Stollen

This month's challenge is not the most daring I've ever done. Despite that it's the first time that I've been 100% certain that the recipe will be one I make again and again. This has already become part of the fabric of our Christmas. I really can't thank Penny enough for this truly delicious recipe. 

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

A few days before I made the stollen, I made the candied orange peels to go into it. I'm very glad I did - they added a really lovely touch and were so superior to the usual peel. I made the marzipan to go in the middle too but I haven't given the marzipan recipe because it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it to. My main changes were to substitute in brown sugar and to use whole almonds, which gave it a pretty speckle. 

I didn't make any massive changes to the stollen recipe. The vanilla paste worked really well and I'm glad I used brown sugar. Otherwise it was just adding some golden sultanas, skipping the cherries and citrus extracts and using whole almonds.  I used the fresh yeast suggested because I adore working with it. 

When I pulled stollen after stollen out of the oven I wondered if we would ever manage to eat it all. It turns out that it's incredibly addictive and mum and I polished off three of them very quickly. We found we liked it fresh the best, then very lightly toasted in the next few days and finally toasted with some salted butter. One of the stollen is still sitting in the freezer as mum is saving it for new year.

All in all, a really wonderful challenge.

Finally, make sure you have a big bowl and don't put it at the top of the fridge like I did or this will happen within a few hours... (whoops!)

Stollen

juice of 3 clementines

1 tbsp rum

150g raisins

90g golden sultanas

26g fresh yeast

60ml lukewarm water

240ml milk

140g unsalted butter

770g plain flour

115g soft brown sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 large eggs

zest of an orange and a lemon

2 tsp vanilla paste

115g candied orange peel*

100g whole almonds, chopped

50g butter, melted

icing sugar to coat

On the first day (of christmas, my true love gave to me...), mix the clementine juice and rum together in a small saucepan. Add the raisins and sultanas and heat on a very low heat for 15 minutes. Leave to soak overnight. 

On the second day, break up the yeast into the lukewarm water. Let sit for a few minutes then stir to dissolve. Put the milk and butter into a small saucepan and heat until the butter has melted.  Beat the eggs and vanilla paste together in another small bowl. Measure the flour, sugar, salt, zests and spices into the mixer bowl. With the mixer on low speed, add the yeast mixture, the milk mixture and then the egg mixture. Beat until it comes together - about 2 mins. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rest for 10 minutes. Tip in the soaked fruit, candied peel and chopped almonds and mix to combine. Transfer your beater to a dough hook (or move to the counter to hand knead) and knead for 6 minutes (8 by hand). The dough should be soft and smooth, not sticky and the dried fruit might start coming away on the surface. Transfer to a very big oiled bowl, cover, and put in the fridge. Leave to rise overnight. 

On the third day, take the dough out of the fridge and leave on the side for two hours to warm up a bit.   Line two oven trays with parchment paper. Tip the dough out onto the surface and punch down. Knead for a minute or two. Divide the dough into four. Take each piece of dough in turn and roll out into a rectangle (think mine were vaguely 30cm by 20cm). Place a sausage of marzipan along one of the long edges (like this), then roll up tightly around the marzipan into a rope. Curl round into a circle and join the two ends,  pinching the dough together. Use scissors to cut incisions around the edge of the wreath. Place on the baking tray. Repeat for the other three pieces, placing two on each tray. Cover the trays with cling film and leave in a warm place to rise for about 2 hours or until they have nearly doubled in size. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180C. Bake the stollen for 15 minutes, then turn the tray and bake for another 15-20 minutes. They should be a deep brown and sound fairly hollow when knocked on the bottom.  Brush with plenty of melted butter while still hot, then dredge with icing sugar. Leave for a few minutes then add more sugar. Be generous. Leave to cool.  

(Makes 4 medium stollen wreaths)

* I make my own candied peel - the recipe I use is here.

The Upside Down Cake

Last year I submitted my whisky and dark chocolate 'The Beautiful and the Damned' Cake to the arts supplement of one of our student newspapers, the Cherwell. This term I decided to try again as it had been such a success last year.

Unfortunately I ran out of time for the first issue of term, which had the theme 'Brave New World'. I had an idea that I'm sure I'll use another time. Then this theme was released and I knew I could do something with it - 'Upside Down'.

Here are the words I submitted:

"This cake is upside down. Inside the upside down cake, horizontal becomes vertical.  What stereotypes do you have about a cake’s appearance? Does the sight make you slightly uncomfortable?

It tastes the same, upside down or upside up: alternating dark chocolate and almond génoise cake layered with milk chocolate buttercream and boxed in with chocolate marzipan."

The thing that interests me most about this idea, as I mentioned above, is the way I feel uncomfortable looking at it, as if something is always nagging in the back of my mind. Something just isn't right.  Compare with the photo below, when the layers are reversed. To me, it immediately looks better. Apart from the difficulties of gravity, why is one right and one wrong?

I had quite a few designs in mind for this cake. At one point I was going to make a circular cake with a white chocolate plate on top and a quote from Alice (below) written around the cake, upside down. It was going to have a similar inside design to this cake. In the end I changed my mind - this just seemed more exciting, and I found having two layers gives it a much more striking look. 

"I wonder if I shall fall right down through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward." Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll. 

The first thing this quote reminded me of was some of my medieval work. In particular the Wonders of the East, an Old English text with great illustrations of weird and wonderful people and animals. I was going to scan in some illustrations from the Beowulf manuscript version for you all, but haven't had time - here's an image from another MS of the text to give you an idea. Monsters are deviations from the norm, like the man in that illustration with two heads. This cake is a bit of a monster in that sense. 

I used the chocolate marzipan I used for my Sinful Chocolate Simnel Cake so that's the post to read if you want to make that. The milk chocolate buttercream is just cooled melted chocolate stirred into plain buttercream. I brushed each sponge layer with some plain sugar syrup too. To assemble I used a ruler and sharp knife to cut out the squares and then stacked it all up. 

I was really rushed at the end so you'll have to excuse the slightly dodgy edges to the white chocolate decoration. I also had a massive incident when the wire rack all the cake parts including the finished top box slid off my work surface and crashed onto the floor. Somehow I managed to rescue it. 

Génoise Sponge

(Adapted from Mini Patisseries Maison by Souksisavanh and Nikolcic)

3 eggs

95g caster sugar

75g plain flour

20g ground almonds

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a swiss roll tin. Sift the flour and almonds together a few times. Put a pan of water on to heat up. Put the eggs and caster sugar into the metal mixer bowl and place over the lightly boiling water. Whisk lightly until the sugar has dissolved and the bowl is hot (don't let the contents cook, but you want the bowl to hold heat while you whisk. Quickly place into a stand mixer and whisk until trebled in volume, cool and holds shape. Sift over the flour and almonds and gently fold in. Pour into the prepared tin and then put into the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch. 

For chocolate I used 55g flour and 20g cocoa. 

Chocolate Simnel Cake

This is my somewhat alternative interpretation of a Simnel Cake. There's no fruit involved. Just chocolate. Lots of chocolate. It's a dark beauty.

I saw a recipe for Chocolate, Orange and Almond Simnel Cake in April's Good Food and this all built from there. I've made their chocolate marzipan recipe but the rest is different - I've added in coffee instead of orange and used a different cake recipe.



I wasn't expecting huge amounts from the chocolate marzipan. I thought it would be nice - after all, how could a blend of sugar, almonds, cocoa and egg be bad - but I wasn't expecting explosions. We got them. Seriously, please make this. It's fantastic. Whoever came up with this recipe in the Good Food team is a genius.

A few minutes after tasting some, my mum declared:

"It's sort of like a food orgasm, isn't it?"

I was going to simply place a thin disk of marzipan on top and in the middle. I wanted to use truffles instead of marzipan balls on top. Then I became blinded by love of the marzipan and decided to simply totally enrobe the cake with the marzipan and use it for the balls. I was going for indulgence, so why not spread the love down the sides of the cake.



With such a rich and heavy marzipan, I wanted to make a cake that had a deep chocolate flavour but wasn't too dense. I found what I was looking for in Nigella Lawson's ridiculously simple Traditional Chocolate Cake recipe in her big book Feast. It's a great recipe - you just chuck everything in the food processor and you get a lovely light but very tasty cake for all your not so hard work. Indulge yourself with the spare time you're not spending creaming and folding!

I switched the vanilla in the recipe for coffee - I wanted the bitterness and extra flavour to bounce off the chocolate.



To sandwich it all together I made a bitter chocolate ganache with some 85% chocolate, more coffee, the rest of the sour cream and a good dollop of the truly indulgent double cream I was raving about with the Tians. It compliments the sweet marzipan and brings everything together.

I'm really pleased with the way it came together. It's a great change from the normal fruit cake and the marzipan is truly wonderful. It's probably a bit too dark and bitter for little children or people who don't like that kind of thing but using a sweeter filling would sort that out.  You could just use a sweeter dark chocolate or milk chocolate in the ganache, or find another frosting that you like.

We had it for pudding last night with chopped pears and creme fraiche - I can't recommend the combination highly enough.


Chocolate Simnel Cake
(Marzipan from April 2010 issue of Good Food, Cake from Nigella Lawson's Feast )

For the chocolate marzipan:
85g golden caster sugar
100g icing sugar
200g whole almonds
50g dark cocoa powder
1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk

As I prefer grinding almonds myself, I put the almonds in my food processor and blasted them till fine. If using already ground almonds, just put those in the processor. Add the sugars and cocoa and blend to mix well. Beat the egg and egg yolk together and then add to the processor and blend until it comes together. Scoop out onto a piece of clingfilm and then wrap it up and place in the fridge. Keeps for a week in the fridge if you want to make it ahead (though I couldn't guarantee that it won't all be nibbled away by then...)

For the cake:
200g plain flour
200g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
40g cocoa powder
175g unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 tbsp instant coffee
150 ml sour cream

Take the butter and sour cream out of the fridge (and the eggs, too, if you keep them there). Preheat the oven to 180C. Line and grease two sandwich tins (8"/20cm). Put the instant coffee in a mug/bowl and pour 1 tbsp of boiling water over the top and stir well. When the butter etc is room temperature, simply weigh everything out and put it all in a food processor. Blend until a you have a smooth batter. Measure out into the two tins and smooth. Put into the oven for around 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge and turning out. When cool place into the fridge to make them easier to split/work with. If you don't have much time, just pop them in the freezer for a 5 minutes.

For the ganache:
100g dark chocolate (I used 85%)
2 tsp instant coffee
60 ml double cream
40 ml sour cream

Chop the chocolate into small pieces and place in a small bowl. Heat the double cream and sour cream together in a small saucepan until nearly boiling then pour over the chocolate, ensuring all the pieces are submerged. Leave for two or three minutes before beating until smooth and glossy. Mix the instant coffee in a bowl with a tsp of boiling water then beat into the ganache.

To assemble:
Split each of the cakes into two (I also trimmed them down to a smaller circumference as I wanted a taller-looking cake).  Sandwich all the layers with the ganache. Put into the fridge and take out the marzipan. Cut an end off and form 11 small balls from it, rolling them in your hands. Put them to one side. Either dust the surface liberally with cocoa powder or sandwich the marzipan between two big sheets of cling film before rolling it out into a big circle. Use a piece of string to check it's big enough. Get the cake out of the fridge and remove one side of the cling film. Place the centre of the marzipan circle over the cake and smooth down. Fold down over the sides and cut off any excess. Stick the balls of marzipan on top and dust with cocoa powder.