Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake

All the bakers out there - have you ever made something that looked fine and smelt fine, but disappointed in the taste department? I had one such experience with a caramel cake. The darn thing looked perfect, all nicely risen and golden on top, and had that titillating and irresistible smell of caramelised sugar and butter. It held such promise...I took a bite, and disappointment set in as the cake was so depressingly bland. It tasted nothing of caramel. Indeed, it didn't even taste sweet, an impossible situation given how much sugar (and vanilla sugar at that!) I had invested in the thing. And even though I knew from that first bite that it was a total flop, I kept going back for more, hoping that the taste would improve on standing. All those wasted calories...which could have been spent on this Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake instead.

I had a good feeling about this cake as soon as it came out of the oven. The intoxicating scent of lemons  permeated the whole kitchen, and even though it was the dead of winter and near midnight, I felt like I was swathed in a comforting blanket of warmth and sunlight...*ahem*, yeah creative writing and figurative expression have never been my forte; why don't I simply let the pictures do the talking?

I have made many-a-pound cakes before, and I've had consistently better results with a combination of cream cheese and butter, instead of a "pure butter" pound cake. Problem is, cream cheese is so expensive. And it seems such a waste to use it in anything except a cheesecake, where it can truly shine. And this is where sour cream comes in, because it produces a result indistinguishable from that made with cream cheese - for less than half the price! A quick search on the interweb found a pound cake recipe involving sour cream, courtesy of Cooking with Tanya and Epicurious.

The recipe makes a lot of batter, which is why you should use the 16-cup tube pan that both recipes recommend. I went with a loaf pan, and had about 2 cups of batter left over. One cup I put into a smaller pan and baked for 45 minutes, and the other I microwaved for 3 minutes. The microwaved version was...interesting. Good to eat straight away, but became very dry almost immediately afterwards.

The baked version, on the other hand, is very moist, and will probably stay moist and improve in flavour over the next few days. Simply wrap it with a few layers of cling wrap, and leave it at room temperature for 1 or 2 days before eating. The fragrance from the lemon juice and peel is very pronounced, and goes perfectly with the tang from the sour cream. Serve as is or toasted, with a tall glass of cold milk on the side.

Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake
Recipe adapted from Epicurious and Cooking with Tanya

Makes 1 10-inch cake (in a bundt pan or chiffon/angel cake pan)

Ingredients
3 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g unsalted butter, softened
3 cups white granulated sugar
6 eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Finely grated peel from one large lemon
300ml sour cream

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Grease and dust the pan with flour.

3. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with an electric beater until creamy. Gradually add the sugar, and continue to beat for 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat until incorporated.

4. Stir in the lemon juice and grated peel.

5. Fold in the dry ingredients from step 2.

6. Mix in the sour cream.

7. Transfer the batter into the greased and floured pan. Alternatively, you could simply line the pan with foil.

8. Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted near the center comes out clean. You may have to cover the top of the cake with a piece of foil an hour into baking to stop the top from burning. Remove from oven, and allow to cool in pan for 15 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack. Let it cool completely before serving. I recommend wrapping it in cling wrap (once it's completely cool!) and letting it stand at room temperature for 1 or 2 days before eating it, to allow the flavours to develop.

Valentine's Day Madeleines

Facebook was positively a-buzz yesterday with updates about Valentine's Day, with accompanying pictures of impressive arrays of flowers sent by the Significant Other of the owner of the updates. Being my usual competitive self, I parried the onslaught of nauseating expressions of luuurve with photos of these:

That's right, they're Valentine's Day Madeleines! I did start off referring to them as "red velvet Madeleines", but have decided to switch tags since, upon careful consideration, these aren't really "red velvet" as they lack the usual ingredients of cocoa powder. They're still red, though. Clearly!

To be honest, I only made some of the batch red as an after-thought; the real objective was to try out my new Madeleine pan, purchased impulsively during a recent shopping spree in Balmain.

Most of the madeleines were of the natural hue, as I feared that the artificial colouring may turn people off. To get the red colour, I simply dissolved a bit of powdered colouring in water, and added that to the remaining batter.

That's some powerful stuff! Like love. Okay, I'll stop it.

The natural-coloured ones I dusted with a bit of icing sugar, to great effect:

Making these also presented another opportunity to use my beloved, new KitchenAid. As you can see from the picture below, I added lime zest to the madeleine batter. The original recipe called for lemon zest, but I found that the lime flavour went very well with the honey in the batter. And anyway, green zest is fun-ner than yellow zest!

The recipe was for 12 big madeleines, or 72 small ones, but I ended up with enough batter for 15 big ones, meaning that I had to bake the final 3 in a second batch. And, even though I adhered to exactly the same baking times and methods as the first batch, my red madeleines came out browned around the edges. Definitely not as pretty as the first batch:

First batch on the bottom; the more browned, second batch is on the top.

Perhaps it had something to do with temperature adjustment? My oven has been acting up lately. However, regardless of the disparity in visual appeal, all the madeleines had the same, wonderful lime fragrance standing out against the richness of the butter, eggs and honey. The lime and honey combination is a definite winner; I'm excited to apply it to future recipes. Madeleines are best eaten fresh out of the oven, since that is when they're crunchy on the outside but moist within. They do have a tendency to become a bit chewy after cooling completely, but are still great as a snack. My siblings certainly gobbled them up when they came home from school. There almost wasn't enough for me to make a gift package out of them - for my friend, of course, rather than a genuine Valentine xD

Hope those of us with romantic attachments had a great Valentine's Day!

Recipe for Lime & Honey Madeleines

Adapted from From Donuts to Delirium

Makes 12-15 large madeleines

Ingredients

3/4 cup all-purpose/plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon packed light brown sugar

Finely grated zest of 2 small limes

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Red food colouring (dissolve in few drops of water if in powder form): Optional

Confectioners'/icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.

2. In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer or hand mixer to whisk together the eggs, honey, white and brown sugar, and lime zest. 

The eggs, honey, white and brown sugar, and lime zest

3. Beat until mixture is creamy and light in colour. Add the dry ingredients from step 1, and whisk until just combined. Pour in the melted butter, and stir in until well-incorporated. Cover the mixture in the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

The madeleine batter

4. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit), and place the baking rack towards the bottom of the oven. Grease well a 12 mold madeleine pan. Use about 2 tablespoons of batter for each madeleine, or fill mold until two-thirds full. If you want to make some red like I did, reserve some batter to mix with the food colouring.

Madeleine pan, about to be filled with the chilled batter.

5. Bake for 5 minutes, before reducing heat to 150 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit), and baking for another 5 minutes. 

Fresh from the oven.

6. Remove from oven, and remove madeleines either by inverting the pan and tapping it against the counter, or gently prying the madeleines loose (don't burn yourself!) 

Serve madeleines warm, dusted with confectioners' sugar. If packaging in plastic, wait until completely cool. 

Melting Moments with lime buttercream filling

I think the name of the cookies is particularly apt for this time of year in Australia, wouldn't you agree? It felt like it was 45 degrees Celsius outside today! I felt like someone had converted my backyard into an open-air sauna. All the more reason to stay inside and have a few of these "Melting Moments" with a glass of iced tea :D

The original recipe for these come from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection' cookbook. It's a nice, compact volume filled with pretty pictures of tea cakes, cookies, and slices. Even though I've got a thousand other baking cookbooks already (some of which I've only given a cursory flip through), I just had to buy this when I saw it at Costco, if only for the recipe for the delectable looking Melting Moments pictured on the front cover.

The cookies form a sandwich around a filling of lime buttercream. I was fortunate to come across the limes at a local Harris Farm supermarket for the unbelievable price of 10 for $2. I mean, I've seen these retail for $2 each at other fruit and vegetable stores. Except now I had more limes than I know what to do with. Lime iced tea, anyone? The original recipe calls for lemons, but since I did just come home with a whole bag of limes, lime buttercream it was.

True to their name, these cookies do indeed 'melt' as soon as you bite into one. I presented my sister with one when she came home from school today (congrats on starting high school, lil' sis!), and her eyes widened in surprise as her first bite sent crumbs a-flying, before gobbling up the cookie and asking for another. I had the same response for a number of taste-testers, so I can guarantee that these are worthy of your time!

I would recommend chilling the dough in the freezer for a couple of minutes before attempting to roll it into balls. The recipe didn't mention anything about letting the dough harden before working with it, which I felt was an over-sight. The dough right after mixing proved impossible to handle without it melting into a sticky gloop in my hands. Maybe the book was written during the wintertime? Anyway, chilling it will make it so much easier to shape the cookies, thanks to the huge ratio of butter in the recipe. Don't look so affronted; how else would you get the 'melt-in-your-mouth' effect? ;P

If limes aren't readily available, I imagine you could easily substitute in the juice and zest of a lemon or some other citrus fruit. It is preferable to use a citrus-flavoured buttercream, because otherwise there'd be nothing to cut through the richness from all that butter. The acidity comes as a nice surprise. It's so tasty I ended up making cookie sandwiches using leftover buttercream and some store-bought cookies.

Do give the recipe a go, and let me know how your 'Melting Moments' turned out :D And remember to drink plenty of fluids in upcoming days to avoid dehydration!

Recipe for 'Melting Moments' with lime buttercream filling


Adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly 'The Afternoon Tea Collection'


Makes 25 cookie sandwiches, or 50 individual cookies

Ingredients

For the cookies:
250g (8 ounces) salted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (80g) icing/confectioners' sugar, sifted to remove lumps
1 1/2 cups (225g) plain/all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (75g) cornflour/cornstarch

For the lime buttercream:
90g (3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup (120g) icing/confectioners' sugar, sifted to remove lumps
1 teaspoon finely grated lime rind
1 teaspoon lime juice

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius, or 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Place baking rack towards the middle of the oven, closer to the bottom (this will stop the cookies from browning). Line cookie tray with baking paper.

2. Beat butter, vanilla extract, and the sifted icing sugar in a bowl with an electric beater or mixture until light and fluffy. Sift in the plain flour and cornflour, and mix until just combined with a spatula. Don't overmix, or your cookies will become tough!

3. Place cookie dough in fridge or freezer until slightly hardened. With floured hands, roll rounded teaspoons of dough into balls. Place about 2.5cm apart on a lined cookie tray (you may have to bake the entire recipe in a few batches). Flatten dough balls with a floured fork.

4. Bake the cookies for 13-15 minutes. Allow to cool on trays for 5 minutes before attempting to transfer onto a wire rack for further cooling.

5. Make the buttercream by beating together the butter, sifted icing sugar, and lime zest and juice until light and fluffy.

6. Once cookies have completely cooled, use around a rounded teaspoon of buttercream to stick together the two cookie halves. Serve with a dusting of icing sugar, if you like.

Using up that pesky bag of almond meal

ETA: Guess what I spent the morning doing! If you look along the top the page, just under the banner, I've added a tab "About BeyondBourkeStreet", which links to an 'About Me' page. Feel free to check it out, and hope you like the pictures! :D

In this post, I shall share two dessert recipes that I recently employed in order to use up my stash of almond meal. I'm sure this isn't a commonly-occurring problem for most people, since no one goes out of their way buying almond meal in bulk, especially considering how expensive the stuff is. Unless you had plans on making macarons until you developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Too bad I fell out of love with macarons after I'd bought the 1kg bag of almond meal. Something to do with eating so many over a limited period of time that my teeth hurt, my throat smoked, and my sinuses seized up from the overwhelming sweetness. I need to learn moderation.

Orange and poppyseed frangipane tart

The first of the recipes - the orange and poppyseed frangipane tart - is an innovation of my very own. Why orange and poppyseed? Well, why not? :D Haha, actually, it was because I had a bag of poppyseed that also needed to be used up. The flavour combination is such a classic one that I was quite confident it would turn out well in this form. Like for my pound cake, I utilised orange extract instead of orange juice and zest.  I would like to try this with the real stuff some day. Flavour extract notwithstanding, this tart turned out really well. As you can see from the photos, the top was crusty while the insides remained gooey and yielding. Kinda like a macaron, actually! 

All the frangipane tarts I came across on the Internet included some sort of fruity component, whether it be pears poached in white wine, sliced and layered on top, or apple pieces spiced with cinnamon, and the whole thing resembling a postmodernist take on the humble apple pie. Since I was to be taking this to a dinner party the next day, I wanted a recipe that didn't consist of easily-perishable ingredients. Gourmet Traveller to the rescue! The magazine had an online recipe for a Galician almond tart which I used as a reference point for ingredient ratios.  Had I substituted almond meal or some other kind of gluten-free flour for the shortcrust pastry dough, the whole tart would have been gluten-free.

The second recipe is one we're all familiar with: the Flourless Chocolate Cake. Again, a classic. You can't go wrong with classics. I also brought this along to the same dinner party, and the guests were absolutely enamoured with the cake. There were moans upon tasting. One taster commented: "This is the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten. Perfect balance of sweetness." No doubt this was largely due the use of my precious Callebaut bittersweet chocolate, with a 60% cocoa mass.

Flourless chocolate cake

There are literally thousands of recipes for flourless chocolate cakes, some using nut flours as a substitute for wheat flour, while others using only eggs for structural integrity. Since the whole point of this exercise (apart from getting chocolate cake out of it, of course) was to use up my almond meal, I went with the recipe from The Cake Mistress. And I am so glad I did, because this was the best chocolate cake I myself have ever tasted. 

Fudgy, incredibly moist and so intensely chocolatey, I may very well never experiment with another flourless chocolate cake recipe.

Recipe for Orange and Poppyseed Frangipane tart

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

200g plain flour

75g white, granulated sugar

100g cold butter, coarsely chopped

1 egg

1-2 tablespoons cold water

For the tart filling:

4 eggs

250g white, granulated sugar

250g almond meal

3 tablespoons poppyseeds

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons orange extract

To serve: icing sugar

Method

1. To make the shortcrust pastry, combine flour, sugar and butter in a food processor and pulse until the mixture has the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg and 1-2 tablespoons of cold water and pulse until the pastry just comes together. Alternatively, if you don't have a food processor, you can combined everything by hand. Just put the flour, sugar and butter in a bowel and rub together with (clean) finger tips. Add the egg, and cold water if necessary, and rub some more. Don't knead the dough, otherwise the crust will turn out tough.

2. Press the pastry into a 25cm-diameter tart or flan tin, pushing the pastry up the edges. Don't worry about trimming overhanging dough at this point. Cover with cling wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. To make the filling, whisk eggs and sugar until pale and frothy (mixture reaching the 'ribbon stage'), and the mixture has doubled in volume. Fold in the almond meal, vanilla and orange extracts, and poppy seeds.

4. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Remove pastry from fridge, and trim the edges. Prick the base all over with a fork, and spoon the almond mixture into the tart tin lined with the pastry. Smooth top. Bake for 45 minutes or until top is golden, crusty, and hard to touch. Remove from oven, cool tart in pan. Once tart is completely cool, remove from pan and serve dusted with icing sugar.

Recipe for Flourless Chocolate Cake

Adapted from The Cake Mistress

Ingredients

200g good quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped

125g unsalted butter, chopped

225g brown sugar

100g almond meal

5 large eggs, separated

1 pinch of cream of tartar

To serve: 1 tablespoon cocoa powder.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (or 360 degrees Fahrenheit). Line the base and sides of a 20cm-diameter cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

2. Combine the chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl and melt in microwave by heating in 10-second bursts for the first two times, then 5-second bursts subsequently. Stir in between heating. Be careful not to burn the chocolate! Alternatively, you can melt the chocolate and butter over a double-boiler. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and place that bowl over the saucepan of boiling water. Stir while ingredients melt.

3. Once butter and chocolate have completely melted, stir in the brown sugar and almond meal until the mixture is smooth. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the egg yolks one by one, stirring after each addition.

4. In a dry, clean bowl, combine the egg whites and cream of tartar. Beat with a hand-held mixture until frothy, then gradually add the white, granulated sugar. Continue beating until firm peaks form. 

5. Fold one-third of the beaten egg whites into the cooled chocolate mixture. Mix well to make the chocolate mixture more liquid-y. Pour the chocolate mixture into the remaining two-thirds of the beaten egg whites, and fold together carefully with a rubber spatula, being careful not to deflate the mixture. Fold until the mixtures are just incorporated.

6. Pour into the lined cake tin, and bake for 45-50 minutes until a firm crusts forms on top. Remove from oven, and allow cake to cool in tin completely before removing. Once cake is completely cool, sift cocoa powder over the top.

C is for Celebration...and Cake!

HELLO!!! Guess who is finally done with her exams?! I was starting to suffer from major BURN-OUT towards the end of it. The first thing I did after my last exam was take a long walk around the CBD, just taking in the sights and sounds of life. Life essentially gets put on hold during times like those, and all one finds the energy for (apart from studying) is sleeping, eating, and maintaining one's basic bodily functions.

Enough depressing talk. It's all over now, and I, for one, am ready to do some celebratin'! Starting with baking a cake. An orange and poppy seed pound cake, to be exact.

For those not in the know, the designation "pound cake" comes from the fact that the cake is made from a pound of each of its core ingredients: flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Whoever came up with this original, golden ratio was an effing genius. This was the best cake I've ever baked, texture- and taste-wise. The crumb was dense and moist (helped by the substitution of half the butter with 250g of cream cheese, no doubt), and the flavour from all that butter was present, but not to such a degree as to overwhelm the added fragrances of the orange essence. The poppy seeds gave it a great crunch factor.

Basically, I've pretty much decided after tasting this pound cake that this will be my go-to recipe from now on for all "Western-style" cakes, buttercream, fondant and all. This cake slices really neatly, and holds its shape well.

And, best of all, there are so many ways to tweak the recipe for different flavours. Along with the orange extract (purchased from Life Organic in Newtown), I also bought a bottle of hazelnut extract. Ferrero Rocher in pound cake form, anyone? Yes please!

Haha, the goose fat didn't go into the pound cake, do not worry! I found it at the Harris Farm Markets in Broadway. I have plans to use it for roasting chicken henceforth.

Unfortunately, I overmixed the batter slightly so that my cake was had some minor "tunneling" issues (explanation of this term available at Baking Bites). I could tell while I was mixing the batter that gluten was starting to develop, because the batter had taken on an elastic quality reminiscent of the dough I once made for some Asian-style soft breads. You can see some of the "tunnels" in the picture below:

Fortunately, I don't think the texture was affected that much by the overmixing. The use of cream cheese may have had something to do with the moistness retained.

And, just in case it wasn't obvious already...these photos are the result of another (dodgy) attempt at food-styling and photography. I love looking at the beautiful photos of food placed "just so" over at Foodgawker and Tastespotting, but it always makes me so envious of the talent of the amazing people behind the cameras. These photos were taken on my iPhone, and the spotted backdrop happens to be one of my old shirts. Lol. Think I may need to enroll myself in one of those photography courses. And get a camera that doesn't come with internet and a keypad.

Recipe for Orange and Poppy Seed Pound Cake

Adapted from Elizabeth's Edible

Ingredients

Makes 1 10-inch cake

250g butter (I used salted), softened to room temperature

250g cream cheese

3 cups white, granulated sugar

6 large eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tsp good quality orange essence or extract

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius

2. With an electric beater or mixer, beat together cream cheese and butter at medium speed until creamy.

3. Gradually add the sugar, continuing to beat until light and fluffy.

4. Add the eggs, one at a time. Mix until incorporated.

5. Sift together the flour and salt. Add to the butter mixture gradually, folding it in with a rubber spatula. Be careful not to over-mix, to prevent gluten formation (which will make your cake tough and dry).

6. Pour cake batter (which will be very thick!) into a greased and floured 10-inch Bundt pan, or chiffon/angel cake pan. Smooth the top of the batter with a spatula to make it flat.

7. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour and 40 minutes, or until cake tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Take out of oven, and cool in the pan on a wire rack until it can be removed from the pan without giving you third degree burns. Slice, and enjoy with a cup of tea!

C is for cake, and that's good enough for me!