Easter!

There's nothing like a 4-day weekend, especially when the weather is as nice as it was. I went to visit my family, and did lots of cooking, as we had 2 dinners on the weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't do so well with the photos--just some snapshots before we demolished everything (literally, for the cake). I got up early on Friday morning to make this coconut cake for my brother's birthday. His birthday was in March, but this cake is worth the wait. The only change I made was to use fresh grated coconut on top and between the layers. I made it last year and after the first bite my brother said 'I'm taking this with me'. This devolved into a 4-way fight for the cake, but we made up and shared it in the end. This year the cake got a bit mangled on the trip, but it was mostly fine. I got a quick picture, and thought I would get more at my brother's house. What I didn't expect was that my nephew would fling it onto the floor! It was in a carrier, but looked a complete mess after that.

Hmm, having some white balance issues, but it was good--really. This is the before shot.

                            

Before Mr. Trouble got a hold of it. He's the best nephew ever, so all is forgiven.

For every family dinner I have to make coleslaw. I prefer making desserts, so I usually make something sweet too, but this is what my family always asks for. I've been making this since I was a teenager working in the kitchen of a local hotel. 

1 head cabbage, shredded (I do this by hand, but you can use a food processor)

3 carrots, grated

1 red onion, finely chopped

Place these in a LARGE bowl, and salt and pepper generously. Pour over a mixture of:

2 cups mayonnaise

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

1 bunch of dill, finely chopped (about a cup)

Mix with your hands. This keeps well, and is best made a day, or at least a few hours, in advance. 

Yup, same white balance issues. Bright yellow walls+skylight make for tricky pictures!

I also wanted to make some rhubarb desserts, but I will have to wait a while longer, as you can see below. No doubt everyone will be eating raspberries by the time my rhubarb is ready, but I consoled myself by making 2 more maple sugar pies. I can wait a long time if I get to eat more sugar pie!

My new favourite pizza?

Yes, Mr Blogspot, I am ignoring the red squiggly line under favourite. That's how it's spelled here, like it or not. Nobody's listening to you anyway, since blogspot has its own squiggly line. Let's talk about my pizza instead.

The photo is terrible, but it was after dark when I made this, and this is the best I could do. What you're looking at is a base of creamy chipotle spinach, topped with sweet potatoes, feta and cilantro. 

Make the pizza dough first, and then the spinach, so it can cool while the dough is rising. If you are using tiles or a pizza stone, preheat oven to 500/550℉ at least 30 minutes before you want to bake the pizza. If you are using a cookie sheet, preheat it for 10 minutes or so.

Basic pizza dough (from Gourmet Today)

2¼ teaspoons active dry yeast

about 1¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for kneading

¾ cup warm water

1½ teaspoons salt

1½ teaspoons olive oil

Stir together the yeast, 1 tablespoon flour and ¼ cup warm water in a measuring cup and let stand until creamy, about 5 minutes. If nothing happens, you need new yeast.

Stir together 1¼ cups flour and the salt in a large bowl. Add the yeast mixture, the remaining water and the olive oil and stir until smooth. Add enough of the remaining flour (about ½ cup) so dough comes away from sides of bowl. The dough may be wetter than other doughs you've made (I didn't find this).

Knead dough on a dry surface with lightly floured hands until smooth, soft, and elastic. This dough was great: very silky, but not sticky at all. Form into a ball, put on a lightly floured surface and generously dust with flour. Cover loosely with plastic wrap (or the large bowl you just dirtied), and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1¼ hours. 

To shape dough, do not punch down dough, but generously flour it and transfer it to a dry work surface. Holding one edge of dough in the air with both hands and letting bottom just touch the surface, quickly and carefully move your hands around edge of dough as though you were turning a steering wheel, allowing weight of dough to stretch round to roughly 10 inches. Okay, that's confusing--just shape it however you usually do! More detail from the book: lay dough on a floured surface and continue to work edges with your fingers, stretching it to a 14-inch round. Lay the dough on a peel dusted with cornmeal. Top with spinach, and then sweet potatoes and crumbled feta, or other cheese, a little or a lot. Bake for 10-12 minutes if using tiles, a few minutes longer on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro. 

Creamy chipotle spinach

about ½ cup whipping cream

1 bunch spinach, washed and trimmed, or an 8-ounce bag

1 chipotle in adobo, chopped

salt to taste

Combine cream and chipotle in a wide, flat pan, over medium-high heat, and reduce cream to about ¼-⅓ cup. Add spinach and salt, and turn, until wilted. Set aside to cool. 

Just before baking, peel and slice your sweet potato very thinly. I steamed mine for a few minutes, but I don't think it was necessary, as I cut them on a mandolin. 

The before picture:

TWD: Coconut tea cake

I was so excited about this cake that I made it more than a week early. Yup, you read that right. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am never early for anything, but it seems like we've been making lots of cookies and tarts at TWD, and cake is my favourite thing to bake and eat. I even went hunting in my mother's basement to find a bundt cake pan. Unfortunately when I was turning the cake out I saw that it was recommended for microwave use. Oops. Guess that's why the outside of the cake was a bit too brown in spots. It didn't melt, but that was probably just luck. I think this pan dates from the 80s, when my parents bought their first microwave--a behemoth Panasonic Genius. My mother still has it, and she can have the pan back too.
:)

I used fresh coconut both inside and on top of the cake. I also added 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom, but the flavour wasn't that strong, so I'd add more next time. Interestingly, in the TWD P&Q forum (that's problems and questions), some found that the optional cardamom overpowered, but I have been taste-tasting the cake for days (it's a good keeper), and I still can't taste it. Instead of rum and vanilla, I added some of my homemade extrait antillais: a mixture of rum, vanilla beans, mace, tonka beans and sapote. It smells like heaven, even though I only made it a couple of weeks ago and it needs longer to get really strong. I tried to get a photo, but it looks like alien parts in a bottle, so just use your imagination. I also glazed the cake with some cream cheese icing that I thinned with the leftover coconut milk and more rum.

I usually don't like bundt cakes much, but this was nice: the coconut added a nice texture, and it was lighter than I expected, and very moist. Again in the P&Q some found this a bit dry, but I think the fresh coconut helped. The cake lasted 4 or 5 days, and kept very well. This week's recipe was selected by Carmen of Carmen Cooks, so she's got the recipe. Thanks for a fantastic pick Carmen!

Daring Bakers' March Challenge: Orange Tian

Tian? What? It certainly sounds fancy, doesn't it? A tian is a layered dish, either sweet or savoury. The required components for this month's challenge were:

• the pastry base (pâte sablée)
• the orange marmalade
• the whipped cream
• the citrus segments
• and a caramel sauce 

I was excited about making marmalade, as I have made all sorts of preserves before, but never marmalade. I got so excited that I made about 3 litres of the stuff, or 14 jars! I used a tablespoon in the tian recipe, so there are leftovers. Want some? I've been eating it instead of ginger honey on my toast, but considering I don't eat much toast, it could last a while. I made it with Seville oranges, and it was delicious, but there was definitely a bitter undertone.  The colour was beautiful, so I may just hang a jar in my window as a suncatcher. Except I don't get much sun in my apartment. This photo was taken at my mother's--she gets lots of sun.

I really spaced out the components of this challenge. About a week after the marmalade I made the caramel and segmented the oranges (navel and blood) and grapefruit as they had to sit overnight in the caramel. The next day I made the pâte sablée and realized I had no whipping cream to make the filling. So, the citrus got an extra day in the caramel. At least some of it did--it was pretty tasty.

The next day it rained and was completely grey outside, so I postponed again. My north-facing apartment gets little enough light as it is, and I couldn't get enough to photograph anything in natural light. Of course I haven't got lights--I'm using a point and shoot camera! So, I just ate a bit more of the fruit and hoped I'd have enough to put the dessert together.

Once I finally remembered to pick up the whipping cream and the weather cleared up it came together really quickly. The recipe called for stabilizing the cream with gelatin, but since I was only making 2 small tians I didn't think this was necessary. I had read in Rose's Heavenly Cakes that dulce de leche could be used to sweeten and stabilize whipped cream, so I did that, as I thought that it would be nice with the caramel sauce, and it was. I already knew that dulce de leche went very nicely with the pastry, as I had made cookies out of the leftover pastry, sandwiched them together with dulce de leche and used them for Tuesdays with Dorie just a day earlier. Recycling is in, people!

These were delicious! The crisp and buttery pâte sablée base with the caramel whipped cream, fresh citrus and more caramel sauce made for a great combination. I used Seville orange juice in the caramel sauce, so it was not very sweet. The marmalade in the cream was a nice surprise too. Well, not really a surprise, since I had just made it, but I was still somewhat surprised to find it there. Not paying attention can have its benefits!

Mandatory blog-checking lines: The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris. 

Thanks Jennifer for a great challenge! Check out the slideshow to see what all the rest of the fabulous Daring Bakers have come up with this month.
:)

Recipes after the jump.

Lemon yogurt cake

Hi! Welcome to my new, or at least, slightly updated look. What do you think? Really? Thanks! Or not...

This cake seems to be everywhere on the blogosphere these days, and with good reason. It's moist and has a strangely addictive texture--spongy yet melt-in-your-mouth tender. I much prefer sponge cake to pound cake, which I often find too dense. I added some lemon zest and topped it with a simple lemon juice and icing sugar glaze, cause I'm taking it to the same lemon-loving kids that got the thumbprint cookies. 

I have a handwritten (imagine!) recipe for this from the late 90s. It was given to me by a food-obsessed student from France. Unfortunately I've lost touch with her, but I still make the cake. Well, except that her recipe calls for measuring the ingredients in the little yogurt pots and I buy my yogurt in giant tubs. So, I just use this recipe from Epicurious, though there are many others. The only changes I make are to beat the eggs and sugar until they are thick and light before adding the rest of the wet ingredients, including the oil. I usually reduce the oil a bit, to ⅓ cup or so, and sometimes use melted butter instead. I do find that it always takes longer than the specified 50-minute baking time, so expect it to take an hour or so, unless it's just my oven. Oh, and I've never used the marmalade glaze. I usually just boil lemon juice and sugar together and pour it over the cake. I just thought the icing sugar glaze was more kid-friendly (and by that I mean sweeter). This cake keeps well, but you'll find yourself cutting a slice every time you pass by it. No worries--it only takes a few minutes to whip up another. Enjoy!