Lean and lovin' it: Don pretties up 'ugly' cake by trimming fat, sugar
Once glance at the cover of "Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook" had me doing a double-take. My head spun and and eyed widened the same way as dogs in Disney's "Up" when they hear ""Squirrel!!!"
The title didn't say it could or might change the way I cook, it promised that it will. How could I not pick it up?
"Food52 Genius Recipes" turned out to be a collection of 100 recipes created by cookbook authors, chefs and food bloggers curated by Kristen Miglore, executive editor of the award-winning food52.com.
One recipe, Nigella Lawson's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake, sent me zipping to my kitchen. The introduction described: "It's not a layer cake nor some molten lava thing - it's a chocolate cake that's full of nuance and personality, damp and puddinglike within, with caramel crisp edges." Lawson also notes that a blog reader who made her cake nicknamed it "chocolate ugly cake."
OK, I was hooked.
But, before I could get started, a couple of nutritional issues had me putting on the the brakes.
Reading the ingredient list I learned this cake didn't just look "ugly" on the outside; the calories from fat and sugars made it ugly on the inside as well. You see, Lawson used two sticks of butter (1,628 calories and 184 fat grams), plus more than 13 ounces of dark brown sugar (zero fat but 1,425 calories with 99-percent of those calories coming from sugars) to create her nuance-filled cake. There had to be a better way to make this cake and still have it meet my chocolaty expectations.
I turned to an old fat cutting standby: drained, unsweetened apple sauce to cut out a butter stick and wave goodbye to 810 all-fat calories.
It's tricky cutting sugar since it plays some major roles in baking. Those roles, textural and chemical, aren't all that easy or successful to replace.
I didn't want to replace all the dark brown sugar since I needed the chemical reaction (heat plus sugar/molasses) needed to create those "caramel crisp" edges. I went with half dark brown sugar and half organic stevia, a natural sugar substitute.
Her recipe also required four ounces of "best" bittersweet chocolate. Since that held the key to all that chocolaty goodness, I went with 70-percent bittersweet baking chocolate.
Lawson's process was unique, too. The way that the shortening is creamed and the chocolate melted is what makes this: " … resemble a cake, a steamed pudding and a fudgy brownie all at once."
Butter and sugar get creamed together, pretty standard, but they're creamed until just combined versus mixing for 6 to 8 minutes as they are for most cake batters. In addition, the melted chocolate is folded in gently, not beaten in. Finally, after gently mixing in flour and hot water, the batter looks very thin and liquid.
How was my version? Nothing short of sensational, if I do say so myself. I took it to a dinner party and there was nothing but crumbs left of my reduced-guilt chocolate cake.
Here's the recipe for this not-as-ugly cake. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@theleanwizard.com.