish, we will all stick to the central premise of the theme of that month. Read more here.

April's theme was egg substitutions. I think most of us Indian vegetarians have at some point wondered about egg substitution - be it for ourselves, for our parents who do not eat eggs, for a friend/ relative who is allergic, of course the Brahmin sect that traditionally considers egg as non-vegetarian and would not eat it, while many of the same sect have said “egg is allowed, but chicken, mutton, beef, sea food not allowed” (as though the latter covered everything that’s not vegetarian!), or “ I will eat it in cakes, but not omlettes or boiled eggs that stink of the Hydrogen Sulphide I remember from the Chemistry Lab” (me talking anything remotely chemistry is my husband’s influence or his input to a post... sure, you guessed that if you know my relationship with the subject :P).... or maybe egg replacers simply because you feel like substituting something that is so vital to baking! We FSBs had around 16 substitutions (!) for eggs at our disposal to work with, and we each picked 2 out of that list to work into a recipe that otherwise needed eggs. I picked Ener-G, a commercial egg replacer, and a combination of water + oil + baking powder. These 2 were to be used in the making of 2 separate chocolate pound cakes.

As you can tell, I was very excited to start working on this project, get my blog going on the side, and I started out very optimistically and excited, and must say had a great experience doing this and writing about it. Let’s go to the recipes and the outcome, shall we?

.

*I have presented the original recipe in italics and my notes on alternative approaches adopted in regular bold font as I walk you through this.

Ingredients:
250 Grams All purpose flour/ Maida
250 Grams Sugar
250 Grams Butter
50 Grams Cocoa powder

( I accidentally reset the scale before the Photo. That was about 50 grams of Cocoa Powder)

4 Eggs –

I used :

for cake (a), 1 ½ tsp Ener -G + 2 Tbsp warm water in place of 1 egg, and

for cake (b), 1 tbsp oil + 2 tbsp water + ½ tsp baking powder in place of 1 egg.

1 tsp Baking soda
½ tsp Baking powder
½ tsp Salt
1 tsp Vanilla extract
Upto ½ cup Milk

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350f/ 180c and grease the baking tin - Check
• Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt 2-3 times and set aside - Check
• Cream butter and sugar until creamy and pale . Add vanilla extract and beat well - Check
• Add the eggs one at a time and beat till well incorporated. - For cake (a), I mixed Ener-G and water, whisked it, and set it aside for 5 minutes. Then I added that mixture to the mixture with butter and beat it till nice and creamy. For cake (b), I added Oil and beat it till it was well incorporated.

• Now, add the sifted flour mixture to the butter mixture little by little and beat well till blended smoothly - Check
• Add adequate milk to achieve a batter of dropping consistency - I maxed out on the ½ cup milk . For effort (a), I found that the batter was not of dropping consistency and that it was slightly thicker. For effort (b), I found that the batter was very thick in spite of adding ½ cup milk + 8 Tbsp water ( part of the egg re-placer)

• Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake @ 180C/ 350F for 45-50 mins or until done - Check, I baked Cake (a) in a 8*8 pan and it took me 45 mins. I baked Cake (b) in a 13*9 pan and it took me 20 mins.

Now the results ...

Cake (a) using Ener-G Egg replacer

Cake a) The cake tasted absolutely great and it was super soft. But what seemed odd after I set it to cool, was this mini meteor crater/depression that had formed in the middle of the cake! My husband said it must have been plate tectonics/faulting created by angered ingredients for not seeing their egg around them in their good times in the hot sauna, the oven (the show-off Civil Engineer!)! 

Don’t think seeing the picture and the missing patch that looks like the boundary of the state of Bihar (before jharkhand), and think I am calling that the crater, or that my husband dug into it while I was not looking, it was just a patch that would have been covered with the icing, and now it sat in the middle of this crater/depression. Nevertheless, I covered it up with blissfully- gooey- chocolatey-goodness i.e., Chocolate Ganache!. No one would know about the crater unless I tell them, right ?

Cake b) This cake was super duper fragile (which, of course, I did not know when I took it out of the oven) and when I turned the cake upside down to cool it, only half of the cake came out. The rest decided to stay in the pan for a bit longer!. I tried to coax the rest of the cake to come out of the pan and I think they got pissed off with me and decided to crumble when I forced the rest of the cake out of the pan. Disaster, ain? Well, They don’t know me that well I am not the one to give up a fight so easily.... not when I have been trained for fights by my brother who I am so pally with now! So this is what I did: I crumbled the entire cake in a big bowl..Mugahahah! I am evil. crumbly cakes get more crumbled. All this in a state of mind where I am wondering what I did wrong and I still have not figured it out, and did not want to conclude that the substitution did not do the trick for me. Then for a change, the usually rule book, recipe following, chart-out-a-plan-well-before-you-can me, was taken over by some experimental rush. I was motivated in wanting to get something out of this. I poured some nice warm chocolate ganache on its crumbly head (Mittu to cake: You didn’t expect that for revenge did ya? hah! If you thought that was evil, you have no idea what you are in for) . I mixed up the cake and ganache well and I made lemon sized balls out of it, and stuck in some lollipop sticks (serves you right). I refrigerated them for a while. Once they were a bit hard, I dipped them into some more Chocolate ganache I had set aside. I should have stuck these on a piece of Styrofoam, but well, this was disaster recovery being performed by someone who is usually very bad at it (I will be very mad if anyone provides any snippets in the comments section to prove this :P). Oh, I also did not have a Styrofoam ready in hand. Hence, I placed them in a muffin tray ( not the best idea, but it worked) and again put them back into the fridge. After about half an hour later, we had some sinfully chocolate, cake pops!.

Cake (pops) (b) using Oil+Water+Baking Powder Egg substitution

Then those little rascals started going after her.. and then shortly chomped together (Yumm!)

So, I guess with both my substitutions I could have done better. Given what I ultimately did with my second cake (you got chomped, ***** ), I probably was not my usual self - one following recipes down to a tee, and being a little more in control of the outcomes (Baking is a science with rules unlike cooking where you have more room for experimenting). Maybe a slightly more experimental self of me took over. This could be because these are substitutions, and already an attempt to break the norm :). 

I will be sure to try these substitutions again and report back to you on how it worked and what I did better to get the consistency right, not just the great taste I got and in the altered form. Having said that, I had a lot of fun this time being part of the FSB initiative, enjoyed the hard work and the challenges I had to overcome (phew!). Hope that I have not let the team down by pulling a stunt and not figuring out what went wrong and fixing it, but instead, that I have shared with you, a fun experience I had. I have continued determination to make these egg substitutions work well, and hope to try some of the other options too. Thanks again to Madhuri and other Free Spirit Bloggers for the company, and for being part of inspiring me to start this blog.