Bake-A-Long #5: Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake

I wasn't going to participate this week. I had tried this cake a few weeks ago when my coworker made it and knew that it was very good, but my sister was already making a pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving so I didn't think we needed two. However, Matt decided that he wanted to make this for his family's Thanksgiving dinner, so that's what we did.

We could probably nickname this cake the Pure Pumpkin "Recipe for Disaster" Cheesecake because we had several "oops" moments during construction. The first mistake was with the crust. I poured out the pecans onto a baking sheet for toasting without measuring, as I knew we would need some extra for garnishing. However, it was not me that started processing the pecans for the crust, it was Matt, and he just poured them all in thinking they were already weighed. So, when the pecans, gingersnaps, and butter were all processed together, we had a soupy mess. I then realized that he had used all of the pecans. I would guess that all of the pecan oil is what made the crust really liquidy. To thicken it up, we added a significant amount of ground gingersnaps. This seemed to work OK.

After this, the pumpkin and turbinado sugar were cooked and then processed with the cream, egg yolks, and cream cheese and baked in a water bath as indicated in the recipe. The cake looked good when it was finished baking (I forgot to take a picture).

Thanksgiving afternoon, we made the caramel topping. This was mistake number two. It took three times to make the caramel successfully. The first time, I burnt it (there was not enough volume in the sauce pan to take an accurate temperature with my candy thermometer. Burnt sugar = smoke = good thing we have an exhaust fan above our stovetop.

For our second caramel attempt, we decided to just stop cooking when the syrup began to brown and we also decided to add in some pumpkin pie spice since there were no spices in the cake itself. I though it would add a nice touch. So, when the sugars started to caramelize I took the syrup off the heat and dumped in some spice. I was a bit heavy handed when dumping in the spice and added more than I intended. We added the cream and butter and tasted the caramel to find that it was extremely bitter. I think the bitterness came from the excess spice and I also think I slightly overcooked the sugar.

So, third time was a charm. We didn't risk it by adding spice this time.

The cake turned out quite nice, but I think everyone was too full to fully enjoy it. I think the texture is the best part of this cake. Also, the extra gingersnaps in the crust turned out to be a nice touch, as the ginger flavor came through well. Matt had a piece for breakfast this morning. This leftover dessert for breakfast thing seems to be becoming a trend for this bake-a-long. But who wants to let a good dessert go to waste.

Thanksgiving Bake-Off, Work Addition

Every year, a week before Thanksgiving, we have a "Work Thanksgiving" where everyone brings in a dish to share. This year, we decided to have a mini Bake-Off in conjunction with lunch. Four of use participated in this game with the winner earning the title "King of the Lab".

I debated for a few days on what to make. I thought about doing the pumpkin cheesecake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, but my coworker who had borrowed my book decided to make that one. I wanted to do something somewhat easy since I only had Wednesday after work to make it. So after flipping through numerous cookbooks I stumbled upon the recipe for Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache. It did not look complicated, and the combination of chocolate, raspberry, and peanut butter sounded good, so that is what I went with. I will not go into details about the recipe, but it was a chocolate sponge cake brushed with a black raspberry syrup and topped with a chocolate peanut butter ganache. This was the first cake I have made that has a syrup soaking step, so I was slightly skeptical going in to this. But when I was done I was feeling more confident because I thought it looked pretty good.

The next day at work we had the following entries (one person entered 2 desserts, that's why there were 5 total):

Chocolate Peanut Butter and Jelly Cake

(given the raspberry and peanut butter, I thought that name would fit well)

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Sweet Potato Pie

Chocolate Strawberry Mango Crumb Bars

Black Forest Cake

I thought everyone did very well on their presentation.

When it came time for tasting, we cut a piece of each dessert and called in a few other judges. The judging went as follows: 3 points for first place, 2 points for second place, and 1 point for 3rd place. When the last "judge" was in the room tasting I peaked in to look at the score board. My cake had zero points. I pleaded for a sympathy vote and was given 1 1/2 points from the last voter. I guess that made me feel a little better.

I'm note sure what went wrong. The cake looked good, the texture was fine, it just had no flavor. When I brought the cake home afterwards (all but 2 extremely small slices remained) I made Matt taste it. He said it tasted like a fluffy omelette with a little bit of cocoa powder added. I agreed that it was not a very good cake. The raspberry syrup flavor was nonexistent and the chocolate flavor was very weak. I used a dutch process cocoa powder from King Arthur that I have used previously with success. The peanut butter ganache, however, was pretty good. The peanut butter flavor was subtle but definable. Although I lost, I learned that maybe sponge cakes are not for me, but that probably won't stop me from trying another one, but I know I won't be making this one again.

I will say that my vote went for the pumpkin cheese cake. It was extremely creamy and had excellent flavor. However, it tied for second place with the crumb bars. First place went to the black forest cake which was a chocolate cake baked with cherry pie filling and topped with cream cheese frosting.

Bake-A-Long #4: Catalan Salt Pinch Cake

I told the girls I was bring this cake to Sangria Night a few weeks back. But, after my recent sponge cake embarrassment I was kinda afraid to bring it somewhere untested. But since I already said that's what I'm bringing, I went ahead and made it.

I used whole almonds and toasted them for about 10 minutes.

I had already started the food processor when I remembered that I was supposed to grate them before processing to avoid oil seepage. Therefore, my almonds ended up more coarsely ground than what they were supposed to be. But texture is good in a cake, right?

No problems with the cake mixing. I ended up estimating the 2 tablespoons of egg per 2 minutes and realized about half way through that I was going to fast so slowed down to achieve a total mixing time of 20 minutes.

Since I was still worried about the flavor, I decided to go ahead and make a sweetened blueberry syrup and whipped cream to go on top.

And voila! There's the finished product. Like the last sponge cake, it looked fine, so, off to Sangria Night I went with the pinch cake, blueberries, and whipped cream. I of course had to taste it right when I got there to make sure it was serve-able. I cut a piece, warmed up the blueberries and put a dollop of whipped cream on top. My first bite was sans topping to get the full appreciation of the cake itself. It was much better than the chocolate genoise. The almonds and zest gave it nice flavor. I found it to be a pleasant, light cake good when for when you don't want anything to heavy. I even ate a piece for breakfast this morning. I mean, it's mostly almonds and eggs, those are breakfast foods to me.

Some of the comments I got from the girls were:

"It didn't even need the blueberries and whipped cream" and

"It's a hearty cake, it's good"

So, moral of the story is maybe sponge cakes aren't so bad after all.

Bake-A-Long #3: Lemon Luxury Cake

Oh lemon curd, how I love thee, let me count the ways...

1. Butter

2. Lemon

3. Egg yolks

As individual foods, these may not be all that great to eat, but put them together and you get something quite tasty. That is why I made this cake. Well, that and the picture that accompanies the recipe (if only mine would have turned out that pretty). This cake requires multiple steps, none too difficult, but slightly time consuming. It is best to make it in stages. I made the lemon curd the night before to allow for the required cooling period. I always forget how long it takes to cook lemon curd when I'm making it. I had to keep telling Baxley the puppy "I'm almost done, try to hold it just a few minutes longer...". Thirty minutes later, I was done, and thankfully, he was able to hold it.

Sunday afternoon, I started the white chocolate custard for the butter cream. At first, I thought I may have gotten the white chocolate too hot when melting it with the butter, as it was grainy in appearance, but once I whisked in the eggs, everything came together. This was cooked to 140 F. It thickened slightly but was still fairly runny when complete.

While the custard was cooling, I baked the cakes. No surprises here, it was a straightforward recipe. The recipe called for superfine sugar, which is not available at my grocery store. The book suggests to lightly grind granulated sugar as a substitution. I skipped this step and used regular granulated sugar. My only problem was that I think I slightly over baked the cakes. While the cakes were cooling, I made the buttercream. Buttercream, like the curd, also always takes longer to make than I remember (lots of mixing).

Matt, having more patience than me, volunteered to cut the cakes in half and frost them. Thanks Matt, job well done. The lemon curd did not go all that far, we could have used a little more for filling.

I forgot to mention, I used Ghirardelli white chocolate for the cake and custard, as this is the only brand I could find, therefore, I did not have the vanilla seeds present in my frosting that the recipe calls for.

I will take credit for the final touch of lemon curd dots. Dots are the old standby for my amateur cake decorating skills.

Luckily, Ashlie the sister invited us over for dinner Sunday night so I had somewhere to bring my cake. It was enjoyed by all.

One note that I would like to make is, weighing the eggs does make a significant difference. For both the curd and the cake, I had to add more yolk or whole egg than suggested to achieve the correct weight. This is the perfect cookbook to use as scale with, as all the recipes are given in volume and weight measurements. I highly recommend using one. It makes for less dishes too, which is very important when you don't have a dishwasher in your home!

I'm not sure if I would make this cake again. I do think I will test out using key limes instead of lemons in it one day. We planted a key lime tree in our yard this summer, so this will be added to the list of things to make with our key limes whenever the tree fruits. This ends my post on lemon luxury cake, as I have a piece in the fridge calling my name.