HCB: True Orange Génoise

This week heavenly Cake was the True Orange Genoise Cake and boy was everyone looking forward to that one.  The buzz on this cake was tremendous.

It started with a mad hunt for Seville oranges.  You would think that living in the sunshine state; I would have no issues finding this orange, especially since Florida at one time was the main exporter of Sour Oranges to England! (that’s a fact, look it up). But, you would be wrong.  It was incredibly hard to find them… specially since we had a couple of weeks with temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s, which means that many orchards/groves lost most of their crops to freezing temperatures.

Strike one for the cake!

My hunt began by simply calling our local Fresh Market and talking to “someone” in the produce department, who told me that nope, they did not carry it and there was no way to pre-order them either.

I.was.not.giving.up…There was a cake that needed to be made and the hunt continued

Next up was Whole Foods, I mean WHOLE-FREAKING-FOODS, if they did not carry those little suckers - the end of the world was near. 
Note to Whole Foods management: You need to work on their produce department education because the phone call went something like this:

Me to the produce rep:  Wondering if you have Seville Oranges in stock?
Produce rep: I’m sorry, Sev.. what?
Me [thinking, OH BOY!]: Seville Oranges or you may know then as Sour Oranges?
Produce rep: No, I don’t think so, we have regular oranges, is that what you want?
Me: [counting to 10]: no I’m looking for sour oranges, would you be able to order them for me?
Produce rep: I don’t know
Me: is there a manager there?
Produce rep: I don’ know…
Me: Thank you, never mind. *Click*

Strike two for the cake!

Then during a dinner with the future mother in law, I explain what had happen and she promptly told me to give her a couple of minutes, left the room, picked up the phone and the next thing I knew, I had a bucket of sour oranges compliments of a farmer that had some trees in his back yard.  The power that woman yields!

Point one for the CAKE!

  

Since I have been keeping up with the bakers and all keep writing how delicate the oranges were, I decided to not take any chances and bake it a week earlier than scheduled.

Baking the génoise cake was easy and as Rose suggests in the book, I baked it a day earlier.  I’m really getting the hang of this new technique of warming the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together before whipping it up to full volume in the mixer.  (Previous sponge cakes were done without this pre-cooking step, and I think it just makes a huge difference on the final texture of the cake).

Then, because I was on a roll, I decided to make the orange curd the same day.  And this was fairly as simple mixing the orange juice, sugar, eggs, butter and zest together and stirring until it thickened - The hardest part for me was factoring in a whole lot of patience while it cooked over the stove. I hate to wait around for anything – you know that phrase, “good things come to those that wait”, It’s OVERRATED, seeing as, this orange curd took FOREVER (at least in my world) to get to the point that the book said it would be done.  You know how boring facing your stove and stirring is?

I bet you all do.  Because IT WAS THAT BORING to the power of 3!

When it was FINALLY done, I put it away and decided to quit while I was ahead and do the syrup and ganache the next day. 

    And those two things went without any major roadblocks.  The only thing I did different was not use Triple Sec, but instead used Patron Liqueur Citronge which I happen to have in my liquor cabinet (I’m fancy that way). Putting the cake together was reasonably easy as well.  The only doubt I had was not using all of the orange syrup and curd as the book pointed out, my instincts were shouting in the inside to use it all, but again, I followed the instructions, so a continued on…after I hid the left over curd from Tom, who stole a quick taste and wanted to eat it with a spoon.

I had a lot of fun covering the cake with the chocolate ganache and I wanted to make sure I did justice to the picture in the book… I was very proud of the way it came out.  Very sophisticated and classy looking. 

But, did it taste as good as it looked?

The Feedbacks:

Tom: Oh, this is my favorite so far.
The Little man:  It’s good, I like the orange flavor, but I like the pineapple one better.
My mother:  The cake was a bit dry for me (A HA! I knew it!), but the flavor was good, and by the way can I have the recipe for the orange curd?
The Future Mother in Law: I like it but, I would not make it again, the orange flavor is quite strong.

As for me?

Remember my cook fruit with cake anything hindrance?

This cake almost made me a believer, mainly because I’m a huge dark chocolate fan, and the dark chocolate combination with the tangy/sweet orange curd was YUMMY!  I had to agree with my mother and found the cake was a bit dry and I know it’s because I did not use the whole syrup/curd.  My other take would be that while is a beautiful cake and show stopper, it’s also a cake that needs a certain sophisticated palate (not to offend anyone here) to be enjoyed.  The majority of people out there would have some reservations to this type of combination (see future mother in law comment above), limiting the pool of people you can served it too.

Would I make it again? Only if Tom really, really, begged for it.  Plus it looks pretty. 

As far as the Orange Curd, that has been made twice already. And if you don't believe me, moosy over to Rose Levy Beranbaum site where you can find the recipe.

HCB: Individual Pineapple Upside Down Cakes

 

Can I say this right off the bat (so we can all gasp and get it over with) I don’t like any cake, or pies or tartlets’ or anything that is made with fruit, or has fruit in it, never have and for the record; I have not acquired the taste over the years. In fact, let me put this out there:

I.HATE.PIE. There I said it, it’s out there.

You all have five second to give me the speech about this… Ready... Set...GO!

1,2,3,4,5…Ok, Done? Good, lets move on. 

So after all that information I just gave, you can image my mind frame when I saw this cake came up to bat. I was like: “mmm, maybe I will skip it” Until the boyfriend and the little man (the Boyfriend son) asked me what cake was next. And the reaction was as follow: 

Boyfriend:  “Babe, just because you are “scared’ of cooked fruit it does not mean we need to miss out on this, some of us like fruit” 

And I had a come back, I did, until the little man jumped up and shouted “Ohhh!! Pineapple cake, please make it for my birthday cake!” 

That 8-year old is sneaky, just like his father.

I was done for, plus we were invited to a dinner party and I figure I could get rid of all of it by offering to take it as the dessert.

The first thing I decided to do was use ramekins instead of the cute cake pan, because the cute cake pan was very expensive and I could not justify owning it just to bake pineapple cake in the future.  So I prepped 8 ramekins.

I stared with the caramel and I have done caramel before, in fact melting sugar had nothing on me.

Wrong!

Apparently, Turbinado sugar DOES have something on me because I must have looked away a mili-second too long, and before I knew it, the mixture had turn into a black color and not the deep amber that the book hinted at. Into the trash it went and a second round was started, with better results, except that I ended with not enough to cover all of the 8 ramekins... so 3 of those were very poorly coated.

I started on the cake and this went in much smoother. Everything came together as the book explained, except, once more I was a bit unsure of the batter distribution among the ramekins. This was even after I filled them up using the weight measurements cited in the book and not eyeballing it. But, I let it go into the hot oven they went.

Baking…baking…baking until the house smelled delicious and out they came. Tested them and right away I started to unmold them. Some came out pretty fast, others I had to sweet talked them out of the ceramic mold. Some of the caramel was melted, and others had some un-melted portions, very weird

And upon closer inspection, I realized that my instincts were right and the ration of cake was quite low. I mentally noted that I needed to go with 6-rameskins the next time and not 8, so I could have a pretty substantial cake distribution.

I finished them up with the suggestion of coating them with warm apricot glaze and I did skip the caramel sauce all together, figure it would be way to sweet (I knew the pineapples were supper sweet to begin with) and was to tired to try my luck again with the sugar and heat.

But it did not matter, the results were in:

Boyfriend: “YUM! In need of a repeat”

The little man: “Approved for my birthday cake next week!”

My mother: “They were delicious, needed more cake thought”

Host 1 from the dinner party: “I wish there was a bit more caramel on them, but they are great"

Host 2 from the dinner party: “No, they are perfect this way”

My take: I did taste them and thought they were good, love the cake texture and the fact that it was not sweet at all, which balance the sweetness of the pineapple and apricot glaze.

Would I make it again? Probably, I mean who can say no to an 8-year? 

Oh, wait I been corrected as I write this.. a NINE-YEAR-OLD!

HCB: Tortas de las Tres Leches

A couple of weeks ago, I purchase Rose Levy Beranbaum book “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes”. I have her other book  “The Cake Bible” and in the past would use it as a huge reference point when I wanted to dig in deep and go all out on cake making.

This new book is beautiful. I think I love it more than the old book and as soon as I sat down to view it; I started to mark all the wonderful cakes I wanted to make.

I was in trouble.

Then I found this group and I knew I was lost.  Actually, everyone in my house was in trouble - Cake-baking-galore coming up, hold on to your waistline folks!

The baking group works simply by posting a weekly cake from the book to make and everyone bakes it and blogs about their overall experience.  Having said this, I will note right now that due to copyright laws this will be the only time I WILL NOT POST the actual recipe of what I'm making.  You will need to go and get the book, but trust me, it's totally worth the money, specially if you like baking.

Let's start the show!

A side story to this cake.  I have been making a different version of this cake for over 20 years. When I lived in Miami all the Nicaraguan restaurants around town have this cake on their dessert menu, and once I tasted it, I knew I had to learn to make it. Lucky for me, one of my junior high school friends’ mom used to make this cake for a very popular restaurant in South Florida called Los Ranchos. So I made sure I paid attention and perfected the recipe throught the years. The cake according to my family (and friends) became my signature cake and it’s the first one that is requested during those important dates.

When I read Rose’s version I was intrigue because it was totally different take on how I made mine, so I was exited to try it and see if I could perfect my own some more.

My family not to much.  They believe in the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" theory.

The actually sponge cake was easy enough to make, and I learned a whole different way of making it from the book. The warming up of the sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt over simmering water was a bit intimidating, mainly because it was a new technique for me. I was a bit unsure as to when it would be “warm enough” since the book was very unclear on this step, so I took a chance, placed the “warm” mixture in my kitchen aid to beat on high and double in volume. I'm happy to report that I hit it right on point… the creamy, double mixture was a perfect velvety pale yellow as noted in the instructions.

The next step was to fold the flour and pour the batter into a round 8x3 cake pan - I do not own a 9x3 cake pan, so I decided to best sacrifice a bit of the batter, since I did not want it to spill all over the oven. (Methinks I’m going to have to buy a 9x3 round pan in the near future, since that is what is used the most as a baking pan in the book.) That decision worked as well.

The cake did what the book said, it rose, cracked a bit on top and when tested came out dry – DONE and DONE!

Took it out of the oven and unmolded it right away, as per instructions (Another first for me).

I then set out to prepare the milk mixture and this is where this cake is totally different from my own recipe. Rose’s uses skim milk, whole milk, heavy cream and sweeten condensed milk and she cooks it. (My version uses whole milk, evaporated milk, sour cream, sweeten condense milk and rum - and no cooking it anywhere). Verdict? End results were a bit sweet on my part but I keep on, I was determined to follow this to a “T”.

Then the soaking began and into the refrigerator it went for an overnight rest.

Since I had the family coming over to taste this and I knew that most would be taking a piece with them I decided not to follow the books instructions in toping it with heavy whipped cream since it was going to flatten rigth away after sitting on it for a couple of hours. So instead I used my own topping which is basically an Italian Meringue (which I learned to do from Rose’s first book). I also covered the whole cake instead of just the top.

And then the comments came in.

My mother who is a true Tres Leche fan: told me that while this version was “ok” she preferred my own version. She mention that this was much sweeter and felt it was not moist or creamy enough (my version does not get unmolded, but stays in the pan maintaining the cake super moist at all times).

Tom (the boyfriend): Liked my version as well, commented on being too sweet as well. But, did say that if did not know better, he would probably like it and would ask for a repeat performance.

My neighbors who tasted it for the first time ever: Really loved it. And actually took almost ½ of the cake home with them.

My take: Like my mother and the boyfriend I thought it was on the sweet end as well. I did like the texture of the sponge cake and I may adapt my own recipe to use this version. But I will stick with my own rendering of the soaking milk and my topping.