Baked And Churned

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  • Lime In The Coconut

    Lime In The Coconut

    I put the lime in the coconut! For my in-law’s joint birthdays (they are like 3 days apart) they requested a coconut cake. I didn’t just want to make plain coconut cake so I brainstormed ideas with my wife. She suggested a lime/coconut cake as a good combination.

    Since I’m also trying to do a GBBO bake-along I decided to incorporate lime macarons into the cake as a decoration. The overall idea was lime macarons decorating a coconut cake, and possibly a lime buttercream layer between the layers of cake. Well, here is the story of how 4 different failures led to the cake I actually made, which miraculously was still a tasty hit.

    Lime in the Coconut
    Lime in the Coconut

    First, an embarrassingly simple failure. I made the first set of cakes following this recipe from Cooking Classy. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I ended up with sad layers about a quarter-inch thick. So I threw those away and quickly mixed up a second set. I didn’t have the right amount of coconut milk left but at least I was able to make two decent 9″ rounds of coconut-ish cake. They sunk more in the middle than I would have liked, but they were way better than the first attempt.

    Macarons

    Next, I started on the macarons. I went through a period of making macarons every week and got pretty decent at it, but I haven’t actually made any in a couple of years. Well, you can guess what happened. The first batch of shells was horrendous and all went in the trash. Then the second was less horrendous but mostly went in the trash. The third set finally gave me enough to use.

    Next up was the filling. I made a lime curd since I was making lime macarons. Well, the curd never thickened to a usable consistency. I tried assorted ways to thicken it and nothing worked. I was basically left with runny lime preserves. Without enough limes or time to try a new batch, I was in trouble. But wait – I had an idea. I’d follow the advice of the great Harry Nillson and put the lime IN the coconut!

    Lime in The Coconut

    Final Product

    So the new plan was a coconut(ish) cake, with a layer of lime preserves(ish) between cake layers, buttercream all around, covered in shredded coconut, with macaron shells as a decoration. So that’s what I did. I assembled the layers with the preserves in the middle. I piped a ring of buttercream around the edge of the first cake layer to create a wall to keep the runny filling on the cake. In addition, I used alot of buttercream all around the cake to make up for the fact that even my second attempt cake layers didn’t come out all that uniform. For the final touch, I used a stencil I had and added sprinkled cocoa powder to write out happy birthday.

    Despite all the failures along the way the cake was delicious and well-received. It even looked really nice in presenting it. It wasn’t until you cut into it that you could see there was a lot of lipstick on this pig to make it look good, as the pictures below will prove.

    Lime in the Coconut
    Lime in the Coconut
    Lime in the Coconut
    Lime in the Coconut
  • Red Velvet Mini Cakes

    Red Velvet Mini Cakes

    I decided to bake along with the Great British Bake Off again this season, as I did in 2020, and started with Red Velvet Mini Cakes. From the week one options, my wife requested Red Velvet from the technical round. I then decided to make mini cakes instead of one large cake. This basically made it a combination of the technical and signature rounds, since the signature challenge was mini sandwich cakes. I’ll probably mostly end up making the technicals in this bake along because they always seem to be the most interesting challenges, but ultimately it will come down to what my wife and I actually want to eat most. And yes, for those of you that are watching, I am going to tackle the controversial Mexican week, but I’m definitely not going to be making tacos for it.

    I basically followed this recipe from Southern Living magazine. To stay true to the technical I also referred to Paul’s recipe, especially for the presentation (crumbs on the side, etc.). I made one large(ish) sheet pan of red velvet and used a three inch biscuit cutter I have to cut out circles. I then cut those in half to create the two layers of the cake.

    Mini Red Velvet Cakes
    Mini Red Velvet Cakes

    They came out pretty nice. As you can see above I definitely had some inconsistency in the decorating, especially the piping of the flowers. It basically comes down to two things, one, I’m just not great at it, but also, two, I kept the frosting in the fridge while I let the cakes cool and it ended up freezing. I was then impatient and put the piping bag under warm water to unfreeze it. This ended up giving me a less-than-ideal consistency and causing problems getting perfect flowers. Nonetheless, the red velvet mini cakes tasted amazing, even if they just looked “ok”.

    Crumb Detail
    Crumb Detail
    Nom Nom
    Nom Nom
  • Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

    Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

    It’s Strawberry Rhubarb Tart season! Our yearly CSA began last week, and one of the first things we always get is rhubarb and strawberries. Two years ago I made individual tartlets, this year I decided to make a single full-sized tart. As I noted, the tartlets were called “maybe the best thing you’ve made” by my family, so the bar was pretty high. That’s also partly why I decided to do something a little different. I loosely followed this recipe from Bakes by Brown Sugar.

    The Filling

    Compote
    Compote

    For a change, I remembered to take an in-progress photo. Above is a picture of the compote I made to start the whole process. Although not strictly required, I peeled the rhubarb to ensure it would become nice and soft/smooth when pureed. After breaking down the compote, I used a stick blender to make it into a puree. This puree then gets thickened with eggs to become the tart filling. A tart like this is always scary because you can never be quite sure if/when it has set. Even when you take it out of the oven it seems somewhat liquidy, but you need faith that as it cools it will set if you’ve done it right. Thankfully, I had.

    Strawberry Rhubarb Tart
    Tart Slice

    The Final Result

    The tart was a great success, everyone loved it. Was it better than the tartlets I made previously? Who knows, but it doesn’t matter. The brown sugar crust was a nice change from the less sweet one I used in the past. It helped counteract the tartness of the rhubarb that comes through and I would definitely use the crust again. The one thing I regret is that I was in a rush and used premade canned whipped cream instead of making it fresh. I think fresh whipped cream would have, to steal a phrase, kicked the strawberry rhubarb tart up a notch.

    Strawberry Rhubarb Tart
    Whole Tart
  • The Best Cinnamon Rolls

    The Best Cinnamon Rolls

    The best cinnamon rolls you’ll ever taste is exactly what the recipe says. Were they? I don’t know, I don’t eat a lot of cinnamon rolls, to be honest, but they were very good. I was having a very small Superbowl get-together, ie, one friend came over to watch it with my wife and me. My wife had been wanting cinnamon rolls for a while, so having company seemed like a good excuse.

    Single Cinnamon Roll
    Single Cinnamon Roll

    They were fluffy, cinnamony (is that a word?) and a little tangy, I guess from the cream cheese in the glaze. Everyone loved them, especially my wife, but I think that’s just because she had been craving them.

    The Pan of Cinnamon Rolls
    The Pan of Cinnamon Rolls

    So while I can neither confirm nor deny that they were actually “The Best Cinnamon Rolls”, I can say I would definitely use this recipe again if I wanted to make cinnamon rolls.

  • Home Made Mallomars

    Home Made Mallomars

    I don’t remember why I decided to make homemade mallomars. I think it was the yearly realization that they are actually a seasonal product. This comes up every year around the holidays when they are “in season”. It made me think “maybe I could just make mallomars when they aren’t available”. Well, turns out you can.

    Home Made Mallowmar
    Home Made Mallowmar

    They are actually fairly simple, but labor-intensive, mostly because of making the marshmallow from scratch. I guess saying simple carries the caveat of assuming you’ve made marshmallows before. It seems really daunting if you’ve never done it before, but once you do it you’ll never want to eat store-bought marshmallows again.

    Bitten Mallomar
    Bitten Mallomar

    I wasn’t thrilled with the cookie base I made, I think I embarrassingly misread the recipe and used too much sugar. The cookies were definitely overly sweet. That being said, because I used pretty dark chocolate the completed mallomars weren’t overly sweet, they were delicious.

    I used this recipe from saveur magazine. Is it worth making home made mallomars? Well I would definitely make these again. They were delicious, and definitely elevates the store-bought treat. I’d just be more careful making the cookie base next time.