Maple Cheesecake and Charred Pears: No Cracks!

This was my first official homemade cheesecake, and I'm proud to say there were no cracks! Granted, there were definitely some small air bubbles in the batter because I turned the mixer to high for 5 seconds before I remembered that was probably a bad idea...but still! Even if there were cracks to be found, I guess it wouldn't have mattered too much since I covered the whole thing with pears anyways.

Being me, I couldn't aspire to make a ~normal~ cheesecake for my first cheesecake attempt, but no some gorgeous one I found on the internet made with maple syrup and the most beautiful burnt pears delicately laid out on top in a circular pattern. While I don't think I "nailed it," I definitely didn't fail. The pears on top were all supposed to be 1/8th inch thick, but unless you have a mandolin and super skillz, it seems pretty impossible to get evenly thin slices of pears, which is why I have a smattering of burnt and not-so-burnt slices on top. I think that's a sign that I probably shouldn't go into anything surgical in the future.

 Speaking of future and completely not food related, I just wanted to share with the world that I've been accepted into some medical school programs after several months of interviewing (and one more month to go), so there's a lot in my life I'm very happy and thankful for at the moment. It's a great feeling knowing that you'll actually get to pursue what you want to do and that all your hard work paid off and that the faith that wonderful, intelligent randos put into you was worth it. Ok not randos, but you get the gist of that incredibly run-on sentence.

Anyways, back to food. While the cheesecake did taste, as I quote my sister, "pretty good" (which is a huge compliment from her), it didn't actually taste like maple cheesecake? More like a normal cheesecake, which was a bit disappointing. After all, what's the point of putting in some real grade A kirkland signature maple syrup into your batter if you can't actually taste it? The crust was also supposed to be made of digestive biscuits, but since we're in America and shopping at Vons, I only found butter cookies. I think there must have been salt in the cookies to begin with because the crust ended up being a little too salty, and a little short. Maybe double the crust recipe next time since more is probably better than not enough, even if it looks ~rustic~.

Recipe from SippitySup

Marble Bundt Cake: Fancy Shapes Eh

I learned a few things about bundt pans through this little project. One, when they say grease well, they really really mean grease well. Oh, PAM will probably be ok you think? Nope, its gonna have to be like a quarter to half a stick of butter next time. Two, all those nooks and crannies make a beautiful cake, but cleaning that? Why have they not invented disposable bundt pans?



I'm not entirely sure if I'm jesting about all of the above. The little motivated part of me is inclined to bake this cake again sucessfully, but the other part of me that hates dishes is more....meh. I do like that frosting is optional for bundt cakes given its shape. Unfortunately, the beautiful shape is kinda defeated when you fail to grease and flour your pan enough so that when you try to pry it out, only half plops out, and the remaining bits kinda crumble into a misfitting puzzle.

Being the go-getter that I am, it wasn't enough to attempt to make just a single flavored bundt cake apparently. No, I had to make a marbled bundt cake with pretty swirls of vanille and chocolate instead. This of course led to a little adventure in learning about cocoa powder and spending a solid 10 minutes starting at the baking aisle. Given that I'll probably be in CT for only one more year, it seems excessive to buy both dutch processed powder and normal cocoa powder. However, after reading several pages about cocoa power from David Lebovitz and Joy the Baker, it seems clear that many baking blogs that call for "cocoa powder" without really specifying, may actually mean dutch processed in their recipe.

I ended up going with normal cocoa powder, though I get a feeling the semi-insane part of me will end up forcing me to also buy dutch processed just to try it out (unclear why I've decided to describe my personality as separate entities in this post). If anyone is too lazy to read the links I've posted, basically dutch processed powder neutralizes the acidity found in cocoa powder, which can change affect your cake's final texture and rise depending on if you are correctly using baking powder or baking soda. The mnemonic that someone mentioned in a comment was "dutch-processed = baking powder."

Doing all of this googling also came to highlight, yet again, the lack of basic science education in our society. Several Yahoo! Answers questions popped up where frantic people asked if "chocolate processed with alkali" was bad for you or had toxins. And unfortunately, people again fell to the fallacy that processed equals evil big agro/unhealthy and unprocessed equals more "natural" and better for you. And the classic, "if you can't pronounce it, its probably bad for you!" trope. Maybe even worse, or as a result, several of the super fancy cocoa powders I was examining at the grocery store used this as an advertisement point (ie our powder is ~natural~ and 100% unprocessed for full on maximal chocolate without the chemicals!)

Sorry if that bitterness is a turn off. I just had my hair cut by a nice woman who also seemed to believe that people who touch certain parts of their heads or lose hair at specific random spots are somehow activating different parts of their brain for personality traits like motivation or confidence. Just. Whyyyyy.
Well, while my mood is now a bit sour, this cake certainly was not bitter. Despite the problems getting it out the pan, the bundt shape also meant it had a nice crust that I personally enjoyed. The chocolate and vanilla swirling could have probably been more distributed, but that is likely again my fault for not alternating the different batters well. Additionally, I found my baking time was a bit less than what was called for in the recipe. I image that this and a combination of how it took to get the cake out of the pan resulted in the cake's slight dryness. I'm not entirely sure if this a pound cake, but my cake definitely seemed a bit too dry and not buttery enough to truly be ~pound cake~.

Recipe from Sailus Food.
TL;DR:

• Bundt Pans need to be very very well greased
• Dutch processed cocoa = baked goods with baking powder as the main leavener
• Processed dos not equal "bad for you"

American Crepe Cake: Waiting For The Right Partner

The subtitle doesn't actually mean anything. I was trying to think of a relevant Captain America quote. For all the "pure good" and lack of redemption arc in Captain America's personality, I love Captain America. It's probably more of the anachronisms that I love. But you know, Chris Evans isn't exactly hard to look at or anything. And even though he has that whole moral righteousness thing going, he also has that David and Goliath thing too. Though, unlike David, Steve Rogers got super muscles that helped him defeat the bad guys. So maybe not David and Goliath. Sorry.

Anyhoo, I still don't have this blogging thing down, as evident by this one week late post. Though, *technically* I did make this over the 4th of July weekend, so in realtime, it was seasonally appropriate. Just not in blogtime. Though some might frown at the idea of a crepe cake as a patriotic dessert. But I would argue that it is 100% American to take the thin delicate dessert of the French and make it into a big, colorful, mega frosting-filled cake and call it our own. Sounds about right.

As second attempts at crepe cakes goes, this cake was certainly better than my first crepe cake, though we still have quite a long way to go before I reach Lady M's status. Decoration wise, its pretty clear that my american flag proportions were a bit off, and my frosting skills need some work. Perhaps I'll try a frosting transfer next time? I tried out a different crepe batter recipe (linked at end) from Smitten Kitchen who got from a NYT article for this cake compared to my first. This one required a bit more work--needing browned butter and steamed milk, plus time to cool, but I think I do like this one better.

 Unfortunately, I had to give in and buy grocery store frosting (oh the shame for a food blog!). As a recent real-adult without a handmixer, cornstarch, or a strainer, a vanilla pastry creme was not particularly feasible. Especially since I'm supposed to be working on a little thing called medical school applications. But hey, they would totally understand if I submit my applications late. After all, I was making a crepe cake for AMERICA. Regardless, at least it was store-bought cream cheese frosting so the weird aftertaste you tend to find in canned frosting was not as strong.



Crepe recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Flag inspiration from Betty Crocker 1000 other food bloggers who love the food dye.

Crepe Cake: Aka the Leaning Tower of Crepes

Baking is often associated with love. Fresh baked cookies for your elementary school bake sale. The fruitcake your dear aunt bakes every Christmas that everyone says is lovely but secretly leaves to decay. Ok, so the latter example is probably a stereotype taken from far too many American sitcoms. In this case, this biscoff cream cheese crepe cake is more of a labor of love rather than baked with love (or er, assembled with love). Though the French would probably gaze down unsympathetically at my pleading and begging for my crepe cake to not turn Italian. Well, as Italian as the Leaning Tower of Pisa at least.

Its hard not to be immediately enamored by the sight of a crepe cake. After all, it consists of delicate, thin crepes stacked till they become something stronger and greater together. Kinda like the Avengers, but in cake form. The entire cake took two days to make, one evening of crepe making, another afternoon of crepe stacking. To be honest, my crepes probably weren't the paper thin, lacy delicacies that people like the Domestic Goddess aka Nigella Lawson think of when you say crepes. However if you wanted a semi-decent crepe that is still thin enough to be not-a-pancake, then call me up! The most difficult part of the crepe making process was getting the pan tilting and whirling just right so you got an evenly thick crepe without random pockets of nothing. I don't think I've got it down quite yet, but my imperfections just give me more excuses to make crepes right?

I call my cake the leaning tower of crepes not because of the occasionally mismatched crepe sizes, but because of the next component--the glue to the cake. The filling in the ultra-traditional crepe cake is pastry creme, but judging by the sheer number of hits on foodgawker and google, people have taken great liberties with this filling. Heck, Sprinkle Bakes even covered the whole cake with a healthy layer of ganache to make quite possibly the most beautiful cake in the history of the internet. I've been dying to make something with remaining part of the jar of biscoff/speculoos I towed back with me from Belgium, so when I saw a biscoff crepe cake, my heart was set. But I'm not about that buttercream life so I opted for cream cheese biscoff frosting.

Alas, my 3 month hiatus from baking led to one small problem--the notoriously slippery nature of cream cheese frosting. As I stacked the cake with layers of frosting in between each crepe (28 total!), the frosting began to melt quite a bit. Towards the 20th layer, things started sliding around quite a bit. The cake made several trips to the freezer to firm up. Overall, it was a very stressful labor of love. But one I would totally repeat in a heartbeat should the occasion for a crepe cake ever arise again. Except, maybe not with cream cheese.



Another thing I forgot was the speculoos is already intensely sweet, so to make a cream cheese frosting with speculoos thickened with cups of powdered sugar equals a very very sweet filling. But sweetness seems to relative from my experience with a very picky mother (shockingly, she liked the cake a lot despite its sweetness). And anyways, just look at those layers. stare long and hard at them. How could you resist baking such a beautiful creation?
(also, whipping cream melts rapidly in a warm kitchen when you're trying to take pictures of a cake while adjusting the camera settings)

TL;DR Baking Notes:

• Crepes can be stored in a ziplock bag with parchment paper in between crepes in the fridge for a few days in the fridge, or even longer frozen.
• A firm, non-melty frosting is probably ideal if you're gonna make a crepe cake that doesn't tilt everywhere.
• Biscoff frostings are really sweet.

Crepe recipe and presentation inspiration from Olga's Flavor Factory. Biscoff cream cheese frosting from Center Cut Cook.

Tres Leches Cake: Shoutout to Yale Dining

If you happen to be an ~alumni~ colleague reading this, then you're probably mildly tired of all the post-commencement photo dumps and sentimental posts. Well, at least I am. Commencement is certainly an exciting time, but after a week of senior activities PLUS 3 days worth of ceremonies and events, it gets pretty exhausting.

For my first post in post-college life, I decided to keep up with the sentimental spirit floating around social media and make tres leches, a Yale dining classic. We students do love to complain about college dining, but every once in a while, there's a few things they get right. One of which includes tres leches, a sponge cake soaked in a mixture of three milks--condensed milk, sweetened evaporated milk, and heavy cream. Now, pan or tray desserts, like brownie fudge or cobbler, in the dining hall creep me out for some reason. Something about it being produced in such a large pan quantity I think. Unfortunately, tres leches was one of these desserts, so it wasn't until junior year that I tried this deliciously moist, creamy, and milky cake. It seemed only fitting to tie off the end of my college career by attempting to recreate something I associate with friendly conversations and meals.

Unfortunately, my baking skills are still not quite up to par. Its a bit embarrassing to think that the dining hall, with its huge bulk quantity cooking and baking, can make something of a superior quality than I can in my tiny kitchen with all the time in the world. While my brother, mother, and father all seemed to enjoy the cake to a certain degree, my sister who has eaten dining hall tres leches could only laugh at my meager attempts. Rather than a ridiculously squishy, gooey, bread-pudding like texture dessert, my tres leches was much drier and dense. Granted, I get the feeling that my sponge cake was not right given its lack of rise. Which was possibly because of over beaten egg whites, too much flour, or too much folding--all of which I have had issues with in the past. I was hoping that the sweet milk mixture would soak the cake enough that these wouldn't be issues, but I tried taste testing the cake after only half a day of soaking rather than overnight as most recipes seem to suggest. The lesson here is that you really should plan your baking more in advance if you're trying to make a 9am EST deadline for a blog post the next day. 

The recipe I used was from All Recipes, but I found that there were a few things that were off. While instructions called to bake for 40-50 minutes, it only took 20-30 mins to finish baking mine. Other weird things I mentioned earlier. I used about a pint of heavy cream to make the whipping cream topping, but that was definitely way too much if you only wanted to cover the cake.

While the dining halls version of tres leches didn't have whipped cream topping or fruit on top like many of the recipes I found online, one can never go wrong with some extra homemade whipped cream and raspberries right? I'm hoping that if I try the cake tomorrow morning, the cake will have had more time to soak so that it'll be more moist. Regardless, I think that tres leches will have to eventually become a perfected recipe in my "repertoire" for any future days of college nostalgia.

Carrot Cake Cheesecake: Adios 2013

I've come to the conclusion that I am very very very very bad at making cakes. Maybe its my lack of experience, sheer clumsiness when it comes to mixing till "just combined," or the fact that decorating cakes is just really hard, but I've yet to make a cake I've been completely satisfied about or proud to share with ~everyone~. Lucky for this cake, I need a blog post, and firmly believe in documenting even the bad things.

As the last cake, or really food item, I made in 2013, it's also the first post I make for 2014. New Years is a time we start a lot of things. New exercise regimes (not leaving the room except for food), new dietary regimes (making up for a childhood absent of Cheetos), new sleep regimes (setting alarms for 7am only to wake up at 10am). Yea. Lots of those things. 

And its also a time we stop a lot of things. Old habits (staying in the same room for the entire day), old addictions (Cheetos deprived childhoods), Old relationships (having your bed as your significant other). Yea. All those things.

This cake as the bridge between 2013 and 2014 might symbolically represent those two concepts. New blog posts as I try to keep this whole weekly post thing going as I try to figure out how to live without school. Old baking skillz such as subpar cakes that no one wants to actually eat.
But, sadly, the old habits tend to carry along into the New Year's anyways. Which tends to undermine those new things. Which is ok. Because there will always be bad things, but that doesn't mean the good things don't matter. Sometimes they'll just cancel each other out, or won't make any difference, but they're still there. Take this cake (its a food blog, I have to talk about my cake). Even though this cake was awkwardly not that great, it was still fun to mess around with a fancy camera and take photos of cake using lots of weird focuses.

And, just because this cake failed doesn't mean I won't keep making cakes. After all, maybe I'll make a blog worthy cake when I least expect to. And then work my way backwards to figure out how I pulled off such a magical feat to create more! So, here's to a new year that'll probably be much like the last one! Or better!
Carrot Cake Cheesecake recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe, with the singular modification of adding walnuts because my mother likes walnuts. Even though she didn't eat any of it.