abooja

Wow, thanks!! That is really very sweet of you (pun intended). I will have to try that next time as I went ahead and already made the cake. I definitely should have waited. Although it photographs fairly well, it doesn't taste as it should and is not something I look forward to eating again. The cake itself was the one successful element. I went with the dobos torte sponge cake recipe from the California Le Cordon Bleu. It was light and spongy, not chewy at all. It also contained some lemon zest, which I loved. And powdered sugar, which I believe accounts for the lighter texture. My only misstep here -- and this was a biggie -- was to schmear the batter on the bottoms of two half sheet baking pans, despite the recipe itself not specifying that. This tip, which I read in several dobos torte recipes, is supposed to help even out the schmear, and this did, in fact, work. It also dripped down and off all four sides of the pan, creating burnt blotches of elliptical pancake at the bottom of my oven, and a cake no thicker than a fortune cookie. I toyed with the idea of creating little Yodels with this cake, going so far as to cut out the little rectangles, but wound up not making enough filling for this project. Fortunately, after a brief freeze, I was able to pry the second half of the batter off the back of its pan, clean off the shortening, and reapply it inside the pan. This technique, brilliant in its simplicity, worked perfectly well. A few toothpick pricks took care of any developing bubbles in the oven. I was quite pleased. Onto the cream filling. After much hemming and hawing, I went with my fallback plan and made a light whipped ganache. Everything was going along swimmingly, until I overwhipped it. I've only whipped this stuff a couple of times prior, years ago, and forgot how quickly it sets up. I stopped just shy of it breaking, but it turned out somewhat grainy. It applied easily enough, however, so I forged ahead. For the glaze, I used pastrymama's kindly donated ratio of one pound of chocolate to seven ounces of butter. Unfortunately, I used the same Scharffen Berger semisweet that I used in the ganache, and it wasn't quite right. I also applied too thick a coat. I stupidly thought a bitterweet chocolate would have been wrong as I've been using it a lot lately and figured, somehow, I wouldn't have appreciated that flavor as a child, and it wound up being too mild. It's just not the right chocolate. I have no idea what most bakeries use to glaze their cakes, but I seriously doubt it is Scharffen Berger. Unfortunately, it's the only brand I can easily obtain. Once the cold weather kicks in, and I've used up a bit more of the chocolate locker in my deep freeze, I'll mail order something with a more suitable flavor profile. Recommendations are very much welcome. So, my overall impression of Seven-Layer Cake III is just 'eh'. On a scale of 1 to 10, it hovers around 4. My husband (Jewish man from the Bronx) agreed. I was simultaneously hurt and pleased when he did. The cake is finally right, but everything else is wrong. It did look kind of cute, though. Edited to add: It's actually eight layers instead of seven. That's probably what jinxed it from the beginning.

The more research I do, the less decisive I become. I ran across a dobos torte recipe from the California School of Culinary Arts – Le Cordon Bleu Program that suggests it is the original by Joszef Dobos, the creator of the dobos torte. It's similar to oli's recipe from the aforementioned thread, but includes lemon zest and omits the cream. The proportion of egg yolks to egg whites is 1:1. I think I might go this route. However, I don't think I'll use their French buttercream recipe. Perhaps this is original, but it seems that an egg yolk-based buttercream would be way too rich for this cake. Again, I am stumped, because one would think a meringue buttercream would be called for instead, but am gunshy to go that route again, despising my last attempt. I believe I made it correctly, as it certainly looked good and had the right consistency but, once again, it wasn't what I remembered in this cake. Hell, it might just be easier to buy a Ouija board and drum up the spirits of some old Stern's bakers than go through all this. My mother claims she was friendly with one of the bakers for a short while (not friendly enough, apparently ), but has no idea how to get in touch with him now.

It turns out, I did run across that recipe while researching this cake. Since it contains more eggs yolks than whites, I'm concerned that it will be even chewier than the versions I eschew (har har). I am, however, intrigued by her use of lemon juice in the batter. I recall many of the white cakes at Stern's having a very faint lemon taste to them. That element, plus the lightness of their cakes, is partly what endeared them to me. John, I checked out the famous Gambino's doberge cake and, while it looks delicious, I can tell it's not the same texture as the seven-layer cakes of my childhood. They look more like the best kind of gooey, fudgy yellow cake. It's so cool how they offer 50/50 cakes of both chocolate and lemon. I found a bunch of people online who seem to plotz over them.

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to try to dig up that recipe. I've been doing a lot of research on kosher baking. In fact, I just finished reading Pam R's epic Pesach thread from '05. I think I have finally figured out the whole pareve vs dairy thing. I assume the cakes I enjoyed as a child were kosher, just not pareve, and certainly not KFP. (They were always closed for the holidays.) Hmmm...In this instance, I'd certainly prefer a buttercream made with real butter. I've been toying with the idea of using Cook's Illustrated recipe from their Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake. It contains a pound of semisweet chocolate, half a pound of butter, and a good amount of heavy cream, among other things, so it's almost like a buttercream-ganache, if such a thing exists. It whips up to a pale brown shade, just like I remember, but definitely gets stiff once refrigerated. Someone also commented that it gets a bit grainy when cold. I don't suppose that's typical for a buttercream.

Thanks to you both! Nyleve, I read your bio and immediately felt a kinship with you, except for the part about having kids, moving to Canada, and being employed as a food writer. I'm thrilled that a NYC native has shown up to shed some more light on this subject. I'm sure you're right about the layers I previously baked being in the right ballpark, but I would still like to lighten them up somehow. The recipe I plan on using calls for 10 separated eggs. Perhaps I can change that to something like, 7 egg yolks and 11 egg whites? I can always use the extra yolks for ice cream. Also, given that both Stern's and Leon's were kosher bakeries, I suppose they didn't use butter in their buttercream, as you suggest. How might one go about making a buttercream without butter and not have it taste like Wilton buttercream? I mean, I like that stuff on a butter cake, but the texture was nothing like what I remember. Do kosher bakeries use shortening or, somehow, oil in their buttercreams? We asked the lady behind the counter at Weiss' kosher bakery in Philadelphia to ask the bakers in Brooklyn, and they said they baked with vegetable oil. I have no idea if they meant in the cake or the cream or both. Sheesh. Pastrymama, that sounds about right. I've made a version of that in the past, but coupled with a crap cake, it was unmemorable. I also found a recipe for hard chocolate glaze on bakingcircle.com that involved boiling cocoa, water, salt and granulated sugar, mixing in vanilla extract, then pouring it while warm onto your cake. Of course, that won't work with a cake coated with buttercream, but it sounded intriguing. The author, who filched it from an old King Arthur Flour recipe, said it produced a stiff, crackly type glaze.

Again, I can't be certain, but I don't believe it was a pastry cream. It was definitely not pudding-like. If memory serves me right, these cakes were sold unrefrigerated, in a display case at the counter, as was the cake I bought the other day in Philly. My mother would typically refrigerate it, however, and serve it at room temperature. She remembers buying it refrigerated, but I recall seeing the cakes at eye level as a child, in a display case, along with the Charlotte Russe, a round, thin slice of white cake topped with a huge pile of whipped cream and chocolate shavings in a paper cup. Then again, something like that should have been refrigerated. I suppose this might have been a refrigerated display case and that I just ate it once it was brought to room temperature. The filling was definitely not hard, just the chocolate coating. Sorry to be so confusing, but it's been more than 25 years since I visited this bakery.

Thanks for replying, Stephanie. A seven-layer cake is basically an adaptation of a dobos torte, without the caramel topping, that was/is very popular in kosher bakeries in the New York area for many years. The problem with describing it properly is that I guess I'm not quite sure what its texture should really be like, only what I prefer. The bad seven-layers I've had were made with a dense, eggy cake that it was difficult to run a fork through without tearing the thing apart. The cake I preferred was a light, white cake, likely made with more egg whites than yolks. The cream in between the layers was a pale, mildly chocolate cream, but I'm not at all sure whether it was buttercream or whipped ganache. It was a German bakery, if that means anything. The chocolate coating was as I described above. That help at all?

I'm wondering if someone can help me. I'm looking to recreate a seven-layer cake that my mother used to purchase from Stern's, a now-defunct (German) kosher bakery in Brooklyn. It’s been many years since I’ve enjoyed this cake, so my memory is a bit fuzzy as to the details. The next best thing I’ve had in recent years was the seven-layer cake from Leon’s Pastry Shop on Knapp Street, which itself closed not too long ago. That cake, while quite tasty, did not have the hard shell on the top and sides, but what I believed to be chocolate ganache. I recently tried the seven-layer cake at Weiss Bakery in Philadelphia, which was actually delivered that morning from one of its sister bakeries in Brooklyn, of all places, but it was inferior to both these cakes. The layers were too dense, the top too chewy/fudgy, and it tasted of mocha. The cake I remember did not taste of mocha, and was light and airy throughout. This, I remember distinctly, as I would have detested that flavor as a little girl. For my next attempt, I am going to use the dobos torte cake recipe from the eG thread of the same name and a whipped chocolate ganache, but can't decide on a recipe for the chocolate coating. As I recall, it was a hard shell of dark chocolate, but it could easily be cut through with a fork. Which recipe do you think is most like this description -- the Michael Laiskonis glaçage, the "Glaze of all Glazes" from aguynamedrobert, the glaze that shaloop came up with (both from the Pastry Ganache - Fillings and Glazes thread), or something entirely different? This will be my third shot at recreating this cake, and I don't want to fail as miserably as I did the first two times. I'm inclined to not even go the usual dobos torte route by baking a light, white cake and cutting it into seven layers, rather than several egg-intensive thin layers (they always come out too eggy-chewy for me, almost like a moist fortune cookie), but was sold by the positive reviews of oli's recipe, and the fact that, with the addition of cream, it was different enough from the recipes I used for my past attempts. Unless someone suggests otherwise, I'm also using a light whipped ganache, made with Scharffen Berger semisweet, for the filling (Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe from The Cake Bible), as I disliked the choice of Italian meringue buttercream that I made last time. The whole thing was chewy and overly sweet. I believe I may have also topped it with my attempt at the aforementioned “glaze of all glazes”, but don’t remember how well that worked out as I hated the rest of the cake so much. If all goes well, baking will commence tomorrow. I got sick and couldn’t go to Los Angeles with my husband a couple of days ago, so this is my consolation prize. And his. He would forever worship me if I could manage to finally pull this off. Thanks for any help you can provide.

I just googled "balut" and now feel quite nauseated. The photos are horrific.

Perhaps we should start a support group.

I must be the only person on earth who liked the plastic wrap slide cutter. I was quite peeved when Reynolds discontinued that feature months ago and went back to the wrist-mangling serrated cutter of yesteryear. I do like the more streamlined box that can easily fit in a drawer -- in my case, a narrow shelf between the pantry wall and the refrigerator. But for weeks and weeks, I kept looking for plastic wrap with the new slide cutter mechanism, for naught. It appears more than one of you called in to complain about it. Since then, I've learned to make peace with the old design. It's a bit faster, I suppose, but I'm accident prone and preferred not having so many sharp edges around. I just hate when you get accustomed to a product only to have it yanked from the shelves without warning. I need to get out more.

Hmmm, thanks. I suspected that, but was going with instructions from this recipe.

I tried making Drunken Noodles for the first time ever last night using a package of dried 1/4" rice noodles. It tasted pretty good, but the noodles themselves, which had soaked for 15 minutes then were briefly boiled, fell apart once mixed with the rest of the ingredients. Is there any way to avoid this happening with dried rice noodles? Or is there a foolproof recipe out there for homemade rice noodles that might be a bit sturdier than the dried variety? I searched, but there's very little information out there. I did find a reference to a recipe in Chinese Snacks by Huang Su-Huei that involves 3 cups non-glutinous rice flour, 3/4 cup cornstarch and 6 cups water, but nothing beyond that. 6 cups of water also seems ridiculously excessive. I would make this in my Kitchen Aid and use the pasta cutters if I could, but hear this may not be possible. Am I fooling myself?

I never watched the show, but was intrigued by the question enough to do a bit of research. The only food references I could find were to a plate of food that Krystle once dumped on Alexis and the whole restaurant aspect of "La Mirage". Perhaps some French cuisine that might have been served in Denver in the 80s? Sorry, I'm grasping at straws here. I hope you come up with something and have a lot of fun.

Thank you. I may just give that Alice Medrich recipe a try.

I've read that about egg yolks and chocolate. Obscured chocolate flavor wasn't the problem, however. David Lebovitz's recipe tasted very strongly of chocolate. I did like the addition of cocoa. Perhaps I'll retry it with fewer egg yolks and a bit more milk. Looking back at the CI recipe, it completely omits salt, which is a big mistake. I know I added some anyway, but likely not enough. I have a bunch of eggs, cream and milk laying around the fridge right now that I should do a side-by-side comparison of the altered DL recipe and Pierre Herme's. But I only have the one cheapo Cuisinart ice cream maker, at the moment. This should take a while.

I considered it, but am glad I didn't this first time around because I would have worried too much about the temperature spiking or surging while I was asleep. Unless, of course, you mean that I should try staying awake all night while it smokes?

I forgot to post about this earlier, but I smoked my first butt of the season -- my first butt in many years, actually -- on July 4th weekend. My, my, what I have been missing!! A bit of background: I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Astoria for six years before moving to New Jersey 2-1/2 years ago. That apartment had no access to a courtyard, no balcony, nor even a fire escape on which to attempt barbecue of any kind. All meat was cooked in the oven or on a cast iron grill pan. It sucked, bigtime. In Hackensack, we lived in a high rise that only allowed George Foreman-esque electric grills on the balcony, which I had utterly no use for. We bought a huge Char-Broil offset smoker before realizing this, but quickly got shut down by the fire department after an inspection. Apparently, my research into the Bergen County Fire Code wasn't extensive enough to include the part where you pay off the inspector. We couldn't even sneak our Smokey Joe out there for a quick burger because our neighbor, Smokey the Bear, reported us the one time we tried. Fast forward to this year when we moved to our new townhouse, also a rental, in Central New Jersey. The official policy is no barbecues, but the accepted custom is to break this policy and no one actually cares. In this spirit, we purchased a large, stainless steel gas grill from Sam's Club and a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. Fortunately, the big one didn't get delivered until after this year's fire inspection, while the WSM just hid in the garage. I started using it sometime in early May, for spareribs, and have been in ecstasy ever since. This thing puts that crappy K-mart purchased smoker I used to use upstate (Pine Plains) to shame. For my first smoked butt of the season -- of the millennium, actually -- I purchased a 7-1/2 pound bone-in pork shoulder from Wegman's. I bought it over a month prior because I thought my eyes were deceiving me and that I'd never see one again. You couldn't find a butt in either Hackensack or Astoria to save your life. I vacuum-sealed it and thought about it every day since. I seasoned it with a generic rub mixture (coarse salt, black pepper, smoked paprika, etc.) that I made for the ribs and slapped it on the WSM at 7:45 a.m. Using the Minion Method, I burned two chimney's worth of mostly Kingsford charcoal with a bit of lump thrown in (because I ran out of Kingsford), a few fist-sized chunks of hickory and some apple wood chips from the local orchard that I wrapped in foil and poked holes through to prevent them burning up too quickly. Even though it was raining on and off all day, I had no problem maintaining a mostly 225-250 degree temperature for the 13+ hours it smoked. It took way longer than I thought it would, though. At 9 p.m., when we couldn't take it anymore, we pulled it, even though its internal temperature had only reached 188 at that point. Close enough. Unfortunately, we were too starved to take additional photos of the finished product, which was served on homemade buns (Moomie's, modified with some potato flour) with Steven Raichlen's Carolina Vinegar BBQ Sauce with added sliced onions (per bilrus), creamy coleslaw, and twice-fried potatoes. After a half hour tented rest, the bone came right out and the pork pulled quite easily. It could have cooked even more as there was the slightest bit of sticky fat left inside, but that was easily scraped away. The meat was tender and extremely flavorful, with a nice rind. I read after the fact that you get more crust with the fat cap removed, so I actually did this with the butt already on the smoker. Not the easiest thing in the world, but I'm glad I did. I just rubbed in some more spice where the fat had been removed. The finished product was plenty moist. Here are two crappy photos, one of my WSM setup and one of my butt at the nine-hour mark. Thanks for reading.

I made a second batch of gianduja stracciatella with chopped hazelnuts and, you know what? It wasn't as good as the first batch. Way too chewy, like eating a candy bar, and I added less than a cup. I also overcooked the custard a bit. While it didn't curdle, it was way too thick, so much so that I added a bit of cold cream to the cooled mixture before churning. Still, it was too dense and not very cold, like the first batch. Think I'll stick to the original recipe, and replace my instant read thermometer. It fell into a pot of cooking fresh mint custard and never fully recovered.

I, too, am looking for a great chocolate ice cream recipe. I've read here and elsewhere that Pierre Herme's recipe is great, but I'd like something that is custard-based, more along the lines of a Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream. I found Cook's Illustrated's recipe lacking, and David Lebovitz's recipe far too rich, even after adding more cream and milk. I couldn't eat more than a largish scoop before feeling ill. I could eat a half-pint of HD (a full pint, back in the day) and feel refreshed and satisfied, not nauseated. Is the perfect recipe out there? How about the perfect chocolate? Which brand would most closely match the chocolate used by HD? I've tried several, all very decent chocolates, but none came close. If I ever find this perfect recipe, I would like to add chocolate coated almonds to it in an effort to replicate the now-defunct HD's chocolate swiss almond. I'd also make a version with candied sour cherries to approximate the chocolate cherry ice cream of DH's youth. So far, it ain't happening.

I baked four 3.5 ounce balls of this cookie dough at the 38-hour mark this morning, for breakfast. I had forgotten to sprinkle salt on them before baking, but did so afterwards. Boy, were these good! DH, who had previously chosen Alton Brown's "The Chewy" as his favorite in a head-to-head contest over Cook's Illustrated's chewy version, declared this his new favorite. He's generally a fussy eater, but even liked the salt on top. (I used Maldon both inside and out.) I guess I've lectured him enough times on the merits of salt that he buys into it now. Good boy. BTW, I actually could not finish two of these cookies, and that's without eating anything else so far today. I may reduce the amount of chocolate (Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet) the next time I make these because they were a bit too rich, even for me. Then again, I could try not making a pig of myself and eat just one. I still want to try the Alice Medrich recipe. Next time.

Thanks for the feedback, and the tips. I would have been inclined to weigh and ball them anyway. It's nice to know this would have been a good decision.

Well, what did you think of the finished product? I've got a batch in the fridge right now for Sunday afternoon baking. I've yet to read any actual reviews of the recipe.

I just visited the Grey Lodge for the first time ever this afternoon. Had a cheese steak, fries and a coke, not a microbrew. Pretty good, though the sandwich was extremely light on steak, maybe five very thin slices approximately 3" x 2" each. Lots of white cheese sauce and a big roll. I guess they call them hoagies in Philly? Where I'm from, we call them heros. Anyway, we were pretty pleased, even without the beer. It's bad enough we were eating cheese steaks and fries after DH's visit to the cardiologist. Too bad Weiss's kosher bakery wasn't open. Very disappointing.

Intriguing. I will have to look for these. I used to buy those Ziploc vegetable bags before they were discontinued and they worked marginally better than the paper towel method, but these sound like a much better solution.