Lemon Yogurt Cake

This cake may be my new favorite thing. The delicate crumb is moist from the yogurt, and the lemon flavor light and fragrant. The cake itself is a bright sunny yellow, with a shiny glisten from the marmalade glaze. I can eat the whole loaf by myself, and with only 1/3 cup of oil, I don't feel so guilty when the plate is empty. If you're not a glutton like me, the cake will store nicely for a few days tightly covered. The yogurt and oil will keep it moist.

Feel free to experiment with this recipe. I'm sure it'll taste delicious flavored with orange or just plain vanilla.

Lemon Yogurt Cake
Make 1 loaf

Cake:
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup plain yogurt (I used nonfat)
zest and juice of one lemon
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Glaze:
1/4 cup citrus marmalade
1 tsp water

For cake:
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Combine yogurt, eggs, sugar, lemon zest and juice, stirring until smooth. Gradually add in dry ingredients. Fold in vegetable oil. Pour into a greased 8.5x4.5x2.5 loaf pan, and place in a 350 degrees preheated oven. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick comes out clean. Turn cake out onto a rack and let cool.

For glaze:
While the cake is cooling, heat up the marmalade with the water. Brush the top of the cake with glaze.

Apple Frangipane Tart

Beautiful, elegant, delicious. This tart consists of a tender, buttery crust, smooth almond filling, and sweet apples. It's simple enough for a casual dessert, but also pretty enough for an elegant dinner.

Apple Frangipane Tart
1 10-inch tart

Sweet butter crust:
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp ice water, or as needed

Frangipane
1/2 cup almond paste
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp almond extract

3-4 medium sweet apples - peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup apricot jelly, heated until thinned

For pastry crust:
Cream together butter, sugar, and egg yolk. Sift in flour and salt, and stir to combine. Add in enough cold water to bring dough together, being careful to not overmix. Pat dough into a round disk, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Lightly flour the board, and roll the chilled dough into approximately a 12 inch circle. Lay the tart dough into a buttered 10-inch fluted tart pan (with a removable bottom), and press into the bottom and up the sides. Prick all over with a fork and return to the fridge to chill.

For frangipane:
Combine butter and almond paste until smooth. Add in almond extract and egg. Stir in flour until combined.

To assemble:
Pour frangipane evenly into the tart shell. Arrange apple slices on top of the frangipane (be creative ^.^just make sure that they overlap because apples will shrink when baked). Bake in a preheated 400 degrees oven for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 and bake for 20 more minutes. The frangipane should be puffed and the apples golden. Remove from oven and brush with heated apricot jelly.

Toffee Almond Bars

Beach picnic: turkey and swiss cheese sandwich, washed down with cinnamony horchata, and finished off with gooey toffee squares.

This recipe is from Alpineberry, and gave me a way to use up half a box of cake mix. The original recipe called for toffee bits, but I found that Almond Rocas, which have the ultimate combo of chocolate, almond, and toffee, work very well.

Toffee Almond Bars
9x13"

Crust:
1 box yellow or white cake mix
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg

Filling:
1 can condensed milk (16 oz)
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup toffee bits or chopped almond rocas
1/4 cup chopped almonds

Mix cake mix, butter, and egg until combined. Pressed into a 9x13" pan. Bake in a 350 degrees preheated oven for 7 minutes. The crust wouldn't look done.

In the mean time, combine egg and condensed milk. Stir in toffee bits and chopped almonds. Pour filling on baked crust. Bake for 24-30 minutes until top is browned. Let bars to cool before cutting; this allows the filling to set.

Red Bean Sesame Puffs (because puffs sound better than balls)

My sister's class is putting on a "We Come From Everywhere" play - singing about "melting pots" and dressing in ethnic costumes. The teacher also asked families to bring desserts unique to the children's country of origin for the reception afterwards. Now, the Chinese don't eat a lot of sweets, but when we do, there's usually the presence of a lot of oil, sugar, and the occasional lard. Emeril would probably be waving his hands around wildly, giddily shouting "PORK FAT RULES!"

This recipe is for sesame puffs, made with glutinous rice flour and filled with a red bean paste, coated with white sesame seeds and fried until golden brown and, well, puffy. It's a traditional dessert served at dim sum restaurants, usually snipped in half with scissors to reveal a dark red center surrounded by a ring of white. The crispy outside provides a contrast against the chewy rice flour layer and creamy red bean center. There's no sweetener in the dough, so the sesame puffs are only as sweet as the filling. I used a packaged red bean paste because it's convenient and tastes pretty good (about 1/2 cup for this recipe). It is also quite a bit of work to make a really smooth paste at home due to the need to remove the peels from the red beans. However, a filling of crushed red beans would taste good too.

Red Bean Filled Sesame Puffs
Makes 25 puffs

Dough:
1 package glutinous rice flour
2 1/2 - 3 cups cold water

Place rice flour in a large bowl. Mix in 2 cups water to start, and gradually add in more until the right consistency is reached. The dough should hold together when pinched and not be sticky or liquidy. It's a fairly firm dough, and should feel a bit like clay.

Filling:
1 cup dried red beans
Water
Sugar to taste

Wash red beans, discarding any that are damaged. Place beans in a stockpot and cover with cold water, allowing them to soak overnight (this shortens the cooking process). The next day, bring beans and water to boil and simmer for 1-1 1/2 hours until beans are tender, adding more water as necessary. Drain the beans and puree them in a blender or a food processor until smooth. Pass the puree through a sieve to remove the skins and add sugar to desired sweetness.

To make crushed red beans, cook beans in the same method and smash them with a large spoon. Add sugar for sweetness. I like to keep the skins in the smashed red beans.

Coating:
Water
3/4 cup white sesame seeds

Clear oil to fry

To Assemble:
Pinch off a piece of dough slightly larger than a golf ball and roll into a ball. Make a depression in the center, and form the dough into a bowl. Fill with 1 - 1 1/2 tsp of filling, being sure to not overfill. Pull the lips of the bowl together, enclosing the filling. Roll to form a uniform ball. Place filled balls on a floured plate or board and cover with a towel to prevent drying out.

To Fry:
Right before frying, brush the balls all over with water and roll in white sesame seed, pressing the seeds in. Heat the oil to 350 degrees. Fry 4-5 dough balls at a time, rotating them to ensure even cooking. The balls are ready when they float to the top and the sesame seeds start to brown, about 5-6 minutes. You should cut one open to make sure the dough is cooked through.

Drain the cooked puffs on paper towel. Serve while warm.

Daring Bakers - L'Opera ~ the scent of coconut

What a challenge!

When I read about this month's challenge - a traditional French Opera cake - I nearly clapped my hands in glee. Now this was the stuff I wanted to make - beautiful, elegant, complex, a multi-stepped whirlwind of a challenge. There were the layers of jaconde soaked with syrup, buttercream, chocolate mousse, and chocolate ganache, all with the potential to go terribly wrong. Because May is liveSTRONG month, the cakes were suppose to be yellow or light in color. I decided to go with coconut, almond, and vanilla.

The jaconde, an almond genoise made with almond meal and leavened with beaten egg whites, was light and delicate. I made my own almond meal, so the texture was perhaps not as fine as it should have been. But I rather like slightly coarse feel of the cake. I left this base flavored simply with vanilla, choosing to incorporate my flavorings into the other components. My problem with this portion of the recipe was that it stuck horribly ot the pan. I accidently forgot to put down parchment paper, and despite having buttered the pan generously, the cake needed a lot of coaxing to come out. Note to self, next time a recipe calls for parchment paper, don't forget it. I brushed on a syrup flavored with coconut cream.

The French buttercream didn't come out as well as the Swiss buttercream from Dorie Greenspan's party cake recipe. While smooth on the palate, it was too loose coming together. I prefer a firmer buttercream to work with. I flavored this with also with coconut cream and vanilla.

The white chocolate mousse was just plain delicious. Melted Ghiradelli white chocolate lightened with freshly whipped cream, flavored with coconut - it tasted like a Ferroro's Raffaello. I also made a white chocolate ganache to top the cake. However, I felt the combination of the mousse and ganache was too much. Because the traditional L'opera cake is made with the darker chocolates and flavored with coffee, it is less cloying, with the bitterness of the chocolate and coffee balancing the sweetness of the other ingredients.

Overall, I felt very proud of myself for accomplishing this challenge. I like producing something delicious from my kitchen, but I also love the entire process - making the different components, tasting as I go along, assembling.

mmm...chocolate

I love Ina Garten and her show, Barefoot Contessa. I find her incredibly intelligent and very engaging, even if she seems to overly dote on her husband. Her emphasis on fresh, high-quality ingredients is what makes her simple recipe so good. With that said, I tried my hands at her, or rather, Beatty's Chocolate Cake. Her recipe makes a 2-layered 8-inch cake, but I went with cupcakes instead, with a yummy almond buttercream toffee frosting adapted from Gale Gand.

The cupcakes were moist but didn't taste very chocolatey when they were warm. However, the flavor intensified as they cooled. The texture was light and fluffy, not greasy at all. They were excellent paired with the buttercream frosting.

Beatty's Chocolate Cake from Ina Garten

makes about 24 cupcakes

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar

3/4 cups cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup hot coffee

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Sift flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl, and stir to combine. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir until just combine. Add in coffee and mix, be sure to not overbeat. The batter will be thin. Divide the batter into a prepared (buttered) cupcake tin, filling to about 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 17-20 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely. Frost with favorite frosting.

Almond Buttercream Toffee Frosting from Gale Gand

3 cups confectioners' sugar

1 cup butter, softened

1 tsp almond extract

2 tbsp whipping cream

1/2 cup toffee bits

Using a hand-or standing-mixer fitted with a whisk, mix together sugar and butter, starting at low speed until well blended and then increase speed to medium and beat for about 3 minutes. Add almond extract and cream and continue to beat for 1 minute more. Frosting should be thick and fluffy. Fold in toffee bits.

Orange and Cranberries

I'm out of brown sugar and I'm still cutting weight, the combination of which rules out baking a lot of my favorite things. So no more gooey chocolate chip cookies, chewy oatmeal raisin, moist banana bread...But I did come across this recipe on Nicole's blog Baking Bites for Orange Cranberry Bread. With no butter and only 1 egg and 2 tbsp of oil, I thought it was a fairly good compromise.

Despite the lack of (a lot of) fats, the bread came out moist and delicious. The crumb was brilliantly golden, dotted with pops of red from the cranberries. The orange flavor was surprisingly pronounced, pairing well with the tartness of cranberry. The crunch from the walnuts and pecans added an extra layer of texture. I ate almost the entire loaf myself (what did I expect when I leave it out on the counter with a knife next to it) so I'm planning on baking another one next week to take to Stanford for post-weigh-in snacking.

I highly recommend using fresh orange juice and orange zest for this recipe, since it is such a major flavor. I also reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup and found the bread to be just sweet enough. The batter was quite thick when I followed Nicole's recipe, so I added a tablespoon of milk to it to loosen it slightly. It will still be stiff going into the pan, but just spread it out in an even layer, and it'll bake up beautifully.

Orange Cranberry Nut Bread - adapted from Baking Bites
Makes 1 9x5 inch loaf

2 cups flour
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 1/2 tbsp orange zest
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp milk
1 cup frozen or fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped if large
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts and pecans)

Rub sugar and orange zest together until orange zest is distributed well. Add to flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir well to combine. Add in orange juice, oil, milk, and egg. Stir until just mixed. Fold in the fresh (or frozen) cranberries, dried cranberries, and nuts. Pour into greased loaf pan. The batter will be slightly stiff.

Bake in a 375 degrees preheated oven for 45-55 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool, slice, and enjoy