A black forest cakes has three layers, and it’s made of chocolate genoise soaked with each layer flavoured with kirsch syrup, and piled with chantilly cream and cherries. The cake is decorated with chantilly cream, sweet cherries and chocolate bits and shavings.

Genoise

4 eggs

2 egg yolks

150 g sugar

120 g flour, sifted

30 g cocoa powder, sifted

25 g melted

Directions

1. Sift cocoa and flour. Set aside.
2. Combine the eggs and sugar in a large bowl. Immediately set the bowl over a hot water bath or bain-marie and whisk until the mixture doubles in volume and the water reaches boiling point.
3. Remove the bowl from the heat, and whisk the eggs until they are very light yellow and thick to ribbon stage. This may take 8 to 10 minutes. You can use a mixer using a whisk attachment.
4. Fold in the sifted flour and cocoa in three or four stages, being careful not to deflate the foam. Fold gently until all the flour is blended.
5. If the butter is warm, add a bit of the folded mixture into the butter, stir, and then add the butter to the folded mixture. Carefully fold in the melted butter. Fold in the butter completely, but be careful not to over mix or the cake will be tough. If you forget to add butter, which I did in my practical, your genoise will be dry. The remedy is to add more syrup between the layers.
6. Immediately pan with scraper in a 9 inch round pan and bake on the rack at 365F for about 25 minutes.

Kirsch Syrup

200 g sugar

200 ml water

30 g Kirsch

Directions

1. Place sugar in water in a saucepan and boil until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Remove from heat and let cool.
3. Add the Kirsch.
4. Set aside.

Chantilly Cream

600 ml 35% cream

60 g icing sugar, sifted

2 g vanilla

Directions

1. Make sure that the cream and all equipment and utensils are chilled.
2. Whip the cream by hand or machine until forms soft peaks.
3. Add the sugar and vanilla. Continue to whip until the cream forms stiff peaks but is still smooth.  Do not overwhip the cream it will become grainy and then separate to form particles of butter.

You will also need chocolate bits and shavings and sweet dark pitted griottine cherries for this recipe.

Assembly

1. Carefully slice the cooled-off genoise into three even layers with a bread knife. Place the two first slices on parchment paper, set aside.
2. With the bottom layer of genoise, moisten the layer and sides with plenty of syrup.
3. With a pastry bag fitted with a large plain tip (10mm) or plain tube, pipe a circle of chantilly cream in centre of the layer. Working inward to the edge. You should have a ring of cream.
4. Using a spoon, place well-drained cherries between the rings. I added about 25 cherries for each layer.
5. Pipe three diagonal lines across the ring to hold the second layer in place.
6. Top with the second layer of genoise. Moisten layers and sides with a lot of syrup.
7. Pipe ring, spread cherries, and pipe diagonal lines.
8. Top with third layer with smooth top up. Score. Moisten with the rest of the syrup.—use it all It’s important you moisten here or it will be dry because this toughest part of the genoise.
9. Lightly mask the sides of the cake, refrigerate the cake for a good 10 minutes. Note: the chantilly cream should always be cold and whisk before piping.
10. Mask the sides of the cake, then the top.
11. With a star tip (E6) pipe eight rosettes with chantilly cream around the tops edge of the cake so that there is one each wedge.
12. Mask the sides of the cake with chocolate shavings.
13. Place a drained cherry on each rosette

This filled domed cake should be spongy, moist and easy to slice, and there should be no shortage of whipped cream and cherries. Enjoy every bite! It’s better the next day.

The tangy lemon tart was by far my favourite. Here’s the recipe. I’ll share the other two in the weeks ahead. The flavour for this recipe is comes from both the zest and the juice. Make sure when you are grating the zest that you don’t add the white pith–it’s quite bitter and will change the taste of your tart. I like to use a fine-gauge Microplane as it removes the zest without digging into the skin.

There are four parts to this recipe, so it will take at least 2 hours to make. You will have to make the pie crust, almond cream, the lemon filling and the Italian meringue. Except for the Italian meringue, you can make the other parts in advance.

Part One—Pie Crust

200 g flour, sifted

100 g butter

70 g icing sugar

3 egg yolks

4 ml milk

1 lemon, peel

Directions

1. Add zest to flour.
2. In a mixer on lowest speed with paddle attachment, add the butter and icing sugar, incorporate until soft.
3. Add the salt and eggs, mix, and slowly incorporate the flour. Add milk at this point if the dough is dry.
4. Form into a ball, flatten, saran wrap and chill until it’s the dough has hardened.

While you are waiting, prepare the almond cream and the lemon filling.

Part Two–Almond Cream

60 g icing sugar, sifted

60 g butter, softened

60 g almond powder

6 g flour

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp Grand Marnier

Directions

1. In a mixer on low speed, whisk the butter until creamy.
2. Add the sugar, mix until incorporated.
3. Add the almond powder, whisk until incorporated.
4. Add one whole egg, and combine.
5. Add the vanilla and rum, whisk until its pale and thick.
6. Wrap and refrigerate.

Part Three–Lemon Filling

2 lemons, juice

1 lemon, zest

100 g sugar

3 eggs

Directions

Add lemon juice, zest, sugar, eggs in a large pot over medium heat, add a ½ tsp of flour or cornstarch to help coagulate the eggs. Whisk the mixture until you start seeing steam, and the mixture changes to a bright yellow and is thick enough to coat your spoon or spatula. Cool off the cream.

Rolling Pie Dough

When the almond cream and lemon filling are done, butter your pie mould. Take out the cold pie dough, and lightly flour your surface. If your pie dough is not cold, it will shrink when cooked. Rollout the dough slowly from the centre and push away from yourself. Turn the dough a quarter turn to the right and repeat. Turning the dough helps to roll it out evenly and to make sure it’s not sticking. Keep rolling and turning the dough a couple until it reaches the size you need. Roll the dough a couple inches larger than the mould. To see if the dough is a the right size, hold the pan over the dough.  Place the rolling pin at one end of the dough and loosely roll the dough up around the rolling pin. Place the mould directly underneath the rolling pin and gently unroll the dough into the mould. Carefully lift up the sides of the dough and fit it against the bottom and sides of the mould, without stretching or tearing, which will cause the dough to shrink as it bakes. To remove the excess dough, run the rolling pin over the top edges to cut the dough evenly.  Chill the pie dough for 5 minutes.

Pre-Bake or Blind Bake Crust

Preheat oven 375F. Score your pie dough with fork marks, so that the crust can release stem. Line the pastry shell with parchment paper, leaving excess of parchment paper on all sides so you can lift it. Fill the shell top the top with pie weights to hold its shape during baking. Bake for about 8 minutes. When the first stage of blind baking is done, carefully remove the weights, spread the almond cream and return the pie crust back in the oven for about 15 minutes. When baking is done, let cool. Keep the pie crust/almond cream in the mould.

Part Four-Italian Meringue

100 g egg whites

200 g sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

70 ml water

Directions

1. Heat the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture boils. Boil until a candy thermometer placed in the syrup registers 117C or 243F.
2. While the syrup is cooking, whisk the egg whites in a mixing machine with the cream of tartar until they form soft peaks.
3. With the machine running, very slowly whisk the hot syrup.
4. Continue beating until the meringue is cool and forms firm peaks.

Assembly

1. Spread the cooled off lemon filling to pie crust/almond cream.
2. Pipe Italian meringue in ripples or peaks.
3. Bake at 375F for about 6 – 8 minutes or until surface is browned. Do not use higher temperatures, which will cause the surface of the meringue to shrink.
4. Remove from the oven and cool. Serve immediately because the meringue will start to “weep”–fall apart, particularly in humid conditions. So make plenty!

From left to right: pastry cream, crème anglaise,  crème chantilly, ganache, crème au beurre (butter cream), crème d'amande (almond cream), and far right crème  bavaroise, and Italian meringue.

Pastry Creams

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Day 2. Nine hours later. With outside being 32 degrees Celsius, but feeling like 40 degrees everywhere– even hotter near the stoves. I can complain. But, I’m not going to. I’m pretty happy with how smooth things are going in the pastry kitchen.

Today, the chef demonstrated 10 recipes, and the students made a number of doughs—pâte brisée –shortcrust dough; pâte sucrée—sweet dough; and  pâte sablée—shortcake dough. We turned the pâte sablée into cookies–pâte sablée Nantais.

Pâte sablée is so sweet and soft to the touch you can turn into any shape. The dough is softer and more delicate than pâte brisée and is recommended for small tarts, petit fours and, of course, cookies.  The dough may be wrapped and stored in the refrigerator for up to five days or frozen for several months.

Here’s the ingredients and directions of today’s class. According to my chef, these are done when they are "GBD"–golden, brown and (smells) delicious. 

Ingredients

Pate sable/shortcake

400 g flour

4 g baking powder

200 g butter

4 egg yolks

1 whole egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 g salt

200 g icing sugar

Egg wash

1 egg yolk

2 g coffee extract 

Directions

1. On a parchment paper, sift the flour and baking powder. Set aside.
2. Separate the eggs. Add the whole egg to the egg yolks.
3. Sift the icing sugar, make a well in the centre.
4. Add the salt and diced butter to the well.
5. Using your fingers, cream together the salt, the butter, and the icing sugar until the mixture is smooth and pale.
6. Add the eggs a little at a time. Continue mixing with your fingers in a clockwise direction.
7. Add the flour—a bit at a time. With a plastic scraper, carefully bled into a soft, round dough.
8. Wrap in plastic film and flatten out. Chill until firm before use.

Assembling the Pâte Sablée Nantals

1. Lightly flour your work station.
2. Lightly flour the dough, pound it, and roll out it into a cylinder shape. Note: If the dough gets too stick, and become difficult to work with. Wrap it up, and let it sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or more.
3. Using a cookie cutter, cut out cookies in the size of your choice and press lightly on a lined tray.
4. Brush each cookie with egg wash, and refrigerate.
5. In the mean time preheat oven to 400F, when ready to pop in the tray of cookies in the oven, lower the temperature of the oven to 370F.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown around the edges.

Enjoy, these are especially good dipped in coffee.

Pâte Sablée Nantais And Damier

Pâte Sablée Nantais and Damier

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Finally, it took me three years to find the money and time to get back to Le Cordon Bleu. So here is what I am in for, my favourite kind of vacation – a white  apron with sensible shoes. This time around I am going to learn the basics of French pastry in a five week intensive program—the dough, sponges and creams. So if you always wonder about those patisseries joints in Paris, stick with me for the next little while, I’ll pass on whatever secrets I learned about butter, flour, sugar, milk, and eggs—in other words French pastry.

New York Times Photo

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CBC.ca | Ideas | Have Your Meat and Eat It Too! Part 1 – 3 (Listen)

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2010…

Once it’s butchered and packaged, most meat looks pretty much the same. Our only choice is whether to go for the boneless chicken breast or the pork chops. Most of us think more about what kind of television or which brand of toothpaste to buy than where our meat comes from. But where does it come from and what are our consumer dollars doing?

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If you can, you must try these tasty, shiny red, gold, green, and purple, odd-shaped heirloom tomatoes before the season ends. Toss them in salad or pasta, or slice them up and add them to a sandwich. Nothing is better than a sandwich with tomatoes, fresh basil, cheddar cheese and topped off with mayo and salt and pepper. Even better cut them up, add some good balsamic vinegar, olive oil, coarse sea salt and a little chopped basil, and you’re good to go.

Heirloom Tomatoes

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I do in my vegetable garden, and soon I will have plenty to share. While I wait for mine, I have a plenty of friends giving away their zucchini.

It’s one my favourite vegetables I love to slice, dice, or grate to add to salad, sauces, quiches. But, this weekend I used zucchini for the first time in a cake.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake is amazing bundt recipe I think out of all my bundt recipes. It is a dense cake, but super moist and flavourful. I can’t stop craving for it. I woke up this morning having it for breakfast. Love the vegetable, vanilla and chocolate/espresso mix of flavours.

Make this cake, use your zucchini this way, you’ll be sure to make yourself and a lot people super happy!

My Flowering Zucchini

Serves 10 to 12.

Ingredients

Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake

½ cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powders more for dusting the pan

½ cup sour cream

3 large eggs

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 ½ tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp baking soda

2 tsp instant espresso powder or coffee grains

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) butter, softened

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup sliced almonds 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 12-cup bundt pan and dust with unsweetened cocoa powder.
2. Whisk together the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla in a large glass measuring cup. Whisk together the flour, ½ cup cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt and espresso powder in a medium bowl.
3. Combine the butter and sugars in a large mixing bowl and cream with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice as necessary.
4. With the mixer on low speed, add 1/3 of the flour mixture and beat until incorporated. Add ½ of the sour cream mixture. Repeat, alternating flour and sour cream mixtures and ending with the flour mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl between additions. Stir in the zucchini, chocolate chips and almonds.
5. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert it onto a wire rack to cool completely. Slice and serve. 

Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake

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There is nothing more satisfying to the palate during these summer months than a simple tomato fresh picked from a garden. Add fresh basil, bocconcini, olive oil and good balsamic vinegar to the tomatoes, and you have it, goodness on a plate that takes very little time to prepare. Spread out your sliced tomatoes on a large white plate, place a few slices of fresh bocconcini cheese on top, and slide in a leaf of basil. Repeat.

To make the dressing whisk ½ cup extra virgin olive oil and 1/3 cup of balsamic vinegar in a bowl. Just before serving drizzle the  oil and vinegar and sprinkle salt and pepper. Love.

Featuring My Garden Tomatoes and Basil

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I’ve been trying to find healthy vegetarian recipes with some gourmet flare. It’s turning out to be not an easy task. I’ve been working through two cookbooks, Fields of Greens and Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone– the recipes are good, but they all lack panache. 

The latest dish I made looked and smelt delicious, but I should have added more spice. And maybe the ghee was more important than I thought, I had none, so I used oil instead, not sure if that was a good substitute. It might have added warmth to the dish; on the other hand it’s not that great for you. The trouble with butter if I eat it I wear it. I’d also thought next time I’d throw in some nuts to add more texture, top it off with yogurt and serve it with naan or pappadums.

Here's the original recipe.

Indian Style Sauté of Cauliflower and Greens

Ingredients

2 potatoes, boiled, peeled and cubed

¼ cup ghee

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 small cauliflower, quartered and thinly sliced, including the stem

salt

2 tsp chopped garlic

½ tsp tumeric

1 tsp each ground cumin and coriander

1 tsp mustard

handful of spinach, stems removed

handful of watercress, large stems removed

1 small carrot grated

Juice of 1 lime

Several pinches of Garam Masala

Cilantro sprigs for garnish, or any herb of your liking 

Directions

Boil the potatoes, until tender. Heat 2 tbsp of the ghee in a wide sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté until well browned, about 12 minutes. Remove and set aside. Melt the remaining ghee in the same pan over high heat. Add the cauliflower, season with salt, and sauté until they begin to turn to colour in places, after a five minutes. Return the onion to the pan and add the garlic, spices and potatoes. Lower the heat and cook until everything is heated through, about 4 minutes. Add the greens, carrot, and ½ cup of water (or vegetable stock). Cover and cook until the greens are wilted, about a minute. Season with lime juice and few pinches of garam marsala, then turn on a platter and garnish with fresh herbs. 

Indian-Style Saute of Cauliflower and Greens

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