alanamoana

Thanks everyone for their patience with my lameness So, the challenge was to: "...take FRUITCAKE out of the land of misfits! Take it apart, turn it around, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, but remove the stigma and show us the beauty that lies within..." Let's see what I did: I used two different kinds of fruitcake. Both of which aren't necessarily fruitcake...but they are cake with fruit in them! Here's a picture of the two different cakes - The cake on the left is a pretty dense, not too sweet pound cake type cake. There's buttermilk in it, eggs, sugar, butter and flour. The original recipe might have been better than what I ended up with, but my husband likes it so it must be decent. I got the base recipe from a co-worker who got it from a local (San Francisco) cooking school called Tante Marie. It is supposed to be a Brandied Cherry Chocolate Fruitcake. My version is a bit different (more due to using what I had on hand than anything else). I used a bunch of dried fruit and toasted nuts (see earlier post with photo of Trader Joe's expedition) as well as some 61% E. Guittard pistoles. The dried fruit, I plumped up in hot water and after draining, covered with brandy and a touch of vanilla extract. The cake on the right is a basic gingerbread that I studded with the same boozy fruit with the addition of tons of candied ginger to compensate for the fact that I didn't have any dried ground ginger .

I realized only now that it is Saturday night at 9:33 without anything much prepared for the dessert that my procrastination is getting the best of me in my dotage. I'll have something for you tomorrow evening at the latest...however, I completely forgot to tag another challengee...duh!!! Seeing as how the coming week is Thanksgiving, I hope my fellow eGulleteers won't mind if we take a one week break and I tag the next person to start their challenge on Monday, the 27th of November to present their dessert on Sunday, the 3rd of December. If anyone has objections, please let me know. See you all tomorrow with fruitcake!

I scoured that website yesterday and managed to miss it. I went back just now knowing that it was there and managed to locate it. I think what we used was a circle at 25mm and an oval at 30mm. The closest they have is 29mm circular and 39mm oval, but that is probably close enough. I'm pretty sure they all were 1mm thick. ← i think they can custom make them to your specifications. may cost a bit more. but, a millimeter here or there isn't too big a deal. you're just piping ganache on them and dipping anyway!

David J. What a great post. Thanks for the detail. I'm so jealous. I was on the wait list for that class...obviously, I didn't get in. The rubber stencils are called "chablon" molds as well. They carry them at chefrubber.com and are about $35+/- each. I haven't even read the whole post, but will go back and finish it now.

now that i re-read your post, it is possible that the organic cane sugar you used is the culprit. although it doesn't sound like it should be. just because it is organic, doesn't mean that it isn't refined. but maybe it isn't as refined as regular cane sugar. if there's any trace of fat(?) that could have caused your meringue to deflate.

were the almonds ground or chopped? often, when making nut meringues, the fat that is present in the nuts causes the meringue to deflate. you might be better off tossing the nuts in the flour and folding that mixture into the meringue rather than doing two additions of ingredients thus overmixing/deflating the meringue.

i must be rare hybrid!

improper oven temp can also be a problem. most people don't have oven thermometers. i always err on the side of a hotter oven. what you want is the heat to quickly melt the fat between the layers while creating steam to separate the layers and at the same time causing the proteins in the dough to gelatinize so that it doesn't sink into itself.

that's a great tip. it's too bad that they don't have more specific weights for dimes and quarters, i.e. dimes 2.25 and quarters 5.5 or 5.75...darn the US and our random weighing technique!

Kerry, thanks for the lollipop update. I have a question regarding when to add flavoring and color: Do you think it would be appropriate/possible to add the few drops of flavoring/color to the syrup right at the end of boiling, before shocking the pan so that the boiling action can stir for you, thus lessening the possibility of crystallization?

probably a good idea patrick, but it would have to be a list in one post that can be edited by a moderator or manager that can be kept pinned as a reference. that way, you wouldn't have to search through a whole thread of people debating the weight of a cup of flour in order to find one measurement. there will still be debate though. there are a lot of charts available in books (as the initial poster pointed out) and they don't necessarily agree either. edited to add: utility vs. futility

i kind of wish i had heard that earlier filipe! i think about it now and port or sherry or banyuls would be wonderful to soak the fruit with. i tend to forget about how good port is, i just don't drink it enough. are there any ports that you know are exported that aren't too expensive that i should try (for drinking, not for fruitcake)?

i am a notorious (not here on eGullet, but everywhere else in my life) procrastinator...let's just say i turned the final paper in for a class in college about an hour or so before i walked in the graduation ceremony! i was pretty confident i was still graduating i think i'm a bit of an anomaly. if anyone is interested in the mind of a cook... i don't tend to do a ton of experimenting. mostly because i am lazy but also because i get an idea in my head and work it out about a million times inside before i do anything in the kitchen. this doesn't always work well for me, but often it does. i did start working with some of my fruit yesterday. it does smell good. i took a ton of nice dried fruit, soaked it a bit in water i had brought up to a boil to plump it up and then poured about a gallon of brandy over it all with a splash of vanilla extract and a few slices of dried oranges as well. i'm working on some other components today but will probably get the bulk of it done tomorrow as that will be my first real day off in a bit. fruitcake land is a-ok

if i have a recipe that use volume measurements and i've made the recipe a hundred times and know that it works the way i measure it, then i go ahead and mise everything out and then weigh the results. i do this two or three times. i take an average. i use those weight measurments, not somebody else's. a friend of mine recently went to a "baker's dozen" meeting, it is a group of people (don't know if you have to be a professional to be in the group...i think it is mostly networking, but there are a lot of professional bakers and pastry chefs involved). they had an assignment to make a pound cake recipe. everyone had to make it. they got as many different results as there were people at the meeting. i don't know if the recipe was in volume or weight, but regardless it just shows that everyone does things differently.

that's what i thought. consider that average price for standard hotel pans (which are probably not interchangeable with the mol d'art pans) is about $20 and often cheaper. they get you coming and going!

i would say that the multiple rise and overnight retarding in the fridge is mostly for flavor development. i don't necessarily think it is as important with a focaccia, especially if you're topping with a flavorful herb and oil blend. more important if you're leaving it plain and just sprinkling with a nice salt. as you figured out, nut oils have different (often lower) smoke points which don't always work well at the high temps needed to bake bread. if you're looking for that particular flavor, like if you want to put walnuts on your focaccia and walnut oil would complement that, then save it for the end...a drizzle right after the focaccia comes out of the oven. salt...flavor as well as yeast "tempering" often, if you're making a bread based on a sponge or starter of some sort, there won't be salt added to the pre-dough. there is also autolysis, a method where the initial ingredients like flour and water are mixed and allowed to hydrate or rest before the rest of the ingredients (salt, etc.) are added. but salt is definitely necessary in bread for flavor (although there are examples of saltless breads). so i'd some salt to your recipe. yeast can be treated like other ingredients in halving or multiplying recipes.

Can you elaborate on your setup? One of the things I liked about the melter was its wide opening which allows you to tip a mold over and let it drain back in without making a mess. The other was the large capacity which would allow for filling several molds at one time. Right now I am limited to a single tray at a time due to the small capacity of my Rev2, and I would like to be able to fill a dozen or more at a time. ← if you're doing a dozen or more molds at a time, then it would probably be best to get a melter/holding tank setup. if you get a pretty large stainless bowl, you can keep a large amount of chocolate in temper without too much trouble as the larger mass will hold the heat better than a small mass. you nest the bowl inside another bowl, the heating pad sandwiched in between. i often use a hairdryer to melt down overcrystallization (which jpw does using a heat gun and the mol d'art melters). since i love having toys, i'd love a mol d'art...that'll be my next "investment", but in the meantime, as i'm not doing a dozen or more (i don't think i even have a dozen molds), my setup works fine.

please take a look at the "what we ate for dessert thread" recently (within the past two or three days) PatrickS made a chocolate tart with a mousse piped in a spiral on top. that was also dusted with cocoa. very simple, clean and elegant. there's photo. you can do this with whipped cream or even the chai filling you're using or something that contrasts in color but pairs with the chai well. you can make chocolate shavings you can make chocolate fans or curls and pile them on top you can make a stencil and dust the top with cocoa to make a nice design on top

traditionally yes. you should soak them in alchohol, wrap them in cheesecloth, pack them in powdered sugar and periodically resoak, etc. i'm sure this had to do more with lack of refrigeration and high cost of specialty ingredients (dried fruit, etc.)... it is still not a bad way to eat fruitcake, but you don't necessarily have to do that anymore. as people have stated, fruit rich cakes of all sort are considered fruitcake nowadays. the batter serving more to bind all of the ingredients together. but it can be a matter of taste whether you have a lighter batter with less fruit or a more traditional dense fruitcake with almost no batter at all. and as described above, there are a lot of things which sort of naturally fall into the category of fruitcake that really aren't, but they have candied fruit in them: pannettone, stollen, etc. edited for grammar

looooove me some trader joes. unfortunately, the apricots are not candied. they do have a product (which was sold out when i went) which is called "slab apricot" and it is sort of like concentrated dried apricots in a brick form. supposedly has a great flavor, better than pureee. i don't think it is sulphured either. we'll see how much of this actually ends up in the fruitcake!

i'm sad that el farolito right next to the bart station doesn't get any props. it is a bit seedy, but definitely flavorful. i introduced my husband to their al pastor super burrito on our first wedding anniversary (two weekends ago) and he's a convert...not that he had anything to convert from...new york is notoriously bad for good mexican food (not that a burrito is very mexican per se...but we could go on and on). i'll have to try out some of the other taquerias you've mentioned, but we live in silicon valley so don't get up to the city often enough. great blog so far. love the friend you made at lunch the other day.

if it is just for a hobby, why is everyone so shy about just using a microwave and a heating pad and some bowls? i made tempered chocolate candies for a friend's wedding (1600 pieces) using exactly that method with no real problems. any problems i did have were not with the method of tempering or holding but with my ambient temperature and limitations with counter space in my kitchen. i talk to pros all the time who don't use tempering machines. the holding/melting bins like mol d'art makes are nice to have but definitely a luxury item. my low tech set up (the microwave is built into my apartment) cost me about $20...that way, i can spend money on chocolate and other inexpensive toys. but anyway, i'm sure you can get extra pans. don't know about the compatibility of regular hotel pans, but they probably don't use those so that they can charge more money for replacement parts that are unique to their product.

why, you need one for each kind of chocolate you're tempering! they're a bit expensive. may be off topic, but i'm wondering if you can get good used melters...

so, i went a bit crazy on the dry ingredients. i'm not too interested in already candied fruit. i think i'm going to poach this dried fruit in some kind of liquor...also, i don't really believe in adding raw nuts to baked goods. i will toast all of them first. much better flavor.

from wikipedia (so take it with a slice of fruitcake), Hard sauce is a cold dessert sauce made by creaming or beating butter and sugar with rum, brandy, whiskey, vanilla or other flavoring. It is typically served with plum pudding, bread pudding, Indian pudding, hasty pudding, and other heavy puddings as well as with fruitcakes and gingerbread. Though it is called a sauce, it is not liquid or smooth. they aren't the only source that have this definition. makes sense to me! i always thought hard sauce was because it was mainly hard liquor!! at any rate, K8, you've done it again...i'm definitely trying to work in an egg-noggy component to this dessert. holiday cheer and all that, what? what?