Cake Archives - Baking With Unicorns

But of course she was PHENOMENAL!

May 11, 2014 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

I have been waiting for last night to occur, probably since I was born. Perhaps even before that. I would not but surprised if I have been waiting since the big bang, just waiting for all the right lil molecules to come together.

Regardless, Cher’s performance was outstanding. That woman can still belt it out with the best of them, and she can do it in her Turn Back Time Outfit! Also, she was hilarious! Ugh…. I cannot wait until her 4th farewell tour. I don’t know how she can top this one, but I have no doubts that she’ll find a way. And if Cher wasn’t enough, Cyndi Lauper opened for her!!! And Cyndi brought Liza Minnelli and Rosie O’Donnell onstage with her. And the three of them sang “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Mind blowing.
Sigh.
THANK YOU, MAMA!!! Last night was all I have ever dreamed of and more!!!
Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAMA!!!!!
and because I won’t be posting tomorrow, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MAMA! And to all other mom’s, including Cher!!!!

This song was not performed last night, but I am a huge fan, even if Lady Gaga decided it wasn’t worth releasing. It seems like an appropriate Mother’s Day/Birthday song, and clearly appropriate for Cher:

Now for the baking.
I know I haven’t actually posted in a while, but I have been baking. This particular treat was made 2 weeks ago, but I’m only now getting to it (I blame finals!!!!). Interestingly, when my friend tasted this, she was convinced that there was coconut in it (she loves coconut) and was shocked when she learned that it’s actually hazelnuts that give it the taste and texture that it has (she doesn’t like hazelnuts). What that says about my baking and the treat as a whole is unclear, but… I’m amused.
The hazelnuts give it an interesting texture which I was a bit put off by. I was a little lazy (and pressed for time) when I made this, so did not grind the nuts quite as much as I would have liked. But everyone seemed to like the texture. GREAT!
The recipe called for Calvados-Poached Figs as well, but it was April when I made this. How many fresh figs do you think there are?
On a final note, I TRIED to blanch the hazelnuts (removing the skin and all) and got about 1/3 of the way through the nuts and gave up. It’s not fun, nor easy, to remove skins, despite having blanched them. Almonds are much easier in my opinion.

Chocolate Hazelnut Torte
From BonAppetit, December 2013 Issue

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
8 oz bittersweet chocolate
12 oz blanched hazelnuts (worst!)
1/4 cup flour
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
6 large eggs, separated
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tst cream of tartar

1. If you are going to blanch your hazelnuts, do that first. Here’s how one does that: Blanching!

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease (butter) a 9″ springform pan. Line with parchment and set aside.

3. In a double boiler, melt chocolate until smooth. Set aside to cool a bit.

4. While chocolate is cooling, place (blanched) hazelnuts in food processor with flour, cocoa powder, salt and 1/4 of the sugar. Pulse until well ground (but not till it becomes hazelnut butter!!!). The original recipe says the mixture should be able to pass through a medium-mesh sieve, but in my world, there’s only one sieve size, and that’s the one that I have. Needless to say, I did not pulse to quite that mesh size. Mine was a bit bigger and I said” F*** it! I’m lazy!” and went with what I had.

5. In a medium bowl, beat butter and remaining sugar until fluffy. Then add in the egg yolks one at a time, beating batter after each yolk gets added. Next, stir in the cooled (but still melted) chocolate and vanilla extract. Finally, add in the dry ingredients bit by bit until all is incorporated into the batter.

6. In a small mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff white peaks form! Then, take ~1/3 of the whites and mix into the batter to “loosen” it up (whatever that means). Then, once sufficiently loose, fold in the remaining egg whites, GENTLY, using a spatula. Once all is incorporated, transfer batter to prepared springform pan and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for anther 30-40 minutes (I think I took the full 40 minutes). Test with toothpick! There may be some crumbs that come with toothpick when pricked, but it should not be gooey inside.

7. Remove from oven and allow to cool on wire rack for ~30 minutes before releasing springform pan. Then allow to cool completely!!!

8. Serve to unsuspecting people who think hazelnuts taste like coconut. You’ll blow their minds!

Chocolate Wedding Send Off!

March 6, 2014 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Oh! goodness! This year has been so long already, and we’re only just starting the third month!
But I attribute that to this whole grad-school process. It’s so draining. Interviews are exhausting… and unpleasant really. BUT I’m all sorts of done now! YAY! And plan to make a final decision by Friday. Also, on one of my interviews, I got to play this game. The best game ever!!!! (if you can’t tell, that’s a Dolly Parton Pinball machine!)

So, the following baked good was actually from a couple of weeks ago (don’t worry, it’s been eaten. Just haven’t posted it till now). My dear friend, Anuya, had a little “I’m bout to get hitched in India” party with her lab and my lab (my lab is Anuya’s former lab). It was great! I finally got to say more than a few words to her husband-to-be (March 8th is their official wedding date), and this was actually one of the few times in the two years I’ve been at the Lab that I’ve hung out with lab members outside of the lab. Always want to. Rarely can. So this was a rare opportunity for me. So. Much. Fun!

The whole thing was a bit silly. We played a “wedding” game where we took paper towels and tried to make a sari out of them. It was lab against lab, but of course, my lab won! AND we won by making a sari for the soon-to-be-husband. With a turban. Sigh, why didn’t I go into fashion design?

Anyway, this cake was created for Miss Anuya. She says she likes my baking, so I asked what I should bring to this wedding bash, and chocolate was the request. I had limited time, so I came up with this. A chocolate Bundt cake. Simple, but yummy. There are a few kinks I think I need to iron out, but overall, the texture was super moist and dense, and the flavor was a lot of chocolate, so… mission accomplished!

When I baked it, a dent formed in the middle of the cake. It was just a ring of cake that was indented compared to the inner ring and the outer edges… not sure why…. OOPS! but again, still chocolatey, so… whatevs!

Chocolate Bundt Cake (Suitable for a wedding bash!)
Inspired by this

Ingredients:The cake:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1/3 cup cocoa powder
4 oz Dark Chocolate
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
2 cups flour (may want to add an extra 1/4 cup)
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 eggs
1/2 cup plain (or vanilla) Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

The Icing:
4 oz Dark Chocolate (chopped into small bits)
1 1/2 teaspoons agave nectar
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 12 cup Bundt pan by buttering it and then dusting it with flour. I took probably 10-15 minutes to do this. SO MANY NOOKS IN A BUNDT PAN! yikes.

2. In a double boiler, place butter, cocoa powder, dark chocolate, salt, and water and heat it all up until chocolate is melted and everything is combined into a thin sauce. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. Place flour, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl and mix. Then add ~1/2 the melted chocolate and whisk together. Unless you have one of the whisks with the balls at the ends instead of loops, it’s likely the mixture will get stuck inside. Fret not! Add the rest of the chocolate mixture and continue to whisk! Then add in the eggs, one at a time and whisk some more(not sure why it’s always one at a time with recipes… but I do it…). Finally, add in the yogurt and vanilla and whisk it all together. Now the batter should be smooth, and nothing should be stuck in your whisk. If it is, you may have a problem…

4. Pour batter into your prepared Bundt pan and bake for 50-55 minutes. Check if the cake is done with a toothpick and keep baking if it’s not clean (I may have gone up to 60 minutes. Again, that weird dent in my cake happened!).

5. Once the cake is baked sufficiently, allow to sit for ~20 minutes, then turn cake out onto a wire rack and let the cake cool completely. This, for me, took about 2 hours.

6. To make the icing, place heavy cream, sugar, and agave nectar into a double boiler. Allow the cream to get pretty warm and for the sugar to completely dissolve. Turn off heat and add the chocolate bits into the cream. Stir until chocolate is completely melted and the icing is smooth. I then allowed the icing to cool for about 20-25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. I wanted the icing to stick to the cake rather than just dribble down the sides and pool at the bottom. Your call!!

7. Pour icing over the cake whenever you wish (I threw on some shiny balls after icing). Then serve! Or just take it to your room and eat it all by yourself. No judgements!

Of Lemons and Cornmeal

November 17, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Thanksgiving is approaching far faster than I would like. Mostly this means that I am supposed to be finishing up those pesky applications for graduate school, however clearly I’m typing this post rather than working on my applications. I’m the worst!
But it’s FALL! I love this weather. I love being able to wear hoodies and scarves while not freezing my bum off as I walk to the subway stop. I also love the crunching of the leaves (and of course the pretty colors that the leaves turn). As I was walking to work today, I saw these roses and was a bit surprised by them being in full bloom in the middle of November, but then again, I know nothing about plants, so maybe this is totally normal?

But back to Thanksgiving. I was musing over possible dessert recipes for this years festivities. Lots of thoughts of caramel, apples, cheese and pumpkin have been floating around my somewhat crowded head. Nothing has been set in stone yet, and probably wont be until I am in the kitchen in central NY. This particular recipe popped into my head because corn is a “festive” ingredient, right? And I love lemon. So why not throw them together into a delicious cake? I’ve made this recipe before, perhaps a year or so ago, and wanted to revisit it. I changed a couple things from how I made it last time, and I think there’s a minor but noticeable improvement.

First, I changed how I made my almond flour. Last time I used my food processor to chop up the almonds into small enough bits to be an acceptable “flour” however I was scared I would turn the almonds into almond butter if I blended too long, so the “flour” was rather coarse. This time, I blended the almonds with the sugar, hoping that the sugar would help keep the almond bits separated and less prone to becoming butter. The result was finer almond bits and no butter! Second, I added more lemon zest, both to the cake and to the syrup. Each part received zest from 1 1/2 lemons, making the whole cake super lemony, but not tart!

If I make this again and have the patience to do so, I think I’ll use a coffee mill to make the almonds, sugar and cornmeal all SUPER fine. I like the somewhat grainy texture of the cake as it turned out this time, but I’m curious to see if making the dry ingredients super fine will make a smoother cake. Also, note that this recipe is GLUTEN FREE!!!!!

Almond Flour Progression

Cornmeal Lemon Cake
modified from a recipe I took a picture of at Equinox… no clue what the book is. SORRY!

Ingredients
Cake:
10 oz raw almonds
8 oz white sugar
6 oz cornmeal
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
3 eggs
zest of 1 1/2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon baking powder

Syrup:
zest of 1 1/2 lemons
juice of 2 lemons
1/2 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8″ round pan with parchment. Set aside.

2. Place almonds and sugar into a food processor. Pulse for ~40 seconds. Take a look and see if more pulsing is needed. Again, the sugar should help prevent the almonds from becoming butter, so don’t worry about that too much. If you want to try to get the almonds to be finer, go ahead and pulse longer. When satisfied, sift the mixture. undoubtedly, some almond bits will not fit through. Put cornmeal and the almond bits that are too large into food processor and blend some more. Sift again. If some almond bits are still too large and you have the patience to do this again, return some of the cornmeal/almond/sugar mix that did sift through to the food processor with the too-large almond bits. Pulse and re-sift.

3. Cream butter and ~1 cup of the cornmeal/almond/sugar mixture together in a large bowl. Add the eggs and beat together. Add the rest of the almond mixture, lemon juice, lemon zest, and baking powder. Combine until completely incorporated. Transfer better to prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes (or until toothpick comes out clean).

4. Allow cake to cool in pan for at least 30 minutes then transfer to a wire rack. While cooling on the rack, prepare the syrup. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a light boil over a low heat. Stir constantly with wire whisk for ~7 minutes or until mixture has thickened to a runny syrup consistency. Remove from heat and set aside.

5. Poke holes in the top of the cake! I used a toothpick cuz it was handy, but a fork would work and probably would have been faster than a toothpick. Pour syrup over cake, allowing it to soak into the holes you just poked. I used almost all the syrup, but probably had a couple tablespoons left in the pan. Make sure you get around the edge of the cake as this is the most well done area and soaking it in syrup will soften it up a bit.

6. Serve either immediately or allow to cool completely. Either way, it tastes pretty damn good!!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter BONANZA!!!

November 5, 2013 by Baking Unicorn Leave a Comment

Been a long time since I posted a recipe. I did bake a few weeks ago for my sister’s birthday, but I didn’t really document that recipe. Apparent the baked goodies had an excellent reception, so perhaps I’ll remake them and actually document them.

Enough about the past. Here we are, the start of November. Halloween has left us, daylight savings has come and gone (or is it still here as the clocks are still turned back…?), the NYC marathon has happened, and people are growing out their facial (or body) hair for Movember to raise awareness for men’s health.

Fall is here.

I did not celebrate Halloween, unless you consider giving a 3 hour massage to be a celebration, but I did see some fantastic costumes (one of the members of my lab was a pterodactyl!!) and some less fantastic costumes (I don’t understand the “sexy __(fill in profession)___”). But to me, the bestest part of Halloween is THE CANDY SALES!!! November 1st rolls around and suddenly all the Halloween candy is unacceptable and goes for 1/2 off. But lets be honest. We all know there are enough preservatives in the candy to let them keep for a thousand years. So of course I go on a shopping spree… because I love candy?
I don’t actually.
But apparently I have this total fear that this will be the last chance EVER to buy candy!!! It must be some remnant of a survival/hoarding mode from hunter-gatherer days… or so I tell myself. But to be fair, I do share the candy, and generally use it for baking purposes. And that is how this recipe came around. Thanks to the genius of M&M with Peanut Butter (the best kind ever!)

This recipe is definitely an experiment that I concocted in my head as I was heading to my chiropractor. I knew I had the M&M’s but didn’t know how to make them into something interesting. Cookies seemed too simple. So of course I fall back on cupcakes! Chocolate cupcakes! But why not throw some PB in there for fun? I’ve made chocolate cookies with PB centers before… WHY NOT CUPCAKES?
And that’s exactly what I’ve done here. Chocolate Cupcakes. Peanut Butter Centers. Chocolate frosting. With Peanut Butter M&M’s.
What?
Yup.

So without further adieu, let me Cher this recipe with you (Hi Vani and Mik!)

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Centers!
cupcake recipe adapted from Cuisine At Home (my mom had this one her desk several years ago and I snagged the recipe ).
frosting from FoodNetwork

Ingredients:
The Cake-
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups hot water
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
PSSST!!! this cake recipe is also vegan!!!!

Peanut Butter Centers-
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter (I used Skippy)
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
~1 tablespoon heavy cream

The Frosting-
1 lbs confectioners sugar (a whole box!)
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
7-8 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
ALL THE PEANUT BUTTER M&M’S YOU WANT!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake wrappers in cupcake pan. I only have a single 12-cup cupcake pan, but if you have 2 of these, line all 24 cups. I only prepared the 12 and then also prepared an 8″ round pan for the extra. Because of the vinegar/baking soda reaction, I didn’t want to let the batter just sit around while the first batch of cupcakes baked.

2. Make you PB centers first. Combine the PB, confectioners sugar, vanilla extract, and half the heavy cream in a small bowl and start mixing. If you’re having difficulty combining the mixture into a paste, add more heavy cream. This mixture should be pretty thick, about the consistency of fresh Play-Doh. Make small balls with the mixture, about a teaspoon size. Make sure you have enough for however many cupcakes you’re going to make. And maybe keep rolling if you are planning on making the 8″ pan too. Set these aside.

3. Sift flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a large measuring cup, mix the oil, vinegar, vanilla, and hot water. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk together. You’ll notice that it bubble quickly because of the vinegar/baking soda reaction. YAY! 3rd grade science still works in my kitchen. Make sure the batter is fully mixed together (I whisked for ~3 minutes).

4. Divide your batter into the cupcake cups and/or cake pans. Place a single ball of PB center in each of the cupcake cups. If you’re going the cake pan route, then also add some PB center to this if you like. I kinda just threw it on top in random bits. I had a plan of making long “ropes” of the PB mixture and forming a nice lattice on top, but I lost patience….

5. Bake until a toothpick inserted (not through the PB) comes out clean. About 25 minutes for cupcakes and 45 minutes for the cake. Remove from oven, allow to cool for ~8 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to continue cooling.

6. For the frosting, sift confectioners sugar and cocoa together in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, cream butter and vanilla extract. Add about 1/4 of the sugar/cocoa mix to butter and 3 tablespoons heavy cream. Beat thoroughly. Add ~1/2 of the remaining sugar/cocoa mix and 2 more tablespoons cream and beat again. Add remaining sugar/cocoa and 2 more tablespoons for heavy cream. Beat until completely combined. I stopped at 7 tablespoons heavy cream, but if you want a lighter, more pliable frosting, perhaps add a bit more cream.

7. Place an M&M in the center of each cupcake (if you notice, the seem to have formed a hollow center. I assume the PB expanded when in the oven and contracted when it cooled, leaving a little “cave” in the middle of your cupcake. Then Frost away and decorate to your liking. Same with the cake, if you made it!

Chocolate Vegan Cake Catastrophe

September 15, 2013 by Baking Unicorn 1 Comment

The other night I woke from an amazing, heart warming dream. I was hanging out with Cher in her apartment with a friend from high school, and we were having a grand old time. Cher even started singing for us, though I have no idea what the song was. Best part was that Cher’s apartment was actually attached to a mall…? It was a rough rest of the day as I trudged through the reality that Cher and I are not best friends. WHY!?!?! If you haven’t seen Cher’s new video, check it out. Her hair is amazing! Woman’s World

This week I have also been reading alot of research papers on motor skill learning. On the one hand, people are doing some really great stuff out there that I want to get involved in. On the other hand, they seem to be doing it at top universities that I’m not sure how I’m going to get into. Can I bake them cakes as part of my application? Perhaps a boozy confection that will put them into a perfect mind set to admit me? Please?

Sigh.

Dune of sifted ingredients

Anyway, onto this vegan cake that I conjured up. I say it was a catastrophe, but perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. It was simply a baking adventure (good thing this blog isn’t called “Baking with Unicorns: a how to on all things baking”). Everything started out quite nicely. I sifted ingredients together (I thought it looked rather like a sand dune), which I normally never do because I’m lazy. and the batter was looking quite nice, but once the batter was in the pan, things stopped going so well. The recipe calls for 3 TABLESPOONS of baking powder, which in my head meant major bubbling and rising, but that didn’t fully translate until it was almost too late.

1 minute before I got another pan

I had to wait for my oven to heat up, so after the batter was in the pan, I started to clean up. When I looked over a second later, the batter had risen up to nearly spilling out of the pan! I had to quickly prep a second pan, and awkwardly scoop half of the batter into the second pan. I was a bit scared that this would kill all the light fluffly bubbling of the batter, but in the end, I think it was okay. There was enough baking powder to keep the reaction going. YIKES!

The cake came out fine, though I think it was a bit lacking in flavor and it was SUPER crumbly, most likely because there was no egg or something to bind everything together. The ‘fudge’ frosting was almost a success. I think it certainly has more flavor than the cake, but the recipe made a deceivingly small amount of fudge. I was supposed to have enough to make 1 layer to stick the 2 layers together with and to put into a piping bag and pipe on a pretty top to the cake. I could barely spread a thin layer of the stuff in the middle and the top.

fudge!

Now, i admit my measuring skills for the fudge were lacking, but I OVER did it with the ingredient amounts and still came out with less than expected. GRUMPH!

But all my grumbling aside, I think that overall, the cake wasn’t the worst. Again, I thought it lacked in flavor, but when I took it to my lab and people tried it, they thought it was great, especially for a vegan cake(there are a couple of resident vegans in my lab, so I’ll take their praise as being well informed). I personally think it’s good when the fudge and cake are eaten at the same time, but neither one can stand alone. But that’s just my personal opinion (as is this entire blog….). Here’s the recipe:

Vegan Chocolate Cake
modified from The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Chocolate

The Cake:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
9 tablespoons sunflower oil

The Fudge:
1/4 cup vegan margarine (I used earth balance)
3 tablespoons water
2- 2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
~4 tablespoons cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Prep two 9″ round pans (I just used non stick pans and lined with parchment on the bottom).
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add vanilla and sunflower oil and mix completely. The batter should start to be bubbly/airy. This is because of the crazy amount of baking powder. Divide batter between the two pans and bake for ~25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. (This time is a total estimation. The original recipe was for 48 minutes, but the cake was NOT divided into 2 pans like I did it here).

Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks and allow to cool completely.

To prep the fudge, melt margarine with the water in a saucepan. Remove from heat and add in the confectioners’ sugar and cocoa powder(I sifted the sugar and cocoa powder to avoid lumps). Add more water if the fudge seems like it’s too thick. Spread half the fudge onto top one of the cake layers. Place second layer on top and spread rest of the fudge on top. DONE! There won’t be enough fudge for the sides, but I think that’s okay. The fudge is rather intense and may have been too intense if there were more of it on the cake.

ENJOY!

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