Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Cake

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written any new posts. I think it’s been a combination of busyness and a tendency towards baking the same wonderful things over and over. Sorry about that…

Anyways, I am back with a brand new recipe. This time it is Joy the Baker’s Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Cake, which you can find here: http://joythebaker.com/2012/05/roasted-strawberry-buttermilk-cake/

I am a novice to baking with strawberries. I’m not sure why, I guess I just eat them “raw”. But, it’s Father’s Day, which seems like the perfect excuse to bake something new. My own dad is anti-chocolate and lacks my sweet tooth, so a buttermilk cake seemed like a good choice for him.

Everyone loves strawberries, I hope.

A few notes- I did not have a cast iron skillet, so I used a 9 x 2 ¾” springboard pan, because it seemed closest to the thickness of a cast iron skillet. I was heartbroken to find myself skillet-less, but the springboard pan was nice in that there was hope that I’d be able to get the cake out in one piece in the end.

Here are all of the ingredients:

Roasted Strawberries

8 oz. strawberries cut in half (I quartered some of mine, though)

2 tbsp. maple syrup

1 tbsp. olive oil

Pinch of salt

2 tsp. balsamic vinegar

Buttermilk Cake

2 ½ c flour

1 tbsp. aluminum-free baking powder

½ c granulated sugar

½ tsp. salt

2 large eggs

1 ½ c buttermilk

¼ c butter melted and slightly cooled

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Roasted strawberries (see above)

3 tbsp. turbinado sugar for topping

Oven Settings: Preheat to 375º F for strawberries and turn up to 400ºF for cake.

Roasted Strawberries (originally courtesy of Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Everyday, which is a wonderful cookbook to keep around anyways)

Fully line a rimmed baking sheet- this is important so you can catch the strawberry juices.

Cut off the strawberry tops (I give mine to the chickens in my backyard; do whatever sustainable activity you would like to do with yours) and slice the strawberries in half. I cut some of mine into quarters. Regardless, they will shrink down while roasting.

In a small (i.e. cereal) bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, olive oil and salt. DO NOT added the balsamic vinegar to this mixture. I got a little too excited and did this and ended up redoing the mixture completely.

Not yet roasted, but here's an idea of how liquid-y everything should be.

Place all of your strawberries on the baking sheet and pour on the liquid mixture. Toss everything together on the sheet and place in the over for ~40 minutes. This is important- watch your strawberries closely. After 33 minutes the juices from mine had pooled over the edge of the parchment paper and had burned. You want to get everything out of the oven before this happens so you can incorporate the juices with the rest of the strawberry mixture.

Roasting

Remove from the oven before things go wrong and place back in the cereal bowl. Toss on the vinegar and set aside while you complete the cake. While you are near the oven, turn it up 25ºF.

A bad sign...

Another bad sign.

Soaking in vinegar

Buttermilk Cake

In a large bowl mix up all of your dry ingredients- flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Set aside.

In a smaller bowl (for reference I would recommend bigger than a cereal bowl), whisk together the wet ingredients. Experience has taught me that not only is it important that the butter be slightly warm, but there is such thing as too cold of buttermilk during this step. My mixture was too cold overall, and the butter kept solidifying. Lesson learned for the benefit of anyone reading this.

The butter problem.

Dump the smaller bowl contents into the large bowl and stir everything until smooth and fully combined.

Pour the cake batter into whatever pan you will be using. Add strawberry + balsamic vinegar mixture on top. A few notes: some of my strawberries were burnt. My childlike tendency to attempt to eat anything in front of me led me to the discovery that burnt roasted strawberries are horribly bitter, so I picked out the burnt parts as I was able to. I did not have the strawberry juices left over, so I mixed up a very small amount of olive oil and maple syrup (1:2 ratio) and add this on top as well. Top with sugar- I only used 1 tbsp.

Ready for the oven.

A note on this photo- I resisted playing with the filter so I could show how dark the berries are prior to baking.

Bake for 18-23 minutes. I would recommend reading Joy’s note on baking times varying according to type of pan. I will second her in pointing out that this cake bakes very fast- mine took 21 minutes, and at 18 minutes it had not seemed baked at all. As it bakes, the strawberries will slightly sink into the batter. Overall this recipe takes a bit of babysitting, so make sure you have the time and attention span for it. 

Baked, complete with sunken in strawberries.

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake

Hey everyone,

While I was home for break, I decided I'd try something different and bake an entire cake. Usually I stick with just cupcakes because my apartment oven can dependably bake them and they are much easier to give out to people. So, with some amount of free time and access to a more well-equipped kitchen, I tackled a double layer cake. I'm afraid I don't have photos, but if I re-make it I will post some.

This recipe comes from Joy Wilson's blog Joy the Baker. This is the specific recipe: http://joythebaker.com/2009/07/vegan-chocolate-avocado-cake/.

Her wonderful looking cookbook Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes includes a very similar recipe in cupcake form with a chocolate frosting. I may have to try that if I ever have spare avocados in my apartment...

Now for the cake details- it pains me to part with 3 avocados so quickly. I'm not from the warmest of climates, so avocados tend to be shipped and the price goes up quite quickly. However, I promise that they went to a delicious cause. Normally I excuse my increasing use of butter due to the fact that, in my opinion, it makes everything delicious. However, I don't think it made a difference this time. This cake is very moist, and the frosting is not as avocado-y as comments on Joy's site would indicate. I will warn you now- it really is green. My skeptical family tried the green covered cake, and reported that it's pretty good despite the unsettling color.

One thing I have to rave about is that for the cake itself you do not need any sort of electric mixer. I usually have to mix everything I make by hand anyways, but this is especially simple to throw together.

Here are the ingredients:

Chocolate Cake (makes 2 8"-9" round cakes)

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (Joy used almond oil)
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado (really mash this so it doesn't show up in the finished cake)
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Oven Settings: Preheat oven 350°F.
Spray two 8" or 9" round cake pans, depending on desired thickness of cake layers.
Mash the avocado very well.


Sift together all of the dry ingredients except the sugar.  Set that aside too.

Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl, including the super mashed avocado.

Add sugar into the wet mix and stir.

Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth.

Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. I baked mine for 35 minutes and wish I took it out 5 minutes earlier; the crunchy edges aren't the greatest.

Let cakes cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting with avocado buttercream.


Avocado "Buttercream" Frosting  (Joy got this from Alton Brown)

8 ounces of avocado meat, about 2 small to medium, very ripe avocados (no mushy brown spots in the meat, though)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Peel and pit the soft avocados.  It’s important to use the ripest avocados you can get your hands on.  If the avocados have brown spots in the meat, avoid those spots when you scoop the meat into the bowl.

Place the avocado meat into the bowl of a stand mixer fit with the whisk attachment.  Add lemon juice and whisk the avocado on medium speed, until slightly lightened in color and smooth, about 2-3 minutes.

Add the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat.  Add vanilla extract until combined.  If not using right away, store in the refrigerator.  Don’t worry.  It won’t turn brown!

I know that the frosting seems very sugar-heavy, but I would still recommend that much because it keeps the recipe buttercream-esque.

Sorry there are no photos, I'll put some up next time I make this or try it in cupcake form.

Boozy Cupcakes: Round 2

Hey everyone,

So this past weekend was a re-make. I re-made Irish Car Bomb cupcakes. This time I added green food coloring to the icing. In addition, the ganache solidified, which really changed the overall texture of the cupcakes. I think this is an improvement. Plus, they are plenty festive for St. Patrick's Day! :)



St. Patrick's Day Success!
Photo Credit: Violet Martin 



Irish Cream Puffs

This was my first-ever attempt to make cream puffs. I have to start off by thanking my friend Kate for her help making the puffs, and for switching off on whipping the cream. It's a bit of an arm workout of a recipe, but fairly worth it. It is a delicious way to use up more of the car-bomb ingredients! :)

I followed this recipe: http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/2078057-Vics-Bailey-s-Irish-Cream-Puffs, but was initially inspired when a friend sent me a recipe which included vanilla pudding mix in the Bailey's filling. Seeing as this is a baking blog, I'm trying bake things from scratch as much as possible, so I searched for an alternative recipe.

I will admit that I don't love everything in this recipe. The chocolate topping did not work out very well. As I was mixing the ingredients over heat I found that the oil was separating from the rest of the mixture and had to be spooned out. My years of chemistry classes were not in vain; I remembered that heat tends to break chemical bonds, making solids more liquid, and that cold tends to reform bonds. So, in a state of panic and science-geek experimentation, I threw the mixture in the fridge. It helped a bit, but I think a poor ingredients list could not be completely saved through technique. If I were to re-do this I would replace the water with milk. I think that the oil (from chocolate) and water combination was a match made in hell (and I'm not even referring to my occasionally uncooperative oven this time).

Cream Puff Close-Up
Photo Credit: Violet Martin

Here are the ingredients:

Cream Puffs
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

Bailey's Whipped Cream
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon confectioner's sugar
1-1 1/2 tablespoons Bailey's

Chocolate Topping
2 3.5 oz dark chocolate
2 oz. butter
1/4 cup water
Bailey's to taste

Oven Settings: Preheat to 450°F
In freezer: Bowl and metal whisk for at least 20 minutes prior to making whipped cream

Cream Puff Directions:


On the stove top, melt butter in 1 cup boiling water. Add flour and salt all at once; stir vigorously. Cook, stirring mixture vigorously, until mixture is smooth and forms a soft ball that doesn’t separate. Remove from heat; cool slightly. Add eggs, one at a time, beating very well after each until smooth.

Drop by teaspoons 3 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 450°F for 15 minutes, then at 325°F for 25 minutes. I only left the pastries in the oven on 325°F for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven, split. Turn oven off; put cream puffs back in to dry about 20 minutes (optional). This step was necessary for me. Cool on rack.

This recipe makes about 10 cream puffs. It is a little time consuming if you are only using 1 baking pan, and should count on making the whipped cream while waiting for the cream puffs to dry in the oven and cool.

Cream Puff Dough

Bailey's Whipped Cream Directions:

Chill bowl and metal whisk in freezer for 20 minutes. In chilled bowl whip the cream until slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar and Bailey’s. Whip to fluffy peaks, about 2 minutes. Fill pastry bag with whipped cream and pipe into cooled cream puffs. I skipped the pastry bag and just cut into the cream puffs and spooned the whipped cream into each of them.


Chocolate Topping Directions:


Melt chocolate with water in a small pot over a low flame. Once melted add butter, whisking the whole time. Should look shiny and creamy! Remove from heat. Spread a thin layer on each cream, using a spatula. Wait until icing hardens a bit to serve it. I had to spoon out the excess oil and chill the mixture for a few minutes in order to get a decent consistency. 

Finished Product!
Photo Credit: Violet Martin

I hope you all enjoy this recipe! I'm not sure I'll have anything new up this upcoming weekend, as St. Patrick's Day is just begging for Irish Car-Bomb cupcakes to be made. :)

Banana Bread No. 2

Sorry if this seems to be a banana bread and chocolate themed blog. Or, as you'll read below, a banana bread, chocolate and alcohol themed blog. I promise that is not intentional. I just had 3 brown, horribly neglected bananas sitting on top of my microwave, and a dear friend's birthday party to go to, so something had to be done. Thus, Banana Bread No. 2 happened.

I will say this- it's a much, much better banana bread. It has more of a kick to it, in a good, not too overwhelming way. This is yet another recipe from Deb at Smitten Kitchen, and the original post can be found here: http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/11/speckled-for-the-freckled/

A few notes before I leave you with the recipe-
1. I used a very smooth Canadian whiskey, not bourbon, which probably took away from the "punch" in the bread.
2. I leaned on the heavier side with the brown sugar because in my mind birthdays = things on the sweeter side.
3. The frosting was very spur of the moment, so I cannot make any promises that a sane person would come up with it. Inspiration came from this recipe: http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2009/05/greek-yogurt-frosting-healthy-frosting.html.

Now for the recipe:

Banana Bread

3 to 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted salted butter
3/4 to 1 cup light brown sugar (depending on the level of sweetness you prefer, I always use the smaller amount)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon bourbon (optional)
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch of ground cloves
1 1/2 cup of flour

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 4x8" loaf pan.

With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, vanilla and bourbon, then the spices. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into pan. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan. Personally, the bread took over on hour to bake, and after over 60 minutes uncovered in the oven, I had to resort to wrapping the loaf in foil to keep the top from getting too crunchy, and put it back in for another 10 minutes. Such is baking with Hell, the cake-hating oven.

Baked Bread

Frosting- be warned that I just threw this together, and do not have specific measurements
1 part non-fat Greek yogurt
1 part Nutella
~1 tablespoon whiskey

Chilled Frosting

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and chill. The whiskey should balance out the tartness of the yogurt and the sweetness of the nutella. Spread this over the bread.

Finished Product

Boozy cupcakes

Photo credit: Violet Martin

                                                                              

I'll start off with my hesitation for naming these cupcakes. Technically, they have a name. They are called Irish Car Bomb cupcakes, named after the horribly un-PC drink which entails a half pint of Guinness with a shot of 50% Baileys and 50% whiskey dropped into the pint glass and chugged before the Baileys curdles. For the record: I did not name or create this drink. I haven't even tried it, to be honest. All I know is it's a St. Patrick's day specialty and not actually an Irish creation. And that the food blogger who's recipe post I took this from got quite a lot of comment section grief because of the name. I, for one, am not looking for that attention, but would merely like that you enjoy these delicious cupcakes.

Before I forget- I took this recipe from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. Clearly she is brilliant, because when I searched for alternative recipes, they all cited hers
http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/car-bomb-cupcakes/

Let me break down the cupcakes, because they are rather elaborate:

• Guinness-chocolate cake
• Chocolate-whiskey ganache
• Baileys frosting

I promise they are worth the effort and ingredients. We just won't discuss the amount of butter used. There is a distinct Guinness flavor to the cupcakes, but it's not overpowering. The ganache itself is not too whiskey-esque, but the Baileys frosting is, well, Baileys. These are time and ingredient-consuming, but according to my lovely friends totally worth it. 

Here is the ingredients list:

Cupcakes

1 cup Guinness (I almost used a different stout, but stuck with the authentic choice)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I reused my Trader Joe's cocoa powder and still highly recommend it)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoons salt (sea salt in my case, because it's always around)

2 large eggs

2/3 cup sour cream*

*I didn't feel like buying sour cream, so I used 2/3 cup Greek non-fat yogurt and about 1/3 teaspoon baking soda

Ganache- These are Deb's instructions. I might halve it, however.

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate (I went with the nice Fair Trade 72% Cacao from Trader Joe's)

2/3 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons butter at room temp.

1-2 teaspoons Irish Whiskey (I used R & R; you can't taste it very much, it just adds a nice richness)

Baileys Frosting

3-4 cups confections sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temp

3-4 tablespoons of Baileys

Oven Settings: Preheat 350°F

Makes 20-24 Cupcakes, use liners

Cupcake Directions:

Bring 1 cup stout and 1 cup butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in large bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend. Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine. Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Divide batter among cupcake liners, filling them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, rotating them once front to back if your oven bakes unevenly, about 17 minutes.     I baked mine 1 extra minute so the center was more firm when I went to cut it out. Cool cupcakes on a rack completely.

Ganache Directions:

Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter and whiskey (if you’re using it) and stir until combined.

Filling the cupcakes: 

Let the ganache cool until thick but still soft enough to be piped (the fridge will speed this along but you must stir it every 10 minutes). I found that the refrigerator was necessary to get the ganache solid-ish at all. Meanwhile, using your 1-inch round cookie cutter or an apple corer, cut the centers out of the cooled cupcakes. You want to go most of the way down the cupcake but not cut through the bottom — aim for 2/3 of the way. A slim spoon or grapefruit knife will help you get the center out. Those are your “tasters”. I just cut circles with the tip of a sharp knife and scooped out the top. It's not a fancy trick; it just took some practice. I'd call it an A for effort skill, since people won't be able to see how horribly you cut a hole in the cupcake. Put the ganache into a piping bag with a wide tip and fill the holes in each cupcake to the top.

Ganache-filling Time
Photo Credit: Violet Martin

                                                                                         


*Ziploc bag story: I thought I'd be clever and make a piping bag out of a ziploc bag. I dumped in the ganche in the bag, sealed the top and cut a small triangle off the tip of the bag. It was going great...until three huge globs of ganache went plop on my shirt, sock and floor. Fortunately I'd made more ganache filling than I needed to fill my cupcakes, so the crisis was averted, aside from a chocolate-y baker and floor.


Making the Frosting:


Whip the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, for several minutes. You want to get it very light and fluffy. Slowly add the powdered sugar, a few tablespoons at a time.


Deb's hint: This is a fantastic trick I picked up while working on the cupcakes article for Martha Stewart Living; the test kitchen chefs had found that when they added the sugar slowly, quick buttercream frostings got less grainy, and tended to require less sugar to thicken them up.

When the frosting looks thick enough to spread, drizzle in the Baileys (or milk) and whip it until combined. If this has made the frosting too thin (it shouldn’t, but just in case) beat in another spoonful or two of powdered sugar.

Ice and decorate the cupcakes. I have developed a strange way of icing cupcakes; I swirl the tip of a whisk into the frosting and then swirl it in the other direction on the cupcakes, releasing the frosting as a peaked blob. It looked prettier that smashing on the frosting with a knife.

Frosting Method
Photo Credit: Violet Martin

Do ahead:

You can bake the cupcakes a week or two in advance and store them, well wrapped, in the freezer. You can also fill them before you freeze them. They also keep filled — or filled and frosted — in the fridge for a day. (Longer, they will start to get stale.)

Finished product!
Photo credit: Violet Martin

                                 

Baking Background

Hi again. I figured I'd give a little bit of background on how I bake to explain why I select some recipes instead of others. Some important points are:
1. I don't have a mixer, so all batters, dough and frosting gets mixed or whipped by me or my lovely, stronger friends.
2. My oven is a little strange. It doesn't bake through cakes very well, yet handles cupcakes just fine. In addition it's gas and because it shoots scary flames I have named it "Hell".
3. Although I'm not a big health nut, I do try to use baking recipes that incorporate Greek yogurt and olive oil, as I always have those ingredients around.
4. I like chocolate. Specifically, I like dark, rich chocolate. So if this seems like a chocolate blog, it wasn't trying to be one; it just happened.