Epic Portions

Tag: Baking

  • Fancy Schmancy Carrot Cake with Mango-Cream Cheese Icing

    I must apologize for leaving you so long without a baking post, oh Epic Portions readers.  I know you need your sugar fix, but homework has been getting me down, the weather has been getting me outside, and rock shows galore have been getting me dancing… leaving little time for baking and even less for blogging.  I have been baking though, oh yes!  Expect three posts from me before the weekend is out – the first being this super awesome Fancy Schmancy Carrot Cake with Mango-Cream Cheese Icing!

    This is NOT your average carrot cake. Carrot cake? Yeah, I know – boring. Bland. Kind of weird, actually.  But this?  This is a moist, spicy, flavorful, fruit-filled concoction which you can add just about anything to and it only improves it. Seriously! Experiment with it. You will not be disappointed. Plus, you can make just about any kind of cream cheese icing to suit your flavor-and-color preferences, making it both beautiful and versatile. I chose mango because I made this cake on Easter and mangoes feel spring-like to me, but really: anything goes. Give it a try.

    (Note: this has a long ingredient list and if you don’t bake often it can be a pricey recipe, but if you do bake often you will probably have a lot of things on hand… and either way it is totally worth it. And, despite the long list, it’s a pretty easy recipe to actually make.)

    Fancy Schmancy Carrot Cake
    Makes a three-layer 8″ round cake. Or whatever comparable size you want to make.
    2.5 cups all-purpose flour
    2 tspn baking soda
    1 tsp baking powder
    5 tspn cinnamon (or to taste)
    3 tspn nutmeg (or to taste)
    3 tspn salt (or to taste)
    5 tspn ground ginger (or to taste)
    4 tspn ground cloves (you getting the idea here, yet?)
    4 eggs
    2 sticks (16 tblspn total) butter – SOFT
    3/4 cup white sugar
    3/4 cup light brown sugar
    5 oz crushed pineapple in juice
    5 oz mango – chopped, pureed, in really small pieces somehow
    2 tblspn vanilla
    4 cups shredded carrots
    4 to 5 oz copped nuts – I prefer hazelnuts, but walnuts are nice too
    3/4 dried cranberries, with liquor liquid of preference to macerate
    1/2 cup crystallized ginger, really finely chopped

    Let me start by saying: the mini chopper is your friend. Carrots? Chopped! Mango? Chopped! Seriously, I put almost everything in this recipe in there and it makes it so easy and so good. For this recipe to really work, it’s best to have everything in an even and fine consistency, and the mini chopper is your best answer. I skipped the OXO and got an electric one, and I have never looked back.

    Also, let me say: to bake effectively with dried cranberries, you need to macerate (er, soak) them for at least 4 hours, and 12 hours is really better. I prefer to soak cranberries in spiced rum, but this time I ran out of rum so I added dry red wine, and that was nice too.  It doesn’t, by any means, need to be liquor.  Just find something liquid and tasty, and give your cranberries a good long soak in an air-tight container before you bake ’em. Just make sure you drain them before adding to the recipe – you do NOT want to add your macerating liquid.  I recommend a sieve.

    Now.  In a small bowl, combine your flour, baking soda, baking powder, and spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, salt, cloves and whatever else you feel like.  In a separate, large bowl beat the eggs, butter and sugars until combined and soft.  Add the pineapple (with juice), mango, and vanilla.  Add the dry flourspice mix and beat on low to blend.  Add the carrots, and beat to combine.  Add the walnuts, cranberries, and crystallized ginger, and combine.  Pour into three well-greased 8″ round cake pans, and bake all three for 30-45 minutes at 350F.  The length of time to bake will depend on how much liquid you’ve added in the form of fruit and such; really juicy mango will take longer, for instance. Depend on the age-old toothpick trick and know that moist is better than burnt, and you’ll be fine.  Cool on a wire rack until room temp, remove from the pans, and refrigerate the cakes for an hour or so to get them assembly-ready.

    Mango Cream Cheese Frosting
    16 oz SOFT cream cheese
    10 tblspn SOFT butter
    4 tspn vanilla
    2 cups (ish) powder sugar
    Mango puree to taste and texture (I buy frozen mango, thaw, and mini-chop.)

    Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until combined.  Gradually add sugar and mango until you reach a consistency, sweetness, and mango-ness that you enjoy.

    Assembly: Place bottom cake layer on a serving plate, and coat top with icing. Add second layer and coat top with icing. Add third layer, and generously coat top and sides with icing.  Smooth to make it pretty.  I finish mine off with edible ball bearings, because they are colorful and fun and add a little extra crunch, which I really like.

    Voila!  This has been the attendees’ second-favorite thing I’ve made, just after the Lumpy Bumpy cake. It’s a huge hit.  Enjoy!

  • Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Bacon S’mores.

    Yeah, that’s right: Bacon S’mores.  Chocolate-covered candied bacon smothered in marshmallow in a graham cracker crust.

    I can’t take credit for this idea, and actually I’m not sure I would want to.  A friend tweeted about The Complete Sale of Selma Lee posting about Chewbacca Bars, which they also call Chunky Chewies.  I immediately started telling my friends about them, calling them bacon s’mores, until someone pointed out the lack of graham. So of course,  I added graham! Below is my own recipe, which is extraordinarily similar to others’ recipes, except where I made some changes.

    Start with one pound of thick-cut, peppered bacon. Cut the uncooked slices into quarters or even sixths, and marinate the pieces for a few hours (in the fridge!) in equal parts balsamic vinegar and maple syrup (the real stuff, none of that Mrs Jemima gunk.) Coat with brown sugar and more pepper, and bake on a wire rack on a LINED baking sheet at 350F until delicious. I didn’t time it. If you are someone who can leave baking bacon well enough alone, good for you. I stuck my head in there to smell it every, oh, ten seconds, so it took a while to bake but it was easy to tell when it was done.

    Here is some delicious, marinated bacon ready to bake:

    And here is what happens if you don’t line your baking sheet with tinfoil.

    SERIOUSLY, I have been soaking and scrubbing my baking sheet since Sunday and it hasn’t come clean yet.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you to line it.

    When the bacon is done, remove it from the oven and move it to a plate to cool.  Melt about 2 1/2 cups chocolate – I used dark, but it’s up to you – in a double boiler, and when the bacon is sufficiently cool, dump it in and fold it in to coat. Really coat it. No wimpy half-coated pieces here. Place a greased wire rack on a large amount of newspaper in an area of your kitchen that you don’t much need to make other things, and dump the chocolate-covered bacon onto it to set. Let it set. Stop eating it, just let it set.

    Meanwhile, take 2 of the 3 packets of graham crackers that come in a normal sized box, and make really fine crumbs out of them. I did this using freezer bags and a rolling pin and beating them into submission. You can also use a food processor, but the rolling pin method is actually quite fun! Place 1/2 of the crumbs into a glass 9×11″ baking dish, and set the other half aside.

    Now, you make marshmallow. Yes, you make it from scratch, because homemade marshmallow is god’s gift to the world and about 427times better than store-bought. Really. I used Joy of Baking’s recipe and I used it verbatim*, because everyone warned me it was really gooey and kind of difficult. It is really gooey, but it actually cleans up pretty easily with just water, and it is not that difficult.

    1 cup cold water
    3/4 oz unflavored gelatin (usually comes in 1/4oz packets, 4 packets in a box)
    2 cups white sugar
    1 cup light corn syrup
    1/4 tspn salt (I use popcorn salt)
    2 tspn vanilla extract

    Put 1/2 cup cold water into a large, clean metal bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let stand until gelatin softens, about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, place the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup cold water into a saucepan. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and boil on high heat until the syrup reaches 240F, about 10 minutes.  With mixer running (it helps to have about three hands at this point) pour the hot syrup into the water-gelatin bowl. Add the vanilla. Gradually increase the speed of your mixer to high and beat the mixture until it turns into marshmallow cream. Try not to cut off your fingers with the mixer when you are sticking them into the bowl to taste it.  Be prepared to stand there for awhile – the recipe says 10 min, but mine took 15 min or more. It will grow, so be sure to use a big bowl.  It will also taste really good, like even better than you are expecting, so don’t eat it all with your fingers (if they’re still attached.)

    NOW – chop the chocolate covered bacon into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Pour 1/2 of the marshmallow cream into your crumb-prepared baking dish, and put the chocolate-covered bacon on top. Add the remaining marshmallow and sprinkle the other half of the graham crumbs on top.  Allow to set for a few hours – I gave it four hours but sped it up a bit in the fridge, and it was fine.

    It will look delicious and pretty like this:

    … and it will be divisive.  My sister says chocolate-covered bacon is the most disgusting thing she can think of;  fair-goers across America think it’s a wonderful treat.  Everyone who tried a piece liked it, but only one went back for seconds. I thought it was good.  I think most things made with bacon and most things made with marshmallow are good.  Chocolate doesn’t hurt.

    Will you like bacon s’mores?  Only one way to find out! 🙂

    *verbatim? OK, so not really. I don’t really do verbatim. But I came pretty close this time… I doubled the recipe because I needed extra to make s’mores cakes for the vegetarians and the Muslim (blog post to come) and I also used a hand mixer instead of the recommended stand mixer, because I don’t own a stand mixer. But otherwise: totally verbatim.

  • Lumpy Bumpy Toffee Cake

    My friends were pretty excited when I announced that I’d be blogging here – not just because they’re supportive and stuff, but because I also announced that I’d be hosting regular dessert parties in order to have something to write about. This past Sunday was our first: I made Lumpy Bumpy Toffee Cake, a chocolate-mascarpone-Baileys-toffee creation that was even better than I expected… and which, aesthetically, lives up to its ridiculous name.

    I should note that I did not make the toffee myself. Have you ever tried to make toffee? Perhaps some day when I have nothing else to do, I’ll give that a shot. In this case, I already had two other delicious layers to make up, so I left the toffee to a pro: Audra Martin, a local toffee whiz. I bought a small jar of milk chocolate toffee and a small jar of dark, mixed them together in a ziplock bag, beat them into submission small pieces with a rolling pin, and I had my topping.

    As for the rest – this is a combination of about five recipes, inspired by a sort-of similar cake seen at Sugarland in Chapel Hill NC.

    Lumpy Bumpy Toffee Cake

    A chocolate sponge cake with Bailey’s-mascarpone cream and toffee topping.

    For the cake:

    6oz good-quality dark melting chocolate (I use Ghirardelli 60%)
    3 tablespoons coffee
    6 large eggs, separated and brought to room temperature
    2/3 cup white sugar, divided into two 1/3 cup amounts
    1/2 tablespoon salt (I prefer baking with popcorn salt for the texture)

    In a double-boiler, melt the chocolate and the coffee together, then allow to cool almost to room temperature. Don’t force it in the fridge, you’ll mess up the texture. Leave it be, go watch a movie or something, and just let it cool.

    In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks, 1/3 cup sugar, and the salt until it all turns pale and thick. Fold in the melted chocolate.

    In a separate bowl, with clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peak form.  Gradually beat in the other 1/3 cup sugar until it just holds soft peaks.

    Gradually fold the egg whites into the yolk-chocolate mixture. Pour batter into a 9″ springform pan and bake at 350F for about 25 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in the springform on a wire rack.

    A note: this cake is going to deflate while cooling.  One minute it’s filling the pan, then you set it to cool, and suddenly it’s 3″ tall. It’s OK.

    For the cream:

    100ml Baileys Irish Cream
    16oz mascarpone
    2 tablespoon white sugar
    slightly less than 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream (the cream and Baileys should add up to about 3/4 cup liquid)

    In a large bowl, beat the mascarpone and sugar until combined. Add the Baileys and cream, and beat until it reaches a consistency you like. Try not to eat it all before you get around to assembling the cake.

    To assemble:

    Remove the cake from the springform and place it on a serving plate. If yours is anything like mine, your cake will have deflated, leaving a crater in the middle with slightly raised edges. Fill the cake crater with a thick, lovely layer of mascarpone, and top with roughly 2 cups toffee crumbles.

    Enjoy!