JeanneCake

I got an email today with information about Rose Levy Beranbaum's blog, called Realbakingwithrose.com; I spent a little time checking it out and it's interesting. It's sponsored by Gold Medal Flour, and has some recipes and links to baking sites (egullet among them). In case you want to check it out: RLB's baking blog

There are a few different styles of apple cake or bread; the Payard recipe was the only one I'd tried that I liked. It was the layers of apple slices that made it moist and delicious - and different from a recipe that called for applesauce or grated apples. Maida Heatter has some in her New Book of Great Desserts - both types in fact. Her applesauce cake is very nice but I didn't think it was anything special; I can find that recipe and post my adaptation of it if you're interested. I still haven't found my Payard book, though. Wendy, what was your neighbor's bread like? Moist, wet, dry, cinnamon-y, could you tell whether it had grated apple or applesauce in it?

I really like the apple cake recipe in Payard's dessert book - in a side bar he tells how his father sold hundreds of them every week. It's made in a loaf pan, with some apple slices layered in it and I remember brushing it with some apricoture just to gild the lily. Do you have the book? If not, I'll hunt mine up and can tell you what my notes were on it. I haven't made it in a few years, but it's really good.

What about adding some to a white chocolate ganache for truffles? Or make a holiday dessert with layers of raspberry mousse alternating with pistachio mousse (you'd probably have to add a drop or two of food coloring to get a green shade). I've tried the Agrimontana pistachio paste and it's so much better than Hero or American Almond, but it's harder to find - I got lucky during a conversation with my choc vendor who happened to have some, as well as some of their apricot jam, which is hands-down the best apricot jam I've ever had. I've been using it for an apricot linzer torte, and it's fantastic.

I use IMBC as the "house" buttercream, and it's balanced so that I can add unsweetened hazelnut paste to it and it's fine. Depending on the client, they may ask for a subtle flavor or a stronger one so the amount I use varies. I like to pair hazelnut buttercream with yellow cake (spread with a barely there layer of apricot jam, although since I'm right now fascinated with a hazelnut and dried cherry tart, I am thinking I will try cherry jam on yellow cake with hazelnut buttercream. Since I build my cakes with two layers of filling, I may do a cherry jam skim coat with a layer of hazelnut and a layer of choc buttercream.) And there's gianduia - hazelnut and chocolate so you could put some praline paste into your choc buttercream and use that in choc or yellow cake....

How do the variations differ? I'm intrigued, because I always thought IMBC was beaten eggs whites (with a little sugar), hot syrup and then butter. I've found that if I am rebeating a cold IMBC, I have to warm it up (usually with a torch on the side of the mixer bowl) but one of my instructors used to take some of the cold BC and microwave it briefly - then pour the practically liquid buttercream into the mixer bowl. If I do this more than once, I lose the airy niceness and get a more "dense" (hard to describe) texture - very buttery and it is harder to handle than when freshly made or not previously chilled. Normally I try to make buttercream at the end of the day and hold it overnight for use the next morning (it stands about 12 hours or so) but when it's busy, I'm making it all during the day and using it as I go rather than waiting.

One of my first dessert cookbooks was the New Book of Great Desserts by Maida Heatter; her voice/style is perfect for a novice, and for the experienced cook, it's chatty and comfortable. Don't I wish she were still writing cookbooks - maybe there's hope. Although not a cookbook in any way shape or form, I really miss Laurie Colwin's essays in Gourmet from years ago. I have the books they were compiled into and find myself wanting for more.

There are recipes in the Cake Bible for strawberry and raspberry puree - which can be made from organic fruit - and if you use a little bit of puree to color the frosting, it would be a pale pink color. Your grandson might not be fond of pink cupcakes for his birthday - but on the fruit puree theory - add some organic baby food fruits (blueberry, plum, etc which are naturally low in sugar so it won't mess up the flavor of the buttercream, but they may make the buttercream softer than usual) and see what happens color-wise.

I also have (in order by the frequency I use it): Meyer's Dark Rum, GM, Bailey's Irish Cream (or Emmett's if that's all I can find), Poire William, amaretto, and kirsch. I also have some framboise, a bottle of Frangelico and after my fruitcake experiment, I have a few bottles of brandy.

I think one of the paper sources - Qualita - will do custom color cupcake liners and I seem to remember you needed to order some ungodly number of them. Check the previous thread on 4" round boards from Pam R. (sorry I don't know how to link to a previous thread!) On a side note, what is it about some places that refuse to share this sort of info? I can absolutely understand not sharing a formula or your secret ingredient, but Perfect Endings refused to say where they got their green cupcake liners, and Scrumptions in Rhode Island told me in no uncertain terms that it took her a long time to find a supplier for her clear acrylic/plastic boxes for the miniature cakes she does (the cakes are gorgeous!) and she would not reveal where she gets them - "it's proprietary" she said. I'm just glad that there's a forum like this with lots of people who are willing to share!

Hmm... I emailed them a few months ago. The problem with this company is that they told me I needed to order a min. of $1000 worth of boards every 1-2 months. That's a hell of a lot of boards. But they do seem to have some of the boards I'm looking for. I emailed a couple of the other companies last night - we'll see about shipping to Canada. ← Most of the other vendors listed sell the Enjay boards so you don't have to buy directly from Enjay Converters (even though they are in Canada!)

I've seen them referred to as "mono" boards; I've bought them at Unger, and at Pfeil and Holing (www.cakedeco.com). I got 4" round boards with no tab from Novacart, though. The others have the tab on them and are available in different shapes (heart, hexagon, square...)

You add the liquor after all the butter has been incorporated, so there's no evaporation. In a large-scale buttercream (calling for 2.5# butter, which would be enough to double fill and frost a 10" round cake), you might use 3-6 oz of alcohol. Granted you're only eating one piece of this cake and not the whole cake... but some don't want any alcohol used at all. And if you don't use the whole batch of buttercream, you could end up stuck with a flavor you didn't want. I don't add it to the buttercream; and I ask people when they place their order if there's any allergies or if they have a preference for using alcohol in the soaking syrup I use in some of my cakes. There's a passion fruit liquor I've seen but I can't remember the name; I also think there's something called Grande Passion out there. This thread reminds me of something I read in the Cake Bible about a pistachio liqueur; has any one ever seen it?

Part of the reason for the kitchen cakes is that they wanted to replicate one of Margaret Braun's designs - with a sculpted edge to the cakes - and they were pretty insistent on fruitcake, which would be nearly impossible to carve in the way that she does. Plus, most of the fruitcakes I've seen aren't quite as tall as the typical layered cake, which would mean not much room for the side design. So, I got the styro cut with the wavy edges (Lenny at The Dummy Place is amazing!!), and the bottom tier is fruitcake but not with the sculpted edges. I like to suggest kitchen cake to brides that are on a budget and have a guest list of 150+. It gives them the option to have a display cake for 100 (or 130) and then plain "kitchen cake" for the remaining guests. A kitchen cake is only seen by the staff in the kitchen so it doesn't need decoration - no fondant - just buttercream swirled on so I'm not spending time smoothing and fussing with the final coat of buttercream the way I do on the display cake. I charge less for the kitchen cake servings - for example, the display cake is $5/person and kitchen cake is $2/person. And when I arrive with kitchen cake for these large weddings, the staff loves it because it means they can have 50, 70 or even 100 servings plated before they begin cutting the wedding cake and that part of service goes a little bit faster for them.

The couple is from the Boston area, but have spent a lot of time in London and they said they had adapted the recipe from a National Trust cookbook - from what I've read, it doesn't seem like a West Indies style fruitcake, but more like a Dundee cake with the proportions of flour/eggs/fruit. The other tihing the directions called for was to wet the top to prevent a hard crust just before you put it in the oven.

their recipe calls for 8 oz dried cherries, 14 oz currants, and 22 oz mixed raisins splashed with brandy (not enough to float the fruit, just enough to wet them) and held overnight. Then 12 oz butter, 12 oz brown sugar; creamed. Then add 6 beaten-to-mix eggs to the creamed butter/sugar, then add the dry ingredients which are: 12 oz a/p flour, 1 tsp baking powder, pinch salt, 1.5 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg. Add 3 oz ground almonds and the zest and juice of a lemon and put it in the oven at 325 for 3.5 hours. I adjusted the recipe to make a 12" round cake and two 10" cakes for their wedding (the 12" is going to be the bottom tier, the top tiers are styro, the other two are kitchen cakes). So I've been brushing a little brandy on them every few days; but I started to go through books (english cookbooks mostly) and found there's two basic categories of fruitcake (steamed pudds are another topic) - the ones with fruit soaked for days and the ones with the fruit soaked overnight. Since I am one of those who has not had fruitcake (good or bad... well wait - there was this awful thing my sister had got from a Harry and David gift basket but that cannot be the same thing as what I've made!!). I don't know what this is supposed to taste like or what the texture is supposed to be like. The wedding is next weekend, should I stop brushing with brandy soon or douse it right before I put on the marzipan and fondant? Thanks for the help!

I've made - for the first time - a fruitcake for an upcoming wedding. I used the client's recipe, which called for splashing the fruit (currents, dried cherries and mixed raisins in this particular recipe) with brandy, let it stand overnight and adding it to the cake batter. I did a little checking into recipes and noticed that some call for marinating the fruit for a long time before baking (3-5 days), and those recipes need to ripen for about a week before eating; others with less marinating time need weeks or months to ripen. So now I'm curious....What is happening during the ripening process? What if you don't wait as long as you should before you cut into the cake - is the cake too dry? too "hot" with alcohol? Too wet and hard to cut? What is it about the longer soak in alcohol that makes some of these recipes ready after a week and others not?

The caterer I share space with recently bought a Sephora fountain... she had used some of my Callebaut callets with it and they're too viscous to use with the fountain (she felt that since the choc from Sephora looked and tasted like the callets, they were the same). The first time she mixed some of the Callebaut with the Sephora choc and it worked fine; the second time she used only the Callebaut and it clogged. So now she's buying the choc from Sephora; the moral of the story is you need a choc that will melt and flow easily. I tried to get her to use some of my Schokinag but she's gun shy now and won't risk it. Sephora is telling her she should only use their "formulated" choc

I did a champagne creme brulee (from Roland Mesnier's Dessert University cookbook) recently and it was wonderful - exactly as he describes it. He mascerates green grapes in champagne first and uses those in the recipe (you pour the custard over the grapes) but I just used the sugared grape garnish. There's a thread on it earlier that references the recipe; I think the recipe might be there. It's a stove top brulee, not a baked one; think pastry cream with champagne added.

There's two different canned pumpkin products available - the plain solid-pack pumpkin and then the pumpkin pie filling, which does have spices added. I never realized it until I bought the pie filling once by mistake.

I think the pepto pink came from the conversation they had with Sylvia Weinstock. I had to chuckle as I watched that part - the team member came across (to me anyway) as being totally blinded by the celebrity of talking to the "best cake maker" in the city. Ahem. There are others and they should have done more research. For crying out loud, go on The Knot and look at all the cakes on there for some background info, inspiration or research! Just because Sylvia Weinstock says pink is an "in" color doesn't make it de riguer to use in your design! I did laugh out loud when I saw the expressions on everyone's face at the "fake it til you make it" comment. And I agree, that in the real world, people would have the option to choose a different color and they should have allowed that.

I make perfect IMBC out of frozen egg whites all the time, so I don't think the freezing is the issue -- are you buying pasturized egg whites in bulk? Maybe pasturization is the culprit? ← Sorry for any confusion, I'm not talking about shell eggs that I've separated (that's what I'm doing) but I'm referring to the commercially available egg whites such as Papetti and all of them are pasteurized. Some of the ones I've bought come frozen, others like sysco's inhouse brand are not; but no matter which brand it is, it doesn't work. It's something about these whites - whether it is the pasteurization process or the additives I don't know. I was hoping that Swiss Meringue would work using this type of commercial whites.

If I use all frozen whites in my IMBC, they collapse when I add the sugar syrup (it doesn't matter which brand - Papetti, sysco, the no name brands that various distributors carry). I found I can get away with using them for some percentage (not more than 30% of the total weight, my usual batch is 30 oz whites, of which not more than 10 oz can be the frozen ones or they collapse). So, I was wondering since Swiss Meringue has the sugar and whites heated first before whipping and no hot syrup added, I could use the frozen whites for that. I've never made Swiss meringue bcrm so this might not work either!

I love using chopped dried cranberries and pecans in my macaroons (the haystack kind); and now I'm thinking I could dab the tops of them with some cranberry jam and drizzle with chocolate scribbles for a different look. I know, nothing to do with rugelach, but for them - yes, I bake mine for 25-30 mins at 375. I like the cream cheese dough from RLB's cookie book and the filling from Maida Heatter's dessert book.

Re cream of tartar... I used to use it all the time to prevent the whites from being overbeaten, but when I forgot once, it didn't make any difference so I stopped using it in the IMBC. Re French vs IMBC (vs Swiss) - I like the egg white meringue for stability and longevity at rm temp (I can keep IMBC at rm temp for 1-2 days - not in the heat of summer, but most of the year it's fine.) A whole egg or yolks only buttercream doesn't have the same storage at rm temp which is why I don't use it. I do go back and forth about whether I should switch from IMBC to a Swiss meringue - I could use frozen whites rather than having to separate shell eggs (and there's only so much yellow cake and curd I can make with the yolks!) I know a lot of people use Swiss meringue, but I don't know whether it can be stored for as long as IMBC or not. Anybody?