Today’s bake is a Cream Cheese Chocolate Raspberry Brownie. The recipe is from 100 Cookies, by Sarah Kieffer (highly recommend this book), pg. 75. The only difference is that instead of bittersweet chocolate, I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate raspberry bars. https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0875LWBM5&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_P4N7ND3KC2QD14SYH504. SO good, nice and chewy on the outside, deliciously moist and gooey on the inside; the cream cheese giving it that nice tang balance.
This was a fun, albeit all day project to make. And while I am going to guess it is worthy of the five stars (to be commented upon after dinner), the recipe itself made a lot of assumptions. Either assumptions that you know how to do something, or assumptions that it’s not important you do it a certain way. I hate assumptions in recipes; I much prefer everything spelled out.
Your ingredients should be at room temp. If they are not, step #2 is hard to accomplish because even if you have successfully creamed the sugar and butter in step #1 (btw I use 3 minutes as my butter/sugar cream time), the butter is still cold enough that by adding the eggs you get chunks of butter. So you end up with a 5+ minute mixing time (after that original 3 minutes) to try to get the buttersugar mix to incorporate with the eggs if your butter is too cold. The recipe is in grams, so you are forced to weigh your ingredients. Not a bad thing; I think in general weighing of ingredients is much more precise. It’s weird though because the gram amounts don’t equal an exact American equivalent. The orange sponge layer has no baking powder in while the chocolate sponge does. Why not? Typo? I found that weird. And the orange cake layer did sink more in the middle than the chocolate layers. There is also no salt added in the cake batters or the buttercream. I added it to both. For the buttercream, I truly don’t think you need 5+ sticks of butter even for a 3 layer cake. I divided the ingredient amounts by 2/3 and used that – still plenty of buttercream unless you want your frosting layers between the cakes to be very thick. The mixing directions for the buttercream were sorely lacking. This is an American Buttercream combination (did the author not want to say this, being British?) My ABC go-to is to beat the butter (btw I typically use 50% butter and 50% margarine) for a solid 10 minutes until it’s white and whipped. Then I add the sugar, slowly, then the flavorings, and again, some salt, and continue to beat until I have a consistency I like. A TB of milk is possible at this point too if needed (I needed several). As for decorations, the orange drip is great fun. Interesting to note that red plus yellow food color gives such a brighter orange than the orange food color by itself. There is lots of chilling on this cake – crumb coat, then final coat, then drip needs cooling a good 45 minutes once on the cake. My drip melted somewhat as I took too long with the rest of my decoration, as you can see. My planned chocolate oranges were tempered and thus white; good thing I had orange oreos on hand. The entire process was about five hours including chilling time. Note now that I’ve tried it: I found the cake to be a bit on the dry side, and am confident I didn’t overbake it. Next time I would try adding in some sour cream or buttermilk maybe (adjusting the butter or egg amount?) Taste was still good but it’s not that velvety moist cake I adore.
I finally got around to trying something I’ve wanted to try for awhile, ever since Adelaide and I tried the Pattern Roll Cake on the Sugar Geek website (I love her stuff; her videos are very entertaining). The first time we tried it, Adelaide was the designer and went for the abstract look. I thought the roll cake was on the dry side, so was eager to try this again with a different roll cake recipe. Here is the source for the technique, which is not that difficult: https://sugargeekshow.com/recipe/pattern-roll-cake-recipe/
This time round I chose a recipe from Sally, another source that I love and adore. https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/strawberries-n-cream-cake-roll/. Using the technique above, I came up with the following design. Note that your pattern will only show on one section of the roll. You do need to think about placement when you both make the pattern and roll the cake, making sure the pattern is not on the inside, which it ends up being when you flip the cake onto the towel (you will have to reflip it back).
Things I did differently than Sally’s recipe: For lining the dishtowel prior to rolling the sponge, I only used 1/2 cup of confectioner’s sugar which was plenty. (Use a dishtowel without nap or raised pattern.) For the strawberry cream cheese filling, I only used 2/3 cup of confectioner’s sugar, rather than 2.5 cups. The finished product is not as sweet (which I like better). I’d rate this a 8 out of 10 with a nice sponge that is not at all dry, a tasty filling not too sweet, and a versatile dessert that is satisfying but not overdoing it. 8-10 servings.
Looking forward to making this again and improving on my patterning! Chocolate sponge roll with white snowflakes sounds interesting…..
