Author: Lillian

Yum.

My sister’s birthday was Saturday, so I thought that would be a perfect opportunity to make this cake and not have to watch it devoured in a matter of seconds by the four of us. A whole cake for four people is just silly.

But the usual logistical nightmares meant my sister and the assorted other guests would not be joining us this weekend.

Plan B was cupcakes, but the cake was so glorious that I couldn’t bear to reduce it like that.

Plan C was making the cake, but sending a quarter to the neighbors and another quarter to #1 Son’s girlfriend and her mother.

The best-laid plans of mice and mothers …

So, I made the cake. It was after piano lesson and grocery shopping, so I didn’t start till almost 3 in the afternoon. That was dumb. It’s a cake. I’ve made cakes before. I know how long they take.

Couldn’t find my 9-inch cake pans. (I have sons who have lived in this house their entire lives and still can’t manage to put things away in the same place two times in a row.)

Couldn’t find a non-warped 9×13 pan. (That one’s my fault. I really need to upgrade my baking pans.)

But what’s this? A Bundt pan! It holds the same amount as two 8-inch pans!! Yes!!!

So I made it as a Bundt cake. I buttered and floured the pan, but skipped the parchment — my imagination was just not up to the task of figuring out how to line a Bundt pan with parchment. It baked fine and slid right out of the pan, smooth as silk.

I sliced it into four layers with considerably less angst and cursing than I was expecting, and crumbled the bottom-most one.

Then I made the frosting, increasing the amounts by 50 percent because I like frosting, and so that I could fill the center hole with lovely, fluffy whiteness.

From comments I’d read from other TWDers, I knew the sugar-water part of the frosting was going to have to cook for a while, and yet I didn’t start it till after 8 in the evening. I’m not always the brightest person around. But I had the cake, and I had people waiting for dessert, so I did it despite knowing it was dumb.

Put the egg whites in the mixer. Put the sugar and water and cream of tartar in the pot. Stirred. Boiled. It got up to 230 fairly quickly, maybe 10 minutes or so. And it stayed there. And stayed there. And stayed there. Maybe 20 minutes later it was up to 240. And it stayed there. And stayed there. And stayed there.

I had started to beat the egg whites when it hit 235, just like the book says, and they were done, so I turned the mixer down, just like the book says.

Still 240.

I leaned over the mixer bowl to see how the whites were doing, and when I looked back at the thermometer it read 250. Literally 10 seconds had elapsed, and it had jumped 10 degrees.

Husband later mentioned a slightly burnt aftertaste. I hit him.

But back to the slightly overcooked sugar syrup. I soldiered on, pouring it into the egg whites and beating them till they cooled. Here’s something I hadn’t considered: Increasing the ingredients by 50 percent increases the output by 50 percent. This was not buttercream frosting — this stuff was essentially marshmallow fluff. Marshmallow fluff that expands a lot when it’s beaten.

Filled my five-quart Kitchenaid right up to the top, but luckily no further.

It tasted kind of weird, though, beyond the aforementioned aftertaste. It tasted almost lemony. I figured that had to be the cream of tartar, although I’ve never noticed a flavor from cream of tartar before. It was a little offputting, at least to me. #1 Son liked it a lot.

Slapped the cake together pretty quickly — it was well after 9 by this point — but it looked pretty good, if I say so myself. #2 Son lovingly applied the cake crumbs.

The recipe says to refrigerate the cake for an hour before serving. That was not going to happen. We ate it. We mostly liked it, although we weren’t overwhelmed. That lemony taste turned me off, and I’m not a big fan of chocolate cake to begin with.

Husband: It didn’t thrill me in any way. The lemony taste of the frosting was overwhelming.

#1 Son: I really liked it. Something gave the icing the slightest hint of lemon, and it worked beautifully. The texture of the cake was also perfect; not too mushy, not too crumbly, but a happy, top-of-the-brownie-like middle ground.

#2 Son: I liked the cake, but the icing wasn’t very good. It tasted weird, so instead of eating the leftover frosting, I just put it in a bowl.

So I covered it with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge, hoping for a better tomorrow.

I got one.

Twenty-one hours or so later, the lemony taste had gone, and the frosting was sweet and pillowy and lovely. The cake was fudgier, more like a brownie than cake. I liked the whole package much better. As for those people who live in my house:

Husband: It was better the second day, because the cake had more of a brownie consistency. But I didn’t find the chocolate taste at all special, and I found the icing tooth-piercingly sweet.

#1 Son: I really liked the contrast between the almost too dry cake and the frosting the first day. The second day, the cake got a moistness and a fudginess that I felt equalized the textures more, so I didn’t like it as much. But the flavor and texture of the icing intensified overnight, and I really like that.

#2 Son: It was overall much better today. The sweetness increased, which was good, because it decreased the weird taste in the frosting, but it also  started hurting my teeth. I would eat this again on the second day, but not the first. And I really do recommend milk with it [slurp].

Oh, and #1 Son, brilliant as sometimes, sprinkled cinnamon over his slice. That was amazing.

So there you have it. Mixed opinions, as usual, but I was happy. And that’s really all that matters.

Check out the myriad variations dreamed up by the other Tuesdays With Dorie bloggers. And if you want to try this cake for yourself, buy the book or head on over to Confessions of a City Eater, where Stephanie will have the recipe for you.

Dorie Greenspan has changed my life. I love chocolate candy, but I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate cake or cookies (although I love brownies; go figure). But these cookies have changed all that.

I have made World Peace cookies before. And as we’re trying to cut back on the sugar and fat around here, if this were any other recipe in the book I’d probably have gone back to old photos and written the post from memory.

But this is not any other recipe.

These are, bar none, the best cookies in the world. Nay, in the universe. Dare I say in the megaverse?

I love these cookies.

But even though I’ve made these three or four times already, I tried two new techniques this time. Both were brilliant, if I do say so myself.

First, I shaped each half (well, actually, quarter; I doubled the recipe) of the dough into a rough log and wrapped it in plastic wrap before final shaping. Boy, did that made things easier. Then I slit a paper towel roll (as suggested by Dorie herself) down the side and used that to make sure the dough logs were the right diameter for their whole length. So much neater!

I also baked half a dozen of these little darlings before refrigerating the dough (and after it had been sitting on the counter for an hour or so). They flattened in the oven much more than the refrigerated ones, but they were scrumptious. I think I like them even better that way. (Who would have thought that was possible?) They were thin, but soft and chewy like the best chocolate chip cookies. I was going to save one so I could report on how it was the next day, but I couldn’t resist. Sorry.

The next afternoon I baked the rest, and surprise! They were just as thin and chewy after having been refrigerated for 20 hours or so. In the past, my World Peace cookies have always come out almost like chocolate shortbread. This time they were completely different — if I’d had these somewhere else, I wouldn’t even have recognized them as the same recipe. And I have to say, we like them even better this way.

There were two very small differences in the ingredients this time around: First, #1 Son had been cooking all day on the day I made the dough, and he had left almost three sticks of butter out softening for me. I needed 22 tablespoons, but the nearly full stick had seven rather than six tablespoons left, and, throwing caution to the wind, I tossed the whole thing in there. So that’s essentially an extra half-tablespoon of butter for the basic recipe. And then when I was adding the dry ingredients, I spilled some — no more than two tablespoons or so.

So there you have it: a tiny bit more butter, a tiny bit less flour. A totally different cookie. Fun with chemistry!

I have two photos here to demonstrate the huge difference. The top one comes from the lovely blog She’s Becoming Doughmesstic; thank you, Susan, for so generously allowing me to borrow it. Mine have always looked just like that. The one on the bottom is, of course, this batch.

I made about six dozen of these. By the time we got to the party I made them for, it was down to four dozen or so. Fifteen minutes after I laid them out on the table, there were only crumbs.

I didn’t interview people at the party, but here’s the family:

Husband: I actually liked them better before, when they were more shortbready. They were more special that way. They were good this time, too, though.

#1 Son: The added butter and reduced flour gave them a beautifully crumbly texture without being as dry as I’ve found some past batches. [We’re planning to send him to military school for suggesting that these cookies have even been anything but fabulous.]

#2 Son: They were just as delicious as they were last time, if not more so. They were especially good with the ice cream [coffee and vanilla]. I think they would have been even better if you’d used the 72% chocolate. [I debated between regular bittersweet and the crazy dark stuff, and I went with the regular. I’m a milk chocolate gal!]

Go read 300 other bloggers raving about these cookies. And if you don’t already own Baking: From My Home to Yours, buy it. While you’re waiting for the chance to get to the store or for the book to come in the mail, you can find the recipe at Cookbookhabit. In the name of all that is chocolatey, make these cookies.

I’m back! This week’s recipe, chosen for us by Heather of Sherry Trifle, was Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread. The name did not convey the awesomeness of this cake.

We’re eating more healthfully lately, so I made a third of the recipe rather than the full thing; we did not need that much cake sitting around tempting us. The recipe in the book makes a 9-inch-square cake. I looked it up: The batter for two cake layers also makes two 9-inch-square pans or 24 cupcakes, as a rule, so I did the math and came up with this one 9-inch cake being the equivalent of 12 cupcakes. So, I thought, if I cut it by two-thirds I’d get four cupcakes. For four of us. Perfect.

But no. I got six cupcakes, filled right up to the top of the paper liners with batter, with enough batter left over for a seventh that I (close your eyes, family!) ate without baking. You see why I had to cut the recipe down; I can’t be trusted.

I used Trader Joe’s bittersweet chocolate; that stuff is amazingly good for as cheap as it is. I don’t know how they do it. I also used the fresh ginger but left out the ginger in syrup. I’m not a big fan of fresh ginger, and Husband doesn’t like ginger at all, not even in the gingerbread houses that we make every year. #1 Son loves the stuff, though. Oh, and I swapped out the molasses for maple syrup, both because I didn’t have any molasses and because I don’t really like the flavor (which is, I suppose, why I didn’t have any!).

I’m also a big fan of milk chocolate, as is #1 Son; Husband and #2 Son prefer dark. It causes quite a bit of familial strife, let me tell you. This cake uses bittersweet, both in the cake and in the icing.

The batter was easy to put together, with no weird steps. (And it was delicious, hence the fate of that sad seventh cupcake.) I had to guess at the baking time, though, since I changed the shape. I started with 15 minutes, but they weren’t nearly done. I added 5 minutes at a time all the way up to 30, by which time I think they were just slightly overdone. The cake was ever-so-slightly dry, but not enough to worry about. And there was a great contrast between the top and the inside.

Despite (or, I must admit, because of) the ginger and the bittersweet chocolate, this cake is amazing: dark and rich and mellow, with flavor you can drown in. The ginger isn’t noticeable as such, but it adds a layer to the chocolate that makes a real difference.

Two-thirds of the family loved the cupcakes; the holdout was truly a surprise.

Husband (said with a full mouth, because he couldn’t stop eating long enough to talk to me): They’re a little dry but great chocolate depth. Lot of rich notes in there, really a nuanced flavor. The ginger is an enhancement rather than a roadblock, which is what ginger usually is for me. The icing’s almost not necessary.

#1 Son: I do get some ginger there, but the overall flavor is sort of flat. It hits you with chocolate and then disappears; that’s all there is to it. They were kind of dry, too.

#2 Son: The cupcake overall is good. The frosting is almost unnecessary (said without having heard Husband say exactly the same thing). The ginger is not distinguishable as a taste, but I would notice its not being there. I liked the big chunks of chocolate, and I liked the fact that the outside was crunchy and the inside was more cake-like.

The cupcakes were still moist and yummy on Day 2; I can’t offer any information beyond that point.

I would definitely make this again, maybe for a party (when I could make the whole recipe).

Go check out what the hundreds of other TWD bloggers did with this cake. And try it yourself: Buy Baking: From My Home to Yours, or head over to Sherry Trifle, where Heather will have the recipe for you.

Tune in next week, for the most amazing cookies the world has even seen. I kid you not. The best. Bar none.

Well, I did it. (Scroll down two posts to find out why I didn’t think I would.)

I don’t really like cheesecake, but I made it, and I think it’s going to be very good. I made a hybrid of two of the variations: marbled coconut cheesecake. I added toasted coconut to the crust, toasted coconut and toasted almond meal to the main body of the cake, and bittersweet chocolate to about a third of the batter. (Both the inspired ideas of #1 Son.) The batter, both kinds, was delicious.

It sure does look pretty. I’ll check in tomorrow and let you know how it tastes!

UPDATE: The cheesecake was a hit. We finally ate it very late Thursday night, at our friends’ house in Virginia.

I don’t like cheesecake, as a rule. (I don’t like cream cheese, either, or sour cream. So you can see the problem.)

I liked this, though. I wouldn’t rush to make it again, just for myself, but I ate a whole piece, and it was good. I used three-quarters cream to one-quarter sour cream, so the tanginess was dialed down, and the contrast between the vanilla and chocolate parts was excellent. And toasted coconut makes everything better.

Our friends liked it too. One said the chocolate was like French restaurant chocolate; it had the perfect consistency. She loved the surprise of the coconut in the crust: “It’s crunchy — you can really taste it.” The other one praised the coconut, “which adds significantly to the uncheesiness of it.” Their 2-year-old daughter made her objections known, loudly and vociferously, when her mother tried to take the cheesecake away from her. (Their 7-year-old son was less enthralled — he threw his away.)

And as for my amateur critics:

Husband: The chocolate is mousse-like. I find many cheesecakes far too sweet, but this is not at all. This is just the right hint of sweetness. There’s almost a savoriness to the vanilla part, and the coconut was a really cool surprise.

#1 Son: Tasty. It had a good texture and flavor; it was absolutely beautiful. It seemed like it got soft very easily, so it would probably be best served directly from the fridge instead of letting it sit out on the counter for a while like we did. Maybe some more almond extract would have been good, would have brought out the flavor a bit more.

#2 Son: I liked it, but it was overall too sweet for me. I liked the coconut crust stuff; it was really good. I liked the chocolate better than the vanilla bit. But all combined, it was just too sweet. I would eat it again.

UPDATE#2: #2 Son has changed his opinion: “My previous opinion came after I’d just had some ice cream. Now I’ve had the cake by itself. The chocolate seems a lot richer now, the vanilla is still kind of eh, and the crust is very good. I still like the crust very much.”

Check out what all the other TWD bakers did with the cheesecake. And if you want to try it yourself, Anne will have the recipe for you over at Anne Strawberry.

Please scroll down and check out #1 Son’s gingerbread inn. He worked very hard on it!

If you’re here for Tuesdays With Dorie, scroll down. And the cheesecake is actually coming!

I’ve been making gingerbread houses (and castles, and pirate ships, and spaceships, and Stonehenge!) since #1 Son was very small; the boys usually came up with the concept and did the decoration, and I did the drafting and baking and building. This year #1 Son wanted to take over the tradition. Being the fantastic mother I am, I let him. (It nearly killed me, though — he was doing everything wrong [meaning, not the way I did it]).

Well, it all worked out just fine in the end. He tried two different recipes for the gingerbread. One was from a book called Gingerbread for All Seasons by Teresa Layman, which I bought only a few years ago but which appears to be out of print already. That’s unfortunate, because it’s amazing. Teresa’s techniques drastically improved my houses over the years. The other was, of course, Dorie’s, which I heard about on an NPR piece right before Christmas. The recipe is at the bottom of that link.

#1 Son said Dorie’s dough was easier to work with (of course!), but he liked the flavor of the other dough better. I think that’s just his aversion to molasses, and we’ll try Dorie’s recipe with dark corn syrup or maple syrup next year.

He made the template (although I did help a bit with that; experience is occasionally helpful, even when you’re 16), baked the pieces, and built the house. He and his girlfriend and #2 Son put on the finishing touches. And so, without further ado, I present the Inn of Ill Respite. (Warning: The text may not be entirely appropriate for children, or for people who were raised to be horrified by things that are, in fact, horrible.)

But evil lurks below. Under that cheerfully blazing fire is the entrance to the goblin city.

And there you have it. He’s a good kid, really.

No TWD for me this week. I really did intend to make the cheesecake (or, rather, subcontract it to #1 Son, who has made cheesecake several times before); we were going to have it as dessert after the latke party we threw Saturday night. But we came home from Christmas at the in-laws with most of a pecan pie, half a cherry pie, about a third of a pumpkin pie, and a quarter of a chocolate pie. We really, really didn’t need cheesecake.

But if you want to know what all the other TWD bakers did with the cheesecake, check out the blogroll. And if you want to try it yourself — I bet it was great! — Anne will have the recipe for you over at Anne Strawberry.

And if you come back a little later today, I’ll post photos of the amazing gingerbread cottage #1 Son made instead of the cheesecake. And Husband just had a brilliant idea: We’re going down to Virginia to spend New Year’s Eve and Day with friends, so #1 Son can make the cheesecake tomorrow to take with us. So I might even get photos and some commentary posted by Tuesday night, and I’ll update with our usual summary judgment on Wednesday night.

Ooh, this is so exciting!