Food and a movie
Oct. 14th, 2012 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornT___, who had moved to Kiel some time ago, and recently to Hamburg, came for a visit last weekend, and as I know how hard it can be to visit everyone you want to see in just one weekend, I offered my place for meeting, and said that I would provide tea and cake.
Which was, of course, only a ploy to get to bake cake. I baked small cakes this time, in the 20 cm tray, because it feels insufficient to have less then three things on the table, but three full-sized cakes create too much leftovers
I made a Simple apple tarte: Sweetcrust pastry of 200g flour, 100g butter, 50g sugar, one egg yolk and a teaspoon of creme fraiche. Half of that I put in the freezer for later, the rest, after 30 minutes of cooling to make it more co-operative, became a pre-baked tarte bottom in 15 minutes at 180°C. I then poured in it a mix of 100g creme fraiche, one egg, and a tablespoon of vanilla sugar, piled on the thinly sliced apples and sprinkled generously with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Baked about 30 minutes at 180°C.
Highlight became a new experiment, a Hazelnut-Lemon-Cake:
Beat three egg whites to very solid foam with no sugar but a pinch of salt. Then, beat three egg yolks with 50 grams of brown sugar and 50 grams of white sugar until the mixture became lighter-coloured. Added 100 grams of roasted, ground hazelnuts, the finely grated peel of half a lemon, half a tablespoon of flour, mixed until smooth. Then added the foam in carefully with an eggbeater, first a quarter of it, then another quarter, then the rest. Baked it for about 45 minutes at 180°C. After 25 minutes I had to cover it with tinfoil, because it got too dark.
It was very soft when I took it out of the form. I let it solidify overnight.
Next day, I cut it horizontally and put a generous amount (about 2-3 tablespoons) of heated and smoothened lemon marmalade between. I then, for the first time, tried my hand at a glaze based on coconut fat. Solid coconut fat has a lot of interesting traits. It is cool in the mouth when melting, and it has a very pretty shine. I melted about 37.5 grams of coconut fat and 12.5 grams of butter on low heat, stirred in about 50 grams of sieved confectioner's sugar, and the juice from one lemon, and beat it with the hand mixer for about two minutes. Then I waited for it to cool and become a little less fluid. And waited. And waited. After about 15 minutes of growing impatience, I began to cover the cake with it, layer by layer. When it stopped being quite as fluid, I decorated the cake with halved candied cherries. The glaze was still see-through and soft when I went to bed, and I worried that I might just have drowned a good idea in fat.
Next day it was snow-white, smooth and shiny, and the guests thought that it had come from a store.
Finally, I made chocolate rolls from a sweet yeast dough, which could have used a shorter baking time at lower temperature, because the crust was dry. Still, they were OK.
***
It was a very nice afternoon, good talk, the kids were behaving, and Tully the Tabby allowed people to pet him, while Serious Cat Jerome pulled his Invisible Cat act again.
***
When everyone had gone, I walked over to Snow to finally watch "The Avengers" in not-3D. (Can't stand 3D movies. Hard on my eyes, and my brain has to pick up the slack, so I end up with a headache and no memory of the story.) I liked it. The strategic intelligence of the characters was doubtful and the plot development full of stereotypes, Thor and Loki arguing seemed like a sad re-hash of the Doctor and the Master, but the alien tech was very pretty, the dialogues were very entertaining, and the actors were nice to look at.
Today, flederkatz called and told about her "phasing" cat. As in, sometimes she's there and sometimes not...
Which was, of course, only a ploy to get to bake cake. I baked small cakes this time, in the 20 cm tray, because it feels insufficient to have less then three things on the table, but three full-sized cakes create too much leftovers
I made a Simple apple tarte: Sweetcrust pastry of 200g flour, 100g butter, 50g sugar, one egg yolk and a teaspoon of creme fraiche. Half of that I put in the freezer for later, the rest, after 30 minutes of cooling to make it more co-operative, became a pre-baked tarte bottom in 15 minutes at 180°C. I then poured in it a mix of 100g creme fraiche, one egg, and a tablespoon of vanilla sugar, piled on the thinly sliced apples and sprinkled generously with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Baked about 30 minutes at 180°C.
Highlight became a new experiment, a Hazelnut-Lemon-Cake:
Beat three egg whites to very solid foam with no sugar but a pinch of salt. Then, beat three egg yolks with 50 grams of brown sugar and 50 grams of white sugar until the mixture became lighter-coloured. Added 100 grams of roasted, ground hazelnuts, the finely grated peel of half a lemon, half a tablespoon of flour, mixed until smooth. Then added the foam in carefully with an eggbeater, first a quarter of it, then another quarter, then the rest. Baked it for about 45 minutes at 180°C. After 25 minutes I had to cover it with tinfoil, because it got too dark.
It was very soft when I took it out of the form. I let it solidify overnight.
Next day, I cut it horizontally and put a generous amount (about 2-3 tablespoons) of heated and smoothened lemon marmalade between. I then, for the first time, tried my hand at a glaze based on coconut fat. Solid coconut fat has a lot of interesting traits. It is cool in the mouth when melting, and it has a very pretty shine. I melted about 37.5 grams of coconut fat and 12.5 grams of butter on low heat, stirred in about 50 grams of sieved confectioner's sugar, and the juice from one lemon, and beat it with the hand mixer for about two minutes. Then I waited for it to cool and become a little less fluid. And waited. And waited. After about 15 minutes of growing impatience, I began to cover the cake with it, layer by layer. When it stopped being quite as fluid, I decorated the cake with halved candied cherries. The glaze was still see-through and soft when I went to bed, and I worried that I might just have drowned a good idea in fat.
Next day it was snow-white, smooth and shiny, and the guests thought that it had come from a store.
Finally, I made chocolate rolls from a sweet yeast dough, which could have used a shorter baking time at lower temperature, because the crust was dry. Still, they were OK.
***
It was a very nice afternoon, good talk, the kids were behaving, and Tully the Tabby allowed people to pet him, while Serious Cat Jerome pulled his Invisible Cat act again.
***
When everyone had gone, I walked over to Snow to finally watch "The Avengers" in not-3D. (Can't stand 3D movies. Hard on my eyes, and my brain has to pick up the slack, so I end up with a headache and no memory of the story.) I liked it. The strategic intelligence of the characters was doubtful and the plot development full of stereotypes, Thor and Loki arguing seemed like a sad re-hash of the Doctor and the Master, but the alien tech was very pretty, the dialogues were very entertaining, and the actors were nice to look at.
Today, flederkatz called and told about her "phasing" cat. As in, sometimes she's there and sometimes not...
