Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

odd recipe note

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 20:20:43 GMT

adrian_turtle just walked over with a copy of The Bakery Men Don't See, open to the "Ideologically Labile Fruit Crisp," and asked whether I am in contact with Eileen Gunn, whose recipe it was.

After I said not really, Adrian said "I assume she didn't test the recipe." The specific untested part is the long list of possible sweeteners, which starts with various kinds of sugar and ends "...treacle, fruit preserves, raisins, dates, or gummi bears."

One of Adrian's friends just tried baking rainbow challah, using gummi bears for the rainbow colors. She reports that the gummi bears melted, then solidified into hard candy, and the resulting loaf was stuck to the pan.

This recipe is where I got (slightly paraphrased) "take into consideration any special-interest groups, such as 5-year-olds." I'd thought "consider special interest groups, such as five-year-olds" was from the suggestion to sweeten with gummi bears, but apparently not: having gotten out the book, I see that the special-interest groups and the suggestion of gummi bears are on different pages. Because I am not five years old, when Adrian quotes the part about "special-interest groups" she usually means that she is cooking me sweet potatoes or using ginger in a recipe.

Somewhere along the line, I also combined two different parts of this recipe to get "if you feel the need to peel and slice berries, call 911 or consult your therapist."

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birthday

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:44:13 GMT

We celebrated cattitude's birthday with excellent sushi and homemade birthday cake. The sushi was from Cafe Sushi (which delivers through DoorDash) and hence a bit of a splurge. I got one of the nigiri assortments, which was as good as I'd expected, and a negihama roll (yellowtail and scallion). Cattitude had chirashi, and adrian_turtle had seaweed salad and a couple of rolls, and we ordered more maki to share. In practice, we shared all the maki, except that I didn't eat any of the spicy salmon roll. I did eat two pieces of the special tuna roll, which had quite a bit of wasabi, and maybe a bit of hot pepper.

There was slightly more sushi than we had room for, not and leave room for even small portions of chocolate cake, but only slightly. The food was excellent, as was the company. I was pleased that Adrian and Cattitude both wanted seconds of the chocolate cake. I don't expect to finish the cake while it's still fresh, and will probably make half as much next time (it calls for two eggs, so that's an easy recipe to halve.)

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birthday cake

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 01:44:26 GMT

I made cattitude a chocolate birthday cake, with a layer of chocolate on top, at his request. This is something like the birthday cake he often asked for as a child.

The basic cake recipe I'm using is relatively light -- it's the Hershey's black magic chocolate cake, which is fairly easy to make and east to make non-dairy -- with semi-sweet chocolate chips melted on top.

The first time I tried this, the chocolate chips all sank to the bottom and melted onto the pan. This time, I took the cake out of the oven about 2/3 of the way through baking it, put the chips on, and then put it back. At that stage in the baking, the center of the cake is lower than the edges, and the chips rolled towards the center.

When the cake was done and I took it out, I used a knife to spread the melted chocolate a bit more evenly; cattitude said it's better with discrete chips, so I can skip that step whenever I next make this.

Because this was an experiment, I baked the cake in two pans, and put chocolate chips on only one, so I could count on having a good cake.

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baking note

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 20:30:48 GMT

I made the Hershey Black Magic chocolate cake, this time adding half a bag of chocolate chips.

Notes: orange juice instead of the coffee the recipe calls for works fine, and doesn't make the cake noticeably orange.

Half a bag of chocolate chips dropped onto the batter before the cake goes into the oven makes a more chocolaty cake, but without the layer of chocolate on top that cattitude asked me to try for.

Our big ceramic baking dish is probably not the right thing to bake this in, but if I use it again, start with the top end of the timing range.

Don't overdo the "grease and flour the pan" instructions. Maybe grease but don't flour, and use baking parchment to line the bottom of the pan. (This time I got a layer of flour and vegetable oil on the bottom and sides of the cake, which we don't want.)

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I made bread

Sat, 11 Apr 2020 01:03:12 GMT

I made a loaf of bread today, for the first time.

I sometimes bake sweets, including cookies and cupcakes, but had neer tried bread befrore. Some people on Discord were talking about no-knead bread, and the person who went shopping for us a couple of weeks ago managed to get both flour and yeast, so I gave it a try.

cattitude and I ate a bit under half the loaf for dinner, with butter on mine and honey on his. Theere was a little bit of pickled herring, and Cattitude had some olives, but mostly we ate the bread, as soon as it had cooled down after baking.

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My grandmother's linzer torte

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 03:07:22 GMT

Mia Kanner's Linzer Torte

My mother called today and asked if I still have her mother's recipe for linzer torte, because she wanted to share it with some people at her senior citizens' center, and I emailed it to her.

I have that recipe because when I asked Grandma and she said she didn't have it written down, I asked if I could come over, bake with her, and write down what she did, including the quantities of different ingredients. That was in her kitchen on Ocean Parkway, so before Grandpa died—that makes it at least 22 years ago now. I made copies of the recipe and sent them to my mother, brother, aunts, and cousins. Then I mislaid it and had to ask my Aunt Lea to send it to me.

My grandmother's linzer torte is a cake made from a mix of white flour and ground nuts; it resembles the "linzer tart" cookies sold in American bakeries only in the name. The basis of this recipe was probably something from a Viennese cookbook published about a century ago.

I''m posting this recipe in the hopes someone will bake and enjoy it, and to reduce the chances of it getting lost.

This recipe makes two eight- or nine-inch round cakes, and can easily be divided in half.

The cranberry filling:

1 bag cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Mix the sugar and water in a saucepan, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a boil and add the cranberries. Mix well. Return to a boil, then reduce heat and cook ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Grease two 8- or 9-inch round baking pans.

The dough:

1 cup bland vegetable oil (corn or canola is good)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 1/4 cups flour sifted with 3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon rum
8 ounces ground walnuts (this is what I always use), almonds, or filberts)

Beat the oil and eggs together well. Add sugar and beat well. Add the flour slowly, mixing as you go. Add the cinnamon and mix it in. Mix in the rum, then the ground nuts.

Knead until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. Either roll the dough out, or pat it into the baking pans with your hands. You should have some dough left over. Pour in the cranberry filling. Top with a criss-cross pattern of dough. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes: the cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

My aunt said she "always thinks of the rum as the secret ingredient." I don't remember linzer torte tasting of rum, though my aunt says the recipe she sent around was taken directly from my printout, and I am considering omitting it.

This cake is vegetarian and parve, but not vegan.

This post is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.

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Baking: fixed a mistake

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 21:41:51 GMT

I was making a couple of batches of apple cakelings, using Jo Walton's recipe: two batches because I had almost half an apple left after the first, and didn't want to waste it. I also wanted to try using lemon extract, which I added to the sugar at the beginning.

I was about three steps in when I realized I'd used the normal amount of butter/margarine, but 1/3 more sugar, because I had somehow grabbed a 1/3 cup measure instead of the 1/4. So I used 1 1/2 or 1 2/3 eggs instead of one (no measuring here, just not-exactly-separating the second egg and putting about 2/3 of the egg white and I think about that much yolk into the bowl with the other ingredients. I increased the flour by an unmeasured amount, by using a heaping quarter cup instead of the usual measured amount. That was going to be 1/3 cup as well, but the cat knocked the 1/3 cup measure on the floor.

Overall, these worked well. adrian_turtle, you might like these, they're not as greasy as they sometimes come out. I will probably try this again, with a bit more lemon, and possibly measured amounts of other things.

Here's Jo's cakeling recipe, for reference. I had the oven at 200C/400F, and baked for a full twenty minutes.

Next time, try: 4.5 or 5 tablespoons of margarine (instead of 4); 1/3 cup sugar; a measured 1/3 cup of flour, and 3/8 tsp baking powder (I'm starting with what King Arthur calls all-purpose flour, which doesn't contain baking powder), and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract. Having looked at Jo's currently posted version of the recipe, I might try actual lemon juice and zest some time, instead of apple bits+lemon extract. (For that she advises increasing only the amount of flour.)

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Fiddling with cakeling recipe

Sun, 12 Jan 2014 19:05:02 GMT

We recently got a kitchen scale, after years of thinking it might be useful to have one. (Not only have we been doing a certain amount of "hey, new kitchen!" shopping, we have more counter space than in the old apartment.)

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