12 cake: génoise pour moi et tous
19 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in cake, lemons, sweets, vegetarian Tags: lemon curd, lemurs, mirror of collective creation, saint lucia, sprinkles
nested biscuit cutters were purchased to make shamelessly twee piles of three sizes of teeny round cakes each with a distinct filling and frosting pairing left nude for guests decorating to whim. along side tree decorating and mirror decorating and welcoming of the season of lights and sparkles and sprinkles as we all should be. Especially me, for my birthday, falls on Saint Lucia’s day, the bringer of light, which my great grandmother always said was lucky. I am lucky, with so many lovely radical muffins around me.
light does not bring time, however, and the non-cake (remember vegetables?) part of the evening’s spread needed serious attention, and work for the week (remember work?) had left less late nights than anticipated for concocting spreads and dips.
leisurely and lovingly made early in the morning, three sheets of génoise rested, waiting to serve, in the freezer. Two became four small rectangular layer cakes for the gathering, and one a larger one, layers sandwiched over lazy lady’s cranberry curd, for the ladies’ holiday luncheon at work.
the party cakes came in two flavors: lemon with vanilla frosting or fig filling with chocolate ganache. The youngest party guest had a fine time leading some of the others in decorating the four cakes.
my obsession with the cake itself is well established; with a spike of salt, it has evoked a quest for the golden filling to complement its sturdy, impetuous perfection. This meyer lemon curd nobly contends. A fine end for precious but unspoken for meyer lemons, greedily snatched from the Flatbush coop’s surprise offering which was meager— yet significant in showing up at all!
lemon curd is one of those lost simple kitchen concoctions that has become all mysterious and imagined to magically appear in jars from stores where food is born. Make such a thing from scratch, and to some, you too shine more magically, mysteriously.
for meyer lemon curd: whisk together 2 eggs and three egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of cream or milk. Grate in the zest of 3-4 meyer lemons. Juice the lemons for a generous half cup of juice.
turn the heat on low under a small sauce pan on the stovetop. Slice in 3 tablespoons of butter. Dump in ¼ cup of sugar (eureka lemons will want more sugar if you are working with those or Seville oranges, say). Stir in the eggs and lemon juice. Keep stirring and add 3 more tablespoons of butter. Cook, stirring, until the curd thickens enough to coat the spoon. Pour the lemon curd into any glass container with a cover to store, or let it cool a bit then spread over the bottom layer of a cake.
lazy lady’s cranberry curd has no fussing with eggs—just butter, berries and turbinado sugar.
the chocolate ganache always has a lot going for it, the butter cream has been unbeatable on the génoise. The slim cake wants a topping juicier than thin chocolate. This butter cream made with fresh butter and vanilla seeds scraped from pods fat like plump raisins is luscious, a gift to both the cake and the tart fillings.
at this start of the winter season of lights in the cold, we all make a mirror together; here is part of this year’s mirror of collective creation:
