Cranberry Torte
Nov. 21st, 2023 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitI made cranberry torte tonight!
Also other stuff. I forgot to buy avocados. Or rather, I forgot about the existence of avocados. I knew I had forgotten to acquire potatoes so G. bought them, but I forgot entirely that we needed avocados, and we are no longer living directly across the street from a Star Market. But it's still fine even without the avocados. I got another thing of bacon ends in the share--it was this month's free member gift!-- so we'll do this again soon.
(I'm always intrigued by what's in the free member gift, since I assume it's whatever they're not selling enough of.)
But we had our fun-with-bacon-tacos and I made cranberry torte while G. was chopping and cooking.
Now, the base recipe for cranberry torte comes from Wintersweet, and I have talked before about how much I like Wintersweet. But the cranberry torte is one of the recipes I have modified all to heck. I put in *way* more almond extract than the recipe calls for (this is born of having once spilled the almond extract into the mixing bowl and discovering it tasted way better that way), layer the top entirely with cranberries (single-layer, pressed down slightly into the batter-dough so you're covering the whole thing without them piling on top of each other), and then the sugared top in the base recipe becomes a full-on sugar crust by layering turbinado until the cranberries are nearly covered. (I'm curious to see what happens if I try the sugar crust with proper brown sugar or with shaved panela, although the amount of work involved in shaving panela means that even if it does come out nice I won't be doing it often.)
You then bake this thing for a full hour rather than the 45 minutes the recipe suggests.
You wind up with something that you can only have a small piece of because it's very, very sugary, but it's so good. (IM and AG got slices of this in part because this is how I endear myself to my roommates and in part because I do not want to eat the entire thing-- G. also took a slice home to his girlfriend since she's very fond of almond-flavored things.)
Tomorrow begins the Thanksgiving Pie Affair. I am making this easier on myself by making all of the filling gluten-free, since that part seems to set up with no noticeable difference from regular flour, and just making two different crusts. I also couldn't buy more chopped pecans, so the gluten-free one gets the pecan halves and the gluten one gets the chopped pecans. Which makes it very visually obvious which is what.
I'm also going to see if I can recreate the recipe for hypoallergenic bread. I made this for New Year's once and was not terribly fond of it, but it was completely gone by the end of the night so I assume the gluten-free people liked it. (I don't remember how I did it but I remember which cookbook I got the original recipe from, and generally when I have a base recipe in front of me I can re-derive allergy modifications from first principles.)
Also other stuff. I forgot to buy avocados. Or rather, I forgot about the existence of avocados. I knew I had forgotten to acquire potatoes so G. bought them, but I forgot entirely that we needed avocados, and we are no longer living directly across the street from a Star Market. But it's still fine even without the avocados. I got another thing of bacon ends in the share--it was this month's free member gift!-- so we'll do this again soon.
(I'm always intrigued by what's in the free member gift, since I assume it's whatever they're not selling enough of.)
But we had our fun-with-bacon-tacos and I made cranberry torte while G. was chopping and cooking.
Now, the base recipe for cranberry torte comes from Wintersweet, and I have talked before about how much I like Wintersweet. But the cranberry torte is one of the recipes I have modified all to heck. I put in *way* more almond extract than the recipe calls for (this is born of having once spilled the almond extract into the mixing bowl and discovering it tasted way better that way), layer the top entirely with cranberries (single-layer, pressed down slightly into the batter-dough so you're covering the whole thing without them piling on top of each other), and then the sugared top in the base recipe becomes a full-on sugar crust by layering turbinado until the cranberries are nearly covered. (I'm curious to see what happens if I try the sugar crust with proper brown sugar or with shaved panela, although the amount of work involved in shaving panela means that even if it does come out nice I won't be doing it often.)
You then bake this thing for a full hour rather than the 45 minutes the recipe suggests.
You wind up with something that you can only have a small piece of because it's very, very sugary, but it's so good. (IM and AG got slices of this in part because this is how I endear myself to my roommates and in part because I do not want to eat the entire thing-- G. also took a slice home to his girlfriend since she's very fond of almond-flavored things.)
Tomorrow begins the Thanksgiving Pie Affair. I am making this easier on myself by making all of the filling gluten-free, since that part seems to set up with no noticeable difference from regular flour, and just making two different crusts. I also couldn't buy more chopped pecans, so the gluten-free one gets the pecan halves and the gluten one gets the chopped pecans. Which makes it very visually obvious which is what.
I'm also going to see if I can recreate the recipe for hypoallergenic bread. I made this for New Year's once and was not terribly fond of it, but it was completely gone by the end of the night so I assume the gluten-free people liked it. (I don't remember how I did it but I remember which cookbook I got the original recipe from, and generally when I have a base recipe in front of me I can re-derive allergy modifications from first principles.)
