faux canneles

i've been working pretty hard, and i rewarded myself recently with a cannele mold (the smallest one i've ever seen! not that i have seen a lot of cannele molds, but it's smaller than i thought it would be) from amazon. i don't really have the time to devote to proper canneles, but wanted to test-drive the mold. solution: cake. this is the buttermilk cake from smitten kitchen, which makes a cake that isn't particularly good for special molds, but that is really quite delicious. it makes a fairly light vanilla cake with a bit of a tang and a nice soft crumb. the crumb, however, is loose enough that it doesn't really mold that well. i should have made that vanilla rum cake or something, or perhaps tiny poundcakes. beyond canneles, i'm definitely interested in seeing how the larger cakes (like poundcake, which i always do in a bundt) hold up texture-wise in smaller units. with respect to unmolding, this mold does quite well - it's thin enough that you can invert each mold to get the cake out if it's being recalcitrant. as you can see from the photo, the cakes brown quite nicely.

instead of raspberries, c had cranberries on hand so we cooked them to smushed-berry stage with some water and sugar, and scattered it in the cake. the tang of the cranberries goes quite well with the cake - it's a balanced sweet-and-tangy cake. we made this cake with m, a few weeks ago, and used strawberries, which produced an entirely different kind of cake - it was much more strawberries-and-cream in flavor profile.

regardless of the fruit that you use, i highly recommend. i have been using real vanilla in most things since i have tons of beans from the last time i bought em (the place i buy them from always sends free beans), to pretty good effect.

coming up: c and i bought a ham on sale at the supermarket, necessitating a ham date in january when i'm done with thesis. i also have plans to have a birthday party this year! with lots of cute things to eat, of course. j and i have a bolognese date to schedule - we're going to taste-test the four-hour bolognese that he found online with the fergus henderson 12-hour bolognese that i recently came across. (for reference, the one i make is a six-hour deal.)

i'm a believer

okay, okay. i believe you now, serrated knife. i believe in you, too. who knew that a serrated knife would cut so easily through dough? assuming that the serrations would just rip the dough instead of cutting through it, i used my trusty pastry...scraper? (the name of this object escapes me at the moment; all i can think of is its woodworking brethren, the bench scraper.) that is - i did that the first time i made these overnight cinnabuns. unfortunately, cutting the cinnabun roll into buns with my pastry scraper gave them these pinched edges. pinched edges that became all the more offensive - and permanent - when it turned out that the yeast that i used was not particularly active. i kicked myself - this recipe consumes 5 eggs, 4 cups of flour, buttermilk (which i don't usually have on hand), and a not insignificant amount of brown sugar - so it's not the most economical food item to make. nor are they particularly easy to put together the night before - you still have to wait for the first rising of the dough. the payoff, though, is huge, if you can get it right. the dough is fabulous - so good (buttery, rich...) that that first batch was still edible, if not the right texture.

and this is what i did: i went out and bought new yeast, proofed the yeast before adding it to the dough, let the dough rise in the oven after i turned it off the warm cycle (it's cold!), and cut the roll with a serrated knife. and now i've got those babies (see above photo) in the fridge. i'm going to bake them tomorrow, and you better believe that they will obey my need for cinnamon buns. yeah, cinnamon buns, i'm looking at you, i've coddled you enough; now it's time for you to give back.

i'll report back on them tomorrow, with a recipe.