Zosia's Reviews
11 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 11Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients
By Matt Lewis, Renato Poliafito, Tina Rupp
Stewart, Tabori and Chang - 2012
Banana Whoopie Pies : page 202
Silky milk chocolate buttercream sandwiched between mini banana cakes....
The “cake” portion is a relatively thick oil-based batter that bakes up into a tender banana-flavoured cake with a hint of cinnamon. It was very easy to mix together by hand.
The filling is a little more involved. I didn’t make the Swiss meringue buttercream in this recipe as I had a batch of this Italian meringue buttercream (unflavoured) in the freezer that used the same ratio of egg whites to butter but 1/3 less sugar. I added the 6 oz of milk chocolate from the Baked recipe and found it too sweet, so added an additional 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate. It had good chocolate flavour, a little more intense than milk chocolate but not by much.
I made these sandwich cookie size, using a #70 (a scant tbsp) scoop for the batter. Baking time was 10 min. and the yield was 84 cookies, 42 pies. I used the same scoop to portion out the filling.
They’re not the prettiest looking sweets I’ve ever made but that didn’t stop people from being drawn to them….. they were a huge hit!
useful (0)
Bananas Cake : page 196
This rather impressive cake (it’s very tall!) includes 3 of the authors’ favourite elements, bananas, peanut butter and chocolate, and each are well represented. Creamy peanut butter and chocolate fillings are sandwiched between layers of light, fluffy banana cake, frosted with milk chocolate ganache buttercream and glazed with intense, bittersweet chocolate.
The cake is made with the usual creaming method and the layers bake up quite level with the use of cake strips. It’s moist and has a good banana flavour.
The peanut butter filling is a simple blend of peanut butter, butter and confectioners’ sugar. The photo in the book (and on the cover) is misleading as the recipe makes only enough for a scant half cup per 8” layer ie a very thin layer. You would have to double the recipe to achieve the thickness pictured.
The chocolate ganache buttercream has a lovely, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth quality when eaten and tastes exactly like the chocolate used so make sure to use a favourite. When assembling the cake, I used the same amount for the filling as I did the peanut butter so the layers would be even.
The final touch is a thin chocolate glaze that’s the perfect consistency to cover the top of the cake smoothly and drip part way down the sides. It’s applied in 2 stages; I preferred the appearance of the cake after the first application so next time, I’ll just make a half batch. Made with bittersweet chocolate, it has a rich, intense flavour…..this will be my go-to chocolate glaze recipe from now on.
There are quite a few components to this cake but each one is easy to make. I made it a 2-day project, making the filling and ganache one day, and baking, assembling and glazing the cake the next day.
Serves 16 (any smaller, and the cake slices start to fall apart….believe me, I tried!)
useful (2)
Brown Butter Snickerdoodles : page 138
Crispy, crackly crust, chewy interior, this snickerdoodle is definitely a cinnamon-lover’s dream cookie and with the added nuttiness from the brown butter, this recipe elevates a rather plain cookie to new levels.
The recipe is fairly standard in that it includes cream of tartar and is leavened with baking soda, but is non-traditional in its use of the browned butter, which I didn’t bother to strain, brown sugar and cinnamon in the dough. The shaped cookies are rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture, which is quite heavy on the cinnamon, before baking.
I made mine smaller than the recipe directs, about the size of a walnut, so my yield was 5 dozen cookies. 10 minutes of baking produced the crispy/chewy texture I prefer; an additional 2 minutes produced a crisp cookie.
My new go-to snickerdoodle recipe!
useful (1)
Easy Candy Bar Tart : page 71
Fantastic tart with a chocolate crumb crust, salty-sweet caramel-nut filling topped with a layer of glossy chocolate……a candy bar may have been its inspiration but this sophisticated tart bears no resemblance to any dime store treat (I’m showing my age here…perhaps I should say “dollar store treat”) I’ve ever had!
I noticed an erratum in the instructions for making the crust: you’re told to preheat the oven but not instructed to bake anything. I sent an email through the Baked site asking for clarification and received a reply from one of the authors shortly after – bonus points! You have the option of blind-baking the crust until set or simply refrigerating it. I chose to bake it.
The filling is an easy to make caramel combined with toasted walnuts and the topping of melted butter and chocolate is even easier. A little chilling is required between steps but apart from that, the tart is very quick to make.
I made this for the chocoholics at my Thanksgiving dinner but it was a hit with everyone.
useful (1)
Good Morning Sunshine Bars : page 22
Don’t ever let your university-student son, or your husband for that matter, get their hands on this book or you’ll end up making recipes like this one ;)! Though no worse than some commercial granola bars, breakfast food they are not…… but try convincing someone of that with that recipe name and the fact that you’ve used whole wheat cereal in it!
They’re no more difficult to make than Rice Krispie Treats but you do have to work quickly as the hot sugar-peanut butter mixture that’s combined with the cereal and peanuts firms up quickly, especially in a relatively cool kitchen.
These were actually very tasty with good peanut flavour and crispy, chewy texture and, according to son, travel well in care packages.
useful (0)
Lemon Pistachio Cornmeal Muffins : page 54
These were a very pleasant surprise – I was hoping for a sweet, lemony muffin and that’s exactly what I got. They were tender, a little crumbly because of the cornmeal, a little tangy from lemon juice and sour cream, and were topped with crunchy, toasted pistachios.
The recipe doesn’t indicate what grind of cornmeal to use and I had both very fine and medium in my pantry. I went with the latter which was a mistake; the cornmeal doesn’t have an opportunity to soften in liquid so the larger pieces were obvious, adding additional, but unwanted crunch! I used some of the sugar from the recipe to process the nuts that were to be added to the batter so I would end up with pistachio powder, not butter.
Apart from having to deal with the pistachios, the recipe comes together and bakes up quickly. They did firm up considerably by day 2 but it was nothing a little re-heating couldn’t fix. The recipe made 14 regular muffins.
useful (1)
Lime Angel Food Cake with Lime Glaze : page 41
This is one of the best tasting angel food cakes I’ve ever had, all because of the addition of a lime juice syrup. The cake is subtly flavoured with lime zest but it’s that tart-sweet syrup that’s applied warm to the cooled cake that captures the essence of the fruit. The pistachios added a wonderful crunch, and the finishing drizzle, additional sweet lime flavour.
The cake itself is a standard recipe; it baked up light and airy but I wish I had drawn a thin knife through the batter to eliminate air bubbles before baking as I ended up with some air pockets in the cake.
I made the full recipe of the lime syrup and glaze but ended up using only half of each; I decided to put the pistachios on the top of the cake only, so I syrupped only the top. It was still enough to add that wonderful bright, tart flavour of the lime to every bite. I’m not that fond of confectioner’s sugar glazes so applied only a light drizzle.
I usually only make angel food cakes when I have a plethora of egg whites on hand but for this cake, I would make an exception and crack open the eggs for the whites only and worry about the yolks later!
This recipe was previously published in Bon Appetit magazine…I’ve included the link.
useful (1)
Malted Madeleines : page 123
Pretty little shell-shaped sponge cakes with a nutty, milk chocolate flavour.
The batter comes together much like a sponge cake batter and though it takes only minutes to make, it’s required to rest 1 hour before baking. The recipe says that it yields 24 madeleines; unfortunately, there’s no indication what size they are or what size pan you should use. My pan produces 16 rather large ones so that’s what I made. It turns out that I did overfill the pan and I should have made at least another 4.
The finishing touch is a dusting of cocoa and malt powders….2 tsp weren’t enough for all of the cookies so I added some powdered sugar.
Recipe issues aside, we really enjoyed these…..they were tender with a crisp exterior and a delicate flavour…..very nice with coffee.
useful (2)
The authors describe this as a “scone/cookie hybrid”; it does taste like a peanut butter-chocolate chip cookie, and a good one at that, but with the moist and tender texture of a good scone.
I didn’t have crunchy peanut butter – something that was apparently very important for texture – so I used a scant ½ cup of creamy and added about 2tbsp chopped, dry roasted peanuts. I made them the night before and baked them from a frozen state; they took just a few minutes longer than the time in the recipe.
They were a huge hit…dense, but quite delicious warm and still good hours later. I particularly liked the crunchy sugar topping which added a little extra to the not-too-sweet scone.
useful (2)
This bundt cake with poppy seed filling is a surprisingly “Old World” recipe for these authors – though I suppose adding cream cheese to the batter and glazing the cake with a brown butter icing makes it much less so.
The vanilla cake was dense, moist and very rich with a whisper of orange flavour and a little tanginess from the cheese. The poppy seed filling was moist and not too sweet……. the cake itself was delicious.
I wish I could say the same for the glaze, a confectioners’ sugar based icing with melted browned butter, orange juice and rind. I had to add more liquid than the recipe called for to make it pourable, I suspect because my kitchen was quite cool and the butter was firming up in the glaze. Of course I ended up taking it a little too far and making it too thin. I used it as is rather than adding more sugar and was quite happy that most of the glaze ran off the cake because I didn’t like it at all…..I don’t mind using browned butter in my baked goods, but I really don’t like it poured on top. Other family members didn’t mind it, but it definitely wasn’t a hit.
I would give the cake 4 stars, but the glaze drops it down to an overall rating of 3 stars.
useful (1)
This is one of the best pumpkin cakes I’ve ever had – it’s moist without being dense and oily and is wonderfully spicy. (I especially liked the kick from the ginger).
It’s made with butter instead of the oil that’s often used and owes its light and airy texture to ingredients like ground almonds (which really can’t be detected) and buttermilk.
The frosting is an American buttercream that has some of the butter replaced with almond butter. It had a wonderful spreadable, consistency but, even though I used the lesser amount of sugar listed in the recipe, it was too sweet (for me) and had that unpleasant (to me) gritty mouthfeel that comes with powdered sugar. However, the almond flavour was a very nice complement to the spiciness of the cake. I think I’ll borrow this idea and try adding almond butter to a different frosting…perhaps the cooked milk buttercream that the authors favour.
An easy and delicious cake that I'll definitely make again.
useful (2)