Cake Chart

Abstract

Figure 1

Background

It’s been an embarrassingly long time. For a while knitting design was consuming all of my creative energies. Then I got a job. While it is my dream job, it has been consuming all of my time, or at least it feels that way.

I’m doing database development for public health researchers. Each year the programmers put on a poster session for the rest of the staff. Since this year’s session happened about two weeks after I started work, I couldn’t really participate, except to bring to treats. Except... to... bring... treats!

Methods

The cake is another iteration of the Rombauer jam cake[1], this time a single recipe made with plum preserves and cooked in a 10.5 inch springform pan. I don’t know why it sank so deeply in the middle. We didn’t have that problem last time.

I used our standard sour cream frosting[2] with a bit of vanilla powder. For optimum taste, the cake to frosting ratio should have been higher, but that’s something about which you will rarely hear complaints.

Technically, licorice whip would have satisfied Article 2 of the Manifesto[3] better than chocolate in conjunction with a spice cake, but I was seduced by the glamour of the chocolate fins. To make them, we melted 4 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, spread it into a 10 inch circle on a piece of plastic wrap, and popped it into the fridge to harden. Before it was completely set, Matt scored it into 16 wedges. This worked beautifully. The only thing I would do differently next time would be to cover the top of the chocolate disk with plastic wrap. The bottom of the disk came out lovely and smooth, but the top was a bit rough.

The data labels were applied directly to the cake where feasible. Prep bowls were used for messy ingredients, or those best not eaten raw. The egg was hard-boiled to minimize the risk of a hazardous spill.

Results

I didn’t expect this would be a difficult chart to apprehend, but many people didn’t get it right away. The most frequent first comment was probably, “Is that an egg?” Admittedly, an egg on top of a cake is incongruous and worthy of note.

Figure 2

During the presentation I was mortified to realize that I had made a massive oversight and completely omitted to record the brown sugar in the cake. I also overestimated the chocolate because we used only half of the fins that we made. My colleagues graciously consumed the evidence of these errors.

Figure 3 shows a corrected schematic. The comparison is by mass, and includes the ingredients in the cake, frosting and chocolate fins, but not the data labels themselves.


Figure 3

Conclusion

Job – blog death knell or creative kick in the pants? Further research is clearly indicated.

Acknowledgements

As is so often the case, Matt provided much of the creative genius, labor and, in this instance, geometry.

Citations

[1] I Rombauer. The Joy of Cooking. 1953.
[2] S F. Cut-Up Cakes for Grownups. www.sharonmattnadia.com/2008/06/emperor-penguin-cake.html#frosting.
[3] Ibid. www.sharonmattnadia.com/2008/05/cake-manifesto.html#article2

Chocolate Dome

I didn't manage to think of a good birthday cake commission for Matt this year, so we made a cake designed by someone else, but that I've wanted to make for years. (I guess I'm developing a sort of chocolate mound theme for my birthday cakes.)

During all those years of anticipation I referred to the cake as a bombe. In researching this post, I learned that a bombe is actually a frozen dessert (or an ominously ticking cryptography machine). Ah well. (I saw the movie, Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? at an age when I thought the line, "The bombe is a bomb!" was simply hilarious.)

The recipe is in Cooking with Master Chefsby Julia Child, and the actual recipe is by Michel Richard. I've made several recipes from this book and all have turned out reasonably well. Many are even suited to home cooking. Others, well...in the spirit that over the top is not far enough, Richard has another recipe in the book for deep-fried chocolate truffles. I made these once and treasure the memory. In the same spirit, I hope someday to try Nancy Silverton's sourdough bread recipe, which involves more than a week of nursing a starter made with fermented grapes.

For all the pastry cheffery involved in the chocolate dome, it actually wasn't that difficult to execute -- just a lot of steps (and a full 3/4 pound of chocolate!). Make genoise (three ingredients - eggs, sugar and flour), orange juice, chocolate mousse, raspberry sauce, chocolate shell, and chocolate leaves. Soak genoise with orange juice, layer with chocolate mousse and raspberries, encase in a chocolate shell, and garnish with cocoa powder, raspberry sauce, and chocolate leaves.

One makes chocolate leaves by applying chocolate to actual leaves (we used rose leaves). It was our first attempt at this technique, and we found it a bit fiddly. Fortunately, we made plenty of extras, so we did end up with enough unbroken ones for the cake.



Hours of cooking entertainment, a grand presentation, and very tasty to boot.

Adelie Penguin Cake

My brother recently celebrated a multiple-of-ten birthday, and my sister-in-law organized a surprise party for him. I don't know what made me look at airfares, but when I found they were ridiculously cheap, I decided to fly home to be part of the surprise.

Of course I felt honor-bound to create a cake. (As usual, skip to the end for specs and recipes.) But what design? Sister-in-law suggested: his whippet; a bicycle; his whippet riding a bicycle; a penguin. Given that bicycle and whippet riding a bicycle were way beyond my skills, I tried sketching the whippet (curled up, for ease of sculpture). I came up with a cute sketch, and was looking forward to decorating in all those shades of brown, but realized the whole concept was just gross - eating the family pet and all. So I tossed that, which left penguin.

I know how to do a penguin, but figured Charlie deserved an original. So I combed the web for pictures of other kinds of penguins. Adelie penguins were the obvious choice for sheer cute-power (although you have to admire the rockhoppers' attitude). Found an excellent photo (which I have now misplaced) of a penguin jumping, thought, "Wait, I've seen that before!" and found a penguin in exactly the same attitude in Mr. Popper's Penguins. Robert Lawson's illustrations are impressively true-to-life.*

I knew I was on my own for this design, since Matt was not accompanying me to St Louis. Intimidating, but also exhilarating to be able do everything exactly as I pleased. Plus, I had my mom for a sous chef and dad for a portraitist, so I wasn't completely without resources.

My brother didn't identify the cake as a penguin at first -- thought it might be the Doubtful Guest. An understandable mistake, but the lack of tennis shoes should have been a dead giveaway.

Design Process

I will include a wordy and picture-laden discourse on designing a cut-up cake in a future post. It would make this post excessively long.

Specs and Recipes

I used my usual chocolate sheet cake recipe from Cooks Illustrated (Issue 48, Jan 2001), and the same frosting recipes as for the emperor penguin. The white sour cream frosting recipe didn't make quite enough -- you would want to increase it, say one and a half times.

I poured unsweetened chocolate glaze over the assembled cake before frosting.



The feet are dried papaya spears, as is the beak. The feet are curved spears cut to appropriate thickness. The beak, of which I am particularly proud, I carved a little. Technically speaking, the feet ought to have had long black claws, but I decided that would be too distracting. A wee nubbin of licorice whip defines the chin.




The eye is a sugar eye I bought at Cookies for the cookie-making party. Orient the pupil carefully - it makes a real difference to the facial expression. Before you call me on it, yes, the pupil probably is made with food coloring. A white jordan almond with a dab of chocolate ganache would be truer to the manifesto (unless of course the candy coating is whitened with titanium dioxide, but at a certain point, I just stop asking).

The cake board is foam core covered with tinfoil and then waxed paper. I used a spatula to gently scrape off icing drips, and polished with a damp paper towel. Use the latter sparingly -- I managed to tear a hole in the dampened waxed paper by overly vigorous rubbing.


*I've ready MPP multiple times, but only this time made the connection that it has the same illustrator as The Story of Ferdinand. Once I realized that, I saw that Mr. Popper's grief-stricken posture near the end is exactly that of the frustrated toreador in Ferdinand. Um, yes, I am a children's literature geek.

Dear Abby Cake

This is Matt's traditional birthday cake. I will never, ever get to make him any other kind of cake for his birthday. Fortunately, the Dear Abby Cake is both delicious and beautiful.



The recipe was originally published in Dear Abby's advice column. I have added a lot of my own annotations.

Cake

1. Grease and flour the bottoms (not the sides) of two 9" round cake pans OR two 8" round cake pans and two custard cups. (I add waxed paper in the bottom of the pans after greasing and flouring. If you have Magicake Strips, use them to help prevent doming. Avoid non-stick pans because the cake will dome more and cook too quickly because of the dark coating.)
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Add to double boiler:
1. 3 one-ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate (Scharffen Berger, Callebaut or Ghirardelli are good; avoid Hershey's or Baker's; I accidentally used bittersweet once - it made a very moist cake, but it wasn't quite as good or chocolate-y)
2. 1 cup water
3. 1/2 cup butter
4. Heat until chocolate and butter melt. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.
5. Sift into large bowl (really, do sift it - it makes mixing in the wet ingredients much easier):
1. 2 cups cake flour
2. 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3. 1 teaspoon salt
6. Beat in medium bowl:
1. 2 eggs
2. 1 cup sour cream
7. Beat in with eggs and sour cream:
1. 2 cups sugar
2. 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
8. Slowly add chocolate mixture to egg mixture, beating constantly.
9. Mix half of chocolate-egg mixture into flour at a time. (This feels strange, because usually you would mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Nonetheless, it is correct.) Mix until just blended. (I think this is probably to minimize doming.)
10. Pour batter into prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. (Cake in non-stick pans will cook faster than this.)
11. Let cake cool in pans for 10 minutes and turn out onto cooling rack.
12. If cakes have domed significantly, wait until they have cooled completely, then use a bread knife to gently saw off the domes. Reserve the domes for the cook.

Frosting

1. Prepare frosting once cake is completely cool.
2. This frosting will come out differently every time you make it, as it is extremely susceptible to environmental conditions, cooking technique and the phase of the moon.
3. This recipe makes exactly the right amount of frosting.
4. Combine in double boiler:
1. 3 egg whites (if you are using dried egg whites, before putting over heat, mix all dry ingredients, then add water and beat until whites are dissolved)
2. 1 cup sugar
3. 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
4. dash salt
5. 3 1/2 teaspoons cold water
5. Cook over simmering water, beating continuously for at least 10 minutes or until firm peaks develop. (I have found that firm peaks tends to be a bit overcooked, so I stop just shy of that stage. More like soft peaks - as in the picture below - but not floppy.)



6. Remove frosting from heat and stir in:
1. 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
7. Frost cake immediately. (You don't have to work in a great rush, but don't dilly dally too much, as the frosting will start to set up. Don't worry if it's not beautiful - any imperfections will be camouflaged by the chocolate glaze.)

Note that if you are going to use waxed paper strips to keep your plate clean, they should not be inserted nearly so far under the cake as these were. When I pulled them out, they pulled cake with them and I had quite a job to shove the cake back in place. Thank goodness for the chocolate glaze.

Chocolate Glaze

1. Heat carefully in saucepan or double boiler, making sure no water gets in.
1. 1 tablespoon butter
2. 1 one-ounce square unsweetened chocolate
2. Melt and whisk together.
3. Drizzle glaze by spoonfuls onto frosted cake. Allow to dribble artistically down the sides.
4. Whelve the cake (isn't that a fantastic word?). We don't have a cake keeper, so we have to get creative with large bowls.

We typically increase this recipe and make a three-layer cake because Matt does not want his friends to go hungry. Use larger bowls and increase all ingredients by one and a half except the following:

• increase baking soda to 1 3/4 teaspoons
• increase cream of tartar to 1 teaspoon
• do not increase chocolate glaze

Baby Dragon Cake

We made this dragon cake for a young friend's first birthday. It was one of our more difficult collaborations. Matt wanted a flying, twisted, fire-breathing serpent. I wanted something that I felt confident we could achieve in cake. We produced a vast number of sketches, and very nearly ended up making the cake into a representation of . . . a nicely frosted 13x9 rectangle.

We finally settled on a fat baby dragon without too many protruding edges or inside corners. My inspiration for the design came from the book Artie and the Princessby Marjorie Torrey. (This is a wonderful old children's book, and it's a pity that it's out of print.) Our dragon didn't actually end up looking much like him, but Artie got us pointed in the right direction.



Despite the struggle and fuss, I think our dragon turned out pretty well. I am particularly proud of the decorations. Some day, though, we'll probably try the flying, twisted, fire-breathing serpent.

Pattern

Here's a look at how we start translating the design into the actual pattern. A lot of trace paper is involved.

Cake

We made the double chocolate sheet cake from Cooks Illustrated (Issue 48, Jan 2001). I wouldn't be surprised if the recipe is also available in one of their The Best Recipecookbooks. As with all the recipes in Cooks Illustrated, this one is tasty and reliable. After cooking, we froze the cake to make it easier to cut.

Frosting

We used a double batch of the Quick Icing recipe from the 1997 Joy of Cooking. I wanted a very dark brown icing, almost black, so I thought I would add cocoa and blueberry puree. (At least, I think that's why I did it. The problem with posting months after the fact is that I just don't remember any more.) Unfortunately, I couldn't add enough puree to get the color I wanted before the frosting got way too thin. Tasted good, though.

Another time, I would use the fruit puree to replace the liquid in the recipe, rather than in addition to it. Also, the puree made the frosting look grainy. I think the puree probably would have worked better in a cooked frosting (for example, Quick Icing 2 from Joy).

Blueberry Puree

I started from a fruit puree recipe in The Cake Bible. Thaw 14 ounces of frozen blueberries in a colander over a bowl. Smush the thawed berries so more juice goes into the bowl. Microwave the juice on high for eight minutes until it dries up and smells burned - discard. (Another painful reminder that all microwaves are different. Four to six minutes might have produced the desired reduction.) Puree berries in the blender (with reduced juice, if you manage it without incident). Add 2 teaspoons lemon juice. Makes 1 1/4 cups.

I now have a cup of puree lurking in my freezer just waiting for me to need purple frosting. It may be a while.

Decorations

Outlines - licorice whip
Horns - dried papaya and cantaloupe spears
Nostrils - dried cranberries
Eyes - dried bananas with chocolate-covered coffee beans for pupils
Belly - slivered almonds
Toenails - cashews
Tail - sprinkled with extra coarse sugar

Chocolate Glaze for the Wings

Melt 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate and about 2 teaspoons of butter together in the microwave. Pour over wings (place licorice whip first as a sort of dam). Reheat the glaze as necessary to facilitate pouring.


Transport

Figuring out how to transport these large cakes is often a problem. For this one, we tried using a flat Rubbermaid box, with a bit of non-slip shelf lining to rest the cake board on. It actually worked quite well, although we didn't end up keeping the box because it was too big to have hanging around the house, and isn't wide enough for all of our cakes.

Other Ideas

In the course of brainstorming, we came up with lots of ideas that might be good for other dragons. Keep in mind that we decided against some of these because we were skeptical they would succeed.

• add a treasure hoard made of mixed dried fruit


• make a cloud of smoke out of meringue, with dried papaya for tongues of flame


• use cake to make a gout of flame and cover with apricot puree and papaya spears


• use cacao nibs or finely chopped candied ginger for texture on part of the body (like the belly)


• make frill and wings out of fruit leather - cut large pieces into a the shape of a wing and fold it up (I haven't found any commercial fruit leather without artificial color, so you might want to make your own -- per Article 5 of the manifesto)


• make frill and wings out of crepes


• drizzle a fruit glaze on the wings instead of the unsweetened chocolate


• use a pale green frosting (with matcha green tea powder) for the body


• make teeth out of flat pieces of dried fruit cut into interlocking triangles

Cake in a Mug

Given our enthusiasm for cake in a bag, and our recent foray into making teacup cakes, it should come as no surprise that we glommed on to the idea of cake in a mug as soon as we heard of it.  Warm chocolate cake for two in under fifteen minutes?  What's not to love?

Unfortunately, the original recipe is not very good.  It places a high priority on convenience, so it uses a full egg, which is far too much for such a small cake, making it tough and, well, eggy.  Still warm and chocolate, of course, and remarkably simple to prepare.

We admire the Cooks Illustrated method of perfecting recipes, so we determined to follow their process to optimize cake in a mug (though our prose cannot compete with theirs in purpleness).  Nine or ten versions later (such dedication!), we've come up with a recipe that, while it might sacrifice a little in convenience, tastes more than good enough to be worth the calories.  As usual, you can skip the blab and drop straight to the recipe at the end of the post.

We started by adding more sugar and cocoa to boost the flavor.  We use Dutch process cocoa because it has a stronger chocolate flavor than regular cocoa, and less harshness.  Cooks Illustrated recommends Callebaut (spendy) or Hershey.  Unfortunately, Hershey has changed their Dutched cocoa to be "Special Dark" and it doesn't look like it's getting very good reviews.  Regular cocoa is an acceptable substitute.

Adding hot liquid to the cocoa gives it slightly more oomph.  Unfortunately, if you do that you can't start by mixing the dry ingredients in the mug.  I suggest mixing the dry ingredients separately, to make sure they get thoroughly blended.  If you do mix the dry ingredients directly into the mug (as Matt prefers), stir well with a fork to avoid ending up with big clumps of flour or baking powder in the final product.

We tried using melted unsweetened chocolate instead of cocoa, but it didn't pack as strong a chocolate punch and was considerably more work.  Using a combination of cocoa and unsweetened chocolate provided the richest chocolate taste, but we didn't find it worth the extra effort.  If you're a chocolate chip cake kind of person (neither of us is), you could add some chocolate chips to round out the chocolate palette.

The three tablespoons of oil in the original recipe seemed like a whopping amount, so we reduced the oil and added some fruit puree to compensate.  The fruit puree also adds interest and complexity to the all-cocoa flavor profile.  If you're using applesauce or canned pears for the fruit puree, try serving some along with the finished cake.

You can use lemon juice to "sour" the milk if you prefer sour milk chocolate cake.  Lemon juice also highlights the fruit flavor and helps balance the richness of the fat (particularly if you're using butter).  We like the recipe well enough both ways that we listed the lemon juice as optional.

Inspired by recipes for chocolate spice cake, we tried adding various spices.  Cinnamon and cloves smell wonderful, complement the fruit puree, and make the cake seem special and sophisticated.  Other spices we tried, like ginger and black pepper, didn't harmonize with the fruit and cocoa flavors as well.  Of course, if what you want is pure chocolate comfort food, you can leave out the spices -- the cake will still be very good (Sharon actually prefers it without the spices).

We tried both cake flour and all purpose flour, and found that it doesn't make an appreciable difference in this recipe.  Use whichever one you have on hand.

We reduced the egg to improve the texture.  We tried beating a whole egg and using only part of it, but that was considerably more fuss than just using an egg white, with no improvement in outcome.  Powdered egg whites are particularly convenient for this recipe.  If you can't find them at your local grocery store, you can try Amazon (expensive) or Honeyville (big, but cheap).  Since we eliminated the egg yolk, we added a bit of baking powder for leavening.

We rarely drink milk, so we almost always use dry milk when we cook.  Most dry milk in grocery stores is non-fat, which is often too lean for baking.  We recently came across a dry whole milk product called Nido.  I hate to recommend it, because it is a Nestle product, and their infant formula marketing practices remain suspect, but I haven't found anything comparable from another brand.  In addition to baking, Nido is also useful for backpacking, when getting enough calories is more important than limiting fat calories.  You can mix it with non-fat dry milk to make whatever octane you prefer.

Since this is such a small cake, it requires less than 1/4 teaspoon of some ingredients.  You can eyeball it, or you can invest in some tiny measuring spoons.  Ours come in handy surprisingly often.

This cake is still not as lovely as one you could make in the oven, but it is very tasty, ready in a flash, and a great party trick.

After the main recipe, we've provided several options using slightly different ingredients.

Chocolate Cake in a Mug

Serves 2-3

In a microwave-safe mug, mix:

3 tablespoons cocoa (Dutch process preferred)
3 tablespoons hot water

Mix in:

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar (decrease a bit if using sweetened pureed fruit)
1 tablespoon pureed fruit (e.g. applesauce, mashed banana, mashed pear)
2 tablespoons oil
1 egg white
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice (optional)

Mix the following dry ingredients directly into the mug, or mix them in a separate bowl and then stir into the mug:

1/4 cup flour (all purpose or cake flour)
1 tablespoon dry whole milk (non-fat will also work, but whole is better)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt (or less)
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1/16 teaspoon cloves (optional)

Microwave on high for about 2 minutes, depending on your microwave.  Start with less time to avoid overcooking.  (Our microwave oven draws 1100 watts, and the cake cooks perfectly in 1 minute 50 seconds.)  The cake will rise an inch or more above the top of a typical 12 ounce coffee mug.  Test the cake for doneness by inserting a long pointy thing and checking to see if it comes out clean.

Turn the cake out immediately.  Run a knife around the edge of the cake to release it.  We occasionally succeed in getting the cake out in one piece.

If desired, serve with more of the fruit you used in the cake.  Garnish with topaz (preferred) or rhinestones (acceptable) and sugared ostrich.

Fresh Milk Option

Substitute fresh whole milk for water and omit dry milk.
Microwave milk and cocoa briefly to heat.

Dried Egg White Option

Increase hot water or milk to 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon.
Add 1 1/2 teaspoon dried egg white to dry ingredients.

Butter Option

Instead of using oil, melt 2 tablespoons butter in mug first, then add cocoa and water.
Omit salt if using salted butter.

Mocha Option

Add 1/4 teaspoon instant espresso powder to cocoa.
Omit lemon juice, cinnamon and cloves.

Four Tea Cake

We made this cake for a British friend's fortieth birthday party -- a tea party, of course. I came up with the "four tea" idea pretty quickly. I figured I'd just cut a flat cake into an appropriate shape and "draw" four tea cups on it. I sketched something up, thought of some decorating ideas and was quite pleased with myself. Matt the architect objected, saying it was cheating to make a flat drawing, rather than using the actual shape of the cake. Intense interspousal negotiation ensued which finally resulted in a much better plan. Or at least more ambitious. Certainly more architectural. And full of learning opportunities.


The first question was how to make teacup-shaped cakes. We envisioned using 4 small metal bowls. They didn't have anything like that at our local cake decorating store, but they had something even better - a Wilton 6 Cup Kingsize Muffin Pan. (The only problem with the pan is that I can't imagine what else we might use it for.)

The highly experimental cake turned out better than we had any right to expect. We used the White Cake from The 1997 Joy of Cooking (White Cake 1 in earlier versions) and added some tea and lemon to the batter. Then we added chocolate to half the batter and made a marbled cake, with the idea that it would look reminiscent of tea with milk swirled in. We made four cupcakes and baked the remaining batter in a 9" round pan. (Recipe details are at the end of the post.)

The sour cream chocolate frosting (also from the 1997 Joy) worked as advertised. (Our commission included a specific call for chocolate, or we probably would have ventured in another direction.) The flavor of the frosting was a bit assertive in comparison to the delicate cake, but not incompatible. It took about half of the recipe to frost the single 9" round.

Decorating with coarse sugar and lemon zest was elegant, although the zest flew everywhere when the guest of honor blew out the candles. The effect was festive, if a bit chaotic.

Then there was the crockery. It ought to have worked. We considered the qualities of our materials. Matt made a jig...



...and a prototype.



The prototype used up all of our frozen sugar cookie dough. We weren't sure what recipe we had used for the frozen dough, but figured it wouldn't matter too much. (Edited to add: I think we have finally identified the mystery recipe. You can find it in the Holiday Cookie Making Party post.) So we picked a recipe and whipped up another batch the night before the party. And made bikini cups.



Tried another recipe a couple of hours before the party. Added extra flour. And made Jabba the Cup.



The lesson here is probably that cookies are meant to be cooked horizontally. Given the success of the prototype, I am still not ready to accept this. Had there been time, I probably would have tried using a gingerbread cookie dough that is specially designed for making gingerbread houses. Fortunately, there was no time for that quixotic venture, so Matt employed surgery to salvage one of the Jabbas...





...and I made the other two cups out of rolled marzipan.



We made a paper template to help in rolling out the marzipan. The handles tended to pull off under their own weight. They might have worked better had we been able to prop them up and let them sit for a day.

The cookie saucers (baked over a greased Pyrex bowl) generally worked better than the cups, but some of them required special decanting techniques as well.



We would never let cookies go to waste, so we served the broken crockery on the side.



As usual, we came up with lots of other ideas for materials. We cannot vouch for them as we haven't tested them (and apparently even testing provides no guarantee), but here they are for what they're worth.

• Apply decorative bits to the cup and saucer to create a china pattern - slivered almonds, flattened gumdrops, marzipan shapes, cookie shapes, chocolate candies, etc.


• Make the cups from pie crust (we are kicking ourselves for not thinking of this earlier).


• Make cups by frosting the cupcakes. Make sure the frosting projects above the cake so your "tea" doesn't overflow. The saucers and cup handles should probably still be made of cookie or pie dough.


• Pour a brown glaze over the cupcakes to simulate tea - maybe caramel sauce or a thin penuche frosting (this brown sugar brandy sauce looks good). This would work best with cookie or marzipan cups, unless your frosting cups set up really firmly.


• Omit the cupcakes altogether and just fill cookie teacups with a light brown cloud cream per The Cake Bible (colored with maple syrup, perhaps).


• Try different tea flavor combinations. Put macha powder in your cake and frosting for green tea. Make spice cake and gingerbread cups for chai.


• Make coffee cups instead. Use a mocha cake and top with swirls of whipped cream.

Marbled Tea Cake

Starting from the White Cake recipe in The 1997 Joy of Cooking (White Cake 1 in earlier editions), we made the following modifications.

• omitted vanilla


• added zest of 1/2 lemon to butter and sugar


• for the milk we substituted 1 scant cup double bergamot Earl Grey tea, cooled, 1/3 cup nonfat dry milk, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice


• if you wanted to keep the whole milk, you could omit the tea and add a tiny bit of oil of bergamot instead


• you can buy oil of bergamot at the health food store in the essential oils section
• bergamot is a citrus fruit that actually doesn't taste a bit like tea but is evocative of tea because of its use in Earl Grey
• there is also a purple flower native to the Great Plains called wild bergamot, which is unrelated to the citrus fruit
• added 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to dry ingredients (to compensate for the added acid of the lemon juice and chocolate)


• marbling


• before adding egg whites, divided batter into two parts and added 2 ounces melted unsweetened chocolate to one part
• then mixed half of egg whites into each half of batter
• alternated spoonfuls of each into prepared cake pans and drew knife through to marble

By measuring the volume of our pans, we had previously determined that about 10% of the batter should go in each of 4 muffin cups, with the remaining 60% for the 9" round cake pan. We put a little water in the empty muffin cups to prevent warping.

In retrospect, we should have made an extra muffin. Usually, when you make a cut up cake, there are plenty of tasting opportunities. Since these cakes weren't cut up, we couldn't taste them until the party - that was hard on us. It also meant we didn't have any extra "canvas" on which to experiment. We might also have made the muffins slightly larger. Had we done that, the 9" round cake probably would have cooked for more like the advertised 25 minutes. As it was, it took a lot longer.

Cake In A Bag

Traveling has been interfering with posting. Lots of backpacking, so I thought I'd share this recipe for backpacking cake. (For the person who reached this blog earlier on a search for "backpacking cake" - come back! We've got your answer now.)

Baking while camping presents unique challenges. If you are car- or canoe-camping, and you have room in your luggage, you can bake directly in a Dutch oven. Unfortunately, you can't bake in a backpacking cooking pot because the walls are too thin. The cake batter would turn into a charred cinder crust surrounding undercooked goo.

Cake in a bag avoids this problem by steaming the cake, instead of baking it. You cook the cake batter in an oven food bag or slow-cooker liner on a steaming rack inside your cooking pot. Technically, I suppose that makes it a pudding, rather than a cake, but "pudding in a bag" just sounds weird.

This recipe is entirely a Matt creation. The goals for the cake were to:
taste good - It's not hard to make cake that tastes good after a hard day of hiking, but this cake is yummy even when made at home.
require minimal extra weight - Eggs, oil and other liquids are relatively heavy and require separate sturdy containers to transport safely. This recipe can be carried as a dry mix in a single plastic bag.
require minimal extra gear - In addition to your one-burner backpacking stove and cooking pot, you will need only an oven food bag, a steaming rack and a couple of ounces of extra stove fuel.
be simple to prepare in camp - It's hard for any food, no matter how wonderful, to receive the acclaim it deserves if it isn't ready until the mosquitoes have devoured the children.

Note that beauty is not a criterion. This cake is ugly! It is not browned, and it comes out lumpy, or even lobed, based on the contours it assumes in the plastic bag.


On the other hand, the cake does not have to be as ugly as this picture suggests. Just use a better glaze recipe (as included in this post) and employ moderation in the number of birthday candles you use.

The recipe for chocolate cake in a bag was inspired by a recipe in Light Muffins by Beatrice Ojakangas. (I recommend this cookbook. The recipes are good, and neither taste nor texture suffers appreciably from the reduction in fat.) Matt has also developed a recipe for a date spice cake in a bag.

Gear Needed

Stove- your usual one-burner backpacking stove and some extra fuel
(We've used a white gas stove in the past. We haven't tried making cake in a bag over an alcohol stove; we don't see why you couldn't, though you may have to increase the baking time.)

Pot - the pot you would normally use to cook for more than two people while backpacking (we have a very light 8-cup aluminum thrift store pot that works well)

Steaming rack -

• We use a homemade chicken wire steaming rack that weighs about an ounce and packs compactly in the pot.
  
  
• You can buy a backpacking cake cooker (the Bakepacker) but, at 8 ounces, it's too heavy for our purposes.


• We've never tried a home steamer basket, but it might work (this kind would definitely work if your pot is big enough). Ours weighs in at 6 ounces and is relatively bulky, but you could take it car camping and experiment.


• Someday, we plan to try using a magic wire puzzle. No clue what it's made of or how much it weighs, but you can't deny the cool factor, and the price is certainly right.


• For the ultra-light backpacker, you could try using a loose pile of twigs. The oven bags are pretty stout.

Oven food bag - Glad and Reynolds are widely available brands of oven food bags

When Matt was first developing this recipe, I wondered about the safety of baking in plastic, since these bags are not marketed for that purpose. So I sent an email to Reynolds and got this response from someone named Ethel - "Unfortunately, we have never tested these bags for baking a cake by any method and could not recommend it." Those people have no spirit of inquiry. (And could her name really be Ethel? It sounds like the customer support person in India who has to say his name is Mike.)

We decided to forge ahead on the theory that, if these bags are safe for cooking fatty meat at 400 degrees F (a big if), they should be no worse for baking low-fat cake at 212 degrees or less.

Chocolate Cake in a Bag

serves roughly 8, depending on how many miles you've hiked (the recipe makes the equivalent of 12 muffins)

At home, mix in a heavy-duty gallon bag:

1/4 cup hazelnuts, finely ground (see note at end of post)
1 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, grated
1 3/4 cups white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa (preferably Dutch process)
3 teaspoons instant coffee
8 teaspoons powdered egg whites (or powdered whole eggs to equal 2 eggs)
3 tablespoons powdered buttermilk
4 tablespoons vegetable or nut oil (mixing the oil with the dry ingredients makes it fairly safe to travel with)
Optional: seeds and pulp scraped from one vanilla bean (vanilla powder would be easier; you want the equivalent of 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, which would be 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla powder according to one vendor)

Be sure to carry enough stove fuel for 35-45 minutes of cooking.

In camp:

1. Fill your cooking pot with water to just below the level of the steaming rack and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer if your stove allows.


2. Pour dry ingredients into oven bag. Add 1 1/2 cups water to dry ingredients and mix.


3. Close oven bag loosely (to allow steam to escape, so bag won't burst). Steam, covered, for 35-45 minutes. To test for doneness, remove bag from pot, open and poke a utensil into the middle of the cake.


4. Peel back the bag and serve.

Chocolate Glaze

Because it's not super-rich, this cake benefits from the extra moisture of a glaze. The easiest thing to do is use instant pudding. Try this recipe for something a bit swankier (in taste, not appearance).

At home, mix in a heavy-duty plastic bag:

1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 1/4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, ground
2 1/2 teaspoons instant coffee
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 teaspoons powdered buttermilk

In camp:

1. When your cake is done, add 3 1/2 tablespoons of the boiling water to the dry ingredients in the plastic bag. Mix immediately and thoroughly by squeezing and agitating the bag. (The water must be near boiling to melt the ground chocolate.)


2. Pour glaze over individual hunks of cake (to call them slices would be misleading).

Preparing Hazelnuts

Specifying finely ground hazelnuts in a recipe is a bit like a car repair manual saying "first remove the transmission."

I have yet to find a satisfactory method for removing hazelnut skins. The standard instruction to roast the nuts and rub the skins off with a towel is just a mean joke. Using baking soda in boiling water works beautifully, but imparts a baking soda taste. Most people don't find this offensive, but a few (like me) really have a hard time with it. While looking for a link explaining these methods, I was excited to find that someone suggested using plain boiling water. Definitely worth a try.

Grinding the hazelnuts is fun and easy if you have a good nut grinder. If you are thinking of buying one, I would suggest avoiding this type. Almonds will defeat it every time.

If you prefer, you can have someone else do the work for you and buy ready-made hazelnut meal.