Baking with Poi, oh joy!
Today I attempted to make Poi, and then incorporate it into a Mocha vegan cake of my own devising. I had the french pastry chef at school chide me for being creative and making up my own recipe. According to him, I need to just follow recipes like a sheep because I do not know everything and shouldn’t stray from classical technique. Why the hell am I in culinary school if I just want to follow recipes all day? I could easily do that at home or work. I am not paying these teachers to make me a robot drone. Luckily not all the teachers are like that, and who knows, frenchie may just be joking and I can’t tell because I am 1. not french, 2. not a local seattlite (different humor here than east coast world) 3. not in the pastry program 4. not using butter or eggs.
Back to my experience: so I took a lovely root of poi, peeled it and steamed it for about a half hour. I used my chef instuctor’s mocajete and tried to pound and grind the taro into poi and it just spurted everywhere and was a bit grainy. My teacher told me in Hawaii they have a flat lava rock and pounding instrument….which is much different than his mocajete de Oaxaca. After a good forearm workout, I threw all the taro into the robocoupe and processed it with enough water to make “2 finger” poi, meaning it can be easily eaten with two fingers. It tasted good and not like the crap I had at a diner near Waimea Bay on the Big Island. That crap was so metallic I gagged. My poi tasted earthy and flowery. I didn’t sugar it since I was going to bake with it.
I altered a recipe I had for a vegan chocolate cake and substituted half of the canola oil for poi, but sadly it got overbaked because making cake was not my main job today. I had to cook for one of the Chef of the Day projects and that distracted me enough to bake the cake 5-10 minutes longer than needed. So, it tasted like cocoa powder, I couldn’t taste the coffee nor the poi. One of my classmates could really taste the poi. I thought it was dry and a little crumbly. It was a moist, dense chocolate cake….maybe I just want a brownie.
So my next try I’m going to melt a nice dark chocolate and swirl it into the batter, add more maple syrup and use some brewed coffee and not the bitter instant espresso.
Has anyone ventured into this cake creation world? I’d appreciate any and all advice, and I will update my trials.