Educational Cake

While in line to see Iron Man, my friend Shawn said, "I'd want an Indiana Jones birthday cake". I was pretty sure he wasn't hinting, but that didn't stop me from making it anyway. The cake making was complicated by two things:

1. Shawn is a very picky eater.
2. I didn't remember anything about Indiana Jones.

But I tried my best and it turned out semi-decent. More importantly, I learned a lot.

Many thanks to our friend Adrienne who was kind enough to take the pictures below.



When I think of Indiana Jones, the first thing I think of is brown. The second thing is that scene where the guy rips the other guy's heart out and it beats in his hand. I don't have the skills to make a beating heart cake topper (but hope to add it to my repertoire by Valentine's Day!), so I decided to make the cake brown using the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The cake itself was a double recipe of the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes from the same book. I topped the cake with a "whip" made of marzipan and wrote Happy Birthday Shawn in the closest I could get to the Indiana Jones font.

I used the Crimson Velveteen Cupcake recipe, not a regular cake recipe, because I already knew the birthday boy liked it. Oddly, I was short a tabelspoon of food coloring, but was still able to taste it in the cake. I've made this recipe as cupcakes many times and never experienced that before. It was really weird. Because it wasn't a cake recipe, the cakes turned out a little larger than they should have and the tops rounded. I was dumb and it didn't occur to me to trim them until the next day, so as you can see here, the cake was very lopsided and has a noticeable seam:



My first idea was to make a fedora (or heart full of cherry pie filling) out of home made chocolate clay, but after discussing it with Adrienne, I decided to stick with marzipan because I already knew Shawn liked it and a whip because it should be relatively easy. I used Wilton's coloring paste on it and it ended up the exact same color as the frosting. That wasn't good, so I added some black. Then it was 3 AM and I decided the color was good enough, so I worked on the shape, modeled after this picture.

For the writing, I printed out the Happy Birthday and tried to trace it onto cardboard using a Xacto knife. Unfortunately, I don't have any hand-eye coordination, so Adrienne had to trace out the stencil for me instead. I thought that if I frosted the whole cake, then put the stencil on top of it, I'd ruin the frosting, so I left a blank area for the stencil, which I filled in using a pastry bag and some light yellow royal icing. I then went over it with some orange food coloring on my finger, then red over that. I intended on using a small knife to frost between the letters, but once I was done, I knew that'd never work and ended up with a naked stripe across the cake. Next time, I'll definitely frost the whole thing, do the stencil, then just smooth the defects in the frosting as best as I can.

As you can see, it totally needed more filling:



The final thing I learned making this cake: brown marzipan looks like a turd. D'oh!

Thankfully, that was my last cake for June. As far as I know, July will be a month of rest. Then I hope to bake for two or three people in August, depending on who lets me honor their birthday in pastry fashion.

Things Fall Apart

The centre cannot hold.

Especially when said centre is made of crepes and pastry cream. Behold! The crepe cake!



Doesn't that look lovely(ish)? It's rather a pity that that's not how it looked when it got to the table. This is:



Back in January, my friend challenged me to veganize this cake. It looked complicated, so I decided to wait a while, until I was a bit more comfortable in the kitchen. A while turned into months and then her birthday was coming, so I decided to figure it out and make it her birthday cake. I really wanted to get it right, so I started working on it over a month in advance because the filling kind of freaked me out. This wasn't merely a case of substituting margarine for butter and a little bit of soy yogurt for an egg and I didn't know what to do, so I took it to The PPK. As always, they were very helpful and directed me toward the pastry cream filling of the Brooklyn vs. Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I decided layering that with a few batches of the sweet crepes from Veganomicon would do the trick and set to work.

Here's my first attempt:





Failure. The crepes were too thick and not browned enough and the pastry cream was too loose. The reason? I couldn't get my agar flakes to dissolve. I officially hate agar flakes.

A few days later, I tried again:



Per the suggestions of the lovely people on The PPK, I reduced the crepe batter from 1/2 cup to 1/3 per crepe and dissolved the agar flakes in the microwave (which still took HOURS). The crepes still weren't brown enough, but it was only a test, so I was going for speed (as you can see by my ever-so-smooth filling job). It looked good enough to me. The cream was thick and the crepes were thin, so the cream was able to support the crepes, instead of the other way around. With eight crepes, I called it success. But the recipe called for 25 crepes and it never occurred to me that the number would cause a problem.

Though it looked good, I found the taste slightly lacking. It tasted good and it was nice and sweet, but it didn't taste like anything. Just sweet. I wanted to layer in some thinly sliced strawberries, but I thought that would be too much of a variation (read: cheat) from the original recipe, so I decided to substitute chocolate extract for vanilla in the final cake, top it with powdered sugar and write on it in melted chocolate (at first, I wasn't going to write on it at all, then I was thinking of using royal icing or something similarly generic).

The birthday dinner was on Wednesday, so I planned my week accordingly. Monday night, I went home early and made the crepe batter (four times the written recipe) and the pastry cream (six times the written recipe). I knew I'd have the agar issue, so I did that first, working on the batter while the agar sat in the warm/hot soy milk slowly dissolving, then whisking it for five minutes at a time. For hours. My right arm is currently on strike.

This is a lot of crepe batter:



Please notice the box of soy milk in the background. It's right side up, but I'm pretty sure the text on the back is upside down.

More pastry cream than I ever want to see again:



Tuesday night, I went to see The Futureheads do their first US show in two years (which was superawesome. Expect a fall tour. Run, don't walk for tickets!), then went home and made the crepes and put it all together.

Thirty crepes:



I only needed 25, so I put aside the uglier crepes and the best one (for the top) on a cutting board as I worked. I got to 18, paused to wash my hands, looked over at the cake and it looked like a landslide. As I stood there, the crepes were sliding off of the cake, onto the table, then almost onto the floor! I ran over and caught them (part of them were already hanging off the table), then grabbed up the whole cake and dropped it down on the cutting board. Right on top of the nicest crepe. Crap.

Once I got the pastry cream of of myself (and the table) and convinced myself I was neither going to cry nor throw the crepes around the room, I started reassembling the cake crepe by crepe, using my hands to smooth the filling, instead of my spatula. Since half the filling ended up on the table, cutting board and me, I thought the cake might hold together better with the thinner layers of filling. Since it was already covered with pastry cream, I included the "best crepe" in the cake and topped it off with a clean one, so the cake ended up being twenty crepes instead of 25. That was good enough for me, so I dusted it with powdered sugar and wrote on it with the melted chocolate.





That's how it looked when I put it away. This is how it looked when I woke up:



Appetizing, isn't it? (No)

I IMed the birthday girl when I got to work and basically apologized for completely ruining her birthday (because that's how it felt to me) and tried to brainstorm how to fix it. A coworker noticed I was upset and when I showed her why, she laughed at me. When she was done laughing, she suggested I just move the top of the cake to the center of the pile and trim it around, so that's what I did.

Here it is, with the trimmings my coworkers and I ate throughout the day:



And here's the finished product:



Obviously, it's not nearly as attractive as it started out, but it was presentable enough. And everyone seemed to enjoy it. Even the wait staff at the restaurant tried some, but they didn't tell me what they thought of it, so maybe that was their polite way of not telling me they hated it.

Wow, this post is sort of epic (read: too damn long). Sorry about that. But if it took you this long to read it, think of what it must have been like to do it!

And if you're reading this, happy birthday, Shar! (that's what the cake says, in case you can't tell)

All You Need is Brunch

Lately, all I've been eating is brunch. This is for two reasons:

1. It's yummy
2. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm helping test for Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming vegan brunch book, Crack of Noon.

Let's take a little look at what I've been eating lately.



Like I already said, potatoes are the most important thing about brunch. Check these bad boys out:



Individual Baked Hashbrowns. Individual servings make everything cuter. Cute + potatoes = the best thing ever.

My favorite veg/spice combination is cauliflower and curry. My favorite meal is brunch. Guess how I feel about the Curried Cauliflower Frittata. Go ahead. Guess.



I like using purple cauliflower in this so you can actually see it and it doesn't just blend in with the tofu and curry powder.

I was never a big egg eater, even before I went vegetarian, so I never expected to eat an omelet ever again. I was wrong:



That there is an overstuffed Grilled Asparagus Omelet with Miso Tahini Sauce. The omelet is great and the asparagus is AMAZING. It's marinated in (among other things) balsamic vinegar and is damn tasty. The sauce (not visible because it's inside the omelet) is surprisingly good, given that I don't like tahini.

You know what I think I missed most this past Passover? Matzo brei. Well, I don't have to worry about that any longer.*



It seriously tastes just like my mother makes it. I mixed in a bit of raspberry preserves and was in heaven.

Brunch is never complete without muffins. These Toasted Coconut and Mango Muffins are really good (even though I'm still not so good at making muffins and they're not cooked all the way through despite passing the toothpick test):





Let's not forget dessert: a chocolate cherry variation of the East Coast Coffee Cake:





The longer that cake sits, the better it gets. It's even better if it sits out on the counter, instead of in the fridge. The cut piece looks a little flat because I brought it to a party and it got a bit squished along the way. Oops!

That's it for now, but testing is far from over. My belly is looking forward to more brunch.



* That's not 100% true; this recipe uses tofu, which I can't eat on Passover, but it's still totally acceptable the rest of the year.

All is Full of Brunch

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. Mine was great. I spent most of it cooking, then had a nice brunch picnic with my friends for Memorial Day.

SPOILER WARNING: The following post contains pictures and descriptions of testing recipes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming vegan brunch book, Crack of Noon. If you want to be surprised by the book, don't click!



(all outdoor photos below this point were taken by my friend Adrienne)

For me, the most important part of brunch is potatoes. I was tempted to bring three different types, but behaved myself and stuck with two:





First was Red Flannel Hash: a nice, smoky mix of potatoes and beets, sauteed, then baked. I still don't know if I like beets (I have trouble getting past the garden smell), but I've liked them whenever I've used them in one of Isa's recipes and that's good enough for me.

We also had Samosa Mashed Potato Pancakes, which are basically just flat, doughless samosas. All the goodness of the filling, none of the hassle of making dough. Win! They're one of those recipes that I have trouble believing came out of my kitchen because it tastes so professionally restauranty. Technically, the pancakes are fried, but don't let that put you off; look how dry my pan is:



The oil is pretty much a non-issue.

No brunch would be complete without pancakes, so we had Gluten Free Buckwheat Pancakes:



They're thick and hearty and kind of healthy. Lovely topped with agave nectar and fresh berries. As you can see at the link above, you need four different kinds of flour to make them, but don't let it put you off. They're worth it and you never know when you're going to need quinoa flour (seriously).

For protein, we had Spicy Pinto Sausages and Beer Battered Tofu.





The sausages are an adaptation of the Spicy Italian Vegetarian Sausage recipe from Everyday Dish. It's super cool. You make a seitany dough, divide it up, wrap it up in tinfoil so it looks like a bunch of Tootsie Rolls, throw it in a steamer for a while, and viola! Sausages. It couldn't be any easier. And it's even forgiving of the occasional cock up (I was short one half cup vital wheat gluten). The texture is great, and the spices are serious.



The Beer Battered Tofu is a vegan twist on the fish part of fish and chips. Yup, deep frying for brunch. These were great with a bit of malt vinegar (and even without).

For something a bit more like a "normal" breakfast, we had a Mexicana Scramble. It's great, but very vegetabley. I usually think of scrambles as having more tofu than vegetables, but this is so tasty, we'll let it go.*



I felt like we should have one straight vegetable dish, so I made Poblanos Stuffed With Coriander Seed Mushrooms. If you like spicy, you'll like this. Personally, I can only eat them cold, when some of the spice is held at bay.



I also grilled up some tortillas, in case people wanted to make breakfast burritos.

For dessert, we had Pain Au Chocolat and Orange Pecan Crumb Cake.

I'm an idiot and forgot to photograph the Pain Au Chocolat. It's the easiest thing in the world to make, and it's amazingly tasty and elegant looking. It's one of those desserts that's bound to impress if you don't tell people how you did it. I filled ours with berries and I think my face died and went to heaven when I ate it.

I don't like citrusy cakes much, but the pecans and nutmeg in this one balance it out nicely. It's pretty light, so most people were able to eat a piece, even after all that brunch. Now that I'm writing about it, I'm really looking forward to the leftovers when I get home.

I used the wrong sized pan, so the shape is messed up, but you get the idea.





I had some leftover beer batter and vegetables, so I fried up some shiitake mushrooms, cauliflower and broccoli. Yum!




* After eating the Mexicana Scramble and Beer Battered Tofu, people commented that I got the texture of the tofu really firm and nice. Slimy tofu is the worst feeling in the world. The secret: if a recipe calls for either firm or extra firm tofu, go with extra firm. And if it tells you to press the tofu, press the crap out of it. Seriously. For at least an hour. If you don't have to press it, just shake it out lightly and squeeze it between your hands a bit to get out as much of the moisture as you can.

Happy Mothers Day!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the mothers reading this. And all the wannabe mothers. And all the people who have mothers. And everyone who likes mothers. Basically, I hope everyone had a nice Sunday.

My mother's birthday was also this weekend. As I mentioned in my birthday post, she loved my birthday cake (a little too much), so I made Blackout the Forest Cupcakes for her and my grandmother for Mother's Day/her birthday.

(Note: the post behind the cut is pretty image heavy; I was finally able to take some photos in daylight and may have gotten a little carried away.)



I started out with the same recipes I used for the cake, Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance, halving them and substituting cherries for raspberries. This yielded ten cupcakes. One could probably get eleven out of it, but I tend to overfill.

The cross-hatching on some of the cupcakes is neither functional nor decorative. I just dropped them upside down on the cooling rack.



Next, I cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake, trying to keep the removed part as tidy as possible, so it could be replaced neatly:



Then I filled the hole partway with the cherry layer:



Topped that with ganache:



Topped that with the bits of the cupcakes I'd cut out earlier (trimmed down for a neater fit - and so I had something to snack on):



Then the cupcakes went in the fridge until the ganache hardened and I could be pretty certain nothing would fall off when I turned the cupcakes upside down. Once they were cooled, I covered them with cherry preserves. I covered the full size cake with more of the cherry layer I made, but I didn't think the cupcakes would be able to accommodate the lumpiness of the cherries and still look nice:



I dipped each cupcake in the still warm ganache:



Then the cupcakes went back in the fridge, joined by the ganache, so it could harden. When it was firm, I used the icing to pipe ganache-y os on the cupcakes:



That was topped with chocolate covered cherries, and when I ran out of cherries, a truffle made from leftover ganache:



The money shot:




Loads of extra pictures:

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday, and in honor of that most auspicious of occasions, I baked a cake and brought it to work for my office birthday party on Thursday. I call it Blackout the Forest Cake because it's sort of like a cross between blackout cake and black forest cake. To make it, I adapted parts of Raspberry Blackout Cake with Ganache-y Frosting and Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars from Vegan With a Vengeance.



I started out making the Raspberry Blackout Cake, substituting cherry preserves for raspberry:



Instead of topping it with more cherry preserves, I made the raspberry layer from the Chocolate Chip-Raspberry Blondie Bars, substituting frozen cherries for raspberries:



All that was topped with ganache:



Then another cake and more cherries. When I moved the second cake from the cooling rack to the cake, it ripped about halfway down and I nearly shit my pants. Thankfully, all the toppings covered it up quite nicely and no one could tell:



Then, the whole thing was frosted with ganache and refrigerated along with the remaining topping to firm it up to a spreadable and pipeable consistency:



I also dipped some fresh cherries in the ganache for decoration. I kept the stems on because I thought they kind of looked like birthday candles, and because it made them easier to dip. To get a good layer of chocolate on them, I dipped them, refrigerated them, dipped them again and put them back in the fridge until it was time to use them:



I'm not so great at frosting cakes yet, so I wasn't able to completely hide the seam between the cakes when I poured on the ganache. I managed to cover the seam with the refrigerated ganache, but it didn't come out as smooth as I'd hoped. I guess I just need practice (the top isn't so smooth either, but that's to be expected with the cherry chunks on it).

The next thing I did was pipe chocolate circles onto the cake wherever I wanted to place the fresh cherries. I think of them as "Ganache-y Os":



Then I pressed the chocolate covered cherries into the ganache-y os:



I probably should have done the cake assembly and decoration on the base of my cake carrier, but I didn't because I'm not so smart. I also made the even less smart move of covering my carrier with parchment paper, so that when I piped around the base of the cake, I wouldn't be doing it directly onto the carrier. Moving the cake from the cutting board to the carrier was a nightmare. I really thought I was going to wreck the whole thing. The sides ripped significantly, but I was able to hide it with icing. Then I piped a border on the top and bottom of the cake:



Thanks to the stupid parchment, the cake slid around the carrier throughout my commute (bus, train and 20-minute walk) and I thought it would certainly be ruined by the time I got to work. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, it didn't turn out too bad; the trim is just a little flat. Here's a shot of the inside:



The cake went over very well, with two people having seconds and one attempting to steal one of the pieces saved for absentees.

Since I'd never made a cake like this before, I did half a test cake last weekend by baking one cake, cutting it in half and layering the two halves instead of layering two cakes:



Here's a shot of the cherry and chocolate layers:



My family loved the testcake so much I knew it'd be good enough for my coworkers. Actually, my mother loved it a little too much: my father had to make her back away from the table and when no one was looking, she rushed the cake and took a second piece (part of a piece I was saving for a friend). She's been talking about the cake all week, so I'm in the process of turning it into cupcakes for Mother's Day (literally in the process; I'm typing this while the ganache is cooling in the fridge). If the cupcakes turn out half as well as the cake did, it will be a happy Mother's Day indeed.

Easy Peasy Veganeasy*

We've all eaten or seen a dish and thought "Wow, I wish I could make that!" It's even more interesting to see a dish and think "Wow, I wish I could make that vegan!" Then, not only are you making something absolutely tasty, but you're really changing it up and making it your own. Sometimes, this can be a real process that requires work (see Hezbollah Tofu). Other times, it can be ridiculously easy and require no more effort than a bit of punctuation (see this post).

Recently, Paula Dines was kind enough to share her great-great-grandmother's coffee cake recipe with the Internet. I was sweet-toothed enough to steal it, veganize it, bake it and eat it. Before I continue, want to know how to veganize her recipe? Put quotes around the words "milk" and "butter". Viola! You're done! Vegan.



First off, you should know that this cake is the easiest thing to make EVER. No lie. Also, I am willing to bet your favorite TV show takes longer to watch than this cake takes to make. And when you're done with your favorite TV show, you're still cakeless, so turn off the television and make yourself a coffee cake.

The crumb topping is all sorts of cinnamony and awesome. So awesome I doubled the recipe. I really, really like crumb topping. As far as desserts go, it's my reason for living. The cake itself is sweet and nice, with a good bite. No airy fairy wussy cake here. It's dense and you can easily eat it held in your hand, without a fork. Yummy.

Thank you, Paula Dines, for sharing your family's recipe. Your secret is safe with me (and my belly)!



*I apologize for the absolute stupidity of the name of this post.