Whenever I read a new recipe before I try it, I read it twice; the first time, the way I would make it, and the second time, how a less experienced cook would. So many food bloggers create recipes and don’t think past their own abilities.
What I learned about cooking and baking with students who worked in my kitchen at school and our spätzle customers who don’t like to or know how to cook is you can’t assume anything.
Tomorrow is our youngest son Sam’s 22nd birthday which we are celebrating today since he is working in the ER tomorrow night. I asked him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday and he couldn’t decide and left it up to me. He did request a low-country seafood boil like we did last year for dinner.
I looked through dozens of birthday cake ideas that aren’t dry af gluten-free cake recipes. Sam loves chocolate and peanut butter, so I decided on a flourless chocolate & peanut butter torte with chocolate ganache. Yum! The recipe was listed as “Super Simple and Easy Flourless Chocolate Cake.”
The cake recipe was easy and required no mixers or fussy kitchen equipment. I followed the recipe exactly and was pleased with how well it came out.
It came out of the springform pan without any problems, and removing the parchment paper from the now top of the cake went smoothly, keeping the cake intact perfectly. Sometimes the paper sticks and ruins the edges of the cake.
After letting the cake cool completely and the ganache was made, the recipe says to frost the cake with the ganache on a wire rack. Here is what the recipe writer fails to mention, what side of the cake is the top and the bottom? How do you get the frosted cake from the wire rack onto a serving plate or stand without ruining it?
I know the answers to both of those questions, but thinking like a beginner cook/baker, I would be confused and honestly unsure what to do. It would help if you didn’t have to look at other recipes or a Youtube video to answer questions about the one you are using. Right?
I did go to other flourless chocolate cake recipes and found half of them told you exactly how to frost the cake with the ganache frosting and the other half assumed you knew how to.
Remember what I said never to ASSUME anything; it always makes an “ASS out of U and ME.” See what I did there? 🤓
Ignoring the recipe’s instructions about frosting on a wire rack, I inverted the cake onto a cake stand and then frosted the cake with the ganache frosting. I wasn’t thrilled with the piping of the warm peanut butter because when I was piping it onto the cake in lines, it globbed out and made me curse up a storm.
I remedied the problem when I dragged a skewer through the frosting but hated how the edges of the cake looked unfinished. I piped peanut butter around the edges and carefully sprinkled it with chopped peanuts. I was satisfied with how it looked and stuck it in the fridge until cake time.
The other recipe I used today for clarified butter failed to mention a method that makes clarifying butter so much easier. I was watching a cooking Youtube video, and they happened to be clarifying butter for chicken. In the video, the Korean food stall cook used a ladle and a sieve to remove the butterfat foam from the top of the butter.
Every time I attempted to clarify butter, I ended up frustrated because when I scooped off the butterfat scum from the top of the butter, I lost half of my clarified butter with the scum. I stopped trying and just served melted butter whenever I made shellfish.
I looked at recipes for clarified butter, and none of them tell you about the sieve trick making it so much easier. Is this another case of professional chefs keeping secrets from home cooks, so food looks better when you go out to eat? I think so.
My clarified butter was so easy to make! I always thought it was much more complicated since restaurants have one prep cook in charge of clarifying butter and nothing else. If they are lucky, they are also trusted with other small tasks like picking herbs off stems or just zesting lemons.
Most new chefs spend months doing just one task. It’s all part of life in a professional kitchen and paying your dues, especially if you become a chef by attending and receiving a degree saying so from a culinary school and not moving up the honest or hard way, as they would call it.
Yes, an executive chef would scream at me since there were still a few tiny bits of fat debris in my clarified butter, but for our seafood boil this evening, I think it will be fine, and we all will live.
I’m glad I tried clarifying butter using the Korean cook’s hack again. Now, I am sharing it with you. Clarified butter, also called ghee, is used in Indian cooking. Now I can finally prepare my Indian dishes the proper way! Thanks, Korean food stall guy!
Here is the link to the Super Simple and Easy Flourless Chocolate Cake I made today in case anyone wants to try making it.
Look for Sam’s birthday dinner post soon! Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, guys!