HCB: Double Chocolate Valentine

In tribute to Valentine Day the Heavenly Cake Baker group baked the sinful, delectable Double Chocolate Valentine cake this week.

And let me tell you this cake, well this cake is ... There are NO WORDS except to say that if you like chocolate then this cake (and I’m going to quote the book) “is really the final word in chocolate cake...” The basic ingredients of cocoa powder, eggs yolks, sugar, flour and butter with a touch of vanilla extract and salt gives you a rich, not so sweet flavor with a fudge-ty and moist texture.

I wanted to make it on a heart-shape baking pan, like the book picture. But, apparently everyone in Tampa had the same idea, because after visiting 3 Walmart, 2 Targets, 3 Michael’s and the William-Sonoma (which was the hardest thing I have done to date, going in and walking out without buying the whole store up) store, I came up empty.  No heart-shape pan to be had ANYWHERE in town.

The round 9x2 pan was it.  But I had a plan.

The cake was not complicated to make, once you gather the ingredients you are pretty much done in about 15 minutes and into the oven it goes. On a side note: I’m really loving the way that Rose’s recommends mixing the cake batter, which is putting all the dry ingredients in the mixer first, giving a spin for 30 seconds and then incorporating the butter and wet ingredients which in most cases have been whisked before hand.  It just creates a better cake batter in my opinion.

I do have to say that I took a peek at the video that Rose’s blog had posted for this cake before hand.  I wanted to make sure that I was going to do all of this the right way.  So, I was super prepare for the next steps, which were basically taking the cake out of the oven after baking it for 30-40 minutes and then soaking the top with the Ganache Glaze, then flipping it, taking the baking pan out and soaking the bottom with more ganache (YUM!).  I was a bit scare that the cake was going to be way too hot and crumble on me during all of this flip-flopping.  But, to my surprised it held its own.

Then of course the waiting... Since I made this cake on Sunday, I knew that the waiting period was going to be hard because,
a) the smell of the cake was just driving everyone in the house crazy and had us all salivating and
b) I was running out of natural light to take pictures of the finish product. 

The book said to put it aside to cool for 1 or more hours... And I knew deep down that the more it rested and cooled the better it would be at the end. But....

...I was on a deadline people! I waited an hour. (queue foreboding music here)

I took it out of the refrigerator and put my plan into action.  I really wanted the shape of the heart, so I thought shaping it like a heart by carving it out could not be that difficult to do.  As you can see, I watch way to much Ace of Cake and Food Network Challenge shows.

Before all the carving started, I needed to move it to the serving plate, so I tried to do a flip and flip and realized that it was not going to work.  So, I tried to slide it, and nope, nada. Next up lifting the cake with two spatulas and transferring it to the serving plate, and it seem to work, except that I did not count on it still being wet at the bottom, so when I tried to remove the spatulas, the cake started to split ... YIKES!

Abort! Abort! And yelled for HELP!  Tom came to my rescued and together we were able to place it on its final resting place, but not without some damage.  My type “A” personality was going into overdrive at this point.

My carving idea flew out the window, since I realized that it was not going to work.  The cake was way to moist and soft within and there was no way it would hold the planned sculpture without really making a total mess of it.

Next up...I thought of doing the heart shape with the raspberries!

And it seem to work, except that my heart-shape looked waked and off-centered.  At this point I gave up and covered the whole thing with the raspberries.  Then I gave them a quick glaze over with the red currant jelly and off it went to be photographed.

As soon as I came back into the house with the cake, Tom and the little men were awaiting with forks and grins in their faces.

The verdict:

Tom:  “I take it back, THIS is my favorite cake so far. I love that its light and not sweet  at all, but very chocolate flavor. (the poor man, I still have over 80 more cakes to have him taste)
The little man:  “Its not so sweet, I really like it”
The neighbors (after ringing the doorbell and sticking a paper plate at me): “Just gives us another piece for us to fight over”
Me:  Rose’s keeps pushing the envelope in giving me cakes with fruit and me having to take back my restraint in liking the combinations.  I’m a chocoholic, I love chocolate and if its the dark kind, even more, so this cake just hits my happy center dead on, even with the raspberries on top, which I promptly remove from my piece and give them to Tom to eat.

Plus by the time I finish writing this and posting it, the caked looked like this:

HCB: True Orange Génoise

This week heavenly Cake was the True Orange Genoise Cake and boy was everyone looking forward to that one.  The buzz on this cake was tremendous.

It started with a mad hunt for Seville oranges.  You would think that living in the sunshine state; I would have no issues finding this orange, especially since Florida at one time was the main exporter of Sour Oranges to England! (that’s a fact, look it up). But, you would be wrong.  It was incredibly hard to find them… specially since we had a couple of weeks with temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s, which means that many orchards/groves lost most of their crops to freezing temperatures.

Strike one for the cake!

My hunt began by simply calling our local Fresh Market and talking to “someone” in the produce department, who told me that nope, they did not carry it and there was no way to pre-order them either.

I.was.not.giving.up…There was a cake that needed to be made and the hunt continued

Next up was Whole Foods, I mean WHOLE-FREAKING-FOODS, if they did not carry those little suckers - the end of the world was near. 
Note to Whole Foods management: You need to work on their produce department education because the phone call went something like this:

Me to the produce rep:  Wondering if you have Seville Oranges in stock?
Produce rep: I’m sorry, Sev.. what?
Me [thinking, OH BOY!]: Seville Oranges or you may know then as Sour Oranges?
Produce rep: No, I don’t think so, we have regular oranges, is that what you want?
Me: [counting to 10]: no I’m looking for sour oranges, would you be able to order them for me?
Produce rep: I don’t know
Me: is there a manager there?
Produce rep: I don’ know…
Me: Thank you, never mind. *Click*

Strike two for the cake!

Then during a dinner with the future mother in law, I explain what had happen and she promptly told me to give her a couple of minutes, left the room, picked up the phone and the next thing I knew, I had a bucket of sour oranges compliments of a farmer that had some trees in his back yard.  The power that woman yields!

Point one for the CAKE!

  

Since I have been keeping up with the bakers and all keep writing how delicate the oranges were, I decided to not take any chances and bake it a week earlier than scheduled.

Baking the génoise cake was easy and as Rose suggests in the book, I baked it a day earlier.  I’m really getting the hang of this new technique of warming the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together before whipping it up to full volume in the mixer.  (Previous sponge cakes were done without this pre-cooking step, and I think it just makes a huge difference on the final texture of the cake).

Then, because I was on a roll, I decided to make the orange curd the same day.  And this was fairly as simple mixing the orange juice, sugar, eggs, butter and zest together and stirring until it thickened - The hardest part for me was factoring in a whole lot of patience while it cooked over the stove. I hate to wait around for anything – you know that phrase, “good things come to those that wait”, It’s OVERRATED, seeing as, this orange curd took FOREVER (at least in my world) to get to the point that the book said it would be done.  You know how boring facing your stove and stirring is?

I bet you all do.  Because IT WAS THAT BORING to the power of 3!

When it was FINALLY done, I put it away and decided to quit while I was ahead and do the syrup and ganache the next day. 

    And those two things went without any major roadblocks.  The only thing I did different was not use Triple Sec, but instead used Patron Liqueur Citronge which I happen to have in my liquor cabinet (I’m fancy that way). Putting the cake together was reasonably easy as well.  The only doubt I had was not using all of the orange syrup and curd as the book pointed out, my instincts were shouting in the inside to use it all, but again, I followed the instructions, so a continued on…after I hid the left over curd from Tom, who stole a quick taste and wanted to eat it with a spoon.

I had a lot of fun covering the cake with the chocolate ganache and I wanted to make sure I did justice to the picture in the book… I was very proud of the way it came out.  Very sophisticated and classy looking. 

But, did it taste as good as it looked?

The Feedbacks:

Tom: Oh, this is my favorite so far.
The Little man:  It’s good, I like the orange flavor, but I like the pineapple one better.
My mother:  The cake was a bit dry for me (A HA! I knew it!), but the flavor was good, and by the way can I have the recipe for the orange curd?
The Future Mother in Law: I like it but, I would not make it again, the orange flavor is quite strong.

As for me?

Remember my cook fruit with cake anything hindrance?

This cake almost made me a believer, mainly because I’m a huge dark chocolate fan, and the dark chocolate combination with the tangy/sweet orange curd was YUMMY!  I had to agree with my mother and found the cake was a bit dry and I know it’s because I did not use the whole syrup/curd.  My other take would be that while is a beautiful cake and show stopper, it’s also a cake that needs a certain sophisticated palate (not to offend anyone here) to be enjoyed.  The majority of people out there would have some reservations to this type of combination (see future mother in law comment above), limiting the pool of people you can served it too.

Would I make it again? Only if Tom really, really, begged for it.  Plus it looks pretty. 

As far as the Orange Curd, that has been made twice already. And if you don't believe me, moosy over to Rose Levy Beranbaum site where you can find the recipe.

HCB: Individual Pineapple Upside Down Cakes

 

Can I say this right off the bat (so we can all gasp and get it over with) I don’t like any cake, or pies or tartlets’ or anything that is made with fruit, or has fruit in it, never have and for the record; I have not acquired the taste over the years. In fact, let me put this out there:

I.HATE.PIE. There I said it, it’s out there.

You all have five second to give me the speech about this… Ready... Set...GO!

1,2,3,4,5…Ok, Done? Good, lets move on. 

So after all that information I just gave, you can image my mind frame when I saw this cake came up to bat. I was like: “mmm, maybe I will skip it” Until the boyfriend and the little man (the Boyfriend son) asked me what cake was next. And the reaction was as follow: 

Boyfriend:  “Babe, just because you are “scared’ of cooked fruit it does not mean we need to miss out on this, some of us like fruit” 

And I had a come back, I did, until the little man jumped up and shouted “Ohhh!! Pineapple cake, please make it for my birthday cake!” 

That 8-year old is sneaky, just like his father.

I was done for, plus we were invited to a dinner party and I figure I could get rid of all of it by offering to take it as the dessert.

The first thing I decided to do was use ramekins instead of the cute cake pan, because the cute cake pan was very expensive and I could not justify owning it just to bake pineapple cake in the future.  So I prepped 8 ramekins.

I stared with the caramel and I have done caramel before, in fact melting sugar had nothing on me.

Wrong!

Apparently, Turbinado sugar DOES have something on me because I must have looked away a mili-second too long, and before I knew it, the mixture had turn into a black color and not the deep amber that the book hinted at. Into the trash it went and a second round was started, with better results, except that I ended with not enough to cover all of the 8 ramekins... so 3 of those were very poorly coated.

I started on the cake and this went in much smoother. Everything came together as the book explained, except, once more I was a bit unsure of the batter distribution among the ramekins. This was even after I filled them up using the weight measurements cited in the book and not eyeballing it. But, I let it go into the hot oven they went.

Baking…baking…baking until the house smelled delicious and out they came. Tested them and right away I started to unmold them. Some came out pretty fast, others I had to sweet talked them out of the ceramic mold. Some of the caramel was melted, and others had some un-melted portions, very weird

And upon closer inspection, I realized that my instincts were right and the ration of cake was quite low. I mentally noted that I needed to go with 6-rameskins the next time and not 8, so I could have a pretty substantial cake distribution.

I finished them up with the suggestion of coating them with warm apricot glaze and I did skip the caramel sauce all together, figure it would be way to sweet (I knew the pineapples were supper sweet to begin with) and was to tired to try my luck again with the sugar and heat.

But it did not matter, the results were in:

Boyfriend: “YUM! In need of a repeat”

The little man: “Approved for my birthday cake next week!”

My mother: “They were delicious, needed more cake thought”

Host 1 from the dinner party: “I wish there was a bit more caramel on them, but they are great"

Host 2 from the dinner party: “No, they are perfect this way”

My take: I did taste them and thought they were good, love the cake texture and the fact that it was not sweet at all, which balance the sweetness of the pineapple and apricot glaze.

Would I make it again? Probably, I mean who can say no to an 8-year? 

Oh, wait I been corrected as I write this.. a NINE-YEAR-OLD!