Believe it or not, I actually have a better reason than the usual, “Sorry, we’re busy” for not posting much lately. If you keep an eye on the flickr site, you might’ve noticed that food pictures have been appearing there but never migrating over to the site. Well, the reason is that I’ve had a side project going on — I’ve been making a cookbook! My good friend Jessica is getting married today, and as a wedding present for her, I gathered recipes from her friends and family and put them together in a cookbook that I had printed over at blurb.com. I didn’t have time to make everything myself, but we did test out and photograph some of the recipes, so those are what you may have seen show up on flickr. I wanted to share some of these delicious recipes with you, too, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for Jessica, who I think might read this here blog occasionally. But the beautiful wedding was yesterday today, so the cat’s finally out of the bag. The next several posts will be recipes shared by Jessica’s friends and family.

First up is this Irish cream poundcake from Katrin Baker, an advisor to both Jessica and me when we were in the Honors program at NCSU. I couldn’t resist adding some chopped chocolate to Katrin’s recipe, though I’m sure it would be delicious either way. As Katrin says, this cake actually gets better after it sits for a day or two. I especially liked it toasted. Thanks, Katrin!

Chocolate Chip Irish Cream Poundcake
adapted from Katrin Baker, originally from Cooking Light, she thinks

2 3/4 cups cake flour (about 11 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup low-fat or fat-free cream cheese, softened
10 tablespoons butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup dark chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chip (optional)
Cooking spray
2 tablespoons powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat together cream cheese and butter with a mixer at high speed. Beat in granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs, 1 at a time; beat well after each addition. Beat on high speed 1 minute.

With mixer on low, add flour mixture and liqueur alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mixing well after each addition. Stir in chopped chocolate, if using.

Pour batter into a 12-cup Bundt pan coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 325 F for 55 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack. If desired, sift powdered sugar over cake.

I made caramelized hazelnuts to decorate the top, using instructions from Tartelette.  However, I thought some pictures were in order to better illustrate the technique, so I’ve detailed what I did after the jump.  If you want the recipe for the cake, I’ll send you over to the Smitten Kitchen.  By the way, the cake has very little flour in it, so I think it could probably be made gluten free pretty easily.

Caramelized Hazelnuts

Adapted from Tartelette.

about 15 hazelnuts, plus more for praline
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c water

Toast hazelnuts and remove their skins (which are bitter). I did this by baking them at 350 F for about 8 minutes, until fragrant and barely browned. Then I wrapped them in a kitchen towel for a few minutes, and then rubbed them with the towel. For the most parts, their skins then came off pretty easily, and if there were a few tough bits to get off, I just didn’t worry about them.

Skewer about 15 hazelnuts onto toothpicks. You want to stick them on pretty good, so they don’t fall off once you dip them in the caramel. If you also want to make praline (like the pieces in the center of the cake), chop up some extra hazelnuts.

Suspend a piece of styrofoam or cardboard, so you can stick the toothpicks in it upside down after you dip the hazelnuts in the caramel, so that their little trails end up pointing up out of the top of the hazelnut. (I think styrofoam would work best, but all I had was cardboard.)

Before making the caramel, prepare a bowl of ice water that you could quickly plunge your hand in if you get the hot sugar on yourself. Stir together the sugar and water in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, and then turn down the heat to medium. Cook, without stirring, and watching carefully, until the caramel colors and smells like, well, caramel. This will probably take about 15 minutes, but once it’s there, it can very quickly get burnt, so keep an eye on it. Turn off the heat, and quickly dip each hazelnut in caramel, turn it upside down, and stick the other end of the toothpick in the styrofoam or cardboard.

You will probably have extra caramel, which you can use to make praline. If the caramel has gotten too thick, gently reheat it until you can pour it over the remaining chopped hazelnuts.

Allow the hazelnuts and praline to cool completely before removing the toothpicks and breaking the praline into pieces. The trails from the tops of the hazelnuts are very fragile. Also, they may flop over if the caramel isn’t all the way cooled before they are turned right side up.

Well, it’s time for another Daring Bakers adventure, and what fun this one was! This month’s challenge was hosted by Daring Baker co-founders Ivonne of Cream Puffs In Venice and Lis of La Mia Cucina, with help from Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful. The challenge is dedicated to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com and the Taste of Yellow LiveSTRONG event. In addition to this challenge, this month was also exciting because it brought a new Daring Bakers’ website, including public baking forums which you, dear reader, should go check out.

But enough with the business. You want to hear about cake! This month’s challenge was an Opera Cake. Though Opera cakes are usually flavored with dark ingredients like coffee or chocolate, these Opera Cakes were to choose light spring colors and flavorings. I’d recently been remembering a delicious white chocolate, honey, and lavender terrine I had when Mom and I visited Provence, so I immediately decided those would be the flavors I would pick.

Since Matt was out of town on baking day, Mom came over to our apartment and made the cake with me. I was sure glad — we had a lot of fun, and nothing was that hard, but there were times it was busy and it was good to have two sets of hands. I have to say, I’m pretty proud of how this came out. Aside from not letting the ganache firm up enough so that the glaze melted it a little, the cake looks beautiful, and it tasted delicious as well. Maybe a tad on the sweet side, but what kind of a complaint is that?! I was particularly glad of how much the lavender flavor came out. I thought it might be too subtle, but instead it asserted its presence just enough. Thanks Ivonne, Lis, Fran, and Shea, for a fun and whimsical challenge! Be sure to check out all the other Opera Cakes with the DB blogroll!

Lavender-Honey-White Chocolate Opera Cake

The lavender flavor comes out nicely in this cake. On the other hand, I didn’t really taste the honey, so I think it could probably be left out. This cake has several components: a joconde (spongy cake) soaked in flavored syrup, buttercream, ganache/mousse, and glaze. It was supposed to be only three layers and square, but Mom and I thought that looked too squatty, so we cut it in half and made it six.

Recipe based on Daring Bakers recipe from Ivonne and Lis, which was based on Opera Cake recipes from Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets and Tish Boyle and Timothy Moriarty’s Chocolate Passion.

Joconde

6 large egg whites, at room temperature
2 T granulated sugar
2 c almond meal (if you can’t find almond meal, grind about 2 c blanched almonds with a couple tablespoons of the flour)
2 c icing sugar, sifted
6 large eggs
1/2 c all purpose flour
3 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled
additional melted butter

1. Place racks to divide oven into thirds.
2. Preheat oven to 425 F.
3. Line 2 quarter sheet pans with parchment paper and brush with additional butter.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat egg whites with whisk attachment until they form soft peaks. Add granulated sugar and beat until stiff and glossy. If you don’t have an additional mixer bowl, gently scrape meringue into a different bowl and set aside.
5. If reusing bowl, rinse after removing egg whites. With paddle attachment, beat almonds, icing sugar, and eggs on medium speed until light and voluminous, about 3 minutes.
6. Add flour and beat on low speed until just combined. (Don’t overmix.)
7. Gently fold meringue into almond mixture, and then fold in melted butter. Divide batter between pans and spread evenly to cover entire surface of each pan. (This will be pretty thin.)
8. Bake until lightly browned and just springy to the touch, about 5-9 minutes.
9. Run a knife around edges of a cake to loosen it from pan. Cover with a sheet of parchment, turn over and unmold. Peel off parchment paper, turn it over, and use it to cover the cakes while they cool.

Syrup

1/2 c water
1/3 c lavender sugar
1 T honey
6-8 lavender flowers

1. Stir all the syrup ingredients together in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Buttercream
1 c lavender sugar
1/4 c water
1 t vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
blue and red food coloring

1. Combine the sugar, water, and extract in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.
2. Continue to cook without stirring until syrup reaches 225 F. Remove from heat.
3. While syrup is heating, begin whisking egg and yolk at high speed using whisk, until pale and foamy.
4. When syrup reaches correct temperature, reduce mixer speed to low and very slowly pour syrup down the side of the bowl. Be careful not to splash syrup into the path of the whisk. Don’t worry about syrup that spins onto side of bowl, and don’t try to scrape it down as it will harden.
5. Raise speed to medium high and continue beating until eggs are thick and satiny and the mixture is cool to the touch. (This will take several minutes.)
6. Mash butter with a spatula so it’s soft and creamy.
7. With the mixer on medium speed, and butter a couple tablespoons at a time. Once it’s all incorporated, raise the speed to high and beat until thick and shiny. This will take several minutes.
8. Dye lavender colored using about 2 parts blue food dye to 1 part red. (Ours was a little big grayer-blue than we wanted, but once it was in the cake, you couldn’t really tell.)
9. Refrigerate the buttercream, stirring often, until set enough to hold up a layer of cake.

White Chocolate Ganache/Mousse
7 oz white chocolate (I used Ghiradelli white chips, and I had no problems, though I’ve heard others had trouble with these seizing)
1 c plus 3 T heavy cream
1 T honey

1. Melt white chocolate with 3 T heavy cream in a small saucepan or the microwave.
2. Stir so it’s smooth and chocolate is melted. Add honey. Set aside to cool.
3. Whip remaining 1 c of heavy cream until soft peaks form.
4. Fold the whipped cream into the cooled chocolate to form a mousse.
5. Refrigerate until it’s spreadable.

Glaze
Don’t make the glaze until ready to finish the cake. The original glaze was double this, but since we made it a rectangle, we only did half. So if you decide to do a square, you’ll need twice as much glaze as below.

7 oz white chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/2 c heavy cream

1. Melt the white chocolate with the heavy cream. Whisk the mixture gently until smooth.
2. Let cool for 10 minutes and pour over the chilled cake. Smooth into an even layer.
3. Place the cake in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to set.

Assembly
Directions coming soon!