For many years, I would use the same banana bread recipe, trusting in my ability to find the recipe online again. Predictably, a few months ago, I tried to find the recipe and found that I no longer remembered which one it is that I […]
This is a recipe that I got from a friend, who in turn found it in a diary left behind in a Zipcar. Apparently it’s a recipe that has been featured in the NYT, but I am too lazy to go and find it, so […]
One of the tropes of the food blog is the home cook who reviews a recipe despite completely changing the recipe with “improvements.” Well, today is the day that I present to you a recipe that I have, in fact, completely changed — although as a result, I will not review the original recipe (a strawberry gingersnap icebox cake from NYT). I assure you that all of my changes were totally reasonable! In the aggregate, they don’t necessarily save you time, but they do make for a really great icebox cake. Also, do not worry: your whipped cream will only look slightly curdled if you overwhip it, like I did mine. I made this again to bring to a friend’s for dinner and whipped the cream properly (but failed to photograph it).
Icebox cakes are simple, consisting of cookies softened overnight by whipped cream of some kind. The NYT recipe calls for gingersnaps and a fruit-puree-infused mascarpone cream, and berries on top. The idea of strawberries and gingersnaps was intriguing to me, but I was feeling lazy, so I subbed in the Serious Eats fruit whipped cream for the mascarpone cream. That whipped cream is one of my favorite things in the world — it is fruity and plush and I could eat it plain, but usually I use it to frost cakes. Also, it is way easier and faster to make than the cream in the NYT recipe.
The other thing I did was to cook the strawberries slightly, with a few tablespoons of sugar. This makes the strawberries a little bit less photogenic, but they don’t bleed as much into the whipped cream as much as fresh cut berries do. Also, I’m slightly allergic to raw strawberries, so it was self-serving; you can, of course, just use the berries raw. (Bonus: if you cook the strawberries, you can use the leftover syrup to make strawberry milk.)
On the topic of the gingersnaps, you can certainly make this cake with storebought gingersnaps, but you could also make your own. This might be a good option if you live on the West Coast and your Whole Foods only carries one variety of gingersnaps (How?! This would never happen on the East Coast), but also, if you are short on time and want to enjoy your cake sooner, I fully endorse storebought cookies. Just make sure you adjust the sugar in the recipe if your cookies are particularly sweet.
Ingredients
1 oz (30g) freeze-dried strawberries
1/2c (100g) sugar
2 pints (910g) heavy cream
20 oz gingersnaps (more than 1 package, less than 2)
2 pints strawberries, hulled and cut in half
2T sugar
Directions
1. Make the strawberries: Place the strawberries in a medium saucepan and sprinkle with the sugar. Let stand 5 minutes, then add a few tablespoons of water and heat the strawberries over medium high heat. The idea here is not to cook the strawberries into oblivion, so take them off the heat when the berries have just softened. Let cool while you make the whipped cream. You will want to make sure the strawberries cool to room temp before you assemble the cake.
2. Make the whipped cream: Pulse the freeze-dried strawberries and sugar in the food processor until the fruit is mostly pulverized (it may not get completely powdered, depending on your food processor). You might want to put a dishtowel over your food processor while you do this, as the pulses will get pink dust wafting out of your food processor. Pour in the cream and pulse until the cream reaches the consistency of Greek yogurt — maybe 10-15 pulses or so. Feel free to open up the food processor partway to check the consistency. Make sure you start pulsing soon after you pour the cream into your food processor — unless you have a particularly large food processor, the cream will start leaking out of the bowl where the blade attaches, since the volume of liquid is so high.
3. Assemble the cake: Spread a layer of cookies over the bottom of a 9″x13″ glass dish. Cover with a third of the whipped cream, then scatter half of the strawberries over it. Repeat with another layer of cookies, cream, and strawberries, then top with the remaining third of the whipped cream. You may have to break up the cookies to get a complete layer, or feel free to overlap the cookies. Make sure the cookies on top have a good layer of whipped cream on them — if the cookies are too close to the surface, they may turn greenish as the cake sits (I’m not sure if that was due to the specific gingersnaps I was using…). Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight before serving.
Here’s another cake that’s delicious when unadorned with any accoutrements. This is a cake made with almond paste, which I’ve found makes a cake with a moist but firm crumb. This cake bakes for a long time (as did the other almond paste cake […]
If you have leftover buttermilk, as I did, you should make this cake. This cake is a little lighter than a traditional pound cake, with a bit of tang from the buttermilk. It still has the tight and tender crumb of a pound cake, […]
I made a bunch of cake for my birthday back at the end of January, and to my mind, the winner was the bananas foster pound cake – a banana bundt cake with rum in both the cake and the glaze. Since then, I’ve been working on maximizing the banana and the foster flavor in the cake. It mystified me when I made the cake for the first time, and continues to mystify me, that the original recipe uses white sugar. Every bananas foster recipe I’ve ever come across uses brown sugar, and I followed suit by switching out the white sugar for dark brown sugar. I fiddled with the amount of sugar as well, after finding the cake to be a bit too sweet as written; I tried 2 1/2 cups and 2 cups, settling on the latter because the cake retained its structural integrity while not being too sweet. This amount of sugar also dovetails well with the use of very ripe bananas, since they are sweeter than merely ripe bananas.
I also felt that three bananas didn’t provide quite enough banana flavor; the first time I made the cake, my bananas weren’t quite ready enough to into the batter – they were still just on the cusp of ripeness for eating. The second and third times I made the cake, I waited until the bananas were dark brown, nearly squishy, and the kitchen was perfumed with the smell of very ripe banana. (You want your bananas to be light brown when you peel them, but not translucently so.) The second time I made the cake, I felt that it was a tad too dense, so I cut back from five bananas and settled on four. The peeled bananas weighed 400 grams on the scale, so just make sure your green or yellow bananas weigh more than that when you get them from the store. (more…)
This will be shocking to you, but I don’t always seek out the most complicated recipes I can get my hands on! Sometimes I like to get something in the oven as fast as I can, and this recipe is one that fits the bill. […]
Having mentioned my favorite chocolate wafer recipe, I figured that I should also put it up! Of all of the chocolate-and-fruit pairings, I love chocolate and lemon the best – the richness of the chocolate pairs well with the acidity and floral flavor of the […]
ok, nothing fancy here – just wanted to share a few recipes with you. the first is a chocolate cake, like the one i use for everything (the stout cake), but for when you don’t have beer on hand. it’s much the same in consistency, and a little bit healthier! (note: a little bit. still…) it’s a wonderful chocolate cake, keeps well, not too sweet. and, of course, moist despite not having any oil in it.
the second is one for snickerdoodle blondies. they turn out wonderfully chewy and are rife with cinnamon, like a dense, concentrated snickerdoodle – but i couldn’t help thinking about all the butter in them as i ate one. so, i provide the recipe i used originally, but i bet you could use 1 1/2 sticks of butter and nobody would be the wiser (except your heart). the key here is to use good quality cinnamon – i tried vietnamese cinnamon for the first time and boy, was it good. more depth of flavor than the usual cinnamon, and intangibly sweeter without actually being sweeter. make these – i took a bowl of these babies to a friend’s house as a pre-dinner snack (yes, of cookies) and the bowl was empty in no time.
ok, ok, i know it’s been a long time. i’ve been taking care of things that needed to be taken care of, and i’m finally getting some good cooking and baking time in, these days. i’m in the process of looking for a really good […]