Baking and (Sun)burning

If you've ever been to France and never to the Vosges region, you're missing something.

Quiet, peaceful, and oxygen-filled : everything Paris is not. My short weekend in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, small town in the Eastern part of France gave me the opportunity to learn a new cake recipe. As well as getting huge accidental sunburns and eating a lot of groseilles and raspberries, because the garden was full of them:

Apart from visiting my aunt Mimi, which was obviously the main purpose of my going to St Dié, I decided to bake a kougelhof.

"A what??"

A kougelhof is an Alsatian cake, baked in a huge bundt pan. It's moist and simple, with just a few raisins and almonds. The recipe my aunt has been using forever comes from a local baker and has been getting compliments from ever since I can remember.

That's why, on Sunday morning--we were having a family lunch--I decided to try out a kougelhof. What could go wrong with a trusted recipe before my eyes? 

The only problem was, I'm not quite the type to read recipes carefully. So when I see "mix yeast in warm milk" and "add butter to the rest of the milk", the word "rest" sort of sneaks away... 

So the butter went into the yeast + milk, and I only realized this when it was too late--everything was already in the mixer bowl, ready to become a delicious kougelhof dough.

I stayed optimistic, and while we put the cake in the oven at 100°C for an hour to let it rise instead of outside in the sun for 6 hours like you're supposed to (I hadn't gotten up early enough for this part), I was sure the dough would rise.

It did, to some extent. So then began the cooking, and the end result was actually quite nice. Sure, it was a bit drier and definitely more dense than a traditional kougelhof, but it still had that sweet yeasty distinctive taste. Plus, it was still pretty to look at:

Here's the recipe, which I promise turns out perfect if your read it right!

Kougelhof - prep time 40 mins, 6 hours before final baking

Ingredients (in metric this time)

500g flour

250 mL milk

125g butter

20g yeast

2 eggs

125g sugar

100g raisins

100g slivered almonds

salt

powdered sugar

- Melt the yeast in 2 tablespoons warm milk, and make sure the milk stays warm.

- Melt butter in remaining milk in a double boiler.

- Mix flour, salt, sugar, and add eggs. Add milk/butter mixture little by little. Finally, add yeast and raisins.

- Butter the sides of a 1,5L bundt pan, and cover inside of the pan with slivered almonds. Pour in dough, and cover with a clean dishtowel. Keep in a warm place until the dough reaches the top of the pan and overflows a bit, about 6 hours.

-Place in oven at about 325°F / 160°C for 40 minutes, until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.

- Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

Voila!

Carrot Cake Adventures Part II

I believe I have discovered my new favorite cake. Cake including the cake in itself, plus a truly wonderful and delicious frosting.

Remember last week? My carrot cake was really awful--I ended up throwing it away and picking at the top of it that was hardened by sugar. But, as Maman always says, you learn by trying. 

That's exactly what I did: I still left out the raisins, nuts and prunes, but also put a lot less oil.

The original recipe calls for 1,5 cups oil; I cut the recipe in half yesterday because I didn't have enough flour and instead of adding 3/4 cups oil, I only put 1/3 cup...

And it turned out perfect! Moist but not oily (p

hew), spicy but sweet, everything. It didn't even break! 

This minor success, plus my friend Jérôme's occasional 

"This cake smells REALLY good" while he was cooking tofu made me want to go ahead and try to get my frosting as good as the cake. I followed the recipe that came along with the cake recipe, and substituted 1 tbsp. milk for sour cream, which I didn't have.

I whipped the frosting by hand and the result was amazing: slightly tangy but also creamy... a delight on its own. It turned out it was even better on the cake:

Frosting: 1 box of "Nature à Tartiner" (150g)

1/4 c. powdered sugar

1 tbsp. milk

From grating the carrots by hand to slicing the cake, making a carrot cake is fun from start to finish. 

Plus, as I was always told, "les carottes, ça fait les fesses roses".

Asian Supermarket Heaven

Imagine walking into a store, and seeing everything you could possibly want for less than 2 euros...

This is (almost) exactly what happened to me last night. My friend Jérôme and I decided to do a sort of cooking swap: he was going to teach me a Vietnamese recipe (his mother is Vietnamese), and I would bake a carrot cake (again! More on that later...). Perfect excuse, really, for a trip to Tang Frères. I hadn't been in years, and last time I did go I must have bought a lotus-shaped candle or something like that. 

With my experienced tour guide by my side, I got into Tang Frères 20 minutes before closing time, a short shopping list in hand. We strolled into the vegetable isle and Jérôme nonchalantly picked up a huge bag of cilantro...and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the price. We ended up paying around 60 cents for something you would pay 2,50 for at any Monoprix or Champion.

As I got really excited about all this delicious-looking AND cheap food, Jérôme concentrated on what we really needed for our recipe--fresh tofu, tomatoes, and fish sauce. Meanwhile, I grabbed some Jasmine tea bags (58 cents for 20!), Jasmine loose tea (1,15!), candy, soba noodles, etc. Too bad Tang Frères is almost a half hour away by subway, otherwise I think I would go every day. Who doesn't need 10 different kinds of soy sauce??

Amazed by my purchases like I used to be when we went to the Sanrio store on our way to O'Hare airport, I had to take pictures of my shopping bag:

Lemongrass, Sesame oil, fish sauce, nougat, tea, soba, sesame... an Asian Supermarket Heaven.

Tang Frères: 48 avenue d'Ivry, 75013 Paris. 

Carrot Cake Adventures Part I

I've been wanting to make a carrot cake for quite a while now, and an uneventful Sunday afternoon seemed like the perfect moment to bake one. Plus, I'm probably spending less money making one than I would buying a tiny slice from a place like Bread & Roses, as good as their carrot cake may be.

Armed with a special family recipe and the trust that goes along with it--"This recipe has never gone wrong"--I thought it would be the easiest ever.

That was before a spider decided to run across the countertop, and also before I decided to divide the recipe by three so it would fit in a smaller pan. The first problem was easier to solve than the second, surprisingly. 

To put it in a few words, my first carrot cake isn't that great. Not great at all, actually. Although "moist" is usually a much sought-after adjective when describing a cake, there is such a thing as too moist.This happens when I decide to leave out the golden raisins, prunes, AND nuts from the recipe, don't add enough flour (that's the problem with dividing a recipe up), and keep the same amount of oil.

I decided not to go any further with this minor disaster so I didn't make the cream cheese frosting I was initially going for, and opted for a quick glaze instead (confectioner's sugar + a little bit of water).

Here is the result, after noticing the oil on my hands whenever I touched the cake. Oh, and after the cake broke in half. Fun:

Update: After cooling off, the cake is looking a little better, and definitely not as greasy as it used to.

I am sticking by this recipe though, but next time I'll just make the whole thing instead of dividing it up like I did. Here goes:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1 tbsp cinnamon

7 large prunes, pitted

5 medium carrots

4 large eggs

2 cups sugar

1,5 cups oil 

3/4 cup golden raisins

3/4 cup pecans (I think?)

Preheat oven to 325° (160C).

Mix dry ingredients together (except raisins & prunes) and set aside.

Shred the carrots--you should have 3 cups. Add chopped prunes and set aside.

Put the eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat until the mixture is thick and light colored. Little by little, add the oil. Add carrot and prune mixture, and golden raisins. Add dry ingredients without overmixing. Put the batter into a greased and floured 12 cup bundt pan, and cook 55 minutes.

Part II will have to wait until Thursday--same recipe, new frosting!