Gateau Breton aux Pommes

This time last year, I was frolicking (OK, well, no – I don’t actually frolic) around Brussels with a great group of girls. We took off for a weekend of rest, frivolity, food and shopping. I actually had the best time, even though I was pregnant, sick with a horrendous chest infection and couldn’t imbibe in Brussels’ famous beers. I swore I would go back, and I will – probably with my husband – sometime in the next few years.

Even though I couldn’t drink with the rest of my friends (save for one, who was as pregnant as I was at the time), bon vivant I am,  I still over-indulged. Friends, being pregnant in Brussels isn’t so bad. Sure, you can’t drink the beer, but you’re surrounded ON ALL SIDES by waffles and chocolate. And, my personal favourite, speculoos!

I packed so much eating into those two days, I’m amazed they didn’t roll me off the plane when we got back to Dublin. Waffles three times a day were a must.

“Just plain, no toppings, please! I’ll take six to go.” Hot and fresh off the iron, biting into a doughy Liege waffle was like taking a bite into heaven. I never wanted to be far from those angelic delicacies.

Belgian frites were a must, at least twice a day. Triple fried in beef fat with a side of truffle mayo? Why not. I’M ON VACATION.

Moules-frites, fricadelle, chocolate (MOUNTAINS OF CHOCOLATE), nougat, pain au chocolat – I even over-indulged in some Turkish cheese pastries I found on our final morning. Everything was delicious. Drunk food and pregnant food are basically the same thing, and Belgians are really good at both drinking and creating drunk food.

Can I let you in on a secret? The absolute, VERY BEST THING I ate while in Brussels wasn’t Belgian; it was French – from Normandy, to be exact. It was a caramelized apple pancake at Chez Leon, an old-school restaurant best known for their moules-frites. I didn’t enjoy my moules-frites very much, but I would return to this restaurant just for the desserts.

It was perfect. Sweet, but not too sweet, cooked table-side by our very entertaining waiter, served hot with a dollop of vanilla ice cream melting over the top – it was just what I needed after a highly anticipated, then disappointing dinner. My friends ordered other desserts but nearly everyone ended up taking a bite (or two) of my pancake; it was just so scrummy.

Now, a year on, I’m just after turning 33. For my birthday I really wanted to replicate these flavours – my favourite flavours. I’m lucky to have an October birthday in Ireland – it’s peak apple season. Using tart cooking apples (like Bramleys) in this Gâteau Breton aux Pommes is a must, but equally important is the salted caramel sauce to drizzle over top.

This cake uses A LOT of butter and eggs, but no milk. The consistency post-bake is nearly custard-like, or that of a baked pudding. Your fork slides through the layers of sponge and apple with ease and the caramel adds the perfect amount of sweetness. I think this will be my birthday cake for years to come.

Recipe via Bon Appetit

 

A Good Cake – I mean, Weekend.

We had a bank holiday in Ireland this past Monday which means – you guessed it – a long weekend for Patrick! It would have been great to stick around Waterford for the weekend (the weather has been glorious; hot and sunny, perfect for beaching) but there was just too much going on around the country.

We managed to squeeze in my brother-in-law’s birthday party in Tipperary, The Sky Cat Laughs comedy festival in Kilkenny, a charity tug-of-war competition and family BBQ (also in Tipp, at our local), Bloom in the Park (which will be my next post) in Dublin and a quading adventure in Wexford (this was just for Pat, I, for obvious pregnancy-related reasons did not partake).

We got back to Waterford on Monday evening, completely spent. But it was so worth it. We had a fabulous weekend with our friends and family.

Being the resident cake-maker in the family, it once again fell to me to create a birthday cake for my brother-in-law. When I asked him a few weeks back about his favourite cake, he told me it was boiled fruit cake.

I told him I was definitely not making him a boiled fruit cake for his birthday; he could wait for Christmas like everyone else. *On a side note, could you ever imagine a Canadian guy requesting boiled fruit cake for his birthday? Not in a million years.

In the end he said he would like anything, as long as it didn’t include dark chocolate. I could handle that.

I went for a hot milk vanilla layer cake. I filled the layers with a strawberry Crème Saint-Honoré (which is a thick custard that has been lightened with stiffly beaten egg whites). Then, I masked the cake in a French buttercream and topped it with white chocolate-covered strawberries.

I thought the cake looked a tad plain after adding the strawberries, so I went out into the garden and got some flowers. The yellow and purple gave the cake the pop of colour it needed and we were good to go. The cake itself was moist, not too heavy (even with the French buttercream) and had the perfect amount of strawberry flavour from the Crème Saint-Honoré. The only problem was, for a farmer’s birthday cake, I went slightly overboard with the flowers and hot pink candles. OK, and I also used food colouring paste to dye the cake layers a deep crimson.

I wish I had gotten a picture of the inside of the cake, but it was attacked by half-drunk relatives and I had a hard time finding a piece that didn’t look mangled.

Find below the recipe for my strawberry Crème Saint-Honoré. Traditionally, it’s used as a filling for choux pastry – eclairs and profiteroles. It’s also delicious served with strawberry shortcake, or eaten with a spoon as you would a mousse. The cake and French buttercream recipe will be coming soon!

Strawberry Crème Saint-Honore

Ingredients:

8 egg whites, room temperature

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp icing (confectioner’s) sugars

3 cups freshly prepared crème pâtisièrre (heavy custard)

1 pint fresh Irish strawberries, pureed with a blender

Directions:

• Make the crème pâtisièrre by whisking 1 cup of sugar with 5 egg yolks and 1 tsp of vanilla until the mixture is pale yellow and forms a ribbon. Mix in 1/2 cup of flour, then, while continuing to whisk, slowly drizzle in two cups of boiling milk. Move the mixture into a saucepan and, over medium heat, whisk constantly until the mixture has thickened (it will be extremely thick by the time it’s ready).
• Take the pot off the heat and immediately beat in 2 Tbsp of unsalted butter.
• While the crème pâtissière is hot, start whisking the egg whites with the salt. When soft peaks have formed, sprinkle on the icing sugar and continue to whisk until stiff peaks have formed.
• Fold the stiffly beaten egg whites into the hot crème pâtisièrre.
• Puree the strawberries and press through a fine sieve. Add the strained puree to the Crème Saint-Honore and gently fold to combine. Chill completely before using.

Kit Kat Birthday Cake

I’ve made a lot of birthday cakes in my day, but I’ve never made one for a kid. Now that I live in the same country as my two nieces, the job of “birthday cake-maker” fell to me this past weekend.

“How difficult can that be?”, you might be wondering. Well, as the “auntie who can cook” I had certain standards expected of me. The cake couldn’t come from a box, but it’s for a kid, so it should probably taste like one that comes from a box. It couldn’t be smothered in cream and fruit; that wouldn’t be fun enough. It needed a bit of a “wow” factor, since, until the niece in question spends the weekend with us next week she wouldn’t be getting a present.

Anyway, I love putting unnecessary pressure on myself. Can you tell?

In the end, I decided to make things a bit easier. We’ve all seen the Kit Kat Cake on Pintrest, right? It looks pretty impressive, but from a cake-maker’s perspective it’s not that difficult to make. Just a basic cake, iced and then covered in Kit Kat sticks and M&M’s. Tie a ribbon around the Kit Kats when you’re done and you have a very festive cake, perfect for a candy-loving ten year old.

I thought a chocolate cake covered in chocolate icing and chocolate candy bars might be a bit “overkill”, so for the cake I made Smitten Kitchen’s Best Birthday Cake. It was perfect – the end result actually tastes like a yellow cake mix from Duncan Hines and the like. Instead of using her sour cream chocolate icing (something I would love if making the cake for myself, but not so sure for my niece), I made a basic chocolate buttercream using icing sugar, cocoa powder, heavy cream, vanilla and softened butter.

I should mention that Smitten Kitchen’s recipe makes a BIG cake. If all that batter went into two 9 inch layers, it wouldn’t work for the Kit Kat cake. When the Kit Kats are lined around the cake, you want them to be a few centimetres higher than the top of the cake. Otherwise, the M&M’s would have nowhere to go, and that would be very sad. Instead, I used two smaller sandwich tins. This recipe will make three layers of sandwich-sized cakes. I used two layers for the birthday cake and with the third, made a more “adult friendly” cake with the leftover frosting and Kit Kats.

This cake is absolutely delicious on it’s own. Simply masked in a buttercream, it’s moist and tastes of eggs, sugar, vanilla and has a tang from the buttermilk. With the Kit Kat’s and the M&M’s I found it way too sweet. The kids absolutely loved it, though, and it was well worth the effort!

Kit Kat Birthday Cake

Ingredients:

Two sandwich-tin layers of Smitten Kitchen’s Best Birthday Cake

3 1/2 cups icing sugar

1 cup good quality cocoa powder

1 cup softened butter

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tsp vanilla

40 Kit Kat sticks (make sure you buy extra, though, to account for breakage)

2 large bags of M&M’s

Ribbon, Bows

Decorative Candles

Directions:

• Once the two layers of cake have completely cooled, place one layer on a disposable cake plate (you can get them at the dollar/euro store or Bulk Barn in Canada). Place the cake plate on a cake turntable, if you have one.
• Mix the frosting with a hand mixer or stand mixer, making sure it’s smooth and free of lumps. Put 3/4’s of a cup of frosting on the first layer. Using a palette knife, spread the frosting evenly over the top of the first layer. Sandwich with the second layer.
• Mask the cake with the rest of the frosting, starting with the top of the cake and spreading evenly over the sides (the turntable really helps you get an even layer of frosting, and the palette knife helps sculpt the frosting around the edges – both are great investments if you love decorating cakes).
• Time for the Kit Kats: use a kitchen knife to separate the sticks. If you break them by hand it will look rough and uneven.
• Carefully stick the Kit Kats around the edge of the cake. Some people leave a small space in between, but I think it looks nicer if you work your way around with the Kit Kats pressed closely together.
• When the Kit Kats are completely attached to the sides of the cake, open the M&M’s and pour over the top of the cake. There should be enough Kit Kat overhang (did I really just type that?) to hold the two large bags of M&M’s. You shouldn’t see any frosting, just Kit Kats and M&M’s!
• Finish the cake by tying a pretty bow around the Kit Kats. Decorate the top with decorative candles. This cake will keep for about a week if its not immediately devoured (which, let’s face it, it will be).

I still had the last layer of cake to deal with, so I quickly masked it in leftover frosting and smashed the leftover Kit Kats in a plastic bag with a wine bottle (that’s technically the correct way to smash things). I sprinkled the smashed Kit Kats over the top and Pat and I had dessert for a week! Not that we needed it.