Lapsang Souchong Tea Cake

This cake is designed to be soaked with more of the same tea that is baked into it. The crumb is slightly dense and dry, making it a great carrier for some heavily sweetened and enriched(with cream) tea. Soaking it with hot tea right before serving creates a slightly warm cake that is moist and smokey.  This cake also uses some unsweetened condensed milk that I covered in this post.
Ingredients:
66g sweetened condensed milk
133g homemade condensed milk (see unsweetened condensed milk post)
80g butter, melted
1 extra large egg
50g dark brown sugar
60g granulated sugar
2g salt
40g strongly brewed Lapsang Souchong tea
3g baking soda
4g baking powder
200g ap flour

Method:

Add the milks, butter, egg yolk, sugars, salt and tea to a bowl and whisk until uniform. Mix the baking soda, baking powder, and flour in a separate bowl and add it all at once to the wet ingredients, don't stir it yet. Whip the egg white in a separate bowl until it reaches medium peaks. Now fold the flour into the wet ingredients until it is almost uniformly integrated. Add the whipped egg white and fold everything together until it just comes together. Spoon into whatever container you want to bake in, making sure it is well greased, and bake at 350F until the middle is set and the outside is slightly brown(the time depends on what shape you choose).

This is what it looks like in loaf form:

Here is a small half sphere mold:

Plate it up!

Soaked Lapsang Souchong tea cake with orange blossum-yogurt ice cream, marinated cherries, and condensed milk puree

Same same

The unsweetened condensed milk is in the cake and on the plate. So, just like the tea, you can taste it baked into the cake and applied to the cake after baking... layers.

Cordially,

Adam

Condensed Milk - Unsweetened

Commercial condensed milk is delicious. Browning it to make dulce de leche is also delicious. However, that stuff has additional sugar, making it sweetened and condensed; this milk is just condensed(and browned).
Ingredients:
Milk
Salt
Method:
Place the milk in a non-stick pot(for cleaning purposes). Bring the milk to a simmer and turn down the heat low enough so that it simmers hard, but does not boil over. Stir every 30 minutes until the milk has separated, turned brown, and reduced to about 1/5 of it's original volume (how long depends on the pot, heat,and amount of milk). Blend the condensed milk until smooth and add salt to taste.
This method produces a different flavor than browning sweetened milk. I will be trying out some recipes using this homemade, unsweetened condensed milk, but I wanted to document how it was made first.

Stiffly,
Adam

Brown Butter Consommé Pt.1 Brown Butter Stock

I have to admit that the title of this dish is slightly tongue-in-cheek. How much can a fat-free broth taste like brown butter? I maintain that the end result is highly flavorful, and aside from the fat soluble flavors that are not present, it wouldn't be too hard to convince someone it tastes like brown butter. Clarifying this stock is essential because the initial stock will be incredibly cloudy. All of the particles get in the way when tasting, but once clarified, the flavors shine through. This entry will be for the base stock, and then I will post on how I clarified it.
Recipe:
200g onion, large dice
130g butter
2g salt
2 points star anise (not 2 whole stars)
120g goat milk powder
100g milk
10g sugar
90g shallot, sliced
15g garlic, rough chop
8 sprigs thyme
3 bay leaves
4 black peppercorn
2500g water

Method:
Place the onions, star anise, salt, and 10g of butter in a small pot. Gently brown the onions over medium-low heat.
This takes a little while. Turn off the heat and set aside once the onions are uniformly just beyond golden brown. In a pot that can hold at least 3.5 liters of water, place the milk powder, milk, and the rest of the butter. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly. The mixture will dehydrate, break into fat and solids, and then start to brown. Cook until all of the milk solids are just beyond golden brown. Once this happens add the shallots, garlic, thyme, bay, pepper, sugar, water, and previously cooked onions. Bring everything to a boil and simmer for 1 hour. Strain through a chinoise and cool.


Now you have a fatty and cloudy vegetarian stock. Clarification coming soon. Sorry, no plate up because this isn't ready to serve yet.

Some notes:
Cooking the onions with star anise produces more brown-meaty flavors than if you just brown the onions with the butter. Here is what Heston has to say about it.
The first time I tried to make brown butter consommé the process was a little more time consuming. The idea came from the fact that the flavor of brown butter comes from the milk solids left in the butter from the cream. I decided to try cooking skim milk(a lot of milk solids and notfat) in butter until it dehydrated enough to coagulate the proteins and start to brown. This worked well, but it took a lot of time and milk. Buying already dehydrated milk solids saves time and produces the same results. I used goat milk because that was all I could find, but any dehydrated milk powder would work.

Utterly,
Adam