DB Caramel Cake

Sorry everyone, a bumpy patch in my life caused this post to be a day late and shorter than usual. I was thrilled when I learned this month's Daring Baker challenge. After a hiatus from sweet challenges I was ready to hit the sugar again. This month's recipe is Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater fame's signature caramel cake. I have extremely fond memories of Sander's caramel cakes from my youth. Sander's caramel cakes are a Detroit thing, along with their infamous bumpy cake. I have tried a few times to make a dairy-free version but haven't come anywhere close. I liked Shuna's cake by itself a lot. There was still some lingering soy taste but mostly you got the caramelized sugar flavor with great moistness. The frosting was more disappointing. I made it without the browned butter called for in the recipe (you can't brown margarine) and it suffered from it. My husband and son still liked it a lot but I thought it made the iced cake way too sweet. It's back to the drawing board to find the perfect dairy-free caramel cake but I'm glad I had a chance to play with a new recipe.

The hosts this month are Dolores of Culinary Curiosity, Alex of Blondie and Brownie, and Jenny of Foray into Food. Special gluten-free magic provided by Natalie of Gluten-a-go-go.

Visit the Daring Baker Blogroll to see all the other sugary creations.

Recipe for the Shuna Fish Lydon's Signiture Caramel Cake
My Recipe for Vegan Caramel

Roasting Michigan Chestnuts

I had a chance to take some pictures of the chestnuts I roasted for my cranberry-filled chocolate chestnut cupcakes and thought I'd share them. As a kid I would make my parents buy chestnuts primarily because of that infamous "chestnuts roasting over an open fire" line, I'm a sucker for Christmas music. Of course I'd only eat 1 or 2 chestnuts which probably drove them crazy. I've continued to buy them as an adult and still roast them, eat 1 or 2 and then try to find something like stuffing to throw them in so they don't go to waste. I've never had a chance to make a recipe that really showcases chestnuts. This year I plan on changing that and the cupcakes were just the beginning.

How to roast chestnuts
-Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
-Cut a shallow X into the shell of the rounded side of each chestnut.
-Place the chestnuts flat side down onto a baking sheet.
-Roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until the shell curls back.
-Cool until safe to handle and remove both shiny, dark brown shell and the furry, papery skin.

Michigan chestnuts

A scored chestnutTwo roasted and peeled chestnuts A pile of roasted, peeled Michigan chestnuts

Some of the recipes I'd like to try:
A skillet method for roasting chestnuts from Epicurious.com
Roasted chestnuts and smoked pancetta on a bed of spinach and red quinoa from Lucullian Delights (a mouthful of a recipe title but the ingredients are right up my alley)
Sopa de Castanas (Chestnut soup) from Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried (chestnuts with chorizo, yum!)
Chestnut Apple Ravioli from The Expatriate's Kitchen
Chestnut Rice from Closet Cooking (simple but it sounds really delicious)
Caramelized Onion Butternut Squash Roast with Chestnuts from Cooking Books
Chestnut Mousse from Madcap Cupcake (Alex and I really loved the chestnut frosting and I've been wanting to make this mousse since I saw it back in May.)
Warm sweet potato pudding with apples and chestnuts from Epicurious.com (This description sold me "the best sweet-potato pie you've ever eaten and then take away the crust so you can revel solely in its silky goodness")

*Don't forget the Michigan-based Chestnut Growers, Inc. They have upcoming sales in Detroit and East Lansing.

Raw Comfort Foods Class

Ever since I saw the swank demonstration kitchen in the new Rochester Hills Whole Foods I've wanted to attend a class there. When a listing for a raw comfort foods demonstration came up I jumped at the chance to attend. I've been exploring raw foods because the methods are so fascinating and delicious. The instructor for the demonstration I attended was Beth Wilke.

Beth's focus is on simple and quick recipes. She had two comfort food dishes to demonstrate that day: Cinnamon Apple Breakfast Porridge and her B&B Hot Chocolate. She began with a primer on what raw food is, for her it's vegan and nothing heated above 115 degrees F. We went over the nutritional advantage to soaking and sprouting nuts. She had samples of nuts she had soaked and dehydrated herself. We compared the soaked and dehydrated almond's and pecan's for the differences in taste and appearance to the regular raw nuts. Then we moved on to the two recipes. Both of her recipes were sweetened with medjool dates. The apple porridge was sweetened with homemade date paste (soaked dates that have been pureed) but the hot chocolate's fresh almond milk used whole, pitted dates. Beth dehydrates the remaining pulp from making her almond milk to use as flour. Because it is blended with dates she creates a sweetened almond flour. For the porridge, she warmed the dish in an oven though a dehydrator would be used at home. With the hot chocolate, she used the Vita-Mix blender to beat it to a warm temperature.

Both dishes were tasty and I really want to try and make more almond milk at home. Alex my son likes chocolate almond milk and I'd like to see if he'd drink a date-sweetened version. I'd love to play with the by-product, the date-sweetened almond flour. Beth has several other upcoming classes and she also hosts a raw potluck in the northeast metro Detroit area every other month. You can chose to bring a dish as long as you also provide a recipe or you can offer a $10 donation to attend and try all the raw food. I think it would be a great opportunity if you are just getting started. For more information, you can visit the link to her site. In addition to the new Whole Foods, the open air mall Village of Rochester Hills also has a Williams-Sonoma store that hosts classes and demonstrations. You can see all of the upcoming events in the link below.

Links:
The Village of Rochester Hills
In-store Events at The Village (Lists both the Whole Foods and Williams-Sonoma events and classes)
Rochester Hills Whole Food Market
Beth Wilke's Schedule

Beth preparing the raw cinnamon apple breakfast porridge.
From the left: coring apples, showing us the medjool date paste, the finished dish
Beth preparing the B&B's Hot Chocolate.
From left: Starting the blender with the almonds, dates and water,
filling the nut milk bag, squeezing the nut milk

Top Chef New York: Show Your Craft

I really enjoyed this week's episode. It was a lot less frantic and focused much more on the food. We began with the introduction of this week's guest judge, Donatella Arpaia. If you've watched more than one Iron Chef America than surely you recognize this successful restaurateur. She is a frequent judge on the show. The quickfire was a hot dog challenge with a real New York hot dog vendor in the house. Most of the chefs decided to whip up a sausage with the exception of Jill who crazily wrapped a standard dog in rice paper wrappers. Was this served hot or cold like a summer roll? I couldn't help gagging at the thought that it was a cold hot dog inside! Eugene who peaked my interest last week had nori with boursin cheese, another unappetizing combination. Nods were given to the success of Fabio and Hosea but Radhika's Indian lamb hot dog earned her immunity.

For the elimination round the contestants were given the task of running Craft's kitchen for lunch. The added spin was the 50 guests they had to serve just happen to be chefs that tried out and failed to get a spot on Top Chef, a sure to be critical crowd. The contestants divided themselves into appetizers, entrees, and desserts (5 each.) It was nice to see a set of Top Chef contestants that didn't moan and groan about making dessert. Finally they have learned! The Whole Foods shopping trip and night before prep fly by. I immediately know that Hosea has set himself up for failure. Being sure of the quality of your ingredients and being flexible with your recipe are cardinal rules in cooking and he breaks both of them by choosing canned crab meat he can't taste. The chefs arrive at Craft and get ready for service. Ariane give the other chefs a taste of her dessert when she unsure of it. They give her mixed answers but it seems like she knows there is a problem with the dish. Yet she proceeds anyway. Fabio displays an interesting technique where he remakes olives in a pasta-less ravioli type preparation. Everyone gets through the lunch and it's clear that there are more and less successful dishes. On to judging...

Fabio, Hosea, Carla, Ariane, Jamie and Jill are called in to be questioned by the judges. The judges praise Carla's pastry, Jamie's corn soup and Fabio's carpaccio. Fabio takes the win for his creative dish. Hosea, Ariane and Jill are critiqued next. Ariane's overly sweet dessert and Jill's poorly executed ostrich egg quiche seem to be the worst and it looks bad for one of them. They are called back in and Jill is the one eliminated!

I liked that we got much more details about the food in this episode. The chef's individual styles are developing. Jamie's comment about wanting to "celebrate the season and use good product" endears her to me tremendously. Fabio and Stefan are being portrayed as fierce competitors. Ariane seems to be on her way out. It'll be interesting to see if she can turn that around. Next week's episode will be a Thanksgiving themed meal with the Foo Fighters. I'm sure it'll be entertaining.

This week's winning dish: Beef Tenderloin Carpaccio

Cranberry-filled Chocolate Chestnut Cupcakes

Coincidentally, contemplating cranberry cupcakes can create a clever combination with chestnut and chocolate.

This month's Iron Cupcake Earth ingredient cranberry sent my mind spinning with ideas. Cranberries are in season and it's easy to find Michigan-grown berries. I'm always happiest playing with local and seasonal ingredients. The question was what to pair the cranberries with that would be appealing and unique. Someone beat me to the excellent cosmo-inspired pairing of cranberry and orange (boozed up of course, yum!) I went through and considered the entire Ocean-spray line (Cran-raspberry, Cran-apple, Cran-grape...) but that didn't peak my interest either. Then I came across some Michigan chestnuts. The combination of cranberries and chestnuts seemed fitting in a traditional holiday way. I began looking for chestnut cake and cupcake recipes. Nothing seemed perfect. Then I switched my search to include cakes with chestnuts and chocolate. Sweets aways disappear faster when there is chocolate involved. This brought up a lot more recipes to tweak but nothing specifically dairy-free or vegan (even though I cook with eggs, I have a vegan cupcake fetish.) So I made the decision to replace the pumpkin in a vegan brownie recipe with roasted chestnut puree. I filled my cupcakes with homemade Michigan cranberry preserves and made a frosting that included chestnut puree.

The cake is mildly sweet and not overpoweringly chocolaty. You can taste the natural sweetness of the chestnuts and smell their aroma. The sweet/tart preserves inside bring the cake up to the right amount of sweetness. I chose not to spice the cranberry preserves but would probably do so in the future. My favorite part was the chestnut frosting. I fight with using tub Earth Balance margarine for frostings because it is just slightly too wet. To get a stable frosting you have to over sweeten with powdered sugar. You can solve this by replacing some of the margarine with shortening or by using the Earth Balance sticks but both suffer from a waxy mouthfeel. The chestnut puree solved this and added a nuttiness and nutritional boost (ok ignore that last one it's a cupcake, who cares?) I've never worked with canned chestnuts but I'm thinking about making a big batch of puree and freezing it for future frosting. I bet it would be excellent in a chocolate frosting as well. Here's what I did:

Chocolate Chestnut Cake
Special thanks to have cake, will travel for the recipe Pumpkin Chocolate Brownies I used as a starting point.
Makes 12 cupcakes

1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons soy milk
3/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened roasted chestnut puree
5 tablespoons neutral oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and line a cupcake/muffin pan with papers.
-Mix together the soy milk and vinegar and set aside for a few minutes.
-Stir/whisk together the two flours, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt and set aside.
-Place the two sugars and the chestnut puree into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat until combined. Scrap the bowl down and add the soured soy milk, oil and vanilla. Beat together until smooth, additional scraping may be needed.
-Add the dry ingredients in three stages beating until almost (but not completely) incorporated after each addition. Scrape down after the last of the flour mixture has been added and fold a few times to ensure that all the ingredients are blended evenly.
-Spoon into the lined cupcake pan, filling each cup two thirds of the way full.
-Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
-Cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then transfer and cool completely on a wire rack before filling.

Cranberry Preserve Filling
1 cup fresh cranberries, rinsed and halved
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

-Add the ingredients to a saucepan and cook down until thickened, stirring occasionally, approximately 20-30 minutes.
-Cool and store covered in the refrigerator.

Chestnut Frosting
1/2 cup Earth Balance Margarine
6 tablespoons chestnut puree (ideally run through a sieve to remove lumps)
1 1/2 - 2 cups powdered sugar

-Beat the margarine and chestnut puree together until smooth and combined.
-Sift in the powdered sugar and beat together. Add powdered sugar until a pipeable consistency is achieved.

Cupcake Assembly
1. With a 3/4" to 1" round cutter remove a plug from the top of the cupcake. Trim off extra cake from the plug and gently scoop out enough cake from inside the cupcake to create a reservoir.
2. Fill with cranberry preserves (~1 teaspoon) and cover with the top of the trimmed cake plug.
3. Pipe on the chestnut frosting and drizzle over some of the thickened liquid from the preserves.
4. Chill and store in the refrigerator. Allow to warm to close to room temperature before eating.

Some links:
-The Cosmo-inspired vegan cupcake that makes me jealous
-Michigan-based Chestnut Growers, Inc (With a schedule of events in Michigan where they will be selling their chestnuts.)
-Cranberry growing in Michigan
-Which type of chestnut tree should I grow on my new land? Oikos Tree Crops has 12 varieties of chestnut trees for sale.

Visit No one puts cupcake in a corner to vote for the best cranberry cupcake.
Voting begins on Nov. 30 by 8pm and ends on December 5th at noon.
The November Etsy Prize Pack includes prizes from:
Lollipop Workshop, Cookie Sunshine, Lots of Sprinkles, Cakespy and Sweet Cuppin Cakes Bakery and Cupcakery Supply
Prizes also come from these corporate providers:
Head Chefs by Fiesta Products, Hello Cupcake by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, Jessie Steele Aprons, The Cupcake Courier, and Taste of Home Books
Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers