Carrement Chocolat, the Fancy Cake from Dorie Greenspan (Baking Chez Moi)

My sister came to Atlanta for her birthday (September 4) on Labor Day weekend. I wanted to bake her a cake - I am fifteen years older than she and used to bake her cakes when she was a little girl. So I went out of order in Baking Chez Moi and baked the cake on the cover of the book.

Now I can say I baked the cake on the cover, but mine was a far cry from the gorgeous cake on the cover. Mine tasted incredible but was not a work of art.

Hers is a work of art.

I weighed the ingredients and put the cake together in stages as she recommends. So I made the ganache, the chocolate shards, the syrup, the filling on the day before. I made the cake the day of the gathering to celebrate my sister. I wish I had made the whole thing the day before.

I baked it in a pan with tall sides.

It's a one layer cake that is then sliced and the filling put in between the sliced off top and the bottom.

Here's how it looked in the end:

But even though it didn't look like the book cover, it was melt in your mouth delicious and I would make it again for another special occasion.

Baking Chez Moi Plain and Simple Almond Cake

When I read about this cake, my immediate response was, "Well, that will never work for me."

There are only three ingredients: eggs, sugar and almond flour. The first challenge was finding almond flour, which was, of course, available at Whole Foods. But with just three ingredients and the instructions to use a gentle hand, I approached this cake with fear and trembling.

You'll find the recipe in Baking Chez Moi.

I followed all the instructions:

Whisked the egg yolks with the sugar.

Prepared the pan. I must not have done it well because at the end, it was difficult to get out of the pan.

Got the whites ready to whisk.

Stopped when they made soft peaks.

She says to stir in a little of the whites. Then you fold in the remaining whites and about half the almond flour. Finally, you fold in the rest of the almond flour. In order to have a gentle hand in your folding, there are only two additions. You can see unincorporated almond flour in the photo below. I tried and succeeded at getting it all folded in, but next time, still being very gentle, I might try adding the almond flour in three additions. I think it might be easier on the egg whites, but at the same time, the third folding might break them down more. I will only know when I try it.

I baked it in a springform pan and, although that was suggested, it didn't come out of the pan well. I was glad for the height because the cake used the pan height. Here it has cooled for about five minutes and isn't as high as it was right out of the oven. It acted a little like an angel food cake.

She says to cool for five minutes in the pan and then turn it out to cool on the rack. When I turned it out, the upper left stuck to the corner of the pan (between the sides and the bottom) and tore the cake slightly. I did finally get it out, happy to say.

I can't keep all of these desserts around the house, so I cut the cake in half and sent half of it home to my daughter and her family. My son-in-law left me this message: "This almond cake is AMAZING. We are coming to get the other half! See you in a few minutes..."

I agree with him. It is about half the height it had in the pan, but it is incredibly moist, tastes lovely of almonds with no almond extract (which I sometimes think is overpowering) and I will definitely make it again.

If anyone has tried this and has any suggestions about getting it out of the pan, please let me know. Of course, I may simply need to grease and flour the pan better. But I wondered if it needed to cool in the pan longer than five minutes before turning it out.

I forgot to take a photo of the cut cake until it was almost all gone!

Dorie Greenspan: Baking Chez Moi - Brown Butter and Vanilla Weekend Cake

I've been baking a lot, but not posting about it. Rarely does a week go by without my baking bread. Currently, I am enthralled with a Passion for Bread by Lionel Vatinet. I bake his bread once or twice a week. I love his method for getting a good crust which involves baking the loaf under a stainless steel bowl for the first part of the baking and then removing it for the last 2/3 of the baking. The result is a rustic crusted loaf that is absolutely delicious.

I've also been baking a lot of sourdough. My mother died about a year ago and in the process of cleaning out the house, I found her sourdough starter. She ordered it from San Francisco when I was in high school and it was touted as being 100 years old. Well, fifty years later, it is now 150 years old. I brought the starter back to Atlanta - it hadn't been used in years and was not refrigerated - just in a mason jar on her back porch.

I fed the starter and it went crazy, bubbling out of every container onto my kitchen counter.

I have enjoyed sharing it with friends and baking with it myself.

But I have been yearning for a project. I own Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller, and I just bought Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan.

So I've decided to bake my way through both of them. It will take a while - there are tons of recipes in each, but I'm excited about the process. If you are reading this and want to join me, let me know and share photos with me.

So I've now baked the first two recipes in Baking Chez Moi.  The first was a weekend cake. Greenspan says that in France, it is not unusual for a family to bake a cake for the weekend that is a simple loaf cake. The gateau (cake) is reserved for much fancier items.

The first cake in her book is simply that - a weekend cake.

I've learned now to weigh and measure my ingredients all before getting started. Here's the collection of cake ingredients. My Amaretto bottle had exactly the two tablespoons needed!

Prepared the pan. She calls for a 4.5 X 9 pan. I wish I had used an 8.5 pan. My cake wasn't as lofty as her illustration.

Beginning to make the browned butter.

When it looks like this, it is almost done. Just before it is browned butter, the bubbles get very calm and tiny.

The dry ingredients were next. I am currently using pink sea salt - to explain the little mound of pink in the flour.

This photo (above) shows the vanilla bean seeds before they are mixed into sugar.

The photo below is of one of my beautiful eggs from the Moore Farm stand at the Carter Center Farmer's Market.

  

When the loaf came out, it looked like this.

I may have baked it about 2 minutes too long. It was absolutely delicious. I sliced it into thin slices and took it to the Atlanta Bee Meetup this past Tuesday. Even though there is no honey in it, the beekeepers loved it!  She said to sprinkle powdered sugar over the cake which I did before I cut it but I forgot to photograph it.

Let me know if you try it. I didn't put the recipe here because I think it's important to support the cookbook author. If I ever put up one of my own bakes, I'll share the recipe.