11 cake: ménage à génoise
06 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in cake, quince, recipes, sweets Tags: autumn, baking, layer cake, pink frosting
an experiment to bake my batter of obsession in a standard cake pan rather than a rimmed baking sheet as in a jelly roll and for mini-cakes.
mini-cakes themselves have become an obsession. One set sporting my virgin attempt at fondant. Photos are up on the facebook page; please like radical muffin to feast on bonus food porn. And i will try to catch up on the writing!
however—this is the brief season of quince, and quince insists upon a full sized cake. Most quince insist on a pavlova; these acquiesced to taking part in the great cake adventure.
the fruit, rock hard when raw and ripe, is apple-ish in shape, yellow as canary, and covered in a fine fuzz that every recipe recommends rubbing off even though you peel the skin off. The rubbing is meditative, a knowing of each fruit, and that has something to be said for it.
quarter and core the acerbic and hard orbs; halve or quarter the quarters. In a saucepan of appropriate size, bring to boil enough water to eventually cover the fruit slices. Sprinkle in a cup or so of sugar. Add a dash of salt if you are in the spirit of adding salt to everything. Maybe a squeeze of lemon. Add the fruit, cover and bring to a boil.
quince holds legend as the golden apple Paris awarded Helen and tempted Eve. A cake of quince from your kitchen is hopefully unlikely to end in war or expulsion from the Garden. The perfume of it will evoke this sort of divine allure. Quince are in the rose family, and smell like Arabian Nights.
lift the lid and inhale. Steam your face. Dream. As they poach they’ll blush pink. Cook until soft. Drain, set aside the fruit, and return the liquid to the pan and cook down until it is syrupy enough to suit your purposes.
in this cake, quince comes three ways: a layer each of smashed quince and quince curd in the filling and quince syrup in the pink butter cream.
the cake is génoise—the alluring vanilla speckled egg-voluptuous batter currently on call in the radical muffin kitchen. There were actually two quince cakes. The first a pile of quince slices in the center of a cake cooked in a single layer in a round cake pan for about 23 minutes. The custardy center worked with the fruit pile and the sides had a nice cake crust to frost with a thin ring of vanilla butter cream.
for this layer cake, each lawyer was baked in a heart shaped cake pan for about the same about of time creating a delightfully cakey cake.
