As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought a couple of cookbooks by Rachel Allen, and I had to order them from British book dealers on ebay. Because I couldn't get Allen's cookbooks from Amazon, I had to wait for what seemed like an eternity for Royal Mail to deliver them from across the pond (with Amazon Prime, I'm accustomed having items arrive at our house lickety-split -- Amazon often manages to deliver in one business day, and sometimes we even receive deliveries on Sunday).
So when Cake finally arrived -- 13 days after I ordered it -- I was eager to dive right in, and I quickly flipped through the book to find a recipe I could make that very evening. I found "Coffee Mascarpone Cake," which looked easy, and I had all of the ingredients on hand. I didn't have the proper cake pans (the recipe calls for two 7-inch diameter cake pans), but I thought I could wing it with my 6-inch cake pans. There's actually a significant discrepancy between a 6-inch and 7-inch pan -- the latter has 36 percent more volume for the same height -- but I thought it would be safer to go with 6-inch pans and get thicker cake layers than use 8-inch pans and get cake layers that might be too thin.
I like the fact that Allen's cookbooks give ingredient quantities in both metric and avoirdupois weight. Because of this, I immediately noticed that this cake contains the same amount (by weight) of butter, sugar, and flour. To make the cake batter, you cream softened butter, add sugar and beat until fluffy, add beaten eggs and coffee essence, and then fold in sifted flour. You divide the batter between two buttered and floured pans, and bake. The recipe says the cakes should bake in 20 minutes; as expected, with my smaller pans, the cakes needed about a third more time.
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Once the cakes are cool, you and fill and frost the layers (leaving the sides bare) with a mixture of mascarpone cheese, powdered sugar, and coffee essence (I used coffee extract again). The final step is a dusting of cocoa powder -- the recipe headnote says, "The cocoa isn't just for decoration: it's essential to this recipe, with its magic mocha twist."
This was a fine cake. The crumb is dense, moist, and springy, and the coffee extract I used imparted a strong and delicious coffee flavor to both the cake and frosting. The mascarpone frosting was not very sweet, and it had a definite tang. Obviously this cake channels the flavors of tiramisu, and it does it well. This 6-inch cake was small, but it still provided twelve decent-sized servings. This cute little cake is unusual and delicious.
Recipe: "Coffee Mascarpone Cake" from Cake by Rachel Allen.
So when Cake finally arrived -- 13 days after I ordered it -- I was eager to dive right in, and I quickly flipped through the book to find a recipe I could make that very evening. I found "Coffee Mascarpone Cake," which looked easy, and I had all of the ingredients on hand. I didn't have the proper cake pans (the recipe calls for two 7-inch diameter cake pans), but I thought I could wing it with my 6-inch cake pans. There's actually a significant discrepancy between a 6-inch and 7-inch pan -- the latter has 36 percent more volume for the same height -- but I thought it would be safer to go with 6-inch pans and get thicker cake layers than use 8-inch pans and get cake layers that might be too thin.
I like the fact that Allen's cookbooks give ingredient quantities in both metric and avoirdupois weight. Because of this, I immediately noticed that this cake contains the same amount (by weight) of butter, sugar, and flour. To make the cake batter, you cream softened butter, add sugar and beat until fluffy, add beaten eggs and coffee essence, and then fold in sifted flour. You divide the batter between two buttered and floured pans, and bake. The recipe says the cakes should bake in 20 minutes; as expected, with my smaller pans, the cakes needed about a third more time.
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I should mention a few baking notes. First, where the recipe calls for coffee "essence," I used coffee extract. Allen recommends either Camp or Irel brand essence, and from what I can tell from a bit of quick Googling, these essences are sweetened and thus perhaps more like Rhode Island coffee syrup. I actually happen to have some Autocrat coffee syrup on hand, but it didn't occur to me to use it.
Second, the recipe calls for self-rising flour -- which I don't keep on hand -- but the book provides a conversion to make your own: add one level teaspoon baking powder per 75g of flour. So I used all-purpose flour and added an appropriate amount of baking powder. I found Allen's substitution formula slightly odd, because American self-rising flour contains salt, but Allen's conversion doesn't call for any. In fact, this cake recipe doesn't call for any salt at all -- unless I was supposed to use salted butter (and maybe I was -- the recipe only specifies "butter" without stating whether it should be salted or unsalted).
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This was a fine cake. The crumb is dense, moist, and springy, and the coffee extract I used imparted a strong and delicious coffee flavor to both the cake and frosting. The mascarpone frosting was not very sweet, and it had a definite tang. Obviously this cake channels the flavors of tiramisu, and it does it well. This 6-inch cake was small, but it still provided twelve decent-sized servings. This cute little cake is unusual and delicious.
Recipe: "Coffee Mascarpone Cake" from Cake by Rachel Allen.
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