Orange Castella Cake

The Castella cake is a light sponge cake popular in Japan and seems to be sold often as a plain bar cake. It is classified as a kind of ‘wagashi‘ or Japanese traditional confectionery, according to Wikipedia.

I found a recipe on Youtube that seemed simple enough and flavoured with orange juice and zest for a unique touch.

Of course, with such a simple palate to work with, adding garnishes like fruits and berries and sauces seems obvious. The cake itself is only slightly sweetened. This plating used fresh raspberries and raspberry coulis combining the tartness of the fresh berries with the sweet raspberry sauce.

The recipe was transcribed from the ingredients given in the Youtube video and the instructions described what I actually did to achieve the results above.

Orange Cotton Sponge Cake/Castella Cake – 18 cm x 18 cm x 6 cm/8 inch square glass pan, ended up 4 cm/1 1/4 inches tall after cooling and some shrinking
by LoveSweets

Egg Yolk Mixture

5 egg yolks
1 whole egg
50 ml/3 tbsp + 1 tsp vegetable oil
65 ml orange juice
2-3 tbsp orange zest
75 gm cake flour**

Egg White Mixture

5 egg whites
60 gm caster sugar (try increasing sugar to 90-100 gm)
1/4 tsp lemon juice

** I didn’t have any cake flour so I substituted it with 60 gm all purpose flour (Canadian Red Roses, 13% protein) and 15 gm cornstarch sifted together.

Oil the glass pan and line it carefully with two cross-wise strips of parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the 5 egg yolks and the whole egg. Add the vegetable oil. Whisk in the orange juice. Add the zest.

Sift in the cake flour. Whisk in gently until you have a homogeneous mixture.

In a large bowl whisk the egg whites until foamy. Add the lemon juice and sugar and beat until you have stiff peaks. Fold in about 1/3 of the egg whites to lighten the egg yolk mixture. Add the rest of the whites and gently fold in.

Preheat the oven to 140 deg C/285 deg F.

Smooth the surface using an off-set spatula. Place the pan into a larger pan for a water bath and fill with water about 3 cm/1 inch deep.

Bake 70-80 min. Test for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean and dry, the cake is done.

Remove the pan from the oven and then the cake pan from water bath. Bang the pan firmly on the counter (to set the cake??).

Let the cake pan rest for 5-10 minutes on a cooling rack before removing the cake from the cake pan. Peel off the parchment paper. Let cool to room temperature before cutting.

Pizza … and a Teaser

For spikesgirl58:

This is the pizza I made today. It was delicious. Just my usual pizza dough, frozen, thawed in the fridge overnight and baked today. I threw everything I had on top. Hot Italian sausages, spicy pepperoni, green pepper, mozzarella and sharp cheddar cheese on a jarred portabello mushroom sauce.

And this is a Japanese orange Castella/sponge cake I made back in May. I’ve wanted to make a Castella cake for a while and this was the result. Because it’s a very simple, barely sweet, cake, it benefits from some garnishes. I had no fresh berries or mint so I put a scoop of French vanilla ice cream on top, warmed up some plum jam and diluted it with water and poured it over the top.

I really should do a proper post of this cake, one of these days.

Three Kings Cake … with Repurposed Filling

They know how to party in New Orleans, especially before the forty days of Lent when Christians are supposed to fast or give up something they like. Mardi Gras is the name for the time period before Lent … a joyous carnival like atmosphere of parades and indulgence.

And, in New Orleans, King Cake or Three Kings Cake is the personification of that joyous occasion in pastry form.

There are a number of variations in terms of whether there’s a filling or whether it’s braided, but decorating the finished cake with the colours purple, gold and green is traditional in the southern regions of the United States.

For Christmas I made a sweet Boursin cheese spread flavoured with dried cranberries and orange zest. It was tasty, but other than a single rather skimpy smear on my Christmas bread wreath, it’s been lingering in my fridge. So when I was deciding on a filling for my Mardis Gras style (Three) Kings Cake during the Epiphany, I repurposed my sweet Boursin. I thought it needed some additional texture and substance, so I chopped up about half to three-quarters of a cup of sliced almonds and sprinkled it over the Boursin.

The resulting cake, using this recipe, was tender and delicious, though my decoration fell short of my expectations. It needed a lot more glaze. Double or even quadruple, I think.

The filling was an unqualified success.

Cranberry-Orange Spice Boursin – makes about 3/4 cup of spread

1/2 pkg cream cheese, room temp
1 tbsp unsalted butter, room temp
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup dried cranberries, finely chopped
1-1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp orange zest

Cream together the cream cheese, butter and salt using a hand blender. Stir in the cranberries, black pepper and orange zest. Pack into a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate so that the flavours will marry. Remove from the fridge 1 or 2 hrs before serving so that the Boursin will be soft enough to spread.

Happy Thanksgiving (2019)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

“Jiggly” Japanese Cheesecake… Trial 1

I’ve been curious about this cheesecake for some time and finally got around to giving it a try.

“Jiggly” Japanese Cheesecake

Since some recipes called for as many as 8 yolks and 12 whites, which I didn’t want to commit to the recipe, I looked for one which seemed more restrained in its egg use, and didn’t give complicated baking instructions involving adjusting the temperature during baking.

As a final complication, I didn’t want to make a full sized recipe.

I don’t have the 7 or 8 inch diameter springform pan (mine is a 9 inch) called for, in the first place, and, secondly, a full sized cake is too much for a single person. Based on the recipe, I used, I guesstimated that a full recipe, would make about 4-6 cups of batter. So, I thought that the batter from a half recipe would distribute nicely among three or four one-cup ramekins with room for souffleing. I prepared four, to be safe, and added four inch tall parchment paper collars to accommodate the expected souffleing. (The collars didn’t turn out to be needed.) I filled each ramekin about three-quarters full and baked the ramekins in a water bath for 40 minutes, at 320 degrees Fahrenheit. A wooden toothpick inserted into the middle of a cheesecake came out clean, at this point. Even though the top was as pale as when I put the cheesecakes in the oven, I decided not to bake any further and shut off the oven, leaving the cheesecakes in the oven for another 30 minutes to cool and set fully.

ETA (03/30/19): Refrigerate the cheesecake for at least 4 hours before eating. The cold temperature sets the cream cheese and improves the flavor and texture. Store any remaining cake in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. To freeze, wrap the cake tightly with plastic food wrap and then a layer of foil. Freeze for up to 3 months.

For aesthetics, I brushed some apricot glaze, made from stirring together 1 tbsp of apricot jam with 1 tbsp of warm water until smooth, over the top of the cheesecake.

I ate the first one warm because … well, I couldn’t wait until the next day to eat it cold.

Review: The recipe isn’t very challenging technique-wise, especially if you’ve ever made meringues or any cake involving folding flour etc into a fluffy egg white base to minimize deflating. It was very tasty warm, with just a bit of added sweetness from the glaze to contrast with the slight tang from the lemon juice and cream cheese. I liked the texture which was more similar to a moist pound cake than to a classic cheesecake.

NOTE: Refrigerating the cheesecake overnight transformed the cheesecake. It became more CHEESECAKEY and less ‘cakey’.

Orange Curd Sponge/Swiss Roll

I haven’t made a sponge or Swiss roll in ages but was recently inspired to recreate the lemon curd roll I saw posted on one of my FB groups.

I dug out the wonky old baking sheet that’s the perfect size for the recipe I wanted to use and the result, with minimal effort since I already had some home made orange curd in the fridge, was delicious. It’s actually easier to make this cake than you’d suspect.

From left to right: ready to combine the beaten egg whites with the egg yolk/flour mixture, the greased, parchment paper lined, greased and floured baking sheet and the cake, ready to bake.

After baking – the top of the cake, the bottom, and the rolled up cooled cake ready for filling.

Ready to re-roll and sprinkled with icing sugar before cutting.

Inside of the sponge roll … nice and light and fluffy

Here are some pictures of my previous efforts at a vanilla roll filled with sweetened whipped cream, cherry jam and drained, jarred sour cherries …

… and a cocoa roll filled with chocolate buttercream.

Happy Valentine’s Day 2019

I decided to splurge on a pretty pink St. Valentine’s Day cake to brighten up an otherwise ho-hum occasion.

As you can tell, my cake decorating skills are at the novice level. (Is there something below that?) The cake was tasty though … I ate a third of it to confirm that fact.

Profile of the Pink Cherry Cake

Pink Cherry Cake – makes 2 mini cakes baked in 1 cup ramekins

Basic Vanilla Cake for Two recipe
pink gel food colouring
1 tsp Kirsch, substituted for the vanilla extract
2 tbsp finely minced red glace cherries, stirred into batter just before pouring into ramekins

Glace Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting – enough to frost 2 mini cakes including filling

2 oz/57 gm gm cream cheese, room temperature
1 oz/28 gm unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp Kirsch

Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter in a small bowl until smooth. Add the Kirsch and beat in briefly. Beat in the powdered sugar.

Spread/pipe the frosting over the cake.

Vanilla Cake for One (Review) and a Variation

Sadly, you can’t just omit the cocoa powder in the previous ‘chocolate cake for one’ recipe and get a vanilla version, because the chemistry of the leavener doesn’t work, so I went net surfing for a real vanilla cake recipe.

My answer was found in a ‘vanilla cupcake for two’ recipe baked in a cupcake/muffin pan … so I buttered a couple of ramekins instead. Because a CUPcake is NOT a cake. I had some sticking in the very center of the mini cakes so on my second attempt, an orange flavoured variation, I buttered the ramekins and lined the bottom with a circle of parchment paper, cut to size, which solved the problem.

Frosting a cake at midnight does not result in the most photogenic of images but I had to snap a picture before going to bed.

Crumb/profile of the vanilla cake … yes, there’s some orange zest in the vanilla buttercream frosting in case you spotted that fleck of orange.

REVIEW: Very tasty cake. Fast and easy to assemble. Of course you can frost each ‘cake’ individually but the two layer version just has a lot more visual appeal. For a quick and easy frosting, slightly sweetened whipped cream would work.

Of course I had to take the plain vanilla cake to the next level by adding 1 tsp of orange zest and substituting orange extract for half of the vanilla extract, in the next version I made.

I also decided to switch to a less sweet filling/frosting since the vanilla buttercream that I had used, from the same web site as the chocolate cake, was just too sweet. My ideas evolved from a cream cheese/butter/icing sugar version to one that reduced the amount of sugar and substituted it with home made curd. Since I had made an orange flavoured cake, I made a batch of orange curd to enhance the orange taste. I scaled down a frosting recipe that I found here.

I used less curd than I had originally calculated but I still think the frosting was too soft, even after half an hour in the fridge, so I’d cut back even more on future attempts.

I’d also use the frosting for a filling, in the future, because the orange curd oozed out while cutting into the cake. Hopefully the frosting as filling will stand up to serving better. I’m a firm believer in not skimping on the amount of frosting used but I think the amount I made is enough to fill and frost two mini two layer cakes.

Crumb/profile of the orange cake

Orange Curd Frosting – enough to frost 2 mini cakes including filling

2 oz/57 gm gm cream cheese, room temperature
1 oz/28 gm unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tbsp orange curd *

* Start with the smaller amount and decide whether you’ll need another 1/2 tbsp. You probably won’t need the full amount

Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter in a small bowl until smooth. Beat in the powdered sugar, then the orange curd.

Spread the frosting over the cake.

NOTE: The original recipe says the cake may be frosted a day before serving and covered with a cake dome and refrigerated so it doesn’t dry out.

Coffee Cake for One (Review) and a Variation

After having LOVED the chocolate cake (for one) recipe found on the same site, I thought I’d give the coffee cake for one a try as well.

It’s another winner.

I WOULD cut back on the topping though since half the amount is plenty. The excess just fell off when I turned out the cake to transfer it to a serving plate. Perhaps if I’d drizzled some melted butter over the top, as the post suggests doing, it would have “glued down” the cinnamon sugar topping.

REVIEW: The cake itself is tender and tastes just sweet enough for my taste. I used the same one cup ramekin as I had used for the chocolate cake and thought that the resulting coffee cake was a bit thin.

So, I opened a can of tuna (made a tuna salad sandwich with the tuna inside), peeled off the label and washed it out carefully. I added some home made cranberry sauce in this variation. The revised baking instructions/topping are posted below.

Cranberry Coffee Cake for One

Cranberry Coffee Cake for One

Cranberry filling

1-2 tsp cranberry sauce, home made preferred

Topping

1 tbsp melted unsalted butter
1-2 tsp rolled oats
1-2 tsp brown sugar
pinch ground cinnamon

Make the coffee cake batter as in the original recipe.

Spoon 2/3 of the batter into the prepared baking dish. Using a very small spoon place small amounts of cranberry sauce over the batter. Spread it out a bit. Spoon small amounts of the rest of the coffee cake batter over the cranberry sauce.

In a separate container, combine the brown sugar, rolled oats, ground cinnamon and melted butter. Spoon over the top of the coffee cake batter.

Bake for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

The top of the coffee cake could have been a bit darker but the bottom was nicely browned.

There was a bit more height compared to the coffee cake baked in the ramekin, as well.

Happy Belated National Chocolate Cake Day (Jan. 27, 2019)

I recently commented on Dolly’s “koolkosherkitchen” blog that her National Chocolate Cake Day post made me want to make/eat some chocolate cake and she responded with “So go for it – it only takes a minute!”.  Well, the recipe that I used took a bit longer than a minute but the resulting cake was rich and chocolatey and pretty easy to make.

Although the recipe title says it’s a cake for one, on reading the post you’ll see that she recommends splitting the batter among two mini pans. Do it. You’ll be glad you did cause the batter really puffs up. And make twice as much of the frosting using the link at the bottom of the page. I have one cup ramekins so that’s what I used to bake the cake in. If you don’t … use an empty tuna can that you’ve washed thoroughly. Remove the label.

Chocolate buttercream frosting

Pour yourself a big glass of cold milk and dig in.

REVIEW: It’s delicious.