Posts tagged as:

cake

Gianduja Roulade

March 25, 2011

Gianduja Roulade

That’s just fancy talk for rich hazelnut chocolate ganache rolled into a hazelnut sheet cake rich with chocolate and more hazelnuts.

As you’ve probably noticed, there is a lot of chocolate being eaten in the Purple Foodie household. And this time, with a bag of fresh hazelnuts at hand, I had to put together one of the world’s greatest food pairings: chocolate + hazelnut.

I made the hazelnut ganache from scratch – which means I toasted the hazelnuts, ground it to a paste, and then mixed it with dark chocolate and cream. If the cake didn’t bake in 8 minutes, I’m pretty sure I’d have licked the bowl of ganache clean.

If you’re not particularly inclined on making the ganache from scratch, you could make the ganache with Nutella. Will work just as well.

Gianduja Roulade Recipe

Adapted from: Pure Dessert (USA | UK | India)
Equipment: A 12×16 inch or 11×17 inch baking sheets with rimmed edges, or two 9×9 inch baking pans, or jelly roll pans.

Gianduja Ganache

Ingredients

4 oz / 100g hazelnuts, toasted
4 oz / 100g dark chocolate
4 oz / 100g icing sugar
8 oz / 200g light cream (I use 25% fat)

Cooking Directions

Toast the hazelnuts in at 175°C/350°F, until they are fragrant and light brown. Let them cool a little before transferring it to a mixer for grind to a paste starting with half the sugar, and then adding the rest of the sugar until it's a homogenous paste. Transfer this paste to a bowl and then add the chocolate. In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil and pour it over the chocolate-hazelnut mixture. Stir till all the chocolate has melted and then refrigerate until ready to do.

Hazelnut Cake

Cook Time: 8 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

1.5 oz / 50g hazelnuts, toasted
2 tbsp flour
6 oz/ 180g dark chocolate
4 oz/ 100g butter
4 eggs, seperated
2/3rd cup / 130g caster sugar
cocoa powder, for dusting

Cooking Directions

Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F.
Pulse the nuts with the flour in a food processor until finely ground. Set aside.
In a large bowl, melt the chocolate and butter over a pot of simmering water. Once melted, remove from heat and then stir in the egg yolks and half the sugar (1/3rd cup).
In another bowl whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then slowly add the remaining sugar, and beat until stiff peaks form.
Fold in about a 1/4th of the whites into the egg mixture. Then scrape all of the egg mixture into the bowl, sprinkle with the flour and hazelnut mixture and fold it in.
Spread the batter evenly into prepared pans. I preferred making mine into smaller roulades, so I divided the batter into two 9 inch square pans.
Bake for 8-10 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.Now, finally when the cake has cooled, invert it on a sheet of foil and then spread it with the gianduja paste. Start rolling it with the help of the foil. There will be cracks, but it gets less severe as it thickens to one cake.
Refrigerate for a while before slicing, to have neat slices. Dust with cocoa powder to serve.

{ 10 comments }

Raspberry Yoghurt Teacake

October 12, 2010

Raspberry Yoghurt Cake

I miss blogging. I miss blogging a lot. It’s not that I’m not baking. It’s just that I’m not baking anything new. I’ve been on my feet for hours at a stretch; I can hardly feel them anymore. I’m not complaining – rather, I’m enjoying every bit of it. Nothing beats working for myself, nothing can ever be a bigger motivator. And what I’m especially thrilled about is that my tart crust just keeps getting better and better! The last batch was so good, I didn’t care to fill it up. Just ate it like that. I know a little Nutella in it would be dreamy. It’s not that I’ve hit upon a “no-fail” recipe for the tart dough. It’s about paying attention to the technique and the little things that need to be taken care of while making the tart dough. And more importantly, it’ about practice.

While Mondays are my new Sunday (well, almost), I finally got some time to sit and read a book and bake something new for myself. I’m not a big fan of snacking on raspberries (my first raspberry experience), but I love them in baked goodies. Today I made myself a raspberry yoghurt cake. I especially love yoghurt cakes. They are my comfort food. They are always more moist than regular cakes, and keep longer too. And I adore how the raspberry red bleeds into the cake, making it look so spectacular.

As for the recipe – I keep going back to the Ottolenghi Cookbook, so it’s no surprises here that the recipe I used is from there. I used a buttered and floured muffin tray for these mini teacakes. When had warm, you will love the crust that has crisped up with all the butter (always be generous with butter). My mom enjoyed it so much; she claimed an entire loaf of it.

On a side note, I’ve been featured in Bombay Times as well as Tehelka this past week.

Raspberry Yoghurt Cake

Raspberry Yoghurt Teacake

Makes 9-12 mini tea cakes.
Adapted from: The Ottolenghi Cookbook (US | UK | India)

130g flour
½ tsp baking powder
1/4^th tsp baking soda
100g butter
80g Sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
75g yoghurt (or you could use sour cream)
100g raspberries, fresh or frozen

Preheat the oven to 175C/350F. Butter and flour a kugelhopf tin, mini bundt pan or a muffin tray.
In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
In another bowl, mix together the butter and sugar, until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to mix until evenly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract.
Add the flour mixture and yoghurt alternately until it looks like a homogenous mixture.
Stir in half the berries. Add the cake batter into the prepared pan and press the remaining berries into the dough.
Bake for 15 minutes for mini cakes in muffin mould or longer, depending on the size of the mould used.
Eat warm.

{ 18 comments }

Blueberry Almond Cake

August 30, 2010

Blueberries

Last week I got a message from my friend D. that read “They have blueberries at the supermarket!!!” I sprung out of my seat and bolted. For some, it might seem like a literary exaggeration, but that’s exactly what I did. All the tasks on my Google calendar can wait because I really didn’t want to miss out on getting my hands on fresh blueberries this time.

As I approached the shelf that stocked the blueberries, I couldn’t stop smiling when I caught the innumerable boxes of blueberries in sight. One guy caught my gaze and grabbed a box too, assuming by the look on my face that it might be some sort of manna (since blueberries are unheard of here). As I picked up a few boxes myself, I thought of the endless possibilities that might be the fate of these blueberries. Muffins, a peach blueberry pie, a grand cake, or a smoothie perhaps? While I waited my turn in the line to check-out, I started snacking on some of the berries (yeah, I know, shame on me for eating them without washing). And soon after, I ate them with vanilla yoghurt – the best way to eat fresh berries. The best!

After having berries right from the box till my mouth turned blue, I finally decided to bake a blueberry almond cake with it. I’ve had this cast iron pan cake on my mind for a very long time. It’s a simple cake, with a gorgeous golden crust. It has a top that gets wonderfully chewy when baked and has a nice toasty bite that the sliced almonds bring to it. With blueberries at hand, this was the perfect excuse to bake the cake speckled blue with juices bubbling from the side of the pan.

I’m so thrilled that we get blueberries here! That makes it one less thing on my letter to God for my baking wish-list.

So when are you visiting us, dear raspberries?

Blueberries

Blueberry Almond Cake

Yield: One 9 inch cake OR one 6 inch cake + a tiny loaf cake

Adapted from: Baking From My Home to Yours (UK | India)

Note: I find the sugar to be a bit much for my taste, so I’d reduce it little next time, about 20-30 grams. Otherwise, a fantastic cake that makes it to my go-to repertoire. The original recipe states that you need to mix in the melted butter right in the end, but I started baking in auto-pilot and realised only after I had creamed the butter and sugar together. If you try the original method, then please report back!

Ingredients:

1 stick / 112g butter, melted
1 cup / 200g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup / 130g all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4^th cup sliced almonds
½ / 100g blueberries

Equipment:

Cast iron skillet or Small loaf pan

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
Butter a cast iron pan or a 9 inch cake pan generously – this helps attain the covered golden crust.
Beat the butter and sugar together for 2 minutes or until light and fluffy.
Add one egg at a time, until you find that the mixture looks homogenous and the eggs are thoroughly incorporated.
Add the vanilla extract.
Sift together the flour and baking powder and fold it into the egg mixture. Stir in the blueberries.
Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, scatter the sliced almonds, and bake for 25-30 minutes (even lesser when using a small pan), until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Serve warm.

{ 60 comments }

Honey Lavender Madeleines

April 19, 2010

I am extremely frugal when it comes to using my last 10 grams of lavender; I even packed it up and put it away in the freezer to save until the time I was certain that my next batch is on its way. Just recently I found a huge stash of very fragrant lavender when I was rearranging my cabinet. It sat somewhere at the back, tucked away, with a bunch of other things I didn’t remember I had like Hungarian paprika (suggestions to use this?), pearl sugar and some very adorable cupcake decorations.

I’m one happy, happy girl to have so much lavender at hand. As soon as I asked for things to do with it on Facebook, I got some really interesting suggestions like lavender ice cream, lavender vanilla cake, lavender granita, lavender iced tea, macarons and lavender lemon shortbread (which I hope to try out over the next few weeks1). But what I really had on my mind were honey lavender madeleines. Especially because I’ve had the mould for a few months now, and I’ve been itching to use it!

For the madeleines, I started off with a honey madeleine recipe from Paris Sweets. Instead of the lemon zest, I used the lavender. And I didn’t just throw the lavender in the batter but came up with a pretty ingenious way to infuse all the lavender goodness into the batter: I first rubbed the lavender in my hands for it to get all nice and fragrant and then I put it in the pan with the butter that needs to be melted. This way the butter absorbs all the flavours beautifully and with the heat, the lavender releases more flavour! To sound more exotic, this recipe could actually be called honey madeleines with lavender infused butter.

I used a tin pan for large madeleines, but the smaller ones look adorable too. While buttering and flouring the tin might be an additional step, just please stay away from the silicone moulds - they make the madelines look so artificial with the shiny surface and uneven browning. The dark non-stick variety might solve the problem, but you will have darker madeleines.

How did they turn out? Little bites of goodness! My hands are still fragrant with the lavender I rubbed, and my fingers still buttery (and now the keyboard) with the half dozen madeleines I just snacked on. Will I be making them again? Yes, tomorrow!

Honey Lavender Madeleines

Yield: 12 large madeleines or 36 small ones.

Adapted from: Paris Sweets

3/4th cup / 105g flour

½ tsp double action baking powder

5 tbsp / 70g butter

1 tsp lavender, rubbed to release flavour

2 eggs

1/3rd cup / 65g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp honey

Sift together the flour and baking powder. Set aside.
In a saucepan, melt the butter with the lavender. Let it cool.
In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale and think, about 2-4 minutes.
Add in the vanilla extract.
With a silicone spatula, fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter and honey.
Mix until just combined.
Transfer to a disposable piping bag and clip the end. Let this rest in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. (you can keep it upto two days – the longer the better – this gives the madeleine it’s characteristic hump.)
Butter and flour a madeleine pan, covering every millimeter of it, else the madeleine won’t come off easily.
Pipe the batter into the madeleine pan until almost full.
Bake in a preheated oven at 200C / 400F for 10-11 minutes or until your finger springs back when you touch the centre of the madeleine. The baking time for smaller madeleines will be shorter by 3-4 minutes.
Remove from the oven and eat the madeleines! If you’re going to be storing it for later, then transfer to an airtight container as soon as they’ve cooled.

{ 42 comments }

The Big News + Chocolate Hazelnut Marbled Cake

December 21, 2009

Before I get to the delicious cake, I want to tell you about the big news I was holding on to a while ago.

If you’re following me on Twitter or Facebook, you might have heard me gushing about finally signing ‘the contract’.No, it’s not some corporate contract boohockey or a typical 9-5 job. This contract is my entry into the world I’ve only dreamed about until now. It’s a world full of butter, sugar and flour – a world I know I’m going to be happy in. Starting January 2010 I will work for a lovely, first-of-its-kind, startup French pâtisserie here in Bombay. Here, I’ll work with two absolutely amazing chefs from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. When I first baked with them, the day went by quickly and I lost complete track of time – that’s when I knew that this is my kind of place. The two of them are so professional and so much fun at the same time. I’m going to love it here!

I’m sure as hell going to miss orangefoodie and my friends at my current workplace, but I know this is one step closer to where I want to be. 5 years ago, when I learned about Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and got my hands on their brochures, I knew I had to study there – I just had to. Back then, my parents didn’t take my passion so seriously and thought my interests were as fleeting as summer, and cooking/baking for a living sounded absolutely ludicrous to them. Luckily, they are so much more supportive of the career switch now more than ever. I am so thrilled about this – my dream of baking for a living is finally becoming a reality.

Here’s a wonderfully moist chocolate hazelnut marbled cake that I made yesterday. I used Dorie Greenspan’s mocha walnut bundt cake recipe as a framework to create this cake. I substituted hazelnuts for walnuts and cocoa for espresso. While recipes usually call for milk at room temperature, I’ve noticed that using warm or hot milk is important for producing really soft cakes that makes all the difference. Don’t be scared, the hot milk won’t cook the eggs. My mom wolfed down most of the cake and asked for more to take for my grandmom.

Chocolate Hazelnut Marbled Cake
Adapted from: Baking From My Home to Yours -Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 1 large bundt cake

2 ½ /310g cups flour

½ / 100g cup ground hazelnuts

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

9oz. / 250g. butter

3oz./ 85g. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped

1 tsp cocoa powder

1 1/4^th cup hot milk

1 3/4^{th /350g} cup sugar

4 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350F/160C. Butter a 10 inch bundt pan or a loaf pan and dust the inside with flour. Tap out the excess flour.
Whisk together the flour, ground hazelnuts, baking powder and salt.
In a heatproof bowl set over simmering water, melt 2 tbsp butter with cocoa and chocolate. Heat until the chocolate and butter have melted and the mixture is smooth. Set aside.
In a bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar for about 3-4 minutes – this will look like a thick paste.
Beat the eggs in one at a time, until the mixture looks smooth. Add the vanilla extract.
Now either on a reduced speed, or by folding in by hand, add the flour and hot milk alternately, starting and finishing off with flour (so, flour-milk-flour-milk-flour)
Now take a little less than half the flour and mix it with the chocolate mixture that you set aside earlier. Stir till it is thoroughly blended – don’t overdo it.
What I did was add the white mixture then the chocolate mixture and then the white mixture again into the bundt pan and then run a knife through it once or twice for very visibly distinct two layers. For a pronounced marbled look, stir the knife through the batter a few more times.
Bake for 55-65 minutes or until the knife comes out clean. Let it cool for 10 minutes or so before unmoulding.
Slice and eat! It’s lovely with some mascarpone dusted with caster sugar or some chocolate sauce.

{ 43 comments }

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