Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Have you ever cooked/baked something only because you really wanted to try a new ingredient, or perhaps cook in your new pot or pan, use your brand new ice cream maker, creme brûlée torch, or some other appliance? Well, this muffin was inspired not by an ingredient or a cooking utensil/appliance, but by a beautiful ceramic dish that I wanted to present it in! I was determined to make something pretty to put on this dish as soon as I received it in the mail. A fresh citrusy muffin adorned with little chocolate flowers seemed perfect to go with the lovely red mushroom decoration on the plate.

 

A little bit background on this plate that I’m raving about - My friend Maitreyee makes beautiful ceramic kitchenware & decorative pieces, and she was nice enough to customize this plate for me. You can check out her shop, YayClay (love the name!) on Etsy, or Facebook.

Ingredients: (Makes 18)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

3 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup sour cream

¼ cup unsweetened applesauce

¼ cup canola oil

1-1¼  cup white sugar

Zest from 2 lemons

1tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs
4 tsp poppy seeds

(Oil + Applesauce can be substituted with ½ cup butter)

 

Preheat oven to 350°F and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.

 

Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl. Add salt, mix and set aside.

 

In another bowl mix milk, lemon juice and sour cream, and set aside.

 

In a large bowl, cream together oil, applesauce, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Add eggs and beat well. Alternately add the flour mixture and the wet ingredients, mixing gently as you fold in the flour. Do not overbeat. Fold in poppy seeds.

 

Pour batter into the lined muffin tin (~¾ full), and bake in preheated oven for ~20-25 minutes until golden brown in color with tops that bounce back when touched.

 

If you want to get a little fancy and add a glaze, mix ½ cup powdered sugar with just enough lemon juice (or milk/water) to get a thick paste. It only takes a couple teaspoons of liquid. Spread or drizzle the glaze on the muffin while it is still warm. Sprinkle some lemon zest and poppy seeds on top for a beautiful presentation and an extra boost of citrus flavor.

~Gayatri

 

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Portobello Mushroom Strudel

I’m always looking for quick weeknight dinners, but throwing salads together, making sandwiches or an omelette quickly gets boring. However, with some time spent prepping on the weekend (and store bought pie crusts!) weeknight dinners can be a breeze. One such dish is a simple strudel. Here’s one of our recipes for a chicken strudel, and if you’d like a vegetarian version, follow along for a crispy but moist and cheesy strudel recipe using Portobello mushrooms, asparagus and spinach. The veggies can be cooked ahead of time and refrigerated to speed up the process. You could even assemble the strudel, cover it with plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge until ready to bake.

Ingredients:

1 small onion - chopped

8-10 asparagus stalks - chopped

2 cups packed fresh spinach - chopped

3 large portobello mushroom caps - sliced about ½ inch thick

4 tsp oil

Red wine vinegar or lemon juice (optional)

Salt, black pepper

1 pie crust

3 provolone cheese slices

Egg wash (optional)

Mix 1:1 parts water and beaten egg

Mushroom Sauce (optional)

~⅓ cup dehydrated wild mushrooms- soaked in hot water for half hour

1 tsp oil/ butter

2 tsp flour

¼ tsp thyme leaves

1.5 cups water/vegetable stock/milk

Salt, black pepper to taste

Spinach, asparagus mixture

Heat 1 tsp oil over medium high heat. Add the onions and garlic, cook until onions are translucent. Add the asparagus and spinach, season with salt and pepper and cook until spinach is wilted (1-2 min). Add lemon juice or vinegar, take off the heat and set aside.

Portobello mushroom slices

Slice the mushroom caps about ½ inch thick. Heat the remaining oil over medium heat. Place the mushroom slices in a single layer. Once they are browned on the bottom, turn them over. Add some lemon juice or vinegar if using, and let the mushroom cook until the other side is browned.

Assembling and baking the strudel

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Roll out the pie crust on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Using the back of a knife, gently mark vertical lines on the pie crust approximately dividing it in thirds. Using a sharp knife, make horizontal cuts on the outer sections as shown.

Place the cheese slices slightly overlapping each other in the middle third of the pie crust. Top it with the spinach asparagus mixture. Lay the portobello slices on top of the mixture.

Fold over the sides and press them together to seal. Seal the ends of the strudel, and brush the top with egg wash (optional).

Bake for 30-40 minutes until the top is browned.

Mushroom sauce

While the strudel is baking, prepare the mushroom sauce. Roughly chop the rehydrated mushrooms. Heat oil/butter over medium-low heat and add the mushrooms. Sauté for a minute, then add flour and cook, stirring continuously, for a couple minutes. Add the water that the mushrooms were soaked in (and/or vegetable stock or milk). Season with salt and pepper and let the sauce reduce to the consistency of your liking.

Slice the strudel and serve it topped with the mushroom sauce for extra deliciousness!

~Gayatri

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Posted by The Cooks of Cake and Kindness on Monday, April 11, 2016

Chocolate Brownie Cake with Ganache Frosting

What treat would you make for a chocoholic? Chocolate brownies? Chocolate cake? How about both combined!? This dessert is rich and chocolatey like brownies, yet soft and light like a cake. I topped it with a dark chocolate ganache to give it an even higher degree of chocolatiness (pretty sure I’m making up a word here) to celebrate a chocolate-loving friend’s birthday.

Cake recipe adapted from: Williams-Sonoma

Ingredients:

8 Tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

4 oz. good-quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (70%+ cacao is best), chopped

 

For ganache:

½ cup heavy whipping cream

4 oz dark chocolate, chopped (or chocolate chips)

 

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Line an 8-inch round cake pan with parchment paper.

 

Mix In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until well blended. Add the flour slowly and continue to beat.

 

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, or in the microwave heating for 30-60 seconds at a time on 40% power, stirring each time until chocolate is melted. Add the melted chocolate to the batter and beat gently until just combined.

 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until for 20 to 25 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool down a little before taking it out of the pan and decorating with ganache.

 

To make the ganache, add the dark chocolate to whipping cream in a saucepan and heat over low heat (stirring occasionally) until the chocolate is melted. Take it off the heat and stir to combine the cream and chocolate well. Let it cool down and thicken a little before pouring it over the cake. Spread with a spatula to the edges of the cake (you may cover the sides too). Let the ganache cool down further and then pipe decorations like a simple border using a star-tip. Drizzle melted white chocolate to make a pretty presentation.

 

Cut slices and enjoy as is, or à la mode.

 

~Gayatri

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Posted by The Cooks of Cake and Kindness on Tuesday, October 27, 2015

An Engineer's Guide to Baking Even Cake Layers (Celebrating 100 posts of Kindness!)

Happy 100th post to The Cooks of Cake and Kindness! Fellow readers, it has been a pleasure sharing our culinary experiences with you. Thank you for reading, supporting us here and on Facebook, and for trying out our recipes and giving us feedback. Here’s a delicious cake to celebrate this milestone!

 

Figure 1: Vanilla cake  with strawberries and beets; Cream cheese frosting dyed with beet juice;

Topped with sliced strawberries and chocolate lace

 

Given the title of the post and the “figure” notation, you might have noticed that this is not one of our typical recipe posts. Today we will share a technique instead of a recipe, along with the science behind it.  

The Problem

Figure 2: Chocolate cake with tall dome

 

Most cakes will rise into a dome shape as they bake, and it’s wonderful to see a beautiful dome when baking cupcakes. However when baking a sheet cake or any cake that needs frosting, it’s not the most ideal characteristic. Especially when making a layered cake, you’d want to have nice flat cake layers. Unless the cake comes out flat from the oven, you’ll have to trim the tops to get even layers. Even though it’s fun to munch on the top that is cut off, or turn it into these delicious cake truffles, it is a pain to cut evenly, and it also makes frosting a little bit challenging with all those loose crumbs. So how can you ensure nice level cakes straight from the oven?

The Science

To get to that answer, let’s first understand the physics behind that dome. You’ve mixed your baking powder and/or baking soda well with the flour and your batter is nice and even in the pan. We also expect the oven temperature to be fairly even in the horizontal plane (especially if the cake pan is centered horizontally). There’s one thing that is not being controlled though - the temperature of the pan surface.

As the pan heats up, it transmits that heat to the batter immediately adjacent to the surface. Hence the batter near the edges of is pan gets hotter than the center, until it all reaches equilibrium eventually. That leads to the batter at the edges to bake quickly and set faster while the batter in the center continues to bake at a slower rate, giving more time for the baking powder, soda, eggs etc. to do what they’re supposed to - help the cake rise and become nice and fluffy. While that happens, the edges that are already done baking keep getting harder and harder. Moist insides with crispy edges may be divine for cookies and brownies, but not so much for cakes.

 

 

Figure 3: The science behind uneven cakes

What we want is for that moist fluffy texture of the cake center to extend to the edges instead of having those hard edges and a dome in the middle. That means we have to figure out a way to dissipate the heat evenly, and not let the pan surface heat up quicker than the batter in the center.

 

The Solution

There’s actually a pretty simple remedy that results in flat, evenly baked cakes every single time. That means no more trimming hard edges or the dome!

 

All you need is some thick cotton fabric (that you don’t care too much about), and a couple safety pins. The idea is to attach wet strips of fabric to the outside edge of the baking pan so that the pan edges don’t heat up as quickly. There are some fancy ones that you can buy, but a homemade fix with the cotton fabric (maybe even old pillowcases) comes at hardly any cost. Simply fold the thick cotton fabric lengthwise until the height matches the height of the baking pan.

 

Wet these fabric strips and wring them out just enough so that they’re not dripping. Attach the wet strips to the outside of the pan. Use safety pins to attach the strips to each other such that they are snug enough to not fall off.

Figure 4: Baking pans with and without wet sleeve, ready to be transferred to the oven

 

Bake the cake with the strips on. You can take them off after 25-30 minutes if you want to - by that time they’ve done their job. We have baked leaving the strips on for the entire time, and also taking them out after a half hour. The difference is that the latter gives a nice golden brown crust (without it being hard), which is best for cakes that may not be frosted or only frosted on top.

It takes a couple extra minutes before you start baking to get these strips on, but saves a lot of trouble later, and you get cakes that are nice and soft not just in the middle, but all the way to the edges.

 

 

Figure 5: Cakes baked with and without wet sleeve.

Figure 5 shows photographs of mini cakes baked in 4” diameter pans, where the cake baked without the sleeve has a dome on top and the cake baked with the sleeve is flat on top. The dome phenomenon is much more prominent in larger baking pans (as seen in Figure 2), as the heat dissipation is more uneven. But, with this trick up your sleeve, now you can (more) easily construct creations like this! 

 

Figure 6: 100th blog post celebration cake

Happy baking!

~Gayatri & Karla

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Posted by The Cooks of Cake and Kindness on Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Apple Pie Roll-ups

This tasty snack is inspired by the Pillsbury apple pie crescents, which look super easy to make. I had some apples that needed to be used, and wanted to try something other than my go-to easy apple crisp. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any Pillsbury crescent rolls, or apple pie spice, or even pie crust. So, I made my own! If you have all the ingredients on-hand, these not-too-sweet treats are simple to make, and you’ll have trouble stopping at eating just one!

Ingredients: (makes 16)

2 apples

2 9” pie crusts (*see footnote for recipe)

½ cup brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground cloves

¼ tsp ground cardamom

3 TBSP unsalted butter, melted

Heat oven to 375F.

Core, peel, and slice the apples into eighths so you have 16 pieces total.

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and cardamom.

Roll out the pie crusts and, using a knife or pizza cutter, cut each crust into 8 wedges. On each wedge, spread some of the sugar and spice mix.

Dip each apple piece into the melted butter, then place at the large end of each wedge. Roll up the apple slice in the crust, tamping the end down, and place on a lined baking sheet.

Brush each roll-up with the leftover butter. Bake at 375 F for 10-12 minutes until crust is browned and crispy. Let cool 5-10 minutes.

Enjoy as-is or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

~Karla

Pro-tip: if you use a smaller apple (or only use one apple cut into 16ths), or have large pie crust wedges, pinching the edges together will help keep the delicious caramelized sugar-spice glaze from seeping out during baking.

*Whole-wheat pie crust recipe (makes 2 9-inch crusts when rolled out to about ⅛ inch thickness):

½ cup canola oil

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

4 tsp sugar

½ cup buttermilk (1 cup buttermilk = 1 cup milk + 1 TBSP vinegar or lemon juice)

dash of salt

Stir together flour, sugar, salt. Add oil and mix. Pour in buttermilk and knead w/ hands. Form into ball (or 2 balls). Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour before using.

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Posted by The Cooks of Cake and Kindness on Monday, September 14, 2015