Bits ‘n Bites

This month’s Daring Bakers Challenge, hosted by Morven (Food Art and Random Thoughts), was the “Perfect Party Cake”, taken from  Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking from my Home to Yours. This recipe called for plenty of lemons for the cake part, and enough butter all around to make Paula Dean proud. My mouth was watering just reading the instructions.

On a quiet Friday morning, I printed the recipe and jumped right in. My KitchenAid made the whole process pretty painless. Like pretty much every DB recipe, this one seemed more daunting than the actual process turned out to be. My cakes came out moist and light, despite not rising much (a step involving whisking the egg whites and the buttermilk had been left out inadvertedly in the instructions) and the buttercream was just divine. Give me a recipe I can just beat the living daylights out of, any day. The preserve used between the layers was left to us. I decided to make the Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar, found on the Food Network site. Turned out lovely and balanced well with the lemon flavour of the cake. Big success all around. Bonus: 8 egg yolks to make ice cream (chocolate and vanilla).

Can’t wait to see the April challenge!

From the folks who brought the Chocomap, free valentine e-cards, designed to let that person you really care, without the calories.

Check it out at: Send an e-card bonbon

Came across an interesting article from NPR today on the discovery of the 5th taste profile. Looks like we can thank one of cooking’s demi-gods for its discovery. Auguste Escoffier first experienced this taste when he developed veal stock. This stock would ultimately redefine sauces as they knew them in the late 1800s and now. The basic four tastes were: sweet, salty, bitter and sour, as defined centuries earlier by the Greek philosopher, Democritus. When Escoffier tasted his first veal stock, he realized he had stumbled onto something new. It was not until the 19th century, when taste buds were “discovered”, analysed and classified by the scientific community, did the science of taste become established. However, because Escoffier’s new flavor profile did not fall into one of the four categories…

“…as far as the scientists were concerned, it wasn’t real. People may smack their lips, drool, savor and pay enormous amounts of money to M. Escoffier, but what they were tasting wasn’t really there. It was all in their heads.”

Meanwhile, in Japan, a chemist named Kikunae Ikeda, arrived at the similar taste profile while drinking/eating daichi, a classic Japanese soup made from seaweed. Being a chemist, he was able to decompose it to its essential component, namely glutamic acid. However, he decided to give it a sexier name, “umami”, which means “yummy” or “delicious” in Japanese. When glutamate breaks down during the cooking process, L-glutamate is the end result. And this is what became the fifth taste. In 2002, some 100 years later, the scientific community recognized the work done by Ikeda and officially established and named that fifth taste (which is neither sweet, salty, sour or bitter), umami.

I would have loved to see Escoffier’s and Ikeda’s face when they first realized they had stumbled onto such a world-altering discovery…

My first challenge as a Daring Baker was a take-off on my favorite cake and donut: Boston Cream Pie. I was a little surprised, I confess, at how complex the recipe first read. I had never done a chiffon cake before, and although I had made custard in the past, I had never done it with nine egg yolks!

Nonetheless, on a day off from work, I got everything ready and followed the directions. The orange chiffon cake came out really nice. Boy, that stuff is easy to eat…it’s so light. The custard didn’t turn out as well, though. I may have undercooked it, or the “heavy whipping cream”, the recipe called for, was not heavy enough. Still, all was not lost. It turned into a very nice, and slightly citrusy, ice cream.

I really enjoyed this challenge and can’t wait to see what’s in store for November.

For some history on Daring Bakers, please click over to Andrea’s article on this wonderful community. Andrea’s own blog can be found at Andrea’s Recipes.

This challenge called for a recipe with sugar. What better representative for this than my home province’s famed Tarte au sucre. I dug into my oldest cook book (publ. 1955) for this one. Jehane Benoît was Québec’s Julia Child of the mid-1900 to mid 1980’s. She was the dean of Québec cuisine. I inherited this book from my mom and have been carting around since the 80’s. I had never actually done any recipes from it until now. To keep the whole challenge as retro as possible, I also did Mme Benoît’s dough recipe for the crust. This will be a keeper as it turned out to be quite flaky and quick to do. Who knew?!… Here is the translation of both recipes, in the same format as they appear in the book:

Hot Water Pie Dough
1 – Put in a bowl 1/2 cup of fat or vegetable shortening. Add 1/4 cup of boiling water. Beat until creamy
2 – Sift together 1-1/2 cup of pastry flour, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 – Add liquid ingredients to sifted ingredients. Mix until all form a soft ball. Cover and store in refrigerator 1 hour. Use for any type of dough.
4 – For a richer dough, beat 1 egg with the water and shortening.

Sugar Pie
1 – Cover an 8-inch pie plate with dough. Spread with 1/2 inch of brown sugar or maple sugar. Wet with 3 tablespoons of cream or milk; dot with a few small dices of butter.
2 – Cover, to taste, with a few strips of dough and bake in a 400F oven for 35 to 40 minutes.

The results (picture below) were quite good, despite my fear that it would taste way too sweet. I have another quick recipe I usually use when making this dessert. It’s more on the caramel-creamy side, compared to this one. It’s one of my stand-bys when invited to dinner, and goes really well “à la mode”.

Quick Sugar Pie
(Recipe: courtesy of Mme Paquin, Trois-Rivières)
1 cup of brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon flour

Mix ingredients in bowl. Throw in a frozen pie crust and bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream. It tastes even better cold, the day after.