Monday, January 04, 2010

Julia Child, take 2: Gateau à l'orange

Along with reading more this year, I'm cooking more. Well, I'm probably cooking the same amount but I'm trying more new recipes and many of them I expect will come from my newest cookbook - Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Tonight's recipe, gateau à l'orange (a.k.a. orange sponge cake). It is extremely very awesome honestly*. And it only took one orange to pack in all that orange flavor goodness. At this time of year who doesn't have oranges in the house? The recipe wasn't that difficult. To illustrate the ease of the recipe let me just say I was able to make the cake in the late afternoon while Henry was underfoot on a day when the little man had had no nap. But, my note for next time will be to fully incorporate the whipped egg whites. I was perhaps a touch too gentle and that left us with a final product that has some sections of egg white cake. Whoops.

*Those watching Charlie and Lola will totally get this sentence. It's very Lolaesque.

9 comments:

Rachele said...

I'm very impressed that you are cooking from that book. I have the cookbook as well but haven't gotten the nerve to try one of the recipes first. The format is so different than what I am used to, so I have to wrap my head around that. I'm used to clearly listed ingredients, instructions, and user reviews and tips to boot. :)

Dr. A said...

OK, this is the one I tried to make for my birthday, except I used lemon as we have about 20 lemons right now. It was easy, it was beautiful, then 5 min out of the oven it fell completely flat! What did I do wrong? It tasted OK, so I packaged it up and tucked it in the freezer, to use in a trifle or something later in the year when we need an emergency dessert. Suggestions?

Christie said...

Dr. A - Mine fell after leaving the oven as well, not flat but it definitely lessened in stature upon removal. My best guess is that it has something to do with the egg whites. Either they weren't beat enough or the were beat too much. My problem was not folding them completely into the batter so when you cut into the cake you could see bits of egg whites that weren't incorporated. Clearly we both need to attempt this recipe again.

Rachele - I know what you mean, it's totally weird, right? I started - I'm not kidding - with the scrambled egg recipe. My next attempt will be a beef dish later this week.

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!

Dr. A said...

Anonymous sure is cheeky today.

Christie said...

Dr. A - I was thinking the same thing but since there are no links to Viagra I figured it might be an actual person and not just spam.

Darren said...

Dr. A. I suggest you leave it in the freezer for Trifle until we come and visit you. mmmmm.

Rachele said...

OK. I'm going to try Julia's french onion soup on Saturday and I will report back.

Christie said...

Rachele - Yum! Good luck! I just picked up the ingredients for a beef dish I'm making tomorrow night. More on that later.