Black Chocolate Party Cake - Rose Levy Beranbaum Bake-off

German Chocolate Roulande

Rose released the BLAD of her new cookbook and our challenge for Father's Day was to cook one of her new recipes using it, the recipes from Marie's Blog, or the Angle food cake .

Many from the group were planning on making the Chocolate Party Cake so I decided I'd do something different with mine. I've never made a cake roll or a roulande so I decided to try it with this cake. This was all about learning after all. (The original cake is supposed to be baked in a bundt pan)

I collected all my ingredients and mixed them together and baked it in a 17 x 12 x 1 inch pan for 14 minutes.

I let the cake cool for 5-10 minutes then rolled it up in a silpat. While the roll was cooling I made Rose's German Chocolate Cake Filling
Then I unrolled the cake... uh, oh. I guess not all recipes are meant to be rolled. Or perhaps I should have used the chocolate syrup on the cake before rolling it up. I wasn't deterred. I spread the still warm filling on the cake, rolled it back up and placed it in the refrigerator overnight.

Hard to believe this was salvageable, eh?



I sliced the roll and syruped each side. It was a good cake before the syrup but the chocolate syrup really set the cake off.


I'll definitely make this cake again.. but maybe in the bundt pan as directed. :-)



This cake's taste is amazing as is the German chocolate filling. Definitely a winner.

Croissants - Rose Levy Beranbaum Bake-off

I love the forum bake-offs on RLB's site. We are given a category and each baker gets to choose a recipe under that category that is new to them. We post pictures on RLB's site and share the lessons learned along the way. With her busy schedule, Rose still finds time to give us supporting comments and praise. How sweet is she?

The first time I thumbed through"The Bread Bible" (Christmas 2007), the Croissants caught my attention and I knew that I would make them one day. Rose's writing style takes the most complicated recipe, breaks it down into do-able steps, sprinkles in a little food science and with each step she builds your confidence to try and succeed .

After mixing the dough and chilling it overnight, I squared the dough and rolled the corners out to create flaps.

I placed 8 oz of Plugra butter in the center and pulled the flaps over the butter, sealing it well. I wrapped this in plastic wrap and placed it back in the refrigerator for a 30 minute rest.

The first turn went very well. It took only a little time and coaxing to roll the dough/butter to a 16 x 7 rectangle. I gave it a business letter fold, wrapped it in plastic wrap, then put it back in the refrigerator for 40 minutes. So far, so good.

By the end of turn two, I was sure I was a natural croissant maker. I didn't have any of the horrible butter break throughs I have read about. I was feeling pretty darn smug with myself.

Then reality kicked in at turn 3.
After turns 1 and 2, I threw away a lot of flour so I decided I didn't need to use as much (I am, after all, a natural croissant maker by now. ...plus I was running low on flour)

You guessed it, I had butter break-through a third of the way through rolling the dough out. I also ran out of flour covering up the butter break-throughs so I grabbed the white whole wheat flour I had in the freezer. Big mistake. It's coarse texture set me up for a real mess in turn 4.

While I waiting for the dough to rest between turns, I checked RLB's site. She had made a comment that we could use unbleached bread flour. I wished I had read that before I grabbed the jagged wheat flour.
I used the bread flour for turn 4 but it was too late. The dough was harder to roll out and the wheat flour I used during turn 3 was cutting through the layers. (and my heart). I heard squishing noise with each roll of the pin. At this point I just kept dumping flour on it and hoping for the best. I wrapped in back up in plastic and let it rest in the refrigerator for 5 hours.

I rolled the dough out for the final time and cut it into triangles.

I shaped them and let them rise.

Then baked them until they were golden brown, cooled for 20 minutes and took my first bite. My husband and I were pleasantly surprised by the splintering crisp crust as we bit into them. Obviously, Rose’s recipe is fool proof because these came out a lot better than they should have considering all the extra flour I used. I really didn't expect these to be edible.

Lessons learned:

1. Shape the dough into a square after the first rise before refrigerating it overnight.


2. Don't use wheat flour to roll out your dough. The sharp edges breaks the glutton strands and causes butter break-through.


3. Be patient. The dough is harder to roll out in turns 3 and 4. Don't be too aggressive or use downward pressure.


4. With Rose's recipe, you can't go wrong no matter how hard you try. :-)

Here's a video of Pino Ficara making croissants. I found it very helpful to watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxCE963K-FY

Things I'm going to try next time I make them:

I'll use bread flour in place of the all-purpose; I heard the higher gluten content allows the layers to rise higher.

I'll mix the butter with some flour and chill it. I heard it really helps keep it malleable but manageable.

Chocolate-Pistachio Marzipan Spirals

For our second bake-off using one of Rose Levy Beranbaum's cookbooks, we chose to do something from her "Rose's Christmas Cookies" cookbook. The rules offered a lot of latitude. We could choose either a bar or a filled cookie. It didn't dawn on me until after I tasted these that they weren't technically a cookie but more of a candy. (the fact that I didn't have to turn on my oven should have clued me in on this)



The most time consuming step was shelling the pistachios and the most difficult step was getting the skins off of the pistachios. However, none of these task were daunting or impossible. Baking the pistachios for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven help in removing the skins.

To make the marzipan, I processed the pistachio nuts, powdered sugar, corn syrup and glycerin in a food processor until in formed a dough, then I kneaded it for 3 minutes.

If you’ll notice, my marzipan is VERY green. The recipe said to use just a dab of green paste. I stuck my toothpick half-way into the paste and used whatever food coloring clung to it. I almost added more coloring because the green doesn’t come through until you start kneading it. Thank goodness I didn’t add more!

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the marzipan rolled out. My sister called me while I was doing this step and I forgot to take pictures. I rolled the marzipan between two sheets of plastic wrap to 1/16th of an inch then spread chocolate ganache on it. I placed the ganache covered marzipan in the refrigerator for 10 minutes for the ganache to firm up then rolled it up like a jelly roll, painted it with egg white then rolled it in chopped nuts.

At first bite, the brute force of the chocolate is dominant overall but then as the marzipan melts on your tongue the chocolate mellows and there is a subtle pistachio finish. Very interesting indeed.

This would be a great dessert to make in the summer time because you do not have to turn your oven on. But the best thing about the Chocolate-Pistaschio Marzipan Spiral is you can make them several weeks or months in advance. They store very well in the refrigerator or freezer. I plan on serving them on May 22nd at a get together at our house. I love foods that you can make ahead of time. It reduces the stress of entertaining!

You'll have to be a member (free) of Rose's forum to read what the others made. Join then click here.

Charlotte Bake off

Some fellow bloggers from http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/decided to have a bake-off. Each person was to select one of the Charlottes from "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum and then post about it.

A charlotte is made by lining a mold with a sponge-type cake in varying geometrical shapes and then filling the mold with an airy Bavarian or whipped cream. The nice thing about the charlotte is you can prepare it in advance and refrigerate it up to 3 days with no loss of texture or flavor.

I chose the Chocolate Chip Charlotte because it had an interesting look (well...and it had the least amount of components needed to assemble) All I needed was a Genoise (pronouced JenWAHZ), Chocolate Ganache, and Chocolate Chip Whipped Cream.

A Genoise is a European sponge-type cake containing butter and is leavened by stiffly beaten eggs. The ganache was made with equal amount of chocolate and cream and the Chocolate Chip Whipped Cream was made with heavy cream, sugar, vanilla, ground almonds and chocolate with enough powdered gelatin to stabilize it. I accidentally omitted the almonds. oops



I baked the genoise in a square pan, coated one side of it with half of the ganache then sliced it into thin strips. These strips were then placed in a bowl slightly overlapping each one. Once the bowl was lined with the cake strips, it was filled with the chocolate chip whip cream and refrigerated.

I was very surprised how easy it was. I'd definitely do it again.

To see pictures of the charlottes other made click here

Other blogs on Charlottes:
La Tartine Gourmande Strawberry and Raspberry
Zoe Bakes Chocolate
Happy Home Baking Mango and Peach
Cannelle et Vanille Summer Berry