A temperamental beast

I'm jonesing for summertime.

Yes, I profess to love rain, and yes, fall is my favourite season, and yes, I did whine all last summer that it was too hot, that it was too humid, that I couldn't wait for it to be over. But now I'm sorry, really I am, and all I can think about is tomato season, and berry season, and the farmer's market, and oh god sunshine. We got a little taste of spring this past week or so - it was beautiful and sunny and I carried my camera everywhere with me and never took any photos - at least not of the great outdoors.

I took photos of cake, though.

If ever my family had a cake recipe, it's this one: Orange Chiffon Cake with Lemon Glaze. My mom taught me how to make it, and my dad rhapsodizes about his mother buying them from the bakery truck when he was a child. It makes for a good transitional recipe, too: flavoured with citrus, which is readily available in the winter, but somehow summery tasting. The cake recipe itself is from the Joy of Cooking, though the glaze varies from season to season and lemon to lemon. And I don't know how chiffon cakes got such a reputation as terrifying and temperamental beasts - be nice to your egg whites and you'll get along fine. (Of course, I can be as smug as I like about that down here at sea level - in New Mexico it was a slightly different story).

Orange Chiffon Cake with Lemon Glaze

from the Joy of Cooking

For the cake:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Have ready 1 ungreased 10-inch tube pan with a removable bottom, and make sure the ingredients are at room temperature, 68-70 degrees.

Sift together twice into a large bowl:

2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour (I used all purpose and it worked out fine)

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

In another bowl, beat on high speed until smooth:

5 large egg yolks

3/4 cup orange juice

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons grated orange zest

1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir into the flour mixture until smooth.

In another large bowl, beat on medium speed until soft peaks form:

8 large egg whites

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Gradually add, beating on high speed:

1/4 cup sugar

Beat until peaks are stiff, but not dry. Use a rubber or silicone spatula to fold one-quarter of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the remaining whites. Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Bake until the top springs back when lightly pressed and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cool upside down for at least 1 1/2 hours, setting the tube over a bottleneck, or resting the pan on 4 glasses.

To unmold the cake, slide a thin-bladed knife around the cake to detach it from the pan, and lift out of the pan by pulling on the tube (this is why you want the removable bottom!) Then cut around the tube and the base of the cake and invert onto a plate. When you're cutting, be sure to press the blade of the knife against the pan, to avoid tearing the cake.

For the glaze (approximately):

2/3 cup lemon juice (juice of 2-3 lemons)

1/4 cup-ish powdered sugar

Stir powdered sugar to taste into lemon juice to dissolve. I like just enough to take the edge of sour off, but still keep a bit of pucker.

To glaze the cake, brush or spoon the glaze over the top of the cake, being sure to get the corners and let it run down the sides. Allow a couple of hours before serving to let it soak in a bit.

Chocolate for (not really) Cynics

I've never been one for Valentine's Day.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a cynic. I'm a huge fan of love and the expression thereof, but why only be romantic one day a year? Why fight other couples for jewelry and flowers and tables at over-booked restaurants?

But I'm not here to expound on the foolishness of the holiday. It is one thing, and that's a great excuse for chocolate.

I used my chocolate excuse to make these Molten Chocolate Raspberry Cakes (along with half of the other food bloggers in the world), and while they're not terrifically attractive little desserts, they are pretty terrifically tasty.

They are very rich and truly chocolatey, so if you're not a chocolate fan (god help you), these probably won't be your thing. But hopefully you are, so that you can enjoy these, and we can stay friends. Make sure, when you make these, that you use chocolate that you enjoy eating on its own. I went with one of my Trader Joe's usuals: the Ocumare 71% from Venezuela. It comes in a 2.8 ounce bar, and while the original recipe, once divided, only called for about 2.3 ounces, I just threw the whole bar in. No regrets on that front. I do think, though, that they could have been smaller. I made a third of a recipe, because dividing it into quarters involved dividing egg yolks, and that was not something I was prepared to do. I made two of them in 6-ounce ramekins, and I think that three in 4-ounce might have been a better call, except that we might have ended up fighting over the last one, and that's not really what you're looking for on Valentine's Day.



Molten Chocolate Raspberry Cakes
Adapted from Epicurious

for the cake:
1 T. & 2 tsp. sugar
2.3 ounces (or 2.8) bittersweet chocolate, preferably 70% or more
4 T. butter
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. flour

for the raspberries:
fresh or frozen raspberries (I used about 4 ounces frozen, because it was what I had on hand - experiment!)
sugar to taste (or none!)

for the raspberries:
If you have fresh, more power to you - I would suggest using them as is. With frozen, I simply warmed them in a small saucepan over low heat until they melted a bit, and added a little sugar. Reheat slightly before pouring over the cakes at serving time.

for the cake:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and generously butter and sugar the insides of two 6-ounce ramekins (or three 4-ounce).

Stir chocolate and butter in heavy small saucepan over low heat until smooth. Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat egg, egg yolk and sugar until thick and pale yellow, about 8 minutes. Fold 1/3 of warm chocolate mixture into egg yolk mixture (making sure it's not too warm), then fold in remaining chocolate. Fold in flour, and a few raspberries from the raspberry mixture, if you like. Divide batter between two (or three) ramekins.

Place ramekins on baking sheet. Bake until edges are puffed and slightly cracked, but center is still a little trembly, about 13 - 15 minutes.

To serve, unmold cakes onto small plates and top with raspberry mixture and softly whipped, (very) lightly sweetened whipped cream.



They won't be pretty, but you'll eat them anyway, and it will be so completely worth it.

One more thing to do with apples

I swear I've been trying to post for the last week. First real life ate me, and then blogger ate my post twice in one night, and I decided that was probably a sign that I should go study or something like that. Anyway.

I made this Apple Kuchen shortly after my last post, when we still had apples and were wondering what to do with them. And then I took the name to work and got one of my co-workers to teach me how to pronounce it.

The recipe itself I found on Baking Bites, a blog I have frequented ever since I discovered it via the ReadyMade blog. It was then called Bakingsheet, and the post that caught my eye was a recipe for homemade graham crackers, which were then supposed to be incorporated into homemade s'mores. I was still in my occasional-batch-of-cookies-and-brownies stage of cooking, so needless to say I never got around to either the crackers or the s'mores... but I still read the blog.

Origins aside, this is a nice, not-terribly-sweet cake that goes excellently with tea. I plan to omit the apples in an upcoming version and try it as a loaf cake - I'll let you know how it goes.

And a gratuitous kitty pictures never hurts - it's been too long.

Chuck has this thing for being cute in boxes - I can't help myself.

Happy Birthday to me (and Itadakimasu)

It seems fitting that my first post here on Itadakimasu should feature my birthday cake, and photos of said cake taken with my birthday camera (thanks, Mom and Dad!)

So here it is: Matcha Chiffon with whipped cream and raspberries.



I've been craving matcha chiffon cake for a while now - since last summer, actually, when I was most recently in Japan. While it's not exactly a traditional Japanese sweet, it's always been one of my favourites, and I thought my birthday would be a good excuse to borrow my neighbour's tube pan and get to work on re-creating it.

And while eating it in our Portland apartment is not exactly the same as eating it at the Dotoro cafe overlooking Ginza san-chome, I can't really complain.

The recipe is a modified version of the classic Joy of Cooking Chiffon Cake recipe, and goes as follows.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a small bowl, pour 3/4 cup slightly-less-than-boiling water over about a teaspoon of matcha (green tea powder). Stir to combine, and let cool. This is not at all the proper way to make drinking matcha, but will do as a substitute for water in the cake recipe, to bring out the tea flavour.

Sift together twice:
2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup matcha (green tea powder)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt





In another bowl, combine:
5 egg yolks
matcha infusion (see above - should be about 3/4 cup liquid)
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Stir egg yolk/matcha mixture into the flour/matcha mixture. You will have a fairly unappetizing batter, at this point, but I promise, it gets better.

In another large bowl, beat until stiff peaks form:
8 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Gradually add 1/4 cup sugar.





Using the spatulate item of your choice (I use a nifty silicone spatula/spoon thing I got from work), fold one quarter of the egg whites into the matcha batter, and then fold in the rest of the egg whites. They don't need to be fully combined - you'll still see streaks of white.



Kind of like that, but less blurry in real life.

Scrape the batter into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan and spread evenly. Bake for 55-65 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean, and the top springs back when lightly pressed. My oven runs a little hot, so the cake was done after about 50 minutes.

When the cake is done, let it rest upside down over a bottle, or perched on four glasses - you know, usual faintly bizarre chiffon cake treatment - until cool, at least one and a half hours. When cool, run a thin-bladed knife around the edges of the cake to loosen it, and let it drop onto a serving platter or plate.





Frost with lightly sweetened whipped cream, and dust with matcha.





Matt was a fan of the raspberries on top of the cake, as well, and I found that they really made the green pop (and taste great, to boot!)

The finished product: