Thursday, October 09, 2008

Go Komen!

My mother and I were flipping through channels the other day. We only have four channels, coming from the bunny ears on our roof. Yes, over the air. And yes... we need a stupid converter box.... That aside, we were shocked to stumble upon the broadcast of a nude photo shoot...

Woah! Wait?! Was she topless? We flip back through the couple channels our momentum sent us through. And there it was. A topless photo shoot with no lil censor bars or strategically placed muffins... OPB?! Good heavens! Of course its OPB... The only channel to broadcast nudity. Under the banner of education of course. This one we learned was about breast cancer. It is, after all,National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Apparently its also adopt-a-dog, vegetarian awareness, and national sausage month, but those have nothing to do with my cake.
I was practicing the sponge cake that goes to a Boston Cream Pie recipe. I've had the darndest time with it in the past. It should have nice big bubble pockets to soak up the creamy filling, but instead it has come out as a sweetened hockey puck of baked egg, replete with flour globes suspended throughout. As I'm using this recipe as a base for experimentation, I needed to perfect it. And so using what I had, a sponge cake, raspberry jam, cook and serve custard, and some "white chips", This lovey Raspberry Boston Cream Pie came into existence. Its even pink for the month!

Raspberry Boston Cream Pie
(Mine was actually scaled down to 3/4)

1 C Cake flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs
1 C sugar
1/4 C milk + 2 tbs
almond extract (or vanilla or raspberry flavoring)

Preheat the oven to 350 F
Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan.

Sift together salt and flour 3x. (I skimped)

Warm eggs and sugar to about 110F till sugar dissolves. Whip 6 minutes till pale. (I whipped two of the egg whites separately to give more lift to the cake)

Warm milk (original recipe had a vanilla bean to steep here) but do not boil. Add to eggs while whipping.

Fold in flour and bake 30 minutes.

Filling - I used a raspberry flavored Jello cook and serve custard mix, but a pastry cream would work better.

Topping - I have no clue how it went together... It had sieved melted raspberry jam. Cream. Powdered sugar. Some melted 'white chips. A lil butter... and I melted it slightly before putting it on. It was grainy from the sugar and white chips...

Topping Ideal - Heat some cream. Add some white chocolate. Add some raspberry jam, seedless. Maybe try butter instead of cream if it had trouble setting up...

It came out a little less than picture perfect... I blame it on my own laziness. Had I made the pastry creme from scratch, and had white chocolate for the glaze... Ghirardelli doesn't sell white chocolate chips! They sell 'white chips' whatever the heck that means. Albertson's brand are better! They don't melt well, taste like powdered milk and wax, and really shouldn't exist. Anyway... If I did it again I'd make the glaze a white chocolate raspberry ganache glaze. And probably some real raspberries in the pudding.

6 comments:

rhid said...

This may sound a tad weird but I really like the background of the first picture. The pearly, opalescent white... How did you do it? Is it just a white piece of paper?

Amara said...

Just a piece of slightly glossy poster paper. And I think the lighting, though I'm not sure how...

Whit said...

I have the second picture as your photo id on my phone now. Very fitting I think.

AND I've seen boobs on OPB too! It hardly even counted as educational I think. Something about transgenders and the night life. Pretty creepy. Thank you OPB for keeping us up on things.

LadyConcierge said...

There is no such thing as white chocolate. That's why they call them 'white chips'.

Chocolate must contain cocoa solids and so-called 'white chocolate' is made with cocoa butter only.

http://www.sallys-place.com/food/columns/zonis/white_chocolate.htm

Amara said...

I disagree. I expect white chocolate chip to have at least some product derived from the cacoa plant. Sure that could mean some lip balm would be qualified as chocolate, but then I wouldn't think ingredients other than those found it "milk chocolate" or semi sweets should be in chocolate.

Alberson's Essensia brand fits these requirements. It has cocoa butter. Sugar vanilla. It doesnt feel like a waxy ball of powdered milk not fit for human consumption!

The "white chips" I used were made with sugar, palm kernel oil, whole milk powder, nonfat dry milk, palm oil, soy lecithin and vanilla.

The oil didn't melt nearly as smoothly as cocoa butter, the powdered milks tasted as just that, dry powdery milk (grainy and disgusting), and it came right through in the finished product.

If it was in any way derived from that plant that makes chocolate, I'd be cool with it. These are more like "Milk Chips". And I'm ashamed that Ghiradelli would make such a yucky and oh-so-not-chocolate product.

~end rand~

Anonymous said...

Your cake is so cute. The pink is so fun; I bet the berry jam makes the frosting all the more delicious.