Merlyn (with a 'y')

"When he had listened to all this, Merlin went up to the King and asked: 'Why have my mother and I been brought into your presence?' 'My magicians have advised me,' answered Vortigern, 'that I should look for a fatherless man, so that my building can be sprinkled with his blood and thus stand firm.'  'Tell your magicians,' answered Merlin, 'that they'd be better served pouring me into a cake.'"¹

It's true: sprinkling the fatherless Merlin's blood over the building would not have steadied its foundation one bit, because the real problem was caused by a pair of dragons fighting beneath an underground pool.  Which is to say: it's not true at all.  Clearly.  That last bit about the cake, however, is especially untrue in that I made it up rather than Geoffrey of Monmouth or Nennius (with whom this episode - minus the cake -  first originated).  Nevertheless, pouring Merlyn (with a 'y') in a cake is tasty tasty tasty.  It's not the stuff of prophecy, but maybe it should be.

Merlyn (with a 'y') is a cream liqueur made by the Welsh distillery Penderyn.  It is delightful straight, but because I'm a fan of putting booze in cake, I couldn't resist...  The liqueur is made with cream, so it took no stretch of the imagination to think that it might taste nice in a whipped cream.  And because I love whiskey and chocolate, I decided to make a chocolate cake.  It also didn't hurt that I already had cocoa powder, and since I was operating in an ill-equipped dormitory kitchen, primarily with leftover ingredients, catering to what I could do (whip cream) and could use (chocolate) was key.  I used the chocolate cake recipe in the Recipe Box, but substituted self-rising flour for plain flour + baking powder.  I did get a bit extravagant, though, buying an entire container of baking soda for this one cake.  After the success of the self-rising flour in my yogurt cake, I had thought that I could get away with omitting baking soda from a chocolate cake.  I tried it that same week, and I was wrong.  More on that another time, perhaps...

Because I was using a tall, 6" cake tin, I halved the original recipe.  I was also short on liquid measuring tools (I had none), and so had to estimate measurements for the oil, buttermilk, coffee and Merlyn.  Because Merlyn wasn't in the original recipe, I allowed for it by dividing the amount of coffee and devoting half of it to the booze.

Guesstimation is an art, not a science...

The student kitchen was also lacking a mixer of any description, but thankfully one of my flatmates had brought one along from home.  It was a manual hand mixer, and this was the first time I'd ever used one to make a cake.  Surely, in the days before electricity, they were very effective; but that didn't stop me from being slightly afraid of a shaky foundation from a loose whipped cream.  So I sprinkled some Merlyn over it... just kidding.  Instead, I purchased extra thick heavy cream, thinking that it would make for a naturally firm whipped cream.  When I opened the lid of the stuff, it was so thick that I was worried it wouldn't whip at all!  I could have turned the container upside down and it would have hung in there like an aging rock star clinging to his youth.  In the end all my fears were unfounded: after a small learning curve, the manual mixer did the job very well, and the whipped cream was thick and fluffy and the leftovers (I know, leftovers! Don't worry, they were eaten...) never deflated.

I used the manual mixer on the cake batter too, and despite the lack of measuring tools and the use of a possibly-questionable oven, it baked well.

To finish the cake, I wanted to cover it in ganache.  The recipe for ganache is also in the Recipe Box.  Normally I just use a store-brand bar (or several) of dark chocolate, but the local store didn't have any, so I went for a pair of large Cadbury Bournville chocolate bars.  Candy bar chocolate can sometimes have a waxy texture that isn't that desirable to begin with, but which also doesn't translate well into ganache - it can go grainy or be temperamental when melting.  I'm no doctor of chocolate, but I suspect that's something to do with some additive designed to stop candy bar chocolate from melting.

The Bournville chocolate, however, works well.  It is a bit softer than darker chocolate, so I added more of it to the cream than I might have otherwise - about a bar and a half total.

Chocolate ribbons just starting to form.

While the ganache was setting, I got going on setting up the rest of the cake: splitting the layers, whipping the cream... that's it really; this was a gloriously simple cake!

After the ganache had set, I spread some on the bottom layer of cake to test my suspicions that it wouldn't be thick enough to pour over the whole thing.  It was not liquid by any means, but it was at this point that I decided to add the extra half-bar of chocolate.  If the ganache has already cooled when you decide to add more chocolate, melt the chocolate on its own and stir it into the prepared ganache.  If the ganache has been stored in the refrigerator, let it reach room temperature or warm it up in the microwave before adding the melted chocolate to prevent it from freezing up.

Merlyn cake: surely the recipe was in the Liber Vetusissimus or somewhere.  Geoffrey probably just didn't have a sweet tooth.

¹Thorpe, trans., Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, p. 168, except for the bit about the cake.  There's some weird stuff in Geoffrey, especially in and around the Merlin material, but cake is not one of those things.

Great Chieftain o' the Puddin'-Race

I've been hoarding this recipe for a while now; since its creation, in fact.  It was the first cake I invented, and it's my favourite.  It earned two passing mentions on the local radio, and it was my claim to marginal fame.  I've been stubbornly reluctant to let it go, and yet all of its elements have been in the Recipe Box for a few months.

 
Born around the height of the Great Cupcake Fad, this cake actually began life in the form of the little cloud-topped, cup-shaped treats.  The basic components were chocolate cake, chocolate ganache and swiss buttercream, none of which is particularly unusual and all of which are easily translatable into a scrumptious layer cake.

The final component of my Whiskey Cake is the secret... You may be able to guess what it is.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn't even the first to think of putting whiskey in a chocolate cake: I was inspired by this recipe for Chocolate Irish Tipsy Cake that my mom once made for St. Patrick's Day.  It's quick, simple and delightfully delectable.  As much as I enjoy baking things from scratch, it can be hard to beat a simple box cake every now and again, and the addition of the instant pudding pack really gives the cake a ton of moisture.  Topped with this Hot Buttered Whiskey Glaze from Jack Daniel's, all I can say is - yum!

In a way, I can't give away the exact recipe for my cake because the recipe isn't exact.  I put whiskey in everything, but never in the same amount.  It's in the cake (pre-bake, substitute for part of the measurement of coffee, or other liquid such as water if called for), in the ganache and in the buttercream (you would think it wouldn't hold it, but it does).  For the latter two especially I use the pour-and-keep-pouring-til'-it-tastes-right method; let your taste buds be your guide  By the time it tastes right to me my olfactory senses are buzzing too...

I've always opted to use Irish whiskey (Jameson is great if it's on sale) because I'm not a huge fan of the smokey peat of Scotch whisky.  Last week, however, the idea was to honour the great Scottish bard Robert Burns, and so a Whisky (without the 'e' - trust me, it can be a touchy topic) Cake it had to be.

The most labour-intensive aspect of this cake is making the buttercream.  I've commented on it before here (and chocolate cake here and ganache here), but briefly: 1.) Beat a meringue to a stiff peak.

2.) When the meringue has cooled to room temperature, chop more unsalted butter than you ever want to think about or see and beat it into the meringue, a few pieces at a time,

3.) It'll look gross...

4.) Then it will look even worse...

But, 5.) If you and your hand mixer are able to power through it, the result - a light silky smooth buttercream - will be worth it.  Just don't think about the butter. 

(A side note: if you are lucky enough to have a stand mixer I'm sure I don't have to tell you to use that instead of a hand mixer, but make sure that you use the paddle attachment for the butter-beating; it will ensure far-fewer air bubbles, which is really what you want for a smooth surface on your cake).

Once the buttercream is finished, add your whiskey, and if you haven't put it in the ganache yet, throw some in there too.  For the cake itself, split your cake layers (best done after the layers have had a brief stint in the fridge or freezer), and spread a layer of ganache on each.  If your ganache hasn't set, you can try adding more melted chocolate (reheat the ganache a bit first so it doesn't freeze up) and cool it all again, or you can use a thin layer of moderately loose ganache and let it set on the layers in the freezer for a few minutes.  Once the layer of ganache is firm, spread a layer of buttercream on top.  Stack on the next cake layer and repeat until you get to the top layer, which should not have ganache on it.

Cover the cake with the remaining buttercream, pipe on borders or a design if desired, and enjoy!

Cake is the New Black

Let me tell you something about recipes: they lie.  Not about the ingredients or the methods or the order of the steps - those are all important.  Those can be jumbled or unclear, but that's another matter.  The lies come before all that.  The lies lie in the prep time.

When I say that the prep time is a lie (insert 'the cake is a lie' reference at will), I am of course exaggerating.  The lies aren't malicious, and in ideal circumstances they might even be truths.  The prep time is more like a fantasy, or that maybe-just-possibly-if-you-work-really-hard-barely-attainable goal.  If you've followed a recipe one hundred times you're bound to get quicker at it, or if you have a minion to set everything up for you before you start that would certainly speed things up too.  But if you've baked something one hundred times (or if you have a minion) then you probably aren't even looking at the recipe any more.  Recipes are for those of us who don't know what we're doing, and therefore if they insist on providing a prep time, they should tell it like it is: 'It will be an hour before this cake is even in the oven, and you'll probably be wearing half of it before it gets there'.  Then again, it could just be me.

Just after finishing off a large bag of apples making a pie, I saw this recipe from BBC Food and knew that I wanted to try it.  When I had another enormous bag of apples (another pie, two galettes and this cake's worth of apples, to be specific), I did.  It was my turn to bake for a class, I was low on time and the recipe said under thirty minutes to prep - perfect!

It wasn't perfect.  The cake was delicious and well worth it in the end, but between washing, coring and peeling the apples, and then waiting for them to become 'fluffy', it took much longer than the estimation provided in the recipe.

What are fluffy apples?

To be fair, I may be at least partly to blame for the extra time.  To start, when I saw how few apples 300g was (somewhere in the vicinity of two), I doubled the recipe.  I also made a mistake at this point in that when I read 'add the apples, water and sugar' I added all the sugar, when really only the castor sugar was meant to go in.  Oh well!  I can't imagine that the brown sugar affected the cook time though.

Are they fluffy yet?

I saw steam in the saucepan and covered them for 3-4 minutes as per the recipe, but when I took the lid off I didn't see much difference.  I left them to their simmering, and it did appear that the apples were softening (getting fluffier?) and that the sauce was thinning, but I still wasn't really sure what was meant by cook them 'until thick and fluffy'.  Then I bothered to read the next step, which was to beat them to remove lumps, and realized that I was essentially supposed to be making applesauce.  At that point I left them to continue simmering for I can't remember how long while I moved on to the second component of the batter.

First I was supposed to beat the butter and brown sugar, at which point I realized that I'd messed up and put the brown sugar in the sauce pan with the apples, so I beat the butter on its own instead.  The downside of this was that there was no sugar to create air pockets in the butter to lighten it, but the cake was light enough in the end so I don't think it truly suffered from the misstep.  Nor did it suffer from golden syrup that was past its expiration date.  I'd never used golden syrup before, but had inherited some from a friend and it had been hanging out in the back of my cabinet since then.  Since it was a syrup I wasn't at all concerned about it aging, nor was I surprised or worried to find crystallization inside the can.  I was, however, surprised by the presence of an expiration date on the lid.  Since I didn't want to kill anyone, I naturally sought the advice of google, who provided me with many instructions on how to age golden syrup, some references to Heston Blumenthal's use of 60 or 70 year old syrup and word straight from Lyle's factory that at least one of their higher-ups would only eat syrup that was past the 'best before'; apparently, like wine and cheese, this stuff gets better with age.  Remember that at your next dinner party.

In addition to the golden syrup, eggs and vanilla are beaten into the butter, followed by the flour.  The recipe calls for self-raising, but I don't keep that around, so I mixed baking powder into my flour before incorporating it (two teaspoons to one cup of flour).  After adding the flour, it was back to the apples.

Applesauce is fluffy right?

I had turned the heat off on the apples so they didn't overcook while I was distracted, and added the all-important calvados.  Then I beat them with a hand mixer, in a sauce pan that was definitely too shallow for such an activity... but what's a little extra laundry anyway?  Adding the baking soda was probably the best bit - I was not at all ready to feel like a mad scientist before the apples started fizzing and foaming, but I did!  And I liked it.  And maybe I am.

The frothing applesauce had to be added to the rest of the batter quickly, before it deflated, and mixing had to be similarly swift, but also gentle so as to not pop all the bubbles.  All together it didn't look very pretty, although it did smell nice.  Thankfully the oven did wonders for its image.

The cake had to come out of the oven after about 30 minutes to be beautified with apples, and I used more of the same Bramley since I did not follow the recipe's advice to buy a Cox's Orange Pippin especially for the purpose.  I don't know the reason for the different variety on top, but I don't think that it mattered.

While the cake was baking, I made the caramel sauce.  I had an idea that caramel sauce was difficult to make, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find straightforward and relatively quick.  You simply melt brown sugar and butter, add double cream (and in this case calvados), and stir.

I stirred constantly to prevent burning, but kept it over a low heat for sufficiently long to feel that it would be a nice thick sauce.  Mission accomplished.  I could stand a spoon in it after overnight refrigeration, and it had to be reheated for use the next day.

This sauce was a winner, possibly even the star of the cake.  The new mission is to think of something else to pair it with, maybe a brownie-shaped something...

Unlike the recipe for the cake itself, I did not double the caramel recipe.  In hindsight if I had I could have been enjoying it for days (smeared on shortbread perhaps? or over some vanilla bean ice cream? excuse me, I'll be in my happy place now...), but in reality there was more than plenty for the cake with just a single batch.

While I did find this cake to be more of a time commitment than I'd been anticipating, the recipe itself was not too difficult, no surprises (apart from fizzing fluffy apples), and the result was totally worth the effort (and the laundry).

Cake Ballin'

In this episode I'll cut the rambling and get to the baked goods: calvados cake balls.  Cake balls are simply cake pops minus the sticks, and despite what late-night tv infomercials (my favourite part is where you start with cake mix and 'add kids') or assorted baking stores might try to sell you, you don't need a special tray (or kids) to make them.

Real cake pops are not baked, but rather are truffle-like balls normally made by crumbling cake and combining it either with cream cheese frosting, or, for something not quite so sweet, plain cream cheese (the haters at The Huffington Post might try this).  In this case, however, I decided to experiment with using mascarpone cheese because I thought the flavour would provide a nice compliment to the calvados, and also that it might make for a lighter cake ball.  Well, the calvados cake balls with mascarpone didn't get me any dates at the pub post-play (a very enjoyable outdoor performance of Much Ado About Nothing), but they did get good reviews, including a silent 'oh wow that's good', mouthed by an actress who had stolen one from our picnic spread mid-scene.  (Sure, her theft was a diversionary tactic, but still, I'll take what claims to fame I can get!).

Sorry, it seems I'm not great at not rambling.  I tried.

Here's the cake.

Step 1:  Bake a vanilla cake.  You can make a box cake (just add eggs and oil, no kids required), or whatever recipe you like.  I made the Versatile Vanilla again.

And don't forget to run a quality control check.  Very important.

Step 2:  Crumble the cake.

Cake balls (or pops) are an excellent way to use up leftover cake ('There's no such thing!' you argue, but let me finish) if, for example, you've baked two rounds but are only making a three layer cake (although if you'd rather just eat that fourth layer yourself, you'll find no judgement here).  They're also a good way to make use of cake that has burned (cut off the bad bits) or is stale, because the cream cheese (etc.) adds plenty of moisture.  Cake balls are the French toast or Welsh rarebit of the cake world.

Step 3:  Mix in calvados to taste.  (Feel free to quality control that too).

Step 4:  Add mascarpone.  (And maybe more calvados).

Step 5:  Beat until the crumb mixture comes together and begins to resemble a dough.

Step 6:  Roll into balls and place on a tray or baking sheet.

Place tray in the freezer.

Step 7:  When the cake balls are frozen, chop and melt dark chocolate.  Don't forget, if melting chocolate in the microwave do so in short bursts (approximately 10-15 seconds, depending on microwave settings), stirring in the intervals.

Step 8:  Using a skewer or fork, dip the cake balls in the chocolate, allow the excess chocolate to drip off, and return to the tray to set.  You may need to re-warm the chocolate during this process.  Once all the balls have been dipped I like to return the tray to the freezer, but you could also stick them in the refrigerator.

 

Step 9:  Consume!  Or if you're feeling generous, pack them up to share.

Of Cocktails and Cake

What is the appropriate cake for a cocktail party?  At this, the End of Term, such a question should perhaps not be foremost in my mind, nevertheless... this blog is called Procrastibaking for a reason.

This time last year I was entrenched in the minutia of editing and consumed by word count, so how exactly I managed to make one of my most artistic cakes to date, I couldn't say.  Well, that's not entirely true; I think it was twisting fondant snakes into torques and playing with edible spray paint (maybe especially playing with the edible spray paint - take that lustre dust) that helped me keep what was left of my sanity.

As it turns out, those little aerosol cans can spray quite far and a fair number of inedibles came out looking like they'd been touched by Midas, but the end result was worth it.  The cake was for our departmental cocktail party, and was decorated accordingly.  I mentioned twisting torques, and while this type of ancient jewellry may not be fashionable today, believe me, for the nerdy they were pretty cool to see on a cake.

And that was how I solved the cocktail cake quandary last year: decorating for theme.  Sadly, despite delusions of marzipan manuscripts, there just wasn't time for elaborate decorating this year.  So what to do?  Well, what do all cocktail parties have in common?  Booze.  And what tastes good in cake?  You know the answer.

Brandy was my booze of choice, and it inspired a pairing with vanilla.  Vanilla cake is simple enough, and this time I went with Martha's Versitle Vanilla.  I still needed a vehicle for the brandy, however, and though whipped cream seemed like a likely choice, I was afraid that if I added too much extra liquid (and I wanted to be able to taste that brandy) the whipped cream might break down or weep.  That's when it struck me: pastry cream.  A traditional princess cake with layers of pastry cream and whipped cream, made non-traditional by the infusion (ha!) of brandy.  The fact that the brandy bottle advertized a 'velvety taste with hints of almonds' was, ahem, marzipan on the cake.

This was my first attempt at making pastry cream from scratch, and my sister warned 'it's a bitch'.  I used a Real Simple recipe and didn't actually find it too troublesome, although the advice to whisk constantly 'until the mixture has thickened to the consistency of a creamy salad dressing' was fairly unhelpful; if there was a 'creamy salad dressing' consistency between 'liquidy' and 'Ah! Get it off the burner before it turns to scrambled eggs!' I sure missed it.  Constant whisking, a constant eye on the pan and constant readiness for rapid (I mean rapid) thickening is enough though.  I was pleased with the end result!  The leftovers were delicious in a bowl with whipped cream...

the finished pastry cream

Whipped cream is simple enough to not normally merit discussion (unless we want to talk about how tasty it is), but a bit of experimentation came into play this time when, predictably, my loathsome local grocery store was out of whipping cream.  I'm fairly ignorant about the various types of creams, but a quick google search suggested that heavy cream could be substituted, and I'm happy to say that it was a great accident in the end.  The heavy cream turned out a thick, lush cream that supported the weight of my four layer princess cake with ease.  Importantly, it also took in the brandy with no problems.  I did add some of the finished pastry cream to the whipped cream to stabilize it, but I'm not convinced that was necessary.

I had intended to dam the layers of pastry cream with whipped cream to prevent the pastry cream from seeping out, but after mixing the brandy into the pastry cream this proved a necessity because adding enough brandy (for my taste) made the pastry cream a bit loose.  Even so, it held up just fine from stacking the layers and covering through to being cut into at the party.

That is, until the end...

and that, children, is your cake on cocktails

As shown, the cake was unceremoniously demolished.  Given that, and the fact that a senior member of the department was heard complimenting the cake a week later (I'd point out here that maybe procrastibaking is productive, if it gets your name out there, but the key is compliments to the cake), I feel safe in proposing that the appropriate cake for a cocktail party is an alcoholic one.