Carrot Cake

Ingredients

Cake
12 1/2 oz all-purpose flour (2 1/2 cups)
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
3 eggs
7 oz granulated sugar (1 cup)
7 oz brown sugar (1 cup, packed)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup oil
1 lb carrots, peeled and shredded (preferably by hand on a box grater)
1 cup raisins, soaked in hot water and squeezed

Frosting
8 oz. 1/3-fat cream cheese (Neufchâtel), softened
5 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
2 tbsp sour cream
pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar (add more if you like it sweeter - I don't)

1 cup toasted pecans, chopped

Steps

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease a 9 x 13" cake pan with butter.
2. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices, and salt in a medium bowl with a whisk or fork. Set aside.
3. Beat the eggs and sugars with an electic mixer on high until light and fluffy (about three minutes). Add the vanilla and beat to incorporate.
4. With the beaters on low, slowly drizzle the oil into the egg mixture to emulsify.
5. Add half the flour mixture to the egg mixture and fold in with a rubber scraper. Repeat with the rest of the flour. Be gentle with the batter.
6. Gently stir in the carrots and raisins.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake 45-50 minutes (until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs attached), turning half-way through.
8. Remove cake from oven and rest in the pan on a wire rack until completely cool.

Frosting

1. Put the Neufchâtel, butter, sour cream, and salt in a food processor and whiz to combine.
2. Add the vanilla and powdered sugar and whiz to combine.
3. Refrigerate until cake is cool enough to frost.
4. Frost the cake and sprinkle the toasted pecans over the top.

Boston Cream Pie

This is my Boston cream pie. I thought it failed. But letting it sit longer makes a huge difference in the quality because the pastry cream gets a chance to soak into the sponge-y cake. It was delicious.

I used Greg Patent's recipe from Origins (found online here) because he dedicated a lot of time to tracking down the true cake.

While I sincerely appreciate and value authenticity, I think baking is a place where tinkering and change are totally acceptable. Next time, I'll skip the almonds (they got soggy from the pastry cream that glues them to the side of the cake). I'll also mess with the chocolate topping (a simple mixture of chocolate and cream) because it turned out chewy, almost rubbery. I'll up the ratio of rum to water (brushed onto the cake layers before assembling) because I couldn't taste it at all in the final product. But the cake and the pastry cream were just right.

Pastry cream might be my favorite substance. I was happy to find that this recipe left me with more than a cup extra.

Green tea cake

Some friends are having a Japanese-themed birthday party and asked me to bake a cake. No further instruction or suggestion beyond "awesome." So, I'm making green tea cake. I practiced today so I don't bring something inedible to the party.

Recipe attempt #1
Loosely adapted from Cook's Illustrated's fluffy yellow layer cake recipe.
10.9 oz. cake flour
3 Tbsp corn starch
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
4 Tb powdered buttermilk
4 tsp matcha
1 3/4 cups sugar
10 Tb butter, melted and cooled a bit
1 cup water, lukewarm
3 Tb vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
6 egg yolks (about 3.75 oz)
3 egg whites (about 3.15 oz)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Prepare two nine-inch round cake pans by greasing the bottoms and sides, cutting a round of parchment paper for the bottoms, greasing the paper, and flouring the inside of the pans.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, powdered buttermilk, matcha and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar in a large bowl. Set aside.

Combine butter, water, oil, vanilla, and egg yolks in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Whip the egg whites in a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until foamy. Gradually add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar, then whip until the whites hold a stiff peak. Transfer the whites to a bowl.

Without bothering to clean the mixer bowl, dump in the flour mixture. Running the whisk on low, add the butter mixture gradually, then mix until just combined. Scrape the sides and mix until all the flour is incorporated (10-15 seconds).

With a rubber spatula, fold in 1/3 of the egg whites to lighten the mixture. Then carefully fold in the rest of the whites until there are no more streaks of white.

Split the batter between the two prepared cake pans. Tap the pans against the counter to release air bubbles.

Bake about 25 minutes, rotating the pans half way through. Cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove the cake from the pans and cool on rack completely.

Frosting

I used Cook's Illustrated's creamy vanilla frosting, plus a teaspoon of matcha.


Problems

I think I over-beat the egg whites a bit, which made them difficult to fold in. But it doesn't seem like this had an impact on the texture of the cake.

I might up the amount of matcha. The batter was a lovely green, but it didn't taste much like green tea. After tasting the actual cake, I think I'll add a teaspoon more.

The side/bottom of the cake is a tiny bit crunchy. I think it will soften after sitting frosted a while, though. I baked the cake for a full 25 minutes. Next time, just 23.

I halved the recipe to just make half a cake (cut it in half and stuck one half on top the other). I also halved the frosting, but it wasn't enough. I'm a bit worried about making this frosting, which CI published alongside a cupcake recipe, since it might not cover. Haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about that.

Pound Cake

The last time I can remember having pound cake was the Sara Lee variety and about 15 years ago. I loved it. I have no idea why I have never made it or even bought it since then. I made this one from the Cook's Illustrated recipe, and I don't want to wait for it to cool to taste it. But I'm going to. Hooray for self-restraint!

I'm going to have it tomorrow with Jacques Pepin's recipe for caramelized peaches (which someone has shared with the world here). I've been dreaming of making that since I saw him do it on Fast Food My Way a couple years ago. Again, no excuse for never having made it.

Early American apple grunt

I bought a bag of Haralson apples at the Wedge this morning, and I spent a good half hour searching for apple dessert recipes before deciding to whip up this super easy apple upside-down cake from Beatrice Ojakangas' Great Old-Fashioned American Desserts. I got this cookbook for my mom a long time ago, stole it from her, and have since lost it. Or maybe I gave it back to her. Either way, I'm grateful that this particular recipe isn't hidden in the Google Book. The only change I made to the recipe was to add 1/2 tsp. of vanilla to the batter, so I'm not going to type it out here.

I just ate three pieces. Three. As in, a third of the entire dessert. Now I'm eating a plain apple because I have this theory that apples erase bad eating choices. But the reason I ate three pieces, besides being that I have no self control and am incapable of practicing the kind of moderation I aspire to, is that it's simply delicious. Also, I have a feeling it tastes best warm, so I wanted to take advantage of its just-out-of-the-oven-ness.

Thankfully, my mom, dad, and sister came over and finished it off so I didn't gain ten pounds in one day. They liked it.

German chocolate sheet cake

I've never been a big fan of German chocolate cake. When I was a kid, it was because of the pecans in the topping. Nuts in desserts always made me angry. Now, it's because… I'm not sure. The cake is rather boring, with a dull, generic chocolate flavor. The topping is too sweet. Now, the pecans in the topping are probably my favorite part of the whole cake.

It's not something I would ever choose for myself. But my Auntie Barb requested it for her birthday, and I was happy to oblige. I found a recipe for it on Cook's Illustrated and got to work on Sunday morning.

The cake was fun to make, and the batter tasted amazing. Velvety and tangy. It turned out thicker than it was supposed to because I used Nancy's sour cream, which is almost the consistency of cream cheese. I think this contributed to the long baking time it required. I ended up pulling it out of the oven before the middle was actually done because the sides were over baking.

I still didn't like the cake, but other people seemed to. If I were to attempt it again, I would make these changes:

• Use regular sour cream
• Add maybe half a cup of dark, chopped chocolate or chocolate chips to the batter
• Use hot coffee instead of boiling water (to pour over and melt the chocolate and cocoa)
• Reduce the granulated sugar in the topping from 1 cup to 1/2 cup
• Broil the topping (need to buy a metal 9" x 13" pan, first

I doubt that I will attempt it again any time soon, though. Too many other things I'd rather make.