Daring Baker March 2011: Yeasted Coffee Cake

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.


For our third Daring Baker challenge, I found myself once again having to get creative to come up with a replacement for the egg-white based portion of the recipe. Talking over possibilities with Allyson and Lila, I decided to modify the chocolate mousse recipe from the Joy of Vegan Baking - substituting in 2 over-ripe bananas for the chocolate, using coconut milk for the non-dairy milk, and replacing half of the vanilla extract with coconut extract. Due to the ripeness of the bananas, I actually made the filling almost a week ahead of the coffee cake, and it lived in my fridge until we needed it.
 

Allyson was able to join me on the actually baking day, and when we saw that recipe made two coffee cakes, she made an actual meringue, per the recipe instructions, for one of the cakes, and I used the banana-coconut mousse for the other. The meringue coffee cake got cinnamon sugar, pecans and chocolate chips (per Jamie's version), and the banana-coconut got the nuts and chocolate, but we left out the cinnamon and sugar, figuring the very-ripe bananas were sweet enough.

Dry Ingredients

I combined the flour, sugar, salt and yeast, then settled in to make 2 eggs from Ener-G egg replacer
while Allyson combined soy milk, Earth Balance butter and water to heat on the stove. Following the recipe, we added flour to the mix as we went, then took turns kneading the dough. We ended up adding a significant portion of the flour, but not all of it.

 

Kneading the Dough

 

I was interested to see that the recipe calls for the bowl where the dough is rising to be covered with plastic wrap and then a kitchen towel, instead of the damp towel I was used to. The dough rose nicely, however, and I may try to remember this trick for the future. The amount of rise may have also been affected by the placement of the bowl - while the dough rose, I made cupcakes for a dinner I was attending that night, so I placed the bowl with the dough on the stove top, where it would catch the warm air exhaust from the oven. 

Dough pre-rising

Dough after rising

Cupcakes done, I cleaned out mixing bowls, and Allyson made the meringue. It took a lot more mixing than I expected, and she achieved very close to stiff peaks. This definitely had a different texture than the banana/coconut mousse that I used in the other coffee cake. 

Meringue

Banana Coconut Mousse

We separated the dough into two pieces, and I set to rolling out the first rectangle. I found that none of my cutting boards were wide enough for the recipe, and we had to Frankenstein together two - one wooden, one ceramic sitting on a book to get the right height. It wasn't until after we rolled out the second cake that we realized parchment paper spread on my counter-top directly would have probably worked better. Something else to remember for next time. Or else get something like this rolling mat.

Rolled Dough on 2 cookies sheets

For each of the cakes we added the "wet" filling, then the dry filling on top, then rolled the cake. Transferring them to the cookie sheets, looping them into circles as we went, was the most interesting part of the process. Luckily neither cake broke. We used a sharp knife to cut the edges, and let the cakes rise again. 

Meringue filled cake

Banana-Coconut Mousse filled cake

We baked the first cake (the meringue filled one made it into the oven first) for 25 minutes, and the banana filled one for 23. My co-workers who tasted both said they liked the texture of the banana mousse filled one better, as the cake was softer. This could be a combination of the slightly reduced cooking time, or the difference in the consistency of the filling.  Overall, I was pretty pleased with the end result, though I'd definitely need more practice in creating evenly filled and shaped coffee cakes.

Uncooked Meringue-filled cake

Uncooked Banana-coconut mousse filled cake

Cakes Cooling

New tools/ ingredients:  none
Recipes used: Daring Baker provided recipe; Adapted Chocolate Mousse from The Joy of Vegan Baking, page 182
Co-bakers: Allyson
Date: March 26, 2011