Week 2: Recipe 4: Lemon Cakes with Syrup

Recipe 4 of the 52 Recipes a Year challenge, and it occurs to me that I gravitate toward baking. Perhaps it's the December spirit lingering, but I find there is nothing like sharing a homemade treat wih family and friends. The fact that there is always a pack of flour in the house (leering at me), may have something to do with it. It's just too tempting to get my bake on.

Hence, these lemon cakes. 

Counting in the Fall Baking Challenge, these little cakes were among the best pastries I've made so far, which was a surprise. Since they look like muffins I expected the dough to be airy and the flavour mild (bland), but the lemon flavour was strong and the dough was substantial and tastefully sweet. (I must admit I did tweak the recipe a bit.) In short, these cakes are basically slices of pound cake disguised as muffins. As for the raspberries and the whipped cream, they were an okay but unnecessary addition. The whipped cream (unsweetened) added little to the texture of the cakes, which were moist enough to enjoy without additions, and the sour raspberries clashed a little with the sweet dough. Perhaps blackberries would have been a better choice. (Tweaked) recipe below, serves 6.

Ingredients:

• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 100 grams flour 
• 1 tsp. dried yeast
• 50 ml milk
• 2 whisked eggs
• 40 grams full-cream butter
• 100 grams sugar
• 50 ml orange liqueur
• 125 ml whipping cream
• 125 grams raspberries
• pinch of salt 
• 50 ml water

Directions:

1.  Mix lemon zest, flour, salt, yeast, milk, eggs, butter, and 60 grams sugar. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let batter rise in a warm place for 40 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 200°C or 390°F. Scoop batter into muffin molds. Bake for 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, mix lemon juice, liqueur, 50 ml water, and the rest of the sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and let simmer on low heat for 5 minutes.
4. Take cakes out of the oven and put them in a deep plate. Pour hot syrup onto them and let cool 1 hour. While they cool, pour syrup onto them a few times more.
5. Beat whipping cream until stiff. Serve cakes with wipping cream and raspberries.

Boterkoek and Apple-Almond Pie

One of my favourite things to bake is the traditional Dutch 'boterkoek' (butter cake). That's not just because it's one of the most delicious pastries of the Dutch kitchen. It's also very practical, as in: it's easily made and not too hard on your wallet. 

The flavor and texture are not easily described or compared to other cakes. The koek in boterkoek literally translates to 'cookie', and that's a fairer comparison, or at least gives a better idea of the sort of pastry this actually is. It's a 'what you see is what you get' sort of cake. There are no layers or fillings, but to simply call it a giant cookie wouldn't do it justice. The texture is comparable to almond paste only a little more solid, and the flavor is sweet, just what you get when you mix butter and sugar. Chewing on it almost feels like it melts in your mouth, and that's quite an achievement for a pastry of any kind.

Perhaps it's best to leave the descriptions for what they are. Try for yourself, and you'll see you won't regret it. But if you're hesitant, rest assured: this cake was entirely family approved.

Ingredients:

• 300 grams soft, sweet cream butter
• 100 grams fine sugar
• 100 grams caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• 300 grams flour
• 1 whisked egg

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C or 390°F. With an electric mixer, beat butter, sugars, and salt into a cream.
2. Mix in flour and knead until you have a ball of dough. Wrap in plastic foil and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Grease a boterkoek pan (or another type of low cake pan). Press the dough into the pan and flatten the surface. Brush whisked egg onto the surface and use a fork to draw a checkered pattern on it.
4. Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool in the pan for a few hours or until the butter has completely solidified. 

As for the apple-almond pie, it's such a common pastry that it needs no introduction. What makes this pie different than the traditional apple pie is that it is filled with almonds and apples, which makes the filling a little less sweet and a little more chewy. The pie got good reviews: it was munched away by five people, including myself.

Ingredients:

• 300 grams self raising flour + extra to dust
• 275 grams caster sugar
• 200 grams cold sweet cream butter
• 50 grams of grated almonds
• 1 egg (split)
• 4 apples
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 big tbsp apricot jam
• springform pan ø 18 cm or 7 inch.

Directions:

1. Mix flour, 200 grams sugar, and salt in a bowl. Using two knives, cut in the butter and mix until you have a crumbly dough. Add egg white and knead with cool hands into a ball. Wrap in plastic foil and refrigerate 1 hour.
2. Pre-heat oven to 175°C or 350°F. Dust working surface, rolling pin, and dough. Roll two-thirds of the dough into a sheet of 1 cm or 0.5 inch thick. Use the springform to cut out a circle and place it on the bottom of the springform pan. Cut out strips to cover the sides of the springform pan. 
3. Peel the apples, remove the cores, and cut into cubes. Put the cubes into a bowl, add the almonds, and stir in the cinnamon and the rest of the sugar. Scoop into the crust. 
4. Roll the rest of the dough into a sheet and cut out strips of about 2 cm or 1 inch thick. Place them onto the filling in a checkered pattern. Brush some of the yoke onto the strips.
5. Bake a little below the center of the oven for about 1 hr. If the strips get too dark, cover with silver foil. When the cake is done, brush the apricot jam onto the surface. Let it cool in the pan for about an hour.

C'est tout. Bon appetit!

Orange Mascarpone Cake from Hell

This week, the Fall Baking Challenge required us to bake a cake and I chose the Orange Mascarpone Cake. The Orange Mascarpone Cake was supposed to be my masterpiece but it became my master disaster. According to the recipe, this cake should take 1 hr and 30 minutes to make. It took me little over 5 hours and it still ended up a tiny little monster. So much went wrong! I would've given up if I hadn't already spent all those ingredients on it.

Yep, that's my miserable little cake right there. I will explain how it got so sad.

The first thing that went wrong was entirely on me. Going by the quantities of the ingredients, this recipe assumes a regular sized springform pan. I used a small springform pan but forgot I had to adjust the quantities to it. The result was that the cake turned out a whole lot thicker (higher) than usual cakes: after baking it for 25 minutes I took it out of the oven, removed the pan from the bottom, and let it cool. Only after my first try at the cream did I discover (by slicing the cake open horizontally) that it wasn't done yet. (In my defense, we didn't have skewers for a test.) So, back in the oven it went! It took another 40 minutes for it to be completely done.

By then I'd already gone to the supermarket for another batch of mascarpone, because, yes, that cream had proved a real bitch to make! 

Firstly, the syrup that goes into the cream. (I'm even rolling my eyes at the memory of it.) One sheet of gelatin, the recipe said.

The recipe lies!

I boiled the orange juice for the syrup, added the sheet of gelatin, and let it cool. It certainly looked nothing like syrup (just a thick sort of orange juice) but I figured this might be precisely what the recipe intended. So I mixed it in with the cream and got nothing but an incohesive mess of watery, orange mascarpone.

Hence, off to the supermarket I went to get more mascarpone.

My second attempt at making the syrup went fairly well (with no less than 12 (!) gelatin sheets). To let it cool, I put the pan in a dish with cold water in the sink. Meanwhile, I sliced open the cake and sprinkled it with orange-flavored liquor. Then I turned to the sink to wash my hands, opened the tap... and let all the cold water run right into the orange syrup that was cooling there. Well, fuck.

A third attempt at making the syrup commenced. Another 300 ml of orange juice and 12 more gelatin sheets later I had a proper syrup, which I let cool on the stove this time. Meanwhile, my mixture of mascarpone and powdered sugar was waiting in the fridge, beautifully white and smooth and sweet.

After the syrup had cooled I mixed it in with the mascarpone. It looked fine at first, but as I was spreading it onto the cake it began to... well, it became lumpy, like you see in the photo. And I wasn't sure if that happened because the mascarpone was cold and the syrup was at room temperature (like it was supposed to be), or because it was around 30°C (86°F) today, or if there was any other reason like leprechauns pissing in my food behind my back. But it makes no difference. In the end, what was supposed to happen (according the recipe, but apparently not according the laws of nature) did not happen. Even my bake-savvy sister had no solution.

Additionally, the candied orange slices were too large even for my 'high cake'.

Summed up, that's 5 unusually dedicated hours to a disaster of an Orange Mascarpone cake from someone who doesn't even like oranges that much. The irony isn't lost on me.

But there's more. I had to try the cake too, of course.

Turns out, it's not even good!

The cake is a bit on the dry side, although to be fair it's not so dry it puts off. Perhaps it's a matter of taste. I like cakes that are a bit more moist. 

But it's really quite bland, too; a bite is much of the same. All the flavors used are orange. The cake is flavored with orange peel, the layers are covered with orange liquor and orange mascarpone, and then the cake is covered with the same mascarpone. Perhaps it would have been nice to use chocolate (or anything else) as an extra flavor.

So. Would I recommend you this cake?

Yeah. Sure. Knock yourselves out. Feel my pain and weep.

(Don't do it.)

But - on the bright side - I really liked the candied oranges, if only because they're so photogenic.

I love how even the peel becomes tasty if you candy it.

Candied Oranges:

Ingredients:

• 2 oranges
• 200 grams sugar
• 300 ml water

Directions:

1. Mix sugar with water and bring to a boil. Wash the oranges, slice them thinly, remove seeds. Put slices in the hot sugar water and turn heat low. Leave for 30 minutes.
2. Pre-heat oven to 100°C or 212°F. Drain slices and put them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Dry in the oven for 45 minutes.

So, wanna test the limits of your sanity? Here's the recipe verbatim (well, not actually verbatim, I had to translate it):

Orange Mascarpone Cake From Hell

Serves: 10 (it says)

Takes: 1 hr & 30 min. (bahaha)

Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 200 grams sugar
• 180 grams + extra to dust
• salt
• butter
• 300 ml orange juice
• grated peel of 2 oranges
• 1 gelatin sheet (you're on your own, kid)
• 500 grams mascarpone
• 50 grams powdered sugar
• about 5 tbsp. orange liquor

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 175°C or 347°F. Split eggs. Beat yokes with 150 grams sugar and the peel of 1 orange until creamy. Beat eggwhites until stiff while gradually adding 50 grams sugar.
2. Mix first half of the eggwhite mixture in with the yokes mixture. When mixed well, stir in the other half. Sift 180 grams of flour and a pinch of salt into the egg mixture and stir well, so you get a smooth batter. (Until here I was still quite pleased with how it was panning out.)
3. Scoop the batter into a greased (butter) and dusted (flour) springform pan and bake 15-25 minutes or until golden-brown and done. Take cake out of the oven and let cool 5 minutes. Then take cake out of the springform pan and let cool more.
4. In a sauce pan, mix orange juice with the rest of the orange peel and let boil until you have about 100 ml left. Meanwhile, soak the gelatin (however many or few you dare to use) in cold water, squeeze to drain them, and stir them into the orange juice. Let cool to room temperature.
5. Mix mascarpone with powdered sugar and mix in the 'orange syrup' (or 'gelatin mixture', or 'devil's brew'). Cut the cake horizontally in three layers and sprinkle each layer richly with the orange liquor. Then spread one-fourth of the mascarpone mixture on the top of each layer and put the cake back together. Cover the entire cake with the rest of the mascarpone mixture. Let stiffen in fridge, then decorate with candied oranges.
6. Get out of the fetal position and pick yourself up from the kitchen floor. Come on. Get yourself together.

So, to sum it all up? Never. Ever. Again.

But if you do try it, you brave soul you, I salute you.