Daring Bakers’: Schichttorte

The January 2014 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Francijn of “Koken in de Brouwerij.” She challenged us all to bake layered cakes in the tradition of Baumkuchen (tree cake) and Schichttorte (layered cake).   And many of the Daring Bakers took the challenge and ran with it.  Versions ranged from the provided recipe, which contained marzipan to alternating chocolate vanilla versions, chocolate-orange versions, and everything in between.  Me, I opted to do a lemon cake with a lemon cream cheese glaze topped off with a sprig of rosemary.

And…yeah…okay.  I cheated.  I used a–mm hmm– a cake mix.  There, I said it.  All of the cooking and baking I’ve done lately– risotto, arancini. cinnamon rolls (twice– I know, I know), stuffed and baked manicotti, and even a mile-high lemon meringue pie– and I just didn’t have it in me to whip and beat one more thing.  And since the challenge was the method and not the recipe, I opted for the easy way out.  But I did make my own glaze.  That makes it okay, right?

The method, while a bit time-consuming, wasn’t all that difficult.  Pour a little of the batter in a pan and bake it at a really high temperature for a really short amount of time, and then do it all over again nine to eleven more times.  The result is several very thin layers of cake.  Many of the final Bakers’ results were stunning to say the least.  My layers were a little more subtle.  They were there, but you had to look for them.  Next time maybe a layer  of vanilla batter and a layer of lemon batter.  Or perhaps, I shouldn’t use a cake mix.

I am hanging my head in shame.  Of course, it’s hovering over a plate of deliciousness.  Shameful deliciousness that wouldn’t be as good as homemade.  But still.

NOTE:  This was supposed to go up on January 27th, and I had this almost typed for reveal day. Then I got the flu.  Not quite as fun as making the cake was.

Lemon Schichttorte

Ingredients:

Cake:

1 box Duncan Hines Lemon Cake Mix

2 large eggs

1 cup water

1/3 cup oil

Glaze:

2 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

1  cup powdered sugar

1 tsp. lemon zest

1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice, more if needed

1 sprig rosemary (optional)

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees F.  So very hot, but it worked.

Prepare a 10-inch spring form pan, spraying the insides with cooking spray (or whatever it is you use to make your cakes not stick).  Make sure that your pan is safe to use in a high temperature oven.  The same goes if you decide to use parchment paper.  Some aren’t safe to use over certain temperatures and can catch fire in the oven.

Combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, and water in a mixing bowl.

Mix it however you mix your boxed cake mix.  I used a hand mixer for mine, following package instructions.

Now you have to do a little math.  Determine how much batter you have and how many layers you want.  I ended up with approximately 5 cups of batter, so I opted to use 1/2 cups of batter for each layer.  This gave me approximately 10 layers, though the 10th layer was very thin due to lost batter along the way (not to fingers, just natural drippage).

Pour your desired amount of batter into the bottom of the pan,

and spread it around as evenly as you can.  This pan is beautiful for cheesecakes as the grid holds a crumb crust beautifully, but the grid make the first layer a little difficult to spread.

Looks good here,

but you can see the uneven spots here.

When your pan is ready and the oven is to temperature, bake it for 4 minutes.  Set your timer and find some chore to do in the kitchen– like making the glaze.

Hey– make the glaze!  In a small bowl, gradually add the powdered sugar (1/4 cup at a time) to the cream cheese, then stir in the lemon zest and lemon juice until you reach whatever consistency your heart or taste buds or stomach desires.  Easy peasy.

When the timer goes off, remove the cake from the oven,

and pour the next layer over the baked layer.

And do it all over again: batter, spread, oven, timer for 4 minutes, work on glaze, beep!, remove it again.  It’s all very lather, rinse, repeat.  At least until you run out of batter.

And your cake will get taller and taller.

When you’re all done, about 40 minutes to an hour later (believe it or not, you can get a lot done in the kitchen during those four-minute intervals), let the cake cool for about 10 minutes.  Then run a knife carefully around the inside rim of the pan to loosen the cake for the sides.

Then remove the outside collar of the pan, and you get…this:

Strange, no?  Not really.  Normally, I might be a little freaked by the weirdly charred exterior, but this is just part of the baking process.  So what to do?  Let it cool all the way– at least an hour– and trim the char.

Not willing to stress over a perfect circle, I opted to turn mine into a square.

Pretty easy…and messy.

But you can kind of see the layers.  And the bottom is a bit burned, but you can trim that off if you want.  It actually tasted more caramelized than burned, though.

Then pour your glaze over the top.

And top it with some rosemary.  I initially did it because the cake needed something, but in the end I decided that flavor combination was pretty delicious even for a cake.  Next time I’ll chop about a teaspoon of rosemary and add it directly to the glaze.

As I said earlier, the layers are a little difficult to see, but they are there.

And it was pretty tasty.  Best of all, I determined the cooking method worked on a boxed mix just fine, which gives me faith that it might work on other homemade cakes just as well.

Either way, it was a fun experiment!  If you have a lot of patience, try it sometime!

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Swedish Prinsesstarta (Princess Cake)

Korena of Korena in the Kitchen was our May Daring Bakers’ host and she delighted us with a beautiful Swedish Prinsesstarta.  And what a challenge: layers of sponge cake, jam, and pastry cream, all topped by a dome of whipped cream and covered in marzipan.  Sounds amazing, right?

I was really excited when I found that the cookbook I’d just borrowed from our digital library, Miette: Recipes from San Francisco’s Most Charming Pastry Shop, highlighted the cake…until I reached the end of Meg Ray’s introduction where she called it “famously complicated,”  and wrote that she  “[doesn’t] recommend you start with this cake; perhaps think of it as a potential goal once you have completed other cakes.  This will be your crowning achievement” (32).

Gulp.  So I Googled it, and the difficulty showed.  Double gulp.

While I didn’t follow things exactly– in our budget conscious household, making a full-sized cake primarily of components we don’t usually eat (sponge-cake: too eggy, and pastry cream: I seem to be the only person on the planet who doesn’t like it) didn’t seem the way to go– I was able to create three miniature versions.

And I’ve got to say, I’m pretty proud of how they turned out.  Instead of sponge cake, I chose and adapted the “Essential Yellow Cake” recipe from Dede Wilson’s Wedding Cakes You Can Make (62).  I split the batter between cupcakes for the princess cakes and a 10 1/2 x 17 1/2 jelly roll pan for some petit fours.  And instead of the pastry cream, I opted for lemon curd with a little bit of (don’t laugh) Cool Whip to cut the tartness.  I also opted to mix more lemon curd with more Cool Whip for the whipped cream– it allowed for the stiffness and sturdiness needed to create the domed shape needed for shaping the marzipan.

Swedish Prinsesstarta (Princess Cake) Petit Fours

*Note: The amounts below make only 3 Prinsesstarta petit fours.  I’ve included the Essential Yellow Cake recipe at the end of this post.  If you ever want to give this a go, feel free to adapt the amounts and much as you want.

Ingredients:

3 yellow cupcakes

2 tbsp. blackberry jam, divided

3  tbsp. lemon curd, divided

1/2 cup + 1 tbsp. Cool Whip, divided

5 oz. marzipan

1 drop green food coloring

Assembly:

Slice the rounded part off of the top of the cupcake. Discard it, eat it, give it to the kids.

Slice the remaining cupcake into thirds.

Turn the cupcakes upside down, so the larger part is on the bottom.  Divide the blackberry jam into thirds, and spread each third over the cupcake.

Place the next layer of cake on top of the jam.

Mix together 1 tbsp of lemon curd

with 1 tbsp. of Cool Whip.

Spread the mixture on top of the cake layers.

Top each with the final layer of cake, of which I forgot to take a picture.

Mix together the remaining 1/2 cup of Cool Whip

with the remaining 2 tbsp. of lemon curd

until it’s well combined and stiff.

Divide the mixture into thirds and spoon each third over the top of each cake.

Using a spoon, shaped the whipped cream into a dome.

Spread it all around the cake in a thin layer.  It doesn’t have to be neat or perfect,

but the more you use, the better.

It also helps by acting as a sort of glue to bind the cake layers together.

At this point, it was getting late, so I wrapped them lightly with plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  If you want to keep making them the same day, I’d say to refrigerate them for at least thirty minutes.  The Cool Whip is stable and it doesn’t sweat like whipped cream.  If you choose to use real whipped cream, you may want to look up different ways to stabilize it so that it doesn’t weep.

A few days ago, I mixed the marzipan with a drop of green food coloring, and I kneaded it all together in a plastic sandwich bag.  I do actually have pictures of those steps, but they were taken with the point-and-shoot, and I haven’t downloaded them as of yet, so if I ever get around to it– I’ll share them then.

Whenever you are ready, though, roll your marzipan out into a thin layer.

Having never worked with marzipan before, I watched a lot of how-to videos.  Most of them showed competent people rolling it out over powdered sugar.

This did not work for me.  It was very sticky and as a very sticky substance, it stuck everywhere.  It was not pretty.  Use waxed paper instead, and save yourself the mess.

Layer the waxed paper on the counter, then the marzipan on the waxed paper,

and then roll it out.  Yeah, I know.  I’m not good at rolling out pie dough, either.

Remove the cakes from the refrigerator, placing them someplace easy to work.  I put mine on a turn table one at a time.

Carefully remove the waxed paper, and then cut and peel off enough marzipan to layer one cake.

My first pass was too thick,

and since I determined that I am among those who do not enjoy marzipan, I opted to go thinner.  So I re-rolled that portion…three times.  It kept sticking and tearing.  Sigh.

Eventually, I got it.  And once you get it, drape it carefully over the cake.

Trim it,

and fold it under the cake.

You may decorate it however you wish.  Traditionally, the Prinsesstarta seems to be coated in green-tinted marzipan, wrapped with a ribbon, and topped with a rose of some sort–probably marzipan.

I had a  very little bit of ribbon (only enough to almost go around 2 of the cakes)in my scrapbooking bin,

and I also happened to have to flower scrapbooking embellishments that matched.  I don’t know what I’d have done if I had to try my had at a marzipan rose at this point.  Sculpture is not my strong suit– this is why I choose to draw, write, and take photographs.

Overall, not too shabby.

It was fun to make–well, maybe not so much the rolling of the marzipan, but everything else was fun.

I didn’t have enough ribbon for this one.

I like the way they turned out.  And the inside is pretty impressive when cut open.

With the exception of the marzipan, the cake itself with the blackberry jam, lemon curd, and lemon cream was perfection.  The flavors melded together well with the tart and sweet playing nicely together.

I don’t know that I would make this particular type of cake again, but I will certainly use the yellow cake recipe with this flavor combination– maybe frosted in a lemon buttercream.

Thanks so much to Korena for a great challenge this month!

Essential Yellow Cake

adapted  from Dede Wilson’s Wedding Cakes You Can Make, used for making jelly roll style cake + 9 cupcakes; will make 2-9 inch round cakes as is

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

16 tbsp. (1 cup or 2 sticks) butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 tsp. amaretto (or vanilla)

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 cup milk, room temperature

Directions:

In a medium bowl (or large measuring cup), combine the flour, baking powder (it seems like a lot, but it really is the right amount), and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and the sugar for 4-5 minutes

until it is very, very  light and fluffy.

Add the amaretto (or vanilla extract), and mix some more.

Then add the eggs one at a time, thoroughly incorporating each egg before adding another.  It really does make a difference.

Then, in batches, add the flour

and the milk, starting and ending with the flour.

When I added the last batch of flour, I turned the mixer off and stirred that batch in by hand.  It keeps the cake from getting tough.

To bake the cake in the sheet pan, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees F.  I poured the batter into the greased and parchment lined pan until the pan was half full, and I smoothed the batter with a bent spatula.

I baked it for approximately 12 minutes, let it cool in the pan and them removed it too a towel to finish cooling.

To bake the remaining batter as cupcakes, I filled 9 liners in a muffin tin approximately 2/3 full with batter.

I baked them for approximately 17 minutes. I immediately removed them from the tin to a cooling rack and let them come to room temperature before attempting to make the Swedish Prinsesstarta petit fours.

Sources:

Ray, Meg. “Princess Cake.” Miette: Recipes from San Francisco’s Most Charming Pastry Shop. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011. 31-35. E-Book.

Wilson, Dede. “Essential Yellow Cake.” Wedding Cakes You Can Make: Designing, Baking, and Decorating the Perfect Wedding Cake. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley Publishing, 2005. 61-63. Print.

 

Daring Baker’s Challenge: Crackers and Crispy Flatbreads

About a year and a half again when I decided that I wanted to make croissants, I went searching for the best recipe that I could find. My search led me to more blog posts that I can count and most of them kept referencing one thing: The Daring Bakers. Spanning the globe, the Daring Bakers and Daring Cooks tackle a challenge every month—the Daring Bakers attempting everything from croissants to panettone and the Daring Cooks giving a go of things like homemade sausage and paella.

After hemming and hawing for a very long time, I bit the bullet and decided to join. The first Daring Cooks challenge for me, making homemade sausage, was a little out of my league; however, the February 2013 Daring Baker’s Challenge to make our own crisp flat breads and crackers was right up my alley. This challenge was presented by Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie.

If you’re interested, the Daring Baker’s reveal their challenges to the public on the 27th of each month and the Daring Cook’s reveal theirs on the 14th.

So without further ado, here’s my first foray into the Daring Kitchen:

Carta da Musica “Sheets of Music”
from King Arthur Flour’s recipe found here

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup semolina (wheat flour for pasta)
1 ¼ tsp. salt
1 cup lukewarm water

Directions:
Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place a cookie sheet in the oven while it is pre-heating. You want it to be really hot.

Grab all of your ingredients; there are only four!

In a bowl stir together all of the dry ingredients

until well combined.

Then add the water,

and stir it all together

until a dough forms.

The original recipe states that this should be a soft dough, but, truth be told, mine was a bit on the dry side.  However, I decided to avoid the temptation of adding more water to the mix, trusting that everything could and would turn out all right.

Knead the dough for about 7 minutes in a mixer. I’m not sure how long you should do it if kneading by hand. I don’t knead dough by hand.  Some people find it therapeutic, but I  find it frustrating.

Remove the dough from the mixer.  See, it moistened itself up quite a bit.

Divide the dough

into 12 pieces or more if you’d like. I ended up with 16 ultimately.  Obviously, that was after I took this picture.

Cover them and let them rest for 15 minutes.

With a rolling-pin, roll each ball into an 8 inch round on a lightly greased surface. I kept a bottle of vegetable oil nearby with a paper towel.

Mine aren’t round at all.

In fact, my first ones were closer to round, but when I cooked them they puffed up to crazy heights, as you’ll see in a second.  The thinner I rolled them, the flatter and crisper they became.

Move the rounds to the baking sheet and bake for about 4 minutes or until the top of the bread is lightly browned and firm.

Flip the rounds over and bake on the other side for another 3 minutes.

The first batches were lighter in color.  The longer the oven was on and the hotter the oven became, the browner and crisper they became.

These were from the first batch.

See how poofy they were?  They were a bit too soft, too.

These were from my second batch.

They were larger and thinner and much less round.

These were the last three that I baked– thinner still and much crisper.

Let them cool before serving.

On their own, they taste like unsalted saltine crackers.  KAF suggests that you “brush them with seasoned oil or serve with dips.”  Or you can just eat them the way we did.

For my husband and daughter, I spread the bread crisps with a little unsalted butter and then sprinkled them with a little kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper.

I topped mine with a smear of unsalted butter, banana peppers, feta cheese, and a sprinkle of kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper.

I had two for lunch and they were ridiculously delicious.

Store leftovers in a zip-top bag.

Yield: 12-16 crispy flat breads