Homey and Old-Fashioned: Applesauce Spice Bars

I have been trying to put together a menu for the annual holiday open house that Tom and I host each December -- it's coming up in a few short weeks and it takes a lot of planning to figure out what we should serve in light of all of the limiting variables: oven space, refrigerator space, freezer space, and most importantly, time, both before and during the party. So I've been reading through a lot of cookbooks lately looking for inspiration. In the process of doing this, I happened to flip by the recipe for "Applesauce Spice Bars" in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. It so happens that just last week I was cleaning out the fridge and I debated whether or not the throw out a half-empty jar of unsweetened applesauce (still perfectly good, but we don't really eat applesauce -- I bought the jar for one of my attempts at making grapefruit jellies). I ended up saving it, and decided to put it to good use.

There is a photo of these bars in the cookbook, and to be honest, they don't look all that interesting. However, Dorie's headnote says, "Don't pass these up because they seem too simple and old-fashioned. They are homey, true, but they're also irresistibly good, the kind of sweet you can serve to both little kids and know-it-all adults."

Both the batter and glaze for these bars are made in a pot on the stove. To make the cake, you melt butter, add in brown sugar and stir until melted and smooth, and then remove the pan from the heat. Then you add in eggs, applesauce, vanilla, and liquor (optional -- I skipped it), fold in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt), and incorporate a chopped baking apple, pecans, and raisins (I used golden). You bake the bars, and while they cool, you make the glaze by cooking heavy cream, brown sugar, butter, and corn syrup on the stove, simmering the mixture (no thermometer needed) until it reduces to a thick caramel-like consistency. Then you add vanilla, and spread the glaze on the bars.

I liked the shiny appearance of the glaze, which was easy to spread while it was hot -- but I had to work fast to spread it in a thin layer before it cooled. The glaze was stiff enough that it did not drip, but it did not set hard enough that I could stack the bars.

I didn't love these bars -- they had the soft consistency of cake, which seemed odd, given that these aren't supposed to be a "cake." I guess I expect a "bar" to have a chewier texture. Also, I wasn't thrilled with the spice mix; I was hoping these would taste like apple pie, but they definitely did not. Finally, I thought that the glaze was a little too sweet. I did appreciate the different textures of the mix-ins, especially the raisins, which were my favorite part. Even though these bars were well received, I don't think I'll be making them again.

Recipe: "Applesauce Spice Bars," from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, available here on amazon.com.

Layer Cake Redemption: Black-and-White Chocolate Cake

Just a few days after my only semi-successful effort at making the Baked Explorations Boston Cream Pie Cake, I needed to bake a cake for a birthday dinner. I looked in the "Celebration Cakes" section of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours, and I immediately noticed the photo of the "Black-and-White Chocolate Cake," because it reminded me of the Boston Cream Pie Cake. While the Boston Cream Pie Cake is supposed to be four layers of sponge cake filled with alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla pastry cream, the Black-and-White Chocolate Cake is four layers of yellow cake filled with alternating layers of chocolate pastry cream and white chocolate whipped cream.

Because the entire Black-and-White Chocolate Cake is frosted with white chocolate whipped cream, the cake structure from bottom up is as follows: cake, chocolate cream, cake, whipped cream, cake, chocolate cream, cake, whipped cream. Greenspan notes that "When the cake is cut, its look is simple and symmetrical." I debated whether this cake would be appealing to children (as there would be five children ages five and younger at the birthday dinner), but the decision was easy when I read the recipe headnote: "It would be hard to imagine a time, place, or an audience for which this cake wouldn't be right."

The cake is a yellow buttermilk cake, made from butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, buttermilk, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. You divide the batter between two 9-inch pans to bake, and I was highly alarmed when I took my cakes out of the oven and it looked like they had hardly risen at all. Each of my cakes was only 7/8 of an inch tall. I had a problem with the sponge cakes for my Boston Cream Pie Cake not rising sufficiently, and I was wondering if I was still trapped in some sort of flat layer cake purgatory. I debated whether I should even try dividing the layers, or if I should just bake another two cakes. My panic was interrupted by a moment of clarity as I studied the photo of the cake in the cookbook. In the pictured slice, the cake layers are exactly the same height as the filling layers. The recipe's directions for assembling the cake state that you only need about 1 cup of chocolate cream between layers. Since one cup of chocolate cream is not going to be very thick when spread across a 9-inch diameter cake, I realized that the cake layers must be very short if they are going to be the same height as the filling layers. So I decided to solider on, and I split my short cakes into even shorter cakes.

The chocolate pastry cream for this recipe is absolutely delicious -- decadently chocolately and lusciously thick, basically the best chocolate pudding I've ever had. It's made from milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, sugar, bittersweet chocolate, and butter. (Note: it's definitely tastier than the chocolate pastry cream from the Boston Cream Pie Cake recipe.)

To make the white chocolate whipping cream, you melt some white chocolate, add cream, and let the mixture cool completely. Then you whip more cream in a mixer and add the white chocolate mixture all at once, whipping until the mixture holds firm peaks. At least that's what you're supposed to do. My whipping cream broke, and it was not salvageable. I didn't have any more white chocolate on hand, so I couldn't make another attempt at the white chocolate whipping cream (even if I had had more chocolate, I wouldn't have had enough time to make another batch; the finished whipping cream is supposed to be chilled for at least 2 hours before filling and frosting the cake, and then the entire assembled cake is supposed to be refrigerated for at least 3 hours before serving). I debated what other frosting I might be able to substitute, and then I realized that since I had some King Arthur whipped cream stabilizer on hand, I could just whip another pint of heavy cream with some sugar, vanilla, and stabilizer. I knew that it would hold up just fine as a filling and frosting, without the need for additional chilling first.

Once I had my thin cake layers, pastry cream, and whipped cream ready, I assembled the cake easily enough. The only thing was that it looked awfully boring since it was simply covered in whipped cream. The recipe suggests decorating with dark and white chocolate shavings or curls, and I made dark chocolate cones. It was amazing how this small bit of decoration completely elevated the appearance of this cake to make it scream, "I'm special!!"

The profile of my sliced cake doesn't look anywhere near as nice as the slice pictured in the cookbook (Greenspan's is immaculately devoid of crumbs), but I was happy with the way the cake turned out, even with the failure of the white chocolate whipped cream. I tasted each component of the cake separately and thought that they were all terrific. To be honest, when eating the thin layers of cake, pastry cream, and whipped cream together, I thought that the flavors became slightly muddled. The amazing flavor of the pastry cream got a little lost, and this might be the odd case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

I also have to point out that my little friend Alexander took one bite of the cake, said he didn't like it, and then proceeded to eat oranges for dessert instead. However, at all of five years old, Alexander is probably the toughest baked goods customer I know, and everyone else -- kids and adults alike --  really enjoyed the cake. I'm going to chalk this one up in the win column. Especially coming off of a disappointing experience with my last layer cake, I do feel that this cake earned me at least some measure of layer cake redemption.

Recipe: "Black-and-White Chocolate Cake," from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Boston Cream Pie Cake

This week's assignment for Baked Sunday Mornings is the "Boston Cream Pie Cake" -- a recipe with a name that is simultaneously both redundant (since a "Boston cream pie" is by definition a cake) and clarifying (since the "pie" part of the title might otherwise be misleading to someone who doesn't know that a Boston cream pie isn't actually a pie). The "Boston cream" formulation of a cake or doughnut with cream filling and chocolate frosting is so iconic that once when I was at a doughnut shop in Guadalajara, Mexico, I made a point of trying to describe -- in Spanish -- to the man behind the counter that I wanted the doughnut with cream filling and chocolate frosting, and he looked at me in confusion and said -- in English -- "Boston cream?"

The Baked boys have put a small twist on this classic, by adding some chocolate filling to the traditional vanilla filling. The recipe is intended to make a four layer cake, filled with alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla pastry cream filling, and topped with chocolate glaze. The cake is a hot milk sponge, made by whipping together eggs, sugar, and vanilla, folding in sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt), and then incorporating a mixture of milk and butter that have been heated until the butter melts.

You divide the batter into two 8-inch cake pans and bake. Whenever I make layer cakes, I always weigh the pans before baking to make sure that I have divided the batter equally between the pans. So I know that I had precisely the same amount of batter in my two pans (well, plus or minus 5 grams, since my scale only measures in 5-gram increments). I must not have done a good job mixing the batter, because one of my cakes rose about 50% higher than the other one. Also, on the bottom of the short cake, there was a small milky layer (probably about 3mm) that looked like it didn't have enough flour incorporated into it, and I had to trim it off. You are supposed to divide each cake in half to create four layers for the final cake. I ended up splitting my tall cake into two layers, and trimming my short cake to match the height of the other two split layers -- so I only ended up only with a three-layer cake instead of four layers.

You have to make the vanilla and chocolate pastry creams in advance of making the cake, since they need to be refrigerated for at least four hours before using them. You make the vanilla pastry cream from egg yolks, sugar, salt, cornstarch, butter, and vanilla (you are supposed to add rum as well, but I skipped it). To make the chocolate pasty cream, you just mix melted dark chocolate into a portion of the vanilla cream. My pastry cream was very thick and set up quite firm almost immediately. After refrigerating it overnight, it kept the shape of the bowl it was in, and I had to whisk it pretty vigorously to get it to a spreading consistency. I'm not sure if adding the rum might have helped maintain a creamier texture, but at least the cream was so thick that I didn't have to worry about the it leaking out of the sides of the cake.

The chocolate glaze for the top of the cake is made from dark chocolate, cocoa powder, corn syrup, sugar, cream, salt, vanilla, and butter. My glaze set up quite nicely, such that it kept the shape of the design I swirled into the top. You are supposed to spread the glaze to the edges of the cake so that it drips down the sides, but mine was so thick that it was hard to get it to go down the sides. In retrospect, I wish I had just covered the top and forgotten about the sides.

By the time I finally got around to assembling the cake, I wasn't feeling particularly optimistic about it -- after all, I had clearly done something wrong mixing the sponge cake batter, and I was missing a whole layer. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this cake was pretty darn tasty. While the sponge cake was moist and had a nice tight crumb, it didn't have much flavor. Nonetheless, when eaten with the vanilla and chocolate pastry creams and chocolate glaze, the cake overall was delicious and very favorably received. The one thing I would change is to use a sweeter chocolate for the glaze. I used Ghiradelli 72% for both the pastry cream and glaze (the recipe specifies 60%-72%), and I thought that the glaze was a bit on the bitter side.

I would like to try making this cake again to see if I could actually get four cake layers and smoother pastry cream. But I was happy with my cake, even with all of its imperfections!

Recipe: "Boston Cream Pie Cake," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Jim Says Goodbye to His Mid-Thirties: Devil's Food White-Out Cake

Tom and I spent last weekend in Shenandoah, on our annual cabin trip in honor of our friend Jim's birthday. Tom and I were responsible for making dinner on Saturday night -- which happened to be Jim's actual birthday, so of course I had to make a birthday cake. I wanted to bake a cake in advance and take it with us to the cabin, because I don't like having to do any serious baking anywhere other than my own kitchen, where I have all of my own familiar equipment. As I was browsing cake recipes, I saw that Dorie Greenspan's Devil's Food White-Out Cake can be made up to two days in advance. Plus, the cake is pictured on the cover of Greenspan's cookbook Baking: From My Home to Yours, so I have been interested in trying the recipe since I bought the cookbook several years ago.

The devil's food cake is made from butter, brown sugar, sugar, vanilla, melted bittersweet chocolate, buttermilk or whole milk, flour, cooca powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, boiling water, and miniature chocolate chips. You divide the batter into two 8-inch pans, and after you bake and cool the cakes, you divide each cake into two layers. My cakes domed during baking, and after I leveled them, each cake was only 1.25 inches tall -- so after I divided the layers in half, they were quite thin. You only need three layers for the cake; the fourth layer is smushed into crumbs used to decorate the cake. (In retrospect, I could have made a four-layer cake, because the amount of cake I trimmed off to level the layers would have been sufficient to provide the crumbs for decorating.)

The cake is filled and frosted with a marshmallow frosting made by whipping egg whites, adding hot sugar syrup (sugar, water, and cream of tartar heated to 235 degrees) and vanilla, and running the mixer until the frosting is cool. After filling and frosting the cake, you press the crumbs into the frosting. At least I didn't have to worry about doing a crumb coat on this cake, since I knew that I would just be putting crumbs on the frosting anyway! Greenspan says that she prefers this cake at room temperature, but notes that some people prefer it cold, when the texture is more fudgy. I made the cake one day in advance, kept it chilled, and brought it to room temperature before serving.

This cake certainly is pretty, and it definitely has "celebration cake" written all over it. I appreciated the classic snack cake flavor combination of devil's food cake and marshmallow. However, I wasn't thrilled about the cake itself -- it was not as tender as I would have hoped (perhaps the cake texture would have been better if I had used buttermilk instead of milk to make to batter). Also, I personally did not like the miniature chocolate chips in the cake layers, but other people commented favorably on them.

I liked this cake and thought it was fitting for Jim's birthday celebration, but it wasn't a favorite. I couldn't help comparing this cake to the Baked Whiteout Cake, since they share the same name -- although the similarity ends there. Instead of Dorie's devil's food cake with marshmallow frosting combination, the Baked Whiteout Cake is vanilla cake with white chocolate frosting. I have to say that I prefer the Baked white-on-white version, although it obviously doesn't have the visual impact of the white-on-black devil's food variety.

In any case, many thanks to our friends Jim and Colleen for organizing the annual cabin trip and inviting us to be a part of it; Tom and I look forward to it all year. Colleen summed up the tradition perfectly: "Good Friends, Good Wine, Good Food, Good Times."

Recipe: "Devil's Food White-Out Cake," from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Previous Posts:

• "Thank God for Vegetarians: Tomato and Onion Tart," November 14, 2010.
• "White and Vanilla but Far from Ordinary: The Whiteout Cake," August 23, 2010.
• "What I Learned at the Cabin This Year... Butternut Squash Tart = Good.  Candles + Soufflé = Bad," November 9, 2009.
• "Jim's Birthday Weekend at the Cabin," November 2, 2008.

The Wait Is Just Beginning: Springerle

At the height of summer, I purchased some baker's ammonia from King Arthur Flour, and I have been trying to find new uses for it since. I soon learned that baker's ammonia is a key ingredient in springerle cookies, but I also read that it is inadvisable to make spingerle in humid weather. So, I have been waiting for months for the crisp, dry weather of autumn to arrive, and it's finally here!

Springerle are dry, cake-like German cookies that are imprinted with molds and traditionally flavored with anise. I purchased some springerle molds from House on the Hill, and also used a recipe that was included with my order, which is available here. In addition, I watched this video demonstrating the recipe before I set out to give it a try.

The recipe method is a bit unusual. After you beat room temperature eggs for 10-20 minutes, you beat in powdered sugar, softened butter, baker's ammonia that has been dissolved in milk, salt, flavoring, and cake flour. Since I am not really a fan of anise, I made my springerle lemon flavored by using Boyajian lemon oil (I used 4 teaspoons, which was the amount specified for citrus oils in the version of the recipe I received with my molds). After the dough comes together, you knead it with flour until it's no longer sticky, roll it out, print it with the molds, cut out the cookies, and leave the cookies out to dry for 24 hours before baking.

The mold I used for my cookies was "Bird on a Branch," which is fairly large with an image almost four inches in diameter. It took a bit of practice to get the printing technique down, but after a few tries, I was able to get cookies with clean impressions. I got only 18 cookies from my batch of dough, and after I let them dry for 24 hours, I baked them for 25 minutes at 300 degrees.

I thought the cookies looked a little plain, so I painted the birds on some of the cookies with gold luster dust dissolved in alcohol. I loved the way these cookies tasted -- a strong clean lemon flavor, with a firm, cakey consistency. I understand that springerle can be stored for weeks and are supposed to improve with time, but I thought they tasted wonderful right after baking. However, I'm going to stash some away and see how they taste in December -- I think they will be worth the wait!

Recipe: "Nini's Perfection Springerle Cookies," from House on the Hill.

SuperFudgy Brownie or Vampire Soap Opera?: Dark Shadows

The first time I flipped through Lisa Yockelson's Baking Style, a recipe for "Dark Shadows" caught my eye. The name of the recipe was enough on its own to garner my attention (this recipe appears in the "Intense Bold" chapter, "Tipping the Scale on Chocolate" subsection), but the cookbook also features a full-page color photograph of the bars, and this introductory description: "The following recipe is what happens when chocolate is used to its fullest capacity: dark, rich squares of buttery sweetness, wrapped in underpinnings of vanilla, are interrupted periodically with miniature semisweet chocolate chips." How could I resist?

The "buttery cocoa batter" is made by beating eggs and sugar, blending in sugar, brown sugar, melted butter and bittersweet chocolate, vanilla, and vanilla bean seeds, and then incorporating sifted dry ingredients (cocoa, all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking powder, and salt). At the end, you fold in miniature chocolate chips that have been tossed with some of the dry ingredients, pour the batter into a pan, and bake. These brownies are no health food. While the recipe calls for a relatively small amount of chocolate (two ounces of bittersweet chocolate and 3/4 cup of miniature chips to make a 9-inch by 13-inch pan; the bulk of the chocolate flavor comes from two cups of cocoa, which exceeds the volume of both flours combined), it also includes an obscene amount of butter (a full pound!) and 8 eggs.

The recipe instructs you to bake the bars for 40-44 minutes, until just set. I bake a lot of Lisa Yockelson recipes, and in my experience, the specified baking times are exceptionally accurate. However, in this case, when I checked the bars at 40 minutes, I didn't even have to use a toothpick to test doneness; I could tell they were still raw in the middle because the bars jiggled as I pulled the pan out on the rack. I ended up baking the bars for 55 minutes, at which point they were just barely set.

After cooling and chilling the brownies until firm, the recipe directs you to either do the conventional thing and cut the bars, or "run amok, and break the big block into odd-shaped pieces and fragments." I went the cutting route, and skipped the final step of sifting powdered sugar, or powdered sugar mixed with cocoa powder, on top.

These bars were ultra, ultra fudgy, but with a quintessential classic brownie flavor. Bordering on creamy, these bars are indeed pure chocolate joy. I thought, and many tasters agreed, that these would have been a serious contender in the SuperFudgy round of the Brownie Tasteoff. I was amused that the recipe name spawned numerous conversations among tasters about the 1960s ABC television show "Dark Shadows," which featured vampires and apparently pioneered the concept of a soap opera with a supernatural theme. I had never heard of the show before (I am a child of the early 1970s), and I'm not sure if Yockelson had it in mind when naming these bars. But I do know that Yockelson was spot on when she wrote that the recipe "is a jewel of a formula, and will deliver raves greatly out of proportion to the kitchen work involved in its preparation."

Recipe: "Dark Shadows," from Baking Style: Art, Craft, Recipes, by Lisa Yockelson.

Previous Post: "Unfortunately, These Aren't Number One: Biscotti #2," October 13, 2011.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins

I'm going to count this week's Baked Sunday Mornings assignment, Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins, as one of the most unexpected delights from Baked Explorations. I wasn't particularly enthused about the recipe; I have never had pumpkin and cheddar together, so I didn't have any particular expectations for what the finished product would taste like.

I was glad to see that this is one of the easier recipes from the cookbook. You just whisk together flour, baking powder, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, and brown sugar, and then make a well in the middle and pour in a mixture of pumpkin puree, sour cream, eggs, and melted butter. Once you incorporate the wet ingredients, you fold in shredded cheddar cheese (I used Seaside Cheddar, a sharp white English cheddar available at Whole Foods). You divide the batter into greased muffin cups, sprinkle the tops with more cheddar and some pumpkin seeds, and bake.

I could definitely smell the cheddar while the muffins were baking; it reminded me of the aroma of my cheddar-chive scones when they are in the oven. I used a microplane instead of a box grater to grate the cheese, and the cheese on top of the muffins was barely visible after baking. The recipe instructs you to serve the muffins warm, so Tom and I tried them shortly out of the oven. We were both floored at how moist, tender, and flavorful they were. I have to say that there wasn't much pumpkin flavor, but the cheese and black pepper were intensely fabulous. I happen to love black pepper, and the black pepper flavor was bold and aggressive (I think that most of the heat came from the pepper and not the cayenne, but it was a little hard to tell).

I immediately thought that these muffins don't seem like a breakfast food, but like the ideal dinner side for autumn; I think they would be perfect for Thanksgiving. I love, love these muffins. Warm from the oven, they are indescribably good.

Recipe: "Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.  Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Ipso Fatto Instant Photos: Pablo's Baby Shower

Restaurant Eve cupcakes have become one of my standards for baby showers. The moist, white cake is delicious and universally popular, and the frosting is sturdy and versatile for decorating purposes. Plus, one recipe conveniently yields enough batter for exactly two dozen cupcakes. For a recent baby shower with a butterfly theme, I had the idea of making the cupcakes look like flowers with butterflies on them. I purchased some sugar butterfly decorations from Little Bitts in Wheaton, MD, and some Wilton yellow petal baking cups. I dyed the frosting yellow to match the color on the baking cups, and used a bit of gold luster dust on the sugar butterflies to evoke the iridescence of real butterfly wings (it's difficult to see the effect in the pictures, but the luster dust really did give the butterflies a lovely sheen). This is the first time I've used the Wilton petal baking cups, and while they are just adorable, I was slightly disappointed to discover that they are not greaseproof. Nonetheless, I was so pleased with the way that these turned out.

Recipe: "Restaurant Eve's Cake," from the April 23, 2006 Washington Post.

Previous Posts:

• "Ipso Fatto Instant Photos: Cecelia's Baby Shower," May 7, 2011.
• "Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: Ella's Baby Shower Cake," March 16, 2010.
• "Think Pink!," November 15, 2008.