Ran out to Viron today to try to get a new cake, in response to them winning my previous cake-off. I had cycled rather than run the previous day and the heat kept me from pushing too hard, so it was a pretty easy run and went fast both ways. I was somewhat disappointed to be successful, since my backup plan would have added another several kilometers. I didn't split up the time between with and without cake, but the 11 km averaged above 9 km/h.
The cake was Citron Noisette, which is a chocolate mousse dome cake with lemon cream (I think it was cream; it's a little hazy now) and hazelnuts. I had decided ahead of time that I really wanted it to be great, which seemed to work. I appreciated having lots of hazelnut, though otherwise there was nothing surprising other than the lemon and chocolate balanced perfectly, which sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Right now, this seems to be the standard to beat.
I also tried to make pâte feuilletée, like for mille-feuille, but it was clear after about the fourth fold that things had gone wrong early on, because big pieces of butter started appearing. It still baked up looking good (although it took 35 or 40 minutes to bake), and I definitely got the layers, but they did puff up much, so it was more like a cracker (though still good enough that I ate all of it at once). The picture is just a third of a 300 g recipe (the base recipe was 1 kg, but I definitely wasn't going to try that; fortunately, it's pretty scalable, so my next attempt will probably be only 100 or 200 g).
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The cake was Citron Noisette, which is a chocolate mousse dome cake with lemon cream (I think it was cream; it's a little hazy now) and hazelnuts. I had decided ahead of time that I really wanted it to be great, which seemed to work. I appreciated having lots of hazelnut, though otherwise there was nothing surprising other than the lemon and chocolate balanced perfectly, which sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Right now, this seems to be the standard to beat.
I also tried to make pâte feuilletée, like for mille-feuille, but it was clear after about the fourth fold that things had gone wrong early on, because big pieces of butter started appearing. It still baked up looking good (although it took 35 or 40 minutes to bake), and I definitely got the layers, but they did puff up much, so it was more like a cracker (though still good enough that I ate all of it at once). The picture is just a third of a 300 g recipe (the base recipe was 1 kg, but I definitely wasn't going to try that; fortunately, it's pretty scalable, so my next attempt will probably be only 100 or 200 g).
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