Candy Bar Pie

Several months ago, I introduced you to Christina Tosi, Milk Bar, and Crack Pie. I told you that I was disappointed in my first Milk Bar recipe, but that my faith in Tosi was not shaken. I would move on to the next recipe, and the next, bound to find a dessert that tasted just as mind-blowing as it looked. What I haven't yet told you is, I have since been disappointed not once, but twice more.

First it was the corn cookies. These beautiful, grainy golden cookies that look like they came fresh from a farmhouse kitchen. Everyone else devoured them, but for me, the salty corn taste was all too reminiscent of that aggressive Crack Pie. Then there were the confetti cookies. They probably would have kicked ass, but I was convinced the milk powder I used had gone a little sour - so I once again hung back and let the co-workers take care of them (and they did, gladly).

So what was going on? So far I'd had an aversion to every Milk Bar recipe I'd tried.

Then a few things happened:

1. I quit my full-time job with the plan to be - temporarily - a freelance writer and author.
2. Josh turned 25 while I was in San Francisco. I wasn't with him on his birthday, and I made no cake.
3. After battling his way through a seemingly endless language requirement, Josh finished his undergrad degree.

With the intersection of these life events, I found myself with 3) a major cause for celebration, 2) an obligation to make up for Josh's cakeless birthday, and 1) plenty of time to tackle the most finicky, madcap, steps-within-steps complex recipe I've ever encountered.

Candy Bar Pie is Tosi's riff on the Take 5 candy bar. And as it turns out, this isn't just a matter of layering chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, peanuts, and pretzels in a pie tin. It's not like that wouldn't work - that actually sounds amazing - but it would lack Tosi's flair for ingenious complication of that which is familiar. 

Case in point? The recipe for Candy Bar Pie takes up eight pages of the Milk Bar cookbook. That includes the chocolate crumb + chocolate crust; the salted caramel; the peanut brittle + peanut butter nougat; and the chocolate glaze over whole toasted pretzels. The first couple times I glanced through this recipe/short novel, I'd end up shutting the book in defeat. I figured I lacked the proper equipment, and more importantly, I doubted my ability to maintain the grit and composure required for the nougat stage.

But the above interplay of life events kept poking me between the shoulder blades, reminding me of this circumstantial rarity. Or maybe that was Josh, asking me when I was going to make his pie. 

And so, despite my misgivings, I resolved to follow this recipe born of Tosi's deranged whim. 

Making stuff to make more stuff: that's the theme of Tosi's recipes. Cocoa powder, sugar, and butter bake up into these little chocolate crumbs only to be processed back into a powder.

Add some more melted butter, and you've got a chocolate crust.

You're looking at nothing more than shelled peanuts and melted sugar. A dry caramel, as it's called,  cooks up faster but burns easier than a wet caramel (sugar + water). I did what Tosi said and let it reach a deep amber. The resulting brittle was a little bitter, IMHO.

Petrified peanuts!

Bitter brittle shards!

Again, we build up to break down.

I make caramel again, this time with some corn syrup. Then I add it to this decadent pool of cream, vanilla, butter, and SALT.

What do you get? Salted caramel!

I should note that, up to this point, it's been pretty smooth sailing. Plenty of steps and a good dose of tedium, yes, but thus far nothing that demands a fight or flight response. Then came the nougat - that sweet, fluffy mystery junk that you love in candy bars but have likely not thought much about outside of that context. And let me say this: there's no reason to! I encourage you to disregard everything I say about making the stuff and continue on with the vague notion that nougat is an elemental substance harvested for use in our Snickers bars. Great.

Those of you who want the dirty truth, read on.

Tosi prefaced the nougat recipe with a slightly arrogant assurance that if there were an easier way to do this, she would have discovered it by now. But within the constraints of modern science, nougat can only be made by heating two different sugar + water solutions to two different temperatures. While that's happening, she tells me, I am to whip an egg white in my KitchenAid stand mixer. But I don't have a stand mixer. I could have borrowed one and saved myself a lot of sweat, but I often get defensive and stubborn when cookbooks imply that I need a more expensive version of what I already have.

So there I am, electric mixer in my right hand, candy thermometer in my left. If the first solution is nearing its target temperature, I am to turn up the speed of my hand mixer until the white reaches medium soft peaks (honestly...I'm familiar with standard egg beating terminology, but "medium soft peaks"? what does that MEAN?!). Conversely, if my egg white is nearing medium soft peaks, I am to turn DOWN the speed of the mixer and turn UP the heat under my first solution. When everything is where it ought to be, syrup #1 is whipped into the egg white. Then syrup #2 is brought up to target temperature and also added to the egg white.

How'd that go in real time? I'll try to be brief.

Attempt One: Syrup #1 hardens upon contact with the egg white. I trash it and start over, fully expecting at least one setback.

Attempt Two: Syrup #1 burns up and desiccates before it even reaches the target temperature. I am not expecting this affront to what I thought was reliable science. While Josh runs to the store for some fresh eggs, I clean all the pots and bowls and wonder if I am obligated to finish what I started.

Attempt Three: The egg white whips up properly. The first syrup does not dry up. I add it to the white in a slow stream to avoid hardened chunks. Meanwhile, Josh helps to bring the second solution to temperature. He drops the thermometer into the scalding syrup. I try to fish it out. We both raise our voices and burn our fingers. We sweat, and our patience runs thin. Finally the syrup reaches target temperature, and I add it to the egg white. Somewhere along the way, this mixture whips up into a toffee-hued cloud that I don't quite understand. But it's there! I MADE it! I resent it. I love it!

There it is - the product of sugar, water, egg white, some tricky heating, and lots of air. Work it into that pebbly bed of peanut butter + powdered peanut brittle and you can finally get on with your life.

The chocolate shell is a combination of dark and white chocolate, plus a little bit of oil. This is Tosi's clever way of avoiding tempering - a "fussy" method that sets the chocolate up for a shiny coat and clean break.

When Josh got home from his last day of Italian class, I warmed up some coffee and sliced into the pie with a dough scraper. The layers gave way to the blade with a satisfying resistance that reflected all the work that had gone into this 10-inch tin. Salted caramel oozed out on cue. This pie was showing off.

If you've managed to stick with me through this entire production, then the verdict on Milk Bar recipe #4 should come as no surprise to you. Candy Bar Pie has got to be the most complex tasting dessert I've ever made. Take a single bite with every layer intact, and you're in for a long, labyrinthine taste trip. Like, all expenses paid, airfare, lodging, rental car, and 3-course meals included. Like every other Milk Bar recipe I've made, it's salty. But it's also sweet, and crumbly, and smooth, and bitter, and crunchy. Our tastebuds were deeply moved.

We gave a couple pieces away and kept the majority of the pie for ourselves. In all, I think I only polished off about 1.5 pieces - but for a different reason than before. This pie had left a good taste in my mouth, and I wanted to keep it that way. Also, Josh kept asking if I was going to eat my pie. I probably would have eventually, but, admiring his stamina, I gave them up.

As philosophy mandates, the person who stands to gain the most happiness from the last piece deserves the last piece.

Fallen Chocolate Cake

Not many posts ago, I told you about my 23rd birthday cake. I explained to you that a baker (or at least this baker) prefers to make her own birthday cake, because it's a gift to herself; because she finds catharsis in the process; because she's a little bit controlling. You watched as I greedily snatched the cake duty, and all the love that goes into it, from those in my life who would have liked to bake my birthday treat.

Well, folks: a year has passed. The Earth has completed yet another revolution. I am twenty-four, and just as greedy as ever.

I was under the assumption that Megan making her own birthday cake was an established tradition after one year. I had already taken it for granted. So when I casually mentioned to my sister what I was considering for this year's cake, I did not expect the startled response that I got.

"You're going to make your own birthday cake?"

"I did last year."

"You should let someone else make it."

That "someone else" was in front of me, nodding expectantly with wide eyes and a goofy smile. It was hard to tell which of us wanted it more. So I wavered, ever so slightly:

"I don't know. Maybe..."

Over the next week she wore me down, until I finally relented. She would make my cake.

Regret inevitably followed. I felt like I'd let myself down, like I'd surrendered when I ought to have stood my ground. Days later, Caitlin gave me a chance to take back the cake.

"If you really want to make your cake, I could wait to --"

"Okay."

The cake was mine again! And this time I wasn't letting go.

I think we're well past that time when a cake with no flour is considered wanting; we are all well aware of what magic can happen when gluten isn't around. But flourless chocolate cake is something else entirely. It has disassociated itself from the broad category of flourless baked goods - that is, baked goods that are customarily made with flour, but can exist in almost identical form without flour - and it has become its very own category. Really, it shouldn't even be called cake. 

Cake, in its most familiar form, is light and spongey. It becomes so by way of several chemical and physical processes, but it's the gluten from flour that is largely responsible for giving a cake structure as it expands. Without flour, the cake needs support from other ingredients. For this one, it's the eggs that do the heavy lifting. Whole eggs and egg yolks introduce protein into the batter, creating a similar, albeit weaker, structural network. Then egg whites are whipped and folded in to incorporate air, the physical leavener. That, plus steam, is what makes this cake rise. And rise it did.

Out of the oven, the cake's delicate surface had risen above the rest of it, creating a slivered portal into its dark netherworld. 

Then, true to its name, it fell.

The result is an intensely moist, dense vehicle for a rich chocolate taste that's both sweet and dark. Cake just doesn't seem to do it justice. I'd call it more of a brownie-torte. Top it with a smooth pile of mascarpone whipped cream, and you might even toss cheesecake into the mix. Who's to say, really?

I wanted so badly to get this shot in the light of day. But unless I decided to have a birthday lunch instead of dinner, I would have to accept a lamplit cake.
A lesson on life: opt for living it properly over capturing it properly.

And now, a lesson on mascarpone.

DO:

Add it to your whipped cream whenever possible, especially if it's going to top a dessert that has a strong presence to begin with. It makes the whipped cream thicker, creamier, and just a little bit sweeter.

DO NOT:

Bring what's left of it to work the next day and, in lieu of a proper lunch, eat it with crackers and raspberry jam, thinking blithely that you've got it all figured out. You don't. You will feel disgusting later, and over the next 24 hours you will gag whenever you think of it, unable to shake the cloying taste memory.

I'm sorry to have ended with that; I feel it was my duty as someone who has learned the hard way. Just know this: when used correctly, mascarpone will take you to a very happy place. When used in due fashion, it is worthy of you, your family, and your birthday cake.

Vegan Chocolate Bundt Cake

It all happened so fast.

I found this recipe at around 4pm. Up until that point, I had no intention to bake this evening. I would be lazy, watch Sense and Sensibility, maybe make stove top popcorn if the craving was strong enough. But this cake looked so appealing. Maybe in part because it's reminiscent of the cakes I see on Downton Abbey, my newest vice and escape of choice. Mostly, though, it was vegan. And vegan meant easy, in this case. No creaming butter, no cracking eggs (truth: I'm terrible at cracking eggs); and I had everything the recipe called for. Everything, except the bundt pan.

I could've baked the cake in a 9x13 pan or a 9-inch round. But oh, then it wouldn't be nearly as pretty. And it wouldn't look like it just came out of Mrs. Patmore's kitchen. I asked myself if that really matters. Turns out, it does. I remembered the wealth of bundt pans I once came across at value village. At the time I had been tempted, but told myself to wait until I actually needed a bundt pan. This was it! The time had come! And off to Richfield I went.

A half hour later I was back and making hazelnut coffee, the one thing I was quite capable of messing up (truth: I'm terrible at making coffee). The batter came together quick, ridiculously quick. It was only as I poured it into the mold that I realized this cake had the potential to really suck. No eggs? No BUTTER? When I told Josh what the cake would be lacking, he made a face. We decided that if it flopped, we could take the opportunity, momentarily, to make fun of vegans and their "food."

I couldn't sample the batter because I was in the middle of a 2-hour express whitestrips treatment, so I had very little indication of how this thing would turn out.

At half past seven, the verdict is in. A cake without eggs and butter is not an impotent cake, whatever purists may say. It is a pleasant chocolate cake with faint reminders of the hazelnut coffee within. The crust is tightly sealed in a flawless inversion of the mold, the elegant depressions crisp and kissed with powdered sugar.

Okay, vegans. You may have something here.

A Mini Mission

I hate to rob my peach tart of the spotlight so soon. Normally it would have enjoyed a good month-long reign before a new post took its place.

But today is an important day.

Today, Caitlin and I baked and delivered 50 mini cupcakes for an engagement party her co-worker is hosting. It was a modest and relatively stress-free undertaking, but its significance was not lost on us. We brought back the winners of the chocolate v. chocolate showdown from a few weeks back, and we made carrot cupcakes as well.

This was the first baking venture that we started, finished, and delivered together, and it was a (very) light warm-up for our wedding gig this October. We're getting ready to take on the Twin Cities baking scene, if for no other reason but the damn shame it would be to deprive you people of the best cupcakes in the world. It's a lame superlative, I know - but I'm not sure how else to put it. I've never had a better chocolate cupcake, not in any established bakery I've been to.

To be fair, maybe a certain amount of quality-sacrifice is inevitable in mass production.

Or maybe we're just better at this. :)

On a not-so-side note, my mom turns 58 today. She couldn't stick around to bake the cakes with us, and it's weird to bake cupcakes for not your mom on your mom's birthday. So Mom, this is the best I can do: imagine the most luscious dark chocolate sponge topped with a perfect button of pillowy bittersweet chocolate...

And a heart on top, 'cause we love you like crazy.

Chocolate v. Chocolate

Mmmm.

I'm currently authoring a series on healthy eating for work. It's been interesting and (sort of) fun, but the books are for beginning readers, and they're about - well, healthy eating. Which I am all for, but - suffice it to say that writing this post is like sinking into a cushy chair after a full day on foot.

Now, I come with exciting news. You know the whole dream-turned-obsession-turned-inevitability of co-owning a bakery one day? (See post 1, The Reason I'm Here.) Well, we're inching in the right direction. We are slated to bake for a small party at the end of this month and a full-blown wedding at the start of October (so much for baby steps). Are we ready? I'm not sure, but we're doing our best. For instance, we decided it pertinent to settle on a basic chocolate cupcake recipe. And that we did.

The contenders: Dark chocolate cupcakes made with sour cream and regular chocolate cupcakes made with buttermilk. Which would claim victory? It was anyone's guess.

That's the dark chocolate/sour cream on the right and regular chocolate/buttermilk in the orange. Look at them, sitting together in perfect harmony. Aw.

But we meant business. Caitlin, Shawn, and I sampled each cupcake without any frosting to distract. After we scrutinized their physical appearance, we sniffed them, popped them into our mouths, and chewed (more accurately, mashed them against our tastebuds) with our mouths open - you know, to let the oxygen in. At least that's what I did. What I'm saying is, this was serious.

And the vote was unanimous. The winner was richer, moister, and denser. There was no question! We high-fived (or maybe I just wish we had...) and whipped up some celebratory frosting.

Now for the icing on the proverbial cake: we were riding on that feeling of great satisfaction that comes from, you know, getting things done, and we decided it was time to purchase the domain name for our future bakery AND set up a business email account. So we did all of it, right then and there, and we are now the proud owners of --

Maybe it's too soon. Give it a couple weeks. (I've got to do something to keep the five* of you coming back for more.)

*That's not a self-deprecating understatement. It's entirely accurate. And slightly self-deprecating. On an unrelated note, what do I need to do to get noticed around here?!

So, there you have it. We've found our chocolate cupcakes, we've purchased our title, and some custom-designed business cards are in the works. Shit's about to go down, folks.

What's that? I never announced the winner of the cupcake battle? Now really. Is that necessary? Come on, people.

It actually may be necessary. I introduced the regular chocolate cupcakes as the ones "in the orange," but this one here is a dark chocolate/sour cream cupcake - the winner! But you knew that, right?

French Macarons

Have you had the pleasure? I hadn't, until this past weekend. A trip home brought me back to a cozy, fully-stocked kitchen, a trusty baking partner, and an open afternoon. I'll take it.

We might have made our default chocolate chip cookies had I not still been tinged by the afterglow of my recent coup des croissants. An affinity for recipes of the finicky French kind sprung from that experience, and I was ready for the next challenge. Macarons had, for quite some time, a definite mystique. I knew what they looked like, and I knew what they had to offer: a creamy filling harnessed by two light, airy cookies. I did not know how the exquisite sandwiches came to be, and to be honest, I wasn't entirely sold on such a textural combination. All we could do was follow the recipe, step by step. And so we began.

Did you know that powdered almonds are the "flour" of macarons? Yep. Our recipe called for whole blanched almonds that were to be pulverized in a food processor. We had whole almonds, but not blanched. We had no food processor, but an adorably tiny coffee grinder. Now, take pause here, because this was an incredible breakthrough for my mom and me. We learned that we could blanch our own almonds by pouring boiling water over them, then waiting a minute before slipping off the seedcoat. (We also learned that we don't need no stinking food processor.) With a spark of ingenuity and mutual enthusiasm, we powdered those almonds.

After that we were running on what I dare describe as la cocaïne de le chef Francais: a high only achieved by the knowledge that you've done more than purchase and combine ingredients - that you have, in fact, made your ingredients!

All right, I've had my say. Now feast your eyes on the rest of this confectionary venture, because it's just as beautiful and fascinating as the onset.

With macarons now demystified, I can attest to the gustatory trip these petit sandwiches promise. The coalescence of crispy, chewy, and creamy is ethereal, and impossible to meet with your eyes open.