steamed kabocha cake (kabocha no mushigashi)

This is a recipe that I've modified from Hiroko Shimbo's The Japanese Kitchen. The recipe is very flexible — I've used different flours, different squash (or sweet potato), and I've added fresh cranberries or currants in lieu of raisins (or left both out). It is always a hit, and is my most-requested dessert.

Ingredients:

• 6 oz. roasted kabocha (I prefer roasted to steamed, and I've doubled the quantity)
• 5 cloves, ground
• ½ tsp. grond ginger
• 2½ tbsp. cake flour (used here, but I've use whole wheat pastry or all-purpose flour as well)
• ⅓ c. rice flour (I've use mochiko in the past, Shimbo calls for joshinko, and here I used an all-purpose stone-ground variety)
• 4 eggs, separated (or 3 if you have extra large ones)
• 5 tbsp. sugar
• pinch of salt
• ⅓-½ c. each zante currants and walnuts tossed in a tablespoon of rice flour

Prepare a pot to steam: if you have a springform that fits in a bamboo steamer, that's great. But springforms are often too tall. In that case, I have a rack on the bottom of a stockpot that will fit an 8- or 9-inch springform pan with water going up to the rack. Line the springform with parchment.

Blend the kabocha, spices, and egg yolks (the spices are optional, but seem appropriate for Thanksgiving) in a medium bowl.

Beat the whites to soft peaks with the salt, adding the sugar a tablespoon at a time as you reach the soft peaks. Fold the whites, a third at a time, into the kabocha mixture. Sift the two flours together and then into this mixture, being careful not to deflate. Do the same with currants and walnuts.

Steam for 25-40 minutes (about 25 in a pot, longer if in a bamboo steamer), until a toothpick comes out clean.

boozy sour cherry and chocolate mousse cake

Melt some bittersweet chocolate with espresso and beat eggs with sugar over a double boiler.

Beat the egg mixture and chocolate mixture; bring some egg whites to soft peaks, add sugar and bring to stiff peaks: fold into chocolate mixture. This fabulous mousse — from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking — will form the second layer of the following cake:

One layer of chocolate chiffon (with a splash of kirsch), a layer of Julia's mousse (with kirsch in lieu of orange liqueur), another layer of chiffon, a layer of sour cherries (stewed, set with tapioca starch and finished with—you guessed it—kirsch), more chiffon. I finished this with a crumb coat (it sets the top) of mousse followed by a generous glaze of chcocolate ganache.

Serve with boozy (read: kirsch-laden) whipped cream. Add candles (and sour cherries soaked in Everclear, orange and hibiscus) and it's the cake for a fabulous friend's birthday!

Chocolate orange cake

A chocolate chiffon with Seville orange marmalade filling, chocolate ganache and freeze-dried Korean jeju mandarin oranges as garnish.

birthday

I started with my favorite cake, a génoise, and with some fresh peaches and raspberries from the farmer's market and some various creams — whipped and bavarian (pastry cream and more whipped cream) — I made myself a pretty satisfying birthday cake.

panforte

Have loved Tartine's recipe for panforte since I first made it. Quinces, orange peel, almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts, medjool dates, Zante currants and a whole lot of spice (black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, star anise) baked in a mixture of honey and sugar (cooked to 250ºF) with a little bit of flour and cocoa.


Once baked, it just begins to loose its sheen and puffs slightly. Cool for fifteen minutes or so, but not before it has glued itself to the pan.


Perfectly unmolded.


Finish with powdered sugar. Gets better after a few days and keeps forever: a medieval confection, panforte was one of the provisions crusaders took with them thanks to it keeping so well.

Happy 2011!

lemon-meringue cake

Baking with the Tartine cookbook always leads to success. I am very excited about the "Lemon Meringue Cake" — four layers of chiffon filled with caramel and lemon cream (lighter and more buttery than lemon curd) draped in a meringue and then torched. The lemon cream is so delicious I could eat it by itself.

Christmas Pudding.

Christmas Pudding. Here I start with two cups of raisins soaked in brandy, some shredded carrots and breadcrumbs (from a cranberry-sunflower loaf, to be exact). I followed that recipe but added four ground cloves and used candied lemon, orange and quince. Greased the pan bith butter but used suet as the fat for the pudding.


Here it is, a full recipe's worth in a 1.2L pudding tin.


Cover with wax paper, steam in a covered pot, partially filled with water, for 4½ hours at 450ºF.


Age for a few days, weeks, months. (This aged 2 weeks). Cover, re-steam for an hour.


Serve with hard sauce (butter, sugar, brandy).


Chilled hard sauce.


Finish with flaming brandy. This is my new favorite dessert. Moist, rich with flavor, and served with hard sauce, it is perfect.

fête nationale

Mini vol-au-vents (bouchées) with a creamed kale-leek filling.

Foies de volailles à l'estragon en aspic — chicken liver pâté with tarragon in aspic (from those feet!) — grâce à Julia Child, bien sûr! Gateaux St-André and Quatres-quarts (pound cake) in background.


A new creation — cardamon meringues! (1 white, 1/2 c. sugar, pinch salt, pinch cream of tartar, six pods caradmom, ground).


Ensemble: Gâteaux St-Andre (Walnut cake), vegan pâté, pâté, Emmenthaler, chèvre from Colrain.


And tartes aux framboises : I made an almond pastry cream that was heavenly. Red and black raspberries from the Tuesday market.

fiddleads, duck & brussels sprouts

Last time A. came to visit she was very pregnant. This time she was with her adorable six-week old. Something special was in order. We had duck breast marinated in red wine and ground mustard seeds (brown/yellow) with a raspberry melomel (mead) reduction, fiddleheads sautéed in duck fat and a few pickled brussels sprouts (they were embedded in some sauerkraut from the fall!). I was quite happy with the result.


A. also brought Prosecco and pomegranite juice which were mixed to create a cocktail that went wonderfully with the duck. It was really good. And that we finished off with a pear-hazelnut torte (from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors):

quatre-quarts

Julia Child's quatre-quarts ("four quarters," literally — "The English like the formula so much that they use a pound of everything — hence, of course, the pound cake" she tells us).

I hadn't made a pound cake before, I love the process. Six ounces butter is whipped until a mayonnaise-like consistency. Three eggs and a cup of sugar are beaten until fluffy and doubled in volume. One and a quarter cups flour are sifted in, and then the butter is folded in. And baked at three-fifty.

I glazed this with quince syrup leftover from candying quince for panforte. I then served it with Tartine's lemon cream: lemon curd with butter beat into it, essentially. Very very good.

bûche de Noël

My bûche de Noël!

strawberries

This is another recipe from the people at Tartine, a strawberry bavarian. I used a génoise as the base (this is the second I've made and I prefer it to the chiffon as a base cake. No leavening, just flour, sugar, eggs, salt — and a little butter). It's really wonderful. So then the cake layers get split, soaked in strawberry purée, and covered with a thin of layer bavarian cream (pastry cream, whipped cream and a little bit of gelatin to stabilize it all).

You then cover that in fresh strawberries, turning halves out on the edge for the final cake's presentation. More pastry cream is added, then the second cake layer and more purée and then that sets for a while. I like to finish it with whipped cream at my final destination as that's the easy part and — I fear — the first part that'd get messed up or melts in a car. Strawberries and calendula (picked from the CSA) finish this one off.