cake poire belle helene

there is no such cake. this is simply what happens when you get crazy excited about a dessert and you must make a ton of it. the poire belle helene is a pear poached in syrup infused with vanilla bean, lemon zest and cinnamon stick. and then drenched in a ridiculous chocolate sauce. how could i resist? of course the whole thing was too much for two, so i decided to dress up the leftovers.

first i made the pears according to tyler florence's recipe. sadly, it's not one i recommend. the pears are magnificent, yes, but the chocolate recipe is off: it produces a much larger quantity than what is needed for 6 pears, and it's too thin for my taste. next time i will use the recipe on delia online.

the next day the sauce had hardened and so it was impossible to use as intended. i whipped it up, as you would a ganache, and used it to fill a red velvet cake, along with my go-to lemon whipped cream, and the perfumed pears atop. for the cake i followed paula deen's recipe. the only modification i made to it was to replace two tablespoons of the sugar quantity with cocoa. i like that it has a whole cup of buttermilk, it's a fluffy cake with a tender crumb. for the lemon whipped cream all you need is 2 cups heavy cream beaten stiff, then 2 tb confectioner's sugar, then 4 - 5 tb lemon curd mixed in, according to your taste. check out celia's microwave lemon curd, it's bound to make your life easier. to assemble the cake i doused it well and good with poaching syrup, then filled it. then i ploped the pears on top and so i stumbled unto a great dessert. it would have been even better to have more pears under the whipped cream. i think next time i'll skip the first scenario altogether and go for the cake straight away. the photos are half-assed because i didn't think i would actually use them. i honestly did not expect it to be so good, it was just leftover pears, for crying out loud. i love it when a shot in the dark pans out.

counting my blessings: there are many.

we got up today to a beautiful morning. a true, it's-really-spring morning, sunny, incredibly warm, that made me open windows immediately and skip about the house - well, at least in my head i did, we all know i'm not that much of a morning person. it gave me a mad craving for a citrus dessert, as cheerful as the weather. i poured a cup of coffee, gave zhara her milk and made some waffles. i was having trouble deciding if i should clean the house and bake bread or dump it all and just go for a walk in the forest preserve. that's when the phone rang. my husband called, using someone else's phone, to tell me there had been an accident. he's fine. but he did not sound fine. my sunny disposition evaporated, knees made out of playdough, i told him i was on my way. oh, god, please. the prayer of all wives, even a wife without a god. his phone had shattered, so i grabbed an older one we hadn't tossed. i had so many questions, but he could only talk for a minute. he had borrowed a phone from someone, and i could hear the clammoring of cops? doctors? in the background. never before have i resented every single car on the road like i did today. i wanted to roll down my window and shout. i'm a bit uncomfortable recalling how the speed limit signs were blurring past, seeing i had zhara in the back. though it's not even close to how fast i used to drive, before i had her. it was never supposed to be him, the one to get in an accident. he's the calm, patient one. he's the one who drives for a living. i couldn't believe it happened, really, all winter long i worry about ice on the road and blizzards and today? seriously?

i got there. it happened, allright. all 18 wheels up in the air. cabin smashed, windshield crushed some 15 feet away. our livelihood a big blob of scrape metal on the side of the road. him, whole. thank god, not a scratch. it could have been so much worse. he was transporting a big coil of industrial chain. luckily the whole thing went down on a ramp, and when the coil got loose it rolled off onto the empty patch in between the two highways. and not in the traffic behind. it could've been disastrous.

it's been hours, but clearly i need a shot of get-it-together-you-damn-fool in the coffee i'm drinking, cause i can't stop obssesing about might've happened. if his seatbealt weren't buckled. if other cars were closer. this week we were going to finally launch our own business. we only needed some numbers from the DOT, we had a charter almost set up, we've been working so long for this. this is not a setback, it's possibly a deal-breaker. and still. he got away intact. we're all healthy. we're not in haiti. we'll be fine.

i drove back, zhara singing 'twinkle, twinkle little star' all the way home. i asked her if she wanted to bake with mommy, for what else could i do? she was enthuziastic as always. we also made a quick risotto while the apple cake was baking. she's such a blessing.

unvelibable! onion has a fever!

if you're as indispensible to your resident as i am to mine, you can cheat on the constant stirring. let it simmer covered instead. no one will know. or care. follow the recipe for risotto milanese, but add the chicken broth right away, bring to boil and after 10 minutes of simmering, add frozen soybeans; after another 5, the asparagus and 1 tb chopped sage.

the asparagus needs 3 to 5 minutes, depending on its thickness, then stir in the cheese and you're done. meanwhile panfry a few sage leafs, 30 seconds, if that, don't carbonize it. serve at once, with a few leafs on top. maybe skip those on the doctor's plate.

the cake really is amazing, i've made this a lot since seeing it at smitten kitchen, it's very moist and the outside gets almost caramelized. wondrous, but the dessert to restore my appetite today has yet ot be invented. so i don't have a picture of a slice, or not a slice of the one i made today. it will probably go to my neighbours, but baking it has calmed me, to way it always does.

these were taken last september? october? or around there; zhara had a grand time stealing cake, she was walking around on her tippy toes trying to look innocent, with crumbs everywhere around her mouth and on her shirt.

dark chocolate cake with goat cheese mousse and raspberries

a few nights ago i watched 'chocolat' again. it's one of my favourite movies, and each time i see it it puts me in a good mood. the actors are all among my faves - juliette binoche, judy dench, alfred molina. a village in southern france and all the chocolate you can carry makes for good entertainment in my book. not to mention the tastiest morsel - johnny depp and his chocolate skin. now i'm not the kind of gal who indulges idle infatuations on distant characters, real or imaginary, but when it comes to johnny depp i think everybody is entitled to a healthy dose of fanatic adoration. well. let's put that particular pot on the back burner so i can tell you about this cake.

i can't post the recipe yet cause it's not quite perfected and i know how dissapointed i am when i try to make a recipe and it's not all it promises. but i was so excited with the idea and the taste of it, i simply couldn't wait. i'm very happy with the cake, it's very moist, did not need any syrup, and i thought the taste very well balanced. the filling is a goat cheese-white chocolate mousse, and it requires some further tinkering, cause it was kinda soft set. now my fridge has been acting up, and it doesn't seem as cold as it should be, so i really must remake it to see where the problem is. but i was very excited with the taste.  i simply love it. the dark chocolate isn't overpowering, its bittersweet works great with the raspberries and the mousse! the mousse is lovely, not too sweet, with just a bit of tang from the cheese, very delicate and in total harmony with the dark chocolate. i tossed the raspberries in a little hot jam to coat, and i poured a thin layer of dark chocolate glaze over the top.

i'm happy to say it keeps well, even in my questionable fridge. the first picture was taken when the glaze was barely set, but by the time we cut it the light had gone, so i took the picture of a slice the next day. i didn't even cover it, and it was just as soft and moist as the day before, so it's perfect to make ahead.

only thing left to do is see if i need more gelatin in the mousse or a new fridge. either way, something tells me this will need several batches to perfect... and possibly new pants.

zhara loved it, today she got up from her nap and demanded it right away. and well, it's got cheese and fruit! so it counts as a snack. and dark chocolate has antioxidants. so there.

dobos torte

this cake graced all the special occasions in my childhood. i don't think my mother ever made it herself. it was always ordered from various bakeries. some were great, and some not so much, but at that age, everything swaddled in chocolate is awesome. even stale, overly sweet cake. awesome, the whole lot.
after seeing it last august on the daring bakers it became an insidious bit of obssesion. this is not a dessert you just slap together, so i patiently waited for the magical intersection of a day i'd have people over for dinner and my husband would be home to mind the child while i baked it. he's away for days or weeks at a time, and pouring caramel with a toddler running around the kitchen is not exactly the pinnacle of safety-conscious cookery.

so i baked six thin layers. i made chocolate buttercream, despite the fact i've a deeply rooted aversion to buttercream and i never use it, not to save my life. i made the lemon caramel glaze and poured it on the top layer. then i assembled the thing and clothed it in pecan praline for a bit of extra oomph.

like proust with his madeleines, my tastebuds trembled with anticipation. i rushed everybody through their chips and dips, the goat cheese and asparagus tartelettes, the tuna empanaditas, and to hell with the chicken wings: who cares about that stuff?! let's cut the cake, right. now.

in the heat of things i never got to take a pic of a slice. it looked neat, equal thin layers of spongecake doused with coffee and deep chocolate buttercream. i only put praline on top so my husband could remove them. he's a nut hater. a hater of all nuts. (all but me.)

there's no easy way to say this: as i was eating, i felt cheated. robbed of one of the fondest culinary memories i had. this cake was nothing like the one i had growing up. it was good, fine, but just a bit too sweet. much sweeter than i like my desserts to be. i really resent a recipe when sheer sweetness masks all the other flavors. i used some great dark chocolate for the buttercream - i think it would have been the same made with wretched chips. you couldn't taste the coffee i brushed on the layers. it was too sweet.

so this cake gets a resounding, definite 'eh'. eh, i've had better. eh, next time i'll follow a romanian recipe and not use one just because it's already translated from the metric system.

luckily it wasn't the only dessert i had. i also made the parisians, only smaller so i'd get more mileage out of them, and another thing i can't say anything about yet because it's the current daring bakers' challenge. look how cute the miniature parisians are, and by miniature i mean about 5 or 6 inches long. these are always great, and even more so this time as i used king arthur flour.

lemon ricotta cake

this is another breezy spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. completely unpretentious. sometimes i just get, and i'm sure this never happens to any of you, the sloth state. it's very annoying when the sloth couples with cravings. you don't want to bake, but the bakery where they have the good stuff is a half-hour drive away. not to mention you can't drive there in your pajamas. sigh.

it's lemony sweet and very light. i used to make this with mascarpone, but my grocer must've confused it with golden talking puppies when he priced it. so i got ricotta al latte instead. typically i'd make a mousse, but i was out of gelatin. so i just mixed it with whipped cream and lemon curd and it was surprisingly smooth and creamy and delicious.

for the cake: 6 eggs, 6 tb sugar, 12 tb water, 14 tb cake flour, 1 ts vanilla extract.

preheat the oven to 350F. separate the eggs. beat the whites stiff and set aside. beat the yolks with the sugar and water and when pale and creamy start adding flour, slowly. add vanilla. fold in the egg whites, gently. pour into buttered pan and bake in the middle of the oven for about 20-22 minutes.

in the meanwhile, whip the 8 oz ricotta with a tb milk. ricotta al latte is moist and creamy, but there's still a grainy texture to it. whip until very smooth. pour 1 cup heavy cream directly over it and continue whipping until good and stiff. now fold in lemon curd, between 6 to 10 oz, according to taste. lemon curd is very sweet, so taste before you add more. trader joe's has a good one for cheap. find it by jams. or if you're not lazy you can make it, like this. anyhoo, mix it in and refrigerate. when the cake is cool cut it in half, sprinkle with some simple syrup and fill it.

blood orange cake

a quick no-bake dessert, easy to assemble, that looks fabulous. do you have other requierments on a weeknight? the hardest part is waiting for it to set, in the fridge, for at least 3 hours to overnight.

8-9 blood oranges
1 3/4 cups orange juice
2 cups whipping cream
1 vanilla pudding mix
2 tb sugar
3 tb powdered sugar
20 ladyfingers or so
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup sugar

make a pudding using 1 3/4 cups orange juice instead of milk. i always get the unsweetened ones because i can better control the taste of the finished product. so add 2 tb sugar or don't. let cool.
make a simple syrup by boiling 1/2 cup oranje juice and 1/4 cup sugar. let cool.
peel the oranges making sure to remove the pith at the same time. slice them across the segments to make them look like flowers. line a cake pan with saran wrap and then arrange the orange slices, trying to fit them close together, like a puzzle. line the walls of the pan too.
beat 2 cups of cream until you have soft peaks, then slowly add 3 tb powdered sugar while beating untill stiff. add the pudding to this and mix gently from top to bottom.

put half of the cream on top of the oranges. then layer ladyfingers which you briefly rolled in the syrup, just a second on each side. on top pf those put the rest of the cream, then another ladyfinger layer. bring the ends of the wrap over the cake and refrigerate for as long as you have but no less than 3 hours. it's light and very refreshing. blood oranges are my favorite winter fruit. it's a brief window of opportunity with these, and each season i feel i didn't have enough of them. like it happens with cherries in the spring. i can never have enough cherries and blood oranges.

this is not my invention but i can't assign paternity, because i don't remember it. i think i've seen it done with blood oranges and mascarpone cream on a brazilian blog, and then i've seen a million versions using, er, orange oranges. i would love to come across that brazilian blog again, it really was extraordinary.

Zhara's Second Birthday Cake

Words don't come easy to me, when it comes to cake. I really wanted to do it myself, but let's face it, I'm no baker. I tested a lot of recipes. I experimented with frosting and the results were really, really, creepy. That's because the cake was Spongebob, and it just did not work. So I ended up doing fondant, and as it turns out, it really was not as difficult as I imagined. I don't know why I was so intimidated. It wasn't close to perfect, but Zhara recongnized it, yelled Spongggggeeeee cake and her whole little being shook with excitement, so, mission accomplished.

I worked from top to bottom and you can see exactly where I got bored and stopped working his pants piping the details on the lower side, like his belt and what have you.

Even now, if  Zhara sees pictures of it she runs to the kitchen to see if there's more. And she sings Happy Birthday. (Seriously, she's very verbal. She sings.)

I'll come back with the recipe, this I have written down, so I'm not likely to forget it.