If you know me, you know that I am ridiculously obsessed and in love with any kind of yellow cake with chocolate buttercream. I don’t know what it is, there’s just something so awesome about them that I really really love. I’ve posted more about them than anything else. Love.  I always picture them like a classic birthday cake. Soft fluffy yellow cake insides, silky chocolate buttercream outside, and colourful sprinkles all over the place. Love love love. They’re fun, cute, delicious, and remind me of being little.

Today I was doing some research for an upcoming project I have to do, 11 tabs and 4 books deep and then all of a sudden I was in the kitchen baking a cake. Whoops.

It was for research though, right? Yea, let’s go with that!

What’s in the middle? A little something I’ve decided to call cookie fudge. Ha.

Yellow Cake with Chocolate Buttercream #…I don’t know…5? 4?

4 1/2 large egg whites (153 grams)
1 cup whole milk (242 grams)
2 1/4 tsp vanilla (9 grams)
3 cups sifted cake flour (300 grams)
1 1/2 cups sugar (300 grams)
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder (19.5 grams)
3/4 tsp salt (5 grams)
1/4 cup custard powder (30 grams)
3/4 cup unsalted butter (170 grams)

Preheat your oven to 350F and grease and set aside two 8″ cakes pans.
Mix together the whites, vanilla, and a 1/4 cup of the milk and set aside. In a mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. Add the butter and remaining 3/4 cup of milk and mix on low until everything is moistened.  Scrape down the sides of your bowl. On medium speed, add the egg white/milk mixture in 3 additions, beating for about 20 seconds between additions to ensure even mixing. Divide the batter between the pans and bake for about 25-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely before icing.

here’s what I did to make the random frosting:

1 cup of soft butter
4 cups of icing sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
1 tbsp heavy cream
2 tbsp sour cream
1/2 cup melted white chocolate
splash of vanilla

Beat the butter until soft, then add the icing sugar one cup at a time, beating until fully incorporated each time. Then add the cream and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add the cocoa and beat on low until incorporated. Add the sour cream and melted white chocolate and beat to incorporate. Save about 1 1/2 cups worth and stir in a bunch of cookie crumbs for the filling. Just like…a lot of cookie crumbs. Any kind you want!

Assemble the cake! Decorate however you’d like!

You can definitely tell that it’s rhubarb season. It’s everywhere, and frankly I’m sick of it now.

But I figured I wouldn’t let all those stalks go to waste.

So I made some sort of rhubarb cake thing. Fun? Ya, I suppose. I don’t know if my oven temperatures are all frigged or if the pans I use are just bad, but this cake took way longer to bake than it should have. Hence the slightly browned rhubarb visible on the sides of the cake. It looks prettier when you cut the edges off, I swear. Look!

It’s such a ridiculously moist cake. I love that. I put some fresh grated ginger in the crumble topping, and ate it with ginger ice cream while it was still warm. It was fairly tasty.

Rhubarb Cake

2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
4 cups chopped fresh rhubarb

streusel topping: 

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat your oven to 350F. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating just until moistened. Fold in the rhubarb. Pour into a greased 9-in. square baking dish.
Combine topping ingredients in a small bowl with a fork; sprinkle over batter. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

So I whipped some up, and I’m fairly happy with them. The cake itself is really light and fluffy and does taste more like strawberry than any other I’ve ever had, but the colour isn’t that pretty. I’m not quite sure how to achieve what I want without using synthetic ingredients or something that will affect the flavour. Something to ponder further I guess.

The icing was fantastic. I used some leftover honey french buttercream I had kickin’ around from some macarons I made, threw in a bit of icing sugar and a bunch of freeze dried strawberry powder. Super dooper strawberry.

I made some stupid little pink fondant circles. In the words of Lil’ Sis, it’s just fo’ decoration man, jus fo’ decoration.

Neat.

Strawberry Cupcakes

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp ground freeze dried strawberries
1/2 cup strawberry puree
1/4 cup buttermilk, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla paste
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Prepare muffin tin with cupcake liners. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and ground freeze dried strawberries.  Set aside.  In another bowl, mix together strawberry puree, buttermilk, and vanilla.  Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Then add in the eggs and beat until light and fluffy. With the mixer on low, alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk mixture.  Start and finish with the flour.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula in between additions. Distribute batter evenly, and bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.  Let the cupcakes cool before icing.

Here’s a basic strawberry frosting recipe,

Strawberry Frosting

1/3 cup fresh strawberry puree
1 Tbsp freeze dried strawberry powder
1 cup unsalted butter, slightly cold
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Stir together the freeze dried strawberry powder and the strawberry puree.  Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and salt until light and fluffy. On low speed, slowly add confectioners’ sugar.  Beat until well combined.  Slowly add puree mixture.  Mix until just combined.  Do not overmix. Apply to the cupcakes however you want!

Cute!

I know I know, macarons are so two years ago. Whatever. I still like to make them (even though I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about making them…). They’re cute, okay? Just so damn cute.  And I will continue to make them forever. Today I made two batches. Regular, and ones with rice flour instead of almond powder. For science. So I guess if you want to get all technical on me then yes, you are right, they are not macarons since I used rice flour. Whatever man, they were good. I also used a bit of freeze dried strawberry powder in the regular ones too so they taste wonderfully like strawberries, and the filling is a cream cheese kind of thing. With passion fruit. DELISH!

I used the regular recipe I usually use, which you can find here at bravetart.  If you’ve never made macarons before, don’t be afraid! I love her approach, because macarons should not be a scary thing. When it comes down to it, you’re making cookies. Not performing some sort of demon ritual. For the rice flour macaron I just subbed in rice flour. No biggie. I wasn’t sure if it would work at all, but it did. They do have that slight sandiness that rice flour always has, but I enjoy the flavour of it so that’s why I wanted to test it out!

Getting ready for macaronage!

Little guys ready to go into the oven!

So bright!

My hands look so old, ha. The inside of passionfruit FREAKS ME OUT! waaahhhh! Why do they just grow on those three spots?! Blegh!! Ugh! But they’re so delicious…

I cooled them upside down because I was having a problem with slightly hollow shells. Did the trick!

Obligatory stacked macaron shots. As you can see, the feet on the regular macarons aren’t so great on this batch.

My first tray that I baked was a DISASTER! The oven was too hot, and they cracked like crazy, see:

So I just decreased the oven to 260F (which I guess is my ovens favourite temperature to bake macarons well) and watched them carefully. The next two trays baked well after that!

Foster likes macarons too!

He approves of the rice flour macarons. Good dog. I didn’t expect anything less from you.

I made some little rhubarb tarts for us at home, and a bigger fruitier one for her to bring to work.

I used a sweet dough for the crust, a buttermilk chiboust (is it still a chiboust if you use buttermilk pastry cream? I don’t know!) and rhubarb that I roasted with a bit of lemon juice, ginger, and sugar.

I wanted to keep it light, not too sweet, and pretty. The rhubarb in my backyard has those thick dark red and green stalks, not the pretty delicate pink stalks of forced rhubarb, but I did my best to make sure they didn’t turn all out green or brown. The only ones that had a nice colour are the ones you see on the tart in the picture above, haha. The rest were too green for my likings and so I hid them underneath the cream. Ha, so ugly. The funny thing is that the way I imagine things in my head before I start is rarely how they turn out. There are so many things I would change about what I made today. For example, I would use a different crust recipe that would be easier to break with just a fork. You shouldn’t need to stab the crust to death to break it, or need a knife and a fork to eat a tart. The crust should be light, buttery, tender, and most importantly, delicious. But, it’s all about trial and error right? How would we learn if we didn’t make mistakes and see where we can improve? Also, I wouldn’t forget to put gelatin in my chiboust next time, haha, so the cream was a little too soft/runny for my liking after sitting for a while. The flavours are all really good, really really good actually, I’m just not happy with the textures or the presentation. I think I get too excited about the ideas in my head and just jump on them instead of planning them out with a bit more thought to up my chances of coming out with something I am happy with. Then again, my standards are even too high for myself.

Roasted Rhubarb

Rhubarb, cut on a bias in whatever size you like (the size will affect the time it will take though, so keep that in mind)
1/4 of the weight of rhubarb in sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1 knob of ginger, peeled and sliced

Preheat your oven to 320F. Place everything in a deep dish, cover with a lid or with tin foil and bake for about 20 minutes. Check it after 15 minutes to see if it’s the texture you want it. I roasted mine for 23 minutes, the rhubarb still had it’s colour and was soft but still had a bit of bite to it. Perfect for me!

Sweet Dough

while this dough is tasty, I wouldn’t recommend it if you want a light tart. I find it puffs up a bit too much and is almost too hard to cut with just a fork. It does make nice little cookies though, that will keep their shape and not spread in the oven!

225g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
zest of 1 lemon
80g soft butter
100g super fine sugar
2 T icing sugar
1 egg

Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt and set aside. In a mixing bowl with the paddle attachment, cream the sugars with the butter. Add the egg and lemon zest and beat to incorporate without adding too much air. Throw in a teaspoon of vanilla if you want. Then add the dry ingredients and mix until it comes together. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before rolling out to the desired thickness and doing your foncage. Chill the dough once again for about 20 minutes before baking. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Once they were cooled, I brushed the insides of my tarts with a thin thin layer of white chocolate, so that the crust wouldn’t get soggy. This is called chablonner.

Buttermilk Chiboust (chiboust is a cream made up of pastry cream+ meringue+gelatin)

for the buttermilk pastry cream:

1/4 c sugar
3T flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 c buttermilk
2 yolks
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
1.5 sheets of gold label gelatin, bloomed

Scrape the vanilla bean into the buttermilk. In a bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour and salt. Add the yolks and whisk to incorporate. Add a little buttermilk if you need to just to losen it up and get all the lumps out. Then slowly add the buttermilk and whisk to combine.  Pour this into a pot and cook over medium, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens and boils. Remove from heat and pass through a chinois or sieve if you have any little lumps or whatnot.

*if you aren’t going to forget your gelatin like I did, whisk it into the pastry cream after you take it off the stove.

for the meringue:

1 cup of sugar
120g egg whites

I made a swiss meringue, so that means I just whisked the whites and sugar in a bowl over a bain marie until the sugar was dissolved, then transferred to a mixing bowl to do the rest of the whipping until it was done. You can fold the meringue and pastry cream together while still a bit warm, it will be okay.

Look at these ugly ones!! What’s wrong with them? They look old-fashioned, and the biscuit on top is WAY WAY too thick (but then again, it was an afterthought).

I found some random recipe on the good ol’ interweb, but then I wrote it down and now a simple google search is not leading me to where I got it from. Whatevs google, whatevs.

COOKIE VERDICT: They are good. There is no lying. The cookies were soft and lovely and the filling was also tasty, minus my added ramp flavour (see below, ha). There’s always room to improve though! Maybe I’ll make an “upscale” version of these some other day. I sprinkled some strawberry powder onto some of them before sandwiching, and it’s delicious. Quite delicious.

Oatmeal Cookie 

1 cup of margarine
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 T fancy molasses
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cinnamon
pinch of ground nutmeg
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (not quick cook)

Sketchy Creme Filling

2 t boiling water
1/4 tsp salt
1 jar (7 oz) Fluff, or a stiff italian meringue
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

For the cookies: Preheat your oven to 350F. Cream the sugars, margarine, molasses and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time. Dump in all the dry ingredients and mix until combined. I pulsed my oats in a food processor for a few seconds just so they had a finer texture and wouldn’t give the cookies a weird shape with giant oat flakes. Scoop the cookies out to whatever size you want, I used a 1″ cookie scoop and got 12 sandwiches out of it, and lots of extra cookies. Bake them for 8 minutes. They should still be soft.

For the filling: Just whip everything together with a mixer, fill a piping bag, pipe on to the cookie halves and sandwich together!

Funny story, the shortening I had in my fridge has been there for a while, and it made my filling taste ever so slightly like onions. Or ramps, rather, since they’re just hanging out in my fridge all happy making everything smell and taste like ramps apparently. Good on ya, ramps! Take over that fridge!

You could probably use butter in place of the margarine and shortening if you’re one of those people who hate on anything but butter, but I like to make recipes the way they are written the first time I make them, for science. Cause you never know!

I think it’s funny that a google image search of “oatmeal creme pie” will not result in ONE single actual pie picture. Which did surprise me, cause people do weird things sometimes. However, you will find a picture of a giant gross snake, who’s name is Oatmeal Cream Pie.

THE MORE YOU KNOW!

Oh no big deal, just laminating some brioche dough. Ridiculous.

tasty croissant cross-section

Bread bread bread!

these are from the tea menu, there was a wedding tasting or something. cute!
on this plate there are pistachio financier, carrot thyme biscotti, pumpkin whoopie pies.

more tea tasting stuff. sea buckthorn tartletts and brandy snap cannolis filled with apple pastry cream.

cute tarts

I made cinnamon buns on easter for the kitchen staff, and now I get to make them every weekend for the breakfast buffet!

cute little spirals of cinnamony goodness

proofed danishes waiting to be baked

completion! almond ginger cream+rhubarb puree, pistachios for colour

one of the co-op students kit looks like ET.

The wall crab! haha. There are lots of things at work that look like faces.

hahaha…hilarious.

Ramps! aka wild leeks

Today I had a day off. Today I made snickers, sort of. Ohmyholycrap they are good.

They basically consist of a peanut butter nougat, caramel, and peanuts. But uhhh…I didn’t have any peanuts. So I may or may not have used pecans? And it’s delicious? Even with the peanut butter nougat? Yes. Yes it is. I am happy.

I saw the recipe on chow a while ago and bookmarked it. I’m glad I finally got around to making it. I have no regrets. I’m going to copy-paste here, because I am kind of in a hurry. Make these! They are wonderful. I made them with 58% couverture but I think that it’s a bit too much for the light flavour of the candy. I would definitely stick with the milk chocolate. Then again, I prefer milk chocolate over darker chocolates…so what do I know!? Make it with what you want! White chocolate however would be way way way too sweet and your teeth would shatter on first bite. Don’t do that.

EAT ALL THE CHOCOLATE!

I really love rhubarb. Just so so much. And it’s spring and I’ve been in a rhubarb kind of mood lately.

When I’m at home on my days off, basically all I think about is baking. What can I make? And then I try to think of something cool that I’ve never done before, and then usually resort to just making a cake or cookies or something easy and satisfying that results in instant gratification.

Yesterday, however, I decided I would actually go ahead this time and make something different. How about a plated dessert? If you followed this blog while I was in school, you’ll know that I suck at plated desserts. Or at least I really used to. I’m not saying I’m good now, but I’m much more confident in my abilities to produce something that is really tasty and looks nice too. I definitely still have a lot to learn.

I admit, I used frozen rhubarb from my garden last year because I went to three stores and not one had it…don’t judge me. It was mostly green looking stalks so I didn’t get a super nice pink colour out of it but I will just have to do this again once the rhubarb in the backyard is ready, right? Right!

The components I made are an almond cake, rhubarb curd, honey almond croquant and almond milk ice cream.

The almond cake is really nice. Super moist and tender, but a bit dense. I think next time for a plated dessert I would try to make it a little lighter by whipping the whites separately and folding them in. If you just want a nice little slice of cake for tea then the way it is more than perfect. And highly addicting.

Almond Cake

110 grams unsalted soft butter
120 grams sugar
3 eggs
90 grams almond flour
40 grams all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 vanilla pod, split and seeded
1 T milk
chopped or slivered almonds for the top

Preheat your oven to 350F and line a loaf pan with parchment. This is why this cake is great: Throw everything in a bowl and beat until it comes together. Pour into the prepared pan, sprinkle with almonds and bake for 25 minutes, or until it is golden brown and springs back when lightly pressed with your finger and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Allow to cool before removing from pan.

Rhubarb Curd

3/4 lb of rhubarb, chopped
1/4 cup sugar
4 yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1 t lemon zest
1 T lemon juice

In a pot, combine the rhubarb with the first amount of sugar and just a splash of water. Cook over medium-low heat until the rhubarb is tender. Puree this and then pass through a fine mesh sieve (I skipped this step and kind of wish I didn’t.).
In a bowl combine everything together and heat over a double boiler gently whisking until it thickens. Remove from heat. Allow to cool.

 Honey Almond Croquant

1 cup chopped toasted almonds
1 cup honey
3/4 cup sugar
water

Place the honey, sugar, and about a tablespoon of water in a pot over medium heat and cook, without stirring, to 340F. Stir in the almonds, pour onto a silicon mat and allow to cool and harden. Once it’s ready, break it up and in either a blender or a food processer chop it up until the consistency you want. Keep in an airtight container with a dessicant.

 Almond Milk Ice Cream

2 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
8 yolks
9 oz sugar (I find this to be a little sweet, I think reducing the sugar amount is a good idea)

Whisk together the yolks and sugar in a bowl. In a pot heat the cream and almond milk until hot. Temper in the yolks. Cook until it coats the back of a spoon or until 85 degrees celsius.  Allow this mixture to chill in the fridge and mature over night. The following day, spin in an ice cream maker. Transfer to a container and freeze.

I mixed some buttermilk into the rhubarb curd for the swipe on the plate (and could eat that for every meal of my life, so good), and set some curd with gelatin for the top of the cake. Yummy.

Perfect moods can only call for one thing: baking. I made me some cookies while listening to awesome music. I love 8tracks so much. It’s probably my favourite and most visited website. This is the wonderful mix I was listening to.

By 9am I’d already showered, done laundry, made cookies, and did a little practicin’ on little nutmeg (my ukulele). The weather is beautiful outside, sun is all a shinin’ away making us humans feel happy.

These cookies are wonderful. I know there is a lot of debate on the subject of “the perfect chocolate chip cookie” so I’m not going to say that these are the best because obviously everyone will have a different opinion ramble ramble, but these are pretty good. They are chewy little devils with that ever so slightly crispy outside edge. I love them. The fleur de sel on the top, while not 100% necessary, does make them better in my opinion. I love the salty/sweet combo, and the crunchiness of the flakes is another added wonderful bonus.

Wicked Awesome Rock Your Socks Off Cookies
(adapted from mrjeffmccarthy.com, whom I secretly have a crush on)

20 oz of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1  1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
10 oz soft butter
5 oz muscovado sugar
5 oz brown sugar
8 oz white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups 58% chocolate, roughly chopped
1 cup of soft caramels, cut up (you can buy these, or make them yourself)
1 cup chopped toasted pecans
fleur de sel

Sift all the dry ingredients together and set aside. Whip the sugars and butter for a good 10 minutes. Then add the eggs and vanilla. Combine with the dry ingredients. Mix in the chocolate, caramel, and pecans. Put it all in a bowl and leave in the fridge for at least 24 hrs!! Yes, you read correctly. 24 hours. Just do it. Allowing the flour to hydrate is wonderful.

When you’re ready, preheat your oven to 350F and line a pan with parchment or a silpat.  Scoop the chilled cookie dough into whatever size you want, flatten slightly, sprinkle with a bit of sea salt and bake until the edges are just starting to brown.  Let them cool before removing them from the pan!