Baking my way through writer's block...

Hazelnut Pound Cake with a Nutella Ribbon

Writer's block sucks.  I've been back from London for 10 days now, and am still "stuck" on what to write about.  There's no shortage of stories to tell, or topics to discuss - it's simply a matter of the words not coming.  I think I'm just over-thinking the whole thing.  Trying too hard and getting absolutely nowhere.

My whole routine has been slightly off kilter for the last couple of weeks.  Hubby has been gone on a couple of business trips and his absence has been very noticeable.  During the first trip, I was simply enjoying a bunch of "me" time - enjoying the silence in the house and being able to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  If I felt like having a bowl of popcorn for dinner, I could.  Then I was off on my own excursion to the UK, discovering a whole new world full of people who are just as nuts about food as I am.  He arrived home while I was away, and got to enjoy some alone time of his own.  I returned a few days later and had just a few hours to spend with him before it was time for bed and right back to work the next day.  A word of advice: if you ever take and insanely short trip overseas and think you can handle going straight back to work 14 hours after you come home, you're wrong.  Don't do it.  Take a day off to figure out which continent you're on, do some laundry and just enjoy the post-holiday glow (something which wears off alarmingly fast at the office).  By Sunday, hubby was back on a plane and I was home alone again.  However, this time the house just felt... vacant.  All of the things he does around the house are now all on my plate, and the bed feels lop-sided with just me in it.  Sure, a couple of times I've let the dogs sleep on the bed with me, but I only wake to find myself pinned under two 60 pound dogs, clinging for dear life to edge of the mattress despite the fact that the bed is emptier than normal.  {sigh}  I miss my hubby...

Several times I have sat down at the computer to write a post, but it's like wading through wet cement.  Finally, I decided that I needed to get back in the kitchen (popcorn for dinner is only fun for so long).  I hadn't baked much since being home either - like I said, my whole routine is out of whack.  So, I shook it off and flipped through a couple of cookbooks for inspiration.  I settled on Toasted Hazelnut Pound Cake from Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen - the first cookbook I ever sat down and read cover-to-cover, and still one of my favourites.  I put my favourite playlist of French music on the iPod (something else that always seems to help when I need inspiration) and got to work.

I happened to have a bag of hazelnut flour in the pantry, saving me the step of skinning and grinding up all those nuts, which was nice.  I didn't have any hazelnut oil though - something the book said was recommended, but not essential for the recipe.  Oh well - next time.  The batter was pretty straightforward and came together beautifully.  I did switch up the baking pan and the recipe a bit though.  Rather than baking it in a round spring-form pan, I baked it in my springform tube pan and added a generous swirl of Nutella through the middle of the batter.  Gorgeous smells were coming from the oven in no time - I just needed to be patient and wait for it to cool.  When it finally did cool enough for me to slice into, what did I see but a nice "smile" of chocolate-hazelnutty goodness in the middle of my cake.

Smile!

If you like hazelnuts, you will absolutely love this cake.  It's a bit lighter than a traditional pound cake, but toasty and nutty and moist, with a lovely crisp crust.  I will be baking this one again - and probably very soon.  I even picked up a bottle of hazelnut oil for next time - I can't wait to see how it enhances the flavour.

Delectable cake baked and tasted.  Pictures taken.  Post written.  I think I may just have finally broken through the wall.  Whew!

*A word about my new recipe format:  while I've always tried to list both metric and imperial measurements in the recipes I post, I've decided to change the layout to make it a bit easier to read - especially for the metric cooks out there.  It's not that the old-fashioned American cooks out there don't matter, but you are seriously outnumbered here.  C'mon already!  It really is time to get on board with the whole metric system like the rest of the planet.

Hazelnut Pound Cake (with Nutella Ribbon)

next time...

Adapted from In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley

Ingredients:

240g   hazelnut flour (finely ground hazelnuts)  1 1/2 Cups

201g   sugar   1 Cup

226g   unsalted butter, room temperature   1 Cup

100g   light brown sugar   1/2 Cup

4 large eggs, room temperature 

10ml   vanilla   2 tsp

284g   all-purpose flour   2 Cups

13g   baking powder   2 1/2 tsp

3g   salt   1/2 tsp

125ml   heavy whipping cream   1/2 Cup

15ml   hazelnut oil*   1 Tbsp

*optional, but recommended by chef

180g   Nutella   3/4 Cup

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350˚F and place rack in centre position of oven.  Butter a 9-inch tube pan or round springform pan, and set aside.
In a medium bowl, combine all purpose flour, hazelnut flour, baking powder and salt.  Whisk together, or sift ensuring there are no clumps.  Set aside.
In bowl of a standing mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and both sugars until pale & fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure to mix well after each addition.  Stir in the vanilla.
Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.  Pour in 1/2 of the cream, and mix on low speed to combine.  Mix in another 1/3 of dry ingredients, followed by the remaining cream, as well as hazelnut oil if you are using it.  Finally, mix in final third of dry ingredients and mix just until no traces of white remain.
In a bowl, gently warm the Nutella in the microwave for about 10-15 seconds, until it is just fluid enough to pour.
Pour approximately 1/2 of the batter into the prepared baking pan and spread evenly.  Pour a ribbon of Nutella over the centre (if using a tube pan, or in two concentric rings if using a round springform pan) of the first layer of batter, making sure to distribute it as evenly as possible.  Pour remaining cake batter on top of Nutella and even out the batter with an off-set spatula.  Make sure that no Nutella is peeking out anywhere - if it is, gently spread some of the batter over it to cover.
Bake for 60 minutes, or until the top springs back lightly when pressed.  Remove from oven and run a paring knife around the edge of the pan to release the cake.  Invert cake onto a wire rack and allow to cool for 20-30 minutes.
Well wrapped, the recipe says this cake keeps well for up to 5 days if refrigerated.  Kept on the counter at the office, it lasts about 2 hours before it's completely gone.

Happy Baking!


22 June 2010

RECIPE UPDATE:  I have since made this cake again, but this time I added the recommended hazelnut oil along with about 50g of flax seeds (see, now it's "healthy"! *wink* *wink*).  Let me just say that a) toasted hazelnut oil smells *amazing*, I could just sit there and sniff at it all day; and b) the added taste of the hazelnut oil is wonderful, it just adds a bit more depth to the toasty nuttiness.  Suddenly I am reminded of a line from one of my favourite movies, Rataouille (quel surprise), where Remy is tasting some food with his brother Emile...
     Remy:     Are you detecting a certain oaky nuttiness?
     Emile:     Oh, I'm detecting nuttiness alright...
Hahahaha - so cute!  I love that movie!

So, while you don't necessarily need the hazelnut oil, it's quite nice to have it in there.

Enjoy!

current state of my blog

Hello all!

Well, this week I have spent a lot of time trying to get caught up on so many things: posting, sorting through photos, catching up at the day job, and getting some sleep (that 8hr time difference really kicked my butt).  On top of that, I have spent several hours attempting to restore my blog to it's previous look - unsuccessfully.  No idea what happened there, or how, so instead of fighting it, I just went with a new template for now - *something* to give it a bit of colour!  Maybe now's as good a time as any to do the site I really want, the way I really want it (just when Meeta had me on board with being patient, now I have no choice but to make some changes).

So, thank you for your patience as my blog goes through some "wardrobe changes".  Hopefully there will just be one more.  I'll keep posting here until I'm ready for the big reveal, and I'll be sure to keep you posted.

Happy Baking!
xoxo

Julia

Funky Monkey Macarons

This month's MacTweets Challenge comes hot on the heels of my trip to Food Blogger Connect, in London. It was an incredible trip, one of the best things being tha I finally got to meet a few of my fellow MacTweeters like Cecilia with her One Vanilla Bean, Bethany and all of her Dirty Kitchen Secrets, Pam a.k.a. the Cooking Ninja, Sarah, who lives at the fabulous Maison Cupcake, the fabulous Mowie of Mowielicious fame, and the darling Meeta, who asks What's For Lunch Honey? In anticipation of this trip, however, I was most excited to finally meet the brilliant Jamie, one of our fearless MacTweets leaders, who writes beautiful stories about how Life's A Feast - and she is just as sweet and kind as I had hoped she would be.

For this month's challenge, Jamie & Deeba (who was unable to attend FBC) challenged us to "Walk on the Wild Side" with our wild animal inspired macarons. I have to admit, I was a bit stumped by this one for a while, if only because I don't always associate many wild animals with my food. If only I had seen this beautiful fella, sitting in the lobby of the Hempel Hotel in London, before I made my macs (he's the perfect embodiment of this challenge!)

A few days before I left for the conference, hubby was called away for a business trip, which meant I was on my own for a few days. Typical of moest people, we each have our different food likes & dislikes, and when we are apart, we tend to indulge in the things the other hates. When I am out of town, hubby gets to enjoy all the soup he wants (that's right - I'm a freak, I hate soup. Even the smell of it makes me gag), and when I'm on my own, I go and get myself a few bananas for simple treats like bananas & cream (a childhood fav), banana bread or bananas foster over ice cream. Spying them sitting on the counter one night, inspiration struck and the Funky Monkey Macaron was born...

I whipped up a batch of chocolate macaron shells, which turned out quite pale compared to previous batches of chocolate macs, and then got to work on making a delicious banana pastry cream for the filling. I dug through all of my recipe books, looking at recipes for banana cream pie, but every recipe simply layered slices of banana in the pastry cream-filled shell. This was not what I was looking for, so I decided to just add a single mashed banana to my favourite pastry cream recipe. That's when I discovered why the pie is made with slices... pastry cream with a banana blended in does not set up. I learned the hard way that the custard that normally firms up just enough to stay in place in a pie shell or pâte à choux becomes a delicious but runny mess when you add a mashed banana. I'll try making it again, adjusing the recipe to see if I can get it to gel, or if all else fails, next time hubby's out of town and I bake with bananas, I'll just blend them into chocolate ganache, or else take a lesson from Pierre Herme and add a tiny piece of banana in the centre.

So while they may not have turned out quite as pretty as I had hoped, they did turn out to be quite yummy. If anyone out there has a recipe for a tasty banana filling that actually sets up, I invite you to give this one a try, and let me know how it works out for you.

The recipes for both the macaron shells and the basic, non runny pastry cream can both be found in previous posts on this blog. Just click on the link and it will take you there!

Publisher's Comments

**BLOG PRESENTATION DISCLAIMER**

Hello Everyone,

This is just a very short note to everyone visiting my blog (thank you!), that I have just returned from a fantastic trip to Food Blogger Connect 2010 in London.  I had an amazing time, details of which I will be sharing very soon.

However, I have returned home to see that the templates, headers, titles and colours are all missing from my blog.  So, my apologies for the current state of my blog - it does not normally look this way.  I am working on getting the problems fixed - at least long enough for me to switch to WordPress.

Thanks again for visiting, and I hope you come back again and see it as I want it to look.  Until then...

Happy Baking!

Julia