Figment Looming Valentine's Day Cards
Color Changing Bands (Hearts Turning Green in My Hand)
Most of Drakeson's
Most of Milli's
How Many Heart Oreos Are Too many Heart Oreos?
09 February 2021
Valentines VI
Every year, Drakeson helps make all his valentines and signs all his cards, but he really stepped up his involvement this time around. We made kaeru mini hearts rainbow loom bracelets for over 45 people, and he had a hand in every step of the way. It became a tradition to listen to the soundtrack to "Over the Moon" while looming these past couple weeks, and it was not uncommon for dance breaks to occur during "Ultraluminary." Milli was no slouch, and a handful of bracelets were prepared for her friends as well. I hope that when we look back on these projects some day, the kids will remember sitting at the table with me, listening to music, dancing, and focusing hard with their metal hooks in their little hands.
Pastry (4/4)
All pastry doughs contain flour, water, and fat. There are five basic types of pastry, and these are choux pastry, shortcrust pastry, flaky pastry, puff pastry, and filo pastry.
Choux pastry is in a world of its own. Also called pâte à choux, it is made of flour, water, butter, and eggs. This thick, sticky batter is stirred over a stovetop, which traps in steam and produces a hollow interior when baked. Choux pastry is used to make éclairs and profiteroles.
Shortcrust is a sturdy base for tarts, quiches, or pies. It has a finer crumb and is better able to retain liquids than flaky pastry. Pâte brisée contains only flour, butter, salt, and cold water, and can contain up to 60% butter. Pâte à foncer requires the addition of egg. Pâte sucrée, or sweet shortcrust, requires both egg and sugar. Pâte sablée is the most difficult shortcrust of all. Butter is creamed with sugar and eggs before flour is added, and the resulting dough is minimally puffy, crumbly, and very rich. Almond flour is sometimes added, making this dough even harder to roll out. Pâte sablée, therefore, is often pressed into molds.
Hot water crust pastry is not considered a shortcrust, but it certainly doesn't belong in any of the other four. This pastry is made by melting animal fat (lard) into hot water and incorporating flour. This sturdy dough is the only pastry capable of producing hand-raised pies.
Flaky pastry, quick pastry, blitz pastry, or rough puff pastry requires pea-sized chunks of butter to be left in the dough. It must be minimally handled, and can be used for pies, quiches, sausage rolls, and turnovers. American pie crust is a flaky pastry.
Puff pastry, or pâte feuilletée, is made from a sheet of butter encased in a dough that is then repeatedly folded or laminated. Both fat and air are trapped between layers of dough, creating a puff of delicate crispy layers when baked. Because the butter cannot melt, laminated dough must be refrigerated between turns, and the process is more time consuming than rough puff. Puff pastry is used for croissants, cream horns, mille-feuille, and wrapping meats.
Filo or phyllo dough is unleavened dough made of flour, water, and a small amount of oil rolled and stretched into impossibly thin sheets. These sheets are then brushed with oil or butter and layered before baking. Phyllo dough is used to make baklava, börek, or spanakopita.
I think we're finally ready to watch the Great British Bake Off.
Chocolate Croissants
Cakes (3/4)
This tutorial will move from the richest cakes to the lightest.
Let's begin by disqualifying gelatin art cakes, which were covered somewhat regrettably in "More Frostings & Fillings." The richest cakes, flourless cakes, include baked or unbaked cheesecakes, baked flourless chocolate cakes, and unbaked mousse cakes. Most other cakes fall into one of two main categories, which are butter cakes and foam cakes.
Butter cakes, also called shortened cakes, require baking soda or baking powder. They use a generous amount of butter, margarine, or vegetable shortening, creamed with sugar, to create moist dense cakes. Egg, flour, and leavening agents are then beaten in.
Foam cakes, on the other hand, do not rely on leavening agents. Also called sponges, these are made with flour and sugar, and use air beaten into egg whites as the raising agent. Although traditional sponge cakes are made without butter or oil, some sponge recipes call for small amounts of butter. These types of cakes must be baked immediately before the egg whites deflate, and they require fairly tall pans due to the egg white rise. They are often eaten without heavy frosting.
Common American butter cakes are chocolate cakes, white cakes, or yellow cakes, where yellow cakes contain more yolks than white cakes. Devils food cakes are chocolate butter cakes made with cocoa powder and boiling water. Red velvet cakes, which are flavored with only a moderate amount of cocoa and dyed red, and carrot cakes are butter cakes shortened with oil.
Popular British butter cakes are Victoria sponges, Madeira sponges, and pound cakes. Victoria sponges, also known as Victoria sandwiches, are butter cakes cut in half horizontally, filled with strawberry or raspberry jam and cream, and topped with powdered sugar. Madeira sponges contain more flour than Victoria sponges, and are therefore firmer and denser. Pound cakes, which are denser than either, contain a pound each of butter, flour, sugar, and egg, and are traditionally baked in loaf pans.
Chiffon cakes are a hybrid of butter and sponge cakes. They require a leavening agent and a generous amount of vegetable oil (not butter) like in shortened cakes, but the eggs are also separated and beaten, like in sponge cakes. Yolks and sugar are beaten until creamy, then oil, flour, and baking powder are gently incorporated, and last, stiff egg whites with sugar are folded in. Chiffon cakes are traditionally baked in circular tube pans.
Hot milk sponges, which are less popular than chiffon cakes, are among the heaviest of sponge cakes. Requiring butter, milk, and baking powder, they use different ingredients than traditional sponge cakes, but they also don't cream butter and sugar together like butter cakes. Whole eggs and yolks are first whipped and then folded with flour, hot milk, melted butter, and baking powder.
Nut sponges are the moistest sponges. Because they don't dry out when exposed to air, they can be layered and unfrosted. Yolks are whipped with sugar, ground nuts and sometimes flour are folded in, and stiff egg whites with sugar are folded in last. The most popular nut sponge is the jaconde sponge, which is an almond sponge baked in thin flexible sheets. Jaconde sponges can hold intricate decorations very well. To create patterns, some of the cake batter is colored, often with cocoa powder, and then piped into a design on a silicone mat and frozen. The remaining batter is then spread thinly over the pattern before being baked. Jaconde sponges are also the basis of the opera cake, a layered marvel including coffee syrup, ganache, french buttercream, and chocolate glaze.
Daffodil sponges have grown out of favor, but like ermine buttercream, they are clearly worth mention. (I am discerning; feather cakes are not.) Daffodil sponges are marbled sponge cakes in which half of the batter is colored yellow from egg yolks, and half is not. To make one of these cakes, begin with an egg white sponge batter like angel food cake. Separately fold beaten egg yolks into half of the white batter, and spoon differently colored batters into a circular tube pan.
The most classic of all sponges, the génoise, is also the most difficult to make. Génoise sponges are dry, delicate, and tender. They don't have much flavor on their own, and are often stacked with fillings or syrups. They slice beautifully without crumbling and are pliable enough to to be baked in a jelly roll pan. Although all génoise sponges contain yolks, those without butter are called "fatless." To make a génoise, whole eggs are beaten with sugar over a water bath until thick and ribbony, and the volume nearly triples during this process. Flour is then gently folded in, sometimes with a little bit of melted butter.
Biscuit sponges, or lady fingers, are drier than génoise sponges but hold their shape even better. They are rarely eaten plain, but used as a component in other desserts like tiramisù. For biscuit sponges, eggs are separated and both whites and yolks are separately whipped with sugar. Both mixtures are then gently folded together with flour.
Angel food cake is the lightest of all sponges, but it's also quite moist due to its high sugar content. White and fluffy, it is imagined to be the food of angels. To make angel food cake, whites are stiffly beaten with sugar, and then cream of tartar, flour, and sugar are folded in. These are traditionally baked in circular tube pans.
In closing, it is important to address the differences between a cake, a gâteau, and a torte. A classic American cake has one to three thick layers of butter cake filled with buttercream. (We're the worst.) A gâteau is a cake with many thin layers of sponge filled with mousse, ganache, or fruit fillings. When gâteaux are made with fresh fruit, they are intended to be eaten on the same day. A torte has even more layers of very thin filled sponges than a gateau. Torte batters often include ground hazelnuts or almonds. They are meant to be quite tall with at least six layers, and they are often covered in chocolate or fondant.
Between this and what we've learned about buttercreams and fillings, we should be fairly well equipped to watch the Great British Bake Off like know-it-alls. What's that? A pastry post request? Oh, if you insist.
Poppyseed Cake with Peppermint Buttercream & Lemon Roses
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