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An interesting couple of days of baking
Mar. 10th, 2018 09:28 pmWe arrived in Phoenix about 2:45am Thursday morning: we were delayed leaving as I had to make an urgent care center visit after having been struck by the twin plagues of conjunctivitis and a sinus infection, fortunately both are responding marvelously to antibiotics. I went shopping and baked my Burmese coconut cake Friday morning: I was assured that I would no longer be contagious after 24 hours on antibiotics. Friday afternoon I baked a 60% recipe of my flourless chocolate cake, today I made a chocolate mousse and poured it on top.
I did make one mistake with the coconut cake. The recipe calls for 14 oz of coconut milk. At the first store that I stopped at, they only had 11 ounce cans of condensed coconut milk, I bought two cans. They didn't have the semolina flour that the recipe required, so I went to a second store. That store had the flour, but also didn't have coconut milk, just the condensed. So I made the cake with 14 oz of condensed coconut milk instead of regular. Normally the cake bakes for 30 minutes, after half an hour it was clearly still mostly gelatinous, so I gave it another half an hour and then it was fine. This is only the second time that I've made this cake, it was somewhat sweeter than the first but it was definitely perfectly good.
The coconut cake won rave reviews all around, even among people who don't normally like coconut! That was nice to hear. I used my PushPan for the flourless chocolate cake and lined it with parchment paper, though it turned out that was not in the least needed. Something happened with the mousse, I'm not sure what. The recipe calls for three whipped egg whites, I normally use two as I like it a bit denser. Today, the mousse either collapsed or there was a difference because of the loss of 7500' of altitude between home and Phoenix and it just wasn't fluffy. Normally, a standard recipe of the flourless chocolate cake in an 8" pan is about 2" thick (scroll down to see photos), but by reducing the recipe 40%, as I did to make room for the mousse, it was only about an inch thick. It's possible that my parent's fridge isn't as cold as ours at home, but when I pulled the cake out at 7pm to cut it, it was flat-out soft.
The mousse is ever so slightly warm as it has melted chocolate, which is allowed to cool, which then has whipped egg whites and whipped cream folded in. So it's only slightly warm. And it had been sitting in the fridge for 7 hours. The cake should not have been soft, I really don't know what happened. The door could not have been cracked as the fridge has a built-in alarm for such things, and nothing hot has been cooked in the last few days and put in.
So I'm kinda boggled. And I don't have a refrigerator thermometer to test it. It's set to it's mid-point, and everything else in it seems reasonably cool.
The end result was a cake covered in chocolate mousse much softer than I expected. No one complained. The texture was more like a conventional cake rather than a flourless cake, which is quite dense.
After all was said and done, half of the chocolate cake, which was cut in to 16ths, was gone, and there were only 3 pieces of the coconut cake remaining.
The PushPan performed marvelously. I could have removed the cake by hand, but found a small can of Crisco that was perfect for the job. I picked the pan up from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but it's on clearance which to me implies that it's discontinued. Amazon lists it, but didn't have it in stock. I want an 8" with 3" sides, and I have a feeling that just ain't gonna happen.
I did make one mistake with the coconut cake. The recipe calls for 14 oz of coconut milk. At the first store that I stopped at, they only had 11 ounce cans of condensed coconut milk, I bought two cans. They didn't have the semolina flour that the recipe required, so I went to a second store. That store had the flour, but also didn't have coconut milk, just the condensed. So I made the cake with 14 oz of condensed coconut milk instead of regular. Normally the cake bakes for 30 minutes, after half an hour it was clearly still mostly gelatinous, so I gave it another half an hour and then it was fine. This is only the second time that I've made this cake, it was somewhat sweeter than the first but it was definitely perfectly good.
The coconut cake won rave reviews all around, even among people who don't normally like coconut! That was nice to hear. I used my PushPan for the flourless chocolate cake and lined it with parchment paper, though it turned out that was not in the least needed. Something happened with the mousse, I'm not sure what. The recipe calls for three whipped egg whites, I normally use two as I like it a bit denser. Today, the mousse either collapsed or there was a difference because of the loss of 7500' of altitude between home and Phoenix and it just wasn't fluffy. Normally, a standard recipe of the flourless chocolate cake in an 8" pan is about 2" thick (scroll down to see photos), but by reducing the recipe 40%, as I did to make room for the mousse, it was only about an inch thick. It's possible that my parent's fridge isn't as cold as ours at home, but when I pulled the cake out at 7pm to cut it, it was flat-out soft.
The mousse is ever so slightly warm as it has melted chocolate, which is allowed to cool, which then has whipped egg whites and whipped cream folded in. So it's only slightly warm. And it had been sitting in the fridge for 7 hours. The cake should not have been soft, I really don't know what happened. The door could not have been cracked as the fridge has a built-in alarm for such things, and nothing hot has been cooked in the last few days and put in.
So I'm kinda boggled. And I don't have a refrigerator thermometer to test it. It's set to it's mid-point, and everything else in it seems reasonably cool.
The end result was a cake covered in chocolate mousse much softer than I expected. No one complained. The texture was more like a conventional cake rather than a flourless cake, which is quite dense.
After all was said and done, half of the chocolate cake, which was cut in to 16ths, was gone, and there were only 3 pieces of the coconut cake remaining.
The PushPan performed marvelously. I could have removed the cake by hand, but found a small can of Crisco that was perfect for the job. I picked the pan up from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but it's on clearance which to me implies that it's discontinued. Amazon lists it, but didn't have it in stock. I want an 8" with 3" sides, and I have a feeling that just ain't gonna happen.
