2 posts tagged “desserts”
Unlike last year, Mr. G had a specific request for this year's birthday treat: He wanted a cherry pie. Having never made a cherry pie before, I went straight to my America's Test Kitchen cookbooks to find the best recipe.
The ATK folks did not disappoint. Per their recommendation, I hunted up some jars of Trader Joe's Morello cherries, which apparently make the tastiest filling (and they certainly look more lovely than the canned cherries I've bought at the supermarket). I did not end up having the time to make the crust from scratch, but ATK says that refrigerated Pillsbury pie dough is almost as good as homemade (and I know Mr. G loves it, anyway). For the sake of time, I also decided to forego the traditional lattice for the full top crust (it's not as pretty, but having more crust can't be a bad thing!).
Here is the absolutely DELICIOUS end result, which we ate for Mr. G's birthday breakfast today (warmed up and topped with a generous scoop of vanilla frozen custard, of course!):
Every year, I ask Mr. Guycita what type of birthday cake he wants me to make for him, and then I scour my cookbooks and the Internet to find the best from-scratch recipe possible.
This year, he told me that he really didn't know what he wanted. In the mood to try something new, I suggested a tres leches cake. My mom occasionally serves it when we visit Texas, and Mr. Guycita always loves it.
Of course, I didn't want to make just any tres leches cake. So after considerable research, I decided to try my hand at a cuatro leches cake. This variation, in addition to being soaked in the traditional mixture of sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream, is topped with dulce de leche (a caramel-type spread that I grew up eating all the time in Uruguay). To put my own twist on the recipe, I decided that, rather than diluting the dulce de leche with milk to pour over the top of the finished cake, I would fill the cake with Conaprole brand dulce de leche straight out of the jar.
Another thing that I thought made this recipe special is that it calls for Swiss meringue icing, rather than the traditional whipped cream. The meringue was super-easy to make, but I had never iced a cake with it before. I quickly learned that, being inexperienced with this medium, I was going to have to be happy with a freeform type of icing job:
I wanted to give the icing a lot of texture, and I thought it turned out pretty good for a first try! Now the recipe directed me to caramelize the icing (to give the cake a hint of roasted marshmallow flavor—yum!). Unfortunately, my little blowtorch refused to cooperate. Out of sheer desperation, I tried putting the cake under the broiler. This method meant that, while the top of the cake would become nice and golden, the sides of the cake would remain unbrowned:
Although the end result was nowhere near what I had envisioned at the start of the process, the cake tasted great. The crumb of the mantecada cake was delicate while still being sturdy enough to hold 3 cups of the leches mixture (the leftover milk can—and should!—be poured over the plated cake wedges). And filling the cake with dulce de leche made this component much more prominent than it would have been if drizzled over the top as directed. I served the cake with coffee and strawberries, both of which were just right to cut the sweetness of the cake. As you can see, we dug in:
Mr. Guycita was happy, and that made me happy. But before I make this cake again, I'll make sure that my little blowtorch is in working order!
