Christmas '15: Pumpkin Yule Log Cake

Christmas desserts this year were split between my cousin B and myself. B made little choux and éclairs, and I dealt with the egg-free stuff for those among us that don't eat eggs. Having seen a recipe on Dash of (Vegan) Butter for a vegan pumpkin cream roll, and seeing how I still had a pumpkin sitting around, I jumped on the opportunity.

First, I roasted the pumpkin in the oven, puréed it in a food processor, then drained it in a colander with paper towels in the fridge to remove all excess moisture. Then I whipped up about 6 tbs of aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas), and proceeded with the rest of the recipe.

For the filling, I folded some whipped cream into the leftover cream cheese mix from the brownie topping. I also added a little more sugar. Then I cut a small section at the end to make a stump on top, which was glued on with more of the cream cheese mix.

The whole cake was covered with whipped cream that was mixed with chocolate powder. At first, I just dragged a fork over the whipped cream to make it seem like bark, but then opted instead to shave some chocolate off large choc chips (the only chocolate I had) to dust over the top.

In the end, the cake was well liked, but the cake batter was a little tough. Either I had overbaked it a bit, or the amount of dry ingredients should have been reduced.

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PUMPKIN CAKE ROLL RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 3/4 cup flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 6 tbs aquafaba
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup puréed pumpkin
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• icing sugar

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C.
2. In a bowl, combine dry ingredients. Set aside.
3. Whip aquafaba on high until soft peaks. 
4. On medium speed, add in applesauce, the progressively add sugar.
5. Mix in pumpkin and vinegar.
6. Fold in dry ingredients.
7. Pour into a prepared pan, then bake for 15 min or until it springs back when lightly pressed.
8. After removing from oven, immediately put on a clean dishtowel dusted with icing sugar.
9. Roll it up with the towel and set to cool.
10. Once cooled, unroll, fill with desired cream, and roll again.
11. Ice as desired, and chill until eaten.

Christmas '15: Brownie with Cream Cheese Pattern

This year for Christmas presents, I decided to bake a big batch of brownie and cut it up into squares to pack up. I had originally planned to have 2 different brownies and some kind of gingerbread-like bars in there as well, but due to time constraints, I had to settle with just the one.

For the brownie, I used a double batch of the classic egg-free recipe I have been using. To make it a little more interesting, at least to the eye, I topped it with a pattern of cream cheese, quark, and icing sugar mix. The quark helped make the cream cheese more fluid, and I had some left from before that needed using up. The pattern was made by drawing lines of cream cheese mix over the top of the batter, then running a chopstick in opposite directions.

The wonderful image I had in mind for nice, even squares went out the window the moment I cut into it after cooling and refrigerating it a couple of hours. The no-crust parts were crumbling and falling every which way. Luckily, I managed to somehow cut 30 squares that were more or less intact, and to package them in little bags, each piece sitting on its own square of baking paper. Unfortunately, in some cases, the pattern did not really survive the cutting and packaging.

Christmas Tree Cake

When I saw Cakecrumb's cake, and her tutorial as to how to make it, I knew I had to try making it. But first on a small scale. I basically followed her recipe for the cakes, except I used egg replacer instead of eggs. I must say I did not expect the dark chocolate to rise so much, and since I had divided it into two little springform pans (roughly 12 cm each).

I had a bit of a hard time carving the dark chocolate mudcake to put in the white cake mix due to a lack of round cookie cutters. As mentioned previously, I have been using emptied tomato concentrate cans to cut cookies. For these, I had to use various objects to approximate the round shapes -- from a simple knotted thread pulled taut from the central toothpick, to small cups and glasses. I couldn't be sure how successful the inside would be until the cutting.

Seems it was at least mostly a success! I was very afraid that the cake would be overly sweet, especially the white part, since it has a lot of white chocolate and it's mixed with white chocolate ganache. But seems the nap in the fridge (and me reducing the amount of sugar by almost half) did the trick to make it pleasant to the tongue without being overly sweet.

For the decorations, I simply piped some Christmas trees using white chocolate, and a small 6-pointed pseudo snowflake from the little remaining at the end. The one at the top was piped as 4 separate half trees. I then used a knife dipped in hot water then dried, and pressed against the edge to "glue" together, to melt the chocolate into a flat surface to attach to the other parts.

Definitely a recipe to try again, but not too often, as the 2-hour baking time for the white cake is not something I can do a lot.

With the carved-out scraps and cut off domes from the dark chocolate cake, and what remained of the crumb mix from the white chocolate cake, I made little cake truffles with leftover ganache and some coconut.

Christmas 2014 Gifts

Whew! Now that I am done posting all the stuff I baked during the semester, when I was too busy to post, it's time to post recent baking!

Like for a couple of the past years (2011 and 2013), I made little pack of baked goods to give out as gifts for Christmas. As usual, procrastination prevailed and I started on the evening of the 23rd of December.

I started out by making the dough for cookies. I had made these cookies a couple of weeks ago, and they're easy enough to make, and since Christmas baking means making a lot of cookies, I opted for these cookies.

A lot of rolling out, cutting with an emptied can of tomato concentrate, and baking later, I ended up with some 195 cookies. These were the first things in the little bags of goods.

I then made some chocolate cakes (white and dark) for another cake that I will post later. With the leftover scraps, I made little cake truffles, mixing cake crumbs with chocolate ganache. I rolled them in some desiccated coconut (and the white cake ones have coconut mixed inside as well).

I wrapped these in some cellophane film to keep them from moistening the cookies when in the little package. The dark choc ones were made after Christmas, so they only got added to the later packets.

Christmas baking!

This year, I also went for baked goods for Christmas presents. I made a rough list of the number of people I was baking for (47!), then got to work! I procrastinated a bit, and started baking on December 23rd.

First up, I made 2 batches of Spéculoos cookies. Some are flower-shaped, but most are star-shaped, because I felt they fit the purpose better.

I followed up with a Cheesecake Crumble to bring to the family party:

I also had some leftover lemon-flavored mini cheesecakes, so I topped them with some forest fruit jam, and sent them along for the other side of the family's party.

The next day (24th), I rushed to try to make chocolate bark. I wanted to make peppermint bark, but the general stores around here don't carry peppermint candy canes, and the one store that I found that had some had sold out... So I had this vague plan of trying to melt down some other peppermint candy and using that instead, but that plan went literally down the drain as it failed beyond saving.

I settled for crushed pistachios (they're colorful... and go well with chocolate). Being my first time making this kind of stuff, I made the chocolate layers way too thick. Oh wells.

Quick snapshots of the cookies and chocolate in a pretty arrangement.

I cut each of the pieces in the picture into 2-3 pieces to make them more enjoyable to eat, and settled to package them with the spéculoos cookies.

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SPECULOOS RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 250 g (2 cups) flour
• 100 g (7 tbs) butter or margarine (margarine makes it vegan but softer)
• 150 g (12-13 tbs) brown sugar
• 2 g (1/2 tsp) baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 4-5 tbs cold water

  Procedure

1. Take butter out ahead of time to let it soften.
2. Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F).
3. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl
4. Cut in softened butter and rub into the flour into a sandy mix.
5. Add water progressively until it comes together into a smooth dough.
6. Roll out and cut into desired shapes.
7. Bake for 15 mins.