Saturday, July 10, 2004


not amazing

said silverton russian coffee cake below ought to be truly delicious.

there's no shortage of butter, sour cream, good things. and yet, as mr. right noted, "it lacks flavor somehow."

precisely, it's not sweet enough and it's too buttery. now, plenty of butter is a good thing.

but you don't want the product to feel greasy in your hand, which this does.

if i were to destroy my kitchen once again to make this monster, i'd reduce the butter by 1/3rd, double the sugar, use brown sugar, and more cinnamon and vanilla to the dough. . .

oh, and form it differently. it is in fact some kind of not-very-sweet chocolate babka.

silverton says to form it as 2 loaves, either free form or in pans. scratch that.

too much area wasted on crust. instead, make one large loaf -- use a springform pan if you don't have a loaf pan of the right size.

and finally, silverton suggests you bake it too long. she says an hour; i found 45 mins. was pushing it.

considering all the stuff in this recipe, it should taste better. but mr. right had to sprinkle extra sugar on top!

thank goodness i added the extra chocolate -- otherwise i would have been even more disappointed.

this could be a nice recipe if seriously tweaked. but why make all this effort when you could just make your standard chocolate babka?

me all confused. and now i have an entire loaf and a half of this left over. . .maybe i can make it into bread pudding or some kind of tiramisu-type thing.

posted by fortune | 8:10 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments