Fraisier Torte

If nothing else (or, if nothing else besides the freshman fifteen), baking has taught me a lot about failure. For every complicated I managed to nail on the first try are at least three flops. And with baking, all of your failures are very physically present, sitting on the counter in front of you, challenging you to take another bite (maybe it'll taste better on the second tasting?), or to toss the whole thing (which always requires explanations to those you live with). 

While my mother is a very accomplished cook, her cooking is sometimes something of a theatrical production, with tantrums in the kitchen and half-cooked food thrown out. I think it was food blogging that taught me to take failure less seriously, to shrug it off and laugh over it with my friends (or, you know, with the Internet). Flops in the kitchen are an inevitable, if unenjoyable, part of baking.

For this cake, it was the simple sponge cake base I just couldn't get right. I skimmed over the long, complicated Fraisier Torte recipe in the Pierre Herme cookbook. Mentally, I dismissed the cake portion as a no-brainer (of course I could whip some eggs and fold in flour! I've done it a hundred times), yet somehow ended up with a hard, dense doorstep of a cake.

Genoise sponge cake is made with a handful of pantry staples, yet it took me three tries to really get the technique down. Much more than a successful baking session, kitchen flops fill you with respect for the magic of baking, of carefully transforming simple ingredients into a fancy finished product when it's so easy to have everything go wrong. 

The finished product was definitely worth all the effort and dirty dishes. The sponge cake sandwiches a thick layer of strawberries and mousseline cream, a pastry cream enriched with buttercream. Pierre Herme's version enriches the pastry cream with a French buttercream but also lightens it with a meringue. I've simplified his recipe significantly (who wants to make meringue twice with two separate methods in one recipe?). It's still on the longer side, but is definitely manageable and also so delicious.

I love that this cake showcases the fresh strawberries, which are just coming into season (and are some of my favorite fruits to photograph!) The tricky sponge cake and filling enhance the fragrance of the strawberries, which really is the central flavor.

So if you've got a few free hours, give this cake a try. And if it doesn't quite work out, give it another! It'll work out in the end, I promise.

Caroline

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Fraisier Torte

Click here for the printable recipe.
Yields: one 9-inch cake
Heavily adapted from the Pierre Herme Pastries cookbook
Special equipment: 9-inch springform pan

Ingredients
For the Genoise Sponge Cake
⅔ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon lemon zest
4 eggs
½ cup sugar

For the Pastry Cream
1 cup whole milk
⅓ cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Swiss Meringue Buttercream
2 egg whites
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, cubed, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

For Assembly
1 pound fresh strawberries
2 tablespoons kirsch (optional, rum can be substituted)
powdered sugar, for sprinkling

Directions
Make the sponge cake. Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line the bottom of a 9-inch springform cake pan with a circle of parchment paper. Do not grease the pan; you want the cake to cling to the sides to allow for better rising.

Sift together the flour and salt over a piece of wax paper. Do not skip the sifting--it’s important to ensuring your cake does not have any lumps.

In a medium mixing bowl, mix together the butter and vanilla extract. Let the butter cool to room temperature. In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice and zest. 

Combine the eggs and sugar in a large heatproof mixing bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Gently heat the eggs and sugar, stirring constantly, until the mixture becomes foamy and is very warm, slightly above body temperature.

Whisk the eggs with a hand mixer or stand mixer on high speed for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture has tripled in volume and is very pale. (If you’re using a stand mixer, it may take slightly less time). When you lift up the whisk, you should be able to draw a clear figure 8 with the mixture.

Remove about ½ cup of the egg mixture and fold it into the butter. With the mixer on medium speed, whisk in the lemon juice and zest, and then gradually whisk in the flour, followed by the egg/butter mixture. Work quickly here, before the eggs deflate too much.

Pour the cake batter into the cake pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when touched. Cool the cake upside down on a cooling rack for several hours.

Prepare the mousseline cream filling. First, make the pastry cream. Pour the milk in a saucepan and heat until it begins to simmer. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch in a heatproof mixing bowl.

Temper the eggs: gradually pour the hot milk into the egg mixture while whisking the eggs constantly.  Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, and cook until it begins to boil. Take off the stove and stir in the butter, followed by the vanilla extract. Pour into a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap, pressed directly onto the surface of the pastry cream. Refrigerate for at least 3 to 4 hours.
About 30 minutes before making the swiss meringue buttercream, take the pastry cream out of the refrigerator and let sit at room temperature.

Make the swiss meringue buttercream. Mix together the egg whites, sugar, and salt in a clean, heatproof mixing bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (again, don’t let the bottom of the bowl touch the water)  and gently heat the egg mixture, whisking constantly, until it reaches 160 F. 

Take the bowl off the heat, and beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes, medium-high for 2 minutes, and high for 5-7 minutes, until the eggs form a stiff, glossy meringue. Turn the mixer to medium speed, and gradually add in the butter a few cubes at a time. Beat the frosting at high speed for another 2 -3 minutes. The mixture may look curdled at first after you add the butter, but it will smooth out. Beat in the vanilla extract.

Make the mousseline cream: With the mixer on medium speed, gradually add the pastry cream you made earlier to the swiss meringue buttercream.

Assemble the cake. Cut the sponge cake in half, into two even layers. Peel off the parchment paper circle. Brush the tops of both layers with the kirsch. (If you do not drink, you can omit the kirsch.)

Set aside about 10 small strawberries (about 1 inch in length) for the sides of the cake. Cut these strawberries in half. Roughly dice the remaining strawberries.

Place one of the sponge cake layers in the bottom of the springform pan. Line the strawberry halves along the side of the pan, cut side facing outward. Spread about half of the mousseline cream over the cake, being careful not to dislodge the strawberries. Scatter the diced strawberries over the cream, and spread the remaining cream over them. Top with the other cake layer.

Refrigerate the cake overnight. Remove the cake from the springform pan, and dust with powdered sugar.

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Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

This cake has been quite a while in the making, in a lot of ways. I turned 21 last week, and had decided to make my own cake (it saves me from complaining and turning up my nose and making faces), so I knew I wanted to make something rich, indulgent and chocolate-y.

But I get ahead of myself. The idea for the topping came from over a year ago, in the sleepy back row during lecture for a class called "Science and Cooking" at school. We had a guest lecture that day by Bill Yosses, the White House pastry chef. He had some interesting stories from his work, casually mentioning the chocolate cookies that were Sasha and Malia's favorites, but I'm afraid I found the majority of his presentation thoroughly uninspiring. Mr. Yosses spent the majority of our 90 minutes discussing the history of electricity (which I'm sure did somehow relate to the culinary arts, but I definitely wasn't paying close enough attention make the connection). 

The one part I do remember is watching him play with melted sugar, carefully shaping it to make a delicate candy apple. It looked like blown glass, and there was something so beautiful about how ephemeral it was, to be eaten or to melt from the moisture in the air. (You can see him make the apple here).

So the idea of melted sugar decorations had been bumping around in my head for a while, and I thought they would be perfect perched on a cake, especially against the contrast of a chocolate one.

The cake itself has also been waiting to be made for a while. At my desk one October afternoon, I looked up from Pinterest (my go-to form of procrastination, though ModCloth is a close second), turned to my roommate and announced that I really wanted to make a chocolate cake. Helen responded with something like a sad shake of the head at the things that occupy my brain before returning to her physics homework, but despite my preoccupation, the cake never happened last semester. 

To be honest, I've always been sort of reluctant to tackle fancy layer cakes. They're hard to photograph, and making even cake layers and smoothing the frosting--and worse, cutting the cake--have always kind of stressed me out. But if not for my birthday, then when?

The chocolate cake is lovely, dense, rich, and extremely chocolate-y. It's simple, and a perfect go-to basic chocolate cake. I thought I had adapted it from Magnolia Bakery's chocolate cake recipe, but as I opened my can of Hershey's cocoa powder to make the cake, lo and behold, there was the almost exact same recipe. (Feel free to go off the Magnolia version, if it makes you feel classier. I promise not to tell!) 

However, it's definitely the frosting that steals the show in this cake. The richness of the chocolate (almost a pound of it!) is tempered by the sour cream, which gives it a faint tartness. Fudge-y and smooth, it's almost like frosting your cake with chocolate truffles. Believe me, this is a hundred times better than that awful too-sweet buttercream. 

Putting all of these elements together, this cake was definitely worth the wait.

Stay warm,
-Caroline

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Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

Click here for the printer-friendly recipe
Yields one 8-inch cake
Adapted from Hummingbird High

Ingredients
For the Chocolate Cake
2 cups cake flour
¾ cup cocoa powder
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strongly brewed hot coffee

For the Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting
12 ounces good quality bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped (you can replace some of it with semi-sweet or milk chocolate if you prefer a sweeter, less intense chocolate frosting)
½ cup butter, cubed
2 tablespoons honey
½ cup sour cream
2 tablespoons milk

For the Spun Sugar Decoration (optional)
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup water

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour two 8-inch round cake pans.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs and white and brown sugars until smooth. Mix in the vegetable oil, and then the vanilla extract and buttermilk. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and gently whisk until combined. Whisk in the coffee. Pour the batter into the two cake pans (try to distribute it evenly), and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cakes cool for an hour, unmold, then let them cool completely. 

Make the frosting. Place the chocolate, butter, and honey in a heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Stir constantly until the chocolate is melted and smooth. 

Take the bowl off the heat, and stir in the sour cream and milk. Let sit for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the frosting thickens in consistency and is spreadable.  

Place one of the cake rounds, domed side up , onto a cake stand or serving plate, and spread a thick layer of frosting over the top. Place the other cake round, domed side down, on top of the frosting. You can cut off the domes to level the cake layers before assembling them if you wish, but I didn’t find this necessary.

Spread the frosting over the top of the cake, then on the sides. It doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth--frosting swirls give this cake a certain appeal. If the frosting becomes too hard, re-heat it over the water bath, and it will soften again.

When you’re ready to serve the cake, make the spun sugar decoration, if desired. Place the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Gently stir over medium heat until it comes to a bowl. Let boil until the sugar turns a golden color. (Once it begins to boil, stop stirring or the sugar might seize and crystallize). 

Let the sugar cool until it thickens slightly. If you insert a fork into the sugar, it should trail thin threads of sugar as you pull it away. 

As you wait for the sugar to cool, grease the handles of 4-5 wooden spoons (chopsticks work as well), and tape them to your kitchen sink (or to a countertop) so that the handles are hanging over the sink (or over a newspaper-covered floor). 

Dip the fork into the melted sugar and gently flick it back and forth over the spoon handles, trailing sugar threads over the handles. Repeat until you get the desired amount of spun sugar. (If the sugar become too hard, heat it on the stove again until it softens.)

Carefully remove the sugar from the spoon handles and place on top of the cake. Serve immediately. (The spun sugar will melt in a few hours).

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Mousse Cups

I struggled with starting this post, and out of curiosity, I looked up "chocolate peanut butter" on Food Blog Search, just to see  how other people start them. Phrases like "One of the best flavor pairings on earth" and "Hello chocolate peanut butter perfection!" aren't uncommon, and we've used them several times for recipes like this chocolate peanut butter mug cake and this brownie pie: It is a truth universally acknowledged on the blogosphere that chocolate and peanut butter go together.

So anyways, I'm just going to describe the anatomy of a bite. Your teeth first sink through a layer of fluffy, creamy, sweet mousse that is strongly flavored with peanut butter while remaining light as air. You then encounter the thicker crunchy peanut and chocolate ganache, chewing through the slightly salty peanuts (I used the Smoked flavor from Planters, to give it a slight savory edge to balance the sweet), and feel the intense dark chocolate of the cup melt on your tongue. 

Apart from just the standard peanut butter/chocolate combination, the flavors, textures, and levels of sweet and salty balance each other out perfectly.

Plus, you can get plenty mileage out of the fact that they look super fancy but are actually no-bake, and are fairly easy to make. The chocolate cups, which is the most time-consuming part, can easily be made ahead a day or two ahead, if you're planning a dinner party or something. I'm imagining a scene in which you say oh-so-casually "I just made some peanut butter cups" and then whip these out.

Enjoy, all!
Caroline

Disclaimer: I was provided a free sample by Planters to review. All opinions are my own.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Mousse Cups

Click here for the printer-friendly recipe
Yields: about 15 chocolate cups

Ingredients
For the Chocolate Cups
6 ounces good quality semi-sweet chocolate

For the Crunchy Peanut Ganache
1 ounce semi-sweet chocolate
1 ounce milk chocolate
2 tablespoons heavy cream
¼ cup salted peanuts, roughly chopped

For the Peanut Butter Mousse
½ cup peanut butter
2 ounces white chocolate, chopped
⅔ cup whipped cream
⅓ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
Make the chocolate cups. Melt the chocolate in the microwave at medium power, stopping every 20 seconds or so to give it a stir. 
With a clean paintbrush or a butter knife, carefully spread a thin layer of chocolate on the inside of 15 mini cupcake liners. Chill in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes, until firm. Spread a second layer and chill for another 15 minutes.

Make the peanut ganache. Place the chocolate and heavy cream in a microwaveable bowl and microwave for about 20 seconds. Let sit for 1 minute, then stir until smooth. Stir in the peanuts. 
Place about 2 teaspoons of the ganache in each of the chocolate cups. Replace the cups into the refrigerator.

Make the peanut butter mousse. Place a large mixing bowl in the freezer for about 20 minutes.

Mix together the peanut butter and white chocolate in a microwaveable bowl. Microwave at medium power, stopping every 20 seconds to give it a stir, until the chocolate has melted.

In the pre-chilled bowl, Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla extract and whip until stiff peaks form.

Mix about a quarter of the whipped cream into the peanut butter mixture to lighten it. Fold the peanut butter into the remaining whipped cream.
Pipe the mousse into the chocolate cups, on top of the ganache. 

Raspberry Meringue Cheesecake

Guysguysguysguys, guess what? It's a reallyreallyreally special day! Because it's our birthday! Pass the Cocoa turns two years old today.

Who'd have thought we'd still be doing this food blogging craziness after two years? To be honest, I thought this would be a passing interest, and that Monica and I would get tired of blogging pretty quickly, yet somehow I'm sitting here at 1 a.m., writing our 97th post instead of doing my history reading.

The story goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there were two high school seniors in Indiana who were on their school paper. They decided to start a blog about food on their high school paper's website, because their adviser was making a big push to get more traffic on the web, and they liked food, and, okay, they were managing editors on staff and were supposed to be, like, doing stuff for the paper.

Well, eventually they were about to graduate from high school, and couldn't take their blog with them, so they had to get a new URL. After much soul-searching, they chose to name their new website Pass the Cocoa, a name with great philosophical and personal meaning and reflected their most sacred beliefs about food and baking. (Okay, fine, we were just looking for an available URL).

For the first year, their only readership consisted of their mothers and one high school friend (thanks Andy!) who may or may not have been bribed with Oreo truffles. They were busy adjusting to college, juggling classes and being traumatized by dining hall food.

But eventually they found their feet, and started to put more thought and effort into their photography and posts, tried to be more of a presence in social media and the food blogging community.

And so here we are. I've talked about my experiences in food blogging in another post, so I'll just say that Monica and I have learned a lot more from this experience than I thought we would. It seemed so easy: we just needed to bake some stuff and take some photos, slap some words on it, stick it on the Internet, and call it a day. We found out pretty quickly that there was a lot more going on behind just what you see here.

I've seen the site statistics for some other blogs, and I know that Pass the Cocoa hasn't grown nearly as fast as a lot of other blogs. It's tempting to always be comparing ourselves to other blogs, but at the end of the day, we actually do blog because we love making and eating and writing about food.

Which brings me to this cheesecake. This raspberry meringue cheesecake is kind of labor intensive but is more than kind of amazing: a vanilla cheesecake with an Oreo crust, topped with raspberry pastry cream, and frosted with fluffy, lightly toasted meringue. A combination of fruity, tart, chocolate-y, and marshmallow-y.

It's a pretty good way of celebrating turning two, if I do say so myself.

-Caroline

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Raspberry Meringue Cheesecake

Ingredients
For the Cheesecake:
20 Oreo cookies
¼ cup butter, melted
16 ounces (2 packages) cream cheese, at room temperature
⅓ cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Raspberry Pastry Cream
1 cup whole milk
3 egg yolks
⅓ cup raspberry jam
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
For the Meringue Topping
3 egg whites
3 tablespoons granulated sugar

Directions
For the Cheesecake
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Finely crush Oreos and melted butter in the food processor. Press into a greased 9-inch springform pan.

Beat cream cheese, with the mixer on medium speed. Add sugar and vanilla. Beat well. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in sour cream on low speed.

Pour the batter in springform pan over the Oreo crust. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until the center is almost set.

Let the cheesecake cool completely, and refrigerate at least 4 hours.

For the Raspberry Pastry Cream
Place the milk in a saucepan and bring to a simmer on the stove.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until they turn a pale yellow. Whisk in the flour and salt.

While whisking constantly, slowly drizzle in about ⅔ of the hot milk into the bowl with the egg yolks. Pour the egg yolks/milk mixture back into the saucepan and cook it over medium-low heat stirring constantly.

The pastry cream is done when it becomes a thick paste and large bubbles begin to pop through the surface. Take the saucepan off the stove and whisk in the raspberry jam.

Allow the pastry cream to cool, then cover it with a piece of plastic wrap placed directly over the surface of the cream so that it does not form a hard crust. Refrigerate several hours, preferably overnight.

Spread the pastry cream evenly over the top of the cheesecake.

For the Meringue Topping
Just before serving the cake, make the meringue topping. Turn on the broiler in your oven. In a double boiler (or a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water), mix together the egg whites and sugar. Gently heat, stirring constantly, until it is 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

Take the bowl off the heat and whisk the egg white/sugar mixture until it is fluffy and white, and stiff peaks form. Spread the meringue over the cheesecake, on top of the raspberry pastry cream.

Place the cheesecake in the oven for 15-30 seconds, until the top of the meringue is golden brown. Keep a close eye on the cheesecake during this process, since it can burn easily.