We’re well past a report on the baking experiments, but the goods have been, to say the least, odd. Still, the odds are good that eventually, we’ll get this whole thing right!
The mise en place chefs continue to rise to the top, because they always know what ingredients they have before they start cooking. If you, like T., finds the filling of little bowls with measured and prepped ingredients fiddly, well… too bad. She started these fudge brownies with what she had on hand – insufficient cocoa powder and no eggs. Oh, the fun things you discover as you go along without the little prep bowls! No problem; she’s good with flip-flopping between vegan and not, and we have lots of solid baker’s chocolate. Unfortunately, almond flour is a pickier substance, and isn’t as easy with her choices.
We’ve talked before about how to make a flax “egg” – but you absolutely must account for that three tablespoons of water that you’ve used. It’s VERY EASY for almond flour pastries to become too moist. It’s one of the perks of baking with almond flour – lovely, moist cakes that don’t dry out, but oh, be careful, little bakers. Vegan-izing can so easily lead to disaster.
T. used the “basic” quickbread ratio for almond flour – two cups of almond flour to a half cup of cocoa powder (augmented with grated chocolate), a third cup of vital wheat gluten, 2/3 c. of a combination of Truvia and erythritol, a teaspoon of vanilla, and about a half cup of milk.
Aaand, there’s problem #2 – that pesky word “about.” It’s been really hard for both T. and D. to get through their heads that everything they think they know about baking no longer counts. We’re just not good enough yet to substitute without measuring. Right now, we’re conforming closely to recipes from The Low Carb Baking and Dessert Cookbook by Ursula Solom and Low Carbing Among Friends, by Carolyn Ketchum & Co…. and trying REALLY hard not to give in to the inevitable urge to just substitute… and failing. Repeatedly.
We have lovely in-the-process pictures from baking these fudge brownies. They came together well – baked up well – but I had some questions as soon as we took it out of its springform. The bottom seemed … too moist. We let it cool completely before doing anything with it, having learned out lesson last time about mucking around with almond flour pastries before they’re cool enough to move — but I thought, “hmmm,” as I saw how damp it was. Not a good “hmm,” either.
And yet, they were SO delicious, and so moist, and …so caved in on the top, and ugly, which is something we can lay at the door of overly-moist as well. They were super-ugly, which is a big minus, since we always like to bake to share, but amazingly chocolate-y, with a deep, rich flavor. Too moist, but yummy, like a fudge brownie pudding, maybe. We couldn’t figure out which way we wanted to go for frosting – plain? A cream cheese base? A chocolate frosting? We tried both plain and cream cheese – really, really tasty. We never got to the ganache we were going to make. Unfortunately, a cake so moist does not keep well – you have to refrigerate it, and we didn’t. YES: we ate a chocolate cake so slowly that it went bad. That’s got to be one for the books, but it really WAS good, and next time – well, we’ve got a lot of plans for next time…
Hmm…reminds me of my first run in with a genoise. I didn’t know it was supposed to be on the moist side so kept putting it back in the oven. And for the record, I don’t always use those little bowls. 😕