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| St. Louis gooey butter cake |
You see, the thing about having a beautiful and spacious cookbook nook is that it begs (implores, even) to be filled up with all sorts of lovely cookbooks. I'm trying to curate the collection carefully, but boy do I love a good culinary read. So when I heard about
American Cakes and the generally positive reviews, I had to get it. Cakes and history! While I was at it, I also got a copy of
Paul Hollywood's British Baking. I have another one of his cookbooks, and was pretty pleased with the recipes and instructions so thought I'd get this one, too, to provide some edification on bakes from the other side of the pond. I can't stress enough how impressed I have been with the caliber of baking from the GBBO. Week 5 was time to take these books for a test drive and why not throw in some yeast for good measure?
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| Semolina and rose water cookies |
Before I get to those, though, I thought I'd try a technical challenge in the form of a rose water and almond based cookie. This time, I went to Morocco and tried a semolina and rose water cookie (ghoriba, I think). Not knowing exactly what the taste and texture should be was a definite handicap, as was not having semolina flour. (I used a mix of whole wheat flour and a bit of cornmeal.) The flavor was pretty good, but texture was too dense/hard. A little like a biscotti and needed to be dipped in mint tea.
Kicked off the weekend with a cake that I'd been wanting to try for quite some time: St. Louis gooey butter cake. Good thing my new cookbook had a pretty authentic looking recipe for it. I was first introduced to this cake by some good friends at a Super Bowl party pitting their Rams against my Patriots. We made regional foods and they provided fried ravioli as well as the aforementioned cake. The New Englanders contributed clam chowder and Boston brown bread. At any rate, there is significant debate about the proper way to prepare the gooey butter cake. This was a yeasted cake base with a buttery sweet topping. I'm not quite sure that I got the base to rise adequately and I may have overworked it, too, making it a little tough. I'd also second-guessed the recipe since it called for two 8" square pans and I thought for sure this wasn't going to work; so I used a 9x13" pan instead. Feedback from a St. Louis born and bred (and self-proclaimed gooey butter cake authority) was that the base should be a little crisper so two pans would have been the way to go. This may be the St. Louis equivalent of the sugar pie, though: so much sugar and butter. I may take a crack at the NYT recipe, too, next time and see how it compares.
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| Goat cheese and prosciutto couronne |
To counteract the sugar overload, I rounded out the weekend bakes with Paul Hollywood's ham and goat cheese couronne. Used some local prosciutto instead of parma ham - an even swap I think. I hadn't worked with yeasted doughs in quite some time given the abundance of sourdough breads and bagels made by JW. The directions and photos were pretty informational and I had little trouble following along. There is something very satisfying about a round of well-proofed dough. The end result was golden, crusty, and pretty well baked through. Even passed the GBBO squeeze test check. Could improve on the shaping though.
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