First Bake

My first bake as a homeowner! Yay!  Having just recently moved to Atlanta, one of our top priorities was to get on the property ladder.  Renters no more!  The hub and I snagged a pretty sweet loft in a converted building downtown, something we could've never afforded in NYC.  And the kitchen has counter space for days!!  Now that we're pretty much settled, a break-in bake was in order.

I've been playing around with alternative sugars for some time, and in the South, sorghum syrup is everywhere.  Baking with liquid sweeteners can be tricky, since they add a lot more moisture to baked goods, which can drastically alter results if trying to substitute them for a recipe with granulated sugar.  Sorghum syrup is the juice of the sorghum cane, that's been boiled and reduced to a molasses -like consistency.  The complex, cereal flavor can be addictive, and it pairs really well with salt.

Only having a couple liquid sweetener cake recipes in my arsenal, I'm always ready to seek out more.  I found an interesting recipe from Epicurious using maple syrup, and knew it would be easy to swap out the maple for sorghum.  I also have this thing where I can never just follow a recipe as written, especially when baking at home, where I may not have the exact ingredients on hand, or my intuition tells me it'd be so much better with the additional pinch of this or that.  Case in point, many chocolate cake recipes out there only use cocoa powder as their chocolate component. That's not a chocolate cake to me.  I have to have REAL chocolate in my chocolate cake!  I also threw in a little bit of sourdough starter into the mix, just because.  Perhaps it will improve the crumb and flavor from the original... but I'll never know, because I will never make the original! Lol.  I would love to have used sorghum flour in this cake as well, but I didn't have any on hand. Next time!

This cake, with the sorghum buttercream recipe that follows, turned out just as I'd hoped.  The sorghum really comes through, and the cake is just sweet enough to be satisfying.  The cake itself is moist with good structure and has a lovely soft crumb.  Please try making this recipe at home, and deviate at will.

Chocolate Sorghum Sourdough Cake

Makes 1 low lying brownie pan's worth

96 g      all purpose flour

25 g      cocoa powder

¾ tsp     baking soda

½ tsp     baking powder

1 tsp     fine sea salt

170 g    sorghum syrup

120 g    yogurt (I used almond milk yogurt b/c that’s what I had)

1            whole egg

30 g      grapeseed oil

1 tsp     vanilla extract

1 tsp     coffee (optional, I had some left in the coffee maker)

20 g      sourdough starter or levain (also optional)

30 g      unsweetened chocolate, melted and warm

Preheat oven to 350F.  Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl large enough to fit everything else.  In a separate bowl, whisk together all the liquids except the chocolate.  Once everything is homogenous, quickly scrape in and whisk the melted chocolate, so it doesn't seize up.  Now pour this liquid mix into the dry mix.  Starting from the center out, whisk into a smooth batter.  Transfer to a greased brownie pan and allow to rest before baking about 10 minutes (this is to allow the chemical leaveners to hydrate, as well as let that sourdough reactivate). 

Baker's trick:  when I want a nice flat, cake with little or no bump, I'll wrap the pan in a wet dishtowel, like a scarf around a neck, to insulate the sides from crusting too quickly.  This allows the entire cake to bake at basically the same rate, therefore less bump! 

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top looks dry and the cake gives some resistence when lightly pressed.  This cake won't rise much, so don't be alarmed.  Cool about 10 minutes in the pan, then invert onto a rack, then invert again so the top of the cake is facing up.  Cool completely.

Salted Sorghum Buttercream

Enough to frost this cake – you’ll need an electric hand mixer for this, sorry

80 g      sorghum syrup

5 g         fine sea salt

2            whole eggs, large

213 g    soft butter (or 1 stick)

5 g         vanilla extract

Bring the sorghum and salt to a boil and allow it to slightly caramelize (swirl the pan as the edges of the syrup darken a bit). Turn off the heat, and allow to cool just for a few seconds.  Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, using an electric hand mixer, whisk the eggs until foamy.  Carefully drizzle in the still very hot syrup into the eggs while whisking constantly.  The syrup my harden a little in the bottom of the bowl but that’s okay for now.  Quickly fill the same pot that had the sorghum in it half full with water and get it on the stove again.  Now put your sorghum-eggy bowl over the hot water and continue whisking until the foam becomes warm, thick and almost dense.  There should be no more trace of any hardened syrup.  Now pull the bowl off the heat and continue whisking until just lukewarm.  Add the soft butter in chunks, then the vanilla.  Whisk until smooth.  Your buttercream may look like a loose icing at this point (mine did).  No worries.  Throw the bowl in the freezer for a couple minutes, then whisk again.  Keep whisking until it gains some of that density again.  If it breaks, wave the bowl over an open flame to warm slightly.  If you over-warm it, and it becomes soup again, back in the freezer.  I know this sounds finnicky, but please don’t give up.  It will come together, I promise.  Frost and decorate your cooled cake now.

If you've got good, flaked sea salt, it won't hurt to sprinkle some over the top.

check out that crumb!

I just piped and piped until I ran out of buttercream

Vacation Baking

Having a long vacation is nice, to say the least.  Being able to look forward to as well as look back on so many first time experiences, one can take comfort in a flexible itinerary.  Another aspect in marathon travel is the fact that of all the cities and places you visit, there are bound to be some duds.  I won't name them, but some of the towns we've visited on this trip have downright sucked.  For whatever reason: the people were rude, everything was closed (which happens a lot in Europe), food options were lacking, a general underwhelming vibe, or maybe one or both parties was suffering from travel fatigue; it's to be expected that there will be relatively low points in the midst of a highlight of one's life.

One such dip struck me before Thanksgiving.  My instagram feed was blowing up with everybody making pies, yet I was staying in budget accommodation with no oven (or heating).  I was also feeling guilty that I had finally had the chance to spend time back home with my family for Thanksgiving, but I chose to travel in the opposite direction.  Oh well, whatever.  Don't feel too sorry for me, cuz I'm still on vacay!

With Thanksgiving recently passed and Christmas quickly nearing, my urge to get back into the kitchen has never been so strong.  Not a professional kitchen, per se, but just the itch to make something sweet and comforting was starting to overwhelm me.  Luckily, when we got to Burgundy, we scored big time with the most amazing AirBnB with basically the most perfect and functional country kitchen ever.  With a long wood countertop underneath a sunny window, I knew this would be my chance to get my hands moving again.  On one of our afternoons out, I purchased an inexpensive digital scale to help me get the job done.

As soon as I could, I knew my first bake would have to be a pie to ease the pain from missing Turkey Day.

Our AirBnB came with a cat who was eager to help.

With the cold weather settling in, apple pie was all I wanted.

We gave a bit to our hosts downstairs and saved the rest!

Having just a couple more days in this lovely kitchen, I got to work again on some soft white dinner rolls.  You'd think I'd be happy eating baguettes and tasty French bread everyday, and I certainly was, but the kid in me wanted something more familiar.  My grandmother would often bring home a pack of those sweet and airy Hawaiian rolls, and I'd end up easily munching half a pack after school and ruining my dinner as a consequence. Check out the slideshow below and the recipe at the bottom of this post.

Since we went out for dinner that night, we didn't actually eat our dinner rolls until the next day, where they made great little ham and cheese sandwiches!

Since I still hadn't gotten the baking bug out my system yet, and was loving working with any kind of dough again, I made another batch of the soft white bread and "babka-d" it.  Yeah, I know everyone is making babka these days, and why not?  They're delicious and you can make them as personal as you want.  To fill mine, I remembered I bought a bag of pralines roses from Lyon a few days back, so they got crushed and rolled up into the babka along with more butter and some fall spices I had from making the apple pie.  I was in love the color of the babka before and after the baking!

We sadly had to leave that incredible farmhouse kitchen (and the adorable cat) to move onto our next home in Alsace.  The kitchen here is much more modern in feel, brand new and a cook's dream!  Since our main focus for this area was to visit as many Christmas markets as I could handle, there wasn't much time left for baking.  I did, however, come across something interesting in the local supermarket.

Pret a Cuire - Ready to Bake!

Cake batter in a bag!  On the shelf (not refrigerated) and ready to bake cake batter... genius!  Being a professional, I'm not normally one for packet mixes and ready made frostings, but this I had to try! The ingredients on the back label were standard cake components, with only a couple things I couldn't pronounce.  I literally just emptied the bag into a baking dish and let it go in the oven.  Out came a very decent, and pretty moist chocolate cake... expectations exceeded.  I can't say for certain, but I don't think this kind of thing has hit the US market yet.  Somebody get on this!

As promised, here's a recipe for those rolls from above. Please don't feel you need to use a mixer for this, because I certainly didn't.  

SOFT WHITE ROLLS
makes 12 rolls or enough dough for one babka loaf

130 g   warm milk
3 g       dry yeast
1           medium egg
18 g      sugar
6 g       sea salt
30 g     butter, cubed
250 g   bread flour
more flour for kneading
melted, salted butter for brushing

In the bottom of a medium bowl, mix the milk and yeast with a fork. Stir in the sugar and salt, then add the butter. The butter will stay in cubes, but that's okay.  Now dump the flour on top of the liquids and get the mix going a little with the fork.  Once a shaggy dough forms, I get rid of the fork and start bringing everything together with my hands. Flour a board or bench and continue kneading dough until the butter is incorporated and the dough is smooth and not too sticky... I did this for about 3 or 4 minutes.  Lightly oil the bowl you used to initially mix the dough (that should be fairly clean) and place in the bottom.  Cover with plastic wrap or towel and allow to rest at room temp 1 hour.
Put this covered bowl in the fridge and chill overnight.  Next morning, punch down and portion dough into twelve 30g pieces. Pre-shape, rest with towel covering them about 10 minutes, then shape again before putting in a buttered baking dish (I used a 10" pie plate).  Cover again and allow to almost double in volume in a warm-ish place.  Brush with butter before baking in a 375F oven for about 16 minutes. Brush again with buter and allow to cool. Great to eat the day of or the next day!