thanksgiving dessert

As promised, here is the pumpkin mousse trifle that I made for Thanksgiving dinner. I was inspired by the wonderful way layered desserts look in a clear glass cup. The layers included vanilla sponge cake, pumpkin mousse, and crushed pralines. This was mine spin on a trifle for Thanksgiving. I kept the flavor profile simple, letting the three main components speak for themselves. Last year, I made Williams Sonoma's pumpkin mousse cake, which is quite similar, and where I drew the pumpkin mousse from.

I wanted a crunchier dimension to the cake, so decided to add crushed pralines, which worked well since pecans and pumpkin complement each other so well. It also gave me an excuse to finally use the Silpat that A. got me years ago. After the pralines cooled, I crushed in my food processor. I experimented a handful of times for the sponge cake, trying to achieve a light airy texture without the sticky top crust. I adjusted temperature, sugar, fat, and time, but still couldn't quite eliminate the problem of a sticky top crust after being completely cooled after baking. My final advice? Place a piece of parchment paper on the top after cooling and once ready to use, peel it off to remove the sticky crust.

I'll continually work on the sponge cake until I reach a perfect product, but until then, this recipe offers every quality a sponge cake should have, albeit with an added nuisance of a crust. My family loved this, and most surprisingly loved the praline, which I would have thought to be too sweet for their tastes. They actually sprinkled more on top as they devoured the cups. I served them with a hot cup of coffee and frothed milk, which was just a perfect way to end a holiday dinner.

Pumpkin Mousse Trifle
makes about 6 14-oz glasses (depends on the size of your glasses)

Praline - I used the praline recipe from Epicurious, and halved the recipe

Pumpkin Mousse - I used the whole recipe from this wonderful Williams Sonoma recipe

Sponge Cake
makes 1 half sheet

6 eggs, separated
2/3 cup baking sugar
1 cup cake flour, sifted
4 tbsp butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 400. Line sheet pan with parchment paper.

Beat eggs yolks with sugar (but reserve 2 tbsp of sugar) until you reach the ribbon stage. Add vanilla.

Whisk egg whites until frothy. Add cream of tartar and salt. Continue whisking and once the whites start to thicken, sprinkle in reserved sugar and continue to whisk until you have stiff peaks. Fold a dollop into the egg yolk mixture to loosen it. Fold in remaining whites gently and fold in sifted flour. Lastly, fold in melted butter.

Be sure not to over mix and deflate the batter, since there are no leavening agents.

Bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 9 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Assemble

Use the cup as a guide and cut out 12 circles of sponge cake.

Pipe a thin layer of mousse at the bottom of the cup. Place one circle of cake and gently press down to remove gaps of air. Pipe a layer of mousse on top, matching the thickness of the cake. Sprinkle with crushed pralines. Repeat starting with cake. Finish with a final layer of piped mousse, pipe extra to crown the cup just a bit. Use a knife or spatula to cut off extra mousse, leaving the mousse clean and flushed with the edge of the glass.

Refrigerate until set and up to overnight. Take out of refrigerator about 20 minutes before serving to bring it back to cool room temperature.

sponge cake with crispy layers

As I promised in the last post, here is the update on using up the phyllo dough. This was inspired by a pretty simple Chinese bakery cake standard. The baked goods I grew up on were more similar to this than the all American fare I experiment these days.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a recipe specifically for this application, so I used a basic vanilla sponge cake recipe and slightly sweetened whipped cream, both from Williams Sonoma. As for the phyllo dough, I went through a trial and error. The cake from Chinese bakeries have a relatively dry crispy layer center, so I baked off the phyllo layers straight from the fridge in a stack. That did not work out, since the edges curled and the results were overly dry and left a dusty flour taste on the palette. In order to get the layers golden brown and flat, I brushed each layer with some melted butter, similar to the approach used in the last post with the exception of sugar.

Flavor speaking, this was quite close to the ones from bakeries. The only downfall was the texture from the sponge cake, which was much less fluffy. The ones from bakeries have cake layers that are much taller. I'm thinking that if the cake was baked in a cake pan, rather than a sheet pan, with more batter, I would get a similar effect. Otherwise, this was a quite a replication success.

fondant cupcakes

A couple weekends ago, my aunt ordered mini cupcakes from me for her dinner party. She wasn't very specific in terms of flavor or design, so I decided to make two flavors: orange-cardamom and chocolate-orange. The recipes were from Epicurious and Williams-Sonoma, respectively.

Since I had to make these in advance and send them on a plane with my mom, I made an orange simple syrup and cocoa simple syrup to brush onto the cupcakes. This helps keep them moist, especially if you need to refrigerate cakes.

The mini cupcakes were for adults, so I made simple fondant flowers/bows/leaves . There were going to be three kids at the dinner, so I made regular sized cupcakes for them and topped each one with a different fondant animal: a dinosaur for the boy, and a blue bird and bumble bee for the two girls.

Please excuse my orange paper and blue tape, they were part of my homemade packaging to prevent movement during the flight.

I think they over well, my aunt sent me a red envelope in return :)

dinner and dessert

About a month before a few coworkers and I got laid off, we would have a weekly dinner date. I would look up recipes for an entree (protein chosen by the others) and a vegetable side. Another ex-coworker, audgbodge (who just so happened to be a close friend of mine for many many years) would join us and was in charge of dessert. It was always great to see the girls after work hours over food, drinks, chit chat, and many laughs.

Since we all got laid off, we haven't been able to meet up weekly. But now that most of them found work, it's gotten even harder. This past Friday, a few of us got together for food again. Since we usually have chicken, we decided to go for beef instead. I made steak au poivre with a roasted tomato and arugula salad.

Originally I wanted to make a roasted peppered beef tenderloin, but apparently beef tenderloin is a rare commodity. Who knew? I sure didn't. I went to three different supermarkets looking for it, only to be disappointed and forced to adjust my plans to steak. I simply crushed whole peppercorns and covered the steaks with it and some salt before I pan seared the steak with some butter. This isn't a true steak au poivre, because I didn't make the sauce that called for Cognac. So, I made sure to rest the meat by tenting it with foil. I paired it with an arugula salad, which I chose for C. (she claimed not to have eaten arugula ever before). The red and yellow cherry tomatoes were roasted for about an hour with garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The arugula was tossed with a simple balsamic vinaigrette and then topped with the warm tomatoes.

I finally brought my bottle of vodka to make the lychee martinis I told them about. One of the girls, E., was very disappointed when she saw my sad little half-filled bottle. I guess I should have clarified that it was a leftover bottle enough to make one drink for each of us. I'll remember to specify next time, E.

And of course there needed to be dessert. I made this in advance and brought it over.

A chocolate cake layered with coffee mousse and covered in a salted caramel ganache. The chocolate was for C. When asked for a request, you can always be sure she'll say, "chocolate." The coffee was for me and E. (we love our coffee, especially Vietnamese coffee). I adapted recipes from Cannelle et Vanille and formed my own combination of flavors. I was going for a caramel/mocha coffee drink accented with a bit of sea salt.

I adapted Cannelle et Vanille's chocolate genoise, and used a cookie cutter to cut out rings. The coffee mousse was made with whipped cream steeped with coffee beans until infused, strained, chilled, and then whipped to soft peaks and folded with some bloomed gelatin and pâte à bombe (I froze leftovers from my previous recipe and thawed it before use). As you can see, I don't have any real rings for forming the individual cakes. I actually went to Michaels to look for some, but left empty handed. I used my cookie cutter and some parchment paper in its place. Pretty easy to assemble by layering a circle of chocolate cake, then piping the mousse on top and alternating until your desired height. I froze this overnight to prepare for the salted caramel ganache.

The next day, I made the salted caramel ganache, but changing the chocolate to about 75 grams of bittersweet and 75 grams of dark. Thank goodness I covered my work area with paper towels. Look at that mess! I topped each cake with a sprinkle of pink sea salt for decoration and to add that extra little savory oomph to enhance the salted caramel ganache. They went back into the freezer until about 15 minutes before ready to serve, that way the ganache and mousse can have a chance to come back to room temperature.

To be honest, I was a bit worried that the flavors would get lost and a bit muddled. To my happy surprise, you could really taste the complexities, starting with coffee, then the salted caramel, and finished by the sweetness of the chocolate.

Dinner was great, as usual; would've been better if everyone could have made it. I'm going to miss these dinners. Hopefully we can still meet at least once a month with everyone.

a refreshing summer drink transformed

For those that know me well know that I love tea. A good hot cup of earl grey can soothe a like no other on a cold rainy night. As such, a crisp iced green tea can be the quencher a dry throat seeks on a scorching afternoon. One of my best friends can attest that we've made more than our (and most people's) fair share of tea runs every summer. Our drink of choice? Iced green tea with aloe.

This cake was inspired by the many drinks at our favorite tea place. I had some white peaches and of course matcha powder left over from before. Each layer has it's own individual accent flavor to combine into a honey white peach matcha green tea cake.

I finally bought a candy thermometer after years without one, forcing me to avoid recipes that called for a pâte à bombe. After a very very long night a couple of Christmases ago with three failed attempts before I finally got the right consistency for the Daring Bakers Bûche de Noël challenge, I never ventured into another pâte à bombe again. The thermometer totally made all the difference in the world. I was even able to make the bubble sugar art for decoration.

I made the same matcha green tea sponge cake, then layered a white peach mousse on top. The mousse was simply white peaches, which I pureed with a bit of lemon simple syrup, folded into the pâte à bombe base along with some whipped cream. I froze the two layers before I piped a honey chantilly and atopped it with a piece of bubble sugar.

The cake was best served at room temperature, when all of the flavors were at their peak. I liked this one more than the matcha green tea with lemon cream and chocolate chantilly; the flavors just felt more appropriate for the warm weather we've been having.

I've enjoyed these layered cakes, which are less complicated than it really looks. My next idea will be based on another tea drink, no surprise there.

something a bit different

I actually started baking before I ever ventured into cooking and savory applications. This is actually based on a few different recipes, but mostly on Cannelle et Vanille's Bittersweet, Milk Chocolate and Meyer Lemon Mousse Cake. I love her style and presentation, not to mention her recipes and choices of flavor combinations.

I made a matcha green tea cake instead of the chocolate biscuit originally instructed, since I saw her Matcha, Lemon and Chocolate Opera Cake. I love green tea and had some left over matcha powder, so decided to mix the recipe. My matcha cake is actually from an old recipe I kept years ago for a roll cake. It always comes out fluffy and spongy.

My concoction started off with a layer of matcha cake with a lemon simple syrup brushed on top, followed with a layer of lemon cream (I didn't have meyer lemons, so used a regular lemon instead with less zest). My layers looked a bit thin, so I made another layer of cake to add volume. I used a dark chocolate glaze on top of this second layer of cake to act as a foundation for the dark chocolate chantilly. 

I tempered bittersweet chocolate the night before and used them as a decorative topping. These went over pretty well at a recent dinner party. I thought the lemon was a bit strong, but my friend enjoyed the tartness it imparted. Perhaps I will use a bit less lemon juice and make a milk chocolate chantilly next time to adjust for sugar levels.

This was my first multi-layered and more intricate cake endeavor. I really enjoyed it, especially the layers of flavor and textures. My head has been working on ideas of other combinations and styles. I'm excited!