TWD: Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake

To make it short: The Nectarine Upside-Down Chiffon Cake is great. Not quick in the making and it involves some different stages, many pots and dishes and time to make some dressing up when you could also go an easier way. But the result is convincing and worth the time and effort.

The cake would have been even better if I would not have miscalculated the butter amount. In Austria, we do not messure in sticks, cups and spoons, but grams. And I know, know, know by heart after almost three years of baking with the group: a stick of butter is 120g. However, in my mind it turned out to be 240g, so I doubled the butter for the caramel. The effect: After baking and cooling the cake was so soft and greasy-moisty that it almost fell apart. I decided to go an unusal way, something that usually never works - but having no eggs left I was desperate: I baked the cake a second time. And now, it got firm!

Due to double baking, the caramel got even more intense in taste and the streusel in the middle did spread all over the batter, so it looked more like a nut cake and did not keep the almost white colour I found in my google research for examples pictures.

Never mind. The cake did taste excellent. With this huge amount of butter it turned out very soft and moisty, but also very butter-loaded so that you can eat only small pieces at a time. But nobody said you should only take one piece a day. :o]

So, thanks to the TWD-group for choosing this recipe. It was fun baking a slightly more difficile cake than in the recent weeks. If you want to find out more about the recipe (or what the cake looks like, if you are using the right amount of butter ;o]) head over the the blogs of Marlise of The Double Trouble Kitchen and Susan of The Little French Bakery, or buy the book "Baking with Julia" by Dorie Greenspan.

TWD - Christmas Rewind: Split-Level Pudding

And again it's rewind-time at TWD! And, again, first I am all excited that I may chose a recipe and catch up at least with one of the many recipes I missed because I joined the group too late. And, also again, I end up in complete despair because - give me options and see me panic! How can I decide for a recipe when there are so many?
I won't bother you with the different approaches I tried out to narrow the choices. Let's just say that after hours and hours and hours of reflection and deliberation I picked a recipe that was always tempting to me and one which always made me a bit sad that the group just made it directly before I started TWD: The Split-Level Pudding. It was originally due for October 6th 2009 and chosen by Garrett of Flavor of Vanilla. You can find the recipe on his page or in Dorie's book on pages 384- 385.

You may see no point why this should be a very christmasy recipe, but in fact... uhm... I guess it isn't. Except that I had not made something creamy for a long time and was longing for trying this pudding also for a long time. So it's like a little present for myself :o]

I mostly followed the directions but made some variations. Between the ganache layer and the vanilla pudding I sprinkled some chopped moisty dried plums. I added some vanilla sugar to the pudding to make it even more vanillier (I don't think this word really exists...), and some almond and rum flavour. Usually I would just use dark rum, but one of my colleagues is pregnant and I want to take the pudding to work, so, no alcohol!.

Then I topped the vanilla layer with some white chocolate ganache. In the pictures you can't really see the difference between these two layers. I merely made it to get a thicker, harder top because I wanted to sprinkle some crumbs (left-overs from the cardamom crumb cake last week) as the top-layer and thought the pudding might make them too soggy. So in the end I had a chocolate ganache-plum-vanilla-white chocolate ganache-streusel-pudding. And I loved it!

I really extremely love this one! As all puddings and cremes, it is a bit of a fuzz. Warming the cream or milk, pouring it over the eggs, slowly, slowly, than putting everything back in the pot, reheat, than again back to the bowl etc. But it's always worth it! I just think that the quantity turns out not too much. Fortunately half our office is on holiday, so I hope everybody will get one of the glasses tomorrow.

And if you haven't already - do this recipe!

TWD: Cardamom Crumb Cake

 Phew! Feels like a little eternity since I baked along with TWD. (in fact, I had to skip only three weeks, what is not too good, but also not too long. Work, holidays, guests and life in general kept me away from the oven).

Cakes are good, and crumbs are wonderful. I likelikelike streusel! Let me choose between a dry, ordinary cake with streusel and a fancy spectacular torte with lots of cream and chocolate - and I will always choose the simple cake.

This one is easy done. I had the feeling the batter was slightly too moist, so I added a little bit more flour just before baking. But I guess it would not have been necessary.

Cardamom was not available in the supermarket next door, and it is far too much winter here in Vienna to take a walk to the next bigger one on a Saturday afternoon. So I mixed what I had and what did sound like an acceptable deviation: For the 1 1/4 teaspoons in the batter I took 1/2 TS cinnamon, 1/2 TS ginger, 1/4 TS nutmeg, a pinch of pimento and a dash of pepper.

I like this pick by Jill form Jill's Blog for its easiness, fastness and sapid taste. Although it is not the same as in the original recipe, I guess it is a good approximation and variant. Find the original recipe on Jill's page or in Dorie's book on page 38/39.

TWD: Crunchy and Custardy Peach Tart

I was on the road almost the whole day because I had to accompany my boss to a day at a summer think-tank in the Austrian mountains. It was an exciting and interesting day, but also an exhausting one. We have been on the road for 9 hours - 4 and a half each way.

Nevertheless, and also against all the work I had to to on the weekend for preparing today's event, I made the Crunchy and Custardy Peach Tart, chosen by Rachel of sweet tarte (have a look at her page for the recipe, or flip through Dorie's book to pages 346 and 347. and left it at the office at 6:30 am, before we left from there. I am a good colleague. :o]

This tart was great, wonderful, extremely tasty! I did not arrive to get a perfect crust, but it turned out the best crust I ever made (which is not hard...). Anayways, I can live with the result, and the tart itself is almost perfect.

Funnily, the fruits didn't taste like peaches, but more like apples. Maybe I left them too long in the boiling water during blanching, maybe I cooked them too long in the oven. But who cares as long as the result tastes as perfect as it did?

Did I mention I love Streusel? Well - I do!!