the strangest season
Apr. 2nd, 2020 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bikingandbakingIt's my first season as RBA (Regional Brevet Administrator), theoretically running brevets.
Well, that's obviously not happened. Someday, I'll ride with other randonneurs outside of Zwift. Hopefully.
But at least Zwift somehow got the secret handshake to talk to my somewhat-ancient CycleOps exercise bike; I didn't pony up for the smart one but I did get the one with real power, so I can race people virtually. Still so few women that, amusingly, in the race I did yesterday, I was 4/7 (4/11 for most of it but I guess the last 4 didn't finish) in group D. If I'd ridden in group C I would have been 2/2, no one at all raced B, and I would have *won* group A as 1/2. Long-term paying for both Peleton and Zwift and often going for months using neither is probably not actually the right plan but for now it's fun.
However, this is mostly a baking, not a biking, quarantine post: for once I made myself birthday cake, since buying a treat wasn't happening, and I have all this time that I'm not commuting.
It's mostly faithful to the recipe in my retro-reprint Betty Crocker, but I made a few tweaks and thus feel free to rename it, as the original one is a little "ooh we added some spice and made it ~exotic~ (even though it has less spice than the applesauce spice cake a page before that is not given a vaguely ethnic name". Except I haven't thought of one yet. (If you want to google the original and other variants, it was listed as "Araby spice cake", and this repost of it is accurate to my cookbook.)
Unnamed Cake
3/4 cup room-temperature salted butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 7/8 cups all-purpose flour, or 2 cups cake flour. (1 7/8 is 2 minus 2 Tbsp)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (increase to 3/4 if using unsalted butter)
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp allspice (if you don't have allspice, skip; adding this was my biggest change to the recipe)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp cocoa (I only had unalkalized, but alkalized/dutched is usually preferable in this sort of recipe)
3/4 cup buttermilk or soured milk or powdered buttermilk + water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1/2 cup walnuts or other nuts, chopped
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour 2 9" cake tins, or perhaps 3 8". (Do not do what I did, and grease them, mean to flour them later when measuring out the flour, forget completely, and pour the batter into ungreased tins, requiring a scramble to get the batter back out and into greased-and-floured tins before the leavening deflated. Probably lost a little height in the process.)
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat thoroughly. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl, wet in another. If using powdered buttermilk, put the water with the wet and the powder with the dry. (I had powdered buttermilk in packets that make a cup and just threw the whole packet in, but used 3/4 cup flour. Because what was I going to do with a 1/4 packet of buttermilk powder?) Add wet and dry ingredients, alternating, until smoothly combined. Fold in nuts. Plop into tins (it was not thin enough for "pour" to be an accurate description) and bake for ~30 minutes. (30 was the short end of the original recipe, and in my convection oven it was Definitely Done at that point and probably could have come out a couple minutes sooner.)
Mocha Spice buttercream filling
3 Tbsp salted butter
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder (again, I'd have used dutched if I had it)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom (my other primary addition)
A few Tbsp hot strong coffee
Mix all ingredients except coffee. Add coffee until correct spreading consistency is obtained. When you add too much, add a little more powdered sugar.
This was a little on the sweet side, even for me, and I might consider trying a ganache if making it again? But in a thin, sweet layer it was good. Maybe just needed a pinch of salt, or using instant espresso powder instead of brewed coffee. This is half the original recipe, because the original assumed you'd also be frosting with it. It'd be tough to get this whole cake covered with that amount, to be honest; if doing that I'd do 1.5x the original recipe, aka three times this one. If doing it as a three-layer in 8" cake pans, probably do 1.5x this version (4 Tbsp butter, etc).
White Mountain frosting
This is straight-up Betty Crocker's "small cake" sized recipe, except that I only had dark corn syrup, so I used what I had.
2 egg whites (approximately 1/4 cup)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
Beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Fret that they're not volumizing enough. Heat sugar/water/corn syrup to 242F in a pan, which takes less time than you'd expect. If you don't have a candy thermometer, that's the top of the soft-ball stage, and mine was definitely hitting the beginnings of the hard-ball stage from the congealed bits on the mixer afterward. Keep the mixer going and pour a thin stream of sugar syrup into it, and watch as the meringue expands. Beat in the vanilla at the end once it's in glossy stiff peaks. Frost. Explain to anyone who will listen and also enjoys the Great British Bake-Off that White Mountain is basically Italian meringue (with a little corn syrup -- to be perfectly accurate, the "Fluffy White" frosting in my Betty Crocker is exactly Italian meringue, and White Mountain is listed as a variant of it) and Seven-Minute is Swiss meringue.
I contemplated various flavorings for the frosting, but I love the classic plain White Mountain. Could try doing the mocha thing like the filling with it too, or go for contrast with orange blossom water or something, but I'm also just as happy I didn't, since we only just finished eating the rosewater-and-pistachio vegan aquafaba meringues I made recently.
Oh, right, recipe for those, too:
1 cup chickpea liquid (2 15oz cans)
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 tsp rosewater
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 cup pistachios
Mix cream of tartar and aquafaba, beat to soft peaks. Add sugar and beat to glossy stiff peaks. Mix in extracts, fold in nuts. Any other combination of 1 tsp extract (water-based extracts, oil-based lemon or orange ones could deflate the meringue), and any 1/2 cup mix-ins would also work. Could increase mix-ins a little if you want them really chock-full, but for pistachios this was a great amount.
250F convection for 45 minutes, then turned off and coasted down for an hour was not enough -- had to bring them back up and overbaked them a little.
Next time, I will try 3/4 cup sugar and 1 hour baking time + cooling in the oven. Or maybe keep the sugar + a pinch of salt?
Evidently you can do cooked frostings with aquafaba, too, but that's an experiment for another day...
Pictures later when I figure out where I'm posting them now that my Flickr is out of space, including the one of a half-eaten meringue that everyone on Facebook thought looked like I was eating a minature dinosaur skull, evidently...
Well, that's obviously not happened. Someday, I'll ride with other randonneurs outside of Zwift. Hopefully.
But at least Zwift somehow got the secret handshake to talk to my somewhat-ancient CycleOps exercise bike; I didn't pony up for the smart one but I did get the one with real power, so I can race people virtually. Still so few women that, amusingly, in the race I did yesterday, I was 4/7 (4/11 for most of it but I guess the last 4 didn't finish) in group D. If I'd ridden in group C I would have been 2/2, no one at all raced B, and I would have *won* group A as 1/2. Long-term paying for both Peleton and Zwift and often going for months using neither is probably not actually the right plan but for now it's fun.
However, this is mostly a baking, not a biking, quarantine post: for once I made myself birthday cake, since buying a treat wasn't happening, and I have all this time that I'm not commuting.
It's mostly faithful to the recipe in my retro-reprint Betty Crocker, but I made a few tweaks and thus feel free to rename it, as the original one is a little "ooh we added some spice and made it ~exotic~ (even though it has less spice than the applesauce spice cake a page before that is not given a vaguely ethnic name". Except I haven't thought of one yet. (If you want to google the original and other variants, it was listed as "Araby spice cake", and this repost of it is accurate to my cookbook.)
Unnamed Cake
3/4 cup room-temperature salted butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 7/8 cups all-purpose flour, or 2 cups cake flour. (1 7/8 is 2 minus 2 Tbsp)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (increase to 3/4 if using unsalted butter)
3/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp allspice (if you don't have allspice, skip; adding this was my biggest change to the recipe)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp cocoa (I only had unalkalized, but alkalized/dutched is usually preferable in this sort of recipe)
3/4 cup buttermilk or soured milk or powdered buttermilk + water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1/2 cup walnuts or other nuts, chopped
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour 2 9" cake tins, or perhaps 3 8". (Do not do what I did, and grease them, mean to flour them later when measuring out the flour, forget completely, and pour the batter into ungreased tins, requiring a scramble to get the batter back out and into greased-and-floured tins before the leavening deflated. Probably lost a little height in the process.)
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat thoroughly. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl, wet in another. If using powdered buttermilk, put the water with the wet and the powder with the dry. (I had powdered buttermilk in packets that make a cup and just threw the whole packet in, but used 3/4 cup flour. Because what was I going to do with a 1/4 packet of buttermilk powder?) Add wet and dry ingredients, alternating, until smoothly combined. Fold in nuts. Plop into tins (it was not thin enough for "pour" to be an accurate description) and bake for ~30 minutes. (30 was the short end of the original recipe, and in my convection oven it was Definitely Done at that point and probably could have come out a couple minutes sooner.)
Mocha Spice buttercream filling
3 Tbsp salted butter
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp cocoa powder (again, I'd have used dutched if I had it)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom (my other primary addition)
A few Tbsp hot strong coffee
Mix all ingredients except coffee. Add coffee until correct spreading consistency is obtained. When you add too much, add a little more powdered sugar.
This was a little on the sweet side, even for me, and I might consider trying a ganache if making it again? But in a thin, sweet layer it was good. Maybe just needed a pinch of salt, or using instant espresso powder instead of brewed coffee. This is half the original recipe, because the original assumed you'd also be frosting with it. It'd be tough to get this whole cake covered with that amount, to be honest; if doing that I'd do 1.5x the original recipe, aka three times this one. If doing it as a three-layer in 8" cake pans, probably do 1.5x this version (4 Tbsp butter, etc).
White Mountain frosting
This is straight-up Betty Crocker's "small cake" sized recipe, except that I only had dark corn syrup, so I used what I had.
2 egg whites (approximately 1/4 cup)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
Beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Fret that they're not volumizing enough. Heat sugar/water/corn syrup to 242F in a pan, which takes less time than you'd expect. If you don't have a candy thermometer, that's the top of the soft-ball stage, and mine was definitely hitting the beginnings of the hard-ball stage from the congealed bits on the mixer afterward. Keep the mixer going and pour a thin stream of sugar syrup into it, and watch as the meringue expands. Beat in the vanilla at the end once it's in glossy stiff peaks. Frost. Explain to anyone who will listen and also enjoys the Great British Bake-Off that White Mountain is basically Italian meringue (with a little corn syrup -- to be perfectly accurate, the "Fluffy White" frosting in my Betty Crocker is exactly Italian meringue, and White Mountain is listed as a variant of it) and Seven-Minute is Swiss meringue.
I contemplated various flavorings for the frosting, but I love the classic plain White Mountain. Could try doing the mocha thing like the filling with it too, or go for contrast with orange blossom water or something, but I'm also just as happy I didn't, since we only just finished eating the rosewater-and-pistachio vegan aquafaba meringues I made recently.
Oh, right, recipe for those, too:
1 cup chickpea liquid (2 15oz cans)
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 tsp rosewater
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 cup pistachios
Mix cream of tartar and aquafaba, beat to soft peaks. Add sugar and beat to glossy stiff peaks. Mix in extracts, fold in nuts. Any other combination of 1 tsp extract (water-based extracts, oil-based lemon or orange ones could deflate the meringue), and any 1/2 cup mix-ins would also work. Could increase mix-ins a little if you want them really chock-full, but for pistachios this was a great amount.
250F convection for 45 minutes, then turned off and coasted down for an hour was not enough -- had to bring them back up and overbaked them a little.
Next time, I will try 3/4 cup sugar and 1 hour baking time + cooling in the oven. Or maybe keep the sugar + a pinch of salt?
Evidently you can do cooked frostings with aquafaba, too, but that's an experiment for another day...
Pictures later when I figure out where I'm posting them now that my Flickr is out of space, including the one of a half-eaten meringue that everyone on Facebook thought looked like I was eating a minature dinosaur skull, evidently...