i don’t usually take photographs at an angle – that “artistic angle” so favored by food bloggers – but for some reason, the dead-on photos just don’t look as good. something about the straight shooting suppresses the cragginess of these cookies. so, caramel melts. this […]
The night I looked at you I found a dream that I could speak to… I found a thrill to rest my cheek to A thrill that I have never known… And here we are in heaven For you are mine At last — friends, […]
as my funds run out (i just parted with my tuition money – my first semester paid with money i earned all on my own!), i am still managing to fritter away money on my baking experiments. i guess i’ll just have to work more hours on my freelance stuff.
i have to admit that, in the absence of my (cambridge) roommates, it’s really nice that people at the office are willing to eat things that people bring in. in cambridge, we basically have a revolving door and somebody is over almost every day or night, thus creating the perfect environment to give away food after every experiment. in new york, i just don’t know as many people, nor do the people i know live close enough to just stop by in the evenings. so the office is my stand-in recipient of my baking experiments.
this week’s experiment is actually a pretty poor in terms of rating an experiment, and more a crowd pleaser for work – it’s a chocolate pound cake i’ve made several times. i like pound cake in general because it has very little artificial leavening – ie, baking soda or baking powder. instead, it derives its structure and texture from the actual making of the cake – if you don’t mix the batter enough, your pound cake won’t have the right texture. when i bought my first baking cookbook, the author expounded on the virtue of creaming the butter for a full five minutes every time. i admit that i was a young and naive 18 year old at the time, and i scoffed. i still make cookies with a wooden spoon (ie no creaming the butter), but i am a convert to creaming the butter properly for cakes. creaming the butter incorporates air into the butter, giving your cake structure and texture. pound cake is essentially a study in how to incorporate air into your batter – the standard method is to cream the butter, beat the butter and sugar for a good long 10 minutes, add the eggs one at a time, then alternate dry ingredients and some moisture-rich ingredient (sour cream, in this case), beating each in every time. so you see that by beating everything in very slowly, you develop the structure of the cake purely by mixing the ingredients together. the efficiency of the method is a beautiful thing. (more…)
can you believe that i haven’t been watching law & order obsessively? yeah, neither can i. so this isn’t a murder case involving food, but it does involve me surreptitiously copying a recipe out of the best recipe at barnes & noble. this is my […]
when i was growing up there were tons of things that my sister and i weren’t allowed to have: twinkies, hostess cupcakes, tv dinners, all manner of synthetic food. this was all for my own good, of course, but when i was ten years old […]
i vaguely remember having promised to update you all on the longevity of the pound cake. i also vaguely remember having forgotten – ok, i very distinctly remember having forgotten to do so. so with respect to elvis’ poundcake, i’d like to report that the texture improved over the next several hours or so. its crusty exterior stayed crusty, but as egg-ful things are wont to do, it tasted much less eggy after the cake cooled and set completely. i think it had about a week’s shelf life?
and onto bigger, better things, or at least, more chocolatey things: chocolate pound cake. i can’t remember why i made a chocolate pound cake; i guess just because. this is a recipe i’d made before, generally in loaf pans to make a pound cake for chocolate raspberry trifle. i also wanted to test the efficacy of beating the butter and sugar to provide the cake’s structure, and i have to confess and bite my tongue – it really helps. in fact, it’s pretty amazing how much it helps. the chocolate pound cake that i made relies heavily on the butter and sugar for its tight crumb, and cake flour for its tenderness, and brown sugar for spicy caramel overtones. i would recommend billington’s dark brown sugar for the best spicy caramel overtones – i’m pretty sure that 95% of said overtones come from this particular brown sugar, which i’ve used before to great effect in brown sugar pudding. this particular cake is fantastic plain, but if you need to fancy it up, just drip a chocolate glaze over it. don’t bother with powdered sugar, which i hate with a passion on cakes and tarts because you just end up inhaling it and choking, just as you’re about to take a bite. it’s annoying at your dinner table when you’re with good friends, and embarrassing in social situations as you cough and hack. (more…)
also several weeks ago, i had enough time (!!!) to go with carrie to the chocolate lounge at mariposa. on thursdays at 7pm, a mini-enterprise takes over the space at mariposa and it becomes a short ode to chocolate. because who wouldn’t be excited by […]
i guess i could never be a dishwasher, because a day after the dinner party, my hands are all itchy and irritated by constant dishwashing. i just put two kinds of gunk on my hands in hopes that they will be happy soon. it’s strange, […]
carrie: and when we go to star, we could get –
me: pork loin!
carrie: yeah, that too…but i was thinking of ice cream.
(24 hours later)
carrie: last night i had a dream about rare meat…i think it was the pork loin.
* * *
i am having a minor allergic reaction to the tiny bit of chocolate-hazelnut shortbread dough that i ate. hmph. well, now the shortbread is in the oven and it shall be mine. hopefully the tea i’m drinking will make the itch in my throat go away. i sweetened it with lyle’s golden syrup, which i used last sunday to make a caramel sauce. it’s one of those british things you’ll only understand when you use it. but it’s perfect for caramel sauce – it just has this kind of caramel-sweet flavor to it. it’s also the thickest liquid i’ve ever seen in my life. shake it, and it just doesn’t move at all. wonder why it’s so viscous. it’s not as good a sweetener as honey, but it does the job, and when else am i going to use it?
the story about the pork : a couple days ago i came home to find carrie scarfing down some focaccia from star. while browsing, she came upon a pork loin sale – huge pork loins for $1.99/lb. we didn’t go last night, but as of last night’s desperate-must-have-ice-cream-and-tosci’s-is-closed run, we are proud owners of a ten-pound pork loin. it was the runt of the lot, but had the best marbling and the least fat on top. we have plans for this pork loin… (more…)
when i was younger, my mother used to buy my grandmother’s birthday cake at konditor meister. their cakes were these enormous, wonderful confections – a dark, dark chocolate cake filled with whipped cream and cherries, with a bit of rum. on top, they were decorated […]