Malted Milk Ice Cream Cake with Blackberry Sauce

For Mother's Day my sister and I made brunch, we pretty much copied the Mother's Day brunch menu from A Cup of Jo, and it was delicious.  However, for Father's Day we decided to make dinner and unfortunately Joanna Goddard did not oblige us with a complete dinner menu to draw from.  Fortunately my sister had some apps she wanted to try out (pear slices with goat cheese and craisins), and a limoncello cocktail (lemonade for grownups) and we have our Sister Shrimp Pasta that is always a hit.  As for dessert, well I took that on.  I was going to make a truly decadent coconut cream pie, BUT we ended up picking up a friends CSA share for that week (thanks Lisa!), a box full of the most delicious strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries and the coconut cream pie idea went out the window because I needed to make something involving berries in some way.  Which is where this ice cream cake comes in.  You make a thin cake layer, top it off with malted milk ice cream, then drench each slice with blackberry sauce.
 

The recipe calls for homemade malted milk ice cream, and while I have an ice cream maker, I also have a family that let out a collective shudder at the thought of using 11 egg yolks in a single item, so instead I used store bought french vanilla ice cream, which I'm sure also has egg yolks in it, but I have no idea just how many and ignorance is bliss.  Anyways, I softened the ice cream in the fridge for about 5 minutes and then mixed in 3/4 cup of malted milk powder, the chocolate flavor as that was all I could find.  The mixing was a pain, so I left as more of a "swirl" aka I got tired and decided it was mixed enough and put it back in the freezer until I needed it again.

Then I moved on to the cake, it was a pretty basic yellow cake but with tiny portions because you are only making one 1/2 inch layer, it was like baking for an Easy Bake Oven.  The recipe said to sift the dry ingredients 3 times, which I think we can all agree is a bit excessive and in protest I didn't sift them at all.  I noticed no ill effects from the lack of sifting, but then again, I probably wouldn't, I hardly ever sift.  You bake the cake in a spring form pan for about 15 minutes, and you may want to put the pan on a cookie sheet when you bake it in case your spring form pan doesn't have the tightest seal and some starts leaking out.  Just a suggestion.

Once the cake is cool, soften the ice cream again and spread it over the cake, leaving the sides on the pan for the time being.  Pop it back in the freezer, you can leave it in the freezer for a few days at this point.

Now, onto the blackberry sauce, take 1/2 of your huge luscious blackberries, 1/2 cup of water, 6 tablespoons of sugar (or more depending on how tart your berries are) and boil them together.

You may may to mash some of the berries with a fork to help them along, when they are adequately saucy, take the pan off the heat and stir in the rest of the berries.  My berries were huge so I mashed them once or twice with a potato masher to incorporate them into the sauce a bit more. 

 

To serve, take the ring off and slice the cake, topping with plenty of blackberry sauce and enjoy!

Malted Milk Ice Cream Cake with Blackberry Sauce, from Bon Appetit 

For the cake:

1 cup cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter, room temp

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 375.  Cream together the butter and sugar.  Beat in the egg and vanilla.  Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk.  Pour into a spring form pan and bake for 15 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.  If you quite particular you can shave off the top of the cake when it is done to make it an even 1/2 inch all around.  I am not.

For the ice cream:

1.5 quarts vanilla ice cream

3/4 cup malted milk powder

Soften ice cream in fridge for about 5-10 minutes, until it is soft enough to work with but not melted.  Mix in malted milk powder and return to freezer.  Alternately, make it from scratch from this recipe.

For the blackberry sauce:

2 pints blackberries

1/2 cup water

6 tablespoons sugar

Mix the sugar, water and 1 pint blackberries in a saucepan, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, mashing the berries as necessary, until the sauce thickens.  Remove from heat and stir in the rest of the berries, cool.

Assembling the cake:

Top the cake with the ice cream and return to freezer.  When ready to serve remove the sides of the pan, slice the cake and top with the blackberry sauce.

Lemon Bundt Cake

O dear, I am afraid I have been neglecting my little blog terribly.  I got caught up in, well, life I suppose.  I hatched chickens and went on treasure hunts at thrift stores with my sister and got an iPhone and then got addicted to said iPhone and dyed my hair and went to fourteen wineries and went back to Portland and saw  my wonderful friends there and developed an obsession with elephants and did not quite become a bocce ball champion (I have terrible aim and have a hard time telling how hard to throw the ball) and all sorts of other things.  So, I am going to jump back in with a lemon bundt cake, combining my love of lemons and love of bundts.  I love the density of most bundts and the balance of sweet and sour with the lemon.  I am also incredibly picky about the combination of frosting/cake combo, they have to work together in just the right way, and because I never really frost bundts, they let me do away with that dilemma all together.  This recipe comes from the blog Baking and Books (click the link for the recipe).

Start by greasing and flouring your bundt pan, I am paranoid about my bundts sticking so I am a bit obsessive about this step.  I also got a nice heavy one and cool the cakes in it for 10 minutes before flipping them out.  Then cream the butter and sugar.  Next add the eggs one at a time.

In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients, which you may or may not want to sift, depending on how lazy you are feeling at that particular moment.  Then add 1/3 of the flour to the butter and egg and sugar mixture, mix gently also known as folding, add half of the buttermilk (or if you are like me, the milk that has a splash of lemon juice in it or the powdered buttermilk route, where you want to put the powder in with the dry stuff and then just water for this step which looks a bit gross but works really well), mix, add 1/2 of the remaining flour, mix, then the rest of the buttermilk, mix, then the rest of the flour.  (I don't know why I felt the need to spell out the alternating in that step for you....)

Next zest and juice your lemons into the batter and fold them in.  I would highly recommend using one of these juicers, they work really well.

Dump the batter into the carefully prepared pan and bake for about an hour.  Once the cake is done, let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes before flipping it out.

If you want, you can make a simple glaze with powdered sugar and lemon juice, I always end up estimating the measurements for glazes and then tweaking them to get them to the consistency I want.  Slice generously and serve.

Smith Island Cake

Maryland has a state dinosaur (it's the astrodon in case you were wondering). We also have a state exercise (walking), not one but two state sports (jousting and the team sport is lacrosse), a state boat (the skipjack), a state crustacean (the blue crab, of course) and as of October 1, 2008, we have a state dessert, the Smith Island Cake. 10 layers of yellow cake with chocolate icing, containing nearly half a dozen eggs, a pound of butter, 2 pounds of powdered sugar, and almost 3 cans of evaporated milk, this cake is not for the faint of heart. Or diabetics. But for everyone else, this almost seussical (as in something out of a Dr. Seuss book) cake is delicious. It is quite the cake, certainly not an everyday cake, and so I had been waiting for an excuse to make it for awhile. But thank goodness my sister moved home, bringing a gentleman friend who had never really been to Maryland before with her, and just like that I found my excuse. This is an intense cake but it isn't all that difficult to make. The worst part for me was the icing, but a good deal of that has to do with my lack of patience and not wanting to wait for it to cool before slapping the cake together, resulting in a topsy turvy creation; which I remedied with several strategically placed skewers. The recipe can be found here.

Like most good things, it starts with butter. And sugar.

Next you beat in the eggs, one at time. All 5 of them.

Then you sift together your dry ingredients, which you then slowly add to the butter and sugar and eggs. Once the flour is in you don't want to over mix the batter, heaven forbid it gets tough, it's one thing to have one or two over-mixed layers, but when you have nine or ten it's a whole other ball game, each layer raises expectations.

Add your liquids, evaporated milk, water and whatnot, and mix it until it is uniform. The batter will be wet, don't be alarmed.

Split the batter between your lightly greased pans. I would recommend using those disposable cake pans as it will make you life much easier, unless of course you happen to have 10 matching cake pans hanging around your house. It will be easier to split the batter evenly, and you won't have to wait for the layers to cool and wash the pans before popping the next layers in the oven.

Bake the layers in sets of three, it takes about 9 minutes a set. You can tell a layer is done by listening to it, which sounds like one of those ridiculous things you sometimes find in recipes, but it actually works. If you hold the cake up to your ear and it's not done you will hear it sizzle, when it is done it is quiet. The change happens fast, you check it once and then thirty seconds later all is quiet. I honestly don't know how I would have told when it was done otherwise.

When the cake is done it's time for the icing. You basically mix melted butter, evaporated milk, cocoa powder and powdered sugar together and cook it over moderate heat until it thickens some. Then you wait, until your icing cools.

Once the icing cools you can put it all together. Start with a layer of cake.

Grab your icing.

And spoon some onto the cake. The recipe calls for two or three serving spoonfuls of icing, if you figure out what that is, let me know. Anything that oozes out between the layers can always be pushed up onto the sides, or puddle on the plate in a delicious goopy pile.

Repeat until you run out of cake.

Ta da!! Doesn't it look funny? Part of that is due to the scalloped edges of the disposable cake pans, which I thought was an interesting choice on the part of the manufacturer. This was about the time I started to explain about how I had never made this before and that I am generally a much better baker than this and so on...

...but then I cut into it and it looked just like the picture (you know, minus the skewers), and all was well in the world.

Hazelnut Torta

One of my favorite breakfasts in Ireland was nutella on toast, it was quick, easy, and on those rainy days when walking to school seemed like a monumental task, and you didn't have time to take a shower because you opted to hit snooze instead of get up and turn on the hot water, and you really really wanted a nice cup of coffee, nutella on toast, all the melty chocolate and hazelunutty goodness could really turn your day around. This is the fancy dinner party version of that, it inspires the same feeling of all being right in the world. My mom picked it out for her mother's day dessert, my dad said he would serve it to the Obama family if they ever came over for dinner (I mean I did see Barack once so we are basically close personal friends and having him and his family over for dinner is totally in the realm of possibility). I just want you to know what you are getting into with this, it's super tasty, uses a whole jar of nutella, has absolutely no flour, half a dozen eggs, and there is heavy cream involved. The recipe can be found here and I will post the American conversion of the ingredients after the pictures so you don't have to drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what gas mark 4 is in fahrenheit or anything like that.

Start by mixing up the butter and nutella, then add the frangelico/rum/water (I used water), egg yolks and ground hazelnuts.

Meanwhile, in your stand mixer, whip up those egg whites (unless you have freakish forearm/wrist stamina and want to do it by hand) until stiff. I may have spaced out just a tiny bit and over beat them by a few seconds, but the cake still turned out lovely.

After the egg whites have been beaten up you do the whole standard shebang where you lighten the chocolate mixture some with a dollop of them and then fold the rest in. Then you pour that mixture into your springform pan and bake it. Ours is nonstick so I didn't do the whole greasing it then lining it with parchment paper step and it was fine. If you are the nervous sort you could always do that step, I personally prefer to skip steps like that and then afterwards when I can't get it out complain loudly about how the damn cake won't come out of the pan, but that's just me.

While it is cooking, or any time really, (you want these to be cool when you use them) toast up your hazelnuts. I could not find whole ones in my grocery store, which I thought would be less aesthetically pleasing and as we all know you eat with your eyes first, but the cake ended up quite pretty anyways.

Then for the fun part, the icing. This pot of heavy cream and chocolate chips turns into a lovely chocolate goo once the chips melt. After that it is just a matter of it cooling some so that it is the right consistency to ice the cake.

Spread a thick layer of icing over the cooled cake.

Top with the toasted hazelnuts and serve. Rich, but not too dense, it melts in your mouth.

Hazelnut Torta (from How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson)

Here are the American conversions of the ingredients and the recipe can be found here.

For the cake

6 large eggs, separated

pinch of salt

1/2 cup soft unsalted butter

14 oz. nutella

1 tablespoon frangelico, rum or water

scant 1/2 cup ground hazelnuts

4 oz. buttersweet chocolate, melted

For the topping

4 oz. hazelnuts

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon frangelico, rum or water

4 oz. bittersweet chocolate

Guest Blogger Tracie: Tres Leches Cake

As promised, here is the second recipe from guest blogger Tracie, I however cannot vouch for the tastiness of this cake as she did not share any with me, but I am sure it was good, it is Pioneer Woman's after all, and as we all know I am quite fond of just about every recipe she has ever written.

The second thing we made while waiting for the other dough to rise was Pioneer Woman’s Tres Leche Cake. I love Pioneer Woman. Maybe a little bit too much, and maybe I also have daydreams about marrying a cowboy. Not her cowboy, just *a* cowboy[Emma: me too, me too]. PW’s recipe is here found here. Tres leche cake tastes like milk, sweetened milk, but there is a distinct milk taste. So if you don’t like milk (*cough cough* Emma *cough cough*)[Emma: milk is gross, and this may in fact be why Tracie didn't share this cake with me...] this cake might not be for you. The cake itself is light and airy, but the milk you pour over it adds some weight and makes it seriously moist. It’s both light and heavy and, most importantly, tasty.

I did the necessary greasing of a 9 x 13 pan , but the cake still stuck a tiny bit so I recommend going the grease and parchment paper route, just to ensure it doesn’t stick.

There are quite a few photos missing from this baking escapade, as some of our friends came over and distracted my photographer[Emma: I am a social butterfly, what can I say?].

Basically though, you:

Mix together flour, salt, and baking powder.

Separate the eggs.

Beat ¾ cup sugar and the egg yolks on high until they turn a light, pale, yellow. Then add the vanilla and milk.

Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and combine gently

Beat the egg whites with the rest of the sugar on high (in a clean, dry bowl) until they reach hard peaks, but make sure not to over beat them and let them get dry

Then fold the egg whites into the batter until just combined. I winged this a bit. I think you are supposed to do that thing where you add a bit of the mix to the egg whites and combine that before you add all the egg white into the rest of the mix. I also, maybe got a bit distracted by *someone* talking to me and stirred more than I should have. But it was fine anyway.

Pour it into the greased (and parchmented) pan, making sure the batter is evenly spread.

Bake for 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Then turn the cake out onto a rimmed dish (or in my case a jelly roll pan) and allow it to cool. This also takes place after Em had left and I was taking photos. I’m not sure why there is that dented in bit. And I’m not here to assign blame.

Once it is cool, use a fork to poke holes in the cake. I poked a lot of holes, but I suppose you can do as many as you like.

Then combine heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk.

And stir to mix them all together. It makes about three cups of milk but you only need to use two to get the cake properly saturated.

Then pour the milk over your cake slowly, making sure to get the edges (I poked a bunch of holes around the edges to make sure it would hold the milk).

Let the cake absorb the milk for at least half an hour before you ice it. Icing it? Frost it? I just made a simple whipped cream to icing it. One cup of heavy cream and 1.5 teaspoons of sugar, beat together on high in an electric mixer. Sorry there are no photos of this step either. But I trust you can imagine it as well as I can illustrate it.

Then icing the cake. I don’t think PW covered the edges of her cake. But I covered mine because I like it that way.

My mom asked for a rustic, swirly, look on the top. I didn’t really comply because I like smooth cakes [Emma: does this remind anyone else of Martha Stewart? Just a little? I once saw her snatch a craft away from someone for not glittering it properly]. It ended up somewhere in the middle.

And then you cut a piece and eat it! I suppose you could top it with something, PW uses maraschino cherries, but I think they are gross so I left the cake plain. And it was just as good.

The end

Thank you for your time and patience, and extensive use of your imagination[Emma: And thank you Tracie for being my very first (and most likely only) guest blogger!].

Guest Blogger Tracie: Gooey Butter Cake

My darling friend has decided (by decided I mean I told her she was going to and she said ok) to grace us with her presence today on Emma's Eats as a guest chef(or as they say on tasty kitchen, home cook extraordinaire)/blogger. I was feeling a tad bit uninspired (i.e. lazy) and felt it was time to shake things up, hence this guest post. And you know, being in grad school and all she has much more free time for this sort of thing than I do being unemployed and all (I do have my work at the hospital and by work I mean three and a half hours of volunteering every week). So with only a few minor tweaks (she wanted to post 38 pictures....) here is the gooey butter cake by Tracie.

Guest Blogger! Say what?! I honestly have no idea why I just typed that, it isn’t a phrase that frequents my everyday vocabulary. But hey, I’ve adopted a “type it and it stays” approach to this entry. Which is a way to say, basically, I’m sorry in advance. I am typing this blind, ps, not in the sense that my eyes are shut, but in the sense that I am writing it without any idea as to what, if any, introduction Em has written about me. Go ahead and assume none of it is true [Emma: you should not tell lies to these lovely people, I only tell the truth] (unless she is raving about me, because then it is true. Fact)

Anyways, I came home the weekend of the 12^th for a mini-spring break. Because, it turns out, being in graduate school and having a non-paying internship that you are still required to go to really cuts into your loafing-about-at-home-and-not-doing-anything time. Not that I let such obstacles stop me. For instance, I am currently writing this instead of doing the vast amounts of research that awaits me. So… in my mini-vacation, I decided to pack as much baking and cooking as I could into one trip.

If my internal ramblings haven’t lost you yet, dear reader, let’s get to the baking and the pictures of the baking. On Friday after being poked with a sharp needle to determine that I’m not dying, I started baking in early afternoon. Of course, I called my hetero life-mate Emma-Pants to the scene to help. And by “help” I really mean take pictures and catch me up on gossip. Emma and I have a track record of baking things together that end up going disastrously wrong. [Emma: there once was a strawberry rhubarb pie which resembled something that had already been eaten, if you catch my drift I hear it was tasty but couldn't make myself try it] Which is a source of amusement for us because we are both capable cooks, but we can’t seem to make anything together. (Side note: Word’s grammar check suggested I use “record of accomplishment” instead of track record. This amuses me to no end) BUT! These two delightful creations turning out perfectly mark a turning point (I hope).

The first recipe I made was Smitten Kitchen’s St Louis Gooey Butter Cake, instructions to be found here. SK adopted it from an article in the New York Times who adopted it from a person at the Park Slope Farmer’s Market. It’s pretty much deliciousness in a buttery vanilla-y square[Emma: it's true, I ate one and it was soooo tasty]. They look sorta like lemon bars and have an internal consistency slightly reminiscent of those molten lava cake things. But it’s got more structure because of the yeast dough base. And that base is topped with a yummy oh-so-healthy combination of butter, vanilla, sugar, and corn syrup.

I used a ceramic dish that was slightly smaller than the 9 x 13 dish I was supposed to use, so my cake was a bit taller, and in retrospect, I should have let it bake a little longer because I think it should have been slightly firmer. Also in retrospect, I should have greased the sides of the dish more --my topping stuck in a few places.

This is me, by-the-by. In my adorable T apron. I apologize for the look on my face, I was talking while this was being taken.

The cast of characters for both the dough and the topping. I need you to imagine an extra egg and some butter here.

I added yeast to milk and warm water and whisked it until it combined and foamed a little. There probably would have been more foam if I had used fresher yeast. At first, I tried to mix this up with the baby spoon seen on the right. That was pretty much an epic fail and so I switched to a more reliable method: a fork.

Then I combined butter, sugar, and salt in my mixer and creamed them together. Notice my awesome paddle with scraper already attached[Emma: it is quite loud though]. My mom got it for Christmas. It’s pretty much awesome (like her).

In went the egg and then I began alternately adding the flour and milk/water/yeast mixture. Then we kept mindlessly beating it for a few minutes until I double-checked the recipe and SK said to switch to a dough hook. We did and the dough did indeed form a ball that pulled away from the sides slightly.

Then we put the dough in the dish and smushed it about until it reached the edges. Next we covered it in plastic wrap and let it sit for the recommended 2.5-3 hours so it could double in size. In the mean time, we made the other recipe[Emma: stay tuned for the other recipe, I should post it in the not too distant future]. Side note: my dough was not rising, which I found most distressing. Turns out, the kitchen was too cold for it to rise properly, so I stuck it in a warm oven and it rose nicely. Important lesson: when a recipe says to sit something in a warm place for it rise, don’t assume your kitchen with all the lights on and a bunch of people in it is necessarily warm enough [Emma: it's still much warmer than my house, which despite our new magical energy star windows still kind of feels like the inside of a fridge].

While I was preheating the oven, I made the topping. I mixed corn syrup, water, and vanilla together in a bowl. Why yes, that is a stackable bowl from Ikea in a festive red shade. Also, notice my adorable tiny whisk. I love this whisk a lot. And I love being able to legitimately use it without being inconvenienced by its tiny size. It was perfect for this job.

Then I creamed more butter, sugar, and salt together until light and fluffy. There was also an addition of an egg, that once again you don’t get to witness. It’s a violent act. I added the corn syrup/vanilla/water mix and the flour. By this time, Emma and her camera had tragically abandoned me to go home [Emma: I am super fabulous and crazy busy, duh], so I started taking the photos myself using my dad’s camera. (Thanks Daddy!)

This is the cake after it rose but before I figured out how to turn the flash on manually. Honestly, I didn’t figure it out and had to turn off the lights in the kitchen to get a balanced shot.

Anyway, you dollop the topping on (and it bothered me that my dollops weren’t symmetrical, they kept sinking towards the center) And then you spread the topping out evenly over the cake using an offset spatula. Maybe you should grease this a little too, because when it touched the cake dough, it would stick a bit and the grease would make it glide smoother.

I pulled it from the oven when it was golden brown. And inserted a knife to make sure the center was still liquid-y. Then I let it cool and dusted it with powdered sugar and cut it into squares.