A Perfect Cake

Today I made a perfect cake: layers of butter spongecake filled with homemade strawberry jam and homemade dulce de leche cream, covered with fresh Chantilly, and decorated with, of course, one sugar rose.

As you may note, I have a passion for flowers. From the heirloom species to the simplest one, all of them are capable to incite the most beautiful felling on me. When I was working on this post I realized how marvelous is to photograph and also make these sugar flowers. 

I had some leftover dulce de leche from the bonbons of the last week and then I decide to incorporate it on this cake. I used it to prepare a velvet cream by adding egg yolks and cream. If you don’t have dulce de leche you can use sweetened condensed milk and the taste will be similar. To add freshness I made a homemade strawberry jam. I have to say that the combination of the flavors between the dulce de leche cream and the Chantilly was wonderfully pleasant. 

The butter spongecake is from the book Mastering The Art of French Cooking. This cake is delicate and fine, proper to pair with the other luscious flavors. The first bite of this cake envelops you in a luxury sweet embrace. It’s that delightful second when a little piece of heaven can be yours.

Butter spongecake filled with homemade strawberry jam and homemade dulce de leche cream covered with fresh Chantilly

Butter Spongecake

(from the book Mastering The Art Of French Cooking)

For a 10-inch cake pan - I used three-4inch pan.

4 Tb butter

2/3 cup granulated sugar

4 egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla extract

4 egg whites

pinch of salt

2 Tb granulated sugar 

3/4 cup cake flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter ad flour the cake pan.

Melt the butter and set aside to cool.

Gradually beat the sugar into the egg yolks, add the vanilla, and continue beating for several minutes until mixture is thick and pale yellow.

Beat the egg whites and salt together in a separated bowl until soft peaks are formed; sprinkle on the sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed. Scoop one fourth of the egg whites over the top of the egg yolks and sugar mixture. Sift on one fourth of the flour, and delicately fold in until partially blended. Then add one third of the remaining egg whites, sift on one third of the remaining flour . fold until partially blended, and repeat with half of each, then the last of each and half of the tepid, melted butter. When partially blended, fold in the rest of the butter but omit the milky residue at the bottom of the pan. Do not overmix; the egg whites must retain as much volume as possible.

Turn into prepared cake pan, tiling pan to run batter to the rim all around. Set in middle level of preheated oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Cake is done when it has puffed, is lightly brown, and has just begun to show a faint line of shrinkage from the edges of the pan. 

Dulce de leche cream

1 cup of homemade dulce de leche or 1 can sweetened condensed milk

4 egg yolks

¾ cup heavy cream 

Pour dulce de leche or condensed milk into a medium saucepan and place over medium heat

Add the egg yolks and keep stirring the mixture until it starts to show the bottom of the pan when you scrape it with a spoon. The mixture should be thick enough to show the bottom the pan for a couple of seconds before the mixture back again.

Pour the mixture in a greased bowl and leave aside to cool. When the mixture is at room temperature, add heavy cream and mix until combine. Place it in the fridge until decoration.

Strawberry Jam

1 cup strawberries

½ cup sugar

1 cup water

Bring all ingredients to a boil in a saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, about 20 minutes (jam will continue to thicken as it cools).

Chantilly Cream

1 cup heavy cream, cold

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Chill a mixing bowl and wire whisk in the freezer for 10 minutes before beginning. Beat heavy cream in the chilled bowl until it begins to foam and thicken up. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and continue to beat until the cream barely mounds. Do not overwhip. 

Dulce de Leche and Almond Bon Bons

Happy Valentine’s Day dear readers! Continuing with my chocolate confections, today I will share with you these wonderful dulce de leche and almond bon bons. I had the most special feeling making these treats. First, they are made with homemade dulce de leche, a traditional candy from my state in Brazil. Second, it was one of the sweets served on my wedding. I tried to reproduce them and I got exactly the same luscious flavor. What could possible go wrong when you have dulce de leche, almonds, cream and butter, covered with dark chocolate?  Nothing! 

As opposed to my first bon bons I didn’t have problems making these one. The homemade dulce de leche is quite easy to prepare. Although the cooking time reaches about two hours, you just have to stir it occasionally. When the dulce de leche is done, almonds, butter and cream are incorporated and cooked until a consistent cream is formed. To make the bon bons and the base of the lace heart  I used the shell molding technique. To prepare the chocolate lace heart shell I used a parchment paper cone and a heart mold. When you will use just a little amount of chocolate to decorate, a paper cone is better than a piping bag. You can see how to fold a paper cone here. The lace effect you will get by making doodle lines following the heart shape in a chocolate mold.

I hope you have a lovely day with your sweetheart!

Dulce de Leche

  

1 quart whole milk

1 cup sugar

  

Combine the milk and sugar in a large, 4-quartsaucepan and place over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, reduce the heat to low and cook uncovered at a bare simmer. Stir occasionally, but do not re-incorporate the foam that appears on the top of the mixture. Continue to cook for 1 hour. If you want a darkcaramel color continue to cook until the mixture has reduced to about 1 cup, approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer if you want. Store in the refrigerator in a sealed container for up to a month.

Dulce de leche and almond filling

½ cup dulce de leche

2 oz/100g ground almonds

1 tablespoon butter

¼ heavy cream

½ teaspoon almond extract

Combine ground almonds, butter, dulce de leche, cream and almond extract in a mediun saucepan. Stir the mixture until it starts to show the bottom of the pan while you scrape it with a spoon. The mixture should be thick enough to show the bottom of the pan for a few seconds before the mixture back again. 

Rose Heart Cake

My second recipe for Valentine’s Day was inspired by February 2012 cover of Martha Stewart Living magazine. There was a beautiful pink flower arrangement in a heart shape on the picture. So I decided to make a heart shaped cake decorated with a lot of sugar pink roses. More and more I love making these sugar flowers. It's like a therapy for me.

I prepared an almond chocolate sponge cake from this book. Because I love almonds, I loved this cake. It is so reach, so good. Once again, I couldn’t not resist in using brigadeiro. This time I made a raspberry white chocolate brigadeiro filling. To balance the sweetness of the brigadeiro I opted to make a mascarpone frosting. 

I have to confess that this cake was one of my favorites. The combination of flavors is magnificent. Besides I liked very much the different shades of pink that I used on the sugar roses.

Almond Chocolate Sponge Cake

(from the book Professional Baking)

4.33 oz /130 g Marzipan

2.67 oz /80 g (4 yolks) Egg yolks

4 oz /120 g (4 whites) Egg whites

1.67 oz (4 tbsp)/ 50 g Sugar

1.33 oz /40 g Cake flour

1.33 oz/ 40g  Cocoa powder  

1.33 oz /40 g Butter, melted

1. Beat the marzipan and egg yolks

together until smooth and light.

2. Whip the egg whites and sugar to a

stiff meringue.

3. Sift the flour and cocoa together. Fold

the meringue and dry ingredients

alternately into the egg yolk mixture,

starting and ending with the meringue.

4. Fold in the butter.

Bake at 425°F (220°C) for 10–12 minutes.

Raspberry white chocolate brigadeiro

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

100g white chocolate (I used Callebaut Belgian Chocolate)  

6oz/170g raspberries

1 teaspoon rose water

Pour the condensed milk into a medium saucepan and place over low heat.

Add the chocolate, butter, raspberries and rose water. Stir the mixture until it starts to show the bottom of the pan while you scrape it with a spoon. The mixture should be thick enough to show the bottom of the pan for a few seconds before the mixture back again. 

Vanilla Mascarpone Frosting

1 cup (8oz) mascarpone at room temperature

1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla paste

4 cups powdered sugar (1 lbs)

1. Beat the mascarpone cheese, vanilla and butter in a large bowl of electric mixer

2. Add the powdered sugar and beat until fluffy.

Gianduja Cupcakes

Last year I had so many realizations in discover how to work with fondant, make sugar flowers, cakes and register all those experiences by the art of the photography that I’m really excited to learn more and more new techniques. When the New Year begins, we usually enumerate a lot of goals and resolutions. Mine was to learn to work with chocolate. I bought a professional book, a marble slab and all the confectionary equipment needed. Over the past three weeks I’ve been learning how to temper properly chocolate and how to make confections, ganache and nut pastes. As Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, I think this is the appropriate occasion to talk about what I have been experienced. Besides, is there a better time to explore this most marvelous ingredient present in the world? So for the first post I will share with you luscious gianduja cupcakes with vanilla buttercream topped with glittered gianduja chocolate hearts.

Can you imagine how those Valentines cupcakes are wonderful? If you are a Nutella lover as I am, you will love to make your own Gianduja. This nut paste is prepared using dark, milk, or white chocolate, sugar and hazelnuts. Freshly made gianduja retains such more aroma and flavor of the freshly roasted nuts than the one commercially available. To make a medium-consistency gianduja using dark chocolate, my suggestion is to use a 1:1:1 ratio – that is, one part dark chocolate, one part roasted hazelnuts, and one part confectioners’ sugar. If you opted for milk or white chocolate, you have to increase the amount of chocolate to approximately 1.25 parts to ensure a similar texture. When a softer gianduja is desired, add more nuts to the mixture or if you want it less sweet, the sugar may be decrease or eliminated.

The procedure to make gianduja is quite simple. First toast the nuts to the desire degree. Roasting nut before baking is an important practice for bringing out the flavors. It’s wonderful how hazelnuts smell good after some minutes roasting. It’s a delight! Second, grind the nut while still hot in a food processor with about 25 percent of the sugar to as fine a consistency as possible. Process them while hot will facilitate to release the oils. To achieve a smooth cream and to avoid a grainy texture on the final product, the nuts should be reduced to a liquid state. Once the nuts have been satisfactorily ground, the remaining sugar and the melted chocolate can be added. I chose dark chocolate this time. Be careful to don't overprocessing the mixture or the heat can cause damage on the chocolate producing an overly viscous paste. Finally, put the entire quantity onto a marble slab and agitate it generously until it is cooled to 27°C/80°F or below. This practice calls temper and it is needed to assure that the gianduja will have a smooth mouthfeel free of large fat crystals on the finished product. In a future post I will try to write more about the theory of temper chocolates! 

I’ve got the inspiration to create these glittered bonbons from this photo on Martha Stewart web site. To conquer the desired result on these gianduja bonbons I took a lot of time between failures and success attempts. My first attempt was to sprinkle edible glitter (disco dust) into the mold before filling with the melted chocolate. The result was beautiful but not vibrant as I wish. So I decided to make the opposite and the result was wonderful. I made a solid gianduja heart followed by chocolate dipping finalized with disco dust. 

For the gianduja cupcakes, I adapted the recipe from the lovely Meg Ray's book by adding ground hazelnuts and gianduja. For the frosting, I made a vanilla buttercream recipe from the same book. I have to say that these indulgent treats are beautiful and equally delicious. I was really happy that I was capable to make these cupcakes and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. 

Hazelnut Gianduja

(from the book Chocolate and Confections: formula, theory, and technique for the artisan confectioner)

yield: 600g

Ingredients: 

200 g/3.6 oz hazelnuts, toasted

200 g/3.6 oz confectioners' sugar

200 g/3.6 oz 70 percent cocoa chocolate, melted

Equipment:

Food processor

marble slab

double boiler for melt the chocolate

thermometer

In a food processor, grind the hazelnuts with a small amount of the confectioners'sugar until liquefied.

Add the chocolate and the remaining confectioners' sugar. Mix in the food processor until homogeneous.

Temper the gianduja for immediate use, or store for future use.

Hazelnut Gianduja Cupcakes

yield: 15 cupcakes

1 cup cake flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

2 large eggs

120g/3.9 oz hazelnut gianduja

62 g/2 oz 70 percent cacao chocolate, melted

62 g/ 2 oz ground toasted hazelnut 

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and set aside.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, that's about 5 minutes.

Add eggs and beat until well incorporated.

Add gianduja paste, ground toasted hazelnuts and chocolate melted to the mixture and beat until well incorporated.

Add the flour and buttermilk in 3 additions always start and finish with the flour. 

line two standard muffin tins with paper lines. Fill each cup two-thirds full with batter. Bake at 350 degrees F until the tops spring back and a taster inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool completely in the pan.

Vanilla Buttercream

(from the book Miette)

yield: 6 cups

2 cups (14 ounces) sugar

1/3 cup water

5 large egg whites

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

3 cups (1 1/2 pounds) unsalted butter, at room temperature.

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar and water. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan. Cook the mixture until it reaches 248 degrees F, 5 to 10 minutes, keeping a constant eye on it.

Meanwhile, combine the egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment.

As soon as the sugar syrup reaches 248 degrees F, immediately pour it into a heat-proof measurer. Pour a few tablespoons into the whites, away from the whisk, so the hot syrup doesn't splash, and whisk on medium speed for a few seconds. Be careful as the syrup is very hot. Pour in a little more syrup and whisk for a few seconds, until incorporated. Repeat until all the syrup has been added. Raise the speed to high and continue to whisk until the mixture cools to room temperature, 70 to 75 degrees F, 5 to 10 minutes.

Only when the meringue is cool enough should you begin adding the butter. Reduce the speed to medium. With the mixer running, drop in the butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, waiting until each is incorporated before adding another. The mixture may deflate and begin to look curdle. Raise the speed to high and continue to add to add tablespoon-size pieces of butter, making sure each is completely combined before adding more. When all of the butter has been added, the frosting should be smooth and thick. Add the vanilla and mix to combine.

Use the buttercream immediately, or cover and refrigerate until needed. Store in a zippered plastic bag for up to 1 week in the refrigerator and up to 2 months in the freezer. (To thaw, leave in the refrigerator over-night, not on the countertop).  To use the buttercream that has been chilled, remove from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature, about 1 hour, or microwave in 15-second intervals, mixing in between each, until soft. If frosting has been frozen, this can take up to 2 minutes total. You can also soften the buttercream over a bain-marie or a double boiler. The frosting will soften from the outer edges of the bowl so mix from outside, folding the frosting inside. Transfer to a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat until soft and spreadable, 2 to 3 minutes.

Gianduja Bonbons

Ingredients:

gianduja paste

70 percent cocoa chocolate melted for dipping, as needed

 pink and gold disco dust to coat the bonbons 

Equipment:

heart chocolate mold

double boiler

dipping fork

parchment paper

small brush to sprinkle the disco dust

Fill the chocolate heart molds with gianduja paste and then let they rest on the refrigerator until they release from the mold. 

 Dip with a dipping fork each gianduja heart in the chocolate melted. Place them on parchment paper. Before the chocolate sets, sprinkle disco dust by tapping brush gently over-top of each heart. Let they dry before top the cupcakes.