Butter Pecan Layer Cake

For Thanksgiving I decided to make a Pecan Pie, but then I found this recipe online, and decided to make a Butter Pecan cake. The original recipe is here- I've made a few changes, and I split the work over three days, so here is my version. It is the most elaborate, and definitely the tastiest cake I've made in a long time. It ages well. One day after being assembled it still tastes great. 

The plan below is how I should have broken the work up. What I did was make the icing and cake the second day, and assemble on the third. The icing suffers a little from being refrigerated- you might have to beat it a second time to bring the texture back, and this is a nuisance. It was still delicious, but I wouldn't make the icing a day ahead again. This is also the most time and labour intensive step.

Day 1
Brown Butter
Bourbon Caramel Sauce
Day 2
Cake
Day 3
Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing
Assembly



Best Butter Pecan Layer Cake. 
12 generous slices, 16 reasonable slices.

Day 1:
Brown Butter

4 sticks of unsalted butter (each stick is 8 tbsp)

Melt the butter in a sauce pan over low-medium heat. Stir frequently with a silicon spatula. The butter will foam quite a bit. Scrape the sides and bottom, as you stir, to keep the butter browning evenly. It took me about 25 min of near constant stirring to have the butter change colour.
As turns brown pour the butter out, along with all the milk solids, into a heatproof dish. I put it into a glass jar with a wide mouth. Let it cool a bit and put it into the fridge for later use.
Put the butter out about an hour before you start making the cake or the icing- it will need time to come to room temp before it can be used.

Bourbon Caramel Sauce
1 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tbsp bourbon
1 pinch of salt

Put the sugar and water in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Gently swirl the pan to combine- do not stir. Crystals might form on the sides. Ignore them.

Simmer till the mix turns brown- took me about 25 min at medium-low heat. It burns easily, so will need constant vigilance at this stage.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the butter- make sure the butter is not too cold or the mix will seize.
Add the cream and stir.
Add the bourbon and the salt.
Put the pan back on the heat and simmer for a few minutes while stirring.
My caramel was full of lumps so I had to strain it into a jar- after this is both looked and tasted great. Set this aside to cool, then refrigerate.



Day 2: Brown Butter Pecan Cake
3 tbsp unsalted butter
2 cups finely chopped pecans
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 of the brown butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 egg yolks (keep the whites)
3 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (1 1/4 cup 2% milk with 2 tsp of vinegar left to sit for about 10 min)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Melt the 3 tbsp of butter in a pan or skillet at medium heat. Add the chopped pecans (2 cups).
Stir frequently, till browned. Took me about 7 min.
Take them off the heat, and set aside for adding to the batter later.
Butter 3 8-inch cake tins, line with parchment paper, butter the paper, dust with flour and set aside. I suspect 2 9-inch tins would also work well, and result in a cake that is easier to cut, though less impressive to look at.
Make the buttermilk, if not using store bought, by putting vinegar into 2% milk and setting this aside for some minutes before use.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
Use an electric stand mixer with the paddle attachment to combine the brown butter, oil, white sugar and brown sugar till pale and smooth (about 7 min). Mix in the eggs and egg yolks one at a time, adding the vanilla with the last egg.
Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low speed just until combined, then add in 1/2 of the buttermilk and mix just until combined. Repeat alternating flour and buttermilk, ending with the final 1/3 of the flour.
Fold in the pecans till evenly mixed through.
Divide batter evenly among the 3 prepared baking pans.
Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean. It took me 32 min.
Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack while in the pan.

Run a knife around edges of the pans to ensure the cakes are loosened, and invert them onto the racks to cool completely.
When the cakes are cool level the tops. I had to do this for just one of them- the other two came out pretty flat.
If making the cakes some time or days before assembling them, brush them with 2 tbsp simple syrup each (1/3 cup sugar heated with 1/3 cup water till the sugar dissolves) before storing. 
I put each cake on a separate dinner plate, brushed it with syrup, and then wrapped it up in plastic for the next day. They sat out on the counter overnight and came to no harm. It was about 62F/17C in the house.



Day: 3
Brown Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream

6 large egg whites (you can use 2 from yesterday)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark-brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (16 tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
the remaining 1/2 of the brown butter softened
3 tsp vanilla extract

Dip a paper towel in a tiny bit of vinegar and wipe the bowl of an electric mixer with this to remove any trace of grease.
Make a double boiler by placing the mixer bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. The bowl isn't supposed to touch the water but it after about 20 minutes of stirring I let the bowl get into the water a bit in an effort to speed things up.
Place the egg whites, sugars, and salt into the bowl and whisk gently but continuously. Keep whisking till the mix reaches between between 150 and 160 degrees F (took me about 35 min). I started by placing the mixing bowl on a baking rack that I arranged over the saucepan. When this seemed to be too slow I inverted a small glass bowl in the saucepan and rested the mixing bowl on that, to get closer to the boiling water.
Attach the bowl to your mixer and use the whisk attachment to whip the egg whites on high speed until thick, glossy peaks form and the bowl no longer feels warm to the touch. It will take about 5 min for the mix to look glossy, and about 15-20 min till the bowl cools.
When cool switch to the paddle attachment and reduce the speed to medium-low. Add both butters, about 2 tablespoons at a time, beating after each addition. The meringue will deflate slightly as butter is added, don’t worry. Once all the butter is added, beat until the icing is smooth and silky. This took me about 5 minutes.
Add the vanilla and beat on low just until combined.

Notes

I made the icing a day before making the cake, and had to refrigerate it. This meant that the next day I had to take the icing out a couple of hours before assembling the cake, wait for it to warm up, put it back into the mixing bowl, and beat it again to get a nice glossy look to it. It never looked as nice as it did on the first day.

I tampered with the ratio of sugar, using a quarter cup of white and 1 3/4 cups of brown. This changed the structure of the icing a bit, and made it a bit looser. It tasted great but didn't look as shiny, or hold the layers up quite as firmly as an icing with more white sugar might have done.

Assembly:
Put the first layer down on a plate or cake stand. Top with about 1/4 of the icing. Place the next layer on top and cover with another 1/4 of icing. Add the top layer and fill any gaps that there might be on the sides.
Cover the top and sides with a very thin layer of icing and put the cake in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This crumb coat will make it easier to finish icing the cake tidily, with fewer stray crumbs.
Pull the caramel sauce out- I had to microwave mine to melt it, and then put it out in the cold to get it to a cooler temperature.
Cover the top and sides with the remaining icing, trying for as smooth a surface as possible.
Make sure the caramel is cool before you pour it over the top, or it will melt into the icing. Top the cake with the caramel sauce working outwards from the centre. It should make its way to drizzling down the sides without any help from you.

Toast 1/2 cup of whole pecans in a little butter, till brown, about 5 min, to top the cake.

Some pointers for survival.

I am going to write the South Indian girl's guide to living with a white boy (or girl? I don't know enough about living with white girls). Based purely on anecdotal evidence.

Here are a few things. 

1. They will try to put their big feet on everything- on tables you might eat off, on you, on the nice chair you do your best to keep clean. This might even be with shoes on. Or even worse their mum will do this. And to keep things pleasant you will have to swallow that shriek of outrage and gently maneuver them out of that position.Or suffer.

2. You will have to be polite when the mother of your relatively aware white boy wants to put on a safety pin in solidarity with People of Colour. I understand white people are anguished about Trump as well, and maybe everyone in your church is wearing a pin, but  church full of white people, with one token Indian named Bob is part of the problem. I will make this a while chapter- things the white mum or your white boy may say or do. How to navigate without losing your mind, the goodwill of this nice older lady, or making your white boy feel terrible for being the progeny of old white people. My take is he can't help it. Just as I cannot stop my nearly 70 yr old Indian father from saying racist things without meaning to. All I can hope for is that he doesn't vote for Modi again .

3. Food- there will be an entire chapter about food.
How to turn his endless bottles of salsa into the tamatar-pyaaz component of your sabji or chicken curry.
How not to turn purple when your nice Southern boy suggests putting a ham hock, or some sausage in with your lentils to give it some fat.
How not to cry inside when he takes your biryani, puts cheese on it, wraps it in a corn tortilla, and eats it with chipotle sauce.
How not to murder someone when they look at the paneer you made, all on your own, from glorious full fat milk, from American cows as big as Indian cars, and say "It's just like Tofu right?" NO IT BLOODY WELL ISN'T. Just like how not all white people are the same....
There will also be some ranting about pound cake and it's incomprehensible popularity.

4. You will have to train them into getting used to you stealing their towel occasionally. Actually I don't think a lot of other people do this. This is not a brown girl thing, it might just be me.
Also- housekeeping and gardening. I grew up with grandparents who were enthusiastic gardeners but I have never encountered anything like the suburban American's passion for lawn maintenance. Just seems mad. 

5. A relative that you encounter only at family gatherings, like Thanksgiving and Christmas which are coming up, might ask you if Indians pay income tax. Yes. And we have had the concept since before this country was called America. Next?

Apple cake

German apple cake- Apfelküchen

This is perfect for days on which you do not feel like shopping for specific ingredients. Chances are everything you need is already in the pantry.

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract 
• 2-3 apples (I used Gala), peeled, cored and cut into slices
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease or spray a 9" tart or cake pan. 
In a small bowl whisk the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, or with a handheld mixer, cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy- about 2-3 min.
Prep the apples.
Add the eggs, one by one, and mix.
Add the vanilla extract, and almond extract if using.
Turn the mixer to low, and slowly add the dry ingredients. Mix slowly till well incorporated.
Transfer the batter to the prepped pan. It will be sticky, and will need smoothing out with a spatula.
Arrange the apples on top.
Mix the last 1/3 cup of sugar with cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle it on top of the apples.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, or till a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Notes
It might look as if the top is browning too fast but do not cover the top. A few dark bits are better than the whole thing going soggy.
If in doubt about whether it is done take it out after 40 min- it will continue to cook a little longer in the pan.
I'm not sure what makes this cake German but that's what the recipe said so I'll go along.

Source: Eva Bakes
Be careful if you hit that link. You'll get a great food blog but also unending Republican ads about how a vote for Clinton would be a vote against Modi's government (if only we were so lucky).

Micro snakes

"It is like micro snakes, all trying to crawl up my nose and into my brain."
Says J about my hair.

It is so humid here that it feels like we could open the balcony door and just swim off into the sky.

Don't blame the hair. It is just trying to deal with summer, like all the rest of us.

Movies one weekend in November

One of my New Year's resolutions is to write more. So am cleaning up old blog posts and letting them loose into the world. Also I may not watch or read anything without leaving at least a line or two about it. So prepare for many opinions in 2016.


November 2015

I have a paper due in a week. Procrastination in full swing. I have baked two batches of muffins, and watched several movies. The first batch of muffins was excellent- Banana Double Chocolate Chip Muffins, no butter or oil but applesauce instead. I was suspicious of applesauce- seemed like a bizarre American ingredient to me to begin with, but now I am a convert. I boiled up a bunch of apples that were going bad, because J is always buying too much fruit in the hope that I will help him eat it. He is not in luck. I eat fruits when they are cut and served to me by adoring grandparents after dinner, but not otherwise.

The second batch of muffins was supposed to serve as breakfast- so they had oats, bananas, cinnamon, cashews and applesauce. These did not turn out so well. They were far too runny, and deflated a bit while cooking. They were also weirdly grey. The almond extract I threw in at the last moment made the whole thing smell ever so slightly artificial- not because the essence was off, but because not even almonds smell that strongly of almonds. I gave up on these, but J has already eaten more than half, so despite their shrunken grey form I assume they are acceptable. Also he does not know where I have hidden the chocolate ones.

This weekend we started Lamhe (1991). J gave up rather soon, when Sridevi launched into her second dance, so about ten minutes into the movie. This film is nearly four hours long, and most of it is songs. Endless painful songs that do nothing to advance the plot. The creepiness of this man who falls in love with a woman, and then her daughter 18 years later was too much for us to handle. Anupam Kher is spectacularly annoying in his buffoonery, and Sridevi's high-pitched chirping was intolerable. As were Anil Kapur's sweaters, even if it was the early 90's. I did not finish this, I wanted to, but some time after watching Waheeda Rehman get on a roller-coaster with these mad hatters I gave up. Painful.

Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya (2014) was a more successful foray. Despite being ill-disposed to Varun Dhawan I found him quite tolerable. J lost patience with the Alia Bhatt character, but returned to watch every song, and practice his dance moves. I enjoyed some parts of the movie very much and was troubled by others. What did this girl study and what was her plan for after she got married? Big blank considering how smart she seems to be. Ashutosh Rana as the dad was most attractive. The sub-plot involving the plan to trick the fiancé into confessing his homosexuality was very nicely done. I was not expecting anything good to come from that set up, having been burnt by countless homophobic jokes in Hindi movies before, but this was a delightful change. For this alone I exempt the movie of criticism for the ridiculous plot and exasperating conclusion. And then there was Humpty's English poetry. In that moment I was in love too.

Nosferatu (1922)- we watched this on Halloween at a little local theatre, where they decided to allow the movie to be accompanied by an orchestra, performing music of their own composition. The music destroyed the movie, was completely off time, and included random bit of sentences, like "Beware the furry one" and "Aaaaieeeeee". I'm sure if there had been silence in the hall the movie would have been a lot spookier, as it happened, it was just tiresome. We did eat dinner in a great Chinese restaurant afterwards though. The waiter was high, and kept hiding J's beer bottle from him at the table (v bad at hiding).

Save the Date (2012) stars Lizzy Caplan. She is wonderful in everything, and even though the movie is a bit of fluff it is fun, and doesn't have the single cringe-inducing moment. Alison Brie is great too, and I look forward to seeing her in more things.

Heartlands (2002) was my find of the week on Netflix. I love Michael Sheen, almost as much as I love Lizzy Caplan. I loved them both before Masters of Sex, and so much more since that show. He was also a most excellent guest on Craig Ferguson's show, where they talked about medieval theme parks, and the importance of living without irony. Michael Sheen plays a man who learns his wife has taken up with the captain of their darts team, hops on the road to Blackpool, and has adventures on the way. The darts team captain was a familiar face as well- Jim Carter/Mr Carson from Downton Abbey. I would watch this again, when looking for a pick-me-up.

I'm reading Nora Ephron and am seized by the desire to live in New York, and be single, in my 20's. My 20's are nearly over, and I am married to a man with whom I live in North Carolina- which is pretty damn far from New York, in every way that seems possible.

The way she speaks of New York, with its charm to residents and difficulties for visitors reminds me of Geneva. When I lived there it was great- visiting it is tiresome. I do not enjoy the high prices of everything, and the lack of belonging. Perhaps this goes for all of Switzerland. It is pretty, but visiting it only makes you feel outside of a perfect bubble of joy and beauty. Which isn't even necessarily true. Switzerland is full of annoying things even for residents, and there are many such bubbles to be found in the world. Perhaps even in North Carolina.

Domesticity

This morning while being chivvied for not getting ready fast enough I was told that I was slower than two sloths losing their cherries. 

Meanwhile here is a picture of a very sleepy dog. He's not climbing over. He just likes to sleep like that. 

Friday evening party anthem

I realise it is a bit of a cop out to just keep posting poetry that might reflect some of the things I have been thinking of late.
As I type this I am sitting on what must be the world's third most comfy couch. Against my left elbow a little beagle is curled up, and making wheezy sleep sounds. I have Chopin playing on the stereo, and while it gets dark earlier each day, inside the house it just gets cosier as the year turns towards winter.
I have about a week's worth of work to do and two days in which to do it. The couch is my home, the dog my only friend, and eventually tears will replace the music. Until Tuesday when regular work, the 8 hours a day sort, will begin again. I cannot wait.