A (very SPECIAL) pound cake

A few days ago, I attended the 2012 Food Bloggers' Picnic, organised by Grab Your Fork and Chocolatesuze. I feel slightly embarrassed admitting just how excited and honoured I was to have been invited. Although I've had this blog for over a year now, I'm still slightly hesitant to introduce it to people as a 'food blog', simply because I see it more as a mish-mash of random tid-bits from my life. But since I was invited, I bloody well was going to attend! I spent the week leading up to the even brain-storming what I wanted to bring, and decided on some form of cake. A few more clicks around the net for inspiration, and I came up with...a pound cake!

How was that for an anti-climax? In one moment of madness, I did consider whipping up this awe-inspiring meringue and mango construction that I saw on the cover of one issue of Delicious magazine. And then the voice of reason took over - I mean, whipped egg whites and fresh fruit in the humidity of the Australian summer? It's a virtual recipe for disaster (pun intended!). But the pound cake - good, ol' trusty pound cake with its dense, dense crumb and seemingly interminable shelf life - was perfect for the occasion by contrast.

Not that there's anything wrong with vanilla, or chocolate, or even orange and poppyseed, but since this was to be a very SPECIAL picnic, it was obvious I had to deviate slightly from the well-trodden path. I did this by substituting the butter in the recipe for browned butter, an ingredient that seemed all the rage a while back but has somewhat disappeared from the foodie scene lately. In addition, I incorporated some stewed apple into the batter, and topped it all off with cream cheese frosting spiked with real maple syrup.

What is "browned butter"? The "browned" bit refers to the fact that the butter is heated until the milk solids and butter fat separate, and taken off the flame when both components acquire a nutty aroma, and a deep, oaken-brown hue. It is also known as beurre noisette. In this case, "noisette" (literally: "hazelnut" in French) obviously derives from the scent of roasted hazelnuts that appear when the butter is done browning. 

Solidified browned butter, bearing a striking resemblance to a golden iceberg!

When I took my first bite of the cake at the picnic, my heart sank in disappointment. The crumb was very dry, and for all intents and purposes, it appeared that I had over-mixed the batter. The saving grace was definitely the cream cheese frosting. The maple flavour was not prominent, apart from adding sweetness, but the soft, sweetened cream cheese mixed with a dash of cinnamon made me want to lick the whole surface off of the cake.

Tasting a slice of my cake at the picnic.

HOWEVER, when I tasted it again the next day, when I took over some of the leftovers (and trust me, there was a lot) to a friend's tea party, the cake was unbelievably moist. Whereas the previous day I'd been reluctant to finish even that tiny square I cut for myself, I couldn't help but go back for forkful after guilty forkful at my friend's party. My theory is that the time it spent chilling in the fridge overnight somehow helped it to develop moisture, or because that first slice I tried at the picnic was an edge piece, and was dried out from being in contact with the cake tin. Whatever the reason was, I was wrong to dismiss this recipe. I only hope that some of my fellow bloggers got to try a bit that was closer to the middle :D

A visibly moister crumb. Picture taken the day after the picnic, two days after baking.

Before I move onto the recipe, I would like to direct your attention to the pattern over the frosting. Pretty, is it not? It's obvious that I used a stencil for it, but did you know that I carved out the stencil by myself? After I copied down the pattern by hand from a picture I saw on the internet? Without tracing paper? Okay, okay, I'll stop bragging. I am awfully proud of it, though.

Okay, so moving onto the recipe! There are quite a few separate steps, but they're all very straight-forward. Hopefully you'll find this tutorial useful, and have a go at making this (very SPECIAL) pound cake yourself! Click the "Read More" link below for a full tutorial on making the cake.

Gingerbread House, from scratch!

Ho ho ho! Is it Christmas yet? No? Well, I'm already in the festive mood thanks to the Gingerbread House which I spent the past two days constructing. It nerve-wracking at times, and yes, I did get powdered sugar everywhere, but when I beheld my finished opus magnum sitting jauntily atop the kitchen counter, in a position visible to all that walks in the front door, I must say that it was well worth the effort!

Okay, not exactly in the same league as Bill Yosses, but this was my very first gingerbread house and I am damn proud of it! Especially considering how I'd already psyched myself up beforehand, imagining the multitude of ways disaster could strike: the gingerbread overbaking and burning, the walls crumbling from being too hard/soft, the royal icing (oh my goodness, the stuff of nightmares; more on this later), and whether I could stop myself from sticking every piece of candy within a 10-mile radius onto it.

Finding the right recipe for the actual gingerbread took much longer than I anticipated. I sifted through blog after blog, website after website in search for a recipe that would produce a 1) delicious and 2) sturdy gingerbread cookie. Ultimately, I chose the basic recipe for gingerbread dough given at Gingerbread House Heaven, a website that is literally a treasure trove of information pertaining to all things gingerbread. The recipe makes enough dough for one gingerbread house (like mine) measuring roughly 15cm x 15cm x 22cm, as well as 30-35 gingerbread people (being politically correct). I guess I could have made my house a bit larger, but I was using the template given on the website.

The dough, flattened into tiles and chilled until hard.

The recipe called for molasses instead of water. I've made gingerbread before using water, and I believe that the molasses make the gingerbread taste much better. It also adds a great colour to the house. So do use molasses and dark brown sugar if you can get your hands on it. The dough was a cinch to mix together. Once the dough had been chilled, I rolled it out, and cut out the pieces using the template.

One thing that troubled me was how the baked gingerbread appeared to progressively get softer as time went on. I assume it was because the gingerbread was sucking in the moisture from the surrounding air. By the time I was ready to assemble the house, the pieces all felt a bit floppy.

The front and back walls of the house, after baking.

Thankfully, the 'mortar' icing that I concocted really was some powerful stuff indeed, and once I stuck the pieces together, there was no way they were going any place else. So, about royal icing. Ever since I tried whipping up a batch a few months ago using powdered egg whites (which was a major, expensive disaster), I've been reluctant to have another shot at it. This time, I took the controversial route and used fresh egg whites. I'm well aware of the fears concerning salmonella, but I reasoned that 1) I've been eating runny yolks for ages and never once had a tummy upset, so the whites should be even safer and 2) these were for me and my family so it's not like I'm gonna get sued...right? xD

About to stick on the final panel. Fingers crossed!

I used two different recipes for the decorating royal icing, and the icing I used as mortar. I made the decorating icing first, and it was obvious straight away that that stuff would never work as 'glue'; it was just too runny, soft, and slippery. It did a fine job used for piping, though. Check out the details on the windows!

It was also good for making the fish-scale pattern on the roof. I used some mini M&Ms for colour:

For the mortar, I simply increased the icing sugar : egg white ratio, so that the consistency was a lot stiffer from the outset. It dried really quickly, so I had to work fast. I sacrificed a tissue box because there wasn't anyone around to hold up the pieces for me while I applied the icing. Next time (if I do decided to repeat this madness again!), I will be more careful and judicious when piping the icing, so that the mortar will be less obvious.

17, one of my favourite numbers!

The board on which I put the house looked a bit sad and empty, so I got to work adding some little details. The pile of logs sitting near the front are actually chocolate-coated finger biscuits (found lying around the cupboard). I chopped up two mini candy canes for the doorframe:

If only trees really were made from chocolate...

I attempted to create a cobblestone path out of chopped cashew nuts, but the dimensions were all wrong and it didn't really look like a path...so I turned it into a sandstone border for a lovely, green lawn instead:

The grass was green-tinted royal icing.

And, for good measure (and because we are in Australia after all!), I threw in a pool, lined with Jelly Belly jelly beans. The rocky path leading to the pool is made from sugar-coated white chocolate pieces, made to resemble, you guessed it, rocks!:

And here are some of my decorated gingerbread people:

One final picture of my edible villa: