Week Fifty-Two: Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake (AKA The End)

February 1, 2010 in Cakes, Cook's Illustrated magazine, Weekly Baked Good | 2 comments

(This week’s recipe came from November 2009 issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine).

Well folks, this is it. The last week of my year-long baking project. I made this cake on January 10th, I believe, ten days later than I should have. I attempted to make Chocolate Covered Hi Hats for New Year’s Eve, but the cupcakes imploded in the oven and I just didn’t have it in me that night to try again. So I accepted that things happen, and plotted something to make a few days late.

Rob and I were watching America’s Test Kitchen one day, and they made the most incredible looking Triple Chocolate Mousse cake. I started scouting around online to see if I could find the recipe, but those Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated fans are an ethical bunch. No one had the recipe listed, but I noticed that someone mentioned it was in the November issue of Cooks Illustrated magazine. Sure enough, I had that issue on my shelf. And there was the recipe.

And so, ten days late, I began my final week of baking for the year.

The recipe started with a flourless chocolate cake base in the bottom of a springform pan. The cake layer baked beautifully, other than the fact that it started pulling away from the side of the pan. I noticed commentors on the America’s Test Kitchen message board had this same problem, but I have no idea how one would fix it. Someone mentioned not greasing the pan before pouring in the batter, but I would be terrified that the cake would stick. I just went with it.

Flourless chocolate cake batter:
Flourless chocolate cake base

Baked:
Flourless chocolate cake base

The next layer that went down was a dark chocolate mousse layer. Heavenly:
Dark chocolate mousse layer

The final layer was a white chocolate mousse layer that used gelatin as a stabilizer (I’ve really discovered the power of gelatin this year):

White chocolate mousse layer

White chocolate mousse layer

I topped it with some dark chocolate shavings because it looked kind of naked with nothing on top. After I refrigerated the cake for a few hours, we took it out, crossed our fingers and unmolded the cake.

It worked!!!
Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

You’ll note that my layers aren’t as distinct as they should be. That’s because the dark chocolate mousse layer seeped down into the area where the flourless chocolate cake pulled away from the side of the pan. But once we cut some slices, the layers became more distinct:
Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake

This cake was pretty fantastic. The only problem was that it was so rich, we couldn’t eat much of it. Tragically, half the cake had to be thrown out after a day or two because we just couldn’t keep eating it. But I hope to make it again in the future and take it to an event or family gathering so it can get the proper respect it deserves!

So that’s it! 52 weeks, a little more than 52 baked goods. A few failures, a few standout favorites and a lot of money spent on ingredients, cookbooks and toys. I can’t even put into words how proud of myself I am that I finished this project. The fact that I learned some new techniques, discovered my love of Christopher Kimball and Co. and made croissants from scratch are just the tip of the iceberg; I finished a project that I started! So so amazing.

Now that we’re a month into 2010, I’ve been thinking about what I want to do now. I’m going to take a break from weekly baking. While I enjoyed almost every minute of it, it can be exhausting. But I’ve already baked a few things this year for birthdays, so I don’t think I can stay away for long. Baking has gotten into me and I don’t think it’ll leave any time soon.

I hope by the end of February to launch a new blog that will feature not only things I’ve baked, but reviews of bakeries and cookery stores in my new city, baking news and baking-related events I’ve attended or wish that I could attend (I’ve managed to attend a book signing by Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks fame and Christopher Kimball and Jack Bishop of Cooks Illustrated/Cooks Country/America’s Test Kitchen fame (eeeeeeeee!) ). I’ve already got a website on hold, but I won’t mention the address yet, as I want everything in place before I unveil it.

I want to thank everyone who supported me during this year, especially my husband, who acted as taste-tester, ingredient-fetcher and shoulder to cry on when things didn’t go so well. I love you.

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Week Fifty-One: Grasshopper Pie

February 1, 2010 in "The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book", Weekly Baked Good, pie | No comments

(This week’s recipe came from “The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book”.)

Despite the fact that it will be February in one hour, rest assured that my project has been completed. I’ve just been a little too lazy in posting my final two weeks.

On Christmas Eve, I baked a Grasshopper Pie to take to my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. I referred to this as Booze Pie while I was baking it, because it contained a lot of booze. I had to visit two liquor stores in lovely Park Slope to procure the green Creme de Menthe and clear Creme de Cacao (which both made an appearance at our New Year’s Eve party when my husband and his friend made Ginger Mint Surprises and Cacao Zeroes (don’t ask).)

This recipe started with a Mint Oreo cookie crust that was made up of crushed Mint Oreos and butter. Delicious.
Mint Oreo cookie crust for Grasshopper pie!

The filling was comprised of the aforementioned booze and not much else. Some gelatin and whipped cream were involved to both stabilize and lighten the filling:
Beginnings of Grasshopper Pie

Whipped Cream for Grasshopper Pie

The filling went into the pie crust, which was then refrigerated overnight:
Grasshopper Pie

The filling tasted incredibly alcoholic the night it was made, but mellowed out the next day. It came out deliciously minty with a nice chocolately finish from the crust. The party guests seemed to enjoy it.

The next post will be my last! I can hardly believe it.

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Week Fifty: Eggnog Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

December 23, 2009 in Cupcakes, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s cupcake recipe came from How To Eat a Cupcake and the frosting recipe came from The Busty Baker. Thanks, ladies!)

For the past six years, I’ve known Christmas is near just by opening my refrigerator. While I’m not looking, my husband will sneak a carton of eggnog into our grocery cart every week. And he’s the only one in our house who drinks it.

Yes, readers, I am a nog hater.

The running joke (which is actually 100% true) is that the very idea of eggnog is enough to engage my gag reflex. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in eggnog? There are uncooked eggs is that stuff! It probably doesn’t help that I don’t like milk either. There are just way too many things going on in eggnog that I do not like.

But baking with it? Count me in! It seems like the perfect baking ingredient. So I knew I’d have to find an eggnog cupcake recipe somewhere…and I found it at How to Eat a Cupcake!

The culprits:
Rum and Eggnog

The recipe was pretty straightforward, and included a nice douse of rum (because if you’re going to drink eggnog, it should probably be alcoholic…) and cinnamon. The batter tasted yummy:
Eggnog Cupcake batter

And I even found somewhat holiday-ish cupcake papers!
Cute cupcake papers

The batter went into the cupcake tins:
Eggnog Cupcakes

And when they came out, I frosted them with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (the same frosting I used for my Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes at Halloween). I dusted the tops with a little cinnamon:
Eggnog Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

Very pretty. I had one of these cupcakes right after I baked them, and thought it was okay. Not spectacular. It seemed a little dry. But I put them in the refrigerator and hoped for the best. I don’t know what happened in that refrigerator, but the next day these cupcakes were ah-mazing. They looked amazing, they smelled amazing and they tasted amazing. A few of my co-workers said this cupcake edged out the Tarte Tatin with Carmelized Apple Cupcake as their favorite. One of the account executives took a cupcake and sniffed it experimentally, then looked at me in amazement and said, “It smells like a Yankee Candle!”

It’s that frosting, I tell ya’. That frosting could save a burnt-black cookie.

Two more weeks, two more weeks, eek! This week I’m baking a Grasshopper Pie for my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. And I still haven’t made a decision on the final project. I’ve got two ideas in mind, but both could prove to be beyond my budget. I’ll have to put some more thought into it. I feel like it needs to be something spectacular, seeing as how it’s The End!!!

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Week Forty-Nine: Gingerbread Cookies

December 16, 2009 in "Martha Stewart Baking Handbook", Cookies, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s recipe came from “Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook”.)

Oh, Martha, is there anything you can’t do?

I knew I had to make gingerbread cookies at some point this holiday season, and when I quizzed a couple of my co-workers on what kind of treat they’d like me to bake, they immediately said gingerbread cookies. Who am I to deny my fans?

Martha’s recipe is a little bit different from most gingerbread cookie recipes, in that it incorporates fresh ginger into the cookies. The recipe is incredibly simple to put together, although I found it took some convincing to get the dough out of my mixing bowl and onto a sheet of parchment without crumbling into bits. I had to manhandle it a little bit to get it rolled into a ball.

Martha recommends chilling the dough in the fridge for at least an hour before rolling it out, which I agree with. But then she gets a little crazy. She suggest you roll out the dough onto a cookie sheet, then freeze it for 15 minutes before cutting out the shapes, and then putting the shapes on another cookie sheet and freezing THOSE for 15 minutes before baking. I don’t know about all that. My dough never really got too soft, and after I froze the first sheet of rolled out dough for fifteen minutes, I couldn’t get a cookie cutter through it for about ten, which seemed to me like it canceled out the freezing…but whatevs. I’m sure Martha had a reason for all the freezing. I just found it unnecessary.

Once my cookies were baked and cooled, I went to work trying to make Royal Icing once again. If you’ll remember, back on Father’s Day, I tried to make Royal Icing for the hammer and saw cookies I made for my dad, with disastrous results. This time, it went a little better. My icing was still a little too runny, and no amount of powdered sugar could get it to the consistency I wanted. As you’ll see in the photos of the finished cookies, my icing didn’t spread too much, but it still wasn’t perfect. I’ll keep trying in 2010.

Unfortunately, once again, I took zero photos of the production process of these cookies. But here are a few of my favorite finished cookies:
Diaper Gingerbread Man
Gingerbread Man wearing a diaper (or briefs, you decide)

Christmas Tree Gingerbread cookie
Gingerbread Christmas Tree

Star Gingerbread cookies
Gingerbread Star

Cyclops with Claws Gingerbread Man
Gingerbread Cyclops with Claws

Whew! I’m caught up again! Only three more weeks in this project..it’s crazy to think that I’ve actually stuck it out and can see the finish line just around the corner.

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Week Forty-Eight: Thanksgiving!

December 16, 2009 in Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good, pie | No comments

(The Pear-Honey-Cranberry Sauce recipe came from allrecipes.com and the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie recipe came from How to Eat a Cupcake.)

Thanksgiving! The second best holiday of the year (Christmas is number one, of course, and Halloween is probably third). My Thanksgiving this year was different from all my past ones; instead of watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, I got to see it in person!
Tom Turkey

Also, my mom came out to visit from Ohio! This was also a pretty big deal, as my mom has never been to New York City before. We took her around to all the tourist traps and posed for pictures with the Naked Cowboy. Much fun was had.

My darling husband insisted that I make some kind of crazy cranberry sauce this year, so I scoured the Internet for recipes. I found one that combined cranberries with pears, sugar and honey and seemed easy enough to figure out. It actually turned out quite lovely. I’m not a cranberry sauce fan, but even I put a little on my turkey this year:
Pear Honey Cranberry Sauce (I made this!)

My main project though was a Pumpkin Pie. My husband’s family is all about traditions at holiday events, so when I told Rob I wanted to mix things up a little bit and make a Pumpkin Chiffon Pie, he was beyond nervous. He was so afraid that the pie would be some radical experiment. But it wasn’t! I followed the recipe from How To Eat a Cupcake, and it turned out great! The only problem I had was that my pre-baked pie crust slid down the pie pan on one side a little…not enough to ruin the pie, but enough to ruin the aesthetic.
What makes this pie a little different is that it incorporates gelatin and whipped egg whites in with the traditional pumpkin filling. It makes for an incredibly light pie. I like pumpkin pie well enough, but after one piece I’m usually done until the next Thanksgiving. I could have eaten two or three slices of this one.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the pie-making process, as I was really busy putting it and the cranberry sauce together the night before Thanksgiving (we had to be up at 5 a.m. Thanksgiving morning to get to the parade route in time). But here’s the finished product, which went over very well:
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie (I made this!)

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