Daring Bakers' Challenge October 2014: Sachertorte

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge was a definite "11th hour" things for me! I'm pretty sure that someone hit the turbo speed button on the month, because it seemed to FLY by. Well, the day before the baking deadline, there I was melting chocolate, beating egg whites, measuring flour, folding, and baking to make my first ever sachertorte!

What, you ask, is a sachertorte? Simply put, it is a dense Austrian chocolate cake that uses beaten egg whites as a leavening agent, incorporates apricot jam as a flavor layer, and is encased in a poured layer of chocolate ganache. The key is to incorporate the egg whites without deflating them ... no easy task... and no tidy task, either.

I was actually really excited about this month's challenge because Eric and I have recently gotten hooked on a show out of the UK called "The Great British Bake Off" and one of the technical challenges given during one of the episodes was a sachertorte. The show is hosted by two well-known bakers from the UK: Mary Berry (isn't that the best name ever??) and Paul Hollywood.

As I worked on my creation last night, I had many thoughts running through my head, but the most prominent one was "What would Mary Berry say?" Would she think I whipped the egg whites enough? Would she approve of my folding technique? It tickled me how a TV host was so absently involved in my process yesterday. At one point, Conor asked if he could help me prepare the cake... of course, that was just as I was folding in the egg whites, which requires a more delicate touch than he tends to display. Instead, I had him help me sift the flour... much less mission critical, but still make him feel special! :)

I'd read about a number of people having difficulty with the poured chocolate finish provided by the recipe provided for the challenge, so I opted to hedge my bets and use Mary Berry's ingredients and quantities for that aspect of the cake, and I'm glad I did. The poured chocolate went on beautifully and turned out so smooth!

The final touch of a sachertorte is writing "Sacher" on its top. The recipe called for milk chocolate, which is something I'm not a fan of and ... it turns out ... don't even keep in our house. We have dark and semi-sweet chocolate galore, but no milk chocolate. I was concerned that the chocolates I had wouldn't provide enough of a contrast with the poured chocolate, so I opted to use white chocolate for the final touches.

Because of the late hour the sachertorte was finished last night, we decided to hold off on taking it for a taste test run until tonight. So, at this point in time, I have no clue how it tastes, but it sure looks pretty and it rose during its time in the oven, so I'm taking that as a win! :)

(please ignore the flash's reflection in the cake!)

The October Daring Bakers' challenge was brought to us by Korena of Korena in the Kitchen. She took us to Austria and introduced us to the wonders of the Sachertorte.

Update (10/28/14): We dove into the sachertorte last night and gave it a big thumbs up. The kids devoured it! To save us from eating the whole thing, I took the leftovers to work, and my co-workers happily finished off the remaining sachertorte goodness.

A Weekend of Homemade

Looking back on this past weekend, I'm pretty impressed with how much "homemade" we achieved.

First, I finished Annika's new nightgown. When I began the project early last week, I figured it would be a snap to whip up... and it should have been, but I couldn't get my serger to work properly. No matter how I changed the tension dials, the only tension that changed was my own. I had to walk away on a few occasions because my fun project wasn't feeling very fun. Finally, I went to the store that sold it to me and asked for help. A marvelous woman took a look at my machine, pointed out a few things that needed to be corrected and then played with the tension dials. Within a few minutes, she tamed my serger and it was creating gorgeous stitches. She also pointed out that the settings she landed on are pretty wonky, which means my serger is due for some maintenance. This week, it'll go in for some TLC.

Annika modeling her new nightgown

While finishing Annika's nightgown was a huge accomplishment (which also resulted in us being able to use our kitchen table again), it wasn't the only completed project of the weekend. Eric and I swapped out the worn out faucet in our downstairs bathroom. (Sorry, no pictures are available.) The hot water handle had a bit of an issue in that if we turned it off too far, the water would turn back on. It's been like this for quite some time and I decide it was time for a change. After a lot of elbow grease, a few scraped knuckles, a bit of head scratching, lots of tools, and some plumbers dope (yes, I do know what that is now!), we pulled out the old hardware and replaced it with the new. So thrilled with the final results!!

On Saturday, I was struck with the idea that Annika and I should try making homemade butter. I'd picked up a quart of whipping cream so I could make frosting for a cake, but knew there would be plenty left for other purposes (Oh yeah, there's another project .. I made a chocolate cake with chocolate and peanut butter ganache topping for my co-workers' birthdays). Thanks to a quick Internet search, I found that a blog that said we only needed was some whipping cream and a jar that had a good seal. Done and done! Unfortunately, I was much more psyched about the project than Annika was, so after about 5-6 shakes, she was ready to work on solving her mazes and I was left getting a great upper body workout. But, after a lot of shaking, we went from having whipping cream to whipped cream, to a lump of stuff, to butter and buttermilk. Little did I realize when we started that we'd have two final products: homemade butter and homemade buttermilk (which I used to make pancakes for the kids Sunday morning)!

Butter!

Buttermilk

Thanks to my cousin (Tonya) introducing me to the wondrous world of online craft classes, I enrolled in a free "perfect pizza" class led by the amazing Peter Reinhart... a well-known bread maker. So, I decided to make homemade pizza for dinner ... which, of course, required homemade pizza dough. One of Peter's tips was to make the dough a day or two before you need it, so the glutens have time to develop. We'll make pizza for dinner tonight ... stay tuned for a review of the final results. 

To quote Homer Simpson: "DOUGH!"

Last, and certainly not least, I got it in my head that the kids needed crowns that would last more than 5 minutes. Typically when they want to play dress up, I'd make them paper crowns. Paper being paper and the kids being kids resulted in ripped crowns and frowny kids. Enough was enough ... our kids deserve the best, right? My mission was to sew them some fabric crowns that had a chance of living past the afternoon. 

Once again, I did a quick Internet search, found a great blog that included instructions and a template, and I went to work. I learned quite a bit about the process making Annika's crown and applied a few tweaks when constructing Conor's crown. The biggest tip I figured out was to cut the interfacing slightly smaller than the fabric so it doesn't make the inside fabric quite so tight. Plus, my serger proved to be the perfect tool for finishing the bottom edges of the crowns - once again, thank you to the marvelous woman at the sewing store! I was incredibly pleased with the final results and the kids love them. Win - win!

Our prince and princess

Ta-da!
You can't really tell in this photo, but each crown has two fabrics:
one on the inside and one on the outside

Sourdough Chocolate Cake

I've taken on a new profession (of sorts) ... sourdough starter rancher. It is a great profession .. I feed and care for my precious stock and get to turn it into all sorts of yummy baked goods. Really, how could that be anything but a good thing??

I found myself pondering about non-bread uses for my starter, which made me turn to my trusty friend the Internet. Oh, how I do adore the Internet and all of its recipes! (Except for Emeril's cornbread ... that was GROSS! But I digress...)

While surfing the 'net, I ran across a sourdough chocolate cake recipe on the King Arthur Flour website and decided to give it a try. Oh my, but am I glad that I did (and so are my co-workers). The cake did take a bit of forethought because it required 2-3 hours for the sourdough to get fed and eat (geez .. who takes that long for a flour/water meal??). Then, it is time to make the cake (easy!) and chocolate/espresso frosting (easy and insanely yummy!) and chocolate drizzle (a snap!).

The only issue I had was the 9x13 pan I have probably needed to be about 1/4" taller to keep the frosting from oozing over the edges. Oh well ... small price to pay for a yummy cake. As promised by the recipe, the cake doesn't taste like sourdough; I think the sourdough provided the great leavening and poof to the cake.

Will definitely keep this recipe on hand for future use!

Sourdough Chocolate Cake

Mockingjay Cake

Recently, my boss asked if I'd be interested in making a cake for her family's upcoming group birthday dinner. Her theme for the party was Hunger Games, so she wanted an appropriately themed cake. She also said that her family is comprised of choco-holics.

I wound up making a chocolate cake (recipe courtesy of Ina Garten) with chocolate ganache between the layers, crumb coated in dark chocolate buttercream frosting, and then covered in 5 layers of poured chocolate ganache. I think the chocolate requirement was definitely met!

Fortunately, I married a very artistic man and he was able and willing to sculpt the bird (shockingly fast, might I add!) for me. I used a leaf cutter to create the feathers - thank goodness for repurposing my tools - and used my hand-dandy air brush to make the whole thing a nice shiny gold, just like Katniss' mockingjay pin. To top it off, I added some fondant "nightlock berries" for some authenticity and added visual interest.

Fortunately, it all went together really smoothly and the cake was a huge hit. :D

Our final product