Strawberries Galore

I know strawberries are out of season now in the U.S., but they still seem to be going strong here in Indonesia.  I think they might have multiple seasons here, in fact.   My understanding is that growing strawberries is relatively new in Indonesia, but people seem to like them a lot.  Strawberry seems like the new hotness as far as flavors go here in Jakarta... 

I got a couple containers of strawberries at the store recently and whipped up two strawberry cakes:

First, Franny's chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream, which I made for a BBQ Tim and I attended.  I figured you can't go wrong with strawberry and chocolate as well as two tried and true recipes. 

As usual, the cake was light and moist, and the frosting was really nice, albeit slightly

 soft in Jakarta's heat:

Second, I made Smitten Kitchen's strawberry summer cake, which was pretty awesome right out of the oven.  Like Deb said, jammy strawberries combined with a slightly crunchy, sugary crust, plus a tender cake below.  Good stuff.  I successfully substituted a third of the flour (1/2 cup) with whole wheat flour and that worked quite well:

Happy Birthday, Tim: S'more Layer Cake

Duuuuuuudes, this cake is good.  So good.  

When I saw this S'more Layer Cake recipe in the Smitten Kitchen cookbook, I knew I had to make it, but I needed an occasion.  Luckily it didn't take much convincing for Tim to agree that his birthday was just that occasion.

Plus, this recipe required the use of a kitchen torch, which I always secretly wanted to buy, but could never really justify.  Heh heh... cool... fire! fire! fire!  Now I have to plan some cooking around that new flaming utensil.

A moist graham cracker flavored layer cake with a milk chocolate ganache filling and toasted marshmallow frosting...  what's not to love?

The cake itself is made by processing a bunch of graham crackers until they turn into a flour (thanks to Amy for bringing American graham crackers to us across the world!).  Buttermilk (or in my case milk plus sour cream) keeps it super moist (I actually had to cook my layers a few minutes longer to get them cooked through, but that may be my wonky oven).

Super rich milk chocolate ganache in the middle mimics the traditional Hershey's bar (I kinda wished there was more of that- maybe next time a layer of it under the frosting would do the trick?) and fluffy, sticky, marshmallowy frosting (not dissimilar from the frosting I made on this cake) is dolloped on top and torch toasted to perfection.

We ate the cake early, the weekend before his birthday, because Tim had to attend and present at a conference this week.  Don't feel too bad for him, though, because the conference is in Bali (life is tough, eh?):

Franny's Chocolate Cake with Fluffy Frosting

Back in December, Amy and I had been texting back and forth about chocolate cake recipes.  She wanted to know if I had any favorite and/or family recipes for chocolate cake... the first cake I thought of off the top of my head was this super moist chocolate cake with fluffy, marshmallowy frosting that my great aunt, Franny, used to make for every family birthday party when we were kids.  I thought Amy might like it because of the ethereal, marshmallowy frosting, since she can, on occasion, down an entire bag of marshmallows without blinking.

I got the recipe from the Real Martha and passed it on to Amy, who made it almost immediately (her photo above).  Amy and her family thought it was quite tasty, although they said it was better the second day, strangely enough.

Sadly, my great aunt Franny recently passed away... in her honor, I decided to make her cake to bring to a party we were invited to here in Jakarta last week.  She probably never would have guessed someone would be making her recipe literally acoss the world.  The cake was awesome and won raves at the party; everyone asked for a piece di bungkus (wrapped up) at the end.

Below is the recipe, although a word of warning if you live in a humid climate:  this frosting does not fare well in the heat and humidity.  I didn't know this, so Tim and I took the cake on the road, trying to walk it the 5 blocks from our air-conditioned apartment to the party.  Bad plan... the frosting literally melted off the cake, pulling away from the sides and liquidizing.  Oops!  It still tasted good, but the consistency was a little bit off.

Moist Chocolate Cake

Step 1:  Sift together:

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

½ tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

5 tbsp cocoa  

Step 2: Make 3 holes in the dry ingredients.  In one put 2 tbsp vanilla extract, in the second put 2 tbsp white vinegar and in the third put ¾ cup vegetable oil.

Step 3: Pour 2 cups water over top and mix well

Step 4: grease and flour cooking pans (either two 9-inch round cake pans or one 9”x13” rectangle pan)

Step 5: Bake at 350◦F oven, 30 minutes for 9 inch pans or 40 minutes for 9”x13” pan 
                                                                                                                                              

Fluffy White Frosting

1 cup sugar

½ cup water

1/8 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp corn syrup

2 egg whites, stiffly beaten

1 tsp vanilla

Step 1: Heat first 4 ingredients slowly to boiling and cook without stirring to 212◦F or to soft ball stage. (My candy thermometer is not super reliable, but I looked up other similar recipes and one stated that you should cook it until you saw "thick, clear bubbles.)

Step 2: Pour over beaten egg whites.  Beat with mixer until fluffy, billowy and shiny (about 5 minutes).

Peppermint Meringue Brownie Cake

The peppermint streak continues!

After seeing this recipe for peppermint meringue brownie cake both in the last ever (tears!) issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine and in the blog The Bitten Word, I had to give it a try.  I also had egg whites leftover from my peppermint ice cream from last week... kismit?  Maybe.
 

This recipe really is pretty simple, but looks pretty fancy.  Brownies and meringue.  Neither is too hard... Plus I got to use my peppermint extract (carried across the world by Meghan and Liz) as well as my cream of tartar (carried across the southern hemisphere from Sydney by yours truly).

 

I like how the brownie is dense and rich and then the meringue is light and both marshmallow-y and crispy.  Awesomesauce.

Big Crumb Coffee Cake with Malang Apples

Tim's had a rough week at work, so I baked him his favorite, a big crumb coffee cake, to bring to the office to share with his colleagues.  Based on Smitten Kitchen's recipe, I just substituted the rhubarb with some local apples from Malang.  Pretty good!

Happy Fourth of July! American Flag Cake

A Fourth of July BBQ calls for a dramatic red, white and blue dessert. I made this massive white sheet cake with cream cheese frosting and fresh summer berries, shaped like a giant star-spangled banner, while the neighborhood kids set off their own massive fireworks in the alley.
America... f*ck yeah.The recipe (care of the Other Martha) is really good, and there's a video to show you how to handle the giant layers. The cake itself is light and fluffy (probably due to the 16 whipped egg whites in the batter), almost like angel food cake. The only change I made was to put parchment paper on the cookie sheets rather than buttering and flouring them, for sake of convenience.

Sunday Dinner: Armenian Meal

Tim's friends from Peace Corps Armenia are coming into town next weekend, so he wanted to cook an Armenian meal for them. But he wanted to practice first, which is where we came in. This week's Sunday dinner was an Armenian feast: minted cucumber and yogurt soup, beet and walnut salad, lahmahjoon/lamejun (basically Armenian lamb pizzas), and apricot cake. We based all of the recipes off of a cookbook Andrea gave Tim for Christmas: Simply Armenian, by Barbara Ghazarian. Recipes after the jump!

Chocolate Sponge Cake Roulade with Chocolate Ganache... AKA Giant Homemade Ho Ho

Kate has been having some serious pregnancy cravings... lots of fruit, lots of sugar... and for the last couple weeks she's been talking about those tasty childhood favorites: Ho Hos.
I told her I could make a homemade version, and since her birthday is this week, so I took the opportunity to give it a try. I searched the internets for a homemade Ho Hos recipe, but all of the recipes I found had poor reviews or the cooks were having trouble executing them without having them fall apart. Ho Hos are really just thin chocolate cake rolled up with a creamy filling and coated in a layer of chocolate, though, so I went to a reliable source for a recipe for a chocolate sponge cake roulade with chocolate ganache. Basically a fancified, giant Ho Ho. Super fluffy flourless cake, lightly sweetened whipped cream, silky ganache. Yum.

Chocolate Pudding Cake

For some reason, I was craving chocolate pudding last week. I did a search in Foodgawker, and spotted this recipe for chocolate pudding cake... pudding AND cake? Sign me up.

This recipe has the craziest and most intriguing instructions I've ever seen, and it was so easy I couldn't resist. Mix cake batter in the pan in which it's baked, then sprinkle brown sugar, cocoa and a cup of water on top prior to baking? Eh? Come again?
Crazy as the directions were, following them produced a great weeknight dessert. Chocolatey, crusty on top, smooth and pudding-y on the bottom, no extra mixing bowl to clean...

Birthday Goodies!

For Chuck's 27th birthday, she got two desserts... one hand-held, relatively mess-free dessert for the keg party, and one melty, delicious ice cream cake for the after-party.

1. One-Bowl Mini Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:
This recipe from the Other Martha is super easy- one bowl, one measuring cup, one measuring spoon. Plus, the cupcakes stay really moist. I had just a little bit less than the required amount of cocoa, so I topped it off with some espresso powder, which I think really complimented the chocolate.
The buttercream frosting is decadent... don't look at the ingredient list, though.

2. Ice Cream Cake with Chocolate Crunchies and Heath Bar:
The ice cream cake I made is loosely based on this recipe, but with chocolate and coffee ice creams, topped with Heath bar crumbles. The chocolate crunchies in the cake are great- I was worried they would get soggy between ice cream layers, but they stayed crunchy!
If you do try making this cake, though, I warn you: beware the leaky springform pan!

Angel Food Cake with Fresh Blueberry Sauce

After making the sesame ice cream for the sesame/halvah/caramel sundaes from last week I had a TON of egg whites left over. Angel food cake to the rescue!

This chocolate-speckled angel food cake from Ina caught my eye, but I figured I would try the basic recipe first before mixing it up. The cake came out sweet, light, and fluffy, without that weird chemical flavor the store-bought ones have.

You definitely have to be delicate when mixing up the batter so you don't crush the fluffed up egg whites. Also, I was forced to buy special cake flour for the recipe, which was a little bit of a pain, but not the end of the world.

Served the cake with a fresh blueberry sauce based loosely on Ina's recipe... I didn't strain it because I like the lumps from the fresh blueberries.

Jenny Said It Couldn't Be Done: Chocolate Beet Cake

Colleen sent several of us a link to this blog that she had stumbled upon, which, at the time, had an interesting recipe front and center for a chocolate cake made with beet puree. Jenny expressed extreme distaste for and disbelief about the quality of the recipe, claiming a chocolate cake made with beets could never be good. Her exact words were "But seriously, did you notice the first recipe on that blog - chocolate beet cake -- why ruin chocolate like that! I can't believe that it would actually be good?!"

That sounded like a challenge to me! I knew it was only a matter of time before I gave it a try...

This week I found myself with 5 or 6 beets from the CSA languishing in my veggie crisper after a long winter full of root veggies, and I knew it would be a tough sell to serve them to the troops straight up. This was the perfect setting for attempting to prove Jenny wrong...

This is a pretty basic chocolate cake, with a spice cake twist from the cinnamon and nutmeg. I don't think that anyone eating the final product would have guessed that beets were in there, unless they had seen the maroon-y color of the batter prior to being baked. The beets lend a great moistness to the cake, much like adding carrots, applesauce, bananas, or some other sweet fruit or veggie to a cake or bread. Maybe it could be a little more chocolate-y for my taste, but otherwise it was really good. Jennifer suggested that perhaps a magenta beet frosting or glaze would be a nice addition.

I don't think Jenny will accept the results of this experiment as valid until she gets a slice of her own, so I'll have to remake the cake next time I get together with her. Doubting Jenny, be prepared!

Gingerbread-Apple Upside-Down Cake

I saw this recipe in today's New York Times food section and had to give it a try. I'm glad I did! This was a light and fluffy gingerbread cake with a caramely/appley topping... yum.

The only ingredient I didn't have in my pantry was buttermilk, but I improvised by using milk and lemon juice. I didn't want to make a whole cake since it was just me and Chuckie, so I halved the recipe and put it in some mini-springform pans (which may not have been the best choice since some of the caramel leaked onto the bottom of the oven). They were so cute, though! I cooked them for about 30 minutes... until a tester came out clean.

Smitten Kitchen's Apple Cake

Tim needed a dish to bring to his office potluck, and one that could be served cold or heated in the microwave. Since I think most things heated in the microwave end up having the consistency of rubber, we opted for a dessert that could be served at room temperature... Smitten Kitchen's apple cake.

This was also the time for apple cake since we had a million apples leftover from a game of apple bobbing that was truly misguided in this season of swine flu paranoia!!

We'll see how the cake turns out. I can't cut it open yet because it has to be pretty enough to entice Tim's coworkers to purchase a piece tomorrow (proceeds go to United Way). I think I forgot to put the nuts in the cake... don't tell.

UPDATE: Tim tells me the cake was "really good," as in "good enough to win best dessert" at Nathan Associate's potluck fundraiser. Apparently we are now the proud owners of two tickets to Mt. Vernon.

Molten Chocolate Cakes with Melty Caramel

Dudes: these individual molten lava cakes are awesome, and awesomely easy. Plus, it's always fun to give everyone at the table their own personal dessert.

Amy's great, she bakes me a chocolate cake!

Amy baked and hand-decorated this kick-ass double chocolate cake for my birthday party. Amazing. Super rich, moist and chocolatey. I think it's the coffee in the batter, and Amy's magic touch. She tells me that left out 1/2 C of sugar, and used Ghirardelli chocolate.

Delicious. Got this song in my head.

The decorations were made with this buttermilk frosting recipe:

Buttercream icing for decorating:

1/2 c. vegetable shortening

1/2 c. butter or margarine, softened

4 c. sifted confectioners' sugar

2 tbsp. milk (+ more milk or light corn syrup for easier spreading)

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and shortening with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all the sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at high speed until light and fluffy. Keep icing covered with a damp cloth until you're ready to decorate. For best results, keep icing in refrigerator when you're not using. Makes 3 cups icing.