mix, mix…stir, stir

The most important thing to establish about this cake is that you don’t need a birthday to make it because it’s easy and tasty enough to make for no specific reason at all. This cake has kicked me back in gear with posting my Tuesdays with Dorie baking adventures after completely losing my blogging rhythm due to all the traveling I did during November and December selling SpiceCare.

I am excited to share this because it’s such a classic chocolate cake with no funny business; it’s the kind of cake Mrs. Cleaver would make. There is the wonderful little twist of malt powder in the frosting, but chocolate malts were popular in the 50’s, so it’s not so out of character really. The frosting is sweet making a cold glass of milk the perfect pairing to serve alongside a slice. I found the texture to be much improved after spending some time in the refrigerator rather than eating as soon as it was baked and frosted (we just couldn’t wait!). The cake became a little denser and slightly fudgy after being chilled. If you  usually buy cakes or bake from a box, I encourage you to give this recipe a whirl. There is something so special about a homemade cake; it will be worth the baking adventure.

I didn’t mess with this classic one bit. I even stuck with the two layers to be true to a classic birthday cake. I usually prefer to split layers and assemble four layer cakes, but that just seemed too fussy for this recipe. For my taste, in the future I will bump up the malt a touch because it’s really subtle and substitute at least half of the bittersweet chocolate in the frosting with unsweetened chocolate just to tame the sweetness a tad. Because it is such a sweet cake I highly recommend using a dark bittersweet chocolate, something in the 70% cocoa solids range. Trader Joe’s sells a nice bittersweet chocolate that is very reasonably priced, Cost Plus generally has a nice selection of imported dark chocolates as do many grocery stores. Standard chocolate chips would be far too sweet, but if that’s all you have, just substitute some unsweetened bakers chocolate to compensate.

Since I’ve encouraged non-bakers to give this cake a try, here are a few cake baking tips that might be helpful if you are new to baking.

• Invest in a roll of parchment paper to line the cake pans with. Just cut out circles of parchment that will fit right in the bottom of the pan. I don’t find it necessary to grease the parchment paper. Don’t forget to peel off the parchement before assembling the cake!
• Check your oven temperature and adjust accordingly if it runs hot or cold.
• Room temperature butter is considered to be about 66-68 degrees F. Easy to cut and spread, but not so warm it’s squishy.
• Room temperature ingredients incorporate better than cold.
• Take the chill off eggs before adding them to a batter by placing whole eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for 3-5 minutes before cracking them.
•  Take the chill off milk or other liquids with a quick blast in the microwave; just enough to remove the chill, not enough to make it hot.
• Avoid leveling a measuring cup of flour by shaking it. This compacts it and you’ll end up adding too much flour. The best method is to spoon flour into a measuring cup and then scrape it off level using a knife. Or even better weigh it; 1 cup of all purpose flour weighs 5 ounces.
• Take your time letting the butter and sugar cream. This process beats air into the ingredients which will enable the cake to rise in the oven.

For the recipe for Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake visit Laurie of Slush. She is the mastermind behind creating this baking group which has been cranking out weekly treats for two years now! She selected this week’s baking task and has the recipe posted on her blog.

Though I haven’t been blogging lately, I have been cooking and baking and will have a lot to share in the coming month as I catch up with my posts. Happy New Year!

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours . 107 recipes completed 114 to go!

I had  fun over the weekend doing a cooking demonstration of low cost meals at a community fair organized by The City of Lake Forest Park, WA. They brought together all sorts of community resource agencies sharing information to help people navigate these difficult economic times. 

One of the agencies participating was Solid Ground, an organization I volunteer with. In partnership with Share our Strength, a national anti-hunger organization, Solid Ground runs a free six week cooking and nutrition program called Operation Frontline, designed to help people on a low income build skills to maximize their resources by learning to cook healthy low cost meals

All of the meals in the program are designed to cost less than $1.68 per serving, which is the amount of money a person on food stamps has to spend for each meal. In the demo I made a White Bean and Chicken Chili with Fresh Basil and a Northwest Apple Salad. These are quick and really flavorful dishes that aren’t fussy to make and can easily be adapted to all kinds of variations. These dishes won’t remind you of your starving student days, in fact I wish I had eaten like this when I was a starving student.

The chili is finished with fresh lime juice and basil, which delivers a bright flavor and fresh satisfying aroma.  The apple salad is simply dressed with a little plain yogurt, but of course I turn to spices to take it in a variety of directions. At the demo I had three versions for sampling, one with cinnamon, one with ground fennel, and one with ground coriander. All work great with apple and it was fun to see apprehension turn into delightful surprise as people tasted the different versions. The different spices pull differnt flavors of the apple forward and lend a nice flavor complexity to what couldn’t be a simpler salad.

It might seem like cooking with a variety of spices would be too extravagant when on a limited budget, but I did some research to show that’s not the case at all if you know where to shop. I expected bulk spices to be cheaper, but I didn’t realize how much cheaper, even when buying from a specialty spice store. The difference in cost per ounce is dramatic enough, but when you consider that with bulk purchasing you only buy what you need for a few months, which in most cases an ounce is more than enough, so cash isn’t tied up in large expensive jars of spice that just sit in the cupboard. The jar of grocery store brand cinnamon was priced at $3.89 (1.75 oz.) , whereas buying an ounce of bulk cinnamon only requires  $0.41, or a $1.00 out of pocket.

Share our Strength partners with different organizations all over the country to implement the Operation Frontline classes. Visit their site to see if there is a group in your community you can get involved with. It’s a great program.

Crystallized ginger sounds difficult and time consuming to make, at least that’s what I thought until I actually did a little research on how to make it. It’s easy, and if you are fearful of candy making because of the fussy steps involved with washing down the sides of the pan to avoid sugar crystal formation, this is the project for you; it’s all about creating sugar crystals!

photo by David Peterman

It seems like Asian markets always have the most gorgeous, fresh, young, ginger for sale, so that’s where I shop when I am making this. The most potentially tedious part of the process is peeling the ginger, but I have a great tip for you if you haven’t already discovered the spoon technique. I learned this years ago in an evening cooking class. To me, this tip alone was worth the entire cost of the class and it wasn’t even the point of the class, just a passing comment. Simply scrape the skin of the ginger off with the side of a spoon. A spoon takes off the thin skin easily and without removing a bunch of ginger with it. It also leaves the ginger root nice and smooth. When I use a peeler or a knife, I seem to leave all kinds of angles and cut marks behind. The spoon is fast and really easy to maneuver around the bumps and contours of the root.

photo by David Peterman

I experimented a bit with this batch to see what would happen if I added a vanilla bean, cardamom and cinnamon. Something good happened. The vanilla, cardamom, and cinnamon are subtle but noticeable right up front in the sugar coating, then the bite and heat of the ginger hit followed by a lovely soft lingering vanilla flavor. Home-made crystallized ginger is darker in color than commercial product and the added spices add even a little darker color, but I like the look of the speckles.

photo by David Peterman

In addition to a wonderful stash of crystallized ginger this recipe generates a sugar by-product that is fantastic to baking with. The excess sugar is infused with the ginger and spice flavors and would be wonderful in your next batch of brownies, pancakes, or cookies. It is very clumpy, but a quick spin in a food processor breaks it down to a nice fine texture.

Spiced Crystallized Ginger

1 lb. fresh young ginger root
water
1 vanilla bean
20 whole cardamom pods, cracked open
2″ piece of True Cinnamon stick or Cassia Cinnamon stick
1 lb. granulated sugar, plus 1/2 cup
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

Peel the ginger and slice into 1/4-1/8 inch thick slices. Place the ginger slices in a 3 qt. sauce pan and add enough water to cover. Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds from the pod, then add the seeds and pod to the ginger. Add the cardamom pods and cinnamon stick. Bring the ingredients to a boil and cook at a simmer for about 40 minutes until the ginger is tender.

Drain the ginger and remove the pieces of spice. Don’t worry about the little cardamom seeds, but be sure to remove the tough pods. In the empty sauce pan, mix 1/3 cup water with 1 lb. of sugar and bring to a boil. Add the ginger and cook at a boil, stirring frequently, for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to cook and stir until the syrup begins to thicken, another 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix 1/2 cup sugar, ground cinnamon and cardamom together in a medium bowl and set aside. As the ginger mixture begins to thicken the syrup will look like foamy bubbles when stirred rather than bubbles in liquid. At this point, using tongs or a  fork, lift the ginger pieces out of the pan into the sugar mixture and toss to coat. Once the ginger is well coated spread it out on a sheet pan to cool. Let it sit for a few hours to dry and then transfer to an airtight container. It will keep at room temperature for 6 months.

Collect all the extra sugar and process in a food processor until it is a nice fine consistency. Store in an airtight container to use in your next baking project. This sugar would be great in brownies, pancakes, or cookies.

Back in August ‘08 I posted a tip on freezing egg yolks, so here is the other half of the story. Freezing egg whites doesn’t require any tricks; they freeze well and when thawed behave like egg whites that haven’t been frozen, even retaining the ability to be whipped into a nice foam. The trick for me was figuring out a good system for freezing egg whites.

photo by David Peterman

Over the years it seems that whenever I generated a lot of spare egg whites during a cooking project I would freeze them. I would even get around to using the frozen whites, but forgetting to label the container with how many whites it contained made using them annoying, as it required digging out a book to look up the measurement of a typical large egg white (2 tablespoons per white and 1 tablespoon per yolk). It was the single egg white that tripped me up. I would think, “I should freeze this,” but usually feeling pressed for time, I wouldn’t want to bother and would toss it justifying that it was just one egg white. Over time, I started feeling like those “it’s just one egg white” moments were adding up and it was bugging me.

What I needed was as system! Something easy to do in the middle of cooking that I would do every time I was faced with a spare egg white. Small Ziploc plastic containers were the answer.

I have a stack of these little bowls with snap-on lids (no spills) and anytime I separate an egg and will not be using the white, I separate the white into this container, snap on the lid and toss it in the freezer. Every time! Only one white is allowed per container. The next day, or the next time I open the freezer and have a moment, I process the frozen white. It takes all of about 30 seconds: run warm water over the outside of the container, pop the frozen white out onto a piece of plastic wrap, wrap, date, toss in a zip-top freezer bag with the other frozen whites.

I now have a nice collection of frozen egg whites at the ready and have taken advantage of them numerous times when making buttercream frosting and various other things. Buttercream is particularly gratifying because I use six whites and don’t end up generating a bowl full of orphaned yolks in the process. The best part is it’s saving the random single white that really builds my stash. Having a system in place makes freezing them an automatic process. I feel good!

I have been caught on more than one occasion needing citrus zest for a recipe and buying a lemon or an orange just so I can harvest the zest. Annoyingly, I have often just used a lemon or eaten an orange a day or two earlier and the now much needed zest is languishing in the compost bin.

photo by David Peterman

It finally occurred to me to harvest citrus zest when I have it even if I don’t need it at the moment.  I place the zest of one lemon or one orange in an ice cube tray compartment and add enough juice just to bind the zest and keep it hydrated. Once frozen, pop each one out and store them in a freezer container.

I find it helpful to do the same thing with lemon juice when I have extra lemons around that might go bad before I can use them. The joy of being one step ahead of myself by having zest and juice in the freezer when I need it, is immensely satisfying.

Ice cube trays are great for freezing extra chicken stock, tomato paste, and pesto as well. I especially like the trays with flexible silicone bottoms, the frozen contents pop right out with a little push.