We have a lot of March birthdays in my family~extended family, by marriage family, and friends-that-count-as-family.
I pushed Dean to take a little jaunt this weekend. My motivation was the delivery of a few treats I'd baked.
My sister had a birthday 2 weeks ago. She's on a gluten-free diet. She's a great baker but she's also one who doesn't do it for herself. For her I baked Chocolate Feather Bed. For my mother (birthday last weekend) I baked cream puffs from Beranbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible. She has many fond memories of the ones at the Wisconsin State Fair.
I also made baked low-fat apple donuts from the Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread for my father-in-law. They're fun baked in a mini bundts pan.
Review:
I have two of Beranbaum's books, and I have others on my wishlist. She's an excellent baker, not just a recipe writer or interesting personality. Her books spend time on why she does things, and she's not adverse to systematic experimentation to find out the best way to crack an egg or why different flours affect cakes differently. I highly recommend her blog.
In this case I've made one cake from her new book. It was fiddly, anything but healthy, and fantastic. When baking for someone who can't eat cake normally it was completely worth it. It was not dense, crumbly, or healthy-tasting and my sister deserved every bite. I did two different recipes for cream puffs, and while the first set came out to the minute and deflated, I learned for the second set. They both tasted wonderful and were easy to make. One set I made with chocolate cream. Yum.
My only hesitation with Rose's Heavenly Cakes is that it has fewer 'regular' cakes and frostings. It has wedding cakes and ingots and ganache galore. This may mean that her first cake book (The Cake Bible) has many more standbys and there isn't much repetition. I haven't read that one yet. And while I'm not sorry I bought this one (Goodwill, remember? :) ) it isn't something I can pull out for a straight chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. I've also noticed through the two books I have that because there is so much information, so much mix and match, sometimes it is difficult to find things. The filling for cream puffs is over 10 pages after the recipes for the puff. Recipes which build on each other aren't next to each other. They don't always have a page number to flip to either. Because of the informational content the books work better when read from beginning to end (or the entire section) rather than flipping and doing a single recipe. While this is wonderful for dedicated bakers, not so easy on the newbies. (I did like the index though. It's nice to know which cakes need egg whites or yolks and how many.)
The low-fat (baked) donuts are excellent, but very sweet. In fact, low-fat though they may be the largest ingredient is sugar (brown, maple syrup). I can't eat fried things though, and I can eat sugar, so we make them every so often. I decrease the sugar and maple syrup, trade off applesauce for apple juice, and add lots of apple chunks (and possible chopped pecans).
More birthdays to come, and a fascination with bundt cakes (in my past experience rather dry and lifeless but Beranbaum's book is making me rethink that) and Scandinavian baking. Krumkake? Aebelskiver? Lefse?
0 comments:
Post a Comment