THE BEWITCHING KITCHEN TURNS FIVE!

Posted in Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

IT’S GIVEAWAY TIME!
UPDATE: time’s up, comments shutdown for this post

It’s been five years and 688 posts. I enjoyed blogging from the beginning, and then it got better as the years passed. Now I’m more relaxed about it, I suppose. Looking back, I went through a few phases that are maybe not obvious to you. For instance, in the second year I became slightly obsessed with getting special serving dishes, plates and small bowls “for the blog.” I also flirted with the idea of a fancy camera and photography classes, until I realized that’s not what my blog should be about. I assembled all the extra stuff, donated it, and felt great. Our life has little to do with perfectly set tables and carefully placed food props. “…not that there’s anything wrong with that!” 😉

The Bewitching Kitchen revolves around our desire to eat well while working jobs that demand our full attention, even beyond the daily 9-to-5. So, most stuff I post reflects the need for simple dishes that are reasonably quick to prepare, but flavorful and fun to eat. I have neither goals nor expectations for the blog, except to keep it going as long as I enjoy it. If this site can motivate busy people to cook, eat well, and – I bet you knew this was coming – exercise often, so much the better!

Five years went by so quickly. This blogging milestone demanded that I face my own cooking demons. I baked a cake! What’s even more amazing is that it involved creaming TWO types of sugar with butter. Can you imagine that? It will take me a while to recover …

APPLE SPICE BUNDT CAKE WITH RUM GLAZE
(slightly modified from Alton Brown, Best Thing I Ever Made)

for the cake:
12 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for the pan
15 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground grains of paradise
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground star anise
8 ounces granulated sugar
7 ounces light brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Granny Smith apples, about 8 ounces each, 1/4-inch dice
3 ounces walnuts, chopped
1 1/2 ounces crystallized ginger, finely chopped

for the glaze:
6 ounces powdered sugar
4 teaspoons dark rum
Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

Heat the oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly butter a Bundt pan and dust with flour, tapping out the excess.

Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt and spices together in a large bowl.

Combine the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and, using the paddle attachment, beat on medium until the mixture is pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

Whisk together the eggs and vanilla and slowly add, with the mixer on low-speed, to the butter and sugar. Add the flour one-third at a time and beat on low just until combined after each addition. Stir in the apples, pecans and ginger.

Transfer the batter to the prepared bundt pan; the batter is thick and will almost fill the pan. Bake for 75 minutes, rotating the pan after 30 minutes. The cake is done when it pulls away from the sides of the pan, springs back when pressed and the internal temperature reaches 205 degrees F.

Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes. Invert and remove the cake from the pan. Cool completely on the rack before glazing.

Combine the powdered sugar, rum and 1 tablespoon water in a small mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Pour the glaze onto the bundt cake and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Let the glaze set for at least 30 minutes before serving.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments: This cake was part of the show “Best Thing I Ever Made” on FoodTV Network a few years ago. Ever since I watched that episode and listened to Alton Brown describe his rationale behind the recipe, I wanted to make it. First, I love a cake that goes in the direction of speculoos with all those delicious spices. And this cake had two things that appealed even more to me: the inclusion of grains of paradise, and the omission of cinnamon. Grains of paradise (shown on the top left of the composite photo) have a very unique flavor, so I was quite intrigued by their use in this cake. And cinnamon is so common when apple cakes are concerned, that NOT having it immediately called my attention. In fact, Alton made a specific point of not adding cinnamon to the batter, to avoid taking his masterpiece in the direction of apple pie. Brilliant move!

The whole thing works beautifully together, just as he promised: chunks of apple permeate the cake, a tender crunch of walnuts (he used pecans, by the way), and the assertive crunch of crystallized ginger. The delicate shell of the icing with rum (barely noticeable) is perked up by the sprinkle of turbinado sugar, not to be omitted… For my taste, this cake is close to perfection. I did not have that many issues to bake it, which is a bit unusual. Ok, later I had to wash some dried up cake batter from my right eyebrow, but that’s nothing compared to what cake baking has done to me in the past. Still, below you see a photo of the state of our kitchen midway through this labor of love. Trust me, I never make this mess, only when I’m working on a cake. It is absolutely pathetic. Please notice the place I chose for resting the bowl with all the flour. Why would I pick the most unstable place ever? Let’s not waste time trying to understand it. It is cake. And it is me. Capisci?

And now… GIVEAWAY TIME! I am so thrilled to celebrate my 5th year in the blogosphere that I am offering two gifts. First, a wooden board beautifully crafted by Michael (link to his site), who has been featured on IMK in the recent past. He was actually quite busy with some trips but managed to make time in his schedule to have this board ready for my giveaway. Thank you, Michael!

The second gift, is a copy of the latest cookbook by David Lebovitz, My Paris Kitchen…. If you are familiar with his style, you’ll know this book is a must-have. Paris is obviously a place very dear to my heart, it’s where Phil and I met, and where we spent a sabbatical year together later. Visiting often is not possible, but cooking French food is one way to keep the memories alive. This book is a virtual passport to the city we love. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post.

Everyone is welcome to enter, I will draw two names on July 1st, 2014 an announce the winners right then. Entries will close on June 30rd at midnight. Good luck, and a big thank you for all who make the interactions in comments, private emails, and Facebook so much fun! I invite you all to join me in the journey of my 6th Bewitching year! There will be bread, sous-vide, and pies. There will be macarons, dog tales, and when the mood strikes, pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups. Maybe this will be the year I get to finally conquer the crane pose that I’ve been working on for as long as I’ve been blogging….

It’s the road that matters, not the destination. I firmly believe that. 😉

ONE YEAR AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen turns Four!

TWO YEARS AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen Turns Three!

THREE YEARS AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen turns Two!

FOUR YEARS AGO: Bewitching Birthday!

FIVE YEARS AGO: Welcome to my blog!

16Jun2013

THE BEWITCHING KITCHEN TURNS FOUR!

Posted in Desserts, Sweets by sallybr

June 16th, 2013

My beloved blog turns 4 years old today! To celebrate, I assembled all the cake suggestions my readers offered two years ago, assigned numbers to each of them, and drew the winner cake. Celia’s suggestion was the lucky one, so I gathered all ingredients, took a deep breath and made her White Chocolate Bundt Cake to celebrate the occasion…

She wrote a great post about this cake, one that made the process almost pain-free to a person who hyperventilates with just a glimpse of a Bundt pan. Those crevices are evil. To make matters worse, the cake included that dreadful step of creaming sugar with butter. But, a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do. I did not run away from it, kicking and screaming. Sometimes it is good to resist a first impulse.

WHITE CHOCOLATE BUNDT CAKE
(from Celia’s blog, Fig Jam and Lime Cordial)

for the cake:
450g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
250g unsalted butter, softened
440g white sugar
1½ tsp pure vanilla extract
5 large (59g) eggs, at room temperature
115g white chocolate, melted and still warm
250g thick Greek yoghurt
115g white chocolate chunks or chips

for the topping (optional):
115g (4oz) white chocolate
65ml (¼ cup) heavy cream
115g (4oz) milk chocolate

Heat oven to 350F. Spray a 12 cup bundt pan with oil.

In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, beating for 20 seconds after each addition. Slowly beat in the melted white chocolate. Scrape down the bowl.

Add the flour mixture to the butter in thirds, alternating with the Greek yoghurt. Beat for 45 seconds after each addition. You want to end with flour rather than yoghurt (improves the final texture of the batter). Place the batter in the pan in three layers, separating each layer with the white chocolate chips.

Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, but start checking after 45 minutes. The top will be brown and a sharp thin knife inserted in the center will come out with a few crumbs on it. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then gently loosen around the edges before inverting onto a wire rack to allow the cake to finish cooling at room temperature.

Topping: In a glass or ceramic bowl, heat the white chocolate with the cream until just melted. Stir until smooth. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then drizzle over the cake. In a separate bowl, heat the milk chocolate in the microwave until just melted. Stir until smooth. Drizzle over the cake.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments: Things went extremely well with this cake from making the batter to inverting the pan to reveal a perfect cake in all its gorgeous glory!
I was already thrilled because contrary to 99.5% of the cake recipes I’ve tried, this one actually produced enough batter to fill the pan to proper capacity. Every other recipe leaves me wondering if my kitchen has some type of black hole that sucks cake batters and takes them to another dimension. Now, this is a nice looking Bundt pan, ready to be baked.

I baked the cake, allowed it to cool for 15 minutes in the pan, chronometer in hand, heart pounding fast. And voilá, when I inverted the pan, this is the vision I was rewarded with:

Is this a thing of complete beauty or what? I BAKED THAT! I know, I know, unreal… I did several victory laps around the kitchen island, then a few around the house. Oscar followed me, wagging his tail, Buck got scared and ran away to hide. Chief? He slept through the whole celebration, but I won’t take that personally. A 14-year old dog earned his right to sleep through anything!

Time to ice the cake. That’s when the road got a little bumpy. I should have read Celia’s post more carefully. She added a note to say that the white chocolate ganache is usually too liquid, so she prefers to simply melt the pure white chocolate to drizzle on top. Well, my ganache was so liquid it disappeared into the cake. I also did not do a very good job with the dark chocolate drizzle, so in the end I covered the whole cake with powdered sugar on top of the drizzle for cosmetic reasons. Over-kill? Maybe. I do agree with Celia, though. This cake is so amazing, a simple dusting with powdered sugar is more than enough. We took a platter to the department and everyone loved it!

One thousand four-hundred and sixty-one days blogging. Food blogging brings many wonderful things with it. First, the virtual connections made with readers and other bloggers. Too special for words. Second, it provides a journal of our adventures: travels for work and/or pleasure, a sabbatical with its nano-kitchen challenge, the move of our home and lab to Kansas. Third, it is a valuable database of recipes we tried and enjoyed. I normally don’t blog on a recipe that didn’t work, unless I feel it’s worth re-visiting it. Sometimes I like to pick a recipe at random from the index, and read about what was going on with us at the time. Were we in Los Angeles when I baked that? Was that post written during a dreadful ice storm in Oklahoma? Was Pits, our beautiful dalmatian still hanging around in our kitchen, stealing butter and T-bone steaks from the countertop? Has it really been four years? 😉

A very wise and dear mentor, Leon Rosenberg once told me: “Memory fails. Keep a diary. You will be glad you did”. I am sure glad I started this site, the closest thing to a diary I can keep up with…

To my readers, followers, fellow food bloggers, friends in real and virtual life, thanks for stopping by and warming up this place with your presence!
Now, I invite you to join me as I start the fifth year of Bewitching Kitchen!

ONE YEAR AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen Turns Three!

TWO YEARS AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen turns two!

THREE YEARS AGO: Bewitching Birthday!

FOUR YEARS AGO: Welcome to my blog!

16Jun2012

THE BEWITCHING KITCHEN TURNS THREE!

Posted in General by sallybr

It’s hard to believe it’s been 3 years since I wrote my first post, unsure of where it would take me. Since then, I’ve published 447 articles, and went from having a couple hundred page views per month to over 20 thousand!

If my life was a smooth, uneventful ride, I would bake a cake for the occasion. A cake chosen from the several options suggested last year in the comments, fingers crossed that it would be as gorgeous as this baby:

Instead of uneventful, our life seems to follow the script of North by Northwest. 😉 All kitchen stuff is now divided between two homes, we are surrounded by boxes, and constrained by deadlines. No cake this year, I’m afraid. Instead, I celebrate by bringing you the first giveaway in the Bewitching Kitchen!

Leave a comment on this post from now until the end of June, and on July 1st I will draw the name of the lucky winner. The prize?

A copy of “The Brazilian Kitchen“, a book I recently fell in love with and wrote a post about. Everyone is welcome, from all over the planet, as long as the mail service can reach you! 😉

To all my readers, subscribers, followers, friends (in real life and those special friendships formed through the blogosphere) thank you for your support! And a special thank you to Fer, from Chucrute com Salsicha, who (maybe without ever being aware of it), was my main source of inspiration to become a food blogger.

I close this post sharing two photos from our new home: the view from our kitchen window, and a spot at the corner of our backyard. Just a teaser, we are not moved in yet, but sort of camped there for a couple of days last week. The two of us, a bed, a kitchen table. and the amazing performance of fireflies outside the window during the night…

ONE YEAR AGO: The Bewitching Kitchen turns two!

TWO YEARS AGO: Bewitching Birthday!

THREE YEARS AGO: Welcome to my blog!

18Jun2011

BEWITCHING KITCHEN TURNS TWO!

Posted in Desserts by sallybr

Two years of blogging! Forgive the cliche’, but it does seem like yesterday. 😉 I’m a few days late for my own party, mainly because the move home wasn’t trouble free. Our internet and cable services needed some tweaking, and then a tree fell on our bedroom roof during a hail storm! We certainly can’t complain for lack of excitement!

And what’s more exciting than Sally baking a layered cake? My adrenaline level went sky-high, but, in the name of my blog anniversary, I grabbed my wooden spoons and marched with cautious optimism to the Kitchen Aid. Things quickly went downhill, but I managed to make the cake!

TUXEDO CAKE
(from The Pastry Queen, by Rebecca Rather)

For the cake batter:
4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup canola or vegetable oil
2 cups water
4 large eggs

For the whipped cream filling and frosting:
4 cups chilled whipping (heavy) cream
1¼ cups confectioner’s (powdered) sugar

For the chocolate glaze:
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces
½ cup whipping (heavy) cream
¼ cup Lyle’s Golden Syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350^o degrees F. Prepare three 9-inch cake pans: lightly grease the pans with butter, line with parchment paper and then lightly grease the top of the parchment paper and dust with flour.
In a large mixing bowl combine sugar, cocoa, flour, baking soda, and salt; whisk together to mix. Set aside.
In a medium saucepan combine butter, oil, and water. Heat over low heat until the butter is melted, stirring often. Pour the butter mixture into the sugar mixture. Using a Kitchen Aid type mixer on low speed, stir or whisk until combined and smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula so the mixture blends evenly. Add the eggs, one a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition. Finally, add the buttermilk and the vanilla extract, stirring well until smooth.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and place pans on a rack to cool for 10 to 15 minutes then remove cake from the pans and place the cake on the wire cooling rack to finish cooling. Cool completely before frosting.

For the frosting:
In a large mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the whipping cream until soft mounds form; gradually add the powdered sugar, continue beating until thick and stiff.
Place one cake layer on a cake plate. Using an offset spatula thickly spread some of the whipped cream over the top. Top with the remaining cake layers, coating the top of each with the whipped cream, and then covering the sides of the cake. Spread the cream as smooth as possible over the top and sides. Refrigerate the cake at least one hour to stabilize the whipped cream before glazing.

Chocolate Glaze:
Place the chopped chocolate in a medium bowl. Set aside. In a small heavy saucepan over medium low heat, heat the cream until it is hot and just beginning to steam. Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate, stirring until the chocolate is completely melted. Add Lyle’s Golden Syrup and vanilla, stirring until completely mixed. Pour the chocolate mixture into a measuring cup with a pouring spout and let the glaze cool for 10 minutes, no longer than that. Slowly pour the glaze over the cake. Cover the top of the cake entirely, letting some of the glaze drizzle down the sides, and allowing some of the whipped cream show through the drizzles around the side of the cake. Refrigerate the cake until the glaze is set and the whipped cream frosting is firm, at least one hour.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments: When I baked my first layer cake last year I had problems with small differences in the diameter of my 9-inch pans. Now that I am one year smarter, I took one of my pans to the store and bought siblings pans of the exact same size. After a deep breath I opened the book and got started preparing the pans and the batter.

Keep in mind that this is enough batter for three layers of cake. In other words, it’s A LOT of batter. The Kitchen Aid was almost full, and pretty heavy. I poured some batter in the first pan, the second pan, the third pan. I was filling each one a little more when the bowl slipped from my hands into the center of one of the half-full pans! Chocolate batter splashed everywhere, onto everything in its path, including my laptop’s charger (that had no business being on the countertop, what was I thinking?), the bag of flour, the carton of eggs… the list goes on. I confess to some pretty crass language that would extremely disappoint my mother.

The pans went in the oven, I cleaned up the kitchen chaos, and while washing my feet and flip-flops I told myself that only a good night’s sleep would purge my cake demons and prepare me for phase 2: the FROSTING.

What can possibly go wrong with whipped cream? In theory, not much, especially because I make it so often. But, because this was intended to frost a cake, I immediately spilled the whipping cream as I poured it in the bowl, making a big mess. My quick cleaning was apparently not thorough enough, requiring the additional help that you see here, from our puppy Oscar. Our other dog Chief, who’s been with us for 12 years, disappears from the kitchen whenever I bake, so Oscar went at it alone.

Apart from those “issues,” the frosting and the icing went smoothly. I decided to reduce the cake to two layers because it’s already so caloric. Three layers is just too much for us, in my humble opinion. However, it tasted incredibly good: rich, chocolatey and succulent, so if you have a special occasion to celebrate, make this baby and get ready for the compliments… 😉

Now let’s have some fun on this anniversary celebration:
help me pick a cake for next year! Just leave your suggestion in a comment (even if it involves that dreadful “cream sugar with butter step”) and I’ll conduct a random drawing to select my cake challenge for the the blog anniversary in June 2012. You can include a link to a recipe, or just the name of the cake.

Thank you for hanging out with me for these two years of culinary adventures!