making cakes that taste like perfume
making cakes that taste like perfume
because, why not!
Hey hey hello!
Last week I made *another* cake that tastes like perfume. Well, not LIKE perfume but the flavor profile is heavily inspired by the edible notes of fragrance. It’s similar to the notion “ What grows together goes together”-which is something I live by when it comes to pairing flavors by seasonality. Here though, it’s more like uh “What smells good together maybe hopefully also tastes good together”. Flavor is about engaging all of the senses.
I’m currently on the hunt for my signature scent. Which for most of my life has just been very coconut forward hair products. But, I don’t know, something about creeping up on 30 (next month!!) has me thinking I need something that’s just me. So, I’ve been buying up vials of sample perfumes and discovery sets. Naturally, I’m very gourmand driven, and all of these scents have notes of tangibly edible notes. Lots of citrus (hello, bergamot everything), tonka bean, plum, apricot pits and tons and tons of vanilla. So, it’s easy to want to turn these fragrances into cake. Piggy backing on last weeks newsletter and the creative prompt I provided y’all- you can apply the same exercise to perfumes. Take the notes of your favorite scents and dream them up as cakes, ice cream, plated desserts etc.
One of the sets I picked up was a 5 scent discovery box from Replica. Of the five, I really only found myself vibing with the one I actually had the lowest hopes for in terms of my search, Jazz Club. But, girl, one sniff and I was proved wrong. It’s like they bottled up any $20 a pop craft cocktail bar. Maybe, I’m a sultry woody scent girl and not the ultra sweet, fruit gourmand girlie I thought I was?
Looking at the notes, the edible leaning ones pop out at ya, pink peppercorn, lemon oil, neroli, rum, sage, vanilla. With dozens of ideas swirling around on how to make these into a cake, my brain did hyper fixate on the not so edible tobacco leaf in there. Tons of reasons why I wouldn’t want to put tobacco in a cake- but the parasites… the parasites want me to put it into a cake. Mind you- I’ve consumed one tobacco product in my life- one puff of a cigar in a cigar bar in south Florida. Which was an ass experience and 10/10 don’t recommend it to anyone- I truly don’t get the allure of cigars. ANYWAYS, I wanted the flavor of tobacco in the cake, with really no reference point on the taste. So, I do what any rational person does and GOOGLES what tobacco tastes like. I went with the first thing I found: Tobacco has notes of “star anise, cinnamon, cloves, mint, citrus peels, and rum”. So I used these all to make an infused milk for pastry cream. I charred the spices with a blow torch- and I would have just hickory smoked everything for a few hours- but, my smoking gun is packed up somewhere that was not worth the hassle of hunting down. So, I also picked up some smoked black tea leaves to infuse into the milk as well. I feel like adding a splash of liquid smoke also could have done the trick. A few dashes of orange Angostura bitters and now we’re talking.
These perfume cakes are not made with the sake of recipe development in mind. Not to say I’m not trying to make them delicious- duh that goes with out saying. But, I’m making components, tasting and tweaking on the fly. So just for warning ya, the following recipe isn’t going to be totally formatted the way my normal, throughly tested and retested recipes are. They’re more closely aligned to how recipes in kitchens I’ve worked in were previously formatted- since the changes are to flavor and NOT procedure, if you want more in depth on the instructions visit the links to the original base recipes! Because, these cakes and components are all made using my previously shared based recipes, they’re just remixed and flavored a bit. Which is a point I really try to emphasize on. This is my vanilla chiffon cake with some ____ added in , this is my vanilla pastry cream but I _____ the milk first, etc. etc. I’m trying to remind you that you can apply these flavoring techniques to your own favorite recipes!! or yeah, take my base recipes and flavor them to your own personal preferences.
