Showing posts with label yellow cake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yellow cake. Show all posts

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Lemon-Lime Curd Cake with Blueberries

I stumbled across the delicious looking cake on Vita Arina’s flickr page and started to drool. Now I’m not a big fan of lemon curd (don’t you just hate that name?), but this cake looked scrumptious enough to tempt even my anti-lemon heart.


I started the egg whites beating, mixed up the batter, and then folded the peaked eggs whites into the batter.



Here are the cakes just out of the oven. I over baked them of course (I over bake everything), but they weren’t too, too dry. The cakes had a faint lime flavor and the spongy, airy texture of angel food.


Here is the lime curd in the staging processes. My curd came out much more yellow than Vita Arina’s. It must be the Egg Land’s Best eggs that I used. Notice how bright, almost neon, the yolks are? No Photoshopping, I promise.


The finished curd. Look at the little bits of lime rind suspended in the curd. It makes it looks so old-fashioned and home made.


Next it was time to prepare the whipping cream frosting. The recipe called for gelatin to “stabilize” the heavy whipping cream. I had never done this before, but you know what--It really worked! I took the final pictures of the cake outside in 95 degree heat and 100% humidity, and the cream frosting did not droop or melt one bit. Thanks, Vita. Stabilized whipping cream frosting is a amazing.

Here is the gelatin softening, and then melted. Vita said to heat gelatin over a low fire to liquify it, but I just zapped the bowl in the microwave for 15 seconds at 30% power. Worked fine.




Be careful when you pour the gelatin into the cream. Do it slowly and consistently and keep the beaters going. Some of my gelatin clumped and I had little semi-solid balls of gelatin in the frosting. Nasty.

Next came the assembly. Cake-Curd-Blueberries-Cake-Curd-bulueberries-Cake.



One third of the curd goes between each layer, and the final third goes into the frosting. The curd really added a nice flavor to the whipping cream. Not too citrusy or sweet. Just perfect.


So here is the final cake. Not as nice as Vita Arina’s, but not too bad for a novice like me.


Sunday, July 5, 2009

Results - June Yellow Cake Scratch-Off

A group of scratch bakers over at Cake Central have been having a "Scratch-Off" in which 15 different Yellow Cake recipes were baked and reviewed. 18 bakers participated and a total of 40 votes were cast.

The fifteen yellow cake recipes compared were:

  1. Great American Cakes by Barbara Kafka
  2. Lita829's Yellow Cake - see page 3 post #9 of CakeCentral.com for recipe
  3. Sylvia Weinstock's Classic Yellow Cake - missing link - See comment section for recipe
  4. Sylvia Weinstock's NEW Yellow Cake -  missing link - Same as Classic version but with 1 additional cup of milk.
  5. Not So Lemon Lemon Cake adapted from Magnolia Bakery - missing link
  6. Paula Deen's 1234 Basic 1-2-3-4 Cake
  7. Whimsical Bake House Gold Cake - missing link
  8. All-Purpose Buttery Yellow Cake - The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
  9. Vanilla Buttermilk Recipe from Sky High
  10. White on White Buttermilk Cake
  11. The All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake - missing link
  12. Cakeman Raven's Red Velvet Modified by Maryjsgirl into a yellow and lighter cake see post #11 for recipe
  13. K8Memphis Golden Cake - see page 3 post #9 of CakeCentral.com for recipe
  14. Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake
  15. Toba Garett's Moist Yellow Cake
(drum roll please)

The WINNER with 6 votes and final score of 8.83) of Cake Central's June's Yellow Cake "Scratch-Off is ...

Wait,
Wait,
Wait for it...

Sylvia Weinstock's ORIGINAL Classic Yellow Cake !!!!!!!

#1 - Sylvia Weinstock's Original Classic Yellow Cake - with a final score of 8.83
#2 - White on White Buttermilk - 8.33
#3 - Not So Lemon Magnolia Cake - 8.25

Congratulations Sylvia Weinstock's ORIGINAL Classic Yellow Cake !!!

PS: a lot of the testers tried Sylvia's NEW recipe (which is her old recipe plus 1 cup of milk) and 90% of testers considered it a total flop. So be warned.

July's Scratch-Off will be CHOCOLATE CAKE. Yummm. Nothing better than chocolate.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Oreo Cookie n' Cream Cupcakes

This weekend I was able to kill two proverbial baking birds with one stone. I tested my fifth Yellow Cake recipe from the Cake Central June "Scratch-Off", and I tried to recreate a wonderful looking Cookies n' Cream cupcake I had seen on a blog a few months back.

Here is the end product…



So what do you think?

They look pretty good, but honestly I was a little disappointed in the overall experience. Both the cookies baked inside the cupcakes and the pieces arranged on top of the icing got very mushy and soggy. I know, I know, with all the moisture from the cake batter and icing the cookies were bound to get soft, but I naively expected the cookies to stay crisp. I wanted to bite into that cupcake and hear a satisfying cookie crunch, but instead all I got was a silent squish.

Sigh, some people are never satisfied.

Well, here's how it looks on the inside. Just remember squishy not crunchy.

White on White Buttermilk Cake

This weekend I was able to kill the two provable birds with one stone. I tested my fifth Yellow Cake recipe from the Cake Central June "Scratch-Off" and I tried to recreate a wonderful looking Cookies n' Cream cupcake I had seen on a blog a few months back.

So this time I tried the White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe.

The recipe called for your standard mixing steps. 1) sift the dry ingredients together. I didn't have any fresh buttermilk in the fridge, so I used the powdered stuff. 2) Cream the butter and sugar. 3) Add the eggs and vanilla. 4) Mix in the dry ingredients in three stages alternating with the buttermilk. I mixed the last stage of dry ingredients by hand. 5) Add in the crushed Oreo cookies. I was lazy and didn't feel like getting out the food processor to crush the cookies. I chopped them up by hand, so the pieces ended up being a little large.


Here are the cupcakes all baked up.


Here are the insides. See how big the cookie chucks are. Don't they look good?


One without any Oreos.



The final product.


Overall the White on White Buttermilk Cake recipe was good, but not the best. I found it had a strong buttermilk tang that didn't appeal to all of my tasters (the kids especially). Maybe if I had used fresh buttermilk the flavor wouldn't have been as strong, but either way the buttermilk cake was not a good complement to the Oreo cookies.

I think this will be the last yellow cake recipe that I test from the June "Scratch-Off" challenge. It was a fun experiment, but I'm getting a little burned out on yellow cake. July's challenge will be cheesecake.

Come on July.....

Cheesecake Napoleon

If you ever stumble upon a Copeland's of New Orleans restaurant stop in and have a piece of their signature cheesecake. It is light and fluffy and smooth as rich cream. The cheesecake can be decked out with a variety of toppings (praline is my favorite), but it also comes "Napoleon" style, where a layer of cheesecake is sandwiched between two layers of yellow pudding cake. Delicious.

For years I've been hunting for a copycat version of Copeland's Cheesecake Napoleon and in all that time I've only been able to find one recipe. One. In the whole world wide web. And according to that one recipe, Copeland's cheesecake is no-bake. Hummm. Like Jell-O cheesecake?

Intrigued, I decided to kludge together random pieces-parts or different recipes and come up with my own version of Cheesecake Napoleon. Here it is…


First I made the no-bake cheesecake layer:

2 (8oz) packages cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-8oz tub of Cool Whip topping

* Beat together the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth.
* Gently fold in the Cool Whip topping.
* Drape one 8" cake pan with two 30" pieces of plastic wrap. Center the first piece of the plastic wrap in the center of the pan. Fit the plastic wrap to the contours of the pan drape the excess over the side. Do the same with the other piece, positioning it perpendicular to the first piece.
* Dump the cheesecake mixture into the prepared pan and smooth until flat.
*Cover the flattened top of the cheesecake with the plastic wrap that was draped over the sides of the pan. Gently press the plastic wrap into the cheesecake, flattening the cheesecake even more and making sure it conforms to the shape of the pan.
* Freeze the cheesecake (and the pan) for at least 8 hours or overnight.


Next bake a yellow cake. Any yellow cake will do, but it needs to be moist. Over the last month I baked five different yellow cakes for Cake Central's June Scratch-Off, and from that experience I decided to try a modified Downy Yellow Cake recipe. I liked the Downy cake's texture and ease of mixing, but I really loved the taste of Sylvia Weinstock's Classic yellow cake. Maybe a combination of the two would give me that elusive "perfect" yellow cake. I used all the ingredients called for in the Downy recipe but added 1/2 cup of sour cream, 4 additional tablespoons of butter, an extra teaspoon of vanilla.

Mixing the cake was a snap:



After the yellow cakes are cooled and the cheesecake is frozen solid, start the assembly. 1) Remove the crown from the top of the cake with a serrated knife. 2) Stack the layers: yellow cake at the bottom (cut side toward cheesecake), cheesecake in the middle, yellow cake on top (cut side toward cheesecake). 3) Let the cheesecake soften up a bit and using a spatula work smooth the cheesecake into the gaps between the layers until it looks like one continuous tower of goodness.



Slice a piece of Cheesecake Napoleon and smother in your favorite topping. I used raspberry preserves and whipped cream on mine, but let your imagination run free!

But does it taste good?

Well yes, kinda. It taste okay, but it's not "Copeland's". Both recipes need some tweaking. The cheesecake needs a lot more flavor, and the yellow cake ended up denser than I wanted. Next time I'm gonna use Crème Fraiche instead of Cool Whip, and adjust a few ingredients in the cake to try and lighten it up.

I'll also get a few slices of the real stuff so I can compare the two side-by-side.
See how willing I am to suffer for my craft?
No really, I am…

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Sylvia Weinstock's "NEW" Classic Yellow Cake

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The Scratch-Off / June 2009 / Yellow Cakes - Trial #3

A group of scratch bakers on Cake Central have gotten together to test, rate and critique different cake recipes from a predetermined list. This week I decided to try Sylvia Weinstock's NEW Classic Yellow Cake.  (Ms. Weinstock has some great books like Sensational Cakes.)

click here for Sylvia's "new" yellow cake recipe (oops - now this recipe is gone too. So much for data hanging around forever on the internet.  The new recipe was like the old with an additional 1 cup of milk added - yes, one full cup.)

click here for her "original" recipe  - (oops, broken link - see comment section for recipe)

Here is my finished product. "Look Glinda, I'm defying gravity."


The ingredients....

The mixing got a little involved. First the butter and sugar are creamed. Eggs are added one at a time. Milk added to creamed ingredients. Note: I got a little concerned at this point because after the milk was added the creamed mixture looked curdled (sorry I didn't get a picture). But I mixed on.

Next came the sour cream and flour which was added in five stages, beginning and ending with flour. In the final step beaten eggs whites were folded into the mix. I had just seen an episode of Alton Brown called "A Cake on Every Plate", and I decided to follow his suggestion and weigh my pans to make sure I had equal amounts of batter in each pan.


Kinda cool, huh. But I do need one of those new fangled digital scale. Next the equally weighted pans went into the oven.

Whew, it was a lot of work. This had better be worth it!

Just out of the oven and everything looks good.


After 3 minutes I remove the cakes for their pan and set on a cooling rack. The bottom of the cake looked a little "wet", so I place it on a paper towel to absorb the excess moisture.


A few minutes I removed the paper towel and, YIKES, I found this !!!!!! A huge pile of yucky, sticky, gooey mess. What is going on ????




This is the bottom of the cake after the paper towel was pulled away. Notice the big oval patch in the middle where the cake looks REALLY wet. This is not looking good.


But I couldn't worry about the wetness; I had a wedding to attend. So after the cake had cooled to room temperature, I wrapped the layers up in plastic wrap and went off to the wedding.

The wedding was held at The Peristyle in City Park, New Orleans LA




When I got home that afternoon I unwrapped the cake and took a slice. Yuck!! It was gooey and sticky and looked like someone a dipped the bottom third into melted butter.


I took a taste...

Hummmm... not bad. In fact it was delicious. But I couldn't get past the texture. It was wet and gooey and somewhat slimy. It was like eating squishy worms. I threw it in the trash and frantically baked another cake (more on that later).

But the next morning I found the second layer sitting on the counter just waiting to be unceremoniously pitched into the trash. I felt sorry for the poor guy (any guilty about being a wasteful American), so I decided to bring the goopy thing to a family gathering that day and see what other people thought of it.

Well do you know what???? THEY LOVED IT. You could have knocked me over with a feather. They actually LOVED it. Not everyone mind you, about half the taste testers thought it was too moist, but the other half thought it was the BEST CAKE EVER.

Go figure. Teach me to assume that everyone likes dry hunks of sawdust like me.


If you would like to see the final results of the Yellow Cake Scratch-Off, click here. I could just tell you who the winner was, but that would spoil the surprise.

Downy Yellow Cake

The Scratch-Off / June 2009 / Yellow Cakes - Trial #4

Scared of baking a cake from scratch? Well then, this is the cake for you!!!

No whipping of egg whites.

No creaming of butter and sugar.

Everything goes into one big bowl and you mix. Nothing could be easier. And it taste pretty good too.


Doesn't the batter look lovely? So thick, so creamy. Why bake, just eat it raw!



So like I mentioned in a few other posts, some scratch bakers from Cake Central have gotten together to test/rate/critique 14 popular yellow cake recipes. The Downy Yellow Cake is the fourth recipe from the list that I have tried.

Here is the original recipe that was a part of the Cake Central challenge:

All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake

6 large egg yolks
1 cup milk, divided (1/4 cup and 3/4 cup)
2-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
---
3 cups sifted cake flour
1-1/2 cups sugar
4 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
--
12 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, cubed, room temperature (Note: cube the butter while it is still cold)


Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare two 8" round pans.

2. In a bowl combine egg yolks, 1/4 cup milk, vanilla. Whisk until combined.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt). Blend with a whisk (or low speed of your mixer).

4. Add butter and remaining 3/4 cup milk to the dry ingredients. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and mix for 2 minutes. This will aerate and develop the gluten in the flour. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.

5. Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, scraping down the sides and beating 20 seconds after each addition. Make sure each egg mixture batch is fully incorporate before adding the next batch.

6. Divide the batter between prepared pans and smooth the surface with spatula.

7. Bake 25-30 minutes or until just a few crumbs cling to a wooden toothpick tester. DO NO OVERBAKE or the cake will dry out. Remove from oven just as the cake starts to pull away from the side of the pan.


In the final analysis the Downy cake was a little on the dry side (I may have baked it too long), but man was it easy to mix. Almost as easy as a box mix. I think I will play with the recipe (maybe add some sour cream, and more extract) to punch up the flavor and moisture content. Wish me luck.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Magnolia's Vanilla Birthday Cake

The Scratch-Off / June 2009 / Yellow Cakes - Trial #2

I just baked up my second test for Cake Central’s June “Scratch-Off” which features 14 different scratch “Yellow Cake” recipes. This time I selected the Not So Lemon Magnolia Cake. I have an aversion to all things lemon flavored so I subbed the lemon juice with milk and the lemon zest with vanilla extract. This subbed out version of the Magnolia Lemon Cake is also Magnolia’s Vanilla Cake.


The creaming…




The final 1/3 of flour being mixed in by hand…





The scoop. Man was this batter thick, and sweet, and oh so yummy…





Here is a dissected cupcake, showing all of it beautiful crumb...






Just so you know, it tasted as good as it looks. Definitely a 9 out of 10 on the score board.

Monday, June 8, 2009

The Great Scratch Off - June 2009 - Yellow Cake

One of my favorite web sites CAKE CENTRAL is having "The Great Scratch-Off" baking event. Every month a different category of scratch cake is chosen and several recipes are selected for testing. Each participant bakes one or more of the entries and then submits their results/opinions/ratings. At the end of the month the results are tabulated and a winner is announced.

The June 2009 Cake Central Scratch-Off Category is (ta da) YELLOW CAKE .

Not very exciting I know, but where would the world be without Yellow Cake?

14 different yellow cake recipes were submitted for testing. The contenders are:

Great American Cakes by Barbara Kafka
Lita's Yellow Cake Recipe
Sylvia Weinstock's Classic Yellow Cake Recipe
Not So Lemon Lemon Cake from Magnolia Bakery
Paula Deen's 1234 cake
Whimsical Bakehouse Gold Cake
All-Purpose Buttery Yellow Cake from America's Test Kitchen
Vanilla Buttermilk Recipe from Sky High
White on White Buttermilk Cake
The All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake
Cakeman Raven's Modified Red Velvet
Doubleday White Wedding Cake
Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake
Toba Garett's Ultimate Yellow Cake


To see all the recipes click here. The recipes are on the 9th post of page 3.

Each cake is to be critiqued on texture, moistness, and flavor.

My first test was Serious Cakes' Yellow Cake.



Texture: The cake had a fine crumb. It was tender but not crumbly. The mouth feel was dense, almost velvety. It held together nicely when cut, so it would probably be a good cake to carve.



Moistness: Very moist, but not wet or gooey tasting. Top and bottom of the freshly baked cakes were sticky, but the sides were crunchy. The cake was cut on the second day after baking. On the third day I brought the leftovers (individual slices that had been stored under a cake dome) to work and everyone commented positively on the moistness and flavor of the cake.


Flavor: A little lacking in depth, but I paired it with chocolate frosting which made the cake perfect. I think the cake needs more vanilla and also some butter extract (especially since it uses shortening instead of butter).

Ease of preparation: Medium. Creaming of fats, and whipping of egg whites.

Cost: Average. I used supermarket brands of flour, vanilla and shortening.

Other comments: The top domed during baking and then sank to near flat after removing from the oven. I over baked it (oops) to the point where the sides pulled away from the pan and no crumbs came out on the toothpick. I removed the cakes from the pans after three minutes of cooling and after an hour I wrapped in plastic wrap for overnight storage on the counter. I frosted the next morning and served the cake late in the afternoon. Everyone thought the cake tasted great, but a few cake aficionados remarked that most of the flavor excitement came from the frosting.


Overall Rating: 8 out of 10. I liked the cake and plan to bake it again, but next time I'll add more vanilla and include butter extract.


At the end of the month, I will post the results of The Great Scratch-Off June 2009 - Yellow Cakes. Till then here is another look at the cake....