[BakerAunt]

On Thursday, I fed my sourdough starter and made the dough for a double batch of Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I will bake them over the weekend. The dough handles more easily if it has a couple of days in the refrigerator, and it gives the crackers a bit of a zing.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Yesterday, I baked two loaves of my Buttermilk Grape Nuts Bread.

[BakerAunt]

For Wednesday dinner, I combined leftover roast chicken with sautéed vegetables, drippings from the chicken, and buckwheat noodles. I added a few shakes of fish sauce.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Susan Purdy's recipe was not the issue. It's a great recipe. The cake came out pretty well, in spite of my inexperience and actually seemed better after sitting an additional day in the refrigerator. On my notes to myself, I'm writing down that with my Cuisinart mixer, I should use speed 8, and that I should work toward a wide ribbon.

[BakerAunt]

Let's all meet for coffee/tea time at Joan's!

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions, Cass and Mike.

Actually, I wasn't beating egg whites. The recipe calls for heating a mixture of six eggs and a cup of sugar in the mixing bowl on top of a pan (double boiler), stirring constantly with a whisk, until it reaches (110-120F). Then the bowl goes onto the mixer, and the egg-sugar mixer is beaten at medium high speed until it reaches the "ribbon stage." While the directions said 3-4 minutes, it was not at that stage at that point, so I increased the speed and beat longer, but I suspect that I was not clear on what ribbon stage should look like. After looking at some pictures later on, I think beating a little longer was likely necessary. I don't know if that mixture could be over beaten or not.

I folded in the flour, then the nuts, a little at a time with a spatula. I wonder if I should have used my cake whisk. It has a flat oval top, with a square criss-cross pattern, and I've used it for adding in whipped egg whites for waffles.

I will try this again, because, hey, I like the challenge, but probably not before we move in June. I'm focusing now on using up a lot of ingredients that would be difficult to move, especially in hotter weather.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

The cake seemed a bit dry to me, in spite of the soaking syrup. The book cautioned not to use more than 3 Tbs. per layer, but with the nuts, maybe a little more would have been better. I used 1 tsp of rum extract in the soaking syrup. That did not have very much taste. I probably should have used regular rum, but I worried about overwhelming the cake.

People liked it, but that may have been the frosting talking. 🙂 I will probably try it again some time, but next time, I will beat the egg-sugar mixer at a higher speed. "Medium high" did not tell me a lot, and my Cuisinart has 12 speeds. I think that I should have beaten it on 8 the entire time. (I started it on six.) I think that I lost some loft when I folded the melted butter into 1 1/2 cups of the batter that I'd moved to a different bowl, per directions, then added it back to the large bowl.

I also wish that I had looked at more internet pictures before I started. It really does help to see what batter is supposed to look like at certain stages.

[BakerAunt]

I actually have not tried the round slicing guide. It's one of those implements that was a good price, so I picked it up--and when I needed it, it was 1200 miles away....

Susan Purdy did say one could use dental floss to split the layers, but I was not up to trying that last night.

The cake was ok but seemed a bit dry to me, even with the soaking syrup. I only put 1 tsp. of rum extract in it, and it did not have much flavor. I should have used regular rum.

[BakerAunt]

The interior looked like a sponge cake, so I assembled it. I'll report tomorrow after the office party.

[BakerAunt]

Ah, I didn't even think about raising the level. Sometimes I miss the obvious. I did pretty well with a serrated knife and the cake turntable. One layer ended up a bit thin in the center but the others came out pretty well. The cake looked ok to me once I cut it apart, so I assembled it, and it is now parked in the refrigerator.

I actually own one of those German "cake slicer" guides, but it went up to Indiana at spring break because I did not anticipate using it before we move at the end of June.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks, Mike. You and Cass have given me hope. I have a German-made cake leveler, but its lowest setting is 1/2 inch. Susan Purdy has directions in her book, so I'll try her technique.

[BakerAunt]

Cass, I'm going to go ahead and split them and see if they are ok. Mike commented in the baking thread that this may be the height that they are supposed to have. I also looked at some pictures on the internet, which give me hope. I will go ahead and slice the layers, and if they look good, I'll assemble the cake.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

As noted in this week's baking thread (April 23), I'm not sure I had a success. The two 8-inch cake layers are each 5/8 inch thick. I'm not sure what height they were supposed to be, but I suspect that the batter deflated.

I'm wondering if I need to default to a different cake.

[BakerAunt]

I baked the Nut Genoise recipe from Susan Purdy's The Perfect Cake. I baked it in two 8-inch pans. The baked cakes are 5/8 inch thick each. I do not know if that is typical or if I did not get the loft that was needed. I'm debating on whether I can successfully split them to fill.

[BakerAunt]

On Saturday, I baked a new recipe, "Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Bundt Cake" (p. 71), from One Layer Cakes, a special issue of Bake from Scratch that I picked up at Barnes & Noble last week. It requires boiling down cider from 6 cups to 1 1/2, but I had a bottle of boiled cider in the refrigerator, which needed to be used, so I used it, and I substituted a Gala apple for the McIntosh specified. I baked it in my older Bundt pan. I only used half of the cinnamon sugar topping that is sprinkled over the glaze. (What were they thinking?)

I also baked spritz cookies with pastel sprinkles. The cake and cookies are for the after service social time at church tomorrow.

For dinner, I made pizza, using the KAF Ultra-Thin Crust Pizza dough.

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