Last Cake, Next Cake

Apparently we cake people are also ice cream people. Although we made different shapes, and used different flavors of ice cream--many of us opting for homemade ice cream with our homemade cake--I think we were unanimous in our praise for the final result.
The friend-indulgent Jennifer filled her cake with not one, not two, but THREE different ice creams, so that all of her invited guests would get their favorite. If you visited Jennifer's house, you had your choice of peanut butter, rocky road, or strawberry.
I was lazily reading Katya's blog, indulging in a little schadenfreude when she was talking about a few small mishaps she encountered, but I stopped smiling when I saw the nasty burn she got--hope it's better by now! Katya's weekly words of wisdom: "Some days just aren't my day, and I'm grateful that on those days I don't work in an ER or the Pentagon. I'm usually grateful about that on the good days too." Her ice cream of choice was homemade cherry almond.
Raymond made his cake with homemade ice cream too--his was coffee made with his own "strongly brewed espresso."
I mentioned last week that Lynnette had already made her homemade strawberry ice cream, so all she had to do was compose the cake and add a few more fresh strawberries for a lovely accent. Once you've already got your homemade strawberry ice cream, it's hard to go far wrong, and she didn't.
Mendy didn't make homemade ice cream because he didn't have time to experiment with parve, but he bought a good-looking soy-based cherry chip. Like me, Mendy also had a little trouble cutting his cake into even slices. There's that schadenfreude popping up again! Sorry, Mendy.
The ever-organized Nancy B. (vanilla bean and cappuccino mocha chip) made this cake way back in February and has just been biding her time to post her great success: "It was a couple of weeks before I quit being stopped in the hall by either people who had a piece and wanted to rave about it (again), or those who missed out and started the conversation with 'So, I hear you brought in a wonderful cake...make sure I hear about it next time.'"
Gartblue barely batted an eyelash making this cake, whipping it up, as she did, between cookies, a wedding cake, mini pavlovas, and lemon cheesecakes, in her all-baking all-the-time weekend.
Monica made two brilliant moves: 1) to make the cake in a loaf pan so that she could get easy slices and 2) to make homemade zabaglione gelato. The only less-than-brilliant move was not to make enough cake.
Jenn has felt lately that she's been baking under an unlucky star, but everything went perfectly for her with this recipe, including her homemade fresh bing cherry ice cream. Heavenly photos of a heavenly cake!
Kristina (homemade strawberry ice cream made from homemade strawberry preserves) got a reminder of how useful spouses can be sometimes at bringing us back to earth. She reports that she "was feeling rather sorry for myself over a heap of dishes when my husband came into the kitchen and wondered why I didn’t seem happy. “Nothing’s going right tonight. I shouldn’t bake in the evening after a day out in the sun weeding.” “What’s gone wrong? What can I do?” “I accidentally substituted for 1 cup instead of 1/2 cup of cream, so I had to get out more stuff and make a double batch of hot fudge sauce.” “Um, sweetie? That’s not really a problem.” Good point.
Vicki's variation was using a nine-by-thirteen pan to get easy square pieces. It's a "new family favorite!"
Julie went a different ice cream direction from everyone else and used her favorite starlight mint--she was "not disappointed." She went for the ice cream sandwich variation, although, as others have noted, the differences between the "sandwich" and "cake" are infinitesimal.
Joan, fresh from her FEATURED BAKER triumph, came through triumphantly once again, although not without a lot of worry and a bit of chagrin at using store-bought ice cream. (Nothing wrong with that!) She came up with the idea of using the extra batter to bake some chocolate financiers--with the hot fudge as dipping sauce, and with cups of espresso on the side, she had some happy neighbors who were invited in for an impromptu feast.

Joan passes the FEATURED BAKER crown on to Faithy. (By the way, Faithy, will we ever get to know your real name? Or will you be forever a mystery woman?) Here is her verdict on this cake: "OMG, Best Ever! Totally heavenly, totally awesome, totally out of this world.. you can already tell how much i am in love with this cake...lol! This is by far the best ever ice-cream cake i've ever eaten!" Can you tell she likes the cake? Her version also had homemade ice cream--the exotic-sounding coffee stracciatella. The coffee in the ice cream may have been responsible for sending Faithy on a caffeine-induced high. She accused herself of rambling on excitedly when "words are hard to come by" for her. Whether the enthusiasm was caused by caffeine or just by the cake, it was fun to read her post. And, by the way, the family loved the cake too.

Next week, another quick-and-easy cake--the mini vanilla bean pound cakes. This was obviously a scheduling error because I try to space these Q&E cakes so that I won't run out of them. After these two in a row, there'll be only 9 cakes left on that list.
For these minis, there are only a few things to be aware of. There's a PLAN AHEAD notation--make the cakes at least one day ahead. Make sure you have vanilla beans. And get yourself some mini loaf pans if you want to make the mini cakes.
Here's a picture of the two-cup disposable loaf pan compared to a standard pan (I think this one is a 9" by 5", holding about eight cups).

After that--the chocolate banana stud cake. Get your bananas soon if you want to have ripe bananas on hand!