Dessert

White Chocolate Leaf Cake

December 17, 2012 by Erica

I once bought a cookbook just because a cake like this was on the cover.

I think I was waiting for the bus. Next thing I knew, I had spent $25 on a cookbook. Oops.

I’ve since lost that cookbook during one of my moves. I don’t even remember the title or the author. It didn’t really matter – the cookbook, including the cake recipe that went along with the picture, turned out to be nothing special. Those beautiful white chocolate leaves, on the other hand, were something special. So special that I think they belong on your Christmas dessert this year. If you’re in charge of the sweets, you can’t do much better than a gorgeous cake that is so simple to decorate.

These chocolate leaves look like they involve some serious work, but they actually take only 10 or 15 minutes. Below is a step-by-step tutorial.

This weekend I made these leaves to go on a hazelnut brown butter cake from Smitten Kitchen with this vegan chocolate ganache. I baked mini cakes in 1-cup ramekins (1/2 cup of batter in each), and used 2 layers for each little tower. I highly recommend the hazelnut brown butter/chocolate ganache combo, with some extra ganache and chopped hazelnuts in between layers! (One thing to note about the ganache, though: it starts to turn a darker brown pretty quickly, so you would do best to decorate the cake within 2 hours of eating. If that’s not possible, use a different ganache recipe.) If you’re a white chocolate lover, a cake covered in white chocolate ganache, topped with these, and dusted with powdered sugar would be to die for.

White Chocolate Leaves

Makes leaves to cover a 9″ round cake

You will need:

several stems of lemon leaves
small pastry brush
4-6 oz white chocolate

Instructions:

First, get some lemon leaves from your local florist.

It’s helpful to call ahead, because you’ll sometimes get blank stares when you ask for them! Many florists have customers that buy lemon leaves for working with chocolate, but many others will have no idea why you want them. In any case, they’re cheap – I paid $2.67 for 4 stems. I tend to favor the small leaves, especially if I’m not covering an entire cake with them. You can ask the florist to try to pick out some stems with small leaves for you.

Pluck off the leaves you want to use and lay them face down on a flat surface. To top a 9-inch cake, you will probably want 20-25 leaves.

Melt the white chocolate in a small dish in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time. Stir in between. May I suggest that you have another 4-6 oz of white chocolate chips ready as a back-up? White chocolate burns very easily… I probably burn it 50% of the time I use it! So stirring every 30 seconds is important.

Now your chocolate is melted. Using the pastry brush, carefully brush the chocolate onto the back of each leaf. This way, when you peel the leaves off, the front of your chocolate will be indented.

The chocolate is heavy and a little more difficult to work with than you would think. It’s OK (in fact preferable) to give every leaf a thick coat. Don’t worry if it looks lumpy – you’re not going to see that part anyway. Just try to make smooth edges, because those will be visible from the front. If your chocolate starts to cool down too much and becomes too difficult to paint, warming it up for 15 seconds should make things easier.

As you finish each leaf, place them in a bowl to harden. You could also use a plate or baking sheet, but I like to use a bowl so that the leaves curl up a bit. They look more natural and elegant this way than if they are all flattened out.

Once you’re finished, place the bowl in the fridge or freezer to harden. This should only take a few minutes, but you can also leave them in the fridge overnight.

When you’re ready to decorate your cake, remove the bowl from the fridge. Place one leaf at a time on your palm for a few seconds to warm it up. Then carefully peel the leaf away. It should come off very easily. If it sticks at all, warm the leaf up with your hand for a few more seconds.

Now decorate your cake, touching the leaves as little as possible, as the white chocolate melts easily. If you’re decorating a whole cake, you can place the leaves in concentric circles and scatter some hazelnut halves or raspberries in the center. If you’re topping smaller cakes, you can place just a few on each cake.

So pretty. Definitely a special occasion dessert!

Enjoy :)

Pear Frangipane Tart

November 28, 2012 by Erica

Look familiar?

Yes… I posted a picture of this tart in the oven on Facebook a few weeks ago now. Sorry for not sharing it before! I made it for a Thanksgiving party, but the truth is, it’s probably more appropriate for Christmas. So now, rather than being late for Thanskgiving, I’m early for Christmas. I love the way that works!

Have you ever had frangipane? It is a sugary, creamy almond paste that is often layered under fruit in tarts. It’s probably one of the most delicious things on earth, especially if you’re a marzipan lover, like me. I was veeeery skeptical about a frangipane without eggs, but I was proven wrong. Granted it’s been a while since I last baked a pear frangipane tart, but I don’t think you can tell this one is vegan!

This is definitely a tart for those with a sweet tooth (kind of the opposite of the cranberry walnut one). I HIGHLY recommend baking it around the holidays to impress your guests!

For such a pretty and fancy tart, I didn’t take any pictures of the finished product on a serving dish. Sorry. That was mostly because I was driving it across town to a friend’s house, and there was no way I was taking it out of the springform pan before the car ride… no way. (On a side note, does anyone have any tips for transporting pies/cakes in the car? I did a lot of driving around with pies on the floor over Thanksgiving weekend, and it seemed VERY risky.)

Back to baking. One big recommendation here: Use white sugar in the frangipane. I used natural cane sugar in mine, and it turned out the granules were too coarse. You can notice in the pictures that the frangipane looks a bit grainy when baked. It still tasted amazing, but if I were to do it again, I would use white granulated sugar. I’ve never used superfine sugar, but that might be an option for an even creamier texture.

America’s Test Kitchen has a great post on the secrets to assembling a pear frangipane tart. I recommend checking it out before you get started!

Oh, and coring your pears with an ice cream scoop totally does the trick!

Crust and tart recipes are from the Post Punk Kitchen! Feel free to use this crust or a regular pastry crust.

4.5 from 2 reviews

Pear Frangipane Tart

Hands-on time

2 hours

Cook time

1 hour

Total time

3 hours

Author: Coffee & Quinoa

Yields: 10

Ingredients

FOR THE CRUST:
2/3 cup slivered almonds
1 cup all purpose flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp canola oil
4 Tbsp cold almond milk
FOR THE TART:
6 Tbsp Earth Balance, cut into pieces
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cup blanched sliced almonds
2 Tbsp cornstarch
pinch salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
4 pears (Bartlet or Bosc), peeled, halved, cored and sliced thinly crosswise
1/4 cup apricot jam, melted

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a tart pan, springform pan or pie dish with cooking spray.
First, prepare the crust. In a food processor, pulse almonds into a fine meal. Add flour and salt and pulse to combine. Stream in canola oil and 3 Tbsp of almond milk while continuing to pulse. Mixture should hold together when pressed between your fingertips; if it still feels a little dry, mix in one more additional Tbsp of almond milk at a time.
Sprinkle almond mixture into prepared pan and press to the bottom and sides. Press the crust as far up the sides as you can to hold in the filling.
Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Remove and allow to cool while you prepare the filling, but keep oven at 350.
To make the frangipane, process almonds to a fine meal in the food processor. Pulse in Earth Balance, sugar, cornstarch, ground cinnamon, and salt until crumbly. Continue to pulse and stream in almond milk, vanilla extract, and almond extract to form a thick batter. Spread frangipane mixture into cooled tart shell.
Pat the pears dry with a paper towel. Gently press one sliced pear into the frangipane in the center of the tart. This is best done with an offset spatula, but can be done carefully with a knife. For the rest of the pears, tip the slices over so that they are leaning over, rather than standing straight up (see pictures or America's Test Kitchen link above). Carefully place them in a circle around the center pear, thin ends pointing inward.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until tart is golden brown. Remove from oven and cool for 20 minutes, then brush (carefully!) with melted jam. Cool completely before slicing.

Enjoy!

Weekend + Gluten-Free Cranberry-Orange Walnut Tart

November 19, 2012 by Erica

What a great weekend! I am so tired.

I said that I just wanted to sleep this weekend. But it turns out there was a lot of other stuff I wanted to do, too! So now I’m drinking green tea, hoping it will keep me up long enough to finish this post before I faceplant into my pillow.

Friday night was relatively uneventful. My cousin is in town to audition for the symphony, so once she got in on Friday, we went to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant in town. After dinner, it was pie baking time! I wanted to bring two pies to a Thanksgiving dinner party on Saturday night, so I had to get started. First up: a cranberry-orange walnut tart.

This tart was yummy, and believe it or not, gluten-free! I’ll give the recipe below. I’m eating a leftover slice right now!

Making one pie was all I could handle on Friday, so we called it an early night. Saturday we were up early for brunch at Caffe Niche, followed by more pie-baking!

I really liked this pear frangipane tart. I’ll give the recipe if anyone wants to see it, but I didn’t modify it at all from the original.

Saturday afternoon, we also did a bit of Salt Lake City sight seeing. Then we headed over to our friends Matt and Alex’s for a fancy Thanksgiving dinner party. Just look at what they turned their living room into!

They had more than 20 people to a sit-down dinner. Alex is super crafty, and made us each a personalized clay charm for our wine glass! She also did the beautiful table decorations.

We ate way too much, of course. There was also some wine involved!

Yum.

We had such a great time with friends Saturday night – thanks Alex and Matt! It made a little hard to get up Sunday morning to go up to Snowbird. Luckily, we made it!

It was my first day out this year, and happily, the snow was good! It was actually snowing quite hard in the afternoon. It made for tough visibility, but a few good runs!

I had meant to get some powder skis for this season (my second winter in the West!), but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I also never got around to getting the skis I do own tuned up. They literally had cobwebs on them when I took them out of our storage shed this morning. It made for a pretty sloppy day. But I can’t lie… it’s the skier, not the skis, that has some cobwebs to clear! Hopefully I’ll get out more this year than last, and improve a bit more.

My partner in crime. How cute is he?

Pete and Suzanne made me jealous with their bright-colored ski pants. I think I may need to get some…

And we ended the day with beer and nachos up at Alta.

So I’m now realizing that my weekend could be summarized into “eating, skiing, and more eating.” Yep. Pretty ideal, if you ask me. Let’s do it again next weekend!

Anyway, speaking of eating, let me get back to the cranberry-orange tart.

I didn’t actually mean to make this gluten-free, but it ended up that way, so I’ll take it! This tart has a crust made almost entirely out of walnuts, filled with a cranberry-orange mixture. It’s kind of like eating cranberry sauce out of a nutty crust, to be honest. It’s a pretty basic pie and is not too sweet, so it would make a good end to a rich, filling meal. Leftovers would also make a great breakfast the next day – a time-honored Foulser family tradition. :)

If you’ve never made a nut pie crust before, I highly recommend it. It’s much easier than rolling out a traditional pie crust and adds extra flavor. As a bonus, it’s a really easy way to go gluten-free. I’ve tried making regular pie crust before with gluten-free flour mixes, and never had very good results. So if you’re baking with a gluten-free family member or friend in mind, give it a try. The walnut one below could be filled with chocolate or any number of other fillings. I might use it for a pumpkin pie on Thursday.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Gluten-Free Cranberry-Orange Walnut Tart

Hands-on time

10 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

40 mins

Author: Coffee & Quinoa

Yields: 10

Ingredients

For the crust:
3 cups walnut halves
1 Tbsp canola oil
3 Tbsp maple syrup
⅛ tsp salt
For the filling:
juice of 1 orange
2 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
1 (12-ounce) package fresh cranberries
½ cup maple syrup
1/4 cup orange marmalade
1 Tbsp grated orange rind
2 Tbsp chopped walnuts, toasted, plus extra for topping (optional)

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.
In a food processor, process 3 cups walnuts to a find crumb. Remove to a bowl and mix with remaining crust ingredients. Mixture should hold together when pinched between two fingers, but not be too wet. Add some extra ground walnuts if it seems too wet, or a bit more maple syrup if it doesn't hold together.
Press into a tart or pie pan, taking care to press some up against the sides to hold in the filling. Bake for 10 minutes, remove and let cool on a wire rack before filling.
Increase oven temperature to 350. In a saucepan (without heat yet), whisk together orange juice and cornstarch. Now add the remaining filling ingredients. Heat over medium, stirring, until mixture is thick. This will take only a few minutes.
Spread evenly into prepared crust. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes, until crust is golden brown. Remove to wire rack and let cool completely before serving. Optionally, top with additional toasted walnuts once cool.

Notes

Filling adapted from http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/cranberry-orange-tart-10000000522224/

Fudgy Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

November 14, 2012 by Erica

I had planned on posting about something completely different today.

But then I thought that would be unfair, because I’ve had chocolate on the brain all week. So obviously everyone should. Also, do you see this cake?

It is fudgy, pumpkiny and vegan. I really hope you’re not sick of pumpkin yet, because this cake is something special!

Last fall, my roommate and I found this recipe on the Whole Foods website. I’m not sure what we were looking for when we found it (not a pumpkin recipe, I don’t think), but we tried it and it was way better than we expected. It was so good that she made it again to surprise me for my birthday! So sweet. (Miss you Kera!)

I was also pleasantly surprised this weekend when I was able to create a vegan version of this cake pretty uneventfully. (That has not been the case for most of my vegan baking attempts… but more on that some other time.) Probably because it was somewhat healthy to start out with, containing pumpkin and all, the vegan version tasted just like I remembered it. Success!

I’m embarrassed to say that this particular cake spent less than 36 hours on this earth. I had some help… but not much.

This cake isn’t too fancy. It’s good for snacking, or bringing over to a friend’s house to share. It’s sweet, but still pretty healthy!

The one problem with this cake is that it always looks so uneven, you know? Every time you cut a slice, the remaining cake just needs to be evened off a little… now just a little over here… oh shoot, might as well just eat the rest of that row.

And that, my friends, is why there was no cake left when Nate got home on Sunday.

5.0 from 2 reviews

Fudgy Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

Hands-on time

10 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

45 mins

Author: Erica

Yields: 9

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup natural cane sugar
1 6-oz container plain soy yogurt (3/4 cup)
1 15-oz can pumpkin purée (1 ½ cups)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ½ cups vegan chocolate chips
powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking dish.
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour through salt).
In a separate large bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, yogurt, pumpkin, and vanilla.
Mix the flour mixture into the wet ingredients until well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Pour into prepared dish. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with fudgy crumbs, about 35 minutes. Set the dish on a cooling rack.
Once thoroughly cool, dust with optional powdered sugar. Slice and serve directly from the dish.

Notes

Adapted from Whole Foods http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipe/pumpkin-chocolate-cake

Lemon Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Candied Lemons

November 2, 2012 by Erica

Happy Friday!

I’m so excited to share this cake today. Mostly because it’s just SO pretty. (Apparently candied lemons will do that to just about anything. Even a cake that rose slightly higher on the sides than in the middle!)

But I’m also excited to share it because it tastes good! I am typically a frosting person, but this cake is so flavorful on its own that it really doesn’t need much extra. The tart lemon, aromatic rosemary, and rich olive oil are all noticeable in the finished cake, without being overpowering. This made me so happy – I hate it when unique ingredients seem to bake off and are totally undetectable in the finished cake. The spelt flour adds nutty whole-grain flavor, too. All combined, it is both sweet and savory, and something a little outside the ordinary – in a very good way!

I’m lucky that Nate and I had a few friends to help us polish this off. (Thanks guys!) Otherwise I guarantee I would have gone to bed with a big stomach-ache.

While I didn’t intend to use an existing recipe for this cake, once I started researching, it just sort of happened that way. I guess I’m scared of developing my own recipes when baking, or even modifying existing ones, because you can only do so much taste testing as you go. At some point you have to stick it in the oven and commit to any horrible newbie vegan baking mistake that comes out on the other side. I don’t know. I’ll get there. For now, this is a lovely recipe from The Gluttonous Vegan. It may seem to have a lot of components, but it’s really very simple (mix it up and put it in the oven) and fun to make.

If I tell you to bake this cake this weekend, will you do it?

Lemon Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Candied Lemons

Adapted from The Gluttonous Vegan and Eat, Live, Run

Ingredients:

For the cake:
3 cups spelt flour (whole wheat pastry flour would also work)
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups sugar
1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
½ cup olive oil
¾ cup almond milk (or other non-dairy milk)
¼ cup canola oil
1 tsp grated lemon zest
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

For the glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
Juice of 1 lemon, freshly squeezed

For the candied lemons:
2 lemons, thinly sliced
½ cup water
½ cup granulated sugar

To top:
Sprig of rosemary

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9 inch cake tin or two smaller tins.

Combine all the dry ingredients (flour through rosemary) in a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. Pour in the olive oil and almond milk and beat until those are incorporated. Now add the canola oil and mix again. Finally, mix in the lemon juice and zest.

Pour batter into the greased cake in. If you can, mound the batter up in the middle a bit, as the sides may rise more. (I ended up using a spring-form pan because it’s really the only cake-shaped pan I have. If you have a 9 inch cake tin, that should work, or use 2 smaller ones.)

Bake at 350 until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The original recipe said to bake 25-30 minutes, but mine took 42. This will vary a lot based on your oven and the tin that you use! I would say test every 5 minutes starting at 30 minutes. Remove cake from oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack before glazing.

While the cake is in the oven, candy the lemons. This part is optional, but I absolutely love the way they look (although they served purely as a garnish; we didn’t really eat them). Bring the water and sugar to boil in a large pan. Reduce the heat to a simmer and add in the lemons. Simmer for about 20 minutes, until the lemons are translucent. Remove with tongs and drain on wax paper, then refrigerate until cooled.

Next up, make the glaze. Sift the powdered sugar into a medium-sized bowl. Whisk in the lemon juice one tablespoon at a time, continuing until you have a pretty runny consistency.

Last but not least, assemble your cake! Once the cake has cooled, place it on your serving platter and drizzle the glaze over. You may not use all the glaze. (In fact, I recommend using only half unless you have a major sweet tooth.) Finally, garnish with candied lemons and a sprig of rosemary!

So pretty. Enjoy!

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