All of which is to say that I made a couple of mistakes this week trying to tweak recipes. These were not throw-out-the-whole-thing mistakes, but they were mistakes I nonetheless regretted.
The first was when I went to make the
coconut lime cake from Pinch my Salt. I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to use the reverse creaming method for a more tender crumb. For those of you who are not baking geeks, reverse creaming is when you mix together all the dry ingredients, then add the (soft!!) butter and a portion of the wet ingredients, mix that for a couple of minutes, and then dribble in the remaining wet ingredients gradually until everything once again is nice and fluffy. And if you do this with a Cake Bible recipe, or even some of the Cook's Illustrated recipes, it works wonderfully. I've had good luck adapting other recipes with this technique. But this came out gummy, not tender. If I make this cake again, I will follow the instructions!
My next mistake was on the gelatin front. I made the Raspberry Bavarian from Maida Heatter's New Book of Great Desserts, but I needed to make some modifications because of the ingredients I had on hand. First, Maida calls for a 10-oz. box of frozen raspberries in syrup. Well, I'm not sure you can buy those anymore. Can you? So I bought a 12-0z. bag of plain frozen raspberries and thawed them with 1/3 cup of sugar. I think that was not quite enough sugar.
Second, her recipe calls for 1 cup of cream. Well, I usually have a quart container of cream in my fridge, but it was sadly on the empty side yesterday. I had some half and half, though, so I used about 1/4 cup of heavy cream and 3/4 cup of half and half. That was probably also a mistake.
Results? The bavarian tasted a bit flat to me. I think more sugar might have helped. I don't know why I didn't adjust it before I poured it into the mold. Also, the thing didn't gel enough to unmold properly. It was a very unattractive blob on the platter. However, it disappeared before I could think too hard about it. The verdict: Up the sugar, use full-fat cream, and pour into individual serving dishes (wineglasses?) so that you don't have to worry about unmolding.
Here's the recipe--enjoy!
Raspberry Bavarian
Adapted from Maida Heatter, New Book of Great Desserts
Serves 6
1 12-oz. bag frozen raspberries
1/2 c. sugar
3 T. lemon juice
1 envelope plain gelatin
1/4 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1/2 t. vanilla (1 T. or so of kirsch or framboise might also be nice here)
pinch salt
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup crushed ice (I pounded some ice in a Ziploc with a rolling pin. Very therapeutic.)
Put the berries, sugar, and lemon juice in a bowl and let them sit until the berries have thawed and given off a lot of juice. Strain the berries (don't push them through the strainer, just let the juice drain off). Put the milk in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over. Let that soften. Pour the berry juice in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil. By that time, the gelatin should have softened--scrape it into the juice and whisk until the gelatin has dissolved. Pour this mixture into your blender, turn up the speed, and let it go for a full minute. It will whip up to a nice pink color. Then add the berries, egg yolk, vanilla (and/or other flavoring), and salt; whiz for another 5 seconds or so. Finally, add the cream and ice and give it another 15-20 seconds on high. Now strain this into a large glass measuring cup or pitcher (this strains unusually fast for a raspberry mixture) and pour the strained mixture into 6 individual bowls/glasses. Chill for at least 4-5 hours. Enjoy by itself, or with some whipped cream and/or fresh raspberries.
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