desserts & sweets Archives • Page 3 of 5 • Ant & Anise

My favorite chocolate cake with coconut buttercream frosting

Could I bring the quinoa chocolate cake for dessert to a summer family dinner? It was already shaping up to be a busy weekend. My first thought was when am I going to possibly have time to do this?

But when I thought about it a little more, it made sense to make time for it. It is my favorite chocolate cake, after all.

And it gave me an opportunity to be more observant about what I do when I make it. Some recent feedback (I’m talking to you, Daphne) was that the cake didn’t turn out: The quinoa grains were lumpy and the cake didn’t rise very well. What?? Oh no!

I can’t let my favorite chocolate cake be a letdown to bakers out there. To me it’s practically perfect, with a moist texture, rich chocolate flavor but not overly sweet. Plus it’s gluten free, a bonus with our growing number of gluten-intolerant family members.

I’ve had such good success with this recipe, and I want it to become your favorite chocolate cake too. So on Sunday morning I was extra careful to note what I did. I zeroed in on three keys to success:

One: The quinoa needs to be dry.

If you use the absorption method, use a ratio of 1:1.5 quinoa to water when you’re cooking it (1 part quinoa to 1.5 parts water). Many recipes call for a 1:2 ratio (1 part quinoa to 2 parts water) but this will make the quinoa too wet. Wet quinoa will weigh the batter down and make it difficult to rise.

Two: Have the quinoa at room temperature, or slightly cooler.

If the quinoa is too warm it will tend to gum up into clumps, making it difficult for the food processor (or blender) to break down the grains evenly. If you’ve just made the quinoa and it’s steaming hot, spread it out on a sheet pan or two to cool it down before you start.

Three: Beat the eggs one at a time into the quinoa. And then beat them some more before you add the other ingredients.

Beating eggs in one at a time, for about two minutes each, accomplishes a couple things. It helps to break down the quinoa grains gradually and evenly, making it less likely that larger clumps of quinoa will make it to the final batter. The four photos below show what the batter looks like after each egg was beaten in.

Also, more beating helps incorporate more air into the batter, which helps the cake rise when it’s in the oven. Beating eggs enough is absolutely essential to provide structure to baked goods, especially with gluten- or grain-free recipes. So whirl those eggs and quinoa around for several minutes before you start adding the other ingredients.

The finished batter (see photo below) should be smooth. It will still have little quinoa grains that you can see, but the grains should be small and uniform in size, so that no one would know it’s actually quinoa and not flour.

It was good seeing everyone on Sunday. A summer dinner that was initially intended to be small ended up with 14 of us sipping bubbly, chatting and laughing on the patio.

It’s funny how we’ll plan a date to get the family together for a celebratory dinner and have to reschedule at least once or twice. But an impromptu invitation rolls around at the end of July and hey…just like magic, we all can make it.

The cake was a hit. I think I heard it called ‘outstanding’ at one point. Thanks, Kevin. I couldn’t agree more.

My Favorite Chocolate Cake (Quinoa Chocolate Cake - Gluten Free)

Yield: one 8-inch layer cake

This recipe is based on one in Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood by Patricia Green and Caroline Hemming. It's moist, rich and chocolatey, and I hope it becomes your favorite chocolate cake too. Buttercream, specifically Swiss meringue buttercream, has been my go-to frosting for cakes and cupcakes for decades. It has a rich, buttery taste and a silky smooth texture, and is endlessly versatile. It is a little involved, but don't be afraid to try it. There are great step-by-step instructions (with photos!) out there, like on Sweetapolita.

Ingredients

2/3 cup uncooked quinoa (*see cooking instructions below) OR 2 cups + 4 teaspoons (9.3 ounces) cooked quinoa
4 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup (6 ounces) butter, melted and cooled
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Coconut Buttercream Frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
pinch of kosher salt
12 ounces (1-1/2 cups) butter, in cubes and softened slightly
3 tablespoons coconut cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 teaspoon coconut extract

Instructions

To make the quinoa:

Rinse 2/3 cup quinoa in a fine mesh strainer and drain. Place in a medium saucepan with 1 cup water and bring to a boil on medium-high heat.
When the quinoa boils, cover the saucepan and reduce heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat, leave the saucepan lid ajar and let stand for 10-15 minutes.
Spread the quinoa on a baking sheet and cool completely, about 10 minutes.

To make the cake:

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease two 8-inch round cake pans and line the bottom of each with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, sift together cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.
Place quinoa in a food processor and add 1 egg. Blend for 2 minutes, then scrape down the sides of the processor.
Repeat this step another 3 times, blending in each egg for 2 minutes and scraping down the sides of the processor before you add the next egg. When all eggs are incorporated, blend for 1-2 minutes more.
Add milk, vanilla and melted butter and blend until incorporated.
Next up, the dry ingredients: Add sugar and blend until incorporated. Add the sifted cocoa mixture and blend until incorporated.
Pour batter evenly between the two cake pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Remove cakes from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto a cake rack, remove the parchment, and let cool completely before frosting.

To make the coconut buttercream frosting:

Fill a medium saucepan ⅓ full with water and bring to a simmer. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the egg whites, sugar and salt. Place the mixing bowl on top of the simmering water and whisk constantly until the sugar is dissolved and the temperature reaches 160F. (If you don’t have a candy thermometer, whisk until the sugar has completely dissolved and the egg white-sugar mixture is warm to the touch.)
Remove the mixing bowl from the heat and move it to your stand mixer. With the whisk attachment, whisk on high speed until stiff peaks form, about 4-5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl continue to whisk until the mixture is glossy and cool, another 4 minutes or so.
Now you're ready to add the butter: Change to the paddle attachment. With the mixer on medium speed, add the add the softened butter one piece at a time. Mix well after each piece of butter added. Occasionally stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl. (If the butter is too soft, the buttercream may be too runny. An easy fix is to place the whole bowl in the fridge for 10-15 minutes to let the butter firm up a bit before you continue mixing.)
After all the butter is incorporated and the buttercream is silky smooth, add the coconut cream and extracts and mix until incorporated. Makes enough to frost an 8-inch layer cake.

Peppermint Patties: so easy, so good

Cookie night seems like a long time ago now – almost as long ago as the day I promised to post this recipe “tomorrow.”

A lot has happened in the meantime, some of it happy, some of it worrisome. Here’s the conundrum of a family food blog: when illness rides through the centre of Christmas preparations and blogging time both, then what do you do?

Write brightly about Peppermint Patties?

Or “tell the truth and shame the Devil,” as Mother used to say – no matter how sad the truth might be?

Well, the happy part is that my sister Ann recovered from her bout with pneumonia, although she will never recover from Alzheimer’s.

By the time we had our brunch and present exchange on December 27, we were all pretty much returned to normal.

I gave the last of my stock of Peppermint Patties to my niece Janet, along with the heirloom 1960s Christmas tree plate. Happily, like Janet, the chocolates are gluten free.

I’m even toying with the idea of making them again, just one more time before the holidays are truly over.

For one thing, despite the oddness of producing something that seems so decidedly commercial, Peppermint Patties are easy to make.

And since the chocolate is so much better than any chocolate-mint combination you can buy – barring a trip to a chocolate specialty store – they are immensely pleasing.

I’ve made a few changes to the recipe below, which I found in the Gourmet Holiday special edition, from 2011.

The most important ingredient change is substituting coconut oil for their “vegetable shortening.”
I’m not even sure what vegetable shortening is, but I know I don’t have any. Since there’s no discernible coconut taste, I think it’s a good change.

Gourmet gives instructions for tempering the chocolate: a series of steps for heating, cooling, and reheating it.

Because I don’t have an instant-read thermometer, I used my old candy thermometer.

But it only measures temperatures above 100 degrees, so the critical dipping temperature – 88 F to 91 F – is too low for it to register.

Still, it was useful. My habitual way to melt chocolate is in the microwave, at power level four on my machine.

Turns out that’s way too hot, almost 110 degrees. So it’s no wonder that on cookie night, Marla and Shirley had trouble with the chocolate spreading. I’d like to apologize now for remarking that they seemed to have “puddling issues,” and even more for thinking that I could have done better.

Once the chocolate is cool enough, dipping them is much easier, and the Peppermint Patties, while they don’t look machine-perfect, do look like something you shouldn’t be able to pull off in your own kitchen.

Gourmet’s editors suggest that they will keep, refrigerated, for a month. Good luck with that. I’ve noticed that they’re the first sweets to be plucked off a cookie tray. Factor in raids by resident Christmas mice, and you won’t have them for long.

Luckily they work just fine if you double the batch, and you can store the un-dipped rounds in the freezer indefinitely.

Peppermint Patties

Yield: 4 dozen

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups icing sugar, for filling
1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
1 tablespoon coconut oil
10-ounces good quality 70 per cent bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped.
icing sugar for rolling

Instructions

For the filling:

With a hand held electric mixer, beat the icing sugar with the corn syrup, water, peppermint extract, coconut oil and a pinch of salt on medium speed until just combined.
Knead on a work surface dusted with icing sugar until smooth.
Roll out between sheets of parchment paper on a large baking sheet into 7 to 8-inch rounds, less than 1/4-inch thick.
Freeze until firm, about 15 minutes.
Remove top sheet of paper and sprinkle round with confectioner's sugar. Replace top sheet, then flip round over and repeat sprinkling on the other side.
Cut out as many rounds as possible with a cutter. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Gather the scraps and repeat. Freeze until firm, at least 10 minutes.

For the tempered chocolate:

Melt 3/4 of the chocolate in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water.
Remove the bowl from the pan and add remaining chocolate, stirring until smooth. Cool until thermometer inserted at least 1/2 inch into the chocolate registers 80 F.
Return water in pan to a boil and remove from heat. Reheat, stirring, until the thermometer registers 88 to 91 F. Remove bowl from pan.
Balance 1 peppermint on a fork and submerge in the chocolate, letting excess drip off and scraping the back of the fork against the rim of the bowl if necessary. Return patty to sheet.
To make decorative ridges on the patties, immediately set the bottom of the fork briefly on top of the patty, then lift the fork straight up.
Coat the remaining rounds, rewarming chocolate to 88 to 91 F as necessary.
They will keep, chilled, in an airtight container, layered between sheets of parchment paper for one month.

Claus’s Chocolate Crinkles

Fudgy, soft, with the intense chocolate flavor that comes from using unsweetened Baker’s chocolate, the Crinkles have a sweet layer on the outside yielding to a slightly more bitter taste inside.

They look fancy, but the oven does the decorating, so as long as you remember to make the dough at least six hours before you plan to bake, nothing could be easier.

For one thing, there’s no creaming. You melt the butter and chocolate together and then add them to the beaten eggs and sugar before adding the flour. An electric hand mixer does the work – at least until it’s time to form the dough into 80 one-inch balls and roll them in icing sugar.

If you have some kitchen elves on hand, that can be very pleasant and social, the kind of simple, repetitive kitchen chore, like shelling peas, or cutting fruit for canning, that we don’t often do any more.

I found them in A Baker’s Field Guide to Christmas Cookies, by Dede Wilson, a truly wonderful cookbook that has fueled the creativity of cookie night for several years: the Christmas Mice! the Meringue Mushrooms!

If you’re a fan of Christmas Cookies, you need this book.

I’ve taken two liberties with the recipe.

First, I’ve changed its name. Wilson called them Kris Kringle’s Krinkles. Somehow the initials KKK just don’t say Christmas to me. Right now I’m going with Claus’s Chocolate Crinkles, but I’m open to better names.

And as of this batch, I’ve officially stopped making the version that’s rolled in cocoa powder instead of icing sugar. Here’s why.

Although we make these cookies every year, they aren’t my favorites. The telling proof? I can keep a container of them in the house and not feel any need to go get another cookie every half hour or so.

But other people, including Alan and Marla, always ask for them.
What they say, with glad expectation in their voices, is: “Are you going to make those chocolate cookies with the icing sugar on them?”

Since no one ever mentions the cocoa-rolled version, and they’re always the last to be eaten, I’m not going to make them any more.

Expect your hands to become sticky with dough. You’ll have to stop and wash a couple of times in the course of rolling a batch.

Tomorrow: the best chocolate-covered mints ever.

Claus’s Chocolate Crinkles

Yield: 80 cookies

Ingredients

5 ounces unsweetened chocolate, broken into pieces
1/2 cup butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Confectioner’s sugar
unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)

Instructions

Melt chocolate and butter together in a double boiler – over hot but not boiling water – or in a microwave until about ¾ melted. Remove from heat and stir until completely melted and smooth.
Stir flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl.
In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on high speed (hand-held is fine) beat eggs, granulated sugar and vanilla together until creamy, about 2 minutes.
Whisk chocolate and butter mixture until smooth, and beat into the egg mixture.
Add about one-third of the flour mixture and mix on low speed. Gradually add remaining flour, mixing just until blended.
Dough may be very thin; it will firm up on cooling.
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least six hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Sift some confectioner’s sugar into a small bowl. If you’re using the cocoa, sift some into a small bowl.
Roll dough between your palms into 1-inch balls, then roll in confectioner’s sugar (or cocoa) to coat completely. Place the balls 2 inches apart on cookie sheets, and gently flatten so they don’t roll.
Bake until puffed and cracked in appearance, about 12 minutes. The centres will still feel somewhat soft.
Slide parchment onto racks to cool cookies completely.
Store in an airtight container, up to two weeks.

Chocolate-Dipped Cappuccino Shortbread: do Christmas cookies get better than this?

Imagine a rich, coffee-flavored shortbread dipped in dark chocolate, served cold, so the chocolate snaps when you bite into it.

If there’s a better Christmas cookie, I haven’t met it.

A caterer called Jane Bailey invented these Cappuccino Shortbread cookies, and gave the recipe to the Vancouver Sun for a story on gifts from the kitchen. She suggested packing them into coffee mugs as gifts.

It was one of the best recipes of the year, and shortly after was reprinted in Five-Star Food, the cookbook I wrote at the newspaper in 1993, where it’s gone on to earn an ever widening circle of admirers.

I’ve made Cappuccino Shortbread cookies many times, and found them infallible, so I’ve been surprised when other people report having problems with them.

As long as you follow the recipe, I think there are only two things that can go wrong.

If the dough is too warm, the cookies may spread too much. You can avoid that problem by making sure that the butter is room temperature, and not on the verge of melting. That may mean letting it sit out, rather than speeding up the process in the microwave.
If you cut too deep a line into the cookie with the back of your knife, they will also spread too much (like the cookie on the right in the photos below).

One other caution: don’t give in to the temptation to use good quality coffee beans instead of instant, not even if you have to go out and buy a jar of instant coffee to make the cookies. No matter how fine the grind, coffee beans will always stay gritty, and they won’t release their coffee flavor.

It’s worth risking the shocked question from guests – “You keep instant coffee?” – to make Cappuccino Shortbreads work as they should. Just buy a wide-mouthed jar, so the measuring spoon will fit in easily. Store it in the back of the cupboard from year to year. You may be surprised how often you find yourself replacing it.

Over the years, I’ve changed the original in two ways:

Jane Bailey called for dipping both ends, but this presents a problem. It’s hard enough to hold onto the cookie and dip one end without getting chocolate smudges on the shortbread. To dip two ends you’d have to dip them very shallowly, and that would mean a reduced chocolate to shortbread ratio. Who would want that?

The original recipe also called for squares of semi-sweet chocolate – supermarket chocolate in other words. Upgrading the quality and intensity of the chocolate is well worth it.

Chocolate-Dipped Cappuccino Shortbread

Ingredients

4 teaspoons instant coffee
1 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
6 ounces 70 per cent Belgian chocolate

Instructions

Finely crush the instant coffee in your coffee grinder. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Beat in instant coffee and vanilla.
Sift flour and cornstarch together. Stir into butter mixture. The dough is dry. You will have to use your hands to mix it.
Mould the dough into the shape of coffee beans, using one tablespoon of dough for each cookie.
Using the back of a knife, press and indent about 1/8-inch deep, lengthwise, across the top of each cookie.
Place on a parchment-paper covered baking sheet.
Bake at 325 F for 15 minutes. Slide the parchment paper onto wire racks to cool the cookies.
Melt the chocolate. Dip one end of the cookies in chocolate. Place on baking sheets lined with waxed paper or parchment paper and refrigerate.

Tomorrow, cookie night recipes continue with Kris Kringle’s Chocolate Krinkles.

Of moose and men: truly great gingerbread cookies

I no longer know who Betty was, or why we ran her recipe, but I’ve been making Betty’s Traditional Gingerbread since the first Christmas I worked in the food section at the Vancouver Sun, in 1987.

I was planning to make a gingerbread house, but I was busy. The dough stayed in the fridge, Christmas came and went, and the moment for gingerbread houses passed. Sometime early in January, I rolled out the dough, cut some cookies, and realized, with enormous pleasure, that this recipe makes truly great gingerbread cookies.

They have a subtle spicy flavor, not too heavy, and if you roll them thin and keep them crisp, a satisfying snap. I’m happy to have leftover dough early in January, because they’re good spread with soft cheese, with an apple on the side. And if it’s still Christmas, they’re lovely dipped in chocolate – but what isn’t?

And though sugar cookies sometimes make it onto the menu for cookie night and sometimes don’t, gingerbreads to decorate always do.

I double the recipe and sometimes end up making it twice.

Because the dough keeps so well in the fridge, it’s perfect for pulling out for last-minute guests. You can roll out the cookies, pop them in the oven, and in less than 10 minutes have a house that smells of Christmas.

The only thing you need to know is to make them at least a day before you want to bake them, to let the flavor develop.

Betty's Traditional Gingerbread

Yield: 36 3-inch cookies

The original recipe called for shortening. I always use butter. And I roll the cookies thinner than the 1/4 inch that Betty suggested. One quick tip: grease your measuring cup before you pour the molasses in, and it will come out easily.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup molasses
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions

Cream butter and sugar together.
Combine flour, salt, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, mixing well.
Combine molasses, vinegar and baking soda and add to the butter and sugar mixture. Add flour, part at a time, mixing well.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
For gingerbread cookies, roll dough out to 1/8th inch thickness on a lightly flour surface. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies on a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper.
Bake at 350 F for 8 to 10 minutes.

Tomorrow: Possibly the best Christmas cookie of all time: Cappuccino Shortbreads

An upside-up torte: welcome back

I can’t imagine a better reason to stop blogging than moving house. What could be more disruptive? But it’s great to have you so much closer, only 10 minutes away instead of an hour.

All it took for me to stop blogging was the beginning of the fall yoga session and getting the outside of the house painted and repaired while the sunshine lasted. September was noisy, messy, and complicated by schedules that hinged on class times and when someone could be home for the painter and carpenter. Oddly, out of all that, I found my own comfort dessert: an upside-up torte to match your upside-down cake.

Just after Thanksgiving weekend, Kevan, the painter, brought a bag of prune plums from his place on Gabriola Island. I love prune plums, and think of them as one of the consolations of fall. I used to make plum crisps, and I still keep a bottle of Slivovitz, Polish plum brandy, in the liquor cabinet, to macerate the fruit with, just in case. But I’m off crisps at the moment. Just between us, they bore me.

So I went looking for a prune plum dessert, and found a very simple torte, which, like your upside-down cake, is infinitely variable.Once I followed an online suggestion and added more plums, inserted sideways instead of place face down. It came close to doubling the number of plums, and reversed the ratio of fruit to batter. Excellent!

Next I made it with some grapes from a friend’s vines, a little sour for eating, but surprisingly good in a torte. And then last Saturday we made the pear and ginger version: four Bartlett pears, sliced thin, the slices inserted vertically into the batter, the top scattered with a generous amount of thinly sliced candied ginger.

It’s the perfect homey dessert recipe: based on fruit, quick and easy, and so simple you can put it together from memory. It can adapt to any season: a peach or berry torte in the summer, a pink grapefruit torte, or even a banana torte in the depths of winter. For bonus points, it freezes well. If you happen to have a glut of fruit, you could make two or three, and bring them out later in the fall.

I so understand baking as a psychic anchor. My Mom baked all the time – odd that your Mom didn’t. There’s something sunny and uplifting about flour, sugar, butter and eggs. You get to create an edible, often beautiful, treat. It has a moment of glory, and then it’s eaten and disappears: joy to minimalists everywhere.

Pear-Ginger Torte

Serving Size: 6-8 people

I found this recipe, originally from Marian Burros’s Elegant But Easy cookbook, on Epicurious. It’s worth looking at the link for the story of the recipe, and for the helpful reader comments. I’m reprinting the recipe here for the pear and ginger topping, and to correct what may be a typo in the original. It calls for an ungreased pan. That’s not a good idea. Grease it.

Ingredients

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
Pinch salt
4 medium-sized ripe pears, sliced thin
2 to 4 tablespoons candied ginger, sliced thin
Whipping cream or ice cream, optional

Instructions

Arrange a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In an electric mixer, cream the sugar and butter. Add the flour, baking powder, eggs, and salt and beat to mix well.
Place in a 9-inch greased springform pan. Cover the top with the pear slices, arranged vertically, pushing them down into the batter. Scatter the candied ginger over the pears.
Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the center tests done with a toothpick. Remove and cool to room temperature or serve warm.
Serve plain or with whipped or ice cream.