Gramercy Tavern’s Gingerbread

This gingerbread recipe via Smitten Kitchen is dense, dark, and delicious. I've made it years ago and keep thinking of it fondly (I believe I ate most of that batch myself). This year for a Christmas party I made it again, and guests who were initially hesitant about ginger in their baked goods raved about it.

A few changes:

• I reduced the sugar by 20%, so 88g brown sugar and 80g white sugar. 
• I used blackstrap molasses
• Obviously, this resulted in minor sticking in the pan. Perhaps next time I will butter and sugar the pan, to prevent sticking.

For future batches, I would consider:

• reducing the sugar even more, even though the sweetness was fine.
• Perhaps reducing the oil and baking soda as per the comments on SK.

Cake Paper Party’s Buttermilk Chocolate Cake with Brave Tart's Cream Cheese Frosting

Miss R's 9th birthday cake

Yesterday, for Miss R's birthday, I made Cake Paper Party's buttermilk chocolate cake with Brave Tart's cream cheese frosting. She asked for a Tsum Tsum theme, so I bought iced sugar cookies from lan sugar cookie 嵐的甜甜手作 (which were beautiful and arrived well-packaged) and used those to decorate the cake.

Keeping in mind the advice on reducing sugar in cake recipes from King Arthur Flour, I reduced the sugar by 20% which was perfect for our tastebuds. The cake still had a fine crumb and moist texture, and paired nicely with Brave Tart's frosting, which isn't as sweet as powdered sugar based recipes.

Fine crumb, moist texture, lovely chocolate flavor.

here are the weights of the ingredients I used:
57 grams Dutch processed cocoa powder
113 grams bittersweet chocolate, broken (about 60% cocoa)
180 milliliters hot water
315 grams granulated sugar
1 cup (240 milliliters) buttermilk, cold
1 tablespoon (15 milliliters) vanilla extract
227 grams unsalted butter softened-1 cup
4 large eggs
284 grams all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (5 milliliters) salt
1 teaspoon (5 milliliters) baking soda
¾ teaspoon (3 milliliters) baking powder

Baking time took me over 40 minutes rather than the 25-30 minutes suggested. Perhaps my oven was off; and I think one layer was slightly underbaked as it fell apart after I turned it out from the pan to cool. For future reference, I'd bake this a day in advance and refrigerate it before leveling the cake and icing it; I never got the icing down to 60º F even after chilling it for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

This combo is on the repeat list!

BraveTart's Pumpkin Muffins

I first became aware of Stella Park, aka Bravetart, via Kenji Lopez-Alt on Serious Eats, and after trying her Mini Egg Chocolate Cookies and other recipes, I've been turning to her takes on baked goods first. Yes, it's April not Trader-Joe's-Pumpkin-season, but I had a can of pumpkin that I've been meaning to use up and a craving, so I used her Spiced "Pumpkin" Loaves recipe as a starting point. I didn't have any walnut oil, so I used all butter. As usual, I reduced the sugar by about 10%. I wasn't sure if the measurement for nuts was correct, so I used 12 ounces instead of 16 ounces. There's plenty of walnuts, as shown, but if you really like nuts, the recipe can certainly support the full 16 ounces. The recipe yielded 24 muffins. The recipe as I made it is written in metric, because currently the buttons on my scale are a bit sticky and not easily switching between metric and Imperial.



Line muffin tins with paper liners, and spray with oil.

149 g unsalted butter
130 g sugar
130 g brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
2 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 3/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
397 g canned pumpkin
71 g cream
170 g all purpose flour
85 g whole wheat flour
340-454 g walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350°

Combine the butter, oil, sugars, baking powder, soda, salt and spices in a large mixing bowl. Beat them all together for about eight minutes. Stop the mixer to scrape the sides down occasionally.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until each is thoroughly incorporated. Turn the mixing speed to low and add in the flours all at once, followed by the squash puree and then the milk or cream. Quickly add in the nuts and shut off the mixer as soon as everything appears mixed together.

Portion into lightly greased muffin pans and bake for about 20 minutes.

Neapolitan-swirl Bundt Cake

Miss Nomad Foodie asked for a cheetah-print inside the cake, with vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry-flavored cakes, so I made an attempt using my go-to yellow birthday cake recipe, Smitten Kitchen's Best Birthday Cake. I find this cake consistently turns out as described: moist, plush, with a fine, dense crumb, and buttery flavor. I did reduce the sugar by 10%, to 360 grams. For the strawberry portion, I took about a third of the batter and added 1 teaspoon of strawberry flavor and about 15 grams of ground freeze-dried strawberries (I ground Trader Joe's freeze-dried strawberries in a coffee bean grinder). For the chocolate portion, I added about 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder to the battery.

I thought the easiest way to create the print inside would be to use a bundt cake pan. Miss Nomad Foodie insisted on "strawberry, strawberry is my favorite" frosting, so I started with Celebrating Sweet's Cream Cheese Frosting recipe, since I wanted something more liquid than my usual cream cheese frosting but more substantial than a glaze. The proportions of ingredients were:

113g cream cheese at room temperature
200g powdered sugar sifted with
30g ground freeze-dried strawberries
2 Tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon strawberry flavor
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

I supposed I could've added more milk to make the frosting flow and drip more attractively over the cake, but it was fine for our purposes, and it had an intensely strawberry flavor.

The kids decorated the cake with Trader Joe's Candy Coated Chocolate Drops, which are like a slightly more natural version of M&Ms.

How did the cake turn out? Well the flavor and texture was great, but alas, the pattern inside was more of a marbled-swirl than a cheetah-print. Nonetheless, we had a happy little girl!

KAF Easy Cheesecake with Thermapen

Mr. Nomad Foodie gave me a Thermapen recently. Tonight I made King Arthur's Easy Cheesecake - it's been awhile since I've made it, and I wasn't paying close attention as I was cleaning up the kitchen. The cheesecake is clearly too brown, and the thermometer bears witness: the pie registered at 190°F when I took it out, 20°F higher than it should be. Tomorrow I'll know for sure how it's affected the texture.

Cake-y Goodness

I recently made cupcakes for the Parent Pages Rummage Sale's lemonade stand: Martha Stewart's Best One-Bowl Chocolate Cake recipe with paired with her cream cheese frosting, and Smitten Kitchen's Best Birthday Cake (a yellow cake) frosted with Martha Stewart's chocolate frosting. Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake was awesome. I had saved a few for our home and by Tuesday night they were gone. So that meant Wednesday night I was bemoaning the fact that there were no more sweets in the house. So I made cupcakes again - this time trying the Easy-Mix Yellow Cupcake recipe from Elinor Klivan's Cupcakes! book. Unfortunately, that cake didn't have the buttery richness nor the fine crumb of the the Smitten Kitchen yellow cake.

So here are the ingredients I used for Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake, converted to weights:
340g apf
60g cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
400g sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 cup "buttermilk" made with 1T vinegar and milk to make 1 cup + 1 cup sour cream, well-shaken

Ingredients that I used for Martha Stewart's chocolate frosting:
259g powdered sugar
1/4c cocoa powder
6oz cream cheese
6oz butter
9oz bittersweet chocolate
3/4c sour cream

Yes, I know my weights go back and forth between metric and Imperial, but that's because my scale can do both and so I don't bother to convert to metric if the weights in Imperial are already provided.

Incidentally, the chocolate frosting recipe is from the April 2010 "Best" issue. The same recipe appears again in her September 2010 issue with every ingredient doubled except the butter. A typo, perhaps? Stick with the April 2010 version.

KAF: Chocolate Stout Cake

For the Mr. Nomad Foodie's birthday, I thought I would try this Chocolate Stout Cake, described as "amazing marriage of flavors for grownup tastes." Mr. Nomad Foodie loves chocolate and is an avid home brewer, so it sounded perfect!

I did reduce the sugar by 20% and was dumb and used regular cocoa instead of dutch-process cocoa - so the cake rose unevenly. However, since I had baked it in a bundt pan, the uneven top wasn't obvious once I took the cake out of the pan. The cake did end up taking about 75 minutes in the oven.

The verdict? Meh. It was good, but not fabulous. Not something I feel compelled to bake again.

Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake

For Eric's recent Thanksgiving potluck, I made two desserts: a bourbon pumpkin cheesecake and a pecan pumpkin pie. The bourbon pumpkin cheesecake was the more popular of the desserts: rich and creamy, yet light. (And for those worried, even though I doubled the bourbon, the bourbon flavor is a very light accent.)

I modified Gourmet's recipe, using techniques from Cook's Illustrated and based upon recommendations by the reviewers on Epicurious. Given that my audience would include many local Taiwanese, I was concerned about the sweetness and texture - aiming for something less sweet and airier in texture. I still wanted something rich, however, without any of the floury dryness that so many Taiwanese cheesecakes suffer from.

Neither Costco nor Jason's Supermarket at 101 carried graham crackers, so I used Honey Graham O's breakfast cereal purchased at my local Wellcome. I've heard of others successfully substituting Digestive biscuits for the graham crackers. The canned pumpkin came from Jason's (which is currently carrying the larger 20 oz can from the 15 oz can which they carried last year), where I was also excited to find a little sample bottle of Jim Beam. The cream cheese, sour cream, heavy cream, and unsalted butter came from Costco. If you can handle the bulk size and earlier expiration date, cream cheese is nearly half the price when purchased at Costco instead of Wellcome.

My modifications: for the crust, besides substituting the sweeter cereal for the graham crackers, I eliminated the white sugar and increased the pecans by 1/4 cup. I also toasted the pecans and pre-baked the crust for 15 minutes. Following the recommendations from the folks at Cook's Illustrated, I blotted the pumpkin on 3 paper towels, with 1 more paper towel on top. I also doubled the bourbon and spices, added 1/4 teaspoon of allspice, and used 2 teaspoons of fresh grated ginger for the 1/2 teaspoon of grated ginger called for in the recipe. I put the springform pan on a small baking sheet and baked it over a water bath. Finally, for the sour cream topping, I substituted 10 oz of heavy cream for 1 cup of the sour cream to lighten it.

The next time I make this, I'm not even going to make the crust. Even though I pre-baked the crust, it still came out soggy, which is inevitable with the refrigeration required of the cheesecake before serving. I think I'm going to make everything as is, and then make a sort of "reverse" cheesecake with the crust patted on right before serving. I'll also not bother with a water bath.

blotting canned pumpkin on paper towels to absorb excess moisture

24 oz of cream cheese (!)


I doubled the spices, used fresh grated ginger, and added allspice.

A sample sized bottle of Jim Beam for only NT$55 at Jason's

Pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, cream, vanilla, and liqueur...

...whisk together to make heavenly cheesecake batter!

Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake
Adapted from Gourmet

For the crust
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (or substitute Honey O's cereal or Digestive biscuits)
3/4 cup pecans (1 3/4 ounces), finely chopped
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

For Filling
1 1/2 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin, blotted (see note)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons bourbon liqueur or bourbon
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 teaspoons freshly ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, at room temperature

For Topping
1 cup sour cream (10 oz)
10 oz heavy cream
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon bourbon liqueur or bourbon

Garnish: pecan halves

Make crust:
1. Invert bottom of a 9-inch springform pan (to create a flat bottom, which will make it easier to remove cake from pan), then lock on side and line the pan with baking parchment.
2. Stir together crumbs, pecans, sugar, and butter in a bowl until combined well. Press crumb mixture evenly onto bottom and 1/2 inch up side of pan, then chill crust 1 hour.

Make filling and bake cheesecake:
1. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk together pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, cream, vanilla, and liqueur in a bowl until combined.
3. Stir together granulated sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt in large bowl. Add cream cheese and beat with an electric mixer at high speed until creamy and smooth, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium, then add pumpkin mixture and beat until smooth.
4. Pour filling into crust, smoothing top, then put springform pan in a shallow baking pan (in case springform leaks). Bake until center is just set, 50 to 60 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool 5 minutes. (Leave oven on.)

Make Topping:
1. Whisk together sour cream, heavy cream, sugar, and liqueur in a bowl, then spread on top of cheesecake and bake 5 minutes.
2. Cool cheesecake completely in pan on rack, about 3 hours.
3. Chill, covered, until cold, at least 4 hours. Remove side of pan and serve chilled.

Note: Blot the pumpkin before using by scooping it out onto a baking sheet lined with 3 paper towels, and cover with another layer or two of paper towels. This will absorb excess moisture.