Bagels

I spent Sunday afternoon in La Victoria Bakery's industrial kitchen! La Victoria Bakery has been a staple in the Mission for 60 years and makes amazing pan dulces.

They also let other bakers use their amazing kitchen. This is how I ended up making bagels with my baking class partner, Sonja, through a Sour Flour class.

The art of bagel making can be elusive. Though it only has three ingredients, getting the right consistency is...tough. Over the past year I have been working more with pastry dough and gentle kneading is required. Not so with bagel dough. You need seriously strong hands.  Here is some of the low-down I got from Danny, Founder of Sour Flour.

Bagels are made from starter (a piece of dough in which yeast continually grows by adding flour and water to it daily), high gluten flour, and salt- That's it. It's best to measure with a scale but Danny says, "If not, a cup of flour is usually around 125g, water 225g."

Six bagels can be made from 500g of dough. "The trick is to divide your ingredients by the total dough percentage." Flour is marked at 100%, hydration (water) at 54%, and salt at 2%. So the total for the flour is 1.562. (Wow, this not me talking math, it's Danny via email.)

500g/1.562=320g of flour

320g x .54=173g of water

320g x .022=7g of salt
and 5g of starter

(You will also need baking soda to put in the boiling water)

I was going to send you to a link now that explains, simply, how to make bagel dough, but apparently there is nothing out there...So, just go take Danny's class or try to figure it out in your kitchen and don't be fooled by other recipes that call for other ingredients!

This bagel dough kind of went to hell & back before being boiled & baked...

Vegan Chocolate Vanilla Marble Cupcakes

Second vegan cupcakes of the week! (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World) This time I made the Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cupcakes with vegan buttercream frosting and they were killer!

I discovered that vegan buttercream frosting is more delicious than regular buttercream frosting, hands down.

 

 

Going Vegan

(I'm not really going vegan.) But, vegan baking has always been something I wanted to get into. So I finally bought Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (check out their website!)  and dove in. Vegan baked goods can still have terrific flavor and the only noticeable difference is slight, and it is in the texture- usually a tiny bit denser/chewier.

Baking vegan means you need to replace the eggs and butter with some type of fat and liquid. Often for the fat canola oil is used. Canola is a healthier oil and has a neutral flavor, but Sunflower, safflower or vegetable oil can work too. Margarine and/or shortening are often used too. The liquid used is usually soy milk (or rice milk).

Substituting ingredients in vegan recipes, actually makes the process much simpler. You don't have to worry about having enough eggs or your butter getting to soft. And for the most part, the ingredients you use are common and may already be laying around your kitchen.

I am drawn to cupcake recipes that call for beer, because beer is delicious, but also adds a  complexity to the flavor that makes a chocolate cupcake just that much better. The first recipe I tried out of the book was Chocolate Stout Cupcakes made with a crumb topping.

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes

Ingredients for crumb coating:

1/4 C flour
1/4 C Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/4 C granulated sugar
2 tbsp canola oil

In a small bowl, mix together the cocoa, sugar and flour.  Slowly drizzle the oil in, constantly tossing the mixture with a fork. Crumbs will start to form. Continue to toss and stir the crumbs with your fingers for about 30 seconds. You should end up with mostly big crumbs (1/4" diameter) and maybe some loose flour too.

Ingredients for cupcakes:

3/4 C soy milk

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 C + 2 tbsp flour

1/3 C Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

1.4 C stout

3/4 C sugar

1/3 C canola oil

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract/paste

Preheat oven to 350 and line cupcake tins with paper liners.

Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl. In a separate bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add stout, sugar, oil, and vanilla to soy milk mixture and beat until foamy. Add dry ingredients to wet in two batches and beat for about 2 minutes.

Pour batter into lined cupcake tins, filled 3/4 full. Sprinkle the tops with the crumb topping. make sure the crumbs rest on top of the batter and don't sink in. 

Bake 20-22 minutes. The authors recommend going to veganconnection/com/veganbeer.htm if you're concerned your stout isn't vegan.

Sorry no pictures, they were eaten to fast...What vegan recipe should I try next?

Boozy Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Remember the Boozy Fruit I made back in October? Well almost five months later, this past February, an excuse to take it out of the back of the fridge finally presented itself. (Yes, I'm aware it is now April...)

It was Robert's birthday! So, why not make a Boozy Pineapple Upside Down Cake? At least if it tastes bad, everyone eating it will already be tipsy and tipsy celebratory people are the least likely to think a baked good is anything less than delicious.

And, hey, maybe it really will be delicious and I can write a great blog entry on it and recommend it to all the people that doubt you can make a delicious edible thing out of alcohol preserved fruit.

...Well, it was delicious and here is the recipe (adapted from the Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking)

 

 

Boozy Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Topping ingredients

1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp allspice
1/4 C unsalted butter, melted
1 C brown sugar

Batter ingredients
Enough pineapple chunks (preserved in rum) to cover the bottom of a 10 inch bundt pan
1 1/4 C cake flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C unsalted butter room temperature
3/4 C brown sugar
3 eggs, separated, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 C buttermilk, room temperature
1/4 C granulated sugar

Pour the melted butter into the pan and use a fork to spread the brown sugar evenly over it. Top with pieces of pineapple, slightly overlapping for a snug fit.

Preheat the oven to 325F.

Sift flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. In another large bowl, combine the butter and brown sugar. With a sturdy wire whisk, beat vigorously until the mixture is light in color and fluffly, about 5 minutes. Whisk in the egg yolks and vanilla.

Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in 1/3 of the dry ingredients until almost fully incorporated. Fold in 1/2 of the buttermilk, then dry ingredients again, then th remaining buttermilk, then the last of the dry ingredients. Using a lifting motion, fold until the batter is smooth.

In a clean bowl, whip the egg whites with a paddle with a hand mixer or stand mixer. Beat until they for soft peaks. Slowely pour in the granulated sugar whole cintuing to beat- until soft peaks form again. The whites should fall over fently when he beaters are lifted. Fold the egg whites into the batter. Spread the batter in the prepared pan.

Back the cake until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean, 35-40 minutes. Let cool. Invert a serving platter on the top of the pan and, holding the plate and pan together, invert them. Gently pull the pan off (good luck).

Lemon Cake

In three nights I finished reading, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  In the book, Rose (the young girl) and her mom cook in the kitchen together preparing recipes from The Joy of Cooking. I couldn't help but reminisce about myself as young as four in the kitchen with my mom baking birthday cake and brownies. Our kitchen Holy Grail was (and is) The Joy of Cooking. 

The story is about a girl who can taste the cook's/baker's emotions in the food they prepare. But, while reading it all I could think about was how badly I wanted to make a lemon cake with lots chocolate frosting, as yellow and fluffy as the cake on the cover. (scroll to the bottom for pictures)

look how good this cake looks!

Our 1971 Edition
complete with packing tape around
the binding

I had to do some searching for a good lemon cake recipe, but I finally settled on a Citrus Chiffon Cake out of The Gourmet Cookbook (joy's selection of lemon recipes was a little disappointing) This recipe calls for equal parts lemon and orange zest and only orange juice, but I took some liberty in the amounts of each.

The flavor and texture of the cake was just what I was looking for and I'm thankful that only citrus, butter and chocolate are what can be tasted and not the baker's feelings, I doubt they would taste quite as sweet ;)

Citrus Chiffon Cake

adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook, 2004 Edition, page

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups caked flour (sift before measuring)
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 6 large eggs, separated (separate as well as you can, the white stringy part of the raw egg goes with the whites)
• 6 tbsp canola oil
• 1 tsp finely grated orange zest
• 3 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• 3/4 cups juice (I only had enough lemon for 1/3 squeezed, strained lemon juice and the rest with natural Florida orange juice)
• 2 tsp vanilla paste (or extract)
• 1 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and dust with flour, two 9" or 10" round cake pans.

Sift together flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder and salt into a large bowl

Whisk together yolks, oil, zests, juice and vanilla in a medium bowl. Add flour mixture and whisk until batter is smooth

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at the medium-high speed until they just hold soft peaks. Reduce speed to low and add remaining 1/2 cup sugar, two tbs at a time. Beat until whites just hold stiff, glossy peaks.

Stir 1/3 of the whites into the batter, then gently but thoroughly fold in the rest of the whites. Poor batter equally into the two pans.

Bake until cake is golden and a toothpick comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes. Cool cake completely in the pan on a rack. Turn cake out onto a serving plate and frost.

Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting

(bare with me, this is from memory so it's not exact....)

Ingredients

• ~ 3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) butter, at room temperature
• 6 cups confectioners sugar
• 2 tbsp vanilla paste (or extract)
• 1/2 cup half and half (or milk or heavy cream)
• ~ 2 ounces "dark chocolate" chips or baking drops (about 68% cocoa)

Beat the butter, 3 cups confectioners sugar, vanilla, and half and half until it starts to get light. Add the rest of the confectioners sugar. 

Melt the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl (about 3 10-second intervals, stirring every 10 seconds) Keep the mixer going and add in the melted chocolate. Beat on high speed until light and fluffy.

 

it's so spongy!

Thanks, Jen for the TCHO baking drops, they are absolutely perfect in the butter cream frosting.