Rose Levy Beranbaum is swinging through the Bay Area (!) on her way to the IACP conference in Portland and this Saturday April 17, 2010 (3-4pm) she will be giving a talk and signing books at Omnivore Books in San Francisco's Noe Valley. Not only that, there will be the SF contingent of the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale from 12-3pm out front. Proceeds from the sale benefit Share our Strength and the fight against childhood hunger. I will be there with something from my own oven, so I hope to see you there![UPDATE: We raised $1650 for Share our Strength!!]
Well, how did I snap the above photo of the lovely Rose? She gave a talk and demonstration of the amazing chocolate lacquer glaze at the Bakers Dozen (check out the new website) meeting yesterday. Look at the years of Rose's hard work and endless baking curiosity together on the table like that.
For those of you Heavenly Bakers checking in, I finally had the chance to bake the German Chocolate Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The filling was classic and delicious, as anything with toasted pecans and coconut will be, but it was the Deep Chocolate Passion cake in which I was most interested, because it is base cake for the wedding cake recipe in the book (I had previously made all the other components for a wedding cake) and I was entranced by Rose's description of the "breakthrough technique of adding unbeaten egg whites to the batter" for great structure, and it's always handy to have a cake in your repertoire made with oil (instead of butter) so it avoids turning to a brick in the fridge.
The piece got a little mangled (it was cut with a butter knife) but wow was the German Chocolate Cake good. The crumb was so light and incredibly SPRINGY. The following shot is not very well composed but clearly shows the anti-gravitational properties of this cake's crumb.
I am surprised that it is strong enough to be used as the 12" bottom tier of a wedding cake, but it worked for Rose when she made the wedding cake for one of the best chefs in San Francisco. So yeah, I trust her.
The German Chocolate Cake was fantastic. Shoulda known it was yours!
Posted by: Jennie Schacht | April 14, 2010 at 11:01 PM
Thanks! I'll be there.
Posted by: vbagatti | April 15, 2010 at 08:37 AM
How exciting! I'll get to meet her when she does her book appearance in Portland, but your events looks like a lot of fun!
I will be baking the deep choc passion cake for a friend's birthday cake in a couple of weeks so it was nice to get an early preview. thanks!
Posted by: evilcakelady | April 15, 2010 at 04:02 PM
Thanks Jennie! Means a lot coming from you! I actually baked an extra layer because I dropped one of the first two as it was coming out of the oven, and I know it has a delicate structure, and was worried it would deflate....and I couldn't take a chance on Rose eating a crappy version of her cake....
EvilCakeLady, I recommend having everything ready to unmold the cakes (oiled wire racks/clear work surface) so that you can get them out of the pans tout de suite. Oh yeah, and DON'T drop it on the floor with a bang like I did!
Posted by: Rachelino | April 16, 2010 at 10:28 AM
What a great picture of Rose!
P.S. Not dropping things on the floor is always good advice.
Posted by: Marie | April 16, 2010 at 06:50 PM
Did you take notes of Rose's presentation? I did and can't find them, dang it all! Thanks again for the information. I really enjoyed going to see her. Sorry I didn't get to meet you and thank you in person.
Posted by: vbagatti | April 19, 2010 at 08:31 PM
vbagatti- i actually wrote an article.I can email it to you!
Posted by: Rachelino | April 20, 2010 at 10:55 PM