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.

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.