Tuesdays With Dorie : French Strawberry Cake

Our new recipe with Tuesdays With Dorie is French Strawberry Cake.. I have had my eye on this recipe since I got my book.. It looked so simple, elegant and tasty to me.. It is tasty and elegant and all but not as simple as it looks.. At least wasn't for me..

My version of French Strawberry Cake on the cake stand I made at my pottery class.. 

It starts with making the Genoise that will be the base for the cake.. The ingredients are very straight forward: just eggs, cake flour, sugar, vanilla extract and butter.. There is no leavening agent as you can see, so the cake gets its height from whisking whole eggs and sugar for a long time until the mixture triples its size.. My Genoise batter was doing fine until I added the butter, and then it collapsed.. I hoped for the best that it would raise again in the oven, but NO.. It stayed flat and sad.. It was max 1 inch tall.. My husband asked me if this was the first layer of my three layer cake :)) It looked impossible to divide to three layers.. I will give Genoise another chance in the future, hoping that I will do better with the folding in the second round..

Secondly, I cleaned and sliced my strawberries, and mixed them with sugar (I used 1/4 cup of sugar), and left at room temperature to become mushy and delicious.. This is the filling for the layers, together with the whipped cream..

Then comes the whipped cream.. It was very easy to prepare and very tasty.. Just sweet enough, with beautiful vanilla scent..

Oh, it was a challenge to divide my skinny cake into layers.. First, I decided I will go with only 2 layers.. When I tried to cut it in the middle, I ended up with such a skinny layer that I decided I will go for 3 layers.. Well, top layer was like a paper and middle layer's 1/8 does not exist :)..

Anyways, with this disaster behind me, I filled the layers with strawberries and whipped cream, and tried to do my best for icing the cake.. Which wasn't easy with my uneven layers.. So, I decided to cover them all with chopped pistachios, because it would cover the imperfections and because I love the taste and color of pistachios.. I think they add a festive look to any dessert..

After my cake waited two hours in the fridge, I took these pictures and tasted.. It is light and delicious, perfect summer dessert.. Unfortunately, my Genoise was not only skinny, the bottom layer was very dense as well.. I will definitely try to tackle Genoise recipe again, and hopefully will succeed the second time..

As a conclusion, I like how this recipe tasted and that it is so open to variations.. You can use another simple/dry cake recipe as a base, or other fruits of your liking, and the whipped cream recipe is so versatile and can be used with variety of desserts.. At the end of all my struggles, the sliced cake does not look so bad :) Bon appetit to us!

Looks better than expected :)

For the recipe please visit blogs of this week's hosts, Sophia and Allison : Sophia's Sweets and Think, Love, Sleep, Dine, or buy the book: Baking with Julia..

There will be three recipes in July.. All look delicious.. Stay tuned..

Thanks for stopping by..

Tuesdays With Dorie : Lemon Loaf Cake

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Lemon Loaf Cake.. I like citrusy desserts and I like dry cakes - I mean cakes without icing or glaze or anything, the cakes similar to the ones I grew up eating that were served with Turkish tea.. That is why I was very sure that I would like this cake a lot.. The result is: "Not as good as I thought it would be".. On the one hand, I like that the lemon zest flavor coming through beautifully with every bite and I like that the sugar amount in the cake is just enough, not too sweet.. On the other hand, I found the cake a bit too dense and dry.. It is not a cake to eat by itself if you ask me.. That is why I served it with vanilla flavored sweetened whipped cream and some berries to our dinner guests on last Sunday.. It worked very well that way and was enjoyed by us and our guests..

The recipe is very simple: Whisk eggs, sugar and salt until foamy, whisk in the grated lemon zest, mix in flour and baking powder to the eggy mixture in 3 additions, whisk the heavy cream, and lastly fold in the melted butter.. That is it.. Then bake for 50-60 minutes.. Below is how my cake looked just out of the pan, with a beautiful yellow crack on top.. And it smells amazing while baking, thanks to grated zest of 3 lemons.. 

Conclusion: Although very easy and tasty, I found the cake too dry and dense to my taste.. I don't think I will be baking it anytime soon.. 

For the recipe please visit blogs of this week's hosts, Michelle and Truc:  The Beauty of Life and Treats, or buy the book: Baking with Julia..

Coming in 3 weeks: Hungarian Shortbread.. Looking forward to that one because it has rhubarb jam in between two layers of shortbread and I love love rhubarb.. 

Thanks for stopping by :)

Update: I have couple of slices of this cake in the freezer, and just ate a slice toasted.. It is delicious toasted, much better than fresh.. It can be eaten by itself with tea, coffee or spread your favorite jam or nutella on top.. Yummy.. 

French Apple Cake...

I am happy to introduce you to this very french, super moist, rustic, and easy to make apple cake :)

I came across this recipe while I was searching what to bake for a party in one of our friends' house, and there were a couple of specifications about what can be cooked... Firstly, the house we were going was kosher, and the dessert should have to be non-dairy... And secondly, it should not have nuts in it since one of our friends has nut allergy... Difficult for the dessert topic, since almost all desserts have some type of dairy in it and personally I love the crunch of nuts in them... I found this French Apple Cake recipe in David Lebovitz's blog as an option and loved the simplicity of it... Although it has butter in it, butter can be easily substituted with margarine... At the end, I ended up not baking this cake for that occasion, instead baked my carrot cake without the walnuts, but the apple cake was in my mind as a to do since then... I tried the recipe yesterday for our guests who came for brunch, and I am very happy with the result and that I saved it for a good-butter day :)...

Original recipe is Dorie Greenspan's... And according to David Lebovitz, this is a very typique recipe of hers: "not a lot of ingredients, relying on no special techniques or hard-to-find equipment but producing simply spectacular results. The cake is easily mixed up in a bowl, scraped into a cake pan, and in less than the time it takes to run to the pâtisserie for a store-bought cake you can have an authentic French cake right from your own oven."


Here is the original recipe, I did not see any reason to revise the recipe since it works perfectly... And my comments in italic and paranthesis...

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French Apple Cake
One 9-inch (23 cm) cake

Adapted from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan

3/4 cup (110g) flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
4 large apples (a mix of varieties)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
3 tablespoons dark rum (I used artificial rum extract that is sold at baking section in grocery stores. David says rum is "really vital for the taste, and the cake would be not as interesting without it. If you’re avoiding alcohol, you could double to triple up on the vanilla to compensate.")
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 tablespoons (115g) butter, salted or unsalted, melted and cooled to room temperature (I used unsalted butter)

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC) and adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven.

2. Heavily butter an 8- or 9-inch (20-23cm) springform pan and place it on a baking sheet. (The springform pan I used is 22cm)

3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. Peel and core the apples, then dice them into 1-inch (3cm) pieces.

5. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy then whisk in the sugar, then rum and vanilla. Whisk in half of the flour mixture, then gently stir in half of the melted butter. (When he says whisk, I used a hand mixer. When he says "stir", I used a spatula)

6. Stir in the remaining flour mixture, then the rest of the butter.

7. Fold in the apple cubes until they’re well-coated with the batter and scrape them into the prepared cake pan and smooth the top a little with a spatula.

8. Bake the cake for 50 minute to 1 hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. (I took mine out at 50 minutes) Let the cake cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake from the pan and carefully remove the sides of the cake pan, making sure no apples are stuck to it.

Serving: Serve wedges of the cake just by itself, or with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream. (We ate with crème fraîche, and it really works well with the cake)

Storage: The cake will keep for up to three days covered. Since the top is very moist, it’s best to store it under a cake dome or overturned bowl. (I covered with plastic wrap, it worked)
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Bon Appetit! I hope you will enjoy it as much as we did...

My new go to Carrot Cake...

Without any hesitation, I can say that Cafe Fernando is my favorite food blog. At first it was because of his neat website, beautiful photos and good writing. After a while I could not hold myself back from trying his recipes and everything I tried tasted amazing... I believe the priority of the blogger should be building the trust with his/her followers, since they don't have any chance to taste the end-product before putting all the effort to buying the ingredients and applying the recipes... Everything I did from Cafe fernando tasted soooo good, most of the times they were even better than a product I would eat at a quality bakery (like this recipe, yummy)... Now I am at a trust level that I can try his recipe's for the first time for special guests and not be worried, since I know that he tests all the recipes multiple times and makes sure it works out, and I trust his taste buds...

The carrot recipe I am giving here is from his English blog, and I really liked the outcome... This is the richest moistest carrot cake I have eaten, and it does not need the classic icing... Only powdered sugar sprinkled on top is enough to enjoy it, as recommended by Cenk of Cafe Fernando...


Ingredients:
(the igredients are for a fluted pan with diameter of 25 cm or 9 inches)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1+1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1+3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp sweetened shredded coconut (I did with unsweetened and it also worked well)
3/4 cup grape seed oil (or sunflower oil or canola oil - I used canola oil)
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
4 eggs
Pinch of grated nutmeg
2+1/2 cup finely grated raw carrots
140 gr walnut halves
1 tsp butter for greasing the cake pan
1/4 cup powdered sugar - to be used for serving
zest of 1 orange - to be used for serving

Recipe:

1) Roast the walnuts in a non-stick pan on the stove or in the oven for 10-15 minutes. When they are cold, cut into big pieces, and put aside.

2) Preheat your oven to 350 F (170 C) and place a rack in the center of the oven. Butter a 9-inch fluted cake pan and set aside.

3) In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, shredded coconut, nutmeg and ground cinnamon. Set aside.

4) In another mixing bowl, whisk together (I used an electronic mixer) the eggs with the sugars until the batter is thick and light colored.

5) Add the oil and whisk to combine.

6) Add the flour mixture to wet mixture in 3 parts and each time mix until combined. Do not overmix.

7) Fold in the grated carrots and chopped nuts to the mixture.

8) Pour the batter into the cake pan and hit the pan to the counter couple if time to take the air out of the pan.

9) Bake for 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

10) Remove from the oven and let it cool. After about 5 -10 minutes invert the cake onto a serving platter.
Right before serving, dust with powdered sugar. I also sprinkled some orange zest on top, to give some citrus smell and flavor...

11) Bon appetit!


Note: You can freeze the remaining cake by wrapping with plastic roll and again with aluminum foil. When you want to eat, just take the cake out of freezer and let is sit at room temperature for 6-8 hours... It is as moist and fresh as the first day...