make life sweeter!

Susan of Food Blogga is organizing a food blogging event to raise awareness for osteoporis, a disease in which bones become fragile and more likely to break. Eating food that contains enough calcium (and vitamine D), and doing regular exercise helps combat osteoporosis. To enter the Beautiful Bones food blogging event all you have to do is post a recipe with lots of calcium. I chose to make the hazelnut cookies again that I posted about a while back. Hazelnuts contain 200 mg of calcium per 100 g. Next thing I did was to make me some dulce de leche. Sweetened condensed milk has a whopping 300 mg per 100 g! So despite the fact that the cookies themselves aren't all that healthy with all the sugar and butter, at least they have a large amount of calcium! And the more cookies you eat the more calcium you're getting ;) I ate a lot... (I'm starting to remember why I don't make dulce de leche more often...I tend to eat it by the spoonful ;)

Hazelnut cookies

makes about 50 small cookies

250 g (8 ¾ oz) flour, sifted
50 g (1 ¾ oz) hazelnut, toasted, skinned and ground
125 g (4 ½ oz) butter, room temperature
115 g (4 oz) caster sugar
1 egg

Mix the flour and ground hazelnuts.
Cream the butter with the sugar. Add the egg and mix until incorporated. Mix in the flour and hazelnut mixture.
Chill for about 30 minutes or until firm enough to roll out.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
Grease 2 baking sheets or line with baking paper
Roll out the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper until 4 mm (⅛ in). Chill the dough between the baking paper for 30 minutes.
Cut out disks with a cookie cutter. Transfer to the baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges just start to colour.
Allow to cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

I made the dulce the leche the David Leibovitz way.

Opéra cake has been on my to-do list for a while so I was very happy to see it as our Daring Baker's challenge this month. Unfortunately we were not allowed to make the traditional dark chocolate and coffee one. Instead it had to be a more spring-like version, something light in colour.
We were allowed to play around with flavours and colours but weren't allowed to use dark colours.
The master recipe of the cake consists of 3 layers of joconde with buttercream between them. On top of the upper layer of joconde you could use buttercream or white chocolate mousse. The top layer was a white chocolate glaze.



I happened to know that Courtney of Coco Cooks was planning on using pandan extract in her Opéra cake. It seemed like a fun idea to try that too with the pandan extract I bought last month. I had never used it before and I was sure I wasn't going to like the colour of the original glaze so I decided to use it in that. To stay with Asian flavours I used coconut instead of almonds for the joconde and used lemon grass to flavour the syrup. The buttercream in the master recipe wasn't salmonella proof and we were allowed to use a different recipe. Instead I used a meringue buttercream. I kept the buttercream simple and hoped by incorporating lemon in it that I would be able to compensate for the rest of the very sweet tastes.
I served the cake at my son's birthday party and the family loved the look and the taste.



I wasn't sure how the coconut would do in the joconde. And I'm still not sure because I sort of messed up the recipe ;) The idea was to mix an amount flour into a mixture of sugar, coconut and eggs. The step afterwards was incorporating whipped egg whites. Well...I was half way incorporating the whipped egg whites when I discovered the little bowl with flour....oops! Just added it anyway. It took me long incorporate the egg whites. By the time I finally incorporated all of the egg white I excorporated all the air :D The joconde was more like a sweet omelet with coconut ;) I don't know how the real joconde should be so I will have to make the cake again to compare. Next time I'll try the traditional Opéra cake though.

I didn't want to make a big cake so I halved the recipe.
I have one pan that you could call a jelly roll pan but that wasn't the right size. The only one that came close was the square baking tray that came with the oven. It didn't have the right shape but at least it had the right amount of surface area. Because it was a bit warped one corner of the baking tray produced a piece less usable joconde. I was left with 3 squares, just like I needed.

When I saw the ratio of white chocolate to cream I started worrying about getting a smooth glaze. It's the ratio I would use to make truffles. As I expected, the glaze was difficult to spread and I wasn't able to get it to be smooth. It looked really ugly (forgot to take a picture of the monster ;) No way could I present a big cake, I had to cut the cake and decorate it with buttercream before it looked presentable. Pity that the shredded coconut messed up the layers of buttercream a bit when I cut them. I used the left-over glaze and rolled it into truffles (told you so...) and rolled them in caster sugar to coat.



All in all it wasn't a bad cake but I thought it was too heavy and sweet...even for me ;) The pandan flavour was subtle and combined well with the white chocolate (what doesn't ;) The coconut taste was very nice. The lemon grass syrup wasn't very obvious unfortunately, that could have been better. I was glad I used lemon in the buttercream because without that it would have been even heavier.
Fun cake to make and was less complicated than I imagined. Worth making again but I'd definitely go with the traditional Opéra cake and see if the bitterness of the chocolate and coffee compensates for the heavyness of the cake.

Thanks for this challenge Ivonne (Cream Puffs in Venice), Lis (La Mia Cucina), Fran (Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie), and Shea (Whiskful)!

Things I did differently:
Joconde
- I used 1 cup of shredded coconut instead of 1 cup of ground almonds
Syrup
- I used 2 stalks of chopped lemon grass and let them simmer in the syrup for 10 minutes. Kept it in the syrup until I used it 4 days later.
Buttercream
- I used the original recipe for the Perfect Party Cake
- added the inside of half a vanilla bean (to half the recipe)
White chocolate glaze
- I added less than ⅛ of a teaspoon of pandan extract to flavour and colour

Check out all the other Daring Bakers here.
Check out how the hosts did: Ivonne (Cream Puffs in Venice), Lis (La Mia Cucina), Fran (Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie), and Shea (Whiskful).

My youngest son turned one last Saturday. Of course he didn't know he did. But he did notice all the garlands and balloons and seemed to be very happy with them :)
It wasn't really difficult to decide on the flavour of his cake. He loves most things sweet and he loves chocolate in particular. So chocolate cake it was. The last few weeks he wasn't into his other favourite food item anymore (banana) so I skipped the idea of combining chocolate and banana.
Even though we didn't invite a lot of people I made 2 different (mini) cakes and even started on a third one (tart actually, not cake, to be more precise the rhubarb and bergamot pastry cream filled tart I posted about yesterday). Today you're getting the chocolate cake, the other one I'll post about soon too :)
With two little ones running around (well actually one runs, the other crawls) I didn't have that much time to make everything I wanted to make so I decided on an easy chocolate cake base. By easy I mean just throwing all ingredients in a bowl and mixing. It's a recipe from I want Chocolate! by Trish Deseine, a book I've had for a while now. I only tried her chocolate glaze and brownies. The brownies were actually very very good, will have to make them again and blog about them. I really liked the glaze too. The cake recipe was so simple that I doubted a little bit if it would be good but it was. It was pretty sweet though and not very heavy on the chocolate. A perfect cake for a one year old. The only little downside was that you could see some of the sugar crystals in the crust. But since I covered the whole thing in buttercream and glazed it afterwards that wasn't a problem.



Because I was running out of time I made a big batch of buttercream that I could use for both cakes and just flavoured them differently. The basis was a meringue buttercream to which I added melted bittersweet chocolate. This particular recipe poses no salmonella danger because the egg whites are heated till 75°C (160°F). So it was safe for everyone to eat.
The glaze was Trish Deseine's too. What I like about the recipe is that it doesn't contain corn syrup. Downside turned out to be that the glossy appearance disappeared after chilling. I'm not sure anymore but I think the glaze I used before didn't have this problem as much.
I made the cake the day before T's birthday and I let him taste all of the individual ingredients. As I expected he loved all of them and kept pointing to the glazed cake that was tempting him on the table :)
I made some small number 1 cookies and used them to decorate the cake. They looked a bit lonely so I added some buttercream stripes. I thought the cake looked ok but I can definitely use practice in decorating and piping buttercream.



As you can see from the pictures T loved the cake. He didn't eat the entire piece because he wanted to smear it on his table, trousers, bib, hands and face too :) I really enjoyed watching him make such a mess.
My oldest son R will have his 3rd birthday in less than a month but he's much harder to please in the sweet department. Even though he loves chocolate too he doesn't like cake. He would want a piece but he will only taste and not eat it. Usually he would even say he likes it. He doesn't even really like cookies, at least not the ones I bake ;)
Last year I made him some cupcakes with marzipan cars, tractors, pigs and flowers. When I asked him the other day what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday he said he wanted a car cake. And not a big one but a little one. So I guess he liked the ones I made last year because he remembered them :)
I consulted A as well on what to make for R and he suggested making an ice cream cake because he does love ice cream a lot. Never would have thought of that myself somehow so I'll be making him at least an ice cream cake and a small car cake too. And some more cake for the guests.



Chocolate buttercream (adapted from The Essentials of Baking by Williams-Sonoma and Dorie Greenspan's buttercream recipe from a Perfect Party Cake)

2 egg whites
½ cup sugar
½ vanilla bean, scraped
170 g (1 ½ stick) butter, room temperature
100 g bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Heat the egg whites, sugar and inside of the vanilla bean over simmering water while stirring once in a while until the sugar is dissolved and the temperature reaches 75°C (160°F).
Whip the egg whites until they are stiff and glossy. Add 150 g of the butter and whip for a few minutes. Add the remainig butter. The mixture should have cooled down by this time. If the mixture curdles, warm it slightly over simmering water. Add the melted but cooled down chocolate and mix until incorporated. Use immediately or chill for up to 3 days in the fridge. Allow to come to room temperature before using it. Whip it again to make it smooth. If it curdles, warm it slightly over simmering water. Whip until smooth.

Chocolate cake (from I Want Chocolate! by Trish Deseine)

makes 2 15 cm (6 in) cakes

115 g (½ cup) butter, softened
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup flour
2 tbs cocoa powder, mixed with
2 tbs hot water
2 ts baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
Grease to 15 cm (6 in) cake pans.
Place everything in a mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until you have a smooth dough. Divide the dough into the two cake pans and bake for 20-25 minutes.
Allow to cool in the pans for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.
Cut of the tops of the cakes to make them horizontal.

Chocolate glaze (from I Want Chocolate! by Trish Deseine)

115 g (½ cup) butter
¼ cup water
200 g (7 oz) bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Put the butter and water in a saucepan on low heat. Remove from the heat when the butter is melted. Add the chocolate and stir until melted and combined. Allow to cool down for a bit but the glaze should still be pourable.
Put the cake on a wire rack that is placed over baking paper or a large baking sheet. Pour the glaze over the cake.

No birthday cake just yet today, I will be posting about my youngest son's birthday tomorrow because today is the deadline for SHF. I planned on making this tart for his birthday too but ran out of time to make the pastry cream. We didn't invite too many people so I thought 2 small cakes instead of 3 would be enough (they were). I didn't want to waste the pie crust, rhubarb and the many egg yolks that were left over from the other cakes I made. So I decided to finish the tart today. Initially the idea was to make a tart filled with bergamot white chocolate ganache and rhubarb. But I had so many egg yolks in the fridge that pastry cream was a more obvious choice. Also I never made it before and it's always good to try out new things :)
I only used 5-6 drops of bergamot essentail oil in the pastry cream and that generated a pretty heavy bergamot taste. The essential oil is extracted from the peel of the bergamot orange. It's where Earl Grey tea gets its taste from. I thought it tasted more like resin than like citrus. A very earthy kind of taste. It tasted ok in the pastry cream but I think it would have been better in white chocolate ganache though. The combination with rhubarb was ok but not the very best combination. I think it would be better to just use the bergamot essential oil in cookie dough or truffles. Will try that out another time.
I tried making pâte sucrée this time instead of my usual Donna Hay sweet shortcrust dough but the recipe was not a very good one. The dough turned out too dry even though I used a large egg yolk. Will have to try a different recipe next time.
This is my entry for this month's citrus themed SHF hosted by Helen of Tartelette.



Bergamot pastry cream (adapted from by The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard)

makes more than enough for a 15 cm (6 in) tart

2 cups milk
½ cup sugar
3 tbs cornflour
pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
5-6 drops of bergamot essential oil
1 tbs butter, softened

Bring the milk and ¼ cup of the sugar to a simmer.
Sift the cornflour with the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and the salt. Whisk the egg yolks and add the cornflour/sugar mixture while whisking. Whisk until smooth.
Remove the milk from the heat. Add ½ cup of the hot milk to the egg yolk mixture while whisking. Pour this mixture into the hot milk while whisking. Allow to come to a boil while continuing whisking and allow to thicken. Cook for 3 minutes (keep whisking!). Add the bergamot essential oil and whisk until combined. Strain the pastry cream through a sieve into a bowl. Add the butter and mix until incorporated. Place plastic wrap onto the surface of the pastry cream. Allow to cool.

To assemble

15 cm (6 in) pastry crust
4-5 tbs cooked and sweetened rhubarb, thickened with some potato flour

Spread a layer of pastry cream into the the pastry crust. Pipe blobs along the crust. Fill the middle with rhubarb.

My mind went kind of blank when I started thinking about an entry for this month's breakfast themed Go Ahead Honey, It's Gluten Free! My breakfast consists of a very boring type of porridge. It consists of a mixture of 7 different precooked grain flakes. You just add hot milk and voila: breakfast! My breakfast used to be slices of bread with some cheese or peanut butter but during my last pregnancy I started with the porridge and sort of never stopped. So my creativity on breakfast is not very big. At first the only thing that came to mind was making kruidkoek, a Dutch treat that you can eat for breakfast too but I didn't feel like experimenting with gluten-free flour this time. I needed something a little more fool-proof, and that something was granola. I don't eat it that much for breakfast but now that summer is around the corner it's a nice change from my boring old porridge ;)
I found a recipe that was very very easy and simple in Trish Deseine's book I want CHOCOLATE! but it looked like it was a bit too easy so I consulted the big world of food blogs. I remembered Warda of 64 sq ft kitchen posting about it a while back. Turned out she used a recipe she found on The Traveler's Lunchbox. I sort of followed that one. Instead of using water I used orange blossom water hoping that the taste would come through, unfortunately you couldn't really taste it. Maybe you would notice if you left it out though. The recipe stated that it would take 1-1 1/4 hours to bake in total. It did mine the maximum amount of time but that was too much. Especially the hazelnuts started to taste a little too dark. The granola was still delicious but would have been even better without the 'dark' taste, maybe you would even have tasted the orange blossom water...

I'm sending this recipe over to Noami of Straight into Bed, Cakefree and Dried.



I halved the original recipe and used these amounts of 'filling':

50 g hazelnuts
50 g almonds
20 g sesame seeds
30 g dessicated coconut
50 g candied orange peel

Also I used orange blossom water instead of regular water.

For procedures check out the recipe here.