Boulangerie-Patisserie Book

My favorite bakery Boulangerie-Patisserie, has a book, you will bet i will be getting this book next! I love to look at the pictures even though the reviews says that some recipes might not work.

Strawberry Cake

Yellow Cake Ingredients:

1 3/4 plain cake flour
4 large eggs
1/2 cup of milk
2 teaspoon of vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks of butter

Filling ingredients:

strawberries
sugar to taste

Whipped Cream:
Use heavy cream and beat in the mixer until stiff foams form.

Step 1: Make 2 yellow cake by using 2 cake pans. Mix ingredients together and let it cool completely.
Step 2: Make filling. Slice strawberries and add sugar. Let cool in the fridge.
Step 3: Put cake together. Put yellow cake first, then 1 layer of whipped cream, and then a layer of strawberries. Then layer again with whipped cream. Repeat.
Step 4: Decorate. Apply whipped cream around cake, and decorate with fruits.

Preparing to bake a cake from scratch...

Since its hubby's bday i decided to bake a cake from scratch. After looking at some recipes, videos, books i decided to make a chocolate cake. Here are some tools I bought yesterday:




For decorating:

Baking Illustrated Book

This book was given to me on my bday last year and I find this to be an excellent book. This book is not for everyone because it lacks a lot of the colorful pictures that normally people would expect but this book (and all the books from cook's Illustrated) are written from a more technical and scientific approach. Not only it has the reputation of the Cooks Illustrated editors the recipes comes from what they call, "America's Test Kitchen" which is an actual kitchen,

America’s Test Kitchen is a real 2,500 square foot test kitchen located just outside of Boston that is home to more than three dozen full-time cooks and product testers. Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most-foolproof recipe.

Our recipes, equipment ratings, taste test results, and kitchen tips are made available through our magazines, our Web sites, our television series; America’s Test Kitchen, and our cookbooks.


Pretty interesting! NO wonder the recipes I have tried are all pretty good!

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake

Ingredients:
140g/5 oz. fine granulated sugar
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
50g/2 oz. butter
250g/9 oz. cream cheese
100 ml/3 fluid oz. fresh milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice
60g/2 oz. cake flour /superfine flour
20g/1 oz. cornflour (cornstarch)
1/4 tsp. salt

Instructions:
1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Fold in the flour, the cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice and mix well.

2. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

3. Add the cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper).

4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown at 160 degrees C (325 degrees F).

Makes 1 (8-inch) cheesecake, 12 servings.

Matcha Roll Cake

I love drinking matcha so i thought i'd try desserts with it. Its awesome!

Ingredients:

¾ C cake flour
1 T plus 1 tsp matcha powder
¾ tsp baking powder
4 eggs, separated
¾ C sugar
2 -3 T milk

Filling: beat 2 C heavy cream until almost stiff, add 1 - 2 T sugar


Pre-heat oven to 400°F
Sift together flour, matcha, and baking powder 3 times, set aside.
In a clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, set aside.
In another bowl beat egg yolks until very light. Add sugar gradually and beat until light. Add flour mixture, stir on low speed. Add 2 T milk, continue stirring until mixed.
Fold in beaten egg whites.
Spread mixture on a parchment paper-lined jelly roll pan. Bake for 8 minutes. Trim edges.

Using paper as guide, roll cake from short side, leave on a rack to cool completely.

Unroll cake, spread the whipped cream. Re-roll cake, peeling paper as you roll. Refrigerate for 2 hours before slicing.Jelly roll cake recipes usually say to transfer the cake on a towel sprinkled with powdered sugar. It is not really necessary and the powdered sugar will make the outside of the cake whitish and of course add to the sweetness. The paper is better because it will remove the brownish surface layer of the cake and the result is a cleaner, prettier cake.

Of course by the appearance you can tell i didn't do the last part and i left the brownish side on the outside. I should try to peel it off next time.

Carrot Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

I made this for a halloween bake sale at work.

Pastry:
1 C flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C granulated sugar
1/3 C packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 C vegetable or canola oil
1 1/2 C lightly packed finely shredded carrots (I used 2 carrots)
1/3 C dried cranberries (or raisins or omit)
(Next time: 1 tsp of orange zest)

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
1/2 bar of cream cheese (4oz)
1/4 C maple syrup

Optional topping: finely chopped toasted pecans



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or grease them.

Shred your carrots on a box grater (be careful, mind your knuckles) or in a food processor with a shredding disc, set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together.

In a food processor or blender, blend the granulated and brown sugar with the eggs until throughly combined. With the machine running, slowly pour in the oil and continue to mix until the mixture has lightened in color and is somewhat thicker, about 30 seconds. Pour it into the dry ingredients and add the shredded carrots and dried cranberries and mix until no streaks of flour remain.

Divide the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 17 to 23 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a cupcake in the center of the pan comes out clean. Rotate the pan halfway into baking time. Remove the cupcakes from the pan and cool on a rack to room temperature.

As the cakes are cooling, take out half a bar of cream cheese and let it soften a little. To make the frosting, simply whisk the cream cheese with the maple syrup until smooth. Frost the cupcakes when they have cooled and top with chopped pecans if preferred.

Makes 12 cupcakes