Epiphany 2023 Dessert

We look forward to celebrating Epiphany each year because it's a low-key tradition that makes the transition from the holidays to the regular routine less brutal. There are no expectations beyond having a nice meal and writing down our wishes for the coming year. Bubby likes to look back at our wishes from the past, and he looks forward to a special dessert. In recent years January 6th has been a day off from school and we've gone to our  condo in Vermont and spent the day skiing. So with little time during the day, and an unreliable oven in the mix, it has to be a simple dessert.
This year my one requirement was to use up a container of mascarpone I'd had in the fridge for over two months. Looking through Instagram, I'd become curious to try a kind of French cake called a "fondant" or "moelleux", and I found a simple recipe for a Fondant au Mascarpone et au Citron that I put to the test:

Ingredients:
250 g mascarpone
3 eggs
1 tsp lemon extract
50 g flour
60 g sugar
150 g milk
Juice of 1 lemon

The container of mascarpone was 227 g so I adjusted the flour to 45 g, the sugar to 54 g and the milk to 135 g: 25% less of each. I figured it would be OK to leave the other amounts as is, and it was. I did break down and bought lemon extract, so much for using only what I had at hand!
 
You beat the mascarpone with the eggs, add the lemon extract, then everything else, and bake at 350 for 35 minutes. The directions didn't say what size the cake pan should be but judging from the amount of ingredients I figured a 6" round would work. I made a parchment collar to raise the sides of the pan and hold all the batter, which came up just to the rim. I baked it for an additional 10 minutes. Given the history of this oven, I baked it at a lower temperature (335 F I think) for most of the time then increased it to 350 at the end.

The verdict on this cake is... good, but also a bit bland. I'd added a pinch of salt already, but it could definitely use a bit more sugar, and also maybe more lemon extract. Plus some lemon zest, maybe even a bit of almond flour... something to heighten the flavor. The texture was interesting, halfway between a cake and a cheesecake, and a bit better the next night.  We enjoyed it with blueberries, and the size was perfect for our tiny family. 

I'd definitely try another "fondant"... but I'd find another recipe. 😉𝨝




I bet they would have liked some!










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creepy Crawly Spiderweb Cake

Image
Bubby's friend was coming over after a bike ride and I wanted to make them a Halloween-themed treat.  I've been wanting to make a spiderweb cake for a while.  I sure came away with some do's and don'ts! I chose to use  this recipe  from King Arthur Baking.  Not sure why but I had my heart set on making it in an 8x8 square pan, and this recipe fit the bill. It's a recipe that calls for no eggs and no butter! I was a bit anxious about greasing but not flouring the pan, but the cake didn't stick to the sides when cutting it so that was fine.  The cake baked for 32 minutes (should have been 31) in my Corning Ware pan. Had I used an aluminum pan I'm sure it would have been ready much sooner.   I'd never made ganache using chocolate chips and I wanted to try it so this was my opportunity.  This recipe also calls for half and half rather than heavy cream, for the ganache.  It was more difficult to melt the chocolate chips and incorporate the into the half and h
Read more

Lemon Blueberry Scones

Image
 My friend S was back from spending the Summer in Paris, and we'd planned to get together for coffee.  I wanted to bring something and decided on Lemon Blueberry Scones because I had exactly the right amount of blueberries in the house. This was only my second time making scones!  Years ago I made chocolate chip scones and remember the dough being super unwieldy, hard to shape and not fun.  I decided to try again using  this recipe  from Sally's Bake Blog. It calls for grated frozen butter and although a pain, it made all the difference.  It was taking forever to grate and hurting my arm when I realized pressing down hard on the butter made it go faster.  The last bits I had to cut into small pieces with a knife, so as not to grate my finger.  The rest of the process was easy, no mixer required. I used DIY buttermilk, because I didn't have heavy cream, and it worked fine.  To cut the individual scones, I floured the bench scraper thoroughly between cuts. This was helpful. I
Read more

Sugar Pumpkin Cookies Fall 2023

Image
I made these Sugar Pumpkin Cookies for a bake sale for an after-school club of Bubby's. I relied on my old Martha Stewart recipe for the cookies and  my favorite royal icing recipe . I used 10 tablespoons of water which worked out great on this particular day (it does depend on the level of humidity on any given day). Lately I'd been adding 9 tablespoons then had to add extra water afterwards. I don't have any orange food coloring, so I made an orange color using red and yellow. It was a bit peachy but once piped it was OK. I used brown for the stems.  With such flowy icing, I piped the two outer sections of the pumpkin on a few cookies at a time, let them set for a few minutes, then went back and piped the middle section and the stem.  In this way the icing didn't flow together (as happened with the first few cookies I piped) and I was able to show the three distinct sections I wanted.  In spite of the low humidity on this day these took almost 24 hours to dry, so I h
Read more