Best Cake Recipes Biography
Source(google.com.pk)Since it's impossible and foolish to claim that something is the best of anything in New York, I'll hedge my bets and say that the Mille Crêpes at Lady M Cake Boutique, just off Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, is at least the second-best cake in the city. It succeeds so splendidly not just because it's wildly delicious but also because it's a clever design. Any number of decent pastry chefs could have come up with it. But they didn't. (Or at least they didn't look it up in some old cookbooks, but more on that later.) A team of mysterious investors at Lady M did, and they have filed to trademark the name Mille Crêpes.
Here's what it is: 20 (as opposed to 1,000) lacy crepes layered with clouds of whipped-cream-lightened pastry cream. The top crepe is spread with sugar and caramelized like creme brulee. A fork plunged into a slice slides like a shovel through fresh snow. You get a whiff of smoky sugar, then layer after silky-sweet layer.
The components of the Mille Crêpes -- the crepes, the pastry cream, the whipped cream -- are plain as can be. It's the way they are constructed, with every proportion considered and refined, that makes you think differently about cake. ''The recipe has to be perfect,'' said Hideyuki Niwa, who bears the title C.E.O. of this single-location bakery. ''The cream itself has to be firm enough so the cake doesn't collapse. The crepes have to be baked thin enough so that when you cut through with a fork, it can't be an impediment. We've had many failures.''
Most bakeries are born out of love and butter and modest ambition, but not Lady M. The shop on East 78th Street is a clean, bright box done completely in white, with a sleek glass pastry case jutting through the room. In the back are a handful of tables; not even a cash register is visible. What little color there is in the room comes from the cakes and pastries themselves -- eclairs, a paper-thin apple galette and fruit tarts, none of which compare in style to the Mille Crêpes.
Niwa, who was previously an investment banker, prefers to talk about sugary, comforting confections in terms of branding, strategy and intellectual property. He would not say how many investors were involved in Lady M or even where they were from. ''We wanted to be the Maison du Chocolat of the cake industry,'' he said by way of explanation. The company began in earnest in 2002, selling cakes to restaurants, which it still does. Its green-tea Mille Crêpes, for instance, is served at Megu.
When I asked if I could speak to a pastry chef about how the Mille Crêpes is made, Niwa said that company policy didn't permit its pastry chefs to speak to the media. ''We're not interested in them being personalities,'' he said. Niwa was also evasive when asked what inspired the Mille Crêpes. After many phone calls, I was allowed to visit the production kitchen in New York's baking ghetto, Long Island City. The pastry chef, whose name I agreed not to mention, was marvelously precise, assembling the layers of docile cream and crepes in less than six minutes. (Niwa likes to time the chefs and find ways to shave off precious seconds.
also available by mail order,
Gâteau de Crêpes
For the crepe batter:
6 tablespoons butter
3 cups milk
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
7 tablespoons sugar
Pinch salt
For the vanilla pastry cream:
2 cups milk
1 vanilla bean, halved and scraped
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
3 1/2 tablespoons butter
For the assembly:
Corn oil
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar or more
3 tablespoons Kirsch
Confectioners' sugar.
The day before, make the crepe batter and the pastry cream. Batter: In a small pan, cook the butter until brown like hazelnuts. Set aside. In another small pan, heat the milk until steaming; allow to cool for 10 minutes. In a mixer on medium-low speed, beat together the eggs, flour, sugar and salt. Slowly add the hot milk and browned butter. Pour into a container with a spout, cover and refrigerate overnight.
Pastry cream: Bring the milk with the vanilla bean (and scrapings) to a boil, then set aside for 10 minutes; remove bean. Fill a large bowl with ice and set aside a small bowl that can hold the finished pastry cream and be placed in this ice bath.
In a medium heavy-bottomed pan, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch. Gradually whisk in the hot milk, then place pan over high heat and bring to a boil, whisking vigorously for 1 to 2 minutes. Press the pastry cream through a fine-meshed sieve into the small bowl. Set the bowl in the ice bath and stir until the temperature reaches 140 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Stir in the butter. When completely cool, cover and refrigerate.
Wise journalists, students, and trivia contestants know not to trust Wikipedia unthinkingly. There is no better support for this rule of thumb than the open-source encyclopedia’s entry for carrot cake, which currently begins:
Carrot cake is a cake or pie which contains carrots mixed into the batter. The carrot softens in the cooking process, and the cake usually has a soft, dense texture. The carrots themselves do not enhance the flavor, texture, and appearance of the cake.
The misinformation contained in these three sentences boggles the mind. Carrot cake is self-evidently not a pie. Carrots absolutely enhance the flavor of carrot cake—it’s not like all their flavor compounds evaporate while the cake is baking. Furthermore, as sentence No. 2 of the above paragraph attests, they affect the texture, too, lending the batter moisture and body. Carrots also quite obviously enhance the appearance of cake, assuming you consider bright, cheerful orange specks to be a visual enhancement. (I do, and freckle fetishists the world over agree with me.) To assert that the “carrots themselves do not enhance the flavor, texture, and appearance of the cake” is to inadvertently raise all sorts of troubling questions about the nature of perception and existence. (If a carrot falls into a cake batter and no one is around to taste i
. Heat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9- by 13-inch pan. Put the flour, coconut, walnuts (if desired), baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice in a large bowl and stir to combine. Beat ¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter, the oil, and the brown sugar with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer (or with a handheld mixer) until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes. Gently stir in the flour mixture, then fold in the carrots. Transfer the batter to the greased pan and bake until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes. Cool the cake.
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
Best Cake Recipes Carrot Cake Recipe From Scratch Step By Step With Pineapple Jamie Oliver Nigella Easy Moist Martha Stewart In Urdu
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