An Untraditional D(o)B(os) Torte

Before I say anything else, I have to give a shout out to two ladies. One is my good friend and partner in crime, as you'll see, Meeta K. of What's For Lunch Honey? and the other is the woman who regularly saves the day, the sweetest Frenchie (both literally and figuratively) on the Eastern seaboard, Helene of Tartelette. This challenge would not have seen completion without either one of these two ladies.

So why does my Dobos Torte not look like most of the other Daring Bakers' this month? Well, never one to conform, and sometimes for the worse, I used white chocolate.
We haven't been feeling very chocolatey at all here since it's been quite hot and sometimes very humid (for London that is, we're wimps we know), so I thought I'd try this Dobos Torte with a fruity spin. I halved the recipe to make two mini-cakes and used white chocolate, mascarpone and lemon for the frosting and fresh blueberries between the layers of sponge. If you've visited me before you know I have a fetish for this combination, and it seemed like if I was going to try something different than the stated recipe for yet another layer cake, I might as well be able to compare it to a previous DB challenge: Dorie Greenspan's perfect party cake.

I didn't take pictures of the process and, really, you should thank me for that because it wasn't pretty. Oh the sponge went ok enough, as I said to Meeta on twitter I didn't have time to bake each layer for one big cake, particularly with Baby Saffron, but I did have time to use a cookie cutter! She and I baked the sponges separately and then met up over chat to do the rest of the cake. We'd done this once before for the Daring Bakers' 2007 Yule Log, and just like last time, the conversation was a hoot and really helped to ease the process. Between her and her chocolate quark mousse for Soeren's birthday cake (7 years old!) and me with my lemon mascarpone mousse because we both didn't really want to use butter for the buttercream, exclamations of all colors flew and at one point she proposed, and I agreed, that we needed a stiff drink, so dry martinis with extra olives were poured and enjoyed, virtually that is.
My lemon mascarpone mousse didn't set properly which is when I resorted to a twitter plea for help from Tartelette and, as always, she came to the rescue. She is, as I have been quite fond of saying since I first saw her blog in early 2007, a Baking Fairy. If you haven't seen her blog which just got a beautiful new makeover, get thee over there now!
As for Meeta, she is a dear friend, a rockin' blogger with a beautiful blog, and an awesome person all around and I am better for her friendship. We have to do this more often!

The cake turned out to be meh taste-wise (and yes that is about as elaborate and articulate as I am going to be about that) so I think it's probably the kind of cake for which you want to actually use dark chocolate and stick to the recipe. And Dorie, well, she's keeping my heart for now.
Oh one more thing: About the caramel layer, I'm not sure I get the purpose of it other than as decorative, but I actually didn't make it with lemon juice as prescribed in the recipe as it seemed a bit odd to me to mix caramel and lemon, and it turned out just fine by adding a little bit of butter to enable it to pour out onto the sponge layer before it set.

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. You can find the recipe on our hostesses' blogs.

Bonanza au Tesco Malaysien! - Tesco Malaysia Bonanza!

My Papa was in Malaysia a couple of weeks ago and called me at the end of his conference to tell me he had a few hours free before he had to get on the plane and did I want anything? Well, needless to say if I’d had slightly more notice, I think he might have had a ridiculous shopping list on his hands, so I told him that if they ended up being in a grocery store, to get me any interesting looking spices he could see.
Here is my loot from Tesco Malaysia, all for slightly less than 7 euros, so about $9:

100g basil seeds (what can you do with basil seeds you ask? Good question, I had to look it up and apparently it’s either to grow basil, ha, or to make a sort of drink where you soak the seeds in water so that they puff up, and then you incorporate them into a yogurt drink of some sort, I'll have to try it out)
100g chili powder
100g fenugreek seeds
50g “super” cloves (they do look super-sized actually)
80g dried ginger
30g star anise
100g cumin powder
100g fennel powder
50g whole nutmegs (about 14 of them)
230g coriander powder
300g tamarind paste
100g bryani masala powder (actually a mix of turmeric, coriander, cumin, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, sajira, cardamom, bay leaves and nutmeg)
1 pack of spices to make Lok Mei Cheng Poh Leong (some sort of chicken soup from the instructions on the back)

If anyone wants to trade some of these things for something else, let me know; these are not only fairly large quantities of each spice, but my father is probably going to return to Malaysia so I shouldn’t be short of anything I might need from there any time soon.

He also brought back an interesting spice cake called layer cake which smelled and tasted quite like some combination of madeleines, which are the little French cakes with a bump, and gingerbread. I’d like to experiment and see if I can recreate something similar. It was composed of the following ingredients as listed on the package: Wheat flour, cane sugar, eggs, margarine, milk flavors, butter, salt, cinnamon, cloves, mace, cardamom.

Merci Papa!

En Français…

Il y a quelques semaines, mon Papa était en Malaysie pour une conférence, et m’a appelé pour me dire qu’il aurait quelques heures de libre avant de prendre l’avion pour rentrer et me demander si je voulais quelque chose de là-bas. Bon, il est inutile de dire que si j’avais eu le temps d’y réfléchir, il aurait probablement eu une liste d’une longueur ridicule à remplir. Donc je lui ai dit que s’ils se trouvaient dans un supermarché par hasard, de me prendre des épices ayant l’air intéressantes.
Voici donc mon petit butin de Tesco Malaysia, le tout pour un peu moins de 7 euros:

100g graines de basilic (que peut-on faire de graines de basilic dîtes-vous? Très bonne question, j’ai du chercher et apparemment on peut soit les utiliser pour faire pousser du basilic, soit pour faire un genre de boisson où on laisse les graines dans un peu d’eau pour qu’elle gonfle, puis on les ajoute à une boisson qui parait être faîte avec du yaourt, va falloir que j’essaye).
100g poudre de chili
100g graines de fenugrec
50g “super” clous de girofle (ils ont l’air d’être “super”-grands)
80g gingembre séché
30g badiane
100g poudre de cumin
100g poudre de fenouil
50g noix de muscade entière (une quatorzaine)
230g poudre de coriandre
300g pâte de tamarin
100g poudre de bryani masala (en fait un mélange de turmeric, coriandre, cumin, poivre, clous de girofle, cannelle, sajira, cardamome, feuilles de baie et noix de muscade)
1 paquet d’épices pour faire du Lok Mei Cheng Poh Leong (un genre de soupe de poulet d’après ce que je comprends des instructions au dos)

Si quelqu’un veut faire un échange d’épices ou autre, faîtes-moi savoir, car pour la plupart, ce sont de grandes quantités d'épices, et en plus mon père va probablement retourner en Malaysie très bientôt alors il y a peu de chance que je manque de ces épices dans un futur proche.

Il a aussi ramené un gâteau “mille-feuille” aux épices très intéressant qui avait une odeur et un goût qui faisait penser à une combinaison de madeleine et de pain d’épices. J’aimerais bien faire quelques expériences et voir si je peux recréer quelque chose de semblable. C’était composé des ingrédients suivants, tel qu’indiqué sur le paquet: Farine de blé, sucre de cane, oeufs, margarine, goût de lait(?), beurre, sel, cannelle, clous de girofle, macis, cardamome.

Merci Papa!