The BellGab Bakeshop

[Roswells, Art]

Yes!  Just like old times.

I have learned so much about sweet fruited dough since then:  multiple raisings, sneaking up on the flour, rolling one direction, high-protein flour and additional gluten, leaving it in the garage overnight to proof not cold but cool like you see in old recipes — stuff I thought was stupid nonsense and just skipped, but now I see why.  I am stubborn that way.  Still not there; the penis cake wasn’t “sheety” like I want, where you can see swirls of texture inside, just an average crumb, but there is hope!

Part of the problem I think is that I refuse to get a mixer; I want a proper workout dammit 💪 and my stamina just isn’t there yet.

Yeah, I don't know how good my advice was. Re-hydrated savory food sure doesn't taste that great but dehydrated fruit does so maybe. Did you ever come up with a solution? I was thinking drying the fresh fruit with a towel, and tossing it with flour before adding, but still it would be too wet. What is 'sneaking up on the flour'? I hope it is what I imagine.

You don't have a mixer?! Wow! That's admirable. I read once a long time ago that your bread dough is kneaded enough when you get physically tired and can't knead anymore. I'm not sure if I agree or maybe I'm missing something. Is Ol' Noodle Arms' dough going to be kneaded enough? Would a MMA fighter over-knead? You would probably have more insight on the matter than the person who wrote the article.

[Roswells, Art]

Ah, Key West.  I was briefly a Conch Republican in Oct'92 to Jan'93, me and the old Lady went there to work a season under the guise of assisting in the Hurricane Andrew Relief effort...  I worked the TGIFridays dish-pit (anagram of dipshit, I believe) until I scored the sweet gig at Cafe/Hotel Marquesa.  That place seems to have declined in quality from what I can surmise from their online menu.  The pastry-chef used to give me the dessert plates when one of the multi-layered torte slices fell over...

They made those things tall, not quite "Russian Penis Cake" tall, but a good 8-9 inches.  Something like this:

But with more layers, and not as sloppy looking.

Hell, they fed me pretty good now that I think about it.  It seemed like the chefs were always "fucking up" a plate that the "wait-trons" (as I called the servers) would bring me.

They also used actual silver for the silver-ware, and only sat a table once per lunch or dinner period;  which was awesome for a seventeen-year old pot-head in the dish-pit (or dipshit).

She knew some local dude, his family owned the ice cream shop at the end of Duval Street, we camped out on his front porch for the first few weeks we were there.  Literally pitched a tent on his front porch!  Ha, good times.

Woah, that's crazy. That might be a year or two before I went down there. It was really cool at that time. It slowly declined until after awhile I was asking myself why I was still there.

Are you sure it was TGiF you worked at? I remember that place coming way later than when you were there. Maybe it was there then closed than came back a decade later or something.

[pate]

Woah, that's crazy. That might be a year or two before I went down there. It was really cool at that time. It slowly declined until after awhile I was asking myself why I was still there.

Are you sure it was TGiF you worked at? I remember that place coming way later than when you were there. Maybe it was there then closed than came back a decade later or something.

Pretty sure it was a TGiF, "wait-trons" wore red & white striped shirts, suspenders, lots of "flair" buttons.  Big place, sat around 500 covers.  Somewhere in "New Town," awful place for a dishwasher;  every menu item had like 7 plates, chargers, souffle cups &c.  And the damn French Onion soup terrines? that were little ceramic mini-cauldrons with baked on swiss cheese.

I had to run the lunch-shift by myself, and the Chef dude was some Nooo Yawk ass-hat, always bitching about wanting the saute pans shiny on the back-side!  I had to polish the damn things with freaking spray cans of Stainless Steel cleaner.  When he ran Expo, I would always laugh at him.  They had some Veggie-burger thing, that he called a "Nut-Burger."

In the middle of the rush, he'd be yelling out whatever and get to a point "...orh-dah-ing IN three NUT_BOIGUAHS!.."  And I would bust out laughing, and scream from the dishpit at the top of my lungs "NUT_BOIGUAHS!"

Oh he would get pissed, come and yell at me to cut it out.  The line cooks loved it, whomever was running the grill would occasionally call out "Hey Chef, what's the ALL_DAY on NUTBURGERS?" to get me riled up again.

One thing for sure, I learned how to sling some dishes, but man I hated that Chef.  He was all kinds of OCD.

Cafe Marquesa was like a paid vacation after that, I miss that place sometimes...  I should have stuck around until you got to Key West, apparently.  Ah well, one more thing to "fix" when I build that thyme-masheen and go back to tell myself what I should do I guess.

NUT_BOIGAAAAHS, haha.  Still cracks me up when I think of that!



ediot:  as part of my Prep duties at TGiF I had to pan-up about 10 full sheets of frozen breadsticks, to keep on the Bakeshop topic...

[WOTR]

I'm here for the penis cake.

I have known many a woman who was unable to grasp the difference between "fashionably late" and "just late." Good to see you continuing that trend. I suppose I should say the same thing that I do when one of them shows up. "At least you made it."*

*Alright, to be fair, it is usually me who is late. Anyhow, good to see you again.

[K_Dubb]

Yeah, I don't know how good my advice was. Re-hydrated savory food sure doesn't taste that great but dehydrated fruit does so maybe. Did you ever come up with a solution? I was thinking drying the fresh fruit with a towel, and tossing it with flour before adding, but still it would be too wet. What is 'sneaking up on the flour'? I hope it is what I imagine.

You don't have a mixer?! Wow! That's admirable. I read once a long time ago that your bread dough is kneaded enough when you get physically tired and can't knead anymore. I'm not sure if I agree or maybe I'm missing something. Is Ol' Noodle Arms' dough going to be kneaded enough? Would a MMA fighter over-knead? You would probably have more insight on the matter than the person who wrote the article.

It was good advice!  My main problem, though was (and still is  ) not getting the dough elastic enough before adding the fruit.  The more elastic it is, the more it will willingly envelop the sharp-cornered fruit like cling wrap instead of allowing itself to be cut to shreds where it no longer plumps up nice and holds the yeast gases and just gets flaccid and spread out.  Those overnight rises and things are just to increase elasticity -- I think the longer the flour sits in a wet mess the softer and stretchier it gets.  "Sneaking up" on the flour is getting away with as little as possible: when I have time to do three raises I do the first one with the dough only vigorously stirred in its bowl, not even turned out and kneaded.  In the old days they would use a wooden dough trough.

I am basically Noodle-Arms and I can't get the dough as elastic as people with mixers can -- I just wear out too quickly.  I do not think even KSM could overwork my dough.  With a mixer you leave it in there sometimes 20 minutes, a half hour, slapping around in the bowl until you can do the windowpane test, i. e. stretch out a piece so you can see light through it without it tearing.  I can never get it to that point without adding an ungodly amount of Vital Wheat Gluten where the texture starts to resemble rubber cement, but I think that is the direction I need to go in.

[pate]

Today I will begin making a Boston Cream Pie because the lobster roll place isn't selling their homemade version any more -- something to do with how messy it is to serve and people complaining -- and because my dad loves anything with ganache all over it.  I am looking at this recipe https://preppykitchen.com/boston-cream-pie/ but I do not want a store-style dry fluffy sponge and think I will change the cake out for this which is used as the base for kvæfjordkake or verdensbestekake as it sometimes called https://northwildkitchen.com/kvaefjordkake-worlds-best-cake/

From the original

2 large eggs room temperature
1 cup cane sugar 200g
½ cup whole milk 120mL
5 tablespoons unsalted butter 70g
1 cup all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons, 140g
1¼ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

to be replaced with

½ cup (112 g) butter
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons (125 g) granulated sugar
4 large egg yolks
4 tablespoons milk
1 ¼ cup (150 g) all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

which has 4 yolks instead of two whole eggs, nearly twice the butter, and, somewhat worryingly, only half the sugar.  The 1:1 sugar-to-flour ratio in the original seems like it might be a little excessive, but perhaps there might be a reason for it?  He is using bittersweet chocolate, maybe it needs to be offset?  The lobster shack puts a decorative swirl of what looks to be simple icing (powdered sugar in milk or water) on theirs, maybe for that reason.  I want a robust cake, since the chocolate will harden considerably when cool and pastry cream is plenty sturdy.  Any advice would be welcome.

I am also thinking of putting in one of those baking emulsions I learned about from Pye, either Princess Cake or Buttery Sweet Dough, both of which (in addition to vanilla) have a subtle but good high-quality lemony tang, a plain vanilla cake seems like a failure of imagination.  Will this gild the lily?

The decorative swirl could also be White Chocolate, I imagine that you could just substitute W. Chocolate for the Reg. Chocolate in your ganache recipe and use that instead of watery-ass simple icing for the decorative swirl.  And, maybe, just maybe use Pastry Flour instead of All-Purpose?  This will of course possibly defeat the "sturdiness" you are aiming for...  I notice that these Suzy Home-Maker recipes ALWAYS use AP flour in their cake recipes.

That is often a sticking point in my debates with my sister;  she is always griping about how her cakes come out too "dense" and that is precisely what she is trying to "fix."  She stubbornly refuses to listen to my suggestions about the addition of Cake Flour for a portion of the AP:  with subsequent modifications to the amount of leavening if needed in small "test" batches.  (In your case, I would whip up a 1 yolk "test batch" using the Flour% method to discover what proportions of everything else to use, bake that off and see if I like the sturdiness/texture etc.)

Typical of a Suzy Home-Maker wimmin, she abandons her original desire to "fix" the recipe because my advice is "too much work."  Hah!  Then she gets mad when I point out that her logic is circular...

By my reckonning, your second recipe is:

75.66%(72.25%)      Butter
83.33%(80.64%)      Sugar
45.33%(43.87%)      Egg yolks*
40.00%(38.70%)      Whole Milk
100.00%(100.00%)  AP Flour@150g (Pastry Flour@155g)
4.80%(4.65%)          Baking Soda
2.75%(2.75%)          Vanilla Sugar

*Large Grade A egg=2oz wt, yolk is about 30% of the egg weight. 1oz=~28g, so 1 Large Grade A Egg Yolk weighs 28g*2*0.30=16.8g

The maths is a bit complicated, there so I will do it for you.

For AP Flour:
27.67g Butter
30.88g Sugar
16.8g   Yolks
14.82g Milk
37.06g Flour AP
1.78g   Baking Soda
1.02g   Vanilla Sugar

For Pastry Flour:
27.67g Butter
30.88g Sugar
16.8g   Yolks
14.82g Milk
38.29g Flour, Pastry
1.78g   Baking Soda
1.05g   Vanilla Sugar

You will notice that the change from AP Flour -->  Pastry Flour COMPLETELY changes the proportions(%) of the other ingredients, but using this method the recipe "stays the same" as far as the final amounts (by weight) present.

Now you can scale that recipe, up/down as needed to make 1000 Boston Cream Pies (full size) or a miniature dainty snack sized one, and the finished product will be the same!

To really achieve this you need to buy yourself a Drug-Dealer digital scale that that can do 0.01g increments.

Probably, you will be obstinate and lazy like my dear sister and say "that's too much work!"

If you are REALLY serious about "sturdiness" of the cake (which I find to be an oxymoronical idear) you could substitute Bread Flour for AP, which I believe is 29g/quarter cup (or 145g Bread flour for your 4-yolk recipe)

Then of course, you could adventure into 100% Cake flour territory (32g/quarter cup? or 160g for 4-yolks.)

I am certain that the above has thoroughly bamboozled you!  Maybe, Roz can explain it better and more concisely?  Nautical Shore.

Anyway, in short:  are you done making that Boston Cream Pie yet?  Surely the two hours it took me to write this has afforded you ample thyme.

Now FiX that shit!  Ha.

pate/K_Dubb 2024
"WHO shat in the interregnum?"

[K_Dubb]

The decorative swirl could also be White Chocolate, I imagine that you could just substitute W. Chocolate for the Reg. Chocolate in your ganache recipe and use that instead of watery-ass simple icing for the decorative swirl.  And, maybe, just maybe use Pastry Flour instead of All-Purpose?  This will of course possibly defeat the "sturdiness" you are aiming for...  I notice that these Suzy Home-Maker recipes ALWAYS use AP flour in their cake recipes.

That is often a sticking point in my debates with my sister;  she is always griping about how her cakes come out too "dense" and that is precisely what she is trying to "fix."  She stubbornly refuses to listen to my suggestions about the addition of Cake Flour for a portion of the AP:  with subsequent modifications to the amount of leavening if needed in small "test" batches.  (In your case, I would whip up a 1 yolk "test batch" using the Flour% method to discover what proportions of everything else to use, bake that off and see if I like the sturdiness/texture etc.)

Typical of a Suzy Home-Maker wimmin, she abandons her original desire to "fix" the recipe because my advice is "too much work."  Hah!  Then she gets mad when I point out that her logic is circular...

By my reckonning, your second recipe is:

75.66%(72.25%)      Butter
83.33%(80.64%)      Sugar
45.33%(43.87%)      Egg yolks*
40.00%(38.70%)      Whole Milk
100.00%(100.00%)  AP Flour@150g (Pastry Flour@155g)
4.80%(4.65%)          Baking Soda
2.75%(2.75%)          Vanilla Sugar

*Large Grade A egg=2oz wt, yolk is about 30% of the egg weight. 1oz=~28g, so 1 Large Grade A Egg Yolk weighs 28g*2*0.30=16.8g

The maths is a bit complicated, there so I will do it for you.

For AP Flour:
27.67g Butter
30.88g Sugar
16.8g   Yolks
14.82g Milk
37.06g Flour AP
1.78g   Baking Soda
1.02g   Vanilla Sugar

For Pastry Flour:
27.67g Butter
30.88g Sugar
16.8g   Yolks
14.82g Milk
38.29g Flour, Pastry
1.78g   Baking Soda
1.05g   Vanilla Sugar

You will notice that the change from AP Flour -->  Pastry Flour COMPLETELY changes the proportions(%) of the other ingredients, but using this method the recipe "stays the same" as far as the final amounts (by weight) present.

Now you can scale that recipe, up/down as needed to make 1000 Boston Cream Pies (full size) or a miniature dainty snack sized one, and the finished product will be the same!

To really achieve this you need to buy yourself a Drug-Dealer digital scale that that can do 0.01g increments.

Probably, you will be obstinate and lazy like my dear sister and say "that's too much work!"

If you are REALLY serious about "sturdiness" of the cake (which I find to be an oxymoronical idear) you could substitute Bread Flour for AP, which I believe is 29g/quarter cup (or 145g Bread flour for your 4-yolk recipe)

Then of course, you could adventure into 100% Cake flour territory (32g/quarter cup? or 160g for 4-yolks.)

I am certain that the above has thoroughly bamboozled you!  Maybe, Roz can explain it better and more concisely?  Nautical Shore.

Anyway, in short:  are you done making that Boston Cream Pie yet?  Surely the two hours it took me to write this has afforded you ample thyme.

Now FiX that shit!  Ha.

pate/K_Dubb 2024
"WHO shat in the interregnum?"

Dear sir, thank you for the ratios!  Indeed the pie was half-eaten by the time you wrote this.  I do have a clever little scale my mom gave me because all their recipes are in grams over there but it is not digital and you just tare it by twirling the indicator around the base.  I think it is mostly for bread.  I also have the tiniest little springform pan in the world (with a tube insert!), precisely for testing things out or (what is more usual) baking the overflow from fruitcake where I always wind up with too much batter for some reason.

There was a major disaster: the paper stuck to the bottom!  I have never had this happen before.  I should have taken it off when it was just the cake and reapplied a fresh circle but I baked it in my largest pan (I can't find the bottom to the next size down, which I should have used) so the cake was very flat and when I sliced the layers I got the bottom layer too thin and I was afraid the paper was all that was giving it any structural coherence at all so I left it.  I had to lift the pieces with a violent sawing motion to release the stubborn parchment and the results were less than pretty.  I will post pictures of the resulting mess so you can all hoot and jeer and wish you had a piece.

It is true, a sturdy cake goes against the common aesthetic but in my mind I associate light, springy cakes with dryness and commercial bakeries and questionable innovations like chiffon and the horror that is "pudding in the mix" boxes and *shudder* funfetti.  I suppose I hew, if not to Suzy Homemaker, at least towards her grandmother Agnes.

[K_Dubb]

 

[K_Dubb]

Here you can all laugh at my swirl effect which I dripped off the point of a spatula because I was too lazy to get out the pastry bag.



I ended up using the emulsion "Buttery Sweet Dough" for the delicate lemon flavor (unnoticeable unless someone told you it was in there, but worth it) and (don't tell anyone!) a pinch of spice -- mace, cardamom, cinnamon -- which did not go amiss.  I don't think I can bring myself to bake a Plain Vanilla Cake.

Also included is yesterday's Gay_Dubb's Weather Etc. report, which was lovely; Shreddie please note yet another sweater.

[pate]

Here you can all laugh at my swirl effect which I dripped off the point of a spatula because I was too lazy to get out the pastry bag.



I ended up using the emulsion "Buttery Sweet Dough" for the delicate lemon flavor (unnoticeable unless someone told you it was in there, but worth it) and (don't tell anyone!) a pinch of spice -- mace, cardamom, cinnamon -- which did not go amiss.  I don't think I can bring myself to bake a Plain Vanilla Cake.

Also included is yesterday's Gay_Dubb's Weather Etc. report, which was lovely; Shreddie please note yet another sweater.

I was expecting it to be a bit taller, comme ca:



Anyhow, I was thinking more about your recipe vis a vis your "sturdiness" conundrum.  In addition to the Butter you also have Egg Yolks & Whole Milk in there to act as a shortening (both have high relative fat contents).   Being a Cake Batter, I imagine you don't mix it long enough for any gluten-chains to form which helps in the "loft" of the cake by trapping the CO2 from the Baking Powder inside.

You mention a "delicate lemon flavor:" is this from Lemon Zest or Lemon Juice?  I note that both are "tart" indicating the presence of an acid (ascorbic? no matter), I wonder if you could add a small amount of Baking Soda to that recipe to gain an additional bit of "loft" from this unused acid (that I assume is present), and still keep that "delicate lemon flavor"?

Isn't there some "trick" on the parchment paper thing that you can do to make it easier to remove;  either spray/brush oil on it or sprinkle/dust it with flour before pouring the batter on top (both?  I don't generally make cakes so I have limited hands-on with this technique.)  You might try that next time.

On the Butter/Milk/Yolk shortening front, maybe a lower fat Milk & low-fat Yolk substitute:  Powdered Milk- you can beef up the amount of powder/liquid ratio to get a "Milkier" but low/no fat substitute and on the Egg Yolks I think Apple Sauce/Butter(?) is frequently used in Vegan applications where Eggs are verbotten.  I don't think you could get away with a Butter substitute (there isn't one dammit).

Look into the White Chocolate Ganache idea instead of the Water/Milk Icing, your Pa would love it even more I bet.

What was the alarmingly thin layer of "Creame" in there (I had to zoom in to see)?  Bavarian Cream, Creme Anglais, Jello-Pudding (eye keed!) or what?

Axing foar a fiend.

[Robert Mugabe]

Also included is yesterday's Gay_Dubb's Weather Etc. report, which was lovely; Shreddie please note yet another sweater.

They all look the same to me. And, if you wouldn't mind, please stop that sinister wiggling.

[K_Dubb]

I was expecting it to be a bit taller, comme ca:



Anyhow, I was thinking more about your recipe vis a vis your "sturdiness" conundrum.  In addition to the Butter you also have Egg Yolks & Whole Milk in there to act as a shortening (both have high relative fat contents).   Being a Cake Batter, I imagine you don't mix it long enough for any gluten-chains to form which helps in the "loft" of the cake by trapping the CO2 from the Baking Powder inside.

You mention a "delicate lemon flavor:" is this from Lemon Zest or Lemon Juice?  I note that both are "tart" indicating the presence of an acid (ascorbic? no matter), I wonder if you could add a small amount of Baking Soda to that recipe to gain an additional bit of "loft" from this unused acid (that I assume is present), and still keep that "delicate lemon flavor"?

Isn't there some "trick" on the parchment paper thing that you can do to make it easier to remove;  either spray/brush oil on it or sprinkle/dust it with flour before pouring the batter on top (both?  I don't generally make cakes so I have limited hands-on with this technique.)  You might try that next time.

On the Butter/Milk/Yolk shortening front, maybe a lower fat Milk & low-fat Yolk substitute:  Powdered Milk- you can beef up the amount of powder/liquid ratio to get a "Milkier" but low/no fat substitute and on the Egg Yolks I think Apple Sauce/Butter(?) is frequently used in Vegan applications where Eggs are verbotten.  I don't think you could get away with a Butter substitute (there isn't one dammit).

Look into the White Chocolate Ganache idea instead of the Water/Milk Icing, your Pa would love it even more I bet.

What was the alarmingly thin layer of "Creame" in there (I had to zoom in to see)?  Bavarian Cream, Creme Anglais, Jello-Pudding (eye keed!) or what?

Axing foar a fiend.

Sir, the whole affair was sadly lacking in ambition as, after a half hour or so of playing "where's the bottom?" (the opposite of the usual game in these parts) I could not find the base for my 7-inch springform.  You will see that the ratio of cake to filling is about the same, only somewhat flatter.  I did double the ganache for my dad, though.  Your white-chocolate suggestion is excellent, thank you!

The lemon flavor came from the baking emulsion I added, "Buttery Sweet Dough".  And the filling was proper creme patissiere; I do not know why people bother with boxed pudding as the real thing is far superior and simple to make in the microwave.

[K_Dubb]

They all look the same to me. And, if you wouldn't mind, please stop that sinister wiggling.

That wiggling is the mating dance of the American homosexual and is designed to strike fear into your mordant heart or, barring that, disable you by laughter and thus vulnerable to opportunistic buggery.  I will cease only if you allow that your charge that I wear the same one every day was ill-considered and impertinent.

On second thought, it is more fun this way.  I believe I claimed at least 31 different sweaters, of which I have exhibited four or five, so at this rate you may look forward to gyrating knitwear for the balance of the year!

[Asuka Langley]

That wiggling is the mating dance of the American homosexual

I coomed

[K_Dubb]

I coomed

Cute hair!