yes, I'm celebrating

Today most desserts are much smaller,

But my entry needs to be baller,

I know what I'll bake!

A big Malt Ball Cake!

And I'll win because mine is much taller.

Yes, what you see there is my rather sorry attempt at a competitive limerick.  What's a competitive limerick you might ask?  Well, long story short, it's what you write when you've challenged a room full of friends to a cooking/limerick writing competition.  The rules are simple:  submit any dish you please for judgment alongside a limerick which includes the name of the dish.  All limerick-less entries will be disqualified.  Er, would you be surprised if I told you I won a poetry contest when I was in 2nd grade?

If you've never hosted a Competitive-Cooking-and-Limerick-Writing-themed holiday party, I suggest that you consider it.  This past Sunday, my buddy Hillary and I threw a soiree in my rather small Wicker Park apartment, and holy heck did we have a good time.  There were people from all over our chaotic lives: culinary students, medical students, boyfriends, wives, toddlers, former roommates, and friends of friends of friends.  And each brought a dish/limerick to share with all (and to compete for the super secret prize that was awarded at the end of the night). 

The competition was as stiff as well-beaten egg whites.  Gustavo brought chewy Brazilian birthday confections, while Tony assembled bite-sized Thai chicken curry cups.  Will unwrapped an entire smoked leg of lamb, and David baked off a swiss cheese, caramelized onion and fig pizza.  But I thought I would share the two winning entries with you since they were just so gosh darned tasty.  In first place came Hillary herself, with a Sweet Corn Spoonbread Topped with Spicy Carne Asada, and in second place came my darling man-slice with Chocolate Peanut Butter Malt Shooters.  I'd say at least 95% of us finished the evening with quite a belly ache.

And then there was my entry.  I chose to make a three layered Malt Ball Cake because I was celebrating.  Yes, celebrating.  Celebrating the fact that my dear friend Kylie is engaged to the love of her life.  Celebrating the fact that I only have 10 days left of work at my old job before starting off on my next professional adventure.  Celebrating the fact that I got a stage at my all-time favorite bakery.  Celebrating the fact that I finally finished a draft of that manuscript for the cookbook I'm ghost-writing (did I tell you I was hired to ghost write a cook book?).  Celebrating the fact that I was surrounded by a group of fascinating, wonderful people, eating delicious food, and brimming with excitement about the upcoming changes in my life.

Sorry to get all gushy on you.  I just feel like there's so much to celebrate.  Won't you have a slice and celebrate with me?

Malt Ball Cake

Recipe adapted from the cookbook Baked

Cake

2.25 cups cake flour

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1T baking powder

1t baking soda

3/4t salt

1/4t fresh nutmeg

1 cup malted milk powder

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup vegetable shortening at room tempurature

2 cups sugar

1 T vanilla

2 cups ice cold water

4 large egg whites at room tempurature

frosting

8oz bittersweet chocolate

8 oz milk

1.5 cups heavy cream

2T light corn syrup

3 sticks butter, soft but cool cut into 1 in pieces

malt balls for decorating

Cake

1.       Preheat oven to 325F.  Butter three 8 in round cake pans.  Line each with parchment paper circle and butter the parchment.  Dust everything with flour and knock out excess

2.       Sift flours and other dry ingredients.  Whisk in malt powder.

3.       In mixer bowl with paddle attachment, beat butter and shortening on medium until creamy, 3-4 min.  Add sugar and vanilla and beat on medium until fluffy, about 3 min.

4.       Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture alternating with the ice water in three additions beginning and ending with the flour mixture.  Scrape down the bowl and mix on low speed for a few more seconds.

5.       In medium bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form.  Gently fold into the batter.  Divide batter among the prepared pans and smooth tops.  Bake for 40-50 min. until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Transfer cakes to wire rank and let cool for 20 min.  Invert cakes onto rack, remove pans and let cool completely.  Remove parchment.  If you want to make your cakes ahead of time, this is when you would wrap each cake well in plastic and freeze.

Frosting

1.       Chop both chocolates finely, put in mixer bowl.

2.       Bring cream and corn syrup to a boil, then pour directly over chocolate.  Let stand for 3 min, and whisk cream in.  Let mixture rest until it returns to room temperature

3.       In mixer bowl with whisk on medium speed, gradually add butter pieces and mix until thoroughly incorporated.  Frosting should be completely smooth and silky.

4.       Refrigerate frosting until it is thick enough not to be drippy.

Assembly

1.       Layer each cake on top of one another with just under 1 cup of frosting spread between each layer.

2.       Coat outside of cake in a thin layer of frosting.  Chill cake until frosting is slightly set, and frost again with remaining frosting.  Garnish with malt balls.

-Adriana

happy birthday, little blog (and our first giveaway)

This week, Thin Crust, Deep Dish turned one year old. If this were kindergarten, we would have brought in frosted cupcakes for the class. Regrettably, this is not kindergarten. We know this because: a) We haven't seen nap time in years, and b) No five-year-olds have asked Adriana to marry them lately (we'll tell you all about that some other time). Still, we wanted to celebrate with you. And so we've baked you cupcakes. Now, do not try to eat the screen. These cupcakes are actually, physically located in Brooklyn right now, though in spirit, they're in your tummy. Celebrating. If you want them to be actually, physically in your tummy, you can find the recipe here. Just bake them in buttered muffin tins, and only for 40 minutes.

Some of you have been here for Thin Crust, Deep Dish's entire life (hi, parents!), while some of you are just now visiting for the first time. And so we're inviting your participation. One of the things we hope for this blog in its second year of life is that more of you readers will join the conversation through comments. If you're reading this, please leave a comment telling us a bit about yourself. (ALERT ALERT! Our comments weren't working earlier, so if your comment disappears after you try to leave it, please send us an e-mail over at the right where it says Contact Us. We don't want to miss out on any more of your fabulous input. Meanwhile, we're trying to fix comment issues.) Please also tell us what you would like to see more of here on Thin Crust, Deep Dish. We'll then pick one commenter at random from a mixing bowl, and you will receive a gift of one of these: Fat, Ratio, or Super Natural Cooking. Each of these is a book we love, with an author we respect deeply. Think of it as a reverse birthday gift from us to you.

While we're chatting like this, there's something else we'd like to mention. You may have noticed some of the little design tweaks we've been making lately here at the blog. Well, there are more coming. We're in the process of changing things around to make this an even more fun space to be. As things change, feel free to drop us a line and let us know what works for you and what doesn't. After all, we like our guests to be comfy.

Thanks for being here to celebrate with us. Happy birthday, little blog.

-Adriana and Kylie

nigel slater's plum (i mean apple) cake

"I have always felt that a recipe should be something to inspire, remind and lightly influence rather than a set of instructions to be followed, pedantically, to the letter."

-Nigel Slater

Since I bought Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries a few years ago, it's made every move with me. Dorm to dorm to house to house to apartment, The Kitchen Diaries is always the key book that gets packed, right after the socks and rainbow flair and other daily essentials. It's like a security blanket to me, the book I can pull out when I feel like plopping down on the couch and reading with a cup of tea.

This book has served me well. It's just as good to cook from as it is to sit and read. It's organized by seasonality into months, so I can easily flip to the right section when I want to make something and don't quite know what. And to be truthful, I think Nigel and I may be connected by blood in some far-off capacity. Learning about his sensibilities around food feels like coming home to me, and he's always saying what I mean better than I could.



Nigel loves food when it's dressed-down, unfussy. He takes his fruit just at the tip of its freshness, spilling over into too-done juiciness. He isn't particular about measuring and doling out patronizing instructions; rather, he seems to know that you know what's best and that you know what you like.

In short, I felt that Nigel might just be okay with me making his plum cake with what I had on hand instead: the first little New England McIntosh apples of the season. I took a few liberties, as well, baking it in a springform pan instead of a square pan because I didn't have one, and substituting quite a bit of the flour with white whole wheat flour. I don't think this cake was worth for the wear. Crumbly and stuffed chock-full of apples, it uses very little sugar and flour, making it just as nice to serve alongside your breakfast eggs and coffee as it is as an after dinner treat topped with vanilla whipped cream.



Nigel Slater's Plum (I Mean Apple) Cake
Adapted form The Kitchen Diaries

 10 Tb butter
1/2 cup sugar
6 McIntosh apples
3 large eggs
2/3 cup white whole wheat flour
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 3/4 Tbs. baking powder
2/3 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup shelled walnuts

Set the oven to 350 degrees. Line the base of a square 8-inch cake pan or springform pan with parchment. Grease the pan's sides.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer. Beat it until it is, as Nigel says, "light, soft and the color of vanilla ice-cream". Peel and core the apples and cut each one into eight sections.

Break the eggs, beat them lightly with a fork, then add them bit by bit to the butter and sugar. Whisk together the flour and baking powder, and fold them gently into the mixture using a wooden spoon. In a food processor, grind 2/3 of a cup of almonds until they are the texture of cornmeal, and fold them into the batter. Chop the walnuts to "the size of small gravel" and fold them in, too.

Scrape the mixture into the cake pan, dropping the apple sections in on top. Push the apples down into the batter a bit. Bake for 45 minutes, then test for doneness by inserting a paring knife to the bottom of the pan. If it comes up clean and free of batter, the cake is done. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool for fifteen minutes before turning it gently out of the pan.

Cut into slices, and serve alone, with whipped cream or a drizzle of heavy cream.

Serves about 12

-Kylie

If love had a flavor...

If love had a flavor, it would, without a doubt, be some combination of raspberries, pancakes, and bittersweet chocolate. At least, that's what I decided Saturday morning when I set out to make a dessert for Valentine's Day dinner with my beau. The goal was simply to make a confection just for him. Nothing experimental, nothing exotic, nothing that screams "I've just been reading my Gourmet magazine and I'm not afraid to prove it!" No, it was Valentine's Day, and a perfect time to thank him with a dessert tailored just to his particular taste buds. After all, the man had been ever patient with my burned brownies, deflated meringues, and over-spiced biscotti and truly deserved a culinary break.

So, with eyelashes batting and heart aflutter, I set out to bake a cake that proclaimed "I understand you, and I love you" (and preferably not by spelling out the message on top with chocolate chips, though this had, indeed, been reserved as a back up plan.) I had three clues about my sweetheart to help me on my way: 1) nothing makes the boy happier than if you bring him a pint of raspberries, 2) he consumes an average of 1/2 gallon of chocolate milk a week, and has done so since he was five years old, and 3) on the nights we don't have dinner together, there's a 50% chance he's making himself pancakes for the evening meal.

Pancakes...Raspberries...Chocolate...Pancakes...Raspberries...Chocolate....I puzzled and puzzled.

And then I remembered an exquisite-looking recipe on one of my favorite sites, Smitten Kitchen, for a Bittersweet Chocolate Pear Cake made with browned butter, in other words, a perfect jumping off point for my own enamored attempt at baking love into a 9-inch cake pan. If I simply substituted raspberries for the pears and upped the brown butter quotient (a flavor which always does remind me of the crispy edges of a perfectly grilled pancake) I would have the ultimate, boyfriend-centric cake!

When I unveiled my creation to him that evening, his eyes grew wide. "Are those...raspberries...?"

Mission accomplished.


Bittersweet Chocolate Raspberry (Pan) Cake

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, at room-temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1-2 pints fresh raspberries (depending on your preferences)
10 oz. good quality bittersweet chocolate bar, chopped into chunks

Step one: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch cake pan and dust with flour until evenly coated.

Step two: Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) and set aside.

Step three: Using a mixer with the whisk attachment, whip the eggs on high speed for about 5-9 minutes (depending on the strength of your machine), or until they become very thick and pale colored.

Step four: While the eggs are in the mixer, brown the butter. Heat the butter in a medium-sized sauce pan over medium head, stirring frequently. Cook it for about 6 - 8 minutes until it begins to turn brown and smell nutty. Be careful not to overcook it (as I did the first time) so that you get black specks in the bottom of your pan. When butter is browned, remove from the heat.

Step five: Add the sugar to the whipped eggs and keep mixing for a few minutes more. Turn the mixer down to stir and alternate adding the flour mixture and the browned butter until it's barely combined (you don't want to over-mix).

Step six: Pour the mixture into your prepared pan, and then sprinkle the raspberries and chocolate chunks on top. During the cooking process, these pieces will be enfolded by the rising cake, so don't let this alarm you. Bake until the cake is golden brown and springs back to the touch (about 40 to 50 minutes). A toothpick inserted into the center of the cake should come out relatively clean. Sprinkle the finished cake with powdered sugar if you like, and serve it with ice-cream, whipped cream, or anything else in the cream-department.

a little german chocolate to go with your thanksgiving

While the rest of, oh, the United States of America was baking pumpkin pies on Wednesday night, I was nervously embarking upon my very first German Chocolate Cake Baking Adventure. A very special family member of ours has a birthday that always falls on or around Thanksgiving. Therefore, she has to share her celebration with Turkey Day since all the family is already gathered here in Brooklyn. Or rather, Thanksgiving has to share with her. Regardless, we wanted to bake her a really special birthday treat to underline the fact that we're more thankful for her than for poultry or squash. It's the least we could do, right?

I used a recipe I found at David Lebovitz's luscious website, where I also learned that German Chocolate Cake isn't actually German. I know; who knew? It was invented by Baker's Chocolate to get people to buy their product, and I think it worked. I didn't follow the recipe exactly: As usual, Mary was the Greatest Girlfriend Ever and baked the cakes from a mix before I got home. And instead of the dark rum that Mary Jo Thoreson added to her syrup in the original recipe, I substituted about a teaspoon of vanilla for those in our group who don't like alcohol-infused desserts. 

Before you rush off to make this for your best friend and great uncle and favorite cat who just love German Chocolate Cake, I must tell you that this took me a long time to make, probably because I was so petrified of messing it up. For someone such as myself whose baking repertoire most frequently consists of drop cookies, this was a challenge. However, I have the assurance of all our Thanksgiving/Birthday guests that it was, indeed, worth it. Plus, despite my fears, there were no disasters.

The first exciting part was making the custard for the filling, something I've never done before. The smell and taste of the eggs as they thickened with the cream was velvety. Next I successfully cut the cakes in half(!). And finally there was the part where I found out how to properly assemble the pastry bag and tip and tried to make the frosting around the top somewhat pretty before it melted. 

Looking back on this experience, I think I would do it again. It was such fun to stumble and furrow my brow through each new step, and even more fun to hear the exclamations of the German Chocolate Cake-lovers who had previously only tasted the store-bought kind. Thanks to this cake, I'm now the proud, if somewhat confused, owner of a pastry bag, so I may have to try to hone my piping skills sometime soon. But for today, I'm thankful for chocolate-loving family and friends and for new adventures in baking.

-Kylie