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Bingo Fill: Taste
For this prompt, I decided to bake a cake, and to do a little write up about the flavour. I chose to make an Orange Sponge cake, but the lack of appropriate pan means I ended up with two square layers, instead of one big cake. One 'layer' was topped with salted dark chocolate ganache and the other was topped with orange zest whipped cream. The whipped cream was a last minute decision, though a yummy one; the original plan was just to use the salted dark chocolate ganache. My reasoning for choosing an Orange Sponge cake with a salted dark chocolate ganache was that I wanted to combine all five 'basic tastes' in one dish if I could, and I'm more comfortable baking than cooking. I managed four out of the five: Sweet (because of course the cake has sugar), Sour (from the citrus, though it was a rather subtle orange flavour), Salty (the main reason it was a salted ganache, though it did help cut the bitterness too), and Bitter (from the unsweetened chocolate I used in the ganache). I couldn't find a way to add Umami to the dessert, so I decided that it was still perfectly acceptable even with only four or the five tastes.
Below the cut will be an image of the cake(s), and my thoughts on the taste.
First, I made a small mistake by not actually tasting the cake plain before adding the toppings. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was my first time making a sponge cake, so it means I had to try to tease apart the cake flavour from the topping flavour, rather than having the base flavor of the cake already in my mind for comparison purposes.
The cake was light and sweet, the orange noticeable but not overpowering, and almost lost in the sweetness of the batter. I'm personally not a huge fan of orange flavoured desserts, so this was actually a bonus for me. The orange didn't hit me in the face, but it was still present enough to register as orange, or at least citrus.
The salted dark chocolate ganache was a bit on the bitter side, and rather strong. It didn't clash with the cake, but the two didn't marry together as well as I would have liked. I ended up using 1/3 semi-sweet chocolate to 2/3 unsweetened chocolate, so I think that was my main problem. If I had reversed the ratio, or used all semi-sweet, I think I would have had better results. Adding the salt did cut the bitterness significantly though, and I had enough that the salt was noticeable as a separate flavour, but not strong enough to be like "Oh, SALT".
For the whipped cream, I added orange zest to the cream and sugar, though probably only about a teaspoon or so. It was tasty, though I don't know if the zest actually came through in the flavour or not. When added to the cake, I found it was sort of … flat. I think perhaps there was too much sweetness and not enough of anything else to counter it, so it ended up kind of all the same note. Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious (and probably better than the cake with the ganache, though I am still partial to chocolate), but it didn't have anything that stood out and made the flavours pop.
All in all, it was a fun experience to make a sponge cake for the first time, and it gave me a better insight into what different ingredients add to the whole, and how things play together. I also paid a lot more attention to how the cake tasted when I ate it (because I needed to write this up), so I gained more than I normal do by just stuff my face with yummy sweet things. I can't wait for the next baking adventure, to see what new and exciting things I can do!
Below the cut will be an image of the cake(s), and my thoughts on the taste.
First, I made a small mistake by not actually tasting the cake plain before adding the toppings. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was my first time making a sponge cake, so it means I had to try to tease apart the cake flavour from the topping flavour, rather than having the base flavor of the cake already in my mind for comparison purposes.
The cake was light and sweet, the orange noticeable but not overpowering, and almost lost in the sweetness of the batter. I'm personally not a huge fan of orange flavoured desserts, so this was actually a bonus for me. The orange didn't hit me in the face, but it was still present enough to register as orange, or at least citrus.
The salted dark chocolate ganache was a bit on the bitter side, and rather strong. It didn't clash with the cake, but the two didn't marry together as well as I would have liked. I ended up using 1/3 semi-sweet chocolate to 2/3 unsweetened chocolate, so I think that was my main problem. If I had reversed the ratio, or used all semi-sweet, I think I would have had better results. Adding the salt did cut the bitterness significantly though, and I had enough that the salt was noticeable as a separate flavour, but not strong enough to be like "Oh, SALT".
For the whipped cream, I added orange zest to the cream and sugar, though probably only about a teaspoon or so. It was tasty, though I don't know if the zest actually came through in the flavour or not. When added to the cake, I found it was sort of … flat. I think perhaps there was too much sweetness and not enough of anything else to counter it, so it ended up kind of all the same note. Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious (and probably better than the cake with the ganache, though I am still partial to chocolate), but it didn't have anything that stood out and made the flavours pop.
All in all, it was a fun experience to make a sponge cake for the first time, and it gave me a better insight into what different ingredients add to the whole, and how things play together. I also paid a lot more attention to how the cake tasted when I ate it (because I needed to write this up), so I gained more than I normal do by just stuff my face with yummy sweet things. I can't wait for the next baking adventure, to see what new and exciting things I can do!
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Thanks for the suggestion!
You're welcome!
Re: You're welcome!
Re: You're welcome!
Happy Thanksgiving, btw.
Re: You're welcome!
Happy Thanksgiving!