Tuesday, June 19, 2012

TWD - French Strawberry Cake

I have always been intrigued by genoise cakes, but never made one.  But I think this might be a cake where practice makes perfect and I need to revisit this recipe and try it again because my cake did not rise enough.
I beat the eggs and sugar for 5 minutes and found I had to go about 90 seconds more to pass the 10 second ribbon rule.

Things were going well until I added the third batch of flour.  I could not get it all to fold in and with each stroke I could see my batter deflating.  I since learned from the comments on the TWD site that perhaps it was the bump in the Kitchen Aid bowl.  The next time I try this I am going to put the batter in another bowl to fold in the flour.

Finally all the flour was in and I baked the cake.  It was not very tall and I knew there was no way I was going to successfully slice it into 3 layers even though I have a nifty saw type cutter for cutting cakes.  I could not set the setting low enough to slice the layers that thin.  So I made do with 2 layers.
I sliced it and decorated it with the whipped cream.  One thing I loved about this recipe was the addition of the sour cream to the whipped cream.  I think it helped stablize the whip cream so it didn't droop when decorating.  I used the wrong size pastry tip to decorate it, so I had to improvise and just piled strawberries on top for the finished look.
(See the pretty table runner?  My daughter spent a week with my mom and dad and they made this together!

My husband and I really liked the taste of this cake.  It seemed very French.  I like how sturdy the cake was to hold all the juicy strawberries.  I will try this cake again and see if I can get it to rise more so I can cut three layers.




Tuesday, June 5, 2012

TWD - Oasis Naan

The other day on the radio I heard an interesting study.  They polled women and asked what they thought men wanted for Father's Day.  Women said they thought men wanted tickets to a sporting event and power tools.  But when they polled men, what they really wanted was a smart phone/ipad type device.  And the second thing they wanted was A HOME COOKED MEAL!  I am guessing if you are participating in TWD, a home cooked meal for the father in your life is not a big deal. But I think that says a lot about today's society that a home cooked meal ranks above sporting tickets and power tools for men.  I would venture to say that study shows not many men are getting a home cooked meal.  So what does all that have to do with Oasis Naan?  I think it's a shame how many people are missing out on something so easy, yet satisfying like this bread.  This bread was so easy and with so few ingredients, yet when I finished with it I felt like a rock star baker.  It was so good, especially with some hummus.  So I am so grateful for this group that keeps my love of baking and cooking alive and shows me new recipes like Oasis Naan that I probably would have never tried without this group.

The Persian Naan dough, fully risen

The dough rolled out and with seasoning.  I don't own a pizza stone and used the back side of a jelly roll pan to bake them on.  What a slick trick!  I didn't know you could do that.

Ready to eat with some hummus!  My whole family loved it.  What an easy party food this would make!