Wordless Wednesday - Festive sprinkles!

(birthday cake for someone at work--doubled recipe for this cake)

I like small bundts

I actually managed to plan ahead for something!  Today is National Bundt Day, and I actually baked my cake three days early.  If I'd really had my act together, I would have written the post early, too, instead of sitting here trying to finish it when I'm tired and cranky.  Luckily I still have a piece of cake left, so my day will end on a good note, as long as I get to it before my husband does. =)

I first became aware of National Bundt Day thanks to my blogging friend Mary, the Food Librarian.  For the past several years, she baked 30 bundts in the 30 days leading up to National Bundt Day.  You can read all about it here.  She didn't have time to do it this year, but she did bake a bundt for today.  In fact, I was quite amused to discover that she made the same cake that I did, the Vanilla Bean Malt Cake from Baked Elements.  

The recipe makes a small bundt cake, baked in a 6-cup pan.  I haven't used my small pan very much since I got it a few months ago, so I was happy to get it off the shelf.  Besides the vanilla bean and malted milk powder alluded to in the recipe title, dark brown sugar and buttermilk contribute to the flavor of the cake.  The cake batter is pretty easy to mix up; it uses the creaming method.   I deviated from the recipe just a little--in the technique, not the ingredients.  The recipe says to scrape the vanilla seeds out of the pod and mix them with a bit of bourbon.  Instead, I rubbed the vanilla seeds into the sugars before creaming the butter with them.  I added the bourbon before mixing in the eggs.  Other than that, I followed the directions, and my cake took 40 minutes to bake.  Once the cake was cool, it got topped with a simple glaze made from powdered sugar, vanilla and a bit of milk.  

The verdict?  Wow.  This cake is really good.  Like many cakes of this sort, it improves with age.  It's probably good that it's a small cake, because I would have eaten way too much of it if it had been bigger.  As the recipe notes indicate, you don't really taste the malt in it, but it gives the cake a bit of "something" that makes it really appealing.  I will definitely be making this one again.  

If you'd like to try the cake for yourself, I encourage you to get your hands on a copy of Baked Elements.  Don't forget to check your library if you want to preview it before deciding whether to buy it. =)

Good things come in small packages

I have no idea how it can possibly be the end of May and the end of the school year.  Brianna's last day was last Thursday.  Being a worrier, I don't think she was completely convinced that she had been promoted to 4th grade until she saw it in writing on her report card.  Then last night we had Gillian's graduation from pre-K.  (She'll still be at the daycare for the summer, but they had the ceremony at the end of the traditional school year so that no one would miss out because of vacations, etc.)  It wasn't a very long program, since 4 and 5-year-olds don't have very long attention spans, but it was certainly entertaining.

One of the things I like to do at various times including the end of the year is make little gifts for the teachers.  I don't usually do anything big, but I try to make sure that it's something special.  For Teacher Appreciation Week in early May, I made World Peace Cookies.  What teachers wouldn't welcome a little more peace in their lives? =)  Since I went with chocolate for that occasion, I wanted something different for the end of the year thank-yous.  Something...vanilla.  

Over the past couple of weeks Central Market did a focus on France, with lots of interesting French products and ingredients.  I picked up some salted butter, so I had to find something to make with it.  Naturally, I turned to Dorie.  I remembered seeing a cookie recipe of hers in a recent issue of one of my cooking magazines.  I had to do a bit of searching through the stack by my computer, but I found it.  Vanilla Bean Sablés--French butter cookies.

The recipe calls for unsalted butter and sea salt, so I used my salted butter and skipped the additional salt.  Rather than two vanilla beans, I used one and some of my vanilla sugar.  I love rubbing the vanilla seeds into the sugar--it always makes my fingers smell good.  (And after I scraped the seeds from the pod, I stuck the pieces into my container of vanilla sugar to make more!)  The rest of the ingredient list is simple, just some powdered sugar, flour, and an egg yolk.  The dough mixes up quickly in a stand mixer, and gets formed into a couple of logs.  Once the dough is chilled, it's rolled in coarse sparkling sugar, then sliced and baked.  I did skip the step of brushing the dough logs with egg wash before coating with sugar; I just pressed the sugar into the dough.  The cookies bake for about 20 minutes, and you can smell when they're done.  

The verdict?  I totally love these cookies.  The flavors of butter and vanilla play so well together, especially when the bottoms of the cookies turn such a lovely golden brown.  The cookies have a great texture, short and crumbly and with the contrast of crunchy sparkling sugar on the edges.  They're great paired with a mug of tea.  I hope the teachers enjoyed them as much as I did.  

If you'd like to try these cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe in the April/May issue of Fine Cooking, or here online.  

Ready for kindergarten!

What's buggin' you?

I was having a rough day when I got to work on Friday.  I was trying to leave it at home, but as soon as someone asked me if I was okay, I realized that maybe that was easier said than done.  I was missing my mom, a lot.  Long-time readers of my blog may recall that my mom died three years ago, in March.  While the date on the calendar has some significance, what really sticks with me is the fact that it was on Good Friday.  And of course, that date changes from year to year.  Even though I knew it was coming, it still surprised me a bit how emotional I was feeling.  (It shouldn't have, when I think about how stressful this year has been so far.)

I always think about Mom on the night before Easter as I'm filling baskets for the girls.  She was the one who taught me to count everything that I put into the baskets, down to the last jelly bean.  Why, you ask?  Because siblings are competitive, and will immediately notice any differences in who got what.  In fact, one of the first things Gillian did Sunday morning was pull everything out of her basket and count it.  I don't think she actually compared it to what Brianna had (she was just proud of her counting skills), but you can bet B would have said something if she thought G had more of anything. =)

Just in case the candy wasn't enough sugar for the day, I wanted to make something yummy for dessert on Easter.  I've been searching for a good vanilla pound cake since I got my latest batch of vanilla beans.  I've made several recipes and always end up with the same thing--cakes with good flavor but a dry mouthfeel.  To find new recipes to try, I've been using a nifty new tool that I discovered thanks to Jessica of cookbookhabit.  It's called Eat Your Books, and basically provides you with a comprehensive index for the cookbooks already on your shelves.  It doesn't give you the recipes, just helps you figure out where to look.  When I searched for "vanilla pound cake" I got 23 results from my 98 cookbooks.  A few were obviously recipes that utilize pound cake as an ingredient, and some were for other flavor variations that included vanilla in the ingredient list.  But I got about a dozen recipes for what I was really looking for, a basic vanilla pound cake.  I've already tried a few of them that weren't quite what I was after, and this time decided to check out the recipe in Joanne Chang's Flour.  

What appealed to me about this particular recipe was that it uses melted butter folded in at the end, rather than the creaming method.  I've made a similar recipe in the past, the Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes from  Baking From My Home to Yours.  Both recipes use the same mixing method.  First, you whip together sugar and eggs.  Even though Chang's recipe says to mix the vanilla bean seeds with the melted butter, I took a page from Dorie's book and rubbed them into the sugar before I started mixing.  Once the egg mixture is really light, you gently fold in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) and then fold in a mixture of melted butter and some heavy cream.  

Part of why I wanted to make a dense cake like pound cake is that I thought it would be perfect in my new pan--I found this adorable bug pan when I was at Costco on Saturday.  It only holds a total of 3 cups, so I put the rest of the batter in one of my mini (2-cup) loaf pans.  The bugs baked for 20 minutes, while the loaf took 30.  (One thing to note--all of my pans were filled a bit too much, so next time I'll probably fill the bugs a bit less & put the extra batter in a 3-cup pan.)

The verdict?  This is an excellent pound cake recipe.  The finished cakes had a nice tight crumb and a great texture--not too dry.  I'm already thinking of different ways to change up the flavor of the batter and other pans to bake it in (I have a couple of mini bundts as well as my madeleine pans--which I think would be good since the cakes had humps on the backs).  The shapes were a big hit with the girls--they had fun debating which one to eat first.  They split the butterfly and the ladybug--both shapes that were symmetrical, so that there wouldn't be fights over who got the bigger piece. =) (another thing I learned from my mom)

I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Flour.  I've really enjoyed everything I've made from it so far.  If you want to try this particular recipe, you can find it here on Rose Levy Beranbaum's blog.  The vanilla bean variation is at the end of the recipe.  

I scream

I mentioned in my last post that although I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, I'm still baking.  What's really suffered from all the craziness of late is my blog.  I've been making stuff.  I've even taken pictures of a lot of it.  But I've been having trouble writing--I just don't know where to start.  I don't want to just put down a quick review of a recipe (though the occasional one-sentence post can be nice), so I haven't been writing anything at all.  One thing that's really taken a hit is my Tuesdays with Dorie participation.  Okay, I haven't really been keeping up with any of my baking groups, but TWD is the one I really feel bad about.  So I'm trying to get back on track this month, actually writing some blog posts about the stuff I've made.

This week's recipe is Coffee Ice Cream Tart, chosen by Jessica of Domestic Deep Thought.  Ice cream tart sounded yummy, but I had some problems.  Number one, I don't like coffee ice cream.  But Dorie gives options for other flavors, so that was okay.  I recently made a batch of Vanilla Bourbon ice cream to test out my new Madagascar vanilla beans that I got from Beanilla.  (I purchased them myself due to positive reviews from others; I have no connection to them.)  The original recipe is for Double-Vanilla Bourbon ice cream, but I left out the vanilla extract so that the flavor of the vanilla bean would come through more.  Next time I'll try with both bean and extract.  I only used 2 tablespoons of bourbon, and was happy with that--I enjoyed the flavor, but it wasn't overpowering.  

Issue number two, I wasn't excited about the crust.  I don't like almonds all that much.  I also heard from a number of people that they weren't that happy with the crust--that they found it hard to cut when frozen.  So I decided to improvise.  I only wanted a mini tart, and I had just enough dough left over from last week's cookies to make a 4 1/2" mini tart.  Tia of Buttercream Barbie picked the Pecan Powder Puffs for last week.  I made some of the cookies but didn't get a chance to post them, and I only baked one sheet, so I had leftover dough.  I pressed the dough into my mini tart pan, and followed the recipe instructions for baking the tart shell.

Once the tart shell was cooled, I filled it with some of my vanilla ice cream.  I covered the tart with plastic wrap, and stuck in in the freezer overnight.  The next day, I mixed up a little ganache with some chocolate and cream, and drizzled it on top.  I stuck the tart back in the freezer long enough to let the topping firm up.  I tried to unmold the tart before cutting it, but couldn't get the tart ring to release.  Once I cut a small piece, though, it came out with no problem.

The verdict?  I'm happy with the tart, but it really isn't the tart in the recipe. =)   I realized as I was looking back over the recipe that I was supposed to have a layer of chocolate under the ice cream.  Oops. I'm actually not sorry that I skipped it, since I'm happy with the flavors of my tart.  The bourbon and vanilla were good with the pecans and hint of cinnamon in the crust.  The chocolate on top was far enough from the bit of cinnamon in the crust that it didn't bother me.  (I'm not a fan of the chocolate/cinnamon combo.)  I liked the texture of the crust--it held together in the pan, but wasn't too hard to cut with a fork.  

If you'd like to try the real recipe for yourself, head over to Jessica's blog.  And to see how everyone else interpreted this week's recipe, check out the Links.