Happy Birthday to Julian--Gluten Free Carrot Cake

A big shout out to my friend Julian! He is turning twenty this coming Tuesday. A few years back he was this skinny and snobby boy and now he is twenty, so much less annoying, and more mature. Julian and the rest of the little kids belong to another group during family gatherings. He is the oldest among the kids but not old enough to join the 大姐姐 group. All the older siblings are sisters and most have a younger brother. Naturally the sisters got together, and we let the little kids run around and fight over PSP consoles.

Every year one of those boys is flying oversea for college. Even though they've out grown their tiny frame, to me they will always be a bunch of up-to-no-good boys.

Almond Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Walnuts and Macarons

I adapted Elena's Carrot Cake Cupcake recipe into this two layer birthday cake. I like the simplicity of Elena's recipe...almond meal, baking soda, spices, eggs then BOOM you get a dozen cupcakes! I wonder if the cake would be too dense if I use regular all purpose flour instead of almond meal. However, almond meal never fails to deliver a moist cake. Almond Honey Cake with almond meal and honey is one great example.

Gluten Free Carrot Cake
6 eggs
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground clove
2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups almond meal
1 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup walnut pieces, toasted

2 round 9" baking pans, buttered or lined with parchment paper

In a bowl, mix together the eggs, oil, sugar, honey, spices, and salt. Sift almond meal and baking soda in another bowl. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together till you get a smooth paste. Throw in the grated carrots and walnut pieces.

Divide batter into two equal portions and pour along the side of the pan. *Don't pour everything into the middle, this is how you get a mini volcano during baking.

Bake for 40 minutes at 350F. Let cool in cake pan after baking. Frost right away or wrap in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator.

Cream cheese frosting: Blend 8oz cream cheese, 4oz unsalted butter, and 2 cups of powdered sugar together till you get a fluffy spread.

Assembly:

Spread cream cheese frosting on top

Frost the second cake

Decorate it with walnuts, macaron shells, or anything you have on hand

Pan Fried Chicken Breast Stuffed With Parsley-Walnut Pesto

If I were a Stepford wife, this would be the dish I make for my family in the evening. Even if you don't have a family to feed--I obviously don't have anyone to feed except my sweet tooth and always hungry stomach. You can just cook one chicken breast and half the ingredients for the pesto. I find the pesto a delicious compliment to turkey slices in sandwiches or with a little mayo between bagel.

I am usually not a big fan of chicken breast because they're so tough in chicken soups or as fried chicken. My friend, this is different. This pan fried chicken breast is tender and juicy with a crunchy skin on the top. You don't need to cook this meat till it's leather sole--just enough to get the meat cooked through. Even if you overcook the meat, let the parsley-walnut pesto rejuvenate the chicken breast. In between slices I stuffed a spoonful of parsley-walnut pesto.

You don't need a lot of preparation before hand, although preparing the pesto ahead of time and rubbing the chicken breast with salt and pepper makes dinner preparation much much easier.

Chicken dinner for two

For the pesto
1 medium bunch of parsley
1/2 cup walnuts
extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper

For the chicken
2 chicken breasts with skin
vegetable oil
salt & pepper

Rub some coarse sea salt and pepper on the chicken and set aside.

In a food processor, blend parsley and walnuts together till you get a coarse meal. While the motor is on slow speed, slowly drizzle olive oil till the food processor begin churning everything into a thick paste. Season with salt & pepper.

Heat oven to 200F. Place a large frying pan on medium-high heat, drizzle a spoonful of oil into the hot pan. When the oil is hot, place one chicken breast skin down. Let chicken cook for 5 minutes or lift one side of the chicken up to check if you get a crispy skin. Turn chicken around and cook the other side for 10 minutes. Place the cooked chicken breast on a baking sheet and let it stay warm in the preheated oven. Cook the second chicken breast following the same steps.

When the second chicken is done, turn the fire off and let the chicken stay in the pot while you take the first breast out. Carefully slice the first breast into diagonal slices, quarter inch thick. Last, stuff some pesto between slices before serving.

I had one chicken breast to myself for lunch, and it was a tad much. I would recommend serving one chicken breast for two if you and your partner in crime aren't big eaters (or if you are saving room for dessert). Definitely make a large batch of pesto because you will love love love the flavor combination of parsley and walnut. For a stronger walnut flavor, substitute olive oil with walnut oil.

Never Give Up--Macaron filled with Chocolate Ganache

Over the past two weeks, I browsed a handful of popular food blogs for work and personal interest. Some of the blogs have more than fifty comments per post on average. It would make my day to see more than 50 visitors on Chez Ma Cuisine. What is their secret? How do they get people to procrastinate just to wander over some tortuous food photos.

Without doubt, they all have great photos and mostly shot from a DSLR. To me photos are everything. I am a "food gawker", and I make the decision to scroll on or exit the webpage based on quality of the photos. Like many others I am constantly refreshing Pinterest and Tastespotting.

A good photos correlates with quality writing. The more established a blog is, the better the writing. Dorie Greenspan, for example, has a calming yet instructional voice. I read through her posts and I'm craving for more at the end. She has so much to offer. Sometimes it is about the history behind a pastry or a friend she once worked with. 

Good writing read smoothly. I never think Dorie is writing a post. Her words flow out in my mind as if she's talking to me. I think people are most natural when they share their experiences because it is coming from their heart. When you write something close to you, the words aren't forced out of you. They flow out, like silk, like water, like time. 

A good blog is made up of many elements: from good photography to a well written recipe and fluent writing. My goal is to blog what is important to me and write so in a way that will make you know more about me.

Now moving on to sharing my most recent triumph chez ma cuisine. After battling with macarons for a year (yes 365 days), the French almond meringue cookie finally submitted to my electric hand mixer. It was last year around this time that I took a macaron class form Sur La Table. I was impressed by how macarons are made with three ingredients in simple steps but at the same time difficult to perfect. 

One of the many failed attempts

After class I went to practice making macarons. I don't know what I did wrong but either the top cracked or the cookie never had feet. Some people shared a few hints on how to tell what you did wrong, but a cracked cookie can have multiple reasons such as under mixing or overly heated oven. I've tried various recipes and ingredients. I used eggs left out in room temperature for one day, two days, three days, and up to a week. Nothing worked.

All this time I've been using my electric hand mixer. I thought of buying a used stand mixer. But people in the old days don't have kitchen appliances and they still made bread, tarts, and macarons!

I gave up on my maracon project when school started in the Fall of 2011. Recently, I revisited my macaron recipes from Sur La Table and decided to give this stubborn treat another go. I watched more youtube videos and focused more on their techniques. I could tell the difference between a soft peak and stiff peak. And that's the problem of my macarons.

My batter is always watery because I don't whip the egg white long enough. When I fill my pipping bag, the almond mixture just flow out like melted milkshake. Because of the excess moisture, the macarons never dry out at room temperature. Hence lack of feet and hard shell. 

Macarons have three ingredients and three important steps. To bake perfect macarons, each step must be fully executed.

1) Sift almond meals two times to get rid of big lumps. 

• This will give you a smooth top and texture
• Macarons are such delicacies that you don't want a grainy texture

2) Beat egg white till stiff peak

• It doesn't matter how old your egg white is! Just make sure it's at room temperature
• Start a slower speed
• Hold off on sugar till you reach a foamy stage--egg white is white and have small air bubbles all over
• Increase speed to medium after you add the sugar
• When you notice the whip is leaving marks on the egg white, increase speed to high
• Continue beating till you get stiff peak that doesn't fold over
• The beating process can take up to 15 minutes on a hand mixer and a little less than 10 minutes on a stand mixer.

3) Fold almond meal and powder sugar into egg white

• Use a spatula to fold from bottom to top (incorporating almond meals at the bottom of the bowl to the top)
• Repeat till almond meal barely disappeared
• Gently gather batter into a rough ball
• Insert spatula into the center of the batter and smear out against the bowl clockwise
• In the opposite direction, gather the batter back into the center
• Repeat for 5 times, check for consistency
• You want batter to flow off from your spatula in thick-ribbon like texture and the ribbon keeps its shape for 20 seconds

The recipe I used comes from Syrup and Tang:

Egg white 50g

Almond meal 65g (=1.3 x weight of egg white)

Powder sugar 80g (=1.6 x weight of egg white)

Sugar 40g (=0.8 x weight of egg white)

Read the instruction above

Measure out the ingredients

Line baking sheet with either silpat or parchment paper

Beat egg white

Macronnage

Fill pipping bag with a round tip

Pipe quarter sized rounds on baking sheet (I count to three and move on to pipe another macaron)

Hold baking sheet on both sides, drop on counter top to release air bubbles

Leave to dry out in room temperature for at least 15 minutes and up to 2 hours

Preheat oven to 350F

Bake for 12 minutes

Wait for cookie to cool before removing it from the silpat

Pipe filling on half of the shells, top off with the filling less shells

Wait at least 6 hours before serving.

Mocha Almond Cake

Bitter sweet almond cake

Chocolate and espresso go so well together in desserts. Bitter sweet chocolate gives the right amount of sugary flavor that lightens espresso's bitterness. There is no need to use cups and cups of sugar to flavor your treat. The two star ingredient have enough kick already.

A few weeks back I shared a recipe on Almond Honey Cake. This recipe is an adaptation of it. I added some chocolate chips and dissolved two tablespoons of honey in half a cup of espresso. The result is a unsweetened mocha cake! If you prefer a sugary dessert then double the honey amount or substitute honey with half a cup of sugar.

Here is the adapted recipe for the almond cake:

Adapt the amount of sweetness you want by adding more honey or use 1/2 cup of sugar

Chunks of almond and chocolate chip

Time to use up leftover almond meals

My roommate and I dug in before the almond honey cake could cool!

A problem with obsession is you tend to dedicate so much time, effort, and resources, and at the same time ignoring your conscious and abandoning your senses. When the crave fades, however, you're left with a big mess. You question yourself, what have I done? have I lost my mind?

What I have in my kitchen is bag after bag of almond meal--some are grounded with the brown almond skin; some are silky and some lumpy. They serve as constant remainder that I only made one successful batch of macarons with a frill out of I don't know how many batches.

Time to get rid of them. And lower my blood sugar from regular stuffing of tasty almond sugar cookies.

Urgh but almond meal have such limited use. After googling some almond meal recipes, I found out that people mainly make muffins or financier from them. Nothing really arouse my interest until I stumbled across Mmingcook's almond-honey cake post!

No guilt cake for tea time!

What surprised me was her recipe used neither flour nor sugar. Also the ingredient list was short and very accessible. Any home baker would have baking powder, honey, salt, and eggs at home. So preparing the ingredients was no biggy.

Maybe not everyone has honey at home. I didn't have the liquid type of honey the recipe called for, all I have is some honey solid I got from Shanghai. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of honey, so I dissolved 2 tablespoon of the honey below with half a cup of boiling water. Then let the honey dissolve and add the mixture with the rest of the ingredients when the mixture cooled a little.

If you don't have honey, I think you can use sugar instead, but be sure add some liquid. The batter can be very heavy. I thought I made a total mess by substituting honey water for honey because when I poured the batter into my brownie pan, the batter didn't form a smooth ribbon-like texture. I had to dump the thing into the pan. But the cake came out very fluffy. 

I guess the lack of gluten from flour contributes to the lightness. Plus the egg whites helped the cake rise a little, and perhaps the hot water helped too? Like how fluffy cupcakes sometimes call for hot liquid? Anyways if you're looking for a light alternative to tea cake, definitely try this recipe. 

PS If you don't have almond meal on hand, simply pulse 2 cups of almonds with some confectioner's sugar. Adding the sugar absorbs some almond oil that might sip out in the blending process.