Month: February 2012

It’s all becoming clear to me now…

The main reason most Linzer tortes are made with short crust these days — or so I’ve come to believe — has to do with a certain technical issue. Reader Gerhard has convinced me that originally Linzer tortes were indeed cake-like and not tart-like, with red currant (or black currant) jam on the top.

But here’s the sticky detail: jam is gooey. It soaks into cake when you bake it on top of a liquid (or semi-liquid) batter. So how did the originators of the modern Linzer torte achieve a separation of the two? The answer: by applying paper-thin wafers to the batter and then spreading jam over them. Back-Oblaten they’re called…”baking wafers.” The jam goes on the wafer, the wafer provides a barrier and probably absorbs enough moisture from the jam during baking that you don’t know it’s there afterward.

READ ON

Linzer Batter

So…let’s try that again. Here’s a pipe-able Linzer batter. This is enough for one 11″ torte or many cookies. If you plan on making piped cookies with this, omit the cinnamon and cloves. I also recommend adding an extra ounce of flour for cookies, so the batter doesn’t run quite so much. So here we go:

9 ounces whole blanched almonds, peeled hazelnuts or a combination
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoons cloves
11 ounces cake flour
1 teaspoons lemon zest
10 ounces butter
8 ounces granulated sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
2 egg yolks, room temperature

READ ON

Just what is a “torte” anyway?

That’s an excellent question (thanks, Christine G.). The distinctions between cakes, layer cakes, tortes and gâteaux are rarely discussed. Most people simply assume they’re just different words people use to describe the same things, but that’s not really true. The distinctions between them can be fine but they’re real and worth noting. I’m not aware of any definitive resource on the subject, so all I can do is try to create my own. Pastry enthusiasts, chime in if you want to add or correct anything.

Cakes are single-layered sweetened and enriched “breads” for lack of a better word. Usually round and almost always flat, their primary ingredient is grain or grain flour (wheat, oat, barley or the like). Cakes can be sweetened with sugar, molasses or honey and enriched with eggs, solid fat or oil. They can be leavened naturally (yeast), mechanically (egg foam) or chemically (baking powder or soda).

READ ON

Baking Class Debrief

Reader Ruth wrote in to ask about the baking class I did over the holiday season at my daughter’s grade school. I meant to follow up on that but didn’t — so thanks, Ruth!

I may have mentioned that the organizer of these after school classes felt that baking was a subject better suited to older kids than to children my daughter’s age, and I had to agree. Fifth and sixth graders were much more responsible around heat sources and hot objects. I expected at least a couple of burns and/or cuts over the course of the six classes, but no one received a single injury. Which is not to say that they kids listened as well as I’d hoped they would. The science mostly passed right by them, and I frequently had to get, shall we say…insistent when it came to impressing the proper procedures on the group. I had only five, but lord, they were handful at times.

READ ON