The Ultimate Strawberry Cake

I realized recently that strawberry season was quickly drawing to a close and I wanted to try just one more time to find a recipe that could replace my boxed birthday cake.

After making the one for my birthday I decided my cake needed the following aspects to make it better:
1) The texture needed to be fluffier
2) More strawberry flavor

So I set out first to find a fluffy cake recipe, then I would deal with how to get strawberries in it.  I found this recipe and based on the amount of testing she did and the description of the texture, I felt fairly confident this would be a good cake to start with.

Then I set out to research using purees in cake.  And just like everything else on the internet, you can find a lot of opinion on this.  There were a few things that caught my attention while searching though - some people said that heating up the fruit beforehand made the flavor more intense and several people said strawberries lose their flavor when baked in the cake.  So I started thinking about what intensifies the flavor of strawberries and balsamic vinegar came to mind.  I decided to make a puree by cooking some strawberries with some balsamic and honey.
I went back to the recipe to see how I could add this into the cake and, conveniently, there was a perfect spot.  The milk is split up into 2 parts and it was simple enough for me to replace some of the milk with the puree.

I was nervous because I’d be messing with how things interact and you never know how that will turn out.  I started by making the puree, so it would have a little cooling time.  I used ½ pint of strawberries, 1 tbsp balsamic, and 1 tbsp honey and cooked it on medium until it became a bit jammy.  Then I made the cake according to the recipe, but when it came time to add the ½ cup milk to the batter, I replaced it with the puree.  It looked good, but wasn’t quite as pink as I wanted, so I added a drop and a ½ of red food coloring.  I finished up the mixing, poured it in the pans and then also added diced strawberries to the top - they were a pretty small dice.  I also baked off a couple of mini-cupcakes so I could taste it without messing up the cake.  I baked the cake for about 35-40 mins - I find the cakes with fruit take a little longer.

Finally they were done and cooled and we tasted our cupcakes and they were good but too small and you mostly tasted the “crust” of the cupcake.  I decided to just cut a piece of cake and deal with it later when I assembled it.  Again - it was good, but I was so focused on what it was “supposed” to taste like that I couldn’t really judge it on its own.  Then I realized that after all this tasting, I really wasn’t sure what I was trying to achieve anymore.  So the next night, I stopped at the grocery and bought the boxed strawberry cake mix.  I whipped it up when I got home, cut a slice of both and tasted them.  The homemade one won - hands down!  The boxed mix tasted fake and was way too airy.  Mine was moist and the strawberry flavor was so good and natural.  It’s still not super fluffy, but it was lighter than the recipe I used for my birthday version and the texture was much more moist.  And after comparing it to the boxed mix, I prefer the texture of my cake.  Another interesting bit it that it gets better as it sits.  This cake definitely needs to be made a few days ahead of time.  I am super happy with this recipe and this will now be my new birthday cake!

Strawberry Balsamic Cake
Serves 8-10

Ingredients

Strawberry Puree:

1/2 pint strawberries, diced

1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp honey

Cake: (adapted from sweetapolita)

5 large Egg Whites, (5 ounces/150 grams) at room temperature
1/4 cup Whole Milk, (180 mL/6 liquid ounces), at room temperature
2 1/4 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract, (9 grams)
2 3/4 cups Cake Flour, sifted (11 ounces/315 grams)
1 3/4 cups Sugar, (12 ounces/350 grams)
1 Tbsp Baking Powder, + 1 teaspoon, (19.5 grams)
3/4 tsp Salt, (5 grams)
12 Tbsp Unsalted Butter, (6 ounces/170 grams), at room temperature and cut into cubes

1/2 cup strawberry puree

1 1/2 drops red food coloring (optional)

Pastry cream and Frosting Directions found here

Directions

First of all - Make this cake at least a day before needed.  2 days would be better.  Do not frost until ready to eat.

Make strawberry puree.  Add diced strawberries, vinegar and honey to a saucepan over medium heat.  Heat, stirring occasionally, until nice and "jammy" - about 7 mins.

Take off heat and set aside.  (I actually put mine through a sieve as well, just to get some of the seeds out)

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease two round 8-inch pans.

In a medium bowl or measuring cup, combine and stir the egg whites, ¼ cup of milk, and the vanilla. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the dry ingredients together on low speed for 30 seconds.

Add the butter and strawberry puree, and mix on low speed until just moistened.  Add food coloring if using. Increase to medium speed and mix for 1 ½ minutes.

Scrape the sides of the bowl and begin to add the egg mixture in 3 separate batches; beat on medium speed for 20 seconds after each addition.

Divide the batter in two, spreading it evenly with a small offset palette knife.

Bake 20 minutes and check with a cake tester.  If not done, check every 2 to 5 mins, being careful not to over bake.  Let cool on racks for 10 minutes before inverting onto wire racks. It's recommended you turn cakes back up, so the tops are up and cool completely.

Store in airtight container until ready to eat.  Frost with pastry cream and mascarpone whipped cream.  Recipes here.

Side note: I used the boxed cake mix to make cake balls.  I mixed it with store bought cream cheese frosting and coated them in dark chocolate chips and let me tell ya, that’s the way to eat a boxed mix.  Those things are tasty!!!  And so incredibly easy!  If you need something quick for a party, try whipping up these things - everyone will love you.

On the Town - El Naranjo

A few weeks ago, we went out with some friends to try El Naranjo on Rainey St.  It used to be a food truck, but is now a restaurant in a cute little house.

Several of us wanted to go there because we had seen a couple of stories on TV about how wonderful the mole sauce is.  Michael and I saw a piece on Eat St. on the Cooking Channel and our friend saw this piece on a local TV network.  Their story is amazing and the challenges they have faced to get here are overwhelming to consider.  But we’re glad they are here!

The atmosphere is pleasant and laid back, but very well appointed.  And I love that the house has lots of windows, so there is an abundance of natural light.  We went on a Sunday evening - it was not crowded at all - and we sat in the main dining area but there is an outdoor area in the back that I would love to try when it’s cooler.

For appetizers, we got the Queso Fundido with Chorizo and our friends got the Molotes Veracruzanos.  We all shared and everything was delicious.  The queso was a thick, gooey cheese with delicious chorizo on top, served with corn tortillas.  And the Molotes (which I had never heard of before) where kind of like little tamales and were incredibly yummy!  When we go back, I will get the same thing because both of these dishes were fantastic.

For my main dish I got the Mole of the day (which had lots of spices and chocolate) with the pork tenderloin.  This dish was amazing!  I had never had mole before, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I can tell you that it was so dark and rich and intense - like no sauce I’ve ever tasted.  There were so many flavors going on.  And the pork was perfectly cooked and super moist.  Also, once you try it, you’ll find it’s incredibly impressive that she uses no lard in her sauces!

Dessert was Tres Leches - which you simply can’t go wrong with.  But again it was the best one I’ve had.  It was moist and flavorful without being “soupy” which is often associated with tres leches.

If you live in Austin, I highly, highly recommend El Naranjo.  Below is a photo our friend took of his meal... I was too busy eating.  :)

Thanks for the photo, Dave!

A weeknight dinner

Last week I decided to try this recipe for Sweet Tea Brined Chicken.  My husband and I love sweet tea, so this recipe really attracted me.  I only wanted to make 2 breasts, so I cut the recipe in half.  I used 2 large, bone-in, chicken breasts, rosemary, lemons and a sweet onion.  The recipe is for cooking on an outdoor grill, but all we have is a small charcoal one and we didn’t want to mess with that on a weeknight.  I decided to let it brine overnight, sear it on the stovetop and then bake it in a foil pouch to retain moisture.  I like this method A LOT!  I will likely start doing this from now on for my weeknight chicken dinners rather than grilling (re: other post regarding trouble with grilled chicken).  It was easy and clean up was a breeze and I didn’t have to stand over the stove.  There are a couple of things I would do differently with this particular recipe though:
1) Just use boneless, skinless breasts.  I didn’t find the bone-in breasts made a big difference to flavor and they are a pain to eat.  Maybe if I did something with the bones, but I haven’t gotten into stock making yet, so I would prefer not to have the waste.
2) Stronger tea.  The tea flavor really came through in the taste, which I have to say actually surprised me.  But I think I want it to be even stronger.  I may even try honey instead of brown sugar.  And possibly different tea types.

I also made a Panzanella salad and a Blueberry Buttermilk Pie.  The salad is one I have made before and definitely one of my favorites.  I had some leftover artisan bread in the freezer and a few slices of that defrosted and toasted made the perfect croutons.  Also, I have recently been using this vinegar from Williams Sonoma and it is amazing!!  Seriously the best cider vinegar I have ever had.  This is one of my own recipes - after looking at many different panzanella recipes, I picked ingredients I liked and came up with my own.  I have included it below.

Italian Panzanella Salad

Serves: 4

Ingredients

Dressing:

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

1 tsp fresh oregano, chopped

Salad:

3 cups artisan bread, cubed

2 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper

1 tsp fresh oregano

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

1 english cucumber, cubed or halved and sliced

1/2 medium red onion, diced fine

1 tbsp chives, chopped fine

4 ounces provolone cheese, diced

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

Directions: 

In a bowl, whisk together vinegar and oil and oregano; season with salt and pepper.

Cube bread, toss with oil, salt, pepper and oregano.  Toast in 350 oven for 10 mins.

Combine tomatoes, cucumber, onion, and chives. Add bread.  Add vinaigrette.  Toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours, and up to 8 hours. Just before serving, stir in cheese and basil.

The pie was sort of a toss in at the last minute - I wanted to make a dessert and I just happened to have all of the ingredients needed for this pie.  I did not make the crust, I used the Pillsbury roll out crust that I had in the freezer.  I do plan on eventually making my own pie crust dough to freeze, but I currently have 2 boxes of the pillsbury dough and I want to use that first.  I also replaced the white sugar with honey.  We liked the pie, but it was a bit tart.  That could be because I used the honey as sweetener, but I think if I made this again I would just add a wee bit more honey rather than switching to white sugar.  But the texture both right out of the oven and after refrigeration was great.  Hot - it was creamy and gooey and the blueberries just popped.  Cold - it had the texture of flan - creamy and custardy.  It was super easy to make too and I think could be a good base for just about any fruit.

4th of July cake

Last weekend I decided to try this idea I had for a 4th of July cake.  A few months ago I found this recipe.  It looked so delicious.  And I instantly thought it would make a great 4th of July cake if I did one layer in red and another in blue.  After reading the recipe I could tell it was an angel food-like cake.  I’m not a huge fan of angel food.  I want to be, but it just doesn’t do anything for me.  I think it’s a texture thing.  But I chose to stick with the basic recipe.

Here’s the thing... my biggest issue with baking is that I’m super impatient.  And this was my downfall with this recipe.  I needed to split the recipe.  I was able to split the dry ingredients - no problem.  The next step was to whip 11 egg whites and add the food coloring to that.  So I had to split the egg whites in half in order to get the 2 colors.  In hindsight I should’ve just split them before whipping, but noooo.  I thought I would just whip them to soft peaks and then split them.  This did not work.  I should’ve at least weighed the halves, but I was too impatient.  So, the red half did not get enough egg whites.

I added blueberries to the blue half and chopped strawberries to the red half and I iced it with the whipped mascarpone frosting that I used on my strawberry birthday cake.  The blue half did taste pretty good - so if you like angel food cake, I would highly recommend the recipe.  But the red half was rubbery and yucky.  The best part about the cake was the look.  I did love the way it came out visually and I like the idea of doing this for other holidays, with other color combinations.  But I would have to use a more traditional cake method because angel food is not for me.

Sunday Cooking - Chicken, Pancakes, and Egg Salad

I started this blog in order to make notes about recipes I try and to record other general food thoughts.  However, I find myself not wanting to post unless I have a photo and that is just silly.  Because I made things this weekend that I need to make note of, but after a week of taking A LOT of photos at a work event, I couldn’t bring myself to take any pics.  So here are my notes...

Marinated chicken breasts (based on Food Network recipe)

I make these and then freeze them and just heat them up for dinner every once in awhile.

- 2 tbsp cider vinegar
- ½ tsp each of dried oregano, herbs de provence, dried parsley, dried rosemary
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt and white pepper
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast, each about 6 ounces

Mix it all together and marinate chicken for 8+ hours then grill.

Notes:
I still have trouble grilling chicken.  It seems to take much longer than the recipes suggest to cook through.  I know the pan got too hot, and I’ll adjust that next time, however then the chicken will just take longer.  I’m not sure how to fix this issue...  and I hear different things - cook until juices run clear or cook until the internal temp is 165.  Well, by the time the internal temp gets to 165, there are no juices left!  So what is correct??  Am I being too cautious?  Any tips are welcome.

The marinade however was super yummy and easy.  I would add just a little lemon or lime next time.  I may even try one of my flavored balsamics.


Melt in your mouth pancakes

I really have been craving pancakes lately.  But I want super soft, melt in your mouth pancakes and no recipe I’ve ever tried gives me that.  So, I searched again.  And again, every pancake recipe claims to be “melt in your mouth”, but they are the same ingredients and same technique that I’ve tried before with blah results.  Then I found this one from bobanahalf.com.  I found it fascinating that he used club soda and thought, I’ll give this a shot!  It seemed easy enough.

I will say, they were delicious!!  And I definitely feel I have found my go to pancake recipe.  They just sort of dissolved in your mouth and they tasted so buttery, even though there is no butter.  In fact, they are only 87 calories a pancake!!

Notes:
Next time I will make the full recipe - the recipe makes 18 pancakes and I simply did not want to stand there and make 18 pancakes, so I scaled it to 6 which was not a lot of batter.  And because of that, I made the pancakes very small because I wanted to get 6 servings out of it.  They were a bit pathetic, but still tasty.

I also think the batter needs to be a little more liquid.  I only added a splash of milk at the end and I think it needed a bit more.  It probably would’ve been easier for me to get my 6 pancakes if the batter had not been so thick.

And again, my pan got too hot.  I need to watch that, I’m pretty bad about it.
 

Egg Salad

I had some “extra” eggs and wanted to use them up so I threw together a quick egg salad.  I decided to try the baking soda trick I’ve been seeing around the internet - add a teaspoon of baking soda to the water to help with the peeling later.  It actually worked quite well.  They were pretty easy to peel.

- 5 hard boiled eggs
- 1 pickled, diced finely
- 2 tablespoons pickle juice
- 1 teaspoon mayo (I used Vegenaise)
- 2 teaspoons greek yogurt
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon fennel salt (I got this from Williams Sonoma recently... it’s delicious! I couldn’t find a link to it though)
- ½ teaspoon paprika

Boil eggs, then split them, putting the yolks in a bowl.  Mash up the yolks.  Dice the whites (finely) and mix them with the yolks.  Add the remaining ingredients, stirring after each addition.  Chill.  Serve on toasts or with crackers or fresh veggies.  It’s a bit chunky, so it would be nice in a celery rib or endive leaf.

Notes:
I like the chunkiness, but I think I would like to try dicing the whites more finely next time, or whiz everything up in food processor to make it more blended.

I would like to add celery and maybe try celery salt instead of the fennel since I think the celery flavor would be really good in here.

Add more pickles.  :)

Father’s day meal

Last Sunday I made my husband a Father’s Day meal.  We have no kids, but we have a 17 yr. old cat that he has been a wonderful guardian of since she was 4 weeks old.  Also, the week prior was a bit stressful, so I thought he deserved a yummy meal.

He said he wanted the Cheat’s pizza that I made a few weeks ago, but wanted to try some different toppings.  After some discussion and looking at various pizza recipes, we settled on tomatoes with scallions, spinach, mozzarella, gruyere and balsamic vinegar.

It came out pretty delicious.  I bought cherry heirloom tomatoes and halved or quartered them based on size.  Then drizzled them with olive oil and really good balsamic vinegar.  I added chopped scallions and let the mixture marinate for a bit while I made the crust.

I made the crust exactly like I did a few weeks ago with just flour and water based on Jamie Oliver’s recipe.  This time I did leave it in the pan on the stove a bit longer and it did result in a slightly crisper bottom.  I filled it first with the tomato and scallion mixture.  Then nestled yummy pieces of fresh mozzarella into the tomatoes.  Covered the whole thing with baby spinach and topped it with shredded gruyere.  It came out more like a deep dish pizza this time and the flavors were fantastic!  I would probably add a little basil next time.  Also, I think I would dessicate the tomatoes a bit first just to get some of the liquid out.  It was very saucy.  Which wasn’t bad, but made it more of a “fork and knife” job.  We also drizzled a little of the balsamic on top right before eating.  Yum, yum!

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Balsamic tomato quick pizza
Serves: 4

Ingredients:
Pizza
1 ½ cups of self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
½ cup Of warm Water
Topping
1 pint Cherry Or Grape Tomatoes, halved or quartered
2 Green Onions, White And Most Of Green, diced
Couple Of Good Glugs Of Balsamic Vinegar And Good Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
1 ½ cups Baby Spinach
1 ball Good Mozzarella, sliced or torn into pieces
4 ounces Grated Gruyere Cheese
Little More Balsamic & Olive Oil

Directions:
Put diced tomatoes and green onions into a bowl and coat with olive oil and balsamic, and a little salt and pepper.  Stir and let sit while you make the crust.

Turn the heat under the frying pan up to high and dust a clean surface with flour. Put 1½ mugs' worth of flour into a food processor, then half-fill the same mug with tepid water and add to the flour with a pinch of salt and a glug of olive oil.

Whizz until smooth, then tip on to the floured board. Sprinkle the top of the dough and the rolling pin with flour (the dough will be quite wet, so be generous with the flour).

Roll the dough to a 1cm (½in) thickness. Drizzle olive oil into the pan, then dust the dough with flour again and very lightly fold it over into a halfmoon shape.

Lightly fold the half-moon in half, then move the dough to the pan and unfold it, pushing it down into the sides of the pan. If you don't have a pan this big, don't cook all of the dough at once, halve it and make two pizzas.

With crust on hot stove, pour tomato/onion mixture into crust, with all juices.  Nestle mozzarella pieces into tomatoes.  Cover entire top with spinach.  Completely cover spinach with grated gruyere.  Drizzle olive oil over whole pizza.

Put the pan under the hot grill for 4 or 5 minutes, until golden and cooked through.  Remove it from the grill, transfer it to a wooden board and drizzle over a little extra balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil and take straight to the table.

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For a side dish, he chose corn fritters.

It’s a bit of an odd side dish with pizza but corn is so good right now and we both love it, that these sounded yummy to both of us.  I used this recipe.  I didn’t change anything and they came out ok.  This was definitely the best corn fritter recipe I have tried.  The corn was really sweet and the paprika made the flavor nice and smokey.  I find that the ideal corn fritter I have in my head never actually materializes... they just never taste quite the way I want them to.  The flavor isn’t quite what I imagine and the texture is usually drier than what I’m looking for.  I’m honestly not even sure I know exactly what I’m looking for, but maybe I need to play around and see if I can create the corn fritter that I crave.

For dessert, I knew I wanted to make him some donuts and I chose a baked apple fritter donut because he loves apple fritters.

I used this recipe but I didn’t want to use canned apple pie filling, so I looked around for a natural apple pie filling recipe and combined several to come up with my own.  I diced up an appled really small and mixed with a bit of brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon juice and then let the mixture sit and get thick for a little bit.  They came out pretty yummy, but admittedly very ‘fall’.  The cinnamon and nutmeg and apple together are such fall flavors, that it was odd to eat them in June.  But the donut was so nice and moist and the bits of apple were perfect, little, juicy bursts of flavor.  I will most definitely make these in the fall... mmmm with a caramel glaze... ooh I can’t wait!!

In Season: Apricots

Every year, for Christmas, my husband’s brother and sister-in-law give us a Harry and David Fruit of the Month subscription.  We love this!  We love getting fresh, in season fruit every month.  All of a sudden, just on our doorstep.  It’s awesome.

This month it was 16 apricots and a big, beautiful pineapple.  I used the pineapple in my weekly fruit salad and I normally give the apricots away cause I’ve never really liked them, but this year I thought I would try some apricot recipes and give them another shot.  I wanted to do a sweet dish and a savory dish.  I chose this almond apricot tart for the sweet and these pork, apricot and red onion kebabs for the savory.

Almond Apricot Tart

I chose the tart because it looked yummy, but also because I had all of the ingredients already.  And I was a bit curious about the frangipane because my husband and I both love almond paste.  Unfortunately, it was pretty much a bust.  I should have listened to the one review that said the frangipane melted out of the pastry.  I thought maybe that person had just done something wrong since no one else mentioned that, but mine did that too.  And maybe we are doing something wrong, but I’m not sure what that would be.  It could be prevented by putting the tart in a pie or tart pan, but I didn’t like the flavor enough to even try again.  It just wasn’t that exciting.  And we really didn’t like the apricots.  They were bitter and mushy.  In the end, I ate one piece, my husband ate one piece and then I just ate the frangipane off (because that did actually taste yummy) and tossed the rest.  Oh well.

Pork, Apricot, and Red Onion Kebabs (well, stir fry really)

Then I attempted the Pork, Apricot, & Red Onion Kebabs.  This recipe called for 8 apricots and apricot jam.  I had 10 apricots left after the tart, so instead of buying apricot jam, I cooked down the extra 2 apricots and with a little sugar and lemon juice and made my own jam.  I was pretty happy with this.  It was tasty (a good balance of sweet and tart) and perfectly jammy.

I bought skewers just for this recipe and I had fun making my kebabs.  Then I put them on the stovetop grill and they promptly fell apart.  Hmph.  But they were smelling pretty good, so my husband suggested I just slide everything off the skewer and saute it together.  That worked pretty well.  I’m still not really sure how this recipe is supposed to work since the apricots get mushy almost immediately and it takes awhile to cook the pork.  Once I started the saute, I tried to take the apricots off before they got mushy, but I couldn’t do it fast enough.  It ended up being this kind of sweet and savory stir fry.  The apricots became jammy and I basted the pork and onions in more of the apricot jam and everything was slightly sticky and roasted.  This dish is really good - the flavors go really well together.  The saltiness of the pork works so well with the tartness of the apricots and that sweetness of the roasted red onions.  Plus the addition of the jam and the apricots gooeyness make the dish very luscious.  And bonus!  I checked the calorie info on it and it’s very healthy!  It even fits into my weeknight calorie budget, so I had some leftovers this week for dinner.  And I will say, it gets better with age.  The flavors meld together even more and it’s quite delicious.

Pork, Apricot and Onion Nutrition