Powder v. Soda

I saw a Land o' Lakes baking magazine at Costco today, and I thought I'd pick it up to see if there were any useful recipes or tips. I found one about pie pans (use glass) and one about cookie sheets (use shiny).

But I also learned the difference between baking powder and baking soda. I knew the powder had other ingredients—cream of tartar and cornstarch—but I didn't know when a recipe would call for one over the other.

Use baking soda in anything with sour ingredients. So if the recipe calls for sour cream, vinegar, or buttermilk, use baking soda.

Good thing I'd chosen, by instinct only, to subtitle my book: "A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt." Soda would not have worked.

Cake Love

Here's an excerpt from Let Me Eat Cake. I added the last two paragraphs today after thinking about it in the woods with my daughter on our morning walk.

At the party that night, my fluffy white creation shares a table with the $85 Patisserie cake, a large, flat, beige display with fancy brown writing and a few large, elegant white chocolate flowers. Inside is a delicate and creamy cake that’s not overly flavorful, but it shows up the cake I bought from Charm City Cakes in October, in both flavor and price (mine was bland and $190). But long before the cakes are cut, almost all of the forty guests approach me to say they cannot wait to get a piece of the cake they’ve heard so much about. And when they finally do, I am a powerful cake goddess. Men kiss my hand. Women kneel at my feet. Some weep with delight; others sit alone, moaning with pleasure. (One woman later begs my sister to have me make the cake for her fortieth in a few weeks.) Moments later, the party winds down, as every party does once the cake is cut and eaten, and the sugar buzz has dipped to a sleepy hum. And we all depart, slowly, the memory of Martha Stewart’s coconut teatime cake, as recreated by Leslie, the newly crowned cake queen, forever etched on our tongues, a benchmark for all cakes, past, present, and future.

Is this how Martha Stewart feels? Or is she so used to her greatness that she accepts accolades as she breathes air—as something so second nature that she doesn’t think about it, yet, if it were gone, she would surely die?

I think instead that the cake queens among us—and the bakers and chefs, the painters, photographers, writers—make these things because it’s our way of both giving and receiving love. To stand by a cake table and hear people you know and don’t know saying “oh—my—god” after their first bite of your white chocolate caramel cheesecake with milk chocolate ganache and almonds is to be loved, albeit in a kinky, lusty way. To have your offerings on the Thanksgiving dessert table disappear first and quickly is to be embraced wholly, despite what you might have said to Aunt Betty at the last Thanksgiving. Artists—whether they practice in the studio or the kitchen—want to make this exchange: their poetry for your love, their painting for your love, their triple-layer coconut teatime cake for your love.

Here Come the Brides

The best thing about selling a book about cake to Simon & Schuster (read the news here) is that it's like getting a license to investigate all the oddball cake toppers, like this one—really a wine bottle stopper—found in a shop in Rehoboth, Delaware, an Eastern Shore beach town known primarily for its Nic-o-bolis (a trademarked stromboli) and homosexuals (neither trademarked nor strombolis).

Even though it was $20, I couldn't resist the two brides. I think they look a little like me.

Omigod-ish

I called this cake Decadent when I posted the recipe in October of 2005. So what must it be now? Oh-My-God-ish?

Once you have the basics of cheesecake—and those would be four bricks of cream cheese, five eggs, and about a cup of sugar—you can pretty much make what you like. Add some jarred butterscotch topping, chocolate chips, jimmies. It's not too expensive to experiment.

I've made coconut, eggnog (killer), pumpkin-chocolate swirl, fruit, chocolate-orange, and dark chocolate, and I've made many of them without sugar. They are the easiest to doctor for the diabetic. (To adapt the following recipe, omit the crust or make it entirely with almond meal instead of cookies. Replace the all the sugar with 1/2 granular Splenda, 1/2 xylitol, available at health food stores. Use sugar-free candy, which you can find online or in some grocery stores.)

This cheesecake is the result of a dollar-store mistake—a bag of caramels bought to make candy apples the day before I decided to diet, which was the day before I decided I would make this cheesecake and couldn't be on a diet anyway. You follow, right? You're on a diet too. Tomorrow.

Here's what you'll need.

White Chocolate and Caramel Cream Cheese Pie (with Chocolate Ganache)

Crust

14 shortbread cookies OR chocolate wafers OR chocolate graham crackers
1/2 C almond meal or 1/4 C ground almonds
5 T melted butter
1 T sugar

Filling

4 bricks cream cheese (Philly ONLY, and I use 1/3 less fat; I'm delusional), at room temperature
5 eggs
3/4 C to 1 C sugar
1 T vanilla
small bag of caramels
1/2 bag white chocolate chips
2 T heavy whipping cream

Ganache

1/2 bag dark or milk chocolate chips
9 T heavy cream

Optional

sliced almonds
raspberry (or other) preserves
butterscotch
whatevah!

Equipment

10" springform pan
large pizza pan (for bain-marie)
heavy duty foil
double boilers


Instructions

1.) Preheat your oven to 350°. Spray the springform pan with PAM (c'mon, it's really the only non-stick cooking spray, isn't it?). Mix all the crust ingredients in a food processor, and press into the bottom of the pan, going up the sides ever so slightly just to cover that seam. Bake the crust for about ten minutes, then reduce your oven temperature to 325°.

2. Fill a pan larger than the springform about 2/3 with hot water, and place it in the oven. Wrap the springform pan in several layers of heavy-duty foil, making sure not to put a fold or a seam anywhere below the top rim of the pan; you don't want any water to seep between the foil and the pan, or it will destroy your dessert!

3. Beat the cream cheese until it's smooth.

4. Melt the caramels (after you unwrap each of the suckers, and after the hand cramps are manageable) with 2 T of whipping cream in a medium bowl in the microwave (follow instructions on the package).

5. Melt the white chocolate chips in a double boiler.

6. Add the eggs, one at a time, to the cream cheese, mixing until smooth.

7. Add the sugar, and mix thoroughly.

8. Add the vanilla.

9. Mix about half of the cream cheese in the double boiler with the melted chocolate, and mix well.

10. Pour the melted caramel in the other half of the cream cheese, and mix well.

11. Pour the white chocolate mixture over the crust, and then pour the caramel over the white chocolate mixture. Swirl it. (This involves putting in a knife or fork and swirling it around. It won't matter, though, because you're going to cover this baby with ganache. Still, the pretty swirl that comes out is like wearing lingerie. Sometimes only you have to know.)

12. Put the pan inside the pan of water in the oven, and bake for over an hour, maybe closer to two. Check it in forty minutes, then again in an hour, if the batter was still liquid.

13. When your cheesecake is finished, you will know; the edges will have rounded and pulled away, but the center will still wiggle a little. Don't cook it too long; you don't want it to be dry and crack.

14. When the cheesecake has cooled, run a knife inside the pan, and unhook it. You will need two plates to turn the cake over; one to turn it over so that you can lift off the bottom of the springform pan, and your serving plate, so you can flip it back.

15. Melt chocolate chips and cream in a heavy saucepan. Pour it over the cheesecake, and smooth with an offset spatula. Chill.

16. If you'd like, spread more of the chocolate—or use butterscotch or caramel or even preserves!—on the sides, and press sliced almonds all the way around.

This cheesecake, like all cheesecakes, tastes best after 24 hours. I don't know why.

And could we call this what it really is: cream cheese pie? It's a crust and a filling. It's not cake.

bain-marie

Why is a bain-marie so important in cheesecake baking? Recipes without flour or corn starch (and, let's face it, you don't want to interrupt the cheese-y smoothness with powdery thickeners, though it might make the pie closer to cake) tend to crack, and it's easier to overcook a cheesecake (another cause of cracking) when you don't use a water bath.

Below are last week's white chocolate cheesecake and the other night's white chocolate caramel cheesecake. Guess which one took advantage of the bain-marie.

Bobblead!

Today, DecoPac recalled 80,000 bobble head football cake decorations because of lead paint violations.

I know I often feel like a box of lead after I've eaten half a sheet cake at a child's birthday party. This explains why.

The press release says that only the figurines with the green bases have been affected by the recall. It's a good thing. I can't imagine pairing one of those gorgeous purple Baltimore Ravens uniform with a green base!

Maybe that look works for the Patriots.

Let Them Let Me Eat Cake!

Baking a cake takes no time at all. And eating it—that's like inhaling. But writing about it sucks up the weeks and months, and next thing you know, it's more than a year since the cake blog has been given some sugar.

My sugar came yesterday in the form of an agent for my book, which I like to call Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt (and some vanilla! how did I forget vanilla?).

Jumping up and down every few minutes takes a lot out of you, but I figure the more I jump, the more cake I get to eat. And there's a pan of Aunt Margaret's chocolate cake on the counter in the kitchen right now.

There will be cake in my future.

Stay tuned, cake lovers. Much to come, including a brand new cake for my girlfriend's fortieth and a woman who wrote a play in which the lead converses with a gateau—a chocolate one.

Chez Schaefer?

In yet another derogatory remark directed at professional women, Comptroller Willie Donny said that he wouldn't debate his opponent, Janet S. Owens, "on how to bake a chocolate cake."

It's a good thing, because he'd lose that one, too.

Schaefer's comment is not only an insult to Owens, a smart cookie, indeed, but it's a blow to cake bakers everywhere.

Step aside, old man. We're tired of your stale attitude, your bitter rhetoric, and your sour puss. Time for sweet things to take over the world.

(Truth is: I'd vote for the chocolate cake over either candidate, but that says more about me than it does about them.)

Just Wrong

cakes

Witty Re-Torte

This recipe was adapted from an old Martha Stewart Passover favorite. Several things were wrong with the original, including hazelnuts. (Blech!) The problem with MS recipes is that several steps are incorporated under the same numeral. For instance, the original recipe has about four steps, which misleads you into believing this is an easy recipe. It's not, but what is harder is sifting through the many varied tasks in each. My rewritten way is much easier.

You do not have to celebrate Passover to make this cake. It's perfect for people trying to cut back on flour and sugar, great for diabetics, and lovely for anyone. If you want to make it with the real processed sugar and flour, go right ahead.

Fudge Glaze
(Makes 1 3/4 cups)

1.5 C whole blanched almonds
1 C Splenda
1 C Xylitol (or E)
2/3 C cocoa powder
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
1 stick butter
Pinch of salt

1.) Blend almonds and 1.5 C water till fine.
2.) Strain almond milk with fine sieve. Reserve the nut mixture.
3.) Whisk 1 C sweetener (1/2 of each) together with cocoa powder; set aside.
4.) Put 1 C almond milk in a saucepan with the vanilla seeds, the butter, the other C sweeteners, and the salt; bring to a full boil.
5.) Whisk in cocoa mixture, and return to full boil.
6.) Remove from heat, cool 30 minutes, store in airtight container, and refrigerate.

(That is the best fudge glaze you will ever make! Use it as frosting or filling for just about anything.)

Chocolate Torte

1.75 C almond meal
3/4 C butter
3/4 C cocoa powder, plus more for pan
1/3 cup matzo cake meal (or your substitute)
6 large eggs, separated
1/2 C Splenda/Xylitol
1 t molasses
pinch of salt
1 C nut puree (from Fudge Glaze)
1/2 C Splenda/Xylitol processed superfine

1.) Preheat oven to 350°.
2.) Grease a 9-inch round cake pan with butter; dust with cocoa powder.
3.) Whisk together cocoa powder, almond meal, and matzo cake meal; set aside.
4.) Beat yolks, 1/2 C sweetener, and molasses on medium-high speed until mixture holds a ribbonlike trail for 3 seconds when you raise the whisk.
5.) Transfer to a large bowl, and fold in 1 C nut puree from Fudge Glaze.
6.) Clean mixer and whisk.
7.) Beat egg whites and salt on medium-high until soft peaks form.
8.) Add superfine sweeteners, beating till stiff and glossy.
9.) Fold egg whites and cocoa/almond meal/cake meal into the large bowl with the yolk mixture.
10.) Stir in melted butter.
11.) Pour into prepared pan; smooth top with an offset spatula.
12.) Bake until a wooden skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes; cool on wire rack.
13.) Invert pan, and remove cake; slice into two layers with serrated knife.
15.) Fill cake with half cup (or whatever!) fudge glaze.
16.) Cover top and sides with rest of glaze.
17.) Refrigerate 30 minutes.
18.) Cover sides with chopped almonds; decorate the top with chopped or whole almonds.
19.) Keep refrigerated till ready to serve.

To all the members of my tribe, I wish you the happiest of Passovers. And remember the true meaning of this, and every other holiday, They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.

The Sounds of Cake

If you have nothing to do on a rainy morning or lots of things to try and avoid doing on a rainy morning, do this. Why? I don't exactly know.

Thanks to astute reader David Beaudouin for turning me on to some real cake fun—and keeping me from things I ought to be doing.

Lost

Oh, friends, you know me better. A daily visit to The People's Court and an occasional foray into American Idol (and secret untold, unwitnessed by most people, visits to soap operas) are my only glimpses of shlock TV.

I'm speaking of myself. I am lost.

Yesterday, my hard drive crashed, leaving me without manuscripts, without pictures, without anything, including the two e-mails from famous authors and nine pages of already-daunting craft paper about the writing of the cake manuscript.

I have nothing left except for a real daughter, a real husband, and two real dogs, none of whom will do anything I tell them, and a wheel of frozen cake.

Alas, I am still woe, as I have sworn off the eating of white stuff for the entire month of March and, perhaps, April.

All that I have to comfort me are the memories of last night's episode of Seinfeld, in which Elaine complained, loudly, at her co-workers' constant cakedness. She's so sick of it that she takes a sick day, but when she returns, she's greeted by a handful of coworkers with a get-well cake.

ELAINE: Stop it! That's not even a song! I mean, now we're celebrating a sick day?

MALE WORKER: I think it's nice.

ELAINE: What? What is nice? Trying to fill the void in your life with flour and sugar and egg and vanilla? I mean, we are all unhappy. Do we have to be fat, too? ...I don't want one more piece of cake in my office!

Of course, it's an absolute lie. No sooner do they leave than Elaine realizes she's jonesing for cake. She goes into Mr. Peterman's office where she has the stupidity (because who would do this in real life) to start eating a gorgeously frosted piece of (obviously) wedding cake. She then learns that Peterman procured this slice from some auction house, where he paid oodles for it. After all, it's "[a] slice of cake from the wedding of King Edward VIII to Wallis Simpson, circa 1937, price—$29,000."

But even that is little comfort right now. Cake: It can't restore your hard drive.

Wheel of Cake

Spin the wheel. Take a bite. Spin the wheel. Take a bite.

The cake wheel was given to me by the lovely and talented Jamie Williams of SugarBakers. "It's what I give my brides," she said to me, as if I should expect no less, even though I'm there to do what's already been done to death, her Today show story. She was not, as some would believe, a loser of the "Hometown Wedding" cake competition. She wasn't selected by America, perhaps, but the couple liked her cake the best. They said so on national television.

About the cake wheel: I don't know what's what just yet, but I'm guessing I have some Amaretto Raspberry cake, some Red Velvet Fudge cake, some carrot, some lemon. Who cares? It's all going to taste like sweet heaven in my mouth (and hell on my hips).

If you're following my diet travails (more agony and torment, less effort) this week, you'll know that I am "off cake." Hell, I'm off sugar, bread, potatoes—anything white except cauliflower and paper. I'm trying to look good in last year's bathing suit (made by Omar the Tentmaker, as my sister always says) because I'm too broke for a new one. So this lovely cake wheel is cooling its heels in the freezer.

Here's the last paragraph of my interview. You will know now the true extent of my love.

I thank the folks at SugarBakers for their hospitality, and leave with my front-seat passenger, the hulking catering tray. I wonder whether I have the fortitude to lock it in the freezer the moment I get home. There's a quiet humming. I turn off the radio and listen. For twenty slow, rainy miles, the cake slices serenade me with Bach's "Ode to Joy," each inch square by four layer piece imitating a different instrument. I remember my own wedding on a beautiful sunny day, a day with all my friends, really good beer, and lots of cake. I miss two exits.

The Return of Cake Jones

I admit that I lost my desire—not for cake but for writing about cake. My first semester at school didn't meet my expectations for a combination of reasons in and out of my control. But that is a waterbath under the cheesecake, so to speak.

I have just returned from Asheville, North Carollina (see the pictures) with a renewed sense of purpose, place, and thing. I am [noun]; hear me [verb].

Joe Mackall, my mentor this semester, has suggested that I write 300 words in the next four months. This is four pages a day, by my calculations. And with all the other things I need to do (and wish to do), it's undoable. But I'll have to work on my ability to churn out the words willy nilly, without regard for structure and order. I'll have to channel some of Ann Lamott's courage to "write a shitty first draft," one that no one's going to read.

And so I've begun to put my interview notes into prose.

Meanwhile, I have several things warming in the oven. First, comedian Jim Gaffigan (gaffe again?) has a standup routine based on cake, something my husband saw on Comedy Central while I was in Asheville. I'm trying to secure an interview with him, either by phone or e-mail or in person when he hits DC in April.

Second, I'm hoping to interview a man who gives all the town's bakers their start, a man even my first interviewee could say nothing nasty about (a feat, let me tell you).

Third, I'm looking forward to the Joy of cake when my friend, Brownie, comes for a visit and we have crabcakes at Kocos and real cakes at my sister's 40th birthday.

Lots of events on the horizon. I hope you'll stay tuned. Oh, and for a tidbit too big to leave on the cake blog alone, check out A Doggy's Life.

Editor's Note

A few short hours after the previous post, the author lost all willpower. When faced with a choice between bad cake with pretty white frosting and no cake at all, she found she will still choose cake. Leslie will be saying 10 Hail Atkinses and doing penance with flax meal and salad.

Sculpting Medium?

I arrived early to my last cake class in order to have a heart to heart with the instructor. "I know this is supposed to be stress-free and fun. It's cake decorating, after all. But I suck!" I told her. A pathetic but exasperated sigh followed my admission.

Carole's look was earnest. "Now, are you speaking like a beginner? Or are you comparing yourself to me?" she asked.

I looked around the room for Jessica, the girl whose cake was two layers of perfection, crumb coated and iced smooth, an elegant, flat, perfect blank canvas. I pointed: "Her."

Jessica had worked in a bakery a few years ago, so, though she's enrolled in a beginner's class, she's, technically, a pro.

"See?" my cake teacher asks. She's not quite sure what's wrong with the way I frosted my cake. It's clear I don't have icing towels, but it's a fine start. But she does locate a problem: my cake plate. "This is flexible," she says. It will make my icing crack.

Once again, having the right equipment is essential. So I turned around and marched into the Cake Cottage with my credit card, where I racked up a tidy sum on a Wilton cake holder. I didn't spend the dollars on a lazy Susan; however, I found some nifty cookie cutters and a gigantic offset spatula. (I'm dying to try those cookies on the cover of Family Circle!)

And the evening didn't turn out too bad. I don't, as I had originally thought, suck. I do lack patience, but some of the patterns (I have wanted to call them "moves" or "stitches" since this whole thing began) are easy. I practiced my sweet pea about forty times before commiting it to caketop, and I didn't do such a bad job. The rosettes are nearly perfect. The rosebuds are fine. My hyacinths are pretty nice. My leaves are inconsistent, some looking like natural beauties, others resembling penises. They will come. (The leaves, I mean.) I'm still not comfy with borders, but my garland around the side of the cake was pretty nice.

I feel much better about my skills now that I've seen some improvement.

And I've also learned an important lesson. I'm not too fond of the recent batch of frosting, and the Betty Crocker cake mix I used (some Moist Deluxe white thing) is absolutely VILE. It's been sitting on the countertop for nearly a week, and I've had exactly a bite.

Carole says a time will come when I will see buttercream as nothing more than a sculpting medium. I'm afraid that if the time ever does come, my passion for cake will have drawn to a close. So, while I vow to make blech-tasting cakes and frostings for practice, the cakes I make for celebration will themselves be worth celebrating.

A Real Turkey

If I had a day job, don't worry: I wouldn't quit it for cake decorating.

Tomorrow night, our class will be frosting a cake, transferring a pattern, and filling it in. Since I will be out of town, and since my Thanksgiving hosts have requested a carrot cake, I thought I'd give this project a try.

Before I started, I was missing a few things. First, I didn't have enough uncolored icing, so I decided to make a cream cheese version. The consistency was a disaster, so I fell back on last week's batch of practice frosting. I did the crumb coat, and then I piled it on thick, as I'd learned in class. But I didn't have enough to cover some of the thinner areas; some brown shows through.

I found a piece of leaf clip art and outlined it on waxed paper with some black gel. I turned the pattern over on top and pressed the black into the cake. It worked perfectly—and it was just about the only thing that did.

In haste, I turned yellow into orange with some red food coloring, then mixed a bunch of colors together for an icky brown. And then I began to draw. I don't have a lazy Susan, which made for a lot of starting and stopping. And I had a cheesecake baking, a mosaic in the workshop to finish grouting, and dinner to cook.

It didn't look so bad until I tried to write in green frosting. I'd made a mistake, and it stained the cake. I tried to recover it with whatever was left in a pastry bag, but it only made a bigger mess. I wound up inventing a few new patterns (accidentally, of course).

All I can say is that I'm grateful it's the Silver Palate carrot cake under all that nastiness; at the very least, it will taste terrific.

I guess the high point in all this—aside from the fact that I could, actually, fill the leaves pretty well (if rushed)—is that my daughter thinks it's really cool.

Bad Clown Cupcakes

Perhaps I was a bit smug when I began cake decorating classes. I'm no stranger, after all, to world of art making. I can wield a mighty glass cutter and know my way around a power tool.

But that doesn't mean I can squeeze a pastry bag.

Last night, our instructor, Carole, demonstrated several piping designs, including rosettes, rosettes with stars, roses, leaves, stems, sepals, and the shell border. I got the hang of a couple of these, but none of them were close to good looking. My leaves were far too realistic than the perfectly shaped hearts of the instructor. And I could not make a shell, no matter how many I tried. But It wasn't until we got to the sweet pea that I felt a total failure.

I blame it on the bag. Last night, out of laziness (and because people really do this), I subbed plastic, disposable pastry bags for my tough, washable ones. (Have you ever washed a pastry bag? Ick!) I had spots full of trapped air all night and could not escape the bag farts. I would draw a stem, and in the middle, a burst of air would explode on my practice board.

Maybe it's not all the pastry bag. I can be a little impatient.

When we moved on to the more free-form clown cupcakes, I thought I'd ace icing these. Instead, my clowns are sad, scary proof that I stink as a cake decorator.

And thank goodness! How fat would I be if I were doing this for a living?

It's a Cake Life

Finding a new hobby or interest gives people lots of good ideas for gift giving. It's fortunate that I chose to write about cake rather than, say, defecation (Everybody Poops) or colon polyps.

This year, my birthday netted lots of cake-themed cards and a few gifts for the struggling cake writer, like my new Olympus DS-330, a digital recorder that is Mac compatible, so I can download all my cake interviews and save them on the computer, rather than have to transcribe them right away and erase the file.

I also got a couple of groovy cake-themed goodies: a Hurry Up The Cakes hoodie from Engrish.com, which gets a lot of comments from strangers who don't understand why I'd want the cakes to hurry up; Demeter angel food-scented cologne from Anthropologie, which smells a lot like cotton candy; and buttercream-scented body cream, a thick, rich cream from Jaqua Beauty that smells so authentic that someone like me would be tempted to eat it (or me when I wear it). Last year, my love for cake firmly established, I got a cake-scented candle, which I burn regularly in the kitchen, even though I swear it makes my blood sugar rise and my heart race.

Cake-themed gifts: they're a good thing.