BAKING 101: Junjun De Guzman & Adoree Uy
Can you give me the recipe for this type of cake I had? Can you make the same dessert or cake made or sold by this certain pastry shop? We get a lot of questions like these and it has been very hard to answer them since it is very difficult to come up with a certain type of baked product with a distinct type of taste, flavor, texture and feel. There are a lot of hidden bakers around town and I know that quite a few of my students would like to copy specific items or make something quite similar to it. Have a peek at the questions this week.
Q: Hi there, Jun Jun and Adoree! I had this lovely white dessert the other night at a party. It was a dense meringue dessert but I don’t really know what it was called. The host of the party said it was a pavlova but I think she was pulling my leg. It was a cross between a Brazo de Mercedes and a cake. Help! Just thinking about the dessert gave me sleepless nights. (Elizabeth of Makati)
Jun Jun: Then you should take some Tylenol PM, hehehe, that’s a joke; I know that most of you will sometimes get to taste unusual desserts. You’ll love it so much that you just have to make something like it. Frankly, it will be quite difficult for me to answer your question because I have been given very little information about the dessert. It would help if I had a picture and a detailed description. But I’ll hazard a guess anyway. Based on your description I have a feeling that what you just ate is the famous angel food cake. Light but dense, it is very white inside but its exterior is a light brown, and it has a dense marshmallow like consistency. Lately, a few homemakers have been using this cake as a base, adding a filling that is a bit sour, to counteract the sweetness of the cake. They usually cover the whole cake with whipped cream, and then they freeze it. Most of the time, angel food cake will water due to the high amount of moisture in our environment, that’s why freezing it is quite important.
Adoree: Elizabeth, it is very hard to guess what the cake is. Since your friend said it was pavlova, then probably it was a pavlova alright, but presented in a different way. Maybe she layered the fruits and the meringue instead of doing the usual one layer dessert.
Q: I just had a different kind of chocolate cake; it doesn’t have crumbs, the cake had a lot of holes and was very, very moist. It looked like a hardened pudding mix. Can you help me decipher what it was? (Fleurida of Meycauayan, Bulacan)
Jun Jun: Actually in all types of cakes, chocolate is well represented. Chocolate cakes can be made in different styles and using different methods. Again, I have to make do with the few statements you made regarding its characteristics. I could be wrong, but more or less I am 85 percent sure that it’s a devil’s food cake, a famous American diner dessert that when made strictly is frosted with boiled icing. I have eaten some chocolate cakes here in Manila with such kinds of cakes but with fudge icings. The cake batter is very liquid, like a chocolate drink, due to its high quantity of water. This will account for the holes that you see in the cake. I like it too but it has a different texture from the butter cake type of chocolate cake.
Adoree: Fleurida, I think what you had was a flourless chocolate cake. You see, the absence of flour in the mixture will make the cake collapse as it cools down so the texture will be pudding-like. The holes could be due to the incorporation of air while beating the yolks and whites separately.
Q: Another famous question: How do I make my butter cake more moist just like the ones I try in the commercial bakeshops or the one in Vargas kitchen that you featured? That butter cake was very good and tasted like cheese; how do they do that? (Marina of Pasay)
Jun Jun: The Vargas Kitchen butter cake is an old recipe; whoever made or invented it got the right proportion to make the special type of cake with just the correct amount of ingredients resulting in a very soft, moist and buttery cake. The best method to use is of course through the process of trial and error. Get a recipe and play around with the amount of the egg yolks and sugar since usually both ingredients are the deciding factors. Good quality ingredients, proper oven temperature as well method and procedures must be taken into consideration. Over mixing your batter will make it quite hard and not as soft and crumbly. Just remember the gluten affair! I would also suggest using an oven temperature that is not too hot, say around 325F, especially if you are baking a rectangular cake. I hope you succeed in this endeavor. Try looking for my recipe of Inigo’s Butter Cake; that was a good one with all the characteristics you wanted.
Adoree: I agree with Jun Jun. You’ve got to have the right amount of egg yolks and sugar in the recipe to create a moist butter cake. Some butter cakes call for the addition of whole eggs, separating the whites from the yolks, and beating them separately. The latter will give you a fluffier cake but you ought to be careful when beating the whites. Over beating them will cause the cake dry. The next time you bake a butter cake, remember the tips we gave you. I’m sure you will be able to create a beautiful, moist cake.
Q: I had a fruit pizza. It was really good, what was it made of? (Ixxie of San Pablo)
Jun Jun: I just got back from the United States and I saw and tasted quite a number of fruit pizzas. The first one had a flat pie crust that was like a cookie dough, with a simple pastry cream whipped crème and the sweetest array of fresh berries – strawberries, raspberries and blackberries--definitely irresistible. The other one had sweet bread dough flattened like a pizza and topped with another assortment of fresh fruits. If you want to recreate this in Manila it will be quite difficult since fresh berries are hard to procure during this season.
Adoree: The commonly used crust for a fruit pizza is pie dough; either the flaky variety or cookie dough will do. It is baked without the filling. After cooling it completely, a custard filling is spread then fruits are arranged on top. You can make other variations like flavoring the crust or filling with chocolate.
Give our home bakers a chance to do business. I am sure all of you will start someday just like all of them; order from them so that we can all help each other. Watch out for more inquiries and recipes in Baking 101.
Version Recipe
Devil’s Food Bars
Ingredients
65 gms butter softened
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 pc egg
½ tsp vanilla
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 cup all purpose flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ cup water
Procedure
Cream butter and sugar until light. Add eggs, then vanilla, mix. Then sift the following cocoa powder, cake flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix dry ingredients alternately with water. Stir once. Pour into a lined and greased 9x9 pan. Bake in preheated oven for 30 mins. Cool in pan
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