Samoas Cake

Samoas Cake

This samoas cake is one of my creations that uses Momofuku Milk Bar's "Naked Layer Cake" technique. I have shown you one of the official Milk Bar cakes in this blog post. I showed teasers of the samoas cake, but here is how you do it for real. I served this particular cake for Thanksgiving. As I said before, break up the creation of this cake across multiple days to make it more manageable. Doing it all at once will stress you out and make baking less fun. Baking is suppose to be fun. I also am wondering if any of you notice that I used a filter on the above and the last few photos?

Coconut Frosting

Find the original recipe here: http://www.chocolatemoosey.com/2012/04/25/award-winning-chocolate-coconut-cupcakes/

1a. Leave 1.5 sticks of butter (salted or unsalted) out to bring it to room temperature.
1b. In a small pot or sauce pan, whisk together 0.75 cups of coconut milk and 1 tablespoon of all purpose flour.

1c. Bring the coconut milk to a boil using medium heat and continue whisking for about 5 minutes when the mixture should thicken. Take the milk off the heat and let it cool down to room temperature.

1d. Put the room temperature butter and 170 grams of granulated sugar in a stand mixture.  Using the paddle attachment, mix on high until the mixture gets pale and fluffy, about five minutes.

1e. Add in the milk mixture and 1/4 of a teaspoon of coconut extract and continue mixing on high until you get whip cream consistency.

1f. Put the frosting in another container so you will be ready to go on the day you assemble the cake. I put it in a piping bag.

Crack – Coconut Filling

This recipe gives you the coconut spread that is put on German Chocolate Cakes, but with a Milk Bar twist. The addition of milk and corn powder makes it similar to Crack Pie Filling. Get the original recipe here:  http://milkbarstore.com/main/menu/recipes-and-how-tos/#crack%20-%20coconut%20filling

2a. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
2b. Prepare the ingredients. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine:

• 75 grams of granulated sugar 
• 45 grams of brown sugar 
• 5 grams of milk powder
• 6 grams of corn powder
• 0.5 teaspoons of salt

In a small bowl or cup combine  40 grams of heavy cream and 0.25 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

In a small bowl, have two egg yolks ready.

In the container you hope to store the mixture in, put 100 grams of sweetened coconut.

With the paddle attachment, mix on low to combine the dry ingredients. The below pic shows all the ingredients

2c. Melt half a stick of unsalted butter and pour it into the dry ingredients. Mix on low for about a minute which should moisten all the ingredients.

2d. Add in 40 grams of  heavy cream and 0.25 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Mix on low until all of the white from the cream fully disappears into the mixture.

2e. Add in the two egg yolks and mix on low until it combines. Just like the crack pie, you want to be careful not to over mix the mixture and add too much air into it.

2f. In a small baking pan lined with plastic wrap, scrap the mixture into the pan and bake for 8-10 minutes. In the end, the mixture should be set on the edges, but still loose in the center.

2g. Scrap the cooked mixture into the coconut and combine.

Pretzel Cake

To replicate the samoas cookie, I felt the cake need to be especially crunchy and to offset the sweetness, a little on the salty side. I found this recipe to be perfect: http://milkbarstore.com/main/menu/recipes-and-how-tos/#pretzel%20cake

3a. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prep your ingredients which includes,

In the stand mixture bowl add in:

• 1 stick of room temperature unsalted butter
• 250 grams of granulated white sugar
• 1 tablespoon of molasses

3 eggs in a small bowl or cup

0.33 cups of buttermilk and 0.5 cups of neutral oil in a liquid measuring cup

In a bowl (not the stand mixer bowl) mix together:

• 92 grams of cake flour
• 1.25 teaspoons of baking powder
• 0.5 teaspoons of baking soda,
• 3.25 teaspoons of salt
• 150 grams of pretzels that have been ground in a food processor. (The recipe said 3 cups, but after doing some conversions, 150 grams is a more precious number. Also the first time I made this recipe I used simple pretzels. The second time I used Trader Joe's Pumpernickel pretzels. Big mistake. Choose a simple pretzel, maybe butter pretzels.)

3b. With the paddle attachment, mix the contents of the stand mixer on medium high for 2-3 minutes until the butter and sugars are creamed together.

3c. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, then mix on medium high for 2-3 minutes until combined.

3d. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Put the mixer on low and pour in the buttermilk oil mix. Increase the mixer speed to medium high and mix for 6 minutes. By 6 minutes the mixture should have doubled in size and become whitish. This step is very important. It is hard to over mix at this stage, but it is easy to under mix.

3e. Scrape the sides of the bowl. While the mixer is on low, pour in the dry ingredients. Turn off the mixer as soon as everything is combined, about 1 minute. You can mix by hand after the mixer did its thing to get some dry bits combined. It is very easy to over mix at this stage.

3f. Grease a quarter sheet pan with Pam and line it with parchment paper. I used a silpat pad on the bottom and found it difficult to get the cake out. Parchment paper works better. Smooth the top of the pan.

3g. Bake for about 35 minutes. The cake should no longer be jiggly in the center and the edge should feel springy when you poke the side. Wrap with plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge or freezer.

 Assembly

4a. Bring all your ingredients except the cake to room temperature. The cake can be cold.

4b. Using a 6 inch cake ring, cut out two pieces of cake. one complete circle near a corner (1) and another piece that is the most complete circle you can cut as possible (2). You will form a third layer with the leftover scraps (3).

4c. Clean the cake ring, put it on the bottom of a cake pan lined with wax paper. Line the inside of the ring with acetate paper/ transparency paper that is about 4 inches tall and 20 inches long. I cut an 8.5" by 11" transparency paper in half on the long dimension and taped the short dimension together to get me the right shape.

4d. Stuff the bottom layer with cake scrapes, then dab a lot of vanilla milk (milk or non-dairy milk + vanilla extract) until the layer is drenched.

4e. Spread an even layer of 1/3 of the coconut frosting.

4f. Spread an even layer of about 1/2 of the crack coconut filling.

4g. Crumble about 1/3 of a box of samoas (or knock offs) on top.

4h. Repeat step 4d with the almost perfect cake round. Fill in any gaps with the rest of the scraps.

4i. Repeat steps 4e-4g

4j. Place the perfect round on top and line it with the rest of the coconut frosting and decorate it with the rest of the samoas.

4k. Cover the cake with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 12 hours.

4i. Unwrap the plastic wrap, slide off the cake ring, and peel off the transparency paper. Make chocolate ganache and caramel. I forgot to take pictures throughout the chocolate and caramel making process, but here is a good link for chocolate ganache http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chocolate-ganache-recipe.html
and caramel http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/homemade-salted-caramel-recipe/. Let them cool down before handling.

Drizzle them over the top of the cake for over the top cake. You can use the left over for caramel apples. Store the ganache in a metal container and reheat over some steaming water. Store the caramel in a container that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. Caramel apples will be a future blog post.

Freeze the cake for about an hour then wrap it with plastic wrap and put the cake back in the freezer. Let the cake defrost for about three hours in the fridge before serving.

Let them eat cake.

The next two blog posts will be healthy, I promise!