So one day I was thinking I’d make an apple cake.  Since I had never really made an apple cake, I turned to my good buddy Google and soon found this recipe on Group Recipes. Kate and I had gotten a Bakers Edge pan for Christmas and on a chilly winter evening soon after I first tried the Best Apple cake In 47 Years of cooking recipe.  At the restaurant I churched up this simple, outstanding, breakfasty cake into something a bit more.  Maybe another 47 years? Who can say without the benefit of time travel. The genius of the cake is it’s basic nature.  A true quick bread leavened with both eggs and baking soda you really just kind of mix it all up; not much to it.  When it comes out of the oven, let it sit for a few minutes ad then glaze it with the brown sugar glaze.  The smell stirs one to salivation, heads turn and sniff, they sniff-sniff.  I actually have a bit of a thing for the raw batter.  So anyway, give it a try.  I change up the recipe a little from the original: where it says 3 cups of apples I just slice three apples, Also and I brown the butter in the glaze before adding the sugar and cream.  At the restaurant I leave out the walnuts so people with “nut allergies” can order it too.  I get back at them by serving it with toasted walnut ice cream, sage caramel, brown butter struesel and candied walnuts.  I fucking love walnuts.  The sage powder is I cool trick I learned working with Chef Eric Suniga, a man of true kitchen prowess.  Pick a bunch of sage, pile up the leaves, and roll into into a blunt with plastic wrap.  Freeze rock solid and micro plane at service.

The Best Apple Cake in 47 Years of Cooking.

3 c flour

2 c sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 large eggs, beaten

1 c vegetable oil

1/2 c apple juice

2 tsps vanilla

3 finely sliced apples

1 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c butter

1/3 c whipping cream

Preheat The oven to 350. Grease and flour desired pan. (9×13 or 7 - 3X2″ cake pans)

• In a large bowl mix flour, sugar, soda & salt. Make a well in the center & set aside.

• In a medium bowl mix eggs, oil, apple juice & vanilla. Add the egg mixture to dry ingredients, just until moistened.  Add the apples and mix until homogeneous.

• Bake for 45-50 mins.

• In a small saucepan brown the butter, then in mix the brown sugar & cream. Cook & stir till bubbly & all of the sugar is dissolved. Cool slightly.

• Drizzle warm sauce over cake, when it has cooled for 5 minutes, so it can seep into the cake, keeping it moist.

Enjoy the Best Apple Cake (In 47 Years of Cooking) recipe.

A fucking bomb went off! Chocolate flourless cake, salty caramel core,  milk chocolate shell and blood orange ice cream.  The dessert is inspired by a pastry I had in Paris, from the shop of the revered pastry Chef Pierre Herme.  It was a bombe, tempered shell and caramel core, I enjoyed it on a park bench in Luxembourg gardens. Mr. Herme ingeniously used a macaron base, his desserts were all marked by inventive skill and imagination.  I employ a compressed devil’s food cake sealed with icing to seal in the oozing salty caramel, just a candle held towards Chef Pierre’s brilliance. The milk chocolate shell is just that, tempered 38% milk chocolate.  Here’s a recipe for my faithful readers.

Blood Orange Ice Cream

2 cups milk

2 cups blood orange puree

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 oz butter

pinch o’ salt

2 cups heavy cream

3/4 cup egg yolks

P.S.  See this in the Willamette Week?

Two thousand and motherfucking TEN?!? The future is now my faithful readers. I command the powers of the internet in my pants. I make ice cream base in an immersion circulator. As a race we fringe on symbiosis with technology; and I can’t wait to realize this next phase of evolution. Anyway, I been busy as shit.  The holidays kicked my ass; and with in-laws in town and hell of prep, plating and me plowing through it all it went by in a pop!  Shit 2009 was a pop, a bang, a blast, dice cast and rolled and truth be told past year was fucking fast. I turned thirty, I got married, I’ve become a half way decent pastry chef and an annoying blogger.  I’ve made some bad-assed desserts and also learned some killer savory food. Pretty standard actually.  Looking to the new year, I’m hoping to step up my game.  Turn it up to eleven so to speak.  I just need to work harder, cleaner.  The desserts will be smaller, more precise.  Flavors? Louder.  Here’s a recipe bitches.  I adapted it from one of the best recipes I’ve learned in a long time.

Graham Cracker Sponge Cake

250 g soft butter

375 g sugar

5 g salt

6 eggs

375 g fine ground graham cracker crumbs.

7.5 g baking powder

100 g A.P. flour

1.  Preheat your convection oven to 300 F.  Spray and line with parchment one half sheet pan.

2.  Cream the butter, sugar and salt light and fluffy in the bowl of a stand mixer.

3.  Weigh the crumbs, baking powder, and flour into a bowl and whisk them together well.

4.  Add the eggs 2 at a time, allowing the batter to fully absorb each addition of eggs.  Scrape the bowl twice during this step.

5.  Scape the bowl again and add the dry ingredients all at once.  Mix the batter on low speed until homogeneous.

6.  Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake 12 minutes, rotate the pans, and bake an additional 6 to 8 minutes, or until golden brown and springy.  Use as a base for a no bake cheesecake or serve it warm with a cream cheese ice cream.

This here dessert is like a bong hit.  It’s all “Dude, It’ll be all hazelnut, banana and mascarpone, man!”  I based it on an excellent brunch item I had over at Belly Timber, a Stuffed French Toast. It combined house made Nutella, mascarpone, hazelnuts, and a specially made brioche.  It was the first time I ate with David and didn’t have the Chicken Waffle.  Anyway, I make a hazelnut sponge cake, the same recipe I used for the Grilled Almond Cake, I just switched the nuts.  This formula is moist and buttery; and works with any nut.  This dessert is selling well so far, no surprise considering the banana factor.   Maybe a certain Chef will see fit to add her recipe in the comments!  Thanks for your patience with this blog everybody who is still reading.  The web is bloated with food blogs, everybody’s cooking!! The ice cream recipe is one from one of my favorite Chefs, David Lebovitz; author of The Perfect Scoop.

‘

We found ourselves perched precariously with too tall speed racks in the back of a pick up.  As the truck’s engine revved ready to pop the curb my mind flashes through this pasts weeks events.  Moving tons of product, slaving mad and crazy hours.  Tarts.  Shit tons of little tartlettes.  Cookies.  Over five hundred; twenty some odd pounds of dough.  White Chocolate Panna Cotta.  Four hundred of them, forty eight at a time.  Cleaning and processing six flats of blueberies. The truck struggling to summit the curb forces me from my reverie, the speed rack tilting, threatening to spill its payload.  Perez and I look at each other, shaking heads.  Wham!! The truck nails a huge rock and we almost lose our shit.  The shits were up on two wheels, I dropped and tucked against our stacks of plates and dug in , gripping.  In that split second I knew I’d lost the load, that I’d blew the mission.  We braced against the rocking and steadied the racks, cussing and kicking and carrying on.  I felt in that instant…peace.  I’d known it was out of my hands, beyond me.  I couldn’t be more prepared for this event than I was.  I had my product, I had my boy, I knew we had this.  Right until it all was about to fly out of the back of this fucking truck, out of my control.  Thankfully, none of that happened.  The truck rocked back level, the speed racks clunked upright.  We rolled silently over the grass to the plating area.  We had a few hours earlier spread the custards out onto about a dozen sheet pans, each on a little square of acetate; easy to slide off onto chilled plates.  They thawed slowly in the fridge for about three hours, and finished perfectly in the spanking afternoon sun.  The entire plating, 275 plates in the end, took about eighteen minutes.  We had so many hands helping, I just poked around, answering questions and pulling fucked up plates off to be replaced with perfect ones. All said and done, we nailed it.  The silky custards were ice cold but not frozen, the compote thick and rich, the simple essence of blueberry.  We retreated from the heat to the cool of our dorm room to pound tall boys and take a nap.  I slumbered happily elated, stoked to be a chef that day.

Sweet Corn Ice Cream

Like most people on Planet Earth do nowadays, I Google a lot of shit.  In fact as of late, I annoyingly bark searches into my hand-held device, and somehow Google finds that shit.  Mostly I get lost on random pics and  silly articles.  YouTube and Hulu of course; Twitter, sure.  Oh yeah and porn, can’t forget about porn.  Often however, I search recipes.  Now there are recipes and there are recipes; but like your mom, this one is HUGE.  This simple ratio can be divided or multiplied to any yield, a supple and smooth mousse for piping or filling.  I’ve tried infusing the cream, I’ve substituted brown butter for half the weight in chocolate.  This versatile recipe is the basic formula for my dulce de leche mousse. I’ve filled cakes and tarts or just scooped it onto a plate.  This particular batch was for rather large off site event a few months ago.  When I was searching for a vessel large enough in which to melt twenty one pounds of chocolate, I didn’t deem it necessary to make certain said vessel had no cracks or holes, which it did.  I poured over a gallon of hot scalding cream into the large square container, then watched white chocolate ganache come oozing out the bottom an onto the floor.  Very unpleasant.  Be sure to double check your equipment always, but especially when working with a recipe of this size.

White Chocolate Mousse

1 gallon 1 qt heavy cream

21 lbs white chocolate

100 grams sheet gelatin

1 1/2 gallons heavy cream

1.  Weigh the gelatin into a bowl and bloom it with cold water.  Drain.  Weigh the chocolate into a large vessel.

2. Heat the first amount of cream to a scald, and pour it over the white chocolate.  Add the gelatin.  Whisk until smooth. Cool to room temp.

3.  Whip the second amount of cream to soft peaks.  Fold into the chocolate mixture.  Chill the mousse thoroughly before use.

Hello! I recently found your site online and have become somewhat obsessed. I’ve looked through all your plated desserts and they are beautiful! I am currently enrolled in culinary school as a prospective pastry chef and found your recipe for the chocolate whiskey cake! I am actually making this at school right now for our plated desserts in the restaurant on campus (inspired by your post.)  I just wanted to let you know that its genius. I switched out makers mark for Evan Williams (sour mash) and it tastes amazing!  So I guess I’m writing to thank you for having an awesome blog and such in depth directions and whatnot. not only do I get a giggle out of your words, but I’ve learned a lot! Keep it coming!