I love my stand mixer, Stanny. My parents gave him to me as a 30th birthday present after my previous stand mixer (my mom's 25+ year old one) decided it had mixed enough things in its life. Stanny makes marshmallows possible. He's moved cross country with me, living in his own box because he's so heavy. The convenience of Stanny cannot be understated.
However, Stanny doesn't always have a place in a recipe, and that includes the subject of today's entry into my 40th year on Earth. When I made my original list of things I would do during this momentous year, I planned to make a four-course meal featuring recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. April has been surprisingly busy, so I had to re-plan a bit, and settled on making one recipe instead...the Reine de Saba, or Queen of Sheba, cake.
Let's be 100% honest: this is really the only recipe I want to make in this cookbook. I bough my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking not long after reading My Life in France, a wonderful book written by Julia Child and her great nephew, Alex Prud'homme, focusing on Julia and Paul's arrival in France and her immersion into the world of French cooking. I love this book and I love Julia Child. She wanted to make French cooking, veiled in so much history and snobbery, accessible to home cooks. Both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking contain more than recipes; Julia and her co-authors are teaching the reader how to cook. Techniques are broken down, equipment is explained, and ingredients are discussed at length. One recipe leads you to at least three other sections of the cookbook. Julia has a technique for everything. It's best if you follow her suggestions; she knows things.
Quick aside: My Life in France is also featured in the movie version of Julie & Julia; it's the basis of the Julia Child portions. If you haven't watched the movie or read Julie Powell's memoir, I give you permission to skip both. Or to only watch the Julia Child parts of the movie; they're the best parts. Originally, I was going to focus more on this, but why bother writing about my negative reaction to both? If you ask me nicely, I'll share my full opinion with you, preferably while drinking a really good glass of wine at 1 pm on a Tuesday. It'll be oh so very French.
Back to the Queen of Sheba cake. It's one of the last recipes in MTAOFC and is a surprisingly short cake recipe. There are ten ingredients in the cake, and five references to other sections of the cookbook for instructions on a particular technique. These include:
Let's be 100% honest: this is really the only recipe I want to make in this cookbook. I bough my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking not long after reading My Life in France, a wonderful book written by Julia Child and her great nephew, Alex Prud'homme, focusing on Julia and Paul's arrival in France and her immersion into the world of French cooking. I love this book and I love Julia Child. She wanted to make French cooking, veiled in so much history and snobbery, accessible to home cooks. Both volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking contain more than recipes; Julia and her co-authors are teaching the reader how to cook. Techniques are broken down, equipment is explained, and ingredients are discussed at length. One recipe leads you to at least three other sections of the cookbook. Julia has a technique for everything. It's best if you follow her suggestions; she knows things.
Quick aside: My Life in France is also featured in the movie version of Julie & Julia; it's the basis of the Julia Child portions. If you haven't watched the movie or read Julie Powell's memoir, I give you permission to skip both. Or to only watch the Julia Child parts of the movie; they're the best parts. Originally, I was going to focus more on this, but why bother writing about my negative reaction to both? If you ask me nicely, I'll share my full opinion with you, preferably while drinking a really good glass of wine at 1 pm on a Tuesday. It'll be oh so very French.
Back to the Queen of Sheba cake. It's one of the last recipes in MTAOFC and is a surprisingly short cake recipe. There are ten ingredients in the cake, and five references to other sections of the cookbook for instructions on a particular technique. These include:
- How to butter and flour a cake pan
- How to cream butter and sugar
- How to beat egg whites
- How to scoop and level flour for measuring
- How to pulverize almonds (new one for me)
I read all five of these helpful tutorials. I've been baking since my pre-teens, and have, miraculously, been doing four of the five of these correctly the whole time. Pulverizing almonds was new for me; add sugar before pulsing in a food processor so the oil from the almonds doesn't become lumpy. Who knew?
The Reine de Saba cake was supposedly the first French cake Julia Child enjoyed upon her arrival in France. I have no idea if this is true, but what an experience it must have been! This isn't the chocolate cake we're all so used to. It's meant to be slightly underdone, making it creamier in the center. It's not the type of cake that requires filling. It's often left naked, without frosting or glaze, or with a simple dusting of powered sugar. Frosted versions are decorated with almonds. It was named for the Queen of Sheba, a ruler from the 11th century BCE (probably), who ruled what is today Ethiopia and Yemen. She was a visitor to King Solomon's court, and may have had a son with him. To paraphrase something I read about her, her parts of the Bible are pretty boring so they probably actually happened. She also appears in Islamic stories and figures prominently in the folklore of Ethiopia. If you're an American Gods fan, Bilquis is another incarnation of the Queen of Sheba. This concludes your history lesson for today.
The French often named confections after famous or infamous figures from history. The Queen of Sheba cake falls into this category. It's a rich chocolate cake with almonds in the batter and as decoration. It's almost flourless, and based on the tastes I had as I was baking it, super decadent. It seems fitting to name it after a queen who "sped" to Solomon's court in three years time (it was a seven year trip), bringing gold and riches with her.
What's most interesting about making this cake isn't the history, but getting used to the way the recipe is written. I guess I've become accustom to the way recipes appear online or in modern cookbooks; everything is detailed in one place. I always read a recipe multiple times before baking, and this was no exception. I also read my five how-tos several times, just to make sure I was doing everything to Julia's specifications. I browsed through a few versions of the recipe online too, mostly for tips since that's really what internet recipes are for. This was a poor decision. You see, I got so comfortable with how I do things, that I neglected one of the most important things about making a recipe from MTAOFC:
Julia Child knows things. And she is always right when it comes to technique.
Julie Powell discovered this during her year spent cooking and baking her way through MTAOFC. You have to do things the way Julia tells you. This includes, but is not limited to, drying the pieces of beef for beef bourguignon, the temperature of eggs, the way in which you whisk anything, and how to kill a lobster. Even when she makes a mistake, Julia makes it a learning moment. As I was making the cake last night, I followed the instructions from one of the online versions of the recipes for melting the chocolate. I wasn't sure my pans would work the way Julia wanted them to work. I don't temper chocolate ever, so I don't have a double boiler or metal or glass bowls for melting over simmering water. Julia's method is just a small saucepan resting in a larger saucepan. I should have listened to Julia. I melted the chocolate as I do for similar recipes and it was an absolute failure. It didn't melt, but clumped. This would not do.
So I threw it out and started again, following Julia's instructions. Of course, it worked perfectly the second time. MTAOFC was a multi-year writing project because Julia, Simone, and Louise tested every recipe and technique multiple times. They didn't put anything in the book that didn't work. I should know better, but I'm set in my ways and know things too. Just not as many things. And apparently not how to properly melt baking chocolate.
Once I got the chocolate situation under control, the recipe was a breeze. There's very little flour, only 1/2 cup of cake flour, and minimal sugar. The pulverized almonds take the place of more flour and give the cake a nice flavor. It bakes in 25 minutes (20 minutes in my oven), so a quick bake. I let the cake sit over night before adding the icing. The icing is even easier: just chocolate, coffee, and butter. I used the pan within a pan method for melting the chocolate then hand mixed butter to give it a creamy consistency. The last step was moving the pan into an ice bath, stirring until the icing got to the right consistency for spreading. I've never done this before, and it's an amazing technique. It takes almost no time and is easy to control from a mixing standpoint. Icing and frosting can quickly go south if you beat it too much. This method makes that less of a concern. It was easy to work with once it was ready and I finished the cake with almond decorations.
A few of my friends came over today for wine and crafts, and we enjoyed the cake. It's definitely denser than most chocolate cakes I've made. It's like a cross between a torte and a brownie, creamier in the center, but not hard to eat. It's not overly sweet, but not bitter because of the semi-sweet chocolate. The coffee and almonds make a difference; you can definitely taste both.
I will definitely make this cake again, but follow Julia's directions from start to finish. There's no reason to not follow her recipe. She knows how to make an elevated, fancy recipe approachable. Julia Child knows things. Trust Julia Child.
So I threw it out and started again, following Julia's instructions. Of course, it worked perfectly the second time. MTAOFC was a multi-year writing project because Julia, Simone, and Louise tested every recipe and technique multiple times. They didn't put anything in the book that didn't work. I should know better, but I'm set in my ways and know things too. Just not as many things. And apparently not how to properly melt baking chocolate.Once I got the chocolate situation under control, the recipe was a breeze. There's very little flour, only 1/2 cup of cake flour, and minimal sugar. The pulverized almonds take the place of more flour and give the cake a nice flavor. It bakes in 25 minutes (20 minutes in my oven), so a quick bake. I let the cake sit over night before adding the icing. The icing is even easier: just chocolate, coffee, and butter. I used the pan within a pan method for melting the chocolate then hand mixed butter to give it a creamy consistency. The last step was moving the pan into an ice bath, stirring until the icing got to the right consistency for spreading. I've never done this before, and it's an amazing technique. It takes almost no time and is easy to control from a mixing standpoint. Icing and frosting can quickly go south if you beat it too much. This method makes that less of a concern. It was easy to work with once it was ready and I finished the cake with almond decorations.
A few of my friends came over today for wine and crafts, and we enjoyed the cake. It's definitely denser than most chocolate cakes I've made. It's like a cross between a torte and a brownie, creamier in the center, but not hard to eat. It's not overly sweet, but not bitter because of the semi-sweet chocolate. The coffee and almonds make a difference; you can definitely taste both.
I will definitely make this cake again, but follow Julia's directions from start to finish. There's no reason to not follow her recipe. She knows how to make an elevated, fancy recipe approachable. Julia Child knows things. Trust Julia Child.
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