Banana Malt Cake with Milk Chocolate Icing

I had this bag of malt powder for a little while, I kept shoving it further and further back in the cupboard, ignoring it, afraid of it, unsure what to do.

The deal is, with malt, that you replace about 1/3 of the weight of the flour in your recipe, for the same amount of malt. Strangely, the flavour of the banana, and the flavour of the malt resemble eachother a lot, resulting in a cake that tastes like malty banana, or banana-ey malt.

Beehive

My brother's favourite cake...the Nid d'Abeille. It should actually be a giant beignet, filled with cpastry cream, with honey and toasted sliced almonds on top, but my Mom wouldn't let me deep fry it, so I baked it instead. Happy Birthday, bro!

Right Side Up: Ginger Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

I absolutely love this recipe I found in the Chez Panisse Fruit Cookbook for Ginger Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. During my trip to the Honduras, I noticed that bakeries only have 2 or 3 items, and this cake was almost always one of them. I though I would give it a try. The cake batter and the caramel top both contain chunks of candied ginger, goes really well with the pineapple. I also soaked the cake with a dark rum syrup (which I bought for $4 on a shifty island down there) before flipping it right side up.

I wish I had some coconut pastry cream.

I love this more than love..

Babycakes.
I have slowly been making and adapting every recipe in MY FAVOURITE baking book.
This is their blueberry crumb cake, but i used some baked apples instead of blueberries.
The whole thing is vegan, sugar free (agave sweetened) and gluten free.
Delicious in a different way than butter, sugar and eggs but eating cake and feeling great is something I love more than love, or just as equally.

Not my Mom's Carrot Cake

Adapted from "Indulge" The French Laundry cookbook.

Wholemeal Pastry Flour 250 g
Baking Powder 25 g
Cinnamon 1 1/2 tsp
Nutmeg 1 tsp
Shredded Coconut (unsweetened) 125 g
Salt 1 tsp

Sift and combine above with a whisk.

Eggs 5
Sugar 250 g
Veg Oil 185 ml

Beat above until thick with beaters or stand mixer with whisk attachment.

Grated Carrot 350 gr
Grated Apple 150 gr

Fold Dry ingredients into egg mixture
Fold in carrots and apples
Don't over mix, be gentle!

Fill a sprayed and parchment lined 10 inch spring form pan.
Bake at 325F (but every oven is different) for about 40 mins or until firm to the touch and not like a wet sponge.

Make your own little marzipan carrots using food color and flavoring the marzipan with orange blossom water and rosewater if you feel like it.Frost the cake with a cream cheese icing. I used some buttercream that was sleeping in the freezer, but it didn't really work well with carrot cake.

Choose Your Own Adventure Gianduia Happy Birthday Dan Cake

Remember those books (OMG!?!) where you choose your own adventure?
Here I am providing some (choose your own) instructions on how to make this delicious chocolate hazelnut cake. You can basically choose to do it right... right away, or you can take the loooooong way, which is what is pictured here. Should you choose the correct way, I suggest making super-sure that you don't follow our instructions. If you do decide to follow our exact instructions, then that's fine, the cake will turn out amazing anyways. You will need a few extra minutes, and a little bit more dishsoap, that's all!

For the Chocolate Chiffon Cake
(1 sheetpan or 2 x 10" springforms)

2/3 Cup Vegetable Oil
8 Egg Yolks
1 Cup Water
1 Tbsp Vanilla
wisk above to combine




11 oz Cake Flour
5 oz Sugar
4 Tsp Baking powder
1 Tsp Salt
3 oz Dark Cocoa Powder
sift dry ingredients into another bowl and mix with wisk add dry to wet, and mix for 1 minute or until well combined. You can either choose to correctly incorporate the cocoa at this point, or you can use our special technique pictured below which involved the advanced process of adding the cocoa last* For more on this technique, click here.

8 Egg Whites
9 oz Sugar
Using a stand mixer, make a stiff meringue. Fold into the flour mixture with a spatula. Don't overmix! Spread the batter in a parchment paper lined sheetpan. Bake at 350F for about 14 minutes. Cool completely.

Gianduia Mousse
285 g Gianduia Chocolate (chocolate with hazelnut paste)
475 ml Whipping Cream
2 Egg Yolks

Melt the Chocolate over a double Boiler. If you choose to get inspired, think about adding Frangelico liqueur to the chocolate. Think TWICE.



If you have annyway, the chocolate mysteriously seizes into a hard ball. If you decide to heat up some cream and add it to melt the chocolate again and fix your problem, click here. If you decide to eat a couple of spoonfuls of it, click here.

If needed, start again. While the chocolate is melting, whip the cream in a stand mixer. Add the yolks and whip well. Fold the cream into the melted and slightly cooled chocolate. Set aside in the fridge.

Candied Hazeltnuts
A bunch of non toasted Hazelnuts with some shells still on
Some Maple Syrup

Coat the hazelnuts with Syrup. Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet at 375F about 15 mins or until solid. Once cool, cut into small pieces.
Assembling the Cake
Prepare an 8 inch springform pan with a cakeboard at the bottom, and acetate paper on the side. Cute 3 x 8 inch rounds from your sheetpan.
Prepare a simple Syrup with equal amounts of sugar and water, and shot of frangelico liqueur. Bring to the boil and b oil for at least 3 minutes. Let it cool slightly.Place the first layer of cake in the pan. Soak with Syrup.
Place a layer of the Gianduia mousse evenly with a palette knife. If you decide to have a piece of cake, with filling, to try it out and make sure its ok, click here.

Sprinkle with candied hazelnuts. Repeat the layers again, so in total you have 3 layers of cake, and 2 layers of filling in the cake. Leave it to set in the freezer for 1 hour.

Make a Chocolate Ganache

Ganache

250 ml of whipping cream
2 Tbspp Butter, 1 Tbsp Glucose if you have some.
250 gr Dark Chocolate

Bring the cream, butter and glucose to a boil. Pour over the chocolate off the heat. Allow to stand for a minute, then mix until smooth with a spatula. Pass through a fine sieve. Its important to do this to get a perfect smooth finish.Transfer half to another bown and leave to cool. You will need half of the ganache to be pourable, but cool, and the other half to be cool and spreadable like nutella at room temperature.

Cover the cake with the nutella like ganache, getting it as even as possible.

Set in the fridge until hard.

Put the cake on a wire rack, over a tray to catch the falling ganache. Using a ladle, pour the other half of the ganache evenly over the cake, starting by adding large amounts to the center. Keep pouring until it falls over the sides, then go over the sides until perfectly coated. Puncture any bubbles with a toothpick.

Remove the cake from wire rack, and place on a cakeboard. Voila!!! almost finished. Set in the fridge for a few minutes.

Now for the fun part, use any decor of your type, make it appropriately festive for the one you love. We chose to do some nice designs of 50 beer, and filigree. happy berfday Dan!

happy birthday, brother

Every child in my family gets a carrot cake made by my mom for their birthday. My mom buys these little adorable marzipan carrots everytime she goes to Switzerland. This time I made an orange royal icing to put over the cake. The cake itself contains lots of carrots, almonds and all the other types of cake ingredients. My mother has yet to pass on the recipe to me for this one. I do however have another great carrot cake recipe is anyone wants it.

Before the cake, that is a pistachio-plum linzer torte that I made for my brother. He has asked for a chocolate cake, but he got that instead!

tarte tatin

The whole apple method with serious apple shrinkage

















Again with the tarte tatin. This time I got good colour in the apples, and I liked the overall look with the exceptions of the apples being a tiny bit overcooked so the design was a little ruined. The main problem is the bitter caramel taste in the apples. the next day at work i made the same mistake when I tried to make tatin apples to top a cheesecake.

Here is the trick for cooking the apples without that bitter taste:
Peel, core and cut the apples into eights. Melt a good amount of butter in a skillet and toss the apples in once its nice and hot. Once the juices start melting, add some sugar, then cook while tossing the apples around so nothing burns. Then add more buttter, and more sugar and keep cooking keeping a close eye on it and making sure nothing burns. Remove from the heat. At that point there should be that nice deep brown caramel colour and taste. If the apples are still not cooked enough, thats ok since you are making tarte tatin. Since i was making a tatin cheesecake though, I put the apples on a tray in the oven for about 30 more minutes until they were perfect consitency to cut through with a fork.



















I think last year I had tried to make the tatin with apple halves. The taste was good but the look not there. The apples really shrink a lot, as I had been warned, but really they actually shrunk more than I imagined.