Ricotta/Apple Cake
Advance Planning
Two dinner parties, two weekends in a row. I’m cooking for both, not paying for the first, and getting paid for the second. This is what I call fun.
The first party is in Houston, Texas where the group I refer to as my “cooking buddies” is getting together for our 7th semi-annual bash. We’ve been meeting somewhere (Charleston, Santa Fe, Napa…) for a weekend of eating and partying for 12 years now. Usually we out, but this time I’ve been asked to plan and supervise a dinner on Saturday night at the home of one of the group so I’ve been having a great old time planning the menu, working up a schedule, and so on. Two of the other cooks will be working with me — which I consider a huge luxury and should also be great fun.
Then the following weekend I'm doing a dinner party for a small family reunion in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I've pretty much tied down the menu for that event, but I needed another dessert.
Desserts are always a bit of a quandary for me. I don’t fix them often and never have, so I don’t always have a good feel for how a recipe will turn out after reading it, and I don’t have a good sense for what I can — or should —
Apples come immediately to mind, and, although I have an excellent Spiced Apple Cake recipe, it's a lot of trouble to make. So I went looking for an alternative and found a recipe for an Ricotta and Apple Cake. Yesterday I gave it a try. I was disappointed.
Part of the reason was the apples. Currently Braeburns are my favorite cooking apple, but I couldn't find any and went with Staymans. Staymans are a fine cooking apple so this shouldn't have been a problem, but these particular apples were singularly bland. The recipe also called for three grated apples. But that was obviously too much apple, and even the two I did use were too much. I think one and a half would have been perfect. Also, the grating was a bad idea, a small dice would have been superior.
So what I wound up with was lots of bland fruit, no textural distinction, and not enough cake. The part that worked was I made the frosting from the Spiced Apple Cake recipe but used mascarpone instead of cream cheese and reduced the sugar by 25 percent. That worked well. So now I'm thinking I'll make a two-layer version (half the size) of the older recipe.
And this is exactly why I don't experiment with desserts when I'm being paid to fix them. I just don't understand this kind of baking well enough to judge a recipe simply by reading it.
Two dinner parties, two weekends in a row. I’m cooking for both, not paying for the first, and getting paid for the second. This is what I call fun.
The first party is in Houston, Texas where the group I refer to as my “cooking buddies” is getting together for our 7th semi-annual bash. We’ve been meeting somewhere (Charleston, Santa Fe, Napa…) for a weekend of eating and partying for 12 years now. Usually we out, but this time I’ve been asked to plan and supervise a dinner on Saturday night at the home of one of the group so I’ve been having a great old time planning the menu, working up a schedule, and so on. Two of the other cooks will be working with me — which I consider a huge luxury and should also be great fun.
Then the following weekend I'm doing a dinner party for a small family reunion in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I've pretty much tied down the menu for that event, but I needed another dessert.
Desserts are always a bit of a quandary for me. I don’t fix them often and never have, so I don’t always have a good feel for how a recipe will turn out after reading it, and I don’t have a good sense for what I can — or should —
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. ~ Virginia Woolf
do to tweak it. Ordinarily this isn’t a big deal because I seldom fix desserts professionally. But I need something seasonal for the Gatlinburg event.Apples come immediately to mind, and, although I have an excellent Spiced Apple Cake recipe, it's a lot of trouble to make. So I went looking for an alternative and found a recipe for an Ricotta and Apple Cake. Yesterday I gave it a try. I was disappointed.
Part of the reason was the apples. Currently Braeburns are my favorite cooking apple, but I couldn't find any and went with Staymans. Staymans are a fine cooking apple so this shouldn't have been a problem, but these particular apples were singularly bland. The recipe also called for three grated apples. But that was obviously too much apple, and even the two I did use were too much. I think one and a half would have been perfect. Also, the grating was a bad idea, a small dice would have been superior.
So what I wound up with was lots of bland fruit, no textural distinction, and not enough cake. The part that worked was I made the frosting from the Spiced Apple Cake recipe but used mascarpone instead of cream cheese and reduced the sugar by 25 percent. That worked well. So now I'm thinking I'll make a two-layer version (half the size) of the older recipe.
And this is exactly why I don't experiment with desserts when I'm being paid to fix them. I just don't understand this kind of baking well enough to judge a recipe simply by reading it.
4 Comments:
Yeah, baking...
I think baking ingredients should all be specified by weight. Then you might have had an idea how much apple to shoot for.
I find pies are a lot harder to get wrong.
CC,
Absolutely. But most American kitchens don't have scales.
Your 'cooking buddies' gathering sounds like a great time.
I like making desserts but the problem is I still haven't exactly figured out what I can and can't change about recipes. This has resulted in some great successes but also some even bigger failures... Good luck!
Brilynn,
They always have been (except for the last one when I was sick and shouldn't have gone).
I've had few outright failures, but that may be due to lack of imagination on my part.
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