Chocolate Marble Pound Cake -- science of baking

Because it is December and we are in the Northern Hemisphere where December == Cold Winter, I have decided to crank up the oven on Friday nights to give us the much needed warmth.

This will also help me work on my non-existent baking skills. My goals aren't lofty. I just want to bake something decent that BS and LS might love and their children might enjoy and 200 years later the family fondly remember Great Grandma Bong Mom's Pound Cake while beating eggs 300 strokes by hand. Ahem.

So far, BS loves the Chocolate Brownies and the Better Than ... Chocolate Cup Cakes. I haven't told her the name and yet she loves them. They are really rich and chocolate-y.

Before Thanksgiving I made the Zebra Cake which looked really nice with the zebra patterns. But it was a little less sweet and not very rich in texture. Me & D liked it because it was less sweet and more bread than cake like.

BS didn't really show much enthusiasm.

Now honestly BS's showing or not showing enthusiasm does not mean much except a snub on my "I am the best" feeling. She could have ga-ga'ed over the same cake if it was at her best friend's house and might even come back and eat this two months later. You never know.

Last Friday, my project was Chocolate Marble Pound Cake from Sailaja's Kitchen. Pound Cakes have loads of butter but since it is December, I said ok and went ahead. While baking I am trying to understand the science that goes behind all that creaming and beating and it would be really nice if I could experiment more and flush the product down anywhere but my throat till I get the perfect cake.

This particular cake was rich and dense. When had the next day it needed to be nuked for 10 secs to get the moist taste.Also the batter was thicker and more spreadable than pourable. That I learned was not a source of panic but the norm for pound cakes. Really ? Is that true ?
I also needed 1/4 cup more milk than the recipe asked for to make the batter moist. The cake again was a little less sweet for the kid's liking but they enjoyed it with some preserves.

Since I am trying to find meaning in this madness of baking, I will have my two cents on baking science right here. None of them are my theories, they have been sourced from here, here and here.

Let me put some jam on this

Most buttery Pound Cakes start with a step called creaming. What happens when you cream butter and sugar ?

The first step in making a pound cake is to take lots of butter at room temperature and beat it with an electric mixer. This incorporates air bubbles. Sugar is gradually added to the butter. As the sharp sugar crystals cut into the butter, tiny pockets are formed and fill with air as the mixer blades pull more butter over the top of the hole to close it. This makes the butter double in volume and become creamy in texture, which is why this procedure is called “creaming.”

While creaming you know you have reached there: when you're no longer able to see sugar granules, but you can still feel them if you rub a bit of the creamed fat between your fingers.(from the God of Such Things Alton Brown)
Here is a "one bowl" or "quick method" pound cake that skips this step

What's the fuss all about ?

How to add eggs ?

Eggs should be at room temperature before they are added to the butter-sugar. Never happens with me, I will put them in luke warm water for 5 mins and proceed. Ok, maybe I SHOULD bring them to room temp.
Add eggs one at a time to the creamed butter and sugar and beat. Now Alton Brown says, adding eggs one at a time is silly. It must be. Anything one at a time sounds silly to me. Just dump all together and get it over with, I say.
It is better to mix the eggs together first so that the water in the egg whites can hook up with the emulsifiers in the yolks. Did that even make sense ? Whatever.

Now this is easy to understand.The eggs adds more volume and allows the mixture to hold even more air. Beat until the mix is smooth, light in color and the volume has increased to look fluffy.
The texture of the cake is dense if the eggs are added whole and much lighter if the egg whites are beaten separately and then folded into the rest of the batter.

I want lots of that gooey purple stuff. Much more than Didi has.

How to add the dry ingredients ?

First sift all the dry ingredients, i.e. the flour, the baking soda or powder. Then add the dry ingreds first, usually alternating with liquid(which in this case was milk) till it is well blended. The protein in flour, the gluten is what makes the cake hold its shape but too much of it will make the cake tough.So do not overbeat as that will produce more gluten.When you start with the dry you cover the flour particles with fat and so water can't get to the flour and there won't be any gluten. This ensures a tender cake. Whoa !!!

The baking soda or powder when comes in contact with liquid or when heated, releases carbon dioxide that forms bubble in the batter. So you get more air pockets or holes in the batter. This one thing is elementary science at least.

Ooopsie Daizy !!

What happens in the oven ?

As the batter heats up in the oven, bubbles(remember air pockets formed during creaming) expand and the batter rises. As the carbon dioxide breaks down, the moisture in the cake forms steam, which fills the air pockets our sugar made. Eventually, the steam evaporates, but by this time the protein in the flour has had enough time to set, thus making the cake hold its shape.

Just as heat makes steam and carbon dioxide expand, coolness causes contraction. So if you open the oven door before the cake is set, a draft will burst the tiny bubbles and the cake will fall.

This is Messy

What is it about cake pans ?

The size and shape of the cake pan plays an important role in baking. Apparently all cakes cannot be baked in all kinds of pans. Size and material does matter. Most cake recipes work well for cup cakes too. To make pound cake cup cakes try this.

I am not eating any more of this stuff. I am done.

Read more...

Chocolate Marble Pound Cake

What You Need

AP Flour -- 2 cups
Baking powder - 1&1/2 tsp
Salt -- a pinch

Butter ~ 1 cup
Sugar ~ 1 cup

Egg ~ 3
Vanilla extract ~ 1 tsp

Milk ~ 1/2 cup(Original recipe said 1/4 cup)
Cocoa powder ~ 2 tbsp

How I Did It

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and dust a 9" round pan with flour.

Sift together the Dry ingredients

2 cups of AP Flour
1&1/2 tsp of Baking Powder
Pinch of salt

In a mixing bowl add
1 cup = 2 sticks of unsalted butter
With the aid of your mixer beat the butter.
Add 1 cup of sugar gradually.
Beat till sugar and butter mix is light in color and fluffy.

In a small separate bowl add
3 eggs
and beat lightly with a fork

Add the egg mix and 1 tsp Vanilla extract to the creamed butter and sugar and beat with your mixer(for 2-3 mins) till you get a smooth mix.You could also add eggs one at a time to the sugar-butter mix, beating for 30s -- 1 min each time.

Now add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to above, gently mixing. Follow with a little of the milk. Continue this ending with the dry.

Remove a cup of this batter in a bowl and combine with 2 tbsp cocoa pwd. Mix it gently. My batter was thick and not easily pourable.
Pour a tbsp of white colored batter into the greased and floured pan. Alternate with a tbsp of cocoa batter. Continue through out till both the batters are finished.
Smooth out the top with a spatula.
Take a knife and swirl it around the batter in a zig zag fashion, 3-4 times.

Put in the oven and bake for 40-45 mins. Check with a toothpick to see if it is done. Take out of the oven and cool for 10 mins. 

Louisiana Style Pasta -- Cheesecake Factory kind

I don't know about you but I love the Louisiana Style Chicken Pasta at Cheesecake Factory. I love it so much that it is the dish I always have when I am there.

Not that I am there a lot.

I mean I would love to be there always but they have this 40 minute waiting time and my kids are not really the waiting kinds and though I can wait till infinity to have that pasta, my kids have better things to do.

Maybe I just have way too much time on hand. Maybe I should find myself better things to do.Like ordering a dessert next time I am there. This Pasta makes me so full that I always skip dessert.

Or like googling for Louisiana style Chicken pasta instead of waiting for it. Taking matter into my own hands.Having my Pasta and eating it too. Not all kinds of pasta. But hey Louisiana, here I come.

So this is the star recipe that came to my rescue. I will be eternally grateful to this lady for coming up with this thing and though I mangled her recipe and put my signature touches all over it, the credit goes only to her.

Also I totally skipped the chicken part since there was none. I asked the other adult to get me some chicken breasts when I started cooking this, which is 9:15 PM yesterday night to be exact. But he ignored. I didn't even ask him to hunt for it, to just get it from the grocer's but he still ignored. Men just aren't the same anymore.They don't gather food, they just eat it.

Heat 2 tbsp Olive Oil in a skillet. Recipe said 1 tbsp butter but you know me.
Chop 3/4 th of a small red onion in small pieces and add to skillet.
Follow suit with 2-3 cloves of garlic minced.

When the onion is soft add
1 red bell pepper chopped in small pieces
1/2 of a green bell pepper or 1 small yellow bell pepper chopped in small pieces.
1 cup of sliced mushroom

Saute for about 4-5 minutes till the veggies soften.

Now the spices.

Add
1 tsp crushed red pepper or 2 Dry red chili crushed. Adjust as needed and increase if you have no fear of red pepper.

More spices. Since this was Cajun cooking D decided we need to skip Basil which the recipe had and add these spices instead. Again we did not have Basil and at 9:15 PM yesterday D ignored my plea to get basil from the grocer's so he came up with his theory about Louisiana people not using Basil and such.

1/4 tsp of Dry Roasted Cumin powder 
1 tsp of All spice roughly crushed(optional)
1/2-1 tsp of fresh Black Pepper powder
Note: If you have a store bought Cajun spice powder, you can just use that instead

Saute for 2-3 minutes

Add
1/4 pint of heavy cream + 1/2 cup Milk -- Recipe said 1&1/4 pint of whipping cream
1 cup of water -- Recipe said 1 cup of chicken stock
Simmer until it comes to a slow boil. Now cover and at medium heat let it simmer for 5 minutes or so till sauce thickens a little.
Note: You need to add the cream as per the original recipe if you want a creamier sauce. I liked my low cal version though.

Meanwhile cook Bow Tie Pasta according to package directions

Back to the sauce.

Recipe said to add 4tbsp of Minced fresh basil which we skipped because no Basil @home.
Add about 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese to the sauce. Stir to mix.

Check for seasonings and adjust salt and pepper. This is a must, the adjusting.

Simmer sauce till it thickens. Should not be runny.

Drain and add pasta to the skillet tossing gently to mix the pasta with the sauce.I added the pasta gradually mixing to make sure that the sauce was enough to coat the pasta.

I did not use the whole box, about a cup of cooked pasta did not find its way into the sauce.

The delicious Pasta is ready, sitting there hot and pretty.

Eat it and fall in love. You deserve it. Maybe add some more grated Parmigiano. Life in December is all about good food.

I will send this in to join Presto Pasta Night started by Ruth and hosted by Rachel at The Crispy Cook.

Kumro Seddho/Kumro Bhaate -- Mashed Butternut Squash

So here we are, back to hectic Monday, from a long luxurious weekend. My high point of last week was getting the Cuisinart Hand blender from CSN Stores.Yep, that is what I finally ordered, thanks for all your wonderful comments. I still have some left over points and have to finish them up by this month end. I am not going to get extra tall bar stools, but they are selling those if you like.

Now back to the weekend we were discussing. Hope you all had fun, cooking, cleaning and clearing up.

Kumro Bhaate

Me ? I really had fun. Not to make you jealous or anything but all I did this holiday was eat food cooked by friends and sit at the corner couch with my feet tucked beneath reading Judy Blume. Typical "lyad khaoa" as we call such relaxation in Bong lingo.

Of course it wasn't totally peaceful, because there is LS to account for. But she spent a lot of time with BS and our friend's daughter and didn't cause much harm except scribbling with a pencil on the walls of their new home. Now these friends are practically like family, so they didn't mind the graffiti and continued to feed us good food throughout.

I wouldn't have done that. Before LS came into our life, I was very particular about walls and such stuff. I would internally hyperventilate if a child so much as brought a crayon to my Western Flaxed wall. And then LS came and changed everything. In the scheme of things, Western Flax suddenly was not that important.

I didn't tell my friends that though. I mean here was this guy effortlessly making rosogolla from scratch, just to give us the fresh wonderful taste of warm soft rosogollas bobbing in light syrup and here was I doing nothing but sitting on the corner sofa and there was my little girl practicing "Sircol" on their fresh white walls. How could I tell them fresh white walls was not important ?

Apparently they knew.

Back home yesterday, I was not up to cooking much. It was D's dinner making day so I had to do something for lunch. While I cooked the chicken, I thought how exactly I should serve the Butternut Squash in the refrigerator.

I am not particularly fond of cutting and peeling B. Squash. I never said this, because I thought it was my personal problem. But it seems it is a global phenomenon(does 2 people make global ?) and peeling butternut's tough outer skin is not everybody's idea of fun.

I usually do Mandira's roasted butternut squash . That way, there is no peeling and it tastes good too. But the soul craved some sunny kumro bhaate or kumro sheddho with steaming rice.Yes, I could have hacked the squash in chunks, boiled them and then peeled the skin to make kumro sheddho. That would be normal but also b..o..r..ing.

So I hacked them, tossed them in olive oil, red chili pepper, roasted cumin powder, salt, little honey and roasted them as Mandira said. I kept the honey and spices low, 'coz ultimately I was going to mash it up and spike it up with mustard oil.

After it was done, I peeled the skin off. You could also scoop out the orange fleshy innards, that would be easier. It came off effortlessly like hair off my scalp. I then mashed the soft flesh. Added a tsp of mustard oil, 3 finely chopped green chili, sugar and salt to taste and lightly worked everything in.

It tasted delicious. Not exactly my kind of comfort food, but the kind of food I am at the right age to go back to seeking comfort.

For posterity's sake, BS loved this and asked for seconds.


Read more...

Kumro Seddho -- Mashed Butternut Squash

Cut a butternut squash vertically through the center. Scoop out the seeds. Now hack large chunks of it(same or larger than the ones in the picture).

Toss the chunks with
1 tbsp Olive Oil
a pinch of Dry Roasted Cumin Powder
1/4 tsp Red Chili Powder
salt to taste
1 tsp of honey

Preheat oven to 350F. Roast the squash in a single layer till you see squash is done and the skin is just starting to shrivel. Do not over roast it, because we are now going to mash it.
Note: With regular Indian pumpkin skip the roasting part and just boil, mash and season

When done, peel the skin off and scoop out the orange soft flesh in a wide mouthed bowl. Mash it, yeah, mash, mash.Add 2 tsp of Mustard Oil, 3 green chili finely chopped, a little sugar and salt to taste. If you like it hot, crumble two dry red chili pepper and add the flakes. Work everything in lightly with your fingers. Garnish with freshly chopped corriander leaves.

Serve with steaming white rice.

Note: If you want to skip the oven, you can boil the butternut squash on stove top till tender. You can also cook in the microwave for 10-12 minutes or until tender and fully cooked. Remember to cover and add a little water while cooking in the Microwave.
If you have a Pressure cooker, cook in the pressure cooker. It should be done in 5-6 minutes, I am thinking, check this.
In the MW or boiling method, the squash may become watery. So after mashing remove extra water and then add the seasonings.