Circling back to say this hot milk cake was FANTASTIC, especially for how easy it was!
I don’t know what it would taste like on day 2 because it got decimated with a series of “just a bit more” on day 1
The friends who hosted dinner want me to use a jam from the farm near their house “next time”, and the other friends are wondering how large the cake can be baked for when a larger group gathers at their place, so I think we have another favorite “house” dessert for this group,
I still have half the orange zest sugar / oleo saccharum I made today, so I may make another 1 egg version soon… maybe a little Swiss roll.
Looks are deceiving — this is so much more than iits humble appearance.
I loved the little oval cakes I made for your test batch , and didn’t eat them until day two. I might make mention that it is very important to cream the butter/ sugar very well, it’s critical to the cake’s success.
I used my stand mixer and beat for a very long time, probably close to 4 minutes. Can’t say that I had much collapse, stayed pretty fluffy and will do it that way again.
I meant to say beat the eggs with the sugar, not cream butter/sugar. Butter is melted with milk.
I used the Chef Zeb recipe which adds the oil first, it’s not melted with the butter/milk. @Saregama
Yes, I understood what you meant bec I used the same recipe!
After the hot milk, my batter thinned out a lot, which most recipes said is normal. That’s what I meant by keeping the structure – the sugar must dissolve a fair bit for that, because for 1 egg it was only 1/4c milk.
I just came across an eggless version so I may test that out for my vegetarian / eggless recipients.
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ChristinaM
(Hungry in Asheville, NC (still plenty to offer tourists post Hurricane))
148
I made a full size recipe based on the Lottie + Doof version online. It was fine, but I wasn’t thrilled. The only variations I made from the recipe were that I made my own "self-raising flour, " which I think may have been a bit off, as I don’t think it was intended to have salt (but it was just 1/4 tsp) and I only had regular, not golden, caster sugar.
I think the quality of my fruit was good, so I’m at a bit of a loss. Again, it was fine, I just didn’t feel it was particularly special. Did you add any vanilla extract? I feel like it was missing something, and I was wondering if that would help. TIA.
I did add almond and vanilla extract, grated lemon rind as well. White Lily Self Rising flour does have salt in it, the baking powder is 1 1/4 t per cup. The flour is structurally different due to the bleaching and its low protein. Cake flour might be a closer approximation for a similar result. Both RLB and Stella Parks recommend Gold Medal bleached flour for cakes but even that has a higher protein count, Bob’s Red Mill makes a pastry flour that might be close to the same protein amount. The SR flour and bleached cake flour adsorb liquid differently and the texture of the cake therefore is different.
I made 2/3 as mentioned but used 2 whole eggs. No other changes, I did cream the butter/sugar for an extended period of time.
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ChristinaM
(Hungry in Asheville, NC (still plenty to offer tourists post Hurricane))
153
DH requested a “super simple” cake with peaches and whipped cream for his bday. I obliged by making Yossy Arefi’s vanilla buttermilk cake topped with macerated SC peaches and vanilla bean unsweetened whipped cream. I added 1Tbsp bourbon to the cake with the vanilla bean paste. Really delicious.
In addition to lots of jamming I also baked a lot these weekend: further reports to follow. First I made this strawberry cake which finished off my flat. I was going to make the smitten kitchen raspberry buttermilk cake but the raspberries that I bought went from perfect to moldy and squishy in less than 48 hours so I had to pivot. Seemed popular at work.
Inspired by @rosyred’s post for onion and bread pudding, I did a freezer sweep and made a caramelized onion and gruyere strata for breakfast. Delicious!
Thank you very much. I may try it again now, but with a different fruit: apricots are fairly costly here. I’ve never substituted cake flour or pastry flour for all purpose, but maybe it would be a good learning experience for me. I appreciate the help.
With all the cheese and French butter we brought back from our trip to Oregon. I felt we should have some good sourdough to use as conveyance.
I used my standard recipe from The Perfect Loaf, which is around 80% hydration and makes excellent batards or boules using a Dutch oven and an ice cube for steam.
I thought for this batch I wanted to try baguettes. So I did one batard my usual way, and then divided the 2nd dough portion in half for two baguettes.
My last attempts at baguettes weren’t great, partially due to my poor shaping technique, but also because I proofed and baked in one of these pans:
I think baking in this sort of pan restricts the expansion of the bread, resulting in tough, dense baguettes. This time, I lined the pan with a tea towel dusted w rice flour and proofed the baguettes in the pan, but flipped them out and baked them on parchment paper on my baking stone. For steam, I used a brownie pan with rolled up tea towels and poured boiling water over it for use the first 20 min. of baking. Seemed to work well.
The batard turned out fine, but as you can see, my baguette shaping is…. Not great. For starters, I was attempting to use a lower hydration dough technique (rolling out for length) on a very high hydration dough. It didn’t go well, leaving me with quite flat, oven-spring-less baguettes. Thankfully, slicing on an extreme bias gave sufficient cross section for cheese holding, and they still tasted great.
I have ideas in better techniques for next time. Chalk this up to a learning experience.
, and didn’t eat them until day two. I might make mention that it is very important to cream the butter/ sugar very well, it’s critical to the cake’s success.
