Chocolate Mousse Cake for Maggie

I'm a firm believer that cakes are for special occasions. And truthfully, the kind of cakes I make really should be reserved for special occasions only, for the health of everyone involved. Last week, I had the opportunity to dust off my cake ring and offset spatula for my friend Maggie's last day at work.

Maggie and I shared an office together as interns. When we both decided to come back the same team after college, we (surprise!) ended up in the office again. Even though we are in different disciplines and look completely different, I can't tell you the number of times I've been called Maggie, even after almost three years!

Last days are work are a funny thing. When someone leaves the company to pursue their own interests, like starting their own company, people celebrate. Taken out of context though, it could seem pretty horrifying. When Maggie went to the cupcake shop on the morning of her last day, the conversation went something like this:

Sales girl: "So what are these cupcakes for?"
Maggie: "It's my last day at work."
Sales girl: "Oh my god I'm so sorry! What are you going to do next?"
Maggie: "I... don't really know yet."
Sales girl: "..."

Baking Orgy at Kathy's

I haven't had time to post in a while due to grad school application/decision craziness. Thankfully that's all settled now, and it'll be "Paris Sweets in Boston" come September (note to self, don't include geographical information in the blog title next time).

Last week, I was suddently struck with the desire to make bread. Beautiful, warm, domestic-goddess-style bread, and lots of it. Some people have dreams about wanting lots of babies. I wanted bread. I knew I couldn't possibly handle all this bread-making by myself, so I turned to my friend Kathy.

Kathy's my partner-in-crime when it comes to baking. She's technically my coworker (along with 90,000 other people), but we really bonded over food (I made her wedding cakes last summer). Once in a while, we'd get together and unleash our culinary prowess in furious, multi-hour baking sprees. And Kathy's sugar-loving husband Colin usually ends up with lots of mixing bowls and spatulas to "clean".

Really, we're scary efficient when it comes to churning out baked goods. This time, we whipped up sage garlic bread, blackberry coconut bread, cinnamon bread, and mango tres leches cake in less than three hours.

(At least we had one savory item this time. Last time we made cranberry tart, French apple cake, and Paula Deen's insanely decadent pumpkin pie. My heart still hurts when I think about that one.)

Lemon Blueberry Bundt Cake

Two weeks ago, I had a lovely Friday lunch in a cute neighborhood cafe with a friend. The food was comforting (mmm wild boar shepherd's pie), but the real attraction was the baked goods piled behind the glass counter. The whole display was, well, rather American. There were buckets of cookies bigger than my head and five different types of bundt cakes. Despite my usual preference for feather light sponge cakes and delicate custards, I have a soft spot for moist, buttery cakes, especially when they are richly perfumed with citrus and spices.

The slice of lemon bundt cake I bought was...disappointing. I could taste the lemon, but it was missing the lemon fragrance. As commonplace as they are, lemons and oranges have surprisingly elegant aromas (Close your eyes the next time you smell a lemon). Forget passionfruit and lychee, citrus fruits need to take back their status as exotic fruits!

I went home and consulted my trusty America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. It might not be fancy or European, but when it comes to American baked goods, ATK rocks. I used their recipe for lemon bundt cake and added some blueberries to the batter. The cake at the cafe had a soaking syrup, so I made up one with some vodka added for extra flavor (I'm sure lemon has alcohol soluble flavonoids...). I didn't have enough lemon juice left for a glaze, so I made up an almond glaze, which complements the lemon very nicely.

The cake was moist and fragrant, with a tight crumb. It was fantastic paired with a cup of Earl Grey tea.

Birthday Cake Part II: Ispahan Charlotte

I know sometimes I seem schizophrenic, but really, I just like variety. In college, I went from singing Brahms in choir to playing guitar in a rock band, sometimes in the same day, even. (In hindsight, I totally should have rocked out in my choir outfit. Nothing says "stick it to the man" like a high-waisted, floor-length skirt.) The second birthday cake was a complete opposite from the tiramisu cake. Whereas the tiramisu cake had bold, popular flavors, the charlotte was delicate and floral and complex, with a name that only pastry buffs would recognize.

So what is Ispahan?

Ispahan is one of the signature flavors of celebrity pastry chef Pierre Hermé. It consists of raspberry, lychee, and rosewater. I've actually never had any of the Ispahan desserts, but the name is so evocative of Arabian Nights (it'd make a great cocktail too, I need to remember that next time I go out). I was going to make a pear charlotte, but then I remembered that I had all the ingredients for Ispahan on hand. I do love my pantry.

Birthday Cake Part I: Tiramisu Cake

I'm used to making birthday cakes for other people, so when it came to my own birthday, it seemed natural that I'd be making it too (a friend told me he was too intimidated to make me a cake, hah.) I ended up making two joint birthday cakes. One was a joint birthday cake with my sister, and the other one with a friend at work.

(Incidentally, does it seem like you know a lot of people whose birthdays are close to yours, or it just me?)

The first birthday cake was a tiramisu cake because my sister adores tiramisu. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The recipe is fairly straight forward: soak two disks of gorgeous yellow cake in coffee syrup, sandwich with mascarpone cream and chopped chocolate, and top with espresso-flavored whipped cream.

Making the cake was interesting, especially as I had to bring half of my baking equipment across the border to Canada. It's a good thing I didn't fly, because I don't think security would be too happy with my Le Cordon Bleu knife set...

Chocolate Strawberry Birthday Cake

I was on birthday cake duty last Friday, when three friends hosted a spectacular joint birthday party. There were no allergies, but chocolate had to be involved. I briefly toyed with the idea of making three cakes, each one with a different spin on chocolate cake (chocolate sponge with fresh fruit and whipped cream for a modern look, chocolate cake with malt buttercream for the five-year-old in everyone, and a hefty chocolate and stout pound cake for the "too cool for birthday cake" crowd). Alas, all the recent moving and tango classes left me with very little free time, so I settled for one cake - a towering concoction with four layers of tender chocolate buttermilk cake and strawberry-filled chantilly cream in between.

Speaking of moving, the cake matches my new furniture quite well, don't you think?

I got the cake recipe from an old article in America's Test Kitchen for the old fashioned chocolate cake. I improvised a little by adding two teaspoons of espresso powder - it just adds that depth to chocolate desserts without tasting like coffee (for all the coffee connoisseurs out there, yes I know espresso powder doesn't taste like "real coffee", but I like the taste anyway!) I was really pleased with the way the cakes turned out; I was afraid they would be too tender to be sliced and handled, but these were very sturdy after a quick chill in the fridge.

Pierre Herme's Criollo Cake

Now that my WSET exam is finally over, I can catch up with blogging. No more late-night flashcard making! I don't know how much more geography and region names I could have crammed into my head. (Although I have to admit, I wish I had an iPhone flashcard app back in school. It totally beats lugging a stack of cards everywhere).

This is a cake I made two weeks ago to celebrate the new office move. The new building is decidedly more labyrinthine, I think it was built before people realized that right-angle intersections are a good thing. And don't even get me started on the garage. Let's just say that it's the traditional location for intern puzzle hunts.

On the bright side (no pun intended), I finally get a window view (even if it's through someone else's office).

Let's talk about the cake. The Criollo cake is a multi-layered affair consisting of two coconut daquoise disks, lemon-ginger chocolate mousse, and caramelized bananas. It sounds a little fussy, but it's actually quite simple to make (it's definitely one of the easier cakes in Chocolate Desserts). As a testament to it's simplicity, I made it because I had four egg whites to get rid of and I happened to have all the ingredients in the pantry.

Sour Cream Banana Chip Muffins (Best.Banana.Muffins.Ever.)

I love America's Test Kitchen. I'm a regular subscriber to Cooks Illustrated and I love their experimental approach to cooking. I wish they would take me on as a contributing writer. I'd have a grand time being scientific in the kitchen (I have a devoted kitchen calculator, a kitchen laptop equipped with matlab is on the horizon), and I already have an established taste tester pool at work. I just hope moving to Vermont isn't part of the deal...

I own the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, a giant 5-ring binder of recipes that can be conveniently unclipped and taken individually to the kitchen. I was looking for ways to use up some ripe bananas, and I inadvertently stumbled upon a culinary bombshell.

You can ripen bananas by roasting them in the oven.

The idea is to pop whole bananas, unpeeled, into the heated oven while you prepare and measure the other ingredients for banana cake. After 15 minutes, the skins will turn black but the flesh will be brown, soft, and sweet.

And let me tell you, it totally works. I was rewarded with a very fragrant kitchen and lusciously sweet bananas that tasted slightly caramelized. Hmmm... I think that's how they make those intensely aromatic banana breads in Maui.

Blueberry Lemon Cake

I got the inspiration for this charming cake from Molly Wizenberg's thoughtful blog, Orangette. I found out about her blog writing workshop through the awesome food distribution list at work. (One of the quirks of working at a big company is that there's bound to be people who share your interests. Don't even get me started on the daily deluge of cute cat pictures in my inbox).

I've read Molly book, A Homemade Life, and was impressed by how she wove simple, heart-felt stories around themes of food. After signing up for the workshop, I decided to drop by her blog and see what's new on Orangette. I was intrigued by the Marmalade cake, which involves pureeing whole boiled citrus fruits and incorporating it, peel and all, to the cake batter.

Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Sheet Cake, Y'all

Howdy folks. For this cake, the Paris in Paris Sweets refers to Paris, Texas.

Once in a while, I need to embrace the fact that I grew up in the South. I love country music. Sometimes I fantasize about driving a rusty truck, or even a tractor! Okay, maybe more like a cabernet sauvignon harvesting machine than an International Harvester, but I digress.

Whenever I'm feeling particularly "homesick", I like to read Pioneer Woman's blog. I love her blog, especially the incredible step-by-step pictures she provides. When I first read about her Best Ever Chocolate Sheet Cake, I was at once repulsed and fascinated. The entire cake uses almost a pound of butter. On top of that, the icing itself uses a pound of confectioner's sugar. Sweet god.