SHF #30: Orange Blossom Cake with Candied Orchids

This is what I came up with for a flower themed cake for Sugar High Friday #30 Flower Power hosted by Coconut Chutney. This was a really great theme, forced me to experiment with using real flowers- something I've never done before. I was at the local farmers/public market this past Saturday morning, and I passed by a vendor who was selling fresh herbs. I noticed a little plastic container of fresh flowers also. The nice lady handed me an orchid to taste, she said it was from a vanilla orchid plant. Didn't taste like much, but she had me hooked- I was intrigued and just had to buy the pack of flowers, besides, they were only $1! So with flowers in hand, I came home wondering what I should do with them. Good ol' Epicurious always has good ideas for everything, and so I decided to candy my flowers. And oh what a fun but messy (and tedious) project that was. You can see the results below. But now I decided I needed a cake to go with those flowers, so an orange blossom scented cake evolved out of my foggy thoughts. This cake is heavier- like a pound cake. If I were to make it again, I would make it in loaf pans and serve as a pound cake, no frosting, I would probably have a dollop of lemon-lime curd to go with it. But regardless, the cake still tasted really good and decadent in this form.

Candied Flowers (this recipe is adapted from Epicurious)

Edible flowers (pesticide free, organic, nontoxic)
sugar (I probably used ½ cup or so- didn’t really keep track.)
1 egg white
½ tsp water

Beat the egg white with the water. Then brush your flowers with the egg/water mixture. Sprinkle sugar all over the flower. Make sure you cover the flower completely, otherwise you will have problems with them wilting. Place flowers on a wire rack and allow them to completely dry. According to Epicurious, the flowers can be stored in an airtight container for up to one month. I don’t believe this as some of my flowers (the daisies, but not the orchids) were getting a bit wilty after a couple of days. I found the best flower to use was the orchid, but also the individual petals of the carnation were really nice also.






Orange-Blossom Cake with Orange-Blossom Buttercream and Candied Flowers

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cup sugar
5 eggs
1 grated lemon or orange zest
1 Tbl orange extract
4 teaspoons orange-blossom water
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 ½ cups flour, sifted
1 cup milk + 3 tsp apple cider vinegar Preheat to 350°F. Grease & flour two 9 inch round cake pans.

Beat butter in a large bowl until fluffy. Gradually add sugar, beating until well blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, lemon zest, orange extract, and orange-blossom water. Add the baking powder and salt. Beat in the flour and milk/vinegar mixture alternately into the butter/eggs.

Divide batter between the two prepared pans. Bake cake until golden on the edges, firm, and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35-40 minutes. Cool cakes on a wire rack.

When cakes are cool, fill the two layers with lemon-lime curd. I really liked Dagmar’s recipe at A Cat in the Kitchen, so that’s what I used. Then use remainder curd to frost sides. For the top of the cake use the following recipe for Orange Blossom Buttercream.

Orange Blossom Buttercream

½ cup (1 stick) butter
½ cup powdered sugar
1 cup (1/2 pint) heavy whipping cream
½ tsp orange blossom water

Beat the butter and sugar well. Add cream gradually, and orange blossom water, continuing to beat until nice frosting consistency. Frost top of cake.

Then decorate cake with the candied flowers.

Czech Torte SHF#28

Ah, Czech Torte....

This is my first time participating in Sugar High Friday, so here's my shot at it.

I realize that this month's theme is Sweet Seduction (in keeping with Valentines), but this post is going to be more along the lines of delicious sentimentality.

Ever since I was a little kid, I can remember my mom making this torte, usually for my dad's birthday. And I remember helping her and watching her, making all those crunchy layers and chocolate filling, thinking that my mommy must be the best cook in the world, because as a kid this torte looked so complicated to make. This is my first time to actually make the torte on my own, and it's pretty simple really, a slight bit time consuming, requires a delicate hand, but I still think my mommy is the best cook in the world.

I made this torte for my boyfriend in a sort-of post-valentine dinner date. He loved it.

There is a few tricky things that I should mention when making this cake. If you happen to forget to butter and flour the bottoms of the pans (as I just happened to do), it's OK, don't panic. However, this means you have to gently pry the edges of the layers from the pan right after you take it out of the oven while still hot & soft, otherwise it will harden to the pan and be very difficult to get off the pan when cool. Another thing, if you do at some point make a hole or crack in your layer, you can still use it, just don't make it the bottom layer or the top layer. Use the cracked layer somewhere in the middle. So here is my mother's Czech Torte with a few modifications of my own.

Czech Torte

For the crunchy layers:

Sift in a large bowl:
2 cups flour
½ tsp salt

Then cut in:
½ cup butter

Now add:
½ cup sugar
1 tbl honey mixed with 1 tbl water
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350° F.Turn the dough onto a floured board and knead for a minute or two to combine all the dough together. Divide dough into 6 equal sized balls. Grease and flour the upside down bottoms of 9" or 8" cake pans. (I have three 9" cake pans, and I can fit them all into my oven so I cooked three layers at a time in two shifts, you could do two pans in three shifts). Take a dough ball and roll it out onto the bottom of the cake pan. (The layers will be thin, so watch out for holes and cracks, you can mush them out with your fingers.) Bake layers for 7 to 10 minutes, keep an eye on them as you don't want them to burn, they cook up fast. When they are nice and golden brown on the edges, remove them from the oven, let them sit for a minute, then pry up the edges and slide them onto a cookie rack. Cool completely.

For the chocolate filling:

Heat and stir until dissolved in a heavy sauce pan:
3 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup milk
1 cup heavy cream

In a bowl beat until thick:
5 egg yolks
2 tsp cornstarch
small pinch of salt
dash of vanilla

Stir the egg yolk mixture into the the chocolate mixture and continue to cook over low heat, stirring constantly until thickened, simmer for a minute or two. Take off of heat, and let cool, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming. When it is cool, pour into a mixing bowl and beat in:

1 cup unsalted butter

Beat until it's well mixed.

Place one layer on a plate and spread it with some of the chocolate filling. Top it with a second layer and more chocolate filling, continue this till you have used up the layers and end with the chocolate filling on top.

Hazelnut time!

¼ cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped
¼ cup toasted hazelnuts, whole (or more if necessary)

Decorate with the whole hazelnuts along the perimeter of the cake, and the chopped hazelnuts sprinkled over the top of the cake.

Refrigerate overnight to allow to crunchy layers to soften up a little. Be sure to take the cake out of the refrigerator a couple of hours before you serve (like before your guests come over for dinner), otherwise the cake will be very, very, very hard to cut (and your date/guests will not be impressed with your cake serving skills, haha)

Sweet, luscious, chocolaty, hazelnutty goodness!