Chocolate cake: A scientific method

I am in France right now! But before I blog about that, I will tell you about my attempts to make a near perfect chocolate cake.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to bake a cake for another friend's surprise birthday/goodbye party. A commission of sorts! How honoring and surprising! I was told that the recipient like chocolate cake, and the theme of the party was Pink Lemonade (pink and yellow), so I was a bit stumped on how to combine them. I personally am not a fan of lemon and chocolate (I am actually not a fan of any lemon desserts), so I figured I could just add pink and yellow food coloring in a couple places. Unfortunately, chocolate cake is not very easy to color... I considered red velvet, but the one time I tried to make red velvet cupcakes, they did not turn out well at all. And by at all, I mean at all. As I only had 1.5 weeks to prepare, I wanted to stay on the safe side.

But how to add color to a chocolate cake? White chocolate frosting.

I began with the base of the cake. I wanted the base to be good, not just sweet and fluffy, so I gathered a couple recipes. I decided to try two of them: a relatively simple recipe from Scharffen-Berger (that I had made before here) and a more complicated recipe from Cook's Illustrated (which was surprisingly available on their website while I was making the cake, but is now only available to subscribers here). I made half of each recipe to get one layer of each.

For the frosting I turned to one of my favorite cookbooks: I Want Chocolate! by Trish Deseine. I made half of her recipe for Easy Chocolate Ganache, substituting white chocolate for dark. If I remember correctly, it used about 3/4 cup for 8oz of chocolate. This turned out to be a bit to liquid for my purposes, so I had to almost freeze my ganache for it to be thick enough. I often find frosting to be too rich, so I wanted to test two different ganaches, a heavier one (just cream and chocolate) and a lighter one (cream, chocolate and whipped cream). So I made both and colored the heavier one yellow and the lighter one pink.

Then I assembled my test cake. On the bottom I put my layer of simple cake,

 then I spread some heavier frosting,

 put the complicated cake,

and spread the lighter frosting. I did not have enough lighter frosting to cover the entire cake, so it ended up looking pretty ugly. That's why I had a test cake!

Then I had my parents test the cake. I did not tell them which layer corresponded to which cake (because that would have biased the data. I should have made two half cakes, one with the layers in the opposite order, for less bias, but I was worried that would not be stable).

Results: First, the top layer is lighter colored. However, it was also found to be more strongly chocolatey, as well as more tender and lighter than the bottom layer. The bottom layer was not found to have any redeeming qualities in comparison with the top layer. Fortunately for me, the choice was easy. Unfortunately, the chosen cake was the more complicated recipe.

As for the frosting, I decided that I liked having the two types, but that I should switch their positions.

Making the final cake:

I had originally planed to have a second practice cake, but I was out of time, so I went directly to the final cake. I made the full Cook's Illustrated recipe for the base and made ganache with 12oz of white chocolate and 3/4 cup of cream. I put the lighter frosting in between the cake layers and tried to spread the thicker frosting on top. However, the thicker ganache was now too thick to spread easily, and cake crumbs got mixed into the frosting, ruining the smooth finish:

To solve this, I made another batch of ganache using 8oz of white chocolate and spread it on top of the previous layer of frosting. For decoration, I had made letters and shapes with colored melted white chocolate:

The cake was a success, my friends really liked it!

A note: for all of this, I used white chocolate bars. I strongly recommend NOT using so called "White Chips" as these contain absolutely no cocoa butter and have a very different texture when melted.

Things I want to learn, Books I want to read.

This post is not really food related, but I felt like writing it. I am going off to college next, and I am going to have to somehow pick a major and choose classes from all the different amazing classes I can take. I am pretty sure I want to be a science major, but there are a lot of other things I want to learn, and so I decided to make a list.

And so, in no particular order, the things I want to learn:

• Photography. I want to actually understand what all the different settings do and I want to be able to take really cool looking pictures (of food!! (and other stuff))
• Chinese. It would be so useful!! Because then I could go to my friends' houses and creep on their conversations with their parents!! (And also other reasons of course, like that a large portion of the world speaks it.)
• Cello. It is so beautiful.
• Arabic. It is just that boss. Also, this country lacks a lot of cultural awareness of the entire part of the world that speaks Arabic.
• CS. Because then I would be able to do cool stuff.
• How to make croissants (because they are freakin' delicious)
• How to twirl my pencil (I know it is passé, but I still want to know (I actually once wrote a terrible short story where the main character was a really good at twirling his pencil. The story also involved aliens called "iglepuffs" and a π/pie contest.)
• Robotics. It's just awesome.  (at least my robotics friends say so, and I believe them)
• Knowing how to draw decently would be useful
• One day I also should learn my funtional groups. You know, that aldehyde ketone esther stuff. Then I could look at a molecule and say a very a fancy name for it and look smart! Yay!
• There are definitely more things that belong on this list, but I cannot remember them now.

Also, there are so many books I need to read. I am currently almost finished with my first real French literature book (Le Chercheur d'Or by Le Clézio), and then I have a long list of other books I need to read. Unfortunately, I often forget what books I need to read, so here is what I remember at the moment:

• The series A song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin (AKA Game of Thrones)
• Ender's Game
• The Flavor Thesaurus (it's more of a looking stuff up book, but I kinda want to read through it)
• Harry Potter 7 (I have only read it once! Completely Unacceptable!)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (My english class ran out of time to read it, so we only watched the movie, and I was absent for half of it)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (the title sounds cool and my friend likes it)
• Oh, es él!  A silly book in spanish concerning Julio Iglesias and a crossdresser.
• I should probably eventually finish the first book of Asimov's Foundation series (I have a tendency to start books and not finish them)

Raspberry Cupcakes with Chocolate-Orange Ganache

As the school year is ending (I had my last day of High School last Friday!) we had a good-bye party for a teacher who is leaving the country, so I decided to bring cupcakes! I have just recently been introduced to Sprinkles cupcakes, and there are really quite good (especially when they are free!!), so I was inspired to continue the cupcake trend.

I went to Joy the Baker's blog and found a tasty looking recipe for raspberry almond cupcakes with chocolate ganache, and I decided to make it. I gathered all my ingredients and started measuring and mixing, but when I opened my bottle of almond extract, it was empty! All of the extract must have had evaporated over the many years we have had that bottle. So, I replaced the almond extract with 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract and 1 tsp of orange flower water. Unfortunately, the orange flower water did not come out much at all in the final cupcakes, so next time I will put more in. In an attempt to bring out the orange flavor, I added some orange zest to the chocolate ganache, and it was delicious!

I made mini cupcakes instead of full sized ones, using a mini muffin pan and filling a regular pan 1/3 of the way. I also boosted the raspberries, going from the original 1/3c to 1/2c or more. The cupcakes were not soggy at all.

Raspberry Cupcakes with Chocolate-Orange Ganache (basically copied from raspberry almond cupcakes with chocolate ganache with a few variations)

Batter (makes 12 cupcakes)

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tsp orange flower water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries, roughly chopped

1. Put a rack in the middle of the oen and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin cups with paper liners.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt inside a bowl.
3. Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
4. Beat in egg and almond extract.
5. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture and milk alternately in 3 batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and beating just until incorporated.
6. Fold in the raspberries.
7. Divide the batter among lined muffin cups. Bake until pale golden and a wooden pick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Turn cupcakes out onto a rack to cool completely.
8. Spread frosting on cupcakes once cooled.

Chocolate-Orange Ganache

• 3/4 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup heavy cream or 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp orange zest

1. Microwave the chocolate with the cream on low until the chocolate is partially melted.
2. Stir until all of the chocolate is melted.
3. If frosting is too loose to spread, let it sit at room temperature for 10 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, frosting will continue to thicken as it stands.

Cardamom Sour-Cream Waffles

Last week, for mother's day, I decided to make my mother a special breakfast. She likes waffles, so I searched up some new waffle recipes. In the past I have made light and crispy waffles and yeasted waffles, but this year I wanted something new. The epicurious newsletter presented me with an interesting idea: Cardamom Waffles. My family really likes cardamom, the spice used in carrot cake and Indian rice pudding, so I decided to give these waffles a try.

I followed Epicurious' recipe (which was published in the magazine Gourmet) almost to the letter; I, however, ground my own cardamom instead of using pre-ground, and my father made a delicious fruit salad (mango, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries) to serve with it instead of the lingonberry preserves specified the recipe.

Here is the recipe, pretty much copied word for word from the original!

Cardamom Sour-Cream Waffles

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• Rounded 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (You can also use 3-4 cardamom pods and grind the inner seeds yourself with a mortar/pestle or spice grinder)
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon mild honey
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Method:

1. Preheat a waffle iron until hot.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom in a large bowl.
3. Whisk together remaining ingredients in another bowl, then whisk into flour mixture until just combined.
4. Lightly brush waffle iron with oil and cook waffles according to manufacturer's instructions.

Yay for simple directions!

These waffles were delicious fresh and were still good the next day when reheated in the toaster!

A little bit of maple syrup or honey brings out the spice of the cardamom.