Monday, January 26, 2009

Redemption Song

To redeem myself from the last cake fiasco, I set about to use up my bucket of ganache by trying out a new recipe, bittersweet chocolate and pear cake, from Smitten Kitchen, a foodie blog I am starting to love. How did Deb know that my heart sings with these two lovebirds meet?

Maybe you don't believe this, but I adore the combination of pear and chocolate so much that I swayed a professional cake baker to experiment with the lovebirds as a potential batter for our wedding cake. Sadly, the basic batter she used was an intense chocolate chocolate chip ditty, which overpowered the pear and didn't make it worth the extra cost in the end. But ah well, the perfect recipe has flocked home at last. This time? The batter is made with browned butter and eggs whipped to oblivion, with all of the other ingredients of a light, yellow cake batter, so the pears and the chocolate have space to leave their flavorprints.


Changes to the recipe: I used ganache instead of the chocolate chunks, so the batter took on a marbleized appearance on top where the soft chocolate fell through the batter as the cake was rising. It tasted amazing. Also, I found that three pears were a bit much for the recipe. I cut up all of them, but only used about two.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

If I knew a publisher for a foodie mag, this would be submitted on your behalf! Your writing takes a giant gallop into the cosmos when you are talking about the beauties of food. I melt to your words and bow down in awe! well done.