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Last Cake

2011-05-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

This two-year project has come to an end. It began on May 31, 2009, with the Spice Cake with Peanut Buttercream, and ended on May 15, 2011 with Zach's LaBomba. In that time, I made 90-plus cakes, and liked them all. More importantly, I made some wonderful baking friends. I learned about your families, your quirks, and your aspirations (just as you learned about mine). We've seen weddings, births, job changes, house hunts, and other life-changing experiences. And every week, I got to read your blogs, and summarize your reactions to the cake of the week. Just like I'm going to do now.

Everyone liked this cake. More importantly, nobody complained about this cake. Remember all the whining about the Apple Charlotte? I do, because I was maybe the biggest whiner. But this cake--we took it in our stride. A two-day cake? No problem.

Lois, for example, thought that although "there were pages and pages of things to do," "there was nothing terribly complex in the methods used (no hot sugar flung about the kitchen)." See? This is how blase we've become: if there's no hot sugar flung about the kitchen, it's a candidate for the Q&E list.

Lola was so taken with the idea of this cake that she made it early--and she made it twice. She "prepared this several weeks ago for a dinner party. It was so exciting to make and serve that [she] made it again the next week for other guests." Two days of baking, stirring, whisking, separating, beating, pureeing, straining - this translates into "exciting to make"? Yes, if it's a "glorious dessert" that's "such a star when it is completed."

Despite a weekend for Kristina that included a trip to the ER with her husband's torn calf muscle, and her own migraine, she "just didn’t feel right missing out on baking this one with the rest of [her] baking buddies." With all of her experience, Kristina also breezed through this one: "The first step was to make the cake base. This is a flourless chocolate cake, with egg yolks and whites beaten separately, each with sugar, melted chocolate is added to the yolks, then the whites (meringue, by now) are folded into the yolk/chocolate mixture. Doesn’t sound all that complicated, when you say it like that." "Delicious," says Katrina. She also wants to try an (even) easier variation: "....use this basic recipe, minus the bottom crust and top glaze, just as a mousse/pudding type dessert in custard cups or sundae glasses."

I wasn't the only person for whom La Bomba was Last Cake. Nancy B. also celebrated her cake graduation. (If you haven't checked out her post entitled "Rose's Heavenly Cakes--All of 'em!"), do it now. It will impress you with the scope of this project, and make you want your very own cake graduation. Nancy finished this cake with her usual aplomb. But I'm a little worried about her brother and his family who have served as the tasting panel for every cake--what are they going to do without their weekly fix?

Jenn may be the only one who actually used the recommended (and "very expensive") Valrhona Manjari chocolate, although she did have "issues" with it separating, with the "cocoa butter oozing out." Unfazed, she started over, and this time all was well--except for her camera running out of battery life. Verdict: "This is really good. Very rich and chocolate-y. It's a tad too rich for me and I can only eat a small piece - which is not necessarily a bad thing. Hubby loves it, he said it's really good." As you probably know, Jenn is going to be continuing the Heavenly Cake Bakers, doing the 21 or so cakes she's still missing. If you're missing some too, join in! You probably won't have the same 21 left to do, but she's building in lots of Free Choices, so you can finish your missing cakes too.

Jane, our ambitious blogger who's set herself the goal of finishing RHC in one year, made her La Bomba a few weeks ago, and has already made three or four more. No lazy one-cake-a-week schedule for her! It would be an understatement to say that she liked this cake, which she calls The Bomb: "I'm eating a slice of this cake (I need to be careful or it will be the whole cake) while I am writing this and I am getting goosebumps with every bite that I eat. One of my roommates and I just stared at each other and shook our heads and then stared at the cake. Totally speechless."

Poor Sarah. She took La Bomba to a pool party, where it totally outclassed "the Betty Crocker brownies and Costco pies that are standard pool party fare." It "tried to fit in," she swore, really it did, but "with the very first slice, everyone knew it was different." Will Sarah's neighbors continue to invite her and her hoity-toity cakes to the pool parties? Will someone sabotage her silicone? Stay tuned to her blog, which will continue, and see what further adventures await Sarah the Bear.

Jennifer, AKA Evil Cake Lady, has been with us from the beginning, and will continue along with Jenn's "Straggler's blog." Luckily for Jennifer, she was enough of a straggler to get the benefit of Zach's (yes, the Zach of "Zach's La Bomba") permission to use a hand mixer to mix the sabayon. Although she will not develop of one perfectly toned arm from hours of whisking, she did get the benefit of the quicker, easier sabayon. She also found a cup of black lacquer glaze in her freezer (how many people have spare pints of black lacquer glaze?), so her cake--with two major shortcuts--was almost Quick and Easy. And did she like it? "The dessert is indeed a showstopper and a perfect way to show your friends exactly how awesome your baking skills have become."

Indeed, we are all awesome. So universally awesome that I can't bring myself to pick a FEATURED BAKER this week. Instead, a heartfelt tribute to Rose: writer, teacher, mentor, friend. Baking from one of Rose's cookbooks is a little like taking piano lessons from oh, say, Mozart, with the added benefit that Rose is alive.

Although it's clear from her books that she's a way better baker than you'll ever be, it's not her goal to let you know that. She wants to teach you everything she knows so that you will become the best possible baker that you can be, given your talents and limitations. And when you stumble along, Rose/Mozart doesn't point out your stumbles. She applauds your accomplishments. In the end, you bake something--a whole lot of somethings if you cook your way through a cookbook--that you would have thought was way beyond your capacities. Thanks, Rose. I can't wait for the next cookbook.

Although I just titled this post "Last Cake," there will always be Next Cakes too. Most immediately, there is the Barcelona Brownie Bar, Jenn's pick for the May 23 baking project. I've made these several times after my original BBB post of October 12, 2009. I hope you make them too--they're wonderful, with or without the ganache. The following week, Jenn et al. are set to tackle the chocolate raspberry trifle. Oh, that is so good!

But even if you don't bake along in this project, or any other project, I assume if you're reading this you've got some interest in making cakes, especially RLB cakes, and that you'll have plenty of "Next Cakes" in store for you. Bon appetit and adieu!

Zach's La Bomba

2011-05-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

I was in a petulant mood when I went to Whole Foods on Friday morning. It was the third grocery store I'd gone to in my search for blackberry tea, and I was irritated at myself for spending so much time tracking down an ingredient that was, after all, only going to flavor 1/4 cup of liquid. I was sure the tea wasn't crucial, but I wanted to find it. And I didn't really know how I felt about making the last cake in this project. But I found the tea--at least I found black raspberry, and I decided that was close enough.

And I also found some nice chocolate: a hunk of Callebaut and some Cordillera 59% discs (it's a chocolate I'd never heard of--made in Colombia and very good).

When the nice young woman at the checkout counter was ringing up my purchases, she looked at the chocolate, cream, and blackberries, and said, "It looks like you're making something fancy."
"I am," I allowed.
NYW: "What is it?"
Me: "A sort of chocolate-blackberry mousse cake."
NYW: "That sounds amazing!. Where did you get the recipe?"
Me: "Rose's Heavenly Cakes. It's by Rose Levy Beranbaum...I don't know if you're familiar with her,..."
NYW: "Of course I am. She's famous! Is the tea for this too?"
Me: "Yes--I've been looking all over for it."
NYW: "You'll have so much fun making this. I know it will be fabulous!"

Her enthusiasm helped remind me of the general awesomeness and fabulousness of the project and the cakes and the bakers, and I was actually whistling a happy tune by the time I got home.
A good thing because I spent the rest of the afternoon making the blackberry mousse and dirtying every pot, pan, and bowl in my cupboards. The mousse is made in two parts: the blackberry sabayon and the rest. A sabayon, kissing cousin to the Italian zabaglione, is characterized by beating a lot of egg yolks and sugar over simmering water.

Since this involves about 10 minutes of constant whisking, if you made a sabayon every day, your whisking arm would probably become quite toned.
This sabayon also contains the elusive blackberry tea (one-quarter cup; drink what's left in the cup), some chocolate, and a little cream.

Put the sabayon aside to cool, and on with the rest of the mousse. The first step to making a smooth blackberry puree is to whirl the blackberries in the food processor.

See all the seeds whirling about? That means that the next step is one of my least favorite things to do: pressing the berries through a sieve so the puree becomes seedless.

Heat the puree with gelatin.

Melt more chocolate in more cream.

Whip still more cream.

Then mix everything, including the sabayon, together, and pour it into the purple silicone mold that you've borrowed from Woody.

Put it in the freezer, and you're done for the day. Simple enough, right? I was trying to figure out why it took me so long when it really wasn't that complicated. I realized that there was a lot of cooling time involved. Also a lot of recipe reading--I must have read every paragraph two or three times. I didn't want to have to admit screwing up my final cake!

Day Two:
Woody said he'd come over to watch (over) me as I completed My Last Cake, so I waited until he finished his Saturday t'ai chi class before making the cake. Nothing to it! Just a little flourless mousse cake. Woody discombobulated me by suggesting that the instructions in my book were wrong. "I think the oven rack should be in the middle, not the lower third" he said.
"Woody! Are you saying that Rose is wrong?" I was shocked.
"No, I'm just saying you should check the actual book--not the proofs you're using."
I sighed my martyr sigh and checked the "real" book. Ha. The recipe says that the rack should be in the lower third. I kept it there and started chopping and melting more chocolate. How much chocolate is in this cake? I count a total of 11 ounces plus nearly 2 ounces of cocoa for the glaze. Chocolate has become a staple in my house now, along with butter and cream.

My last picture of the miraculous transformation of sunny yellow egg yolks into this creamy mixture:

I love it when that happens. For some reason, it amazes me more than the transformation of egg whites into meringue.

The egg-yolk/chocolate mixture is pretty solid, so it takes some muscle power to fold the egg whites into it, but it ends up being a smooth batter that pours neatly into a parchment-lined half-sheet pan.

Done in just 12 minutes. To satisfy Woody, who is always complaining that I don't take sufficient notes from my baking, I cross out "15," and write a big "12" in the margin of the book. He beams. I expect him to start calling me grasshopper.
We take a break while the cake is cooling and watch Rose on Martha Stewart's show. We like the part where Rose gives Martha permission not to measure the vanilla.

Back to work. I've done a lot of searching for the right-sized circular object to use as my cake template. It turns out to be a lid from a set of Ikea plastic storage bowls.

I ask Woody why we have to make so much cake to get one lousy circle. He doesn't really know, but after I taste it, I stop complaining. It's really good--moist and seriously chocolatey. I don't mind having all those scraps.

More waiting while one of the cake rounds cools and firms up in the refrigerator, so it must be time to make the final component: the black lacquer glaze. Of course, this is the fourth time we've made the lacquer glaze, so it's not quite so wondrous as it was the first time. It turns out just about perfect, and all I have to do is let it cool.

Woody, bless his heart, has brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate the successful completion of the project, but he refuses to let me break it open until I finish making the glaze. I think he's afraid I'll get too snockered to do it.

The front pages of the cookbook finally fall off. They'd been hanging by a thread for the last month or so, and finally gave way. I hated to use my real book for all these recipes--I like the way it's still in pristine shape.

Cheers! Here's to Rose, Rose's Heavenly Cakes, and all the Heavenly Cake Bakers!

The frozen mousse came out of the mold without a hitch.

Just a few remaining steps--pour the cooled glaze over the bombe. It seems extra glossy this time.

I think I'm being unusually careful, but it still turns out that there are a few spots that I've missed. Oh well. If I wanted perfection, I'd pay somebody else to do it.

There's more waiting until we can cut into the cake and try it. As usual, I'm impatient, and can't wait the full two hours, so the mousse is still a little frozen. If you eat slowly and patiently, there's time for the outer edges to warm up so the mousse is the proper consistency. But it's still delicious even if it's frozen--like a fabulous grown-up fudgsicle.

Wow--what a great cake to end with! Although it's time-consuming, it's really not difficult (transferring the glazed cake to the platter was the hardest thing about it). And such great flavors--the thin layer of cake on the bottom tastes like pure chocolate. The mousse is more subtle, both in flavor and texture; the marriage of blackberries and chocolate is one made in heaven; and the rich cocoa glaze adds a third dimension. It's a good thing I broke my one-piece rule long ago.

TASTING PANEL:
Jim: "I like the slight berry taste with the chocolate, and the different chocolate flavors. And it was also very pretty. The glaze stayed shiny without the hair dryer."
Karen: "Really rich, but really, really good."
Woody: "Rapturously good--that means it's uplifting. A fitting finale to two years of baking."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-05-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed reading about your Free Choices when I was in France, and Jenn did a terrific job of keeping the group organized and writing her mid-week roundups. She was prompter than I am this week, I must say.

The white cupcakes--the last entry from the Baby Cakes chapter--are everything a cupcake should be: tender, not too sweet, and just the right size for biting into. As Lois said, "I wasn't looking forward to this recipe - white cake, white frosting, how special can it be? I could not have been more wrong."

What made reading your reviews of this "plain white cupcake" so interesting was the variety of frostings you chose. I suggested Rose's Golden Neoclassic Buttercream, or one of the variations thereof, to give you an extra recipe to cross off your list (page 299), but many of you, including Jennifer, "rebelled."

In fact, Jennifer rebelled two ways. She frosted some with a brown sugar buttercream which she found in her freezer and realized, to her horror, that she'd had it sinced 2008! She wasn't that horrified though; she ate it and pronounced it "still pretty good." She frosted the others with lemon curd left over (only from January of this year), and discovered that the freezer had been less kind to the lemon curd than to the buttercream. Moral: eat your lemon curd while it's fresh.

Vicki, on the other hand, was quite obedient, making the Golden Neoclassic Buttercream, which she described as "probably the easiest time I've had making a buttercream." She did flavor hers with lemon oil, which gave it "a faint lemony taste," so I guess she did veer a little from the buttercream straight and narrow.

Nancy B., already in a celebratory mood as she posted her next-to-last cake, covered her cupcakes with colorful sprinkles and baked them in festive orange and yellow cups. She too had good luck with her buttercream, finding that it went "much smoother" than her attempt made earlier in the bake-through. Nancy also noted the efficient symmetry of this recipe: "This cake and frosting is a nice pairing, too, because the cake needs 3 egg whites and the buttercream takes the 3 yolks."

Lois, who thought the cake would be too plain, had the same opinion about the frosting, but was won over by her "new favorite, golden syrup," which "imparts a sweet, toffee flavor to everything it touches."

Jane. our new go-getter baker, who's determined to finish the book in a year, baked Miss Irene's Strawberry Cake along with her white velvet cupcakes (if you're going to pack 90+ recipes in a year, necessity commands you to double up on your cake baking). She topped the cupcakes with milk chocolate ganache. And she's already up to Cake #12!

Jenn had some Golden Neoclassic Buttercream stashed in her freezer from when she used it to frost Mini Vanilla Bean Cupcakes, so all she had to do was thaw it. With that speedy route to the frosting, and the fact that the cupcakes are on the Q&E list, this became "the fastest cupcake made in Knitty Baker's history." She dolled them up with strawberries--so they don't have the makeshift look that you might expect from the fastest cupcake in history.

One cake left to bake..., but we have a new baker. (I checked with Jenn, and she said "the more, the merrier). Seattle Pastry Girl's first entry is pretty as a picture, with her swirly frosting and her purple quins. (I had to look it up). Welcome, SPG!

FEATURED BAKER status goes to Katya, even though (or maybe because?) Katya bakes cupcakes even though she doesn't like to eat them. In one short blog post, Katya not only posted a picture of mouth-watering cupcakes topped with apricot buttercream, but she also managed to sneak in two great anecdotes: 1) that the last time she made these cupcakes for a bake sale, it led to a proposal of marriage from some reality TV show construction workers and 2) that her sister "told [her] she was on a health kick, then ate two." For this short and sweet post, Katya wins not only the FEATURED BAKER award, but also the Ernest Hemingway Award for Brevity in Blogging.

Our next cake is my last cake, and the cake Rose suggested we end with, the famous, or infamous, Zach's La Bomba. It's another of Rose's multiple-component, 7-page recipes (our last one was the Apple Charlotte). The hardest thing to find may be the silicone bombe mold, which does not seem to be made any longer. (I borrowed Woody's). Fortunately, a glass bowl will also work. It didn't occur to me that blackberry or black currant tea would also be hard to find. When I heard rumblings about it being inaccessible, I checked out some grocery stores--sure enough, it wasn't available in either one. If I can't find it, I think I'll just make a cup of black tea and let a few blackberries steep in it.

DON'T FORGET--THE MOUSSE MUST BE MADE AND FROZEN AT LEAST 8 HOURS AHEAD!

Although this will be my last cake, wonderful Jenn, aka Knitty Baker, will carry on. I believe she has 20-some cakes to make before she's done, and I think her plan will be to include fairly frequent free choices, since the participants aren't all going to have the same cakes left to bake. If you plan to continue participating, please leave a comment to that effect, or let Jenn know.

Here are a few pictures from our trip to France. Jim took thousands--literally--of pictures, and I've culled a few from the thousands. My feelings won't be hurt if you don't want to look at someone else's vacation photos.

Our back yard in Brittany.

The town square in Treguier.

Our favorite creperie, Les Halles.

Treguier's cathedral.

Blue shutters, flowers, and lace curtains--typical of Brittany.

A hike by the sea.

The Rose Granite coast.

Flowers are everywhere...

The weekly village market

Dinner after market day.

The house between the rocks.

In the window of a Paris Chocolatier: 37 euros for this wedding souvenir!

Pierre Herme's shop (you're not allowed to take pictures inside)

A little Pierre Herme snack.

Poilane Boulangerie.

White Velvet Butter Cupcakes with Raspberry Neoclassic Buttercream

2011-05-08T19:50:00.000-07:00

This little cupcake with its decadent frosting was the perfect treat to counter the wonderful French pastries we've been eating for the last two weeks! The all-American cupcake, light, rich, and buttery, can hold its own against any mille feuille or macaron. And the buttercream! Made with French butter, this fantastic icing could make a Frenchman bid adieu to creme Chantilly!
Well, that might be an exaggeration, but the Buttercream Framboise is pretty darned good (as we say in Minnesota).

I got some very cute tulip parchment liners from King Arthur. Mine are brown and gold. Apparently you can make them yourself because they're just squares of parchment, but that didn't occur to me, so I bought them.

The cupcakes are so simple to make that there are no process pictures to speak of. Just add butter to flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt; then mix in egg whites, milk, and vanilla. I usually buy whole milk for cooking, but I only had skim milk. It worked fine, and allowed me to convince myself that I was baking low-fat cupcakes.

I should have been worried about the buttercream, but I somehow knew that it would work out, as it did. I spent about ten minutes letting the Lyle's Golden Syrup drip out of the jar until I got exactly 85 grams. Jim was sure I'd have to open another jar, and I was equally sure that I wouldn't. Stubbornness won out. Drip by drip, I got my 85 grams.

This is my Isigny butter from Normandy. I got it on sale before I left for France. If I were being true to Brittany, where I just vacationed, I should have bought its famous butter, which is excellent, but it's the only butter in France that's salted. I wanted unsalted butter, so I had to go to Normandy. But if you want delicious caramels made with salted butter, you should go to Brittany post-haste.

The last time I made this buttercream with butter, egg yolks, and Lyle's Golden Syrup, it turned out very yellow, and it confused people, who expected it to be lemon. I decided I'd head that confusion off by adding raspberry puree, but the frosting, without raspberries, turned out to be creamy-looking, rather than lemon yellow. I don't think it would have been confusing, but I added the raspberries anyhow.

And then, dear readers, I got out my piping equipment. Yes. Those of you who have followed my adventures in cakedom know that I have always hated piping, decorating, and anything that might come from Michael's. But apparently I've had a sudden change of personality, because my piping bag started calling to me.

Top each frosted cupcake with a single red raspberry. It's as pretty as anything you'd see in Paris.

And not just pretty, but tasty too! The cupcake's crumb is lovely--soft and delicate; and the taste is pure.

I was going to give all these cupcakes away today, but I'm having a dinner party tomorrow. I've already planned chocolate pots de creme as dessert, but I'm going to offer a plate of cupcakes too: a dual dessert party. Who can complain about that? Not Jim or I, the only people who have tasted them so far. We both loved the delicious flavor and crunchy edges of the cupcake, and the tart smoothness of the buttercream. I think these cupcakes can hold their own, even against chocolate.

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-04-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether we have a large contingent of coconut-haters, or whether people were feeling buttercream fear, or whether nobody could find coconut extract--whatever the reason, the turnout for the Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake with Silk Meringue Buttercream was a little sparse. Those who persevered, however, were rewarded with a showstopper of a cake--the kind that makes people gasp (really!) when they see it. And I think almost everyone substituted something, so--as we should know by now--a missing ingredient or two never stopped a determined baker.

Last week Alice just got an honorable mention in the mid-week roundup because she'd baked the wrong cake. This week, the wrong cake turns into the right cake, so we learn that she substituted chocolate ganache for the silk meringue buttercream. The cake was good, and the ganache was good; but she concluded, "I should have listened to the professional because once it set up, the ganache was way too heavy for the tender crumb of the coconut cake." Alice, where is your Tomboy?! You don't want to miss that cake.

Jennifer, who describes this as a "furry yellow cake," did almost everything by the book except that she substituted Baker's coconut for the shredded unsweetened stuff that was supposed to be in the frosting. Also, and more daring, she didn't mix the coconut in the frosting because she thought it would make it hard to frost (how right you were)--she just sprinkled it all over the icing.

Vicki found a creative way of compromising with the people in her house who don't like coconut. She filled and topped the layers with the coconut buttercream, sans shredded coconut, and served that to the coconut-haters. She toasted coconut for the coconut lovers, and sprinkled that on the individual slices. She "doesn't much trust [herself]" around this cake.

Lois couldn't find coconut extract and the only kind of dried coconut they have in her Polish groceries is dessicated coconut. She didn't let that stop her--she tried to rehydrate the dried coconut, but got most of the coconut flavor from the coconut milk, which she did manage to find.

Monica, as dedicated a photographer as she is a cook, wanted to take pictures of her coconut cake in natural light, so she left a note on the cake threatening poor Tom with certain death if he dared to cut into the cake, or even touch it, until she could get back home and take photographs. Fortunately the pictures were taken, the cake eaten, and no one died. Like Jennifer, Monica omitted the coconut from the frosting and sprinkled it atop.

Nancy B. managed to locate "the elusive coconut extract," and baked hers in cupcake form. Opinions on the cake were mixed, depending mostly on how people liked coconut. As Nancy said, "Do you realize how many people have an aversion to coconut?" In exciting news, Nancy said that if she makes two different cakes on the Free Choice weeks, and blogs about the one cake that she has already baked but hasn't written about, she will finish at the same time I do. Yay for us!

Jenn went off in a different direction. She's already made the cake once, so she decided she'd try Hector's recipe for coconut curd, and combine that with whipped cream for her cupcake frosting. She topped the cupcakes with some curd, and then stirred the rest into whipped cream for the frosting. Then she decorated the whole thing with toasted shredded coconut. "Hubby loves it and said it's very coconut-y. I'm not a big fan of coconut dessert myself, but this one is really good."

I'm not sure I've ever made a brand new HCBer a FEATURED BAKER, but I'm making an exception for Jane. No, this is not because her cake looks so delicious (although it does), or because she has such a happy smile in the picture of her standing by her KitchenAid (although she does), but because she's decided to make all the cakes in Rose's Heavenly Cakes in one year! And she's already made six--the latest being the Coconut Cake. It's a good thing Jenn is keeping this Bake Through going!

Speaking of that, Jenn has volunteered to keep the "Last Cake, Next Cake" feature going for the next few weeks when I'm out of town. If I can get an IPad connection, I'll be checking out her LCNC myself. I love to see what everyone bakes. Check Jenn's website mid-week and see what she's got posted. Just go to the right side of the page, and look for "Knitty Baker."

Finally, if you get the Hallmark channel where you live, be sure to watch Martha Stewart's show on Friday. Rose is her special guest, and will be showing Martha how to make the whipped cream cake. It should be interesting to see these two dynamite women together! By the way, there are lots of Martha Stewart slots on the Hallmark channel, so be sure that you get the right one. It's scheduled to air between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. EDT, but it's on at noon in the Minneapolis area. I've got it set to record, and Woody and I are going to watch it when I get back from France. Hanaa, do you want to see it too?

Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake with Silk Meringue Buttercream

2011-04-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

Jim is usually pretty good-natured about following me around the kitchen with his camera, and cleaning up the kitchen too. Today he said, "I love Rose's cakes, but they use too many hard-to-find ingredients and use way too many pans!" His relative grumbliness may have been because the ingredients and pans were for a coconut cake, and coconut is on his list of foods he does not like to eat. Along with cilantro and avocado. But he had to admit that this cake turned out to be a beauty.

I have gradually figured out the obvious: the cakes themselves are never difficult. It's just the level of folderol that goes along with the cakes that makes them hard--that, and tracking down the necessary ingredients or pans. In this case, once I had the egg whites separated and weighed, and the coconut milk whisked together, the cake almost made itself.

The only thing that was hard to find for the cake itself was the coconut extract--it must be natural, not fake! I couldn't find any natural coconut extract, so I settled on the expensive fake stuff, which smelled much better than the cheaper fake stuff.

The cakes came out of the oven before 11:00, and I thought maybe I'd be done with the whole thing by noon. Of course, that was optimistic. Maybe delusional.

On to the first component of the frosting: the coconut-flavored creme anglaise. Not difficult--just a matter of cooking egg yolks with hot coconut milk (something that would never occur to me to do on my own).

The creme anglaise needs to cool. Should I put it in the refrigerator and start in on component #2, the Italian meringue? Or should I have another cup of coffee and work on the crossword? Those choices are why I never finish the cakes before noon. Also, I just made an Italian meringue last week, and they always make me hold my breath.

The last bit of sugar syrup hardened before I could pour it into the meringue, so I microwaved it to get it to pouring consistency. I discovered that if you heat it for more than a few seconds, it crystallizes into a lump that is definitely not pouring consistency. Luckily, as I've discovered many times before, Rose's recipes, precise as they are, allow for errors.

Is there really a pound of butter in the buttercream? Along with the half-pound in the cake? When did I start keeping spare pounds of butter in the freezer for such exigencies?

The coconut creme anglaise is much runnier than I thought it would be, and the whole mixture starts to curdle. But now I know that buttercream often goes through a curdling stage, so I ignore it, and, sure enough, it smooths out. I could not find frozen coconut. I used a finely grated unsweetened coconut, but it tasted very bland, so I supplemented it with ordinary Angel Flake coconut.

With all the added coconut, the smooth and creamy buttercream became difficult to manage. I banned Jim from taking more photographs of my struggles with icing. It took me a long time to finish, but I finally decided it was good enough. I topped the cake (and tried to side it) with some coconut chips that Woody gave me months ago.

This seems like a cake to have for a baby shower, or a big summer party. It's pretty, and festive, and very good. I wish I'd been able to find the frozen coconut, and the natural coconut extract, but I think the pound and a half of butter may have disguised any sub-par ingredients. The Southern (Manhattan) cake went over well in Southern (Minneapolis).

TASTING PANEL:

Jim: "I like the cake, but I still don't like the coconut texture. The really finely grated stuff is okay, but I don't like the big chips. I know you had issues with the frosting, but it turned out looking great."

Karen: "I like the cake's texture. It's somehow meatier than some of the other cakes--not so delicate. It's not heavy, but not too light either. It's one of my favorites, and I've tasted a lot of them. Also, I want to go on record as saying this is a gorgeous cake."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-04-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

We were all crazy about our little Tomboys. I don't know why I waited so long to put this on the baking list, but all I want to do now is bake it again. And I'm not the only one.

According to Lois, this is "without a doubt the best chocolate cake in the book." (And that's really saying something).

Likewise, Shandy thought it was "the perfect size dessert and one of the BEST chocolate cakes I have yet baked."

Kristina "absolutely loved this cake. Soft, fudgey, moist, and delicious. The mousseline’s not necessarily my favourite buttercream, but it compliments this cake well. This is definitely on the “will bake again” list. I might just have to see how it does in a larger size for a party cake, too."

The cake was a "big hit" to Nancy's group of tasters: "lovely chocolate flavor, very moist, no criticisms there."

Lola made it for a ladies' lunch, and described it as "a lovely cake which is delicate and full of flavor at the same time.... [I]t was delicious and a perfectly charming cake to serve to my girlfriends."

Raymond pronounced the Tomboy "rich, dense and moist with an intense chocolate flavor and it keeps well for several days without getting dry." It's a "little gem."

But Raymond was more "on the fence" about the vanilla mousseline, which proved problematic for some bakers. It wasn't that Raymond had problems making the mousseline. "All worked out fine." But, although he thought it was "delicious," he also thought it didn't deliver "that hit of vanilla flavor I was looking for." Next time, he promised to use vanilla sugar and a vanilla bean as well as the vanilla extract and hopefully that will give me the vanilla flavor that I am after to pair with this intense chocolate cake."

Things did not go perfectly in the mousseline department for Jenn and Jennifer. In fact, they both despaired at times of ever coming up with an edible frosting. Read their posts for how not to give up on frosting, even when it's curdling, separating, and all the other sins that mousseline is heir to. It even drove Jenn to ladylike cursing: "$*%&^ $&#*%&!"

In the end, though, they were both successful. Jennifer described hers as "a delicious cake with an intriguing mixing process, bold in flavor and moist as they come with a silky, buttery, vanilla frosting. This Tomboy is welcome in my house anytime." And Jenn "felt really good to have a successful mousseline." Not to mention the fact that the cake is "so moist and chocolate-y. This chocolate cake is now one of my favorites in the book" (This is starting to sound like a theme, isn't it?)

By the way, we were all curious about the technique for making this cake, which is unlike any of the other cakes in the book. Any scientists out there care to explain why it works?

Vicki may not know why it worked, but she knows that it does, and that it's a great cake for your grandchild's birthday. And that is why she's our FEATURED BAKER this week. Not only did she make the Tomboy for her youngest granddaughter's first birthday (adapted somewhat for a little one who doesn't tolerate much dairy), but she also baked up an orange chiffon and a whipped cream cake. Rose's cakes have never been presented with so many sprinkles. As Vicki says, "Here's the best review of Rose's cakes: the kids at the party loved them all. Kids can't be fooled."

Honorable mention to Alice and to Faithy, who both baked from the book but were on somewhat different schedules. Alice thought we were baking the coconut cake this week--if you want to preview that, check out her blog. And Faithy thought it was time for her to make the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache.

Finally, Maria will be missing from action for a while. She is looking forward to being a "bionic blogger" after her hip replacement. Have a speedy and uneventful recovery!

Our next cake before my own two-week hiatus is the Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake with Silk Meringue Buttercream. This, like Miette's Tomboy, has intrigued me since I first laid hands on the cookbook, but it somehow never made it in the rotation before now. This is a nine-inch layer cake, so it's going to feed a crowd. Lucky you if you've got egg whites in the freezer--the cake takes six of them. No worries if you don't, however, because the butercream takes five yolks (and two more whites).

The cake calls for several different coconut flavors: canned coconut milk for both the cake and the frosting, coconut extract for both cake and frosting; oiptional CocoRibe, and fresh or frozen coconut. Rose recommends fresh or frozen coconut so the frosting won't be too sweet. You can also sometimes find packaged unsweetened coconut at the grocery store, and I imagine that would do in a pinch.

We are going to France for two weeks, first staying in Brittany, and then finishing up in Paris. While I'm gone, Jenn has volunteered to write the "Last Cake, Next Cake" summaries. Thanks, Jenn!

Miette's Tomboy

2011-04-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

I want this to become my signature cake. I don't want anyone to think of it as "Miette's Tomboy," (sorry Miette), but as "that chocolate cake that Marie makes." This is, I think, the best chocolate cake in the book so far, and if anyone complains that it's dry, I'll think that they live in an alternative universe where "dry" means "moist and delicious."

In most of Rose's chocolate cake recipes, the chocolate taste comes from cocoa melted in water. In this recipe, there's cocoa, but it's mixed in with the other dry ingredients, and an additional shot of chocolate comes from semisweet chocolate melted in water, and added to the egg, oil (no butter in this cake) and buttermilk.

Everything mixes up into a thick, shiny, glossy batter.

And the finished cakes are also dark and glossy. I used two 6 x 2-inch pans, mostly because I couldn't find a pan that was three inches deep. I was very pleased to have two layers and not to have to cut the thick cake into three layers, so I was just as happy my search hadn't been successful.

After the cakes cooled, there were no more excuses for putting off making the mousseline. There are plenty of bad things that can happen when you make mousseline, and I'm proud to say that I've now been baking cakes long enough that most of them have happened to me: curdling, separating, texture too thin, texture too thick, etc.

None of those things happened today, perhaps because I actually used my Thermapen to make sure everything was around 70 degrees.

Butter softened (and refrigerated until it was 70 degrees).

Egg whites beaten to stiff-peak stage.

Sugar syrup heated to 248 degrees and poured into the meringue. I was explaining this frosting to someone, and she asked if I was making candy or frosting. It's hard to explain this whole hoo-ha over buttercream to a non-baker. Anyway, every step went smoothly--smoothly enough that I was inspired to get my cake decorating kit, such as it is, to attempt the decoration.

I didn't have a #26 tip, but I figured what I had was good enough. This prompted Jim to start his ode to Hanaa's cake decorating abilities: "You should have seen her, Sarah. She really knows what she's doing. She's so fast and and skillful--it's just fun to watch her." Sarah said, "Uh, dad, maybe you should tell mom she's doing a good job." "Oh right, great job, Marie. Like I was saying about Hanaa...." Sarah kicked Jim under the table and he quieted down. I was baking the cake for her birthday, and I think she saw her happy family gathering deteriorating before her eyes.

I'll be the first (maybe the second) to say my piping's not as good as Hanaa's, but remember this is my first attempt. And if you looked at the cake at just the right angle (unfortunately not the angle that any pictures were taken at), you'd say it didn't look half bad.

With a pink candle and a pink rose, it was enough to make Sarah happy, and that was good enough for me.

TASTING PANEL:

Sarah: "So good. The vanilla adds a fantastic flavor to the icing. One of the best cakes I've ever had, and I'm saying that without hyperbole."

Jim: "I love the nice deep chocolate flavor and color of the cake."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-04-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Karmel Cake. Is it a true Plain Jane that has no business being in a cookbook that features the likes of the Chocolate Apricot Roll with Lacquer Glaze or the Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Buttercream? Or is it the ugly duckling that turns out to be a beautiful swan? That is the question the Heavenly Cake Bakers answered last week.

I thought that the ingenious Bakers might look askance at this single-layer unadorned cake and would find some ways to prettify it. But most people kept it simple.

Jenn, however, couldn't quite resist finding some way to make it cute, so she used her new butterfly cakelet pan. The little butterfly cakes are cute all right, although they pretty much refused to budge out of the pan. Also, Jenn's husband decided they had a "weird" taste, so the Karmel cake, cute or no, may not be repeated there.

Lola's husband also failed to rave about the cake. He said it was "okay, but he has preferred other cakes that I have made."

This less-than-enthusiastic reaction was decidedly a minority view, however.

Lois, for example, found nothing "plain about the finished product," and (after making two cupcakes for home consumption) sent it with her husband to his workplace, where it was devoured in record time.

Kristina sent hers to work for the same reason. When she asked her husband whether to leave the cake at home or take it to work, he said, “Take it to work. If you keep it here, I’ll eat it and get fat.”

Raymond was ecstatic about the cake: "The rich and butter taste of the caramel really shines through here and every mouthful is an explosion of rich and mellow caramel flavor. No tame flower this, but a full flavored gutsy cake with a nice crumb and a strong structure to back it up. You will definitely savor every bite of this cake."

As was Katya, who loved the cake's "unadorned simplicity." "I considered dressing up this cake for the camera, but I decided that its rigorous simplicity demanded simple presentation. We ate it just like this, and it was complete in itself. The Karmel Cake, which is also a caramel cake, is a butter cake made with a milk/brown-sugar caramel in the batter, which gives it a subtle depth of flavor and a crunchy brown crust."

Jennifer added this to her "List of Cakes that are Good for Breakfast," which I must say sounds like a very useful list to have. She added, "This lovely caramel cake was a snap to prepare, and just as easy to eat. It had a lovely moist, soft crumb, with the caramelly flavors taking this cake further down the road of awesome than my beloved yellow butter cake." Cakes that are "Further down the road of awesome" would also make a good list.

In fact, some people weren't even planning to make the cake because of its plainness. When Monica, for instance, saw the recipe, she wasn't "wowed" by it at all. But after eating it, (and eating it some more), she decided that "hidden in its simplicity ... is a stand out cake. It does not even need frosting or cream or anything - ...I recommend to eat it plain because sometimes plain is good for the soul - this is one of those times."

Faithy wasn't planning to make it either. (Full disclosure: her change of heart may have had something to do with a veiled threat about Woody chasing her down with his tai chi sword). She was glad she did, because "even with my slightly burnt caramel bits, the cake turned out great."

People loved the caramel taste; if anything, they would have preferred more caramel. Nancy would have liked a punchier caramel flavor, though she thought the cake was "nice and moist," and her nephew called it a "really excellent" cake. Nancy would like to experiment with the sugar, maybe trying the recommended Muscovado. (I think Hanaa's insistence on using dark brown sugar may be contagious.)

Vicki loved it, but also thought the caramel flavor was a little mild: "If there was a way to ramp it up even more, I'd definitely go for it." She recommends Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche ice cream (melting) as a perfect accompaniment.

None of you will be surprised to hear that Hanaâ is this week's FEATURED BAKER. I can't tell you how much I admire her fearless attitude toward baking. "Let's pipe 'Happy Birthday Rose' on the cake!" is just one of her many spur-of-the-moment ideas. And her curiosity knows no bounds. Unlike some people (yours truly, for example), who just want to turn out an edible product and stave off disaster, Hanaâ wants to know how everything works. And then she wants to improve it. She is also warm and fun and supportive.

Our next two weeks are also butter layer cakes. When we finish the coconut cake, we'll have completed with the "Butter and Oil Cakes" chapter.

Miette's Tomboy is a smallish cake. It calls for one 6 x 3-inch round pan. These are not easy to find. Fortunately, you have the option of using two 6 by 2-inch pans, which is what I'm planning to do. If you do this option, the cake "will be slightly less dense and fudgy." But I can live with that. If you don't think that the purpose of the flower nail is to make a chiffon layer cake, you can probably duplicate the pretty pink rose that's in the center of the cake. Otherwise, you can eat it without a rose.

The Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake is, on the other hand, a largish cake--it serves 16 to 20. Unless you're planning to cut the recipe in half, or even less, this would be a good cake to take to the office--or offer up at the end of a big party. This cake doesn't just require packaged coconut--it's supposed to have fresh or thawed and towel-dried frozen coconut. I've never seen frozen coconut in a grocery store. In the other hand, I've never looked. The buttercream also calls for CocoRibe, but since it's optional, I think I'm going to ignore it.

Karmel Cake

2011-04-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

If you've checked Rose's blog recently, you know that she had a birthday, so when the Minnesota Three (Hanaâ, Woody, and me) got together for our recent Bake-a-Thon, we knew we had to turn the Karmel Cake into a birthday cake. Fortunately, Hanaa is an ace cake decorator; otherwise, the cake might have looked a little sad.

Were it not for the first step of making the caramel, this would be just about the Quickest and Easiest of the Quick and Easy cakes. I didn't have the preferred Muscovado sugar; when I got my bag of light brown sugar out of the cabinet, however, Hanaâ said, "I like dark brown better, so I brought that along." Woody gave her the evil eye: "The recipe says LIGHT brown," he announced. When I told Hanaâ that dark brown sounded good to me, Woody realized he was stuck with a couple of lawless woman, and gave us permission to use one-third dark brown.

I stirred, and Hanaâ took the caramel's temperature. She wouldn't let me stop stirring until it reached 238.

The caramel had to cool for an hour. Fortunately, both Hanaâ and Woody brought treats, so the hour passed quickly.

Hanaâ provided a piece of her version of the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache, which she made with a whipped cream filling and homemade triple berry jam. Delicious! I noticed that it looked like a Hostess Ho-Ho and told Woody that he and Rose should work on making a version of the Ho-Ho for the new cookbook. Woody seemed less pleased with this idea than I was.

He's experimenting with making gluten-free ganache, so he brought a White Velvet cake with a coconut cream ganache. Good--but not as good as the original.

Hanaâ also brought some baghrir, or yeasted Moroccan pancakes, that she's written about on her blog. They look like big crumpets, but they taste more like pancakes than crumpets. She topped them with melted butter and honey with orange water. Not your ordinary breakfast pancakes, but they could easily become your recipe of choice--they're pretty addictive.

After downing several thousand carb calories, we waddled back to the kitchen, and whipped up the Karmel cake batter: so easy!

And it comes out of the oven so beautifully brown, smelling sweet and delicious. After the cake cooled, I made whipped cream. Instead of flavoring it with coffee (Hanna doesn't like coffee), I added some caramel left over from the Sticky Toffee cake, and, for those of us who do like coffee, sprinkled some espresso powder on top of the caramel cream. Hanaâ said, "Oh, we should decorate the cake--but I didn't bring my toolbox." "I have a pastry bag and decorating tips," I said. "You can use them," I added craftily. Hanaa looked doubtful: "You? You have decorating things?" Hmmpf. I'm always being misunderestimated, as a certain ex-president used to say.

Look at that girl go! Not only did she pipe "Happy Birthday, Rose," but she also did a border, adding a few little leaves. She knows what she's doing in the kitchen.

We decided that we'd put three candles on the cake--one for each of us to blow out. And we each made a wish on Rose's behalf, which we can't tell, of course, because it's a well-known fact that if you disclose a wish that you make on a birthday candle, it can't come true. If my wish is any example, however, Rose is going to have a very good year.

Woody had been talking about his tai chi sword, which he happened to have in his car. He had never tried it for this function before, but it turns out it's quite good for cutting cakes.

Even though it was cake #3 for the day (#4 if you count the pancakes), I still loved it. I thought it was just about perfect, although Woody pointed out that it had some tunnels in it. This occurred because I overmixed the batter, according to Woody and Hanaâ, who both have more information floating around in their heads than is good for them. (Certainly more than is good for me).

It's basically a very good butter cake, but with the added pizzazz of caramel flavor. The slight crispiness of the crust adds to the uniqueness of this cake. (Eat the cake soon after it's done in order to experience this crispy extra, though--it doesn't last to the second day).

And happy birthday, Rose! I hope your birthday cake in Hope was as good as your birthday cake in Minneapolis.

TASTING PANEL

Woody: "It tastes better than the cake I brought. Definitely a good caramel flavor. But Rose wouldn't like the tunnels."

Jim: "It'a really good cake. I especially like the flavor. The crunchiness gives it a special effect, unlike any of the other cakes."

Hanaâ: "I'm surprised at how much caramel flavor is in the cake--more than in the cream."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-03-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

I believe I started my last post--on the Orange Glow Chiffon Cake--by noting, rather smugly, in retrospect, that I still read the recipe directions pretty carefully. Not carefully enough to see that I was supposed to use unbleached AP flour instead of bleached. And not carefully enough to remember to insert the rose nail in the batter until after the cake was already in the oven.

I was glad to see I wasn't alone: not the only one in this group of careful, thorough, excellent bakers to have trouble reading. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one to end up with a nearly perfect cake despite a less than perfect attention span.

What really tickled me is that I wasn't the only one to forget the rose nail--when the whole point of this cake is that the rose nail allows you to make a chiffon cake as a layer cake, and not in a tube pan.

Jenn, usually as meticulous as they come, did just what I did: "I had already taken out my flower nail before starting the cake, but had somehow forgotten about it (it was hidden behind the the book). And only after the cake's been in the oven for 10 minutes I remembered the flower nail. What to do? I quickly open the oven door, grab the pan and stuck the flower nail in the middle of the cake anyway." Her cake sunk a bit, which she blamed on the tardy nail insertion, but, according to Woody, the cake is bound to fall.

Vicki, also careful (and determined--remember when she baked the Catalan Pinch Cake four times, trying to get the eggs to behave?), did the same thing: "The cake mixed up quite easily and I popped it straight into the oven forgetting the flower nail. Five minutes into baking and more than five swear words later, I shoved it into the batter hoping the whole thing wouldn't deflate." (It didn't).

Like me, Jennifer "glossed over" the fact that the layer cake, unlike the Bostini, called for unbleached flour. No harm done. No, any harm that befell her cake was due to a bit of a cock-up on the cooling front (to paraphrase a character in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin). You can see what happened when you look at her photo captioned, "Bakers of the world: do not do this."

Nancy also missed the part about unbleached flour and just did the cake flour version of the Bostini base; she attributed that little error to her cake's ending up with a "concave bottom." Nancy also recommends not using Seville marmalade in the whipped cream--delicious on toast, but not sweet enough to sweeten the cream. Even so, she liked the cake, finding it "nicely flavored and well balanced with the orange whipped cream."
Of course, if you don't have a flower nail in the first place, this cake isn't going to work.

At least, that was Lola's conclusion, after she tried to make do with a two-inch metal decorating tip instead of a flower nail. Or maybe it was her cake strips--she says she's been having trouble with them. Whatever happened, the cake didn't. Or at least not as a cake. Undaunted, however, she translated the messed-up cake into a trifle, where it looked beautiful.

There being no Michael's outlet in Poland, Lois opted to make cupcakes, as in the Bostini recipe, topped with the True Orange Whipped Cream. Lois has sent so many offerings to Ed's office that she figures "the Polish Air Force will think that Americans are dedicated bakers."

Kristina had the flower nail, but, when she saw that her springform pan was only about two inches high, realized that it wasn't going to work for this high and handsome cake, so she simply baked it in a tube pan, a la The Cake Bible's version of the orange chiffon cake. She too is taking the rest of her cake into the office. (Is there a luckier group of co-workers anywhere than those who work with The Heavenly Bakers?)

But I'm making it sound like everyone had problems with something, when that's not at all the case.

Alice, for example, didn't think she much cared for chiffon cakes. But now she figures she "just hadn't met the right one before." She liked this one so much that, after feeding it to her friends and neighbors, she promptly baked another one. " Yes, that's right...I made two orange-glow chiffon cakes within about 5 hours of each other."

Shandy, who posted both about this cake and the devil's food cake, "loved the cake, and loved the true orange whipped cream!" Shandy also had some nice things to say about the rest of the Heavenly Cake Bakers: we are "captivating, in-depth, enthusiastic, imaginative, and open to new ideas."

Like Sarah, for example. She's not a lover of orange desserts, which always "remind her of Flintstones chewables." Or, as she put it, she was just not "feelin' this cake." Still, she went ahead and made it. And ate it. Even though, while she found "the texture was glorious," "the flavor [was] not great. Again, not the cake’s fault. My palate was simply not designed for the combination of orange and sugar on that level. Just the thought of a creamsicle sends chills up my spine." What?? How can you not like a creamsicle. Oh well, Heavenly Cake Bakers are not judgmental either.

Our FEATURED BAKER this week is Raymond, who can wax rhapsodic over chiffon cakes more than anyone I know. He has yet to meet a chiffon cake he doesn't like, and thinks he likes this one the best of all. As he says, "It is light and delicate, almost like an angel food cake, with a bright and lively flavor of orange. It needs no adornment and can most definitely stand on its own. While I like it as a snack cake and to pair with a cup of tea in the afternoon, it can certainly hold up as a fine dessert when paired with the orange cream."

Dear Bakers, only five more scheduled cakes and two Free Choice weeks. And we will then have baked our way through the entire book (except, as Woody never tires of reminding me, the Wedding Cakes chapter). Woody, maybe you can talk Jenn into baking a wedding cake. But not me.

I am looking forward to next week's Karmel Cake, however. This cake as "soft textured and deeply flavorful." Well, that sounds good. And it also gives us another chance to perfect our caramel-making skills. Warning: the instructions say that "the mixture will look slightly curdled." Since none of us like to see things that looked curdled, it's good to know about this possibility. And the batter looks very simple once the caramel's been made.

The two cakes after the Karmel Cake are both from the "Butter and Oil Cakes" chapter; after they're done, we'll be done with that chapter too.

I'm always glad to be a baker, but this week I'm proud as well. This Saturday, April 2, there will be many Bake Sales for Japan. Jennifer has written about this on her blog, as has Rachelino.

If there's no Bake Sale for Japan where you are, you may still be able to find a way to participate. Hanaa's employer is having a similar bake sale, and she's contributing to that as well.

Orange Glow Chiffon Layer Cake

2011-03-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

I loved this cake in its supporting role in the Bostini (because in my opinion the star of that show was the pastry cream sauce), so I was curious about how it would be on its own. I was also curious about the flower nail (since I didn't even know if it was a "flour" or "flower" nail--the book uses both terms), but not too worried since Hanaa was going to supply the nail. Then Hanaa caught a cold and bowed out of the team baking project (hope you're feeling better, Hanaa!) and I decided it was time to get my own. Jim volunteered to make a trip to Michael's to pick one up--only after we both googled "flower nail" did we figure out exactly what it was. And Jim, who nearly suffered an acute anxiety attack when he walked into Michael's and saw the aisles and aisles of "stuff," as he referred to it, somehow zoomed straight to the flower nail and was able to exit the store without hyperventilating. After that, everything was easy.

I have been at this quixotic cake project for nearly two years now, and, while I think I should be able to make cake in my sleep, I still read the directions pretty carefully. The technique for this one is easy: mix all the ingredients except the egg whites until you have a thick, yellowish batter.

Then beat the egg whites until you get a meringue with stiff peaks.

And fold the two together.

I almost forgot to insert the rose pin. I had the cake in the oven for about 20 seconds when I remembered. I screamed a ladylike scream, grabbed the cake out of the oven, and inserted the pin.

No harm seemed to come to the cake. It came out of the oven looking perfect (were it not for the odd nail-like thing sticking out of the center).

After cooling in the pan for an hour, it came out of the pan, still looking good.

By this time Woody had arrived. He was very impressed with how level the cake was. He had been expecting it to sink. He also had lots of ideas for photographs: "Let's take a picture of the cake in the snow!" Jim looked at him as if he had just started speaking in tongues. But finally he agreed.

Woody did not drop the cake in a snowbank. And, after I whipped some cream with orange marmalade, I served the cake with a dollop of the cream and a dollop of some blood orange curd that Woody had brought along. (Woody always brings samples of his latest projects--he's a great person to invite to your house!)

Yes, the cake stands beautifully on its own. Although the whipped cream and the blood orange curd were great accompaniments, it didn't require accompaniments. It's delicate and flavorful, with a great texture and a perky, natural orange flavor. And that closes the "Sponge Cake" chapter--we started on June 8, 2009 with the Torta de Las Tres Leches and have made all the other sponge cakes in the chapter, including various angel food cakes, which I believe I've finally figured out how to bake. The orange chiffon cake is a great way to wrap up this varied and delicious assortment.

TASTING PANEL:

Sarah: "I love it! With the orange curd and the marmalade whipped cream, it seems very British--like something you'd get for tea at a high-toned tea shoppe." (I'm sure she said "shoppe" not just "shop.")

Woody: "It turned out very well. I'd like to know how you got it to stay so level."

Jim: "Chocolate's always my favorite, but this is excellent. It's nice and moist. A good way of picking up some Vitamin C."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-03-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Another round of catch-up cakes. As usual, most people go to the Quick & Easy list for their Free Choice. Nothing wrong with that--as Nancy (who did not choose the No Bake Whipped Cream Cheesecake from the Q&E list) said, "I am finding these multi-component cakes more of a struggle to tackle, probably in some combination of cake-of-the-week fatigue and a higher stress level from other stuff than usual. After the bake-along winds up..., I'll need a long break from recipes that need more than a couple of components, especially if one of them involves beating sugar syrup into egg whites." Well, we all have our particular bête noire: for some of us it's Italian meringue; for some it's piping.

Alice gets extra credit for veering away from the Q&E Route since she's new enough to the group that she still has most of them on her To Bake List. Instead, she opted for the tiramisu instead of the red velvet cake because it was "more of a challenge." It was her first attempt at ladyfingers. Most of you will sympathize with her struggles.

Both Raymond and Vicki baked the "She Loves Me" cake, which Vicki aptly renamed the "They All Love Me Now" cake, since we all know the way to anyone's heart is through their cake-eating stomach. "Simple and very satisfying," says Raymond. "Straight to the top of the Make Again List," says Vicki.

Jennifer also did one of the satisfying yellow cakes, in the form of Yellow Butter Cupcakes topped with leftover white chocolate lemon buttercream. What a great thing to have leftovers of! So much nicer than, say, tuna casserole. After "falling off the baking bandwagon" for a few weeks, Jennifer is back (and a force to be reckoned with, judging from her teaser photo of the Devil's Food Cake).

Jenn posted an even mini-er version of the Mini Vanilla Bean Poundcakes, turning the little cakes into cupcakes. Although the book's version of these cakes isn't frosted, Jenn thought it would be "fun" to make buttercream. She tried Lyle's Golden Syrup in neooclassic buttercream, "flavored with orange flower water and orange oil." Exotic! If that wasn't enough, she "took a bar of Green & Blacks white chocolate [she] had in the freezer and grated some over the cupcakes. The topped with little pink non pareils for more cute effect."

Maria was amazed by the simplicity and flavor of the Whipped Cream Cake. If you haven't looked at her photo yet, check out her version of "dessert paradise," the whipped cream cake topped with strawberries and figs, mixed with jam and a bit of Chambord.

Lois went in a different direction from these choices with her English Gingerbread cake, figuring it would be a good dessert for her st. Patrick's Day dinner. (Yes, she assures us, "the Irish make gingerbread too"). She was especially pleased at being able to find Lyle's Golden Syrup--"it took three stores, but it was worth it."

I've just changed the "Next in the Oven" section to list all the upcoming cakes. As you can see, we'll be finishing up with Zach's La Bomba cake on May 16. Rose said this would be a perfect cake to end the project with (except, of course, those of you who want to keep on baking with Jenn) because it would be a culmination of everything we've learned along the way. We'll also have two Free Choice weeks in a row, since I'll be in France for those two weeks.

But before we get to La Bomba, let's just concentrate on making the Orange-Glow Chiffon Layer Cake. Here in Minnesota, where we've just had a spring snowfall topped with gray skies, we need some glow. For those of you who've made the Bostini, you know how good this cake is--and it will be fun to try it as a layer cake. Especially topped with orange marmalade whipped cream. If Hanaa gets her way, there will be some chocolate worked in somehow.

Coming up: the Karmel Cake (both caramel and Karmel), topped with "a cloud of Coffee Cream." Rose, what are you doing to me? I'm afraid to step on the scale.

Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake

2011-03-20T19:40:00.000-07:00

The chocolate tweed angel food cake is the only cake I've made that was an utter failure. So I decided I'd better use this Free Choice week to redeem myself. I have made one plain angel food cake that turned out great (for Angel Food Cake Any Way You Like week), but the tweed version still eluded me. Now that I've made three angel food cakes, I can say that they are very, very easy. From now on, I'll make them whenever my stash of frozen egg whites needs to be used up. Unfortunately, I must have used that stash for something else, because I rooted around in the freezer and found a lot of interesting--mostly unlabelled--stuff (is that veal stock or chocolate ganache?), but no frozen egg whites. So I cracked eight eggs. Now I have eight egg yolks.

The first time I made an angel food cake (the failure), I was worrying about never having done it before. The second time I made it (the non-failure), I was worrying about the failure. It took the third time for me to figure out that it's just a lot of beaten egg whites with flour, sugar, and flavorings whisked in. This time--because it's chocolate tweed--the flavoring was grated chocolate.

I went whole hog on Green Black's. For the cake, I used a deep 85% chocolate (I was supposed to use unsweetened). For the whipped cream, I used 60% chocolate with hazelnuts and currants (I was supposed to use plain chocolate and ground almonds). For a person like me--who tries never to veer from the recipe in the slightest--these minor changes were exhilarating. I felt like I was in college, sneaking out of the dorm.

Here's what I still don't get the hang of: you're supposed to "sperad a thin layer of batter onto the sides of the prepared pan to ensure smooth sides." I did this, but apparently I didn't do it well enough because I still had some holes and bumps on the sides.

The cake will "sink to almost level with the pan when done." Check. "The surface will have deep cracks, like a souffle." Check. I let it bake for another two minutes, just to be safe. I put the pan over a funnel and let it cool. The cake did not fall out of the pan. This means that it's a success, no matter what it tastes like.

My junior-sized, eight-cup angel food cake pan (for which I used half a recipe), is only one piece, so you really have to have faith that the cake will somehow extricate itself from the ungreased cake pan. Surprisingly, it did.

If you're feeling critical, you can look at this picture and see that the sides aren't smooth. If you're feeling happy, you can look at the picture and see all the grated chocolate.

I believe that this is the first time I've ever sliced an angel food cake into three tiers. And people say there are no thrills left after you're 65.

What could be better on a chocolate tweed cake than chocolate tweed whipped cream? Also known as chocolate-spangled whipped cream.

My only question now is what I'm going to do with all those egg yolks.

TASTING PANEL

Karen: "It's really delicious, and I don't even like angel food cake. It tastes like real cake--it doesn't have that nasty artificial taste that angel food cake usually has. And it's just the right amount of chocolate. I didn't think I'd be able to finish it, but it was so good."

Jim: "Angel food cake usually tastes kind of gummy to me, but this cake has a nice texture. The little bit of grated chocolate adds a lot of flavor."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-03-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

Before I get to the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache, let me share a few pictures of our vacation.

Sigh. OK, that's enough! It's good to be home, it's good to be home, it's good to be home....

And it really was good to read about all of your cakes. It made me sorry I'd been in such a hurry to get rid of my two chocolate cakes.

This cake packed a powerful chocolate punch, so if you're just not that in to chocolate, you were probably not into the cake.

Examples of being into the cake--Raymond: "The addition of the cognac cherries and golden syrup transform this simple cake from the ordinary to the sublime."

Jenn: Be still my heart! This is the ultimate chocolate cake! The chocolate cake is fudgy and moist - like a really good brownie. And the ganache. Let me tell you! This ganache is a killer.

Example of not being into the cake--Maria: "Mine was dense (not good dense), dry and bitter (not luscious). The frosting was also disappointing.... I found [it] to be a little thin and the cocoa added too much bitter dryness. For those of you that know me, you know what a terrible sport I am and so.... I will take myself to the opposite end of the "Featured Baker" spot and sulk." (This doesn't sound like the writing of a "terrible sport," does it?)

The main variations that people made to this cake, not surprisingly, involved the cognac cherries.

Monica said goodbye to the cherries entirely--as just a needless distraction from the cognac.

Lola substituted a "nice French Black Cherry fruit jam," since she had no dried cherries on hand.

Vicki spread strawberry jam on the cake she set aside for the kids; the other one, which she dubbed her "DUI cake," got the cognac cherries, but cut up and poured over the cake instead of being placed whole in the center.

Lois used cherry brandy instead of cognac--seems like a good idea. As long as she was using the brandy for the cake, might as well pour a couple of glasses to drink. Cheers!

Nancy did the cherries and cognac, but didn't add the extra corn syrup. And, as did some others, Nancy had some trouble with the ganache not setting: "It had been 7 hours sitting at room temperature but was still gloopy, to use a technical term."

There were also some variations in the chocolate. Alice--sort of accidentally--ended up with a wonderful whipped ganache after she got tired of waiting for her ganache to set and wondered what would happen if she beat the heck out of it.

Poor Katya all unsuspectingly bought "cocoa" at Trader Joe's, only to discover that she hadn't picked up cocoa powder, but had instead grabbed hot chocolate mix. But the cake was very forgiving--"it was still the right kind of gooey all-American cake.... It's a very solid base cake for all kinds of shenanigans."

Welcome back to Nicola, who is also our FEATURED BAKER. When I don't hear from people for a while, I start to worry about them. But Nicola is back--with "the cake that finally made it past the deeply guarded barriers of procrastination." She also noticed the excessive tenderness that sent Rose back to the drawing board for another mixing method: "The cake itself ... is quite crumbly. There is no way you can sneak a piece of this cake. A friend dropped over to collect Chris for an early morning motorbike ride on Sunday and helped himself to a slice of cake. I knew this even before I lifted the lid on the cake plate because there were chocolate crumbs all over the floor." I hadn't really thought of it, but not being able to sneak a piece of cake may indeed be a drawback.

Next week is Free Choice Week. You all know the drill on this. Pick one of the cakes that the group has made but you haven't. There are so many good cakes out there. What will it be?

And after that, our final cake from the sponge cake chapter: Orange-Glow Chiffon Layer Cake, in which Rose and Woodyh discover that "using unbleached all-purpose flour and an ungreased, unlined springform pan changed everything." You will need a flat flower (or flour) nail. Fortunately for me, I plan to bake this cake with Hanaa, who not only knows what the nail is; she has one. If the idea of the chiffon layer cake isn't enough to tempt you, think about serving it with True Orange Whipped Cream.

Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

2011-03-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

This is the cake that I made last weekend (the Weekend of the Two Chocolate Cakes) and was the second of two that I attacked. At first, I thought I'd finish them both by 5:00 (the time the potluck party started--the one where I said I'd bring cake whether the hostess liked iti or not), but this little baby wasn't frosted at 5:00, and I was already committed to the raspberry cake anyway. This one was going to have to wait for Monday, when it would go into the office to feed some lawyers.

The dried sour cherries have been soaking in Cognac and Lyle's Syrup overnight. After I tasted them, I thought maybe I'd let them soak a little too long because the flavors you could taste were, in order, cognac, cognac, and cognac. Maybe a cherry-flavored cognac? They would be lovely on ice cream, or some flaming dessert, but I thought they might be a little much for an afternoon cake. I rinsed them and dried them.

More of that chocolate chopping! And lots of it. I was glad I'd cut the recipe in half; otherwise, I'd have to chop twice as much. No doubt you're impressed by my brilliant analytical mind.

I was determined to get the caramel right this time! I decided that my main problem lies in trying to make sure the caramel is sufficiently caramelized, which led me to leave it on the burner just a few seconds longer. By then, the thermometer would register above the correct number. This time, I decided, I'd be sure to remove the pan from the heat at 360--a full ten degrees lower than the proper temperature of 370. (No, I didn't take it off the heat at 192.4

I was overjoyed with the way it turned out. I kept looking around for little caramel droplets that I could lick up. I wanted to just stop right there, forget about the rest of the ganache, and eat up all the caramel sauce. But because I'm a mature person, I didn't.

Instead, I mixed more chopped chocolate into the hot caramel.

And then I added the dissolved cocoa mixture into the chocolate-caramel mixture, for an even more chocolate intensity. Truthfully, I was missing the caramel. If you were given your choice between a beautifully homemade truffle and a beautifully homemade caramel, which would you take? I'd be sad to miss the truffle, but I'd take the caramel.

And now it's time for the chocolate cake. Over the weekend, I used up all the 62% chocolate I had on hand, most of the white chocolate, well over half of my stash of cocoa, not to mention ridiculously large amounts of flour and sugar. And I was only baking small cakes! This cake starts out with a mixture of cocoa and unsweetened chocolate (or, for a "more mellow" flavor, cocoa and semisweet chocolate).

Half a cake called for one egg and one egg yolk. To make up for my egg yolk shortage, I called on my last quail egg.

The batter looked so light and delicious that I was a little sorry to add chocolate to it.

But after adding chocolate and beating for a few minutes, the batter looked even lighter and fluffier.

And it baked into a nicely textured chocolate cake. It was more difficult to judge doneness on these little cakes,, but they both turned out okay.

The ganache, after sitting around for about ten hours, was rich, dark, and spreadable. So good that I didn't want to use it all for frosting the cake--after baking all day, I deserved to lick the bowl, right? The caramel flavor was subtle. I wouldn't have minded a little less subtlety, but it was very good.

With the large amount of frosting between layers, the addition of plump cherries, and the fact that I didn't do a great job of centering the top layer, there was a huge gap between layers. This gap led to sides that weren't perfectly straight. I must say that I've found that people are not at all interested in hearing your monologue about all the things that are wrong with the cake--they just want you to shut up, slice into the cake, and serve them some.

So that's what I did. But first, I cut a slice for Jim because I didn't think I'd be bringing any cake home, and he feels very mistreated if he hangs around the kitchen photographing the cake and then doesn't even get to taste it.

TASTING PANEL:

Dianne: "Is this a Black Forest Cake? I really like the cherries and the chocolate together."
Erika: "That's because she soaked the cherries in cognac. That's why I'm so tired now. It's from eating cognac in the middle of the afternoon."
Rachel: "There's no more alcohol in cognac than in vanilla. I made vanilla once. I just put a vanilla bean in vodka."
Wolanda: "You can test positive on a urine test from drinking vanilla or Nyquil."
Julie: "Anyway, the cake is great. Are you serious that you want to give the rest of it away? I'll take it."
[This is how conversation degenerates among criminal defense lawyers].
Jim: The cake is delicious. I really like the alcohol-laden cherries, and the rich, rich chocolate.

Moist Chocolate Raspberry Genoise

2011-03-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

Sometime in the middle of the week, I realized that I had to make two huge chocolate cakes this weekend, and had to write about them both before I left for Puerto Rico on Tuesday. I fretted about this for hours. I checked the recipes. The raspberry genoise serves 18; the devil's food cake with midnight ganache serves 20. How was I going to find 38 people to eat big hunks of chocolate cake this weekend? And how was I going to blog about both of them? Also, I hadn't replaced my food processor yet, and I always use Rose's food-processor method to make my ganache. Oh woe, woe is me.

Then I remembered my cute little six-inch pans, and I remembered I was going to a party on Sunday where I was supposed to bring wine, but I could bring wine and a cake, couldn't I? I called the hostess and told her I didn't care what she said, I was bringing a cake along with my bottle of wine. She seemed a little surprised about my vehemence, but said that would be okay. Now I could breathe easier.

Then my only problem was that I was baking two chocolate cakes--both in six-inch pans, both frosted with chocolate ganache--on the same day. I knew I'd get confused, and I did, but nothing too horrible happened.

Cake #1 started with the genoise. The first time I made a genoise cake, I wasn't too excited about it. It was so delicate it fell apart, and I thought that any cake that needed some hoity-toity syrup to be edible was too weak and fragile to be a bona fide cake. My ancestors, working in the fields, didn't put syrup on their cakes; of that you may be sure. But then I fell in love with the genoise cakes. Now I'm crazy about their flavor, texture, and versatility. I also love whipping those eggs. I actually forgot about the new chocolate genoise method that Rose wrote about in her blog, but I'm used to the old method by now.

The cakes rose to the tops of the six-inch pans. The cake was pale brown, but smelled like it carried a real chocolate punch.

On to the raspberry-chocolate ganache. Without my food processor, I had to chop the chocolate--a task I don't much like. The last time Hanaa baked at my house, I admired her efficiency and ease when she chopped chocolate, but admiring it isn't the same thing as adopting it. I chopped what seemed like a ton of mixed dark and white chocolates. I need to get that food processor.

I used frozen raspberry puree instead of pureeing and straining frozen raspberries. Straining raspberries is one of my least favorite jobs in the kitchen. I would rather chop chocolate all day long than strain raspberries. And pouring the raspberry puree into cream really made me happy. If I were on a desert island and could have only three foods, raspberries would be one of the three. I just wouldn't strain them.

The ganache turned out to be smooth, rich, and chocolatey. At first I was afraid that the chocolate would overpower the raspberries, but on second taste, I decided that the raspberries weren't hidden by the chocolate; they enhanced each other. I suppose that's why the chocolate-raspberry combination is so popular--it works.

Just a little glug of Chambord can't hurt.

The cakes were small enough that I could cut them with a serrated knife into more or less even layers.

Syruping the cake with cocoa syrup cake next, and then filling the layers with ganache. Even after a few hours at room temperature, the ganache was too runny, although it was dark and smooth. I put it in the refrigerator to thicken it up. Then I did something else with Cake #2; consequently the ganache got too thick. I had one heck of a time frosting the outside of the cake. I banished Jim from the kitchen because he was taking pictures of me doing battle with the ganache (the ganache was winning).

I called him back after the cake finally got frosted. He said, "Oh, it's cute!" I think he was surprised that it turned out looking like a cake. After I ordered him out of the kitchen, he'd thought that this cake was going on the Disaster List.

Despite the trouble I had with the refrigerated ganache, the cake really isn't hard to make, although there are a lot of steps. When you're baking another cake at the same time, it seems like it's more complicated than it really is. And the people at the party loved it.

Cake #2 (the cake for next week) is frosted, in the cake carrier, and ready to go into the office tomorrow. Cake #1 is a thing of the past.

I'm leaving for vacation on Tuesday, so there will be no mid-week post this week. I'll have next week's cake--the Devil's Food with Midnight Ganache--ready to post automatically on Sunday or Monday. Remember to check Rose's blog for the alternative method of mixing the devil's food cake if you want a slightly less tender, less crumbly cake.

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-03-03T15:15:00.000-08:00

At first I thought all the Heavenly Cake Bakers held some kind of grudge against Sticky Toffee Pudding. By the end of Monday, there were only about four posts, but, as of now, 11 prople have written posts and there is the promise of a 12th one by Vicki, who has been suffering from what her doctor dubbed the "18-day flu."

Bakers were divided: some had never heard of Sticky Toffee Pudding and were unaware that the British refer to dessert in general as "pudding," as in, "What's for pudding?"

Katya, one of our seasoned travelers (where are those pictures of Lisbon, anyway?) thought that Rose's version of this "extra-Brit" dessert was extra-good, though, as usual, she souped up her own, adding lemon and orange peel, sultanas and currants to her dates (which she claimed were past their prime).

Kristina, who grew up in New Brunswick, was familiar with pudding desserts, but didn't like them, especially Christmas puddings, and especially fruitcakes. But she liked this one, as did her co-workers. Kristina thinks the leftover sauce would be great on ice cream, and it's hard to disagree.

Lynnette had never baked a pudding, but it's been "on her radar to try" for quite a while. She also recalled a favorite ice cream that was called sticky toffee pudding. Her conclusion: "What is not to like?"

On the other hand, the "sticky toffee pudding" moniker meant nothing to Jenn, who thought it just sounded like a spice cake, which she doesn't particularly like. But, making five cupcakes with one-third of the recipe, she actually ended up liking it quite a bit. (I'm waiting for Jenn to make 3/7 of a recipe sometime, just to challenge herself).

And Lois, who lived in England for 18 months, had never run across sticky toffee pudding while she was there. It took another trip to the UK before she discovered the pudding's delights, and wanted to try this recipe so much that she made it in her daughter's tiny kitchen in Boca Raton.

As usual, our Bakers were quite creative in the pans and presentations. Maria, for example, used a square cupcake pan (that she just "HAD to have") and poured the rest of the batter into a festive pudding tin.

Hanaa made three cakes with the batter for this one cake: she used and 8 x 8-inch square pan, and two six-inch round ones. Hanaa used ginger ale instead of stout, and eliminated the creme fraiche and nuts, but the cake still played to an enthusiastic audience at her house.

Nancy B. cut the recipe in half, but still ended up with enough for nine: nine cakelets made in her one-half cup ramekins. Nancy liked the way the "tang of the crème fraîche complements the sweet toffee sauce and cake very nicely."

Jennifer was enthusiastic herself. She concluded that "all four components come together in a synergistic rush of pure, delicious, cakey joy." I was with her until she said, "I almost wish we were having dark gray stormy days to go along with this cake as it would be so fitting." Sorry--I just can't go along with a wish for rotten weather.

Shandy, our FEATURED BAKER this week, has tasted Sticky Toffee Pudding, but had never made it before. I think it won't be the last time, though, because she sounds pretty enthusiastic: "As the fork tines slid into the cake, I knew making this recipe was worth every second." She was smitten with the date and stout mixture, and was crazy about the "moist, flavorful, lightly spicy cake." Her cake square, with toffee sauce, creme fraiche, and pecans, is every bit as pretty as the picture in the cookbook. Well done, Shandy!

It's been a long time since I've welcomed a new baker, but I'd like to introduce you to Alice, who makes her blogging debut with her individual puddings.

I felt I had to turn down the people who asked to start baking along because we were so close to the end of the project it didn't make sense to add people who'd only have a chance to bake a few cakes. But Jenn has offered to keep the blog going for those of you who want to complete RHC but are not going to be able to finish when I do. We haven't worked out the details yet, but don't worry--if you still have 25 cakes left to bake, you're not going to have to bake them all in the next three months. More information on this later.

As I said last week, I don't know how I managed the schedule so that we're doing two chocolate cakes in a row, but that's just the way it is. Your friends who love chocolate are going to love you.

Next week's chocolate cake is the Moist Chocolate Raspberry Genoise. Remember how everyone was raving about the taste of the last chocolate genoise we made? If you missed it then, now is a good time to see what you missed. And if you made it then, you won't want to miss it. As usual with genoise cakes, Rose recommends that you make the cake a day ahead of time for best flavor.
Those of you who have sworn in irritation at those annoying bits of white flour that don't quite get mixed into the genoise batter will want to check out Matthew's new mixing method. Woody tested and photographed the results. He's now a committed fan of Michael's Method.

Another refinement from the original version: before you make the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache, scheduled for March 14, you'll want to check Real Baking with Rose to get her update on the mixing method for this cake. She found that the cake was a "bit too tender," so she went back to her standard mixing method. Rose recommends the updated method, both for ease of preparation and for the best texture. Also note that the recipe calls for making the ganache at least six hours before using and the cherries at least eight hours ahead (or overnight).

Sticky Toffee "Pudding"

2011-02-27T17:15:00.000-08:00

I was not looking forward to making this cake. It looked like it was going to be cloyingly sweet, and I didn't think I'd ever be able to get rid of twelve pieces of way-too-sweet cake. But I ended up loving all the elements of the cake and could happily have eaten my way through the whole thing. If you too turned up your nose at this recipe and decided to pass it by, I implore you to give it a try.

This is the first time a can of stout has been in the mise en place. Jim was happy to have an excuse to buy an eight-pack of Guinness.

To my knowledge, this is the first time I've ever poured beer in a saucepan and brought it to the boil. I'm absolutely certain that it's the first time I've ever added baking soda to boiling beer. As you might expect, the mixture starts to fizz.

After the dates macerate (my favorite word from last week) in the hot beer for a while, they're supposed to be put in a food processor until mixed to a brown slurry. My food processor chose this moment to give up the ghost. I thought about getting out my immersion blender, but then decided that I'd rather have bits of dates in the cake anyway. So I just chopped the softened dates, and was glad I did--the little pieces of dates added to the textural interest of the cake.

The three eggs I broke into a bowl measured 142 grams. I didn't want to use another whole egg for eight measly grams, and I decided to call it good enough. Then I remembered that I still had a few of my darling quail eggs. (Don't worry folks; the sell-by date is not until March 2). One petite quail egg put me six grams over, so I scooped out a spoonful. There. 150 grams on the dot.

I expect that the cake would have been slightly darker if I'd succeeded in pureeing the dates, but I like the date-studded looks of it. The batter didn't fill the pan one-third full. I looked through the ingredients to see if nothing was missing, but everything was accounted for.

While the cake was baking, I made the toffee sauce. Jim watched me mix the butter and brown sugar, and said, "That looks awfully rich." He sounded as doubtful as I felt. I said, "Wait until I add the cream." But I also added two tablespoons of lemon juice. The lemon juice was an addition of pure genius; its tartness cut the sugary sweetness of the sauce into something quite palatable. Downright delicious, in fact.

Time to remove the cake from the pan. I was worried about this step because the pan-preparation directions had nothing about spraying the parchment paper or the sides of the pan. I'd been fretting about that ever since I noticed. I considered just spraying the pan, but then I remembered my baking mantra: "Rose has her reasons."

Indeed, the cake emerged from the pan with nary a mishap. It still looked thinner than I thought it should.

When I cut into it, though, I decided that the crumb looked okay. Too late, I remembered the cake-testing sheets that Woody had left at my house, and I didn't measure the cake's height. Sorry, Woody. Someday I may be more scientific in my approach.

I can't resist another picture of the finished product. The effect on guests of cutting the cake, spooning the luscious toffee sauce over, dolloping the creme fraiche, and topping with toasted pecans is quite amazing. People are so impressed, and think you did so much more work than you actually did. Both the cake and the sauce are easy to mix up (the sauce, unlike a traditional caramel sauce, does not require taking its temperature); the creme fraiche is just taken out of its carton and whisked, and the pecans simply toasted and chopped. But when you put it all together, it looks like you're a kitchen ace. And all so good! The date-spice cake could be eaten out of hand, and the toffee sauce is amazing. The creme fraiche, along with the miraculous lemon juice, adds a little tartness, and the pecans make it perfect.

TASTING PANEL:

Pat: "Wow. This is delicious. This is really good."
Myra: "Mmmm. I love this cake."
Jim: "This is wonderful. It has a variety of nice flavors--delicious. One of my favorites so far."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-02-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

It was a fairly small group that entered the Free Choice Sweepstakes last week (no, it's not really a sweepstakes)--of course, we're missing Mendy and Lois, who are somewhere in the process of house/apartment-hunting/moving. But those who baked really baked up a storm.

There must have been some subconscious chocolate thing going around because two people (in addition to me) made the Barcelona Brownie Bars.

Allergic-to-nuts-except-for-almonds Hanaa substituted toasted almonds for pecans, baked the brownies in her mini brioche molds, and decorated each brownie brioche with three almonds. Raymond followed the recipe almost exactly, except for the substitution of walnuts for pecans. Since he was making them specifically for someone who hates pecans, this seemed reasonable. Unlike Hanaa, Raymond made the ganache plugs, which he thought were good but "not at all necessary for the enjoyment of these little morsels."

We also doubled up on another recipe: the Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake. (I had to go to my book to see whether it was the Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake or the Heavenly Seduction Coconut Cake. This is a very confusing issue if you give it too much thought).

Our math whiz Jenn made 70% of the recipe--something I don't think I've ever heard of anyone else doing. But it worked for her--making a small heart-shaped pan and a few cupcakes. Jenn doesn't much like coconut cake herself, but was excited to make this because her husband does. (She calls herself "cheesy" for this sentiment, but I say it sounds like every day is Valentine's Day at the Knitty Baker household).

I almost missed Nancy B's posting about her heavenly seduction cake because she followed it so closely with her post about her ciabatta. Both are lovely; indeed, they are seductive. Nancy thinks of this cake as the "five forms of coconut cake," although she ended up using only four forms.

Speaking of every day being Valentine's Day, Kristina lets her husband choose what cake to make for Free Choice week. This week he chose the marble velvet cake, and Kristina obliged. She thinks she needs to "work on [her] marbling skills," but I say her marbling skills look A-OK.

Even in deep midwinter, the Lemon Crown Cake looked good to Maria, who made it with Meyer lemons as a treat for her mother, who was coming home from Dubai(!) Maria had never made homemade ladyfingers before (oh, how I remember my first attempt at ladyfingers!), but her first try was a winner, as was the cake, beautifully wrapped in a green ribbon.

Some people took Free Choice week to extremes. Sarah, for example, did the No-Bake Cheesecake as well as the Carrot Cake. You've probably seen the frosting carrots that a standard bakery uses as decoration on its carrot cakes. Nice. But then you should look at the marzipan "heirloom carrots" that Sarah dreamed up for her carrot cake. More than nice.

And Katya went on a baking rampage. She did three catch-up cakes: the Lemon Canadian Crown, the Black Chocolate Party Cake, and the Quail Egg Indulgence. I must say that Katya pooh-poohed those of us who were "moaning and groaning" about making homemade ladyfingers. She likes to make ladyfingers, and sounds like she's been doing it since she was about three years old. But her blog did remind me that I had some ladyfingers in my freezer, so I'm not going to get all sniffy about her ladyfinger superiority.

And then, if you want to talk about someone who really went baking crazy, take a look at Jennifer, and her epic 72-hour kitchen adventure. She made a wedding cake (which included the golden lemon almond cake as her free choice selection), as well as "baking three different cakes, making four fillings, seven syrups, and three different frostings (one frosting I made three times)."

And so we're all one cake closer to finishing all the cakes in the book.

This upcoming week is something very different: a sticky toffee "pudding" that's not a pudding at all, at least not an American "pudding." It's a spice cake flavored with dates--and stout--topped wiith a butterscotch toffee sauce and a pecan and creme fraiche topping. Just the thing if you're eating light. You can also make individual "puddings," and I'm hoping that at least a few people will take that route. The pudding/cake is made in a 9 by 13 pan and serves 12. That's a lot of pudding. I expect some people will want to cut this recipe in half, and I may be one of them.

The following two weeks are both chocolate cakes. I don't know how that happened--I usually try not to have two chocolate desserts in a row. I've learned my lesson, though, and will not change the order of recipes once they've been announced.

Barcelona Brownie Bars (and Madeleines) with Cherries Macerated in Kirsch

2011-02-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

I love the word "macerate." It sounds so much more stylish than "soak." Especially if you are macerating something--dried cherries in this case--in kirsch. My Free Choice cake is a reprise of the Barcelona Brownies, but with said cherries macerated in said kirsch substituting for the pecans. And no ganache plugs this time because 1) they caused me trouble last time and 2) they're really not necessary because these brownies are so moist and lovely on their own.

As I write, we are having Blizzard #22 in Minnesota. To be honest, it may not be the 22nd blizzard but it feels like it. At least with the brownies in hand, and the short ribs in red wine I'm planning to make tomorrow, we'll be happy in our snowed-in condition. I don't want to hear a peep out of those of you who live in Florida or anyplace else where it's 80 degrees outside.

I'm done with my winter rant now and will go back to the cake. When I was looking for a cake to do for Free Choice week, I saw this variation. But when I went to my liquor cabinet, which, as you know, has grown mightily during this cake-baking project, I found that I was - oddly - bereft of either kirsch or cherry heering. Did I really want to invest more money in another bottle of some obscure liqueur? Oh, sure. But not cherry heering, which sounds too much like fish.

I did something that I thought was very clever, and that saved a pan. The directions say to melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler, and then transfer it to the mixing bowl. I just used the mixing bowl as the top of the double boiler. OK, maybe everyone else has thought of this too, but I'm usually such a slave to the directions that I feel inordinately pleased with myself when I do something more or less creative.

In no time at all, the batter is mixed up and ready to be poured into the financier pans (or whatever). I swear I own two financier pans. I must, because I've made numerous batches of financiers. But I could only locate one of them. I decided to use my madeleine pan for the leftover batter. Financier/madeleine: they're both French words, right?

45 grams of batter went into each financier slot, whereas the madeleine pans held only about 20 grams each. At 12 minutes, when I checked the financiers, they were very liquid. I checked again at 15: still not done. A surprise, because usually my convection oven, set 25 degrees lower, finishes fast. I decided that at low temps (325F - 300 in the convection), maybe there wasn't much of a difference. I raised the temperature to 325 and removed them from the oven after another few minutes. Two of them were still not completely done, but Jim and I ate them to protect other people from the horror of underdone brownies.

I was going to drizzle them with a little cream cheese frosting, but, after tasting them, decided they didn't need anything else. My investment club is meeting at my house on Tuesday, and I'll sprinkle them with powdered sugar before I serve them, assuming any are left. Perhaps we'll be moved to invest in a chocolate company. Or in NordicWare.

The tasting panel was called on account of the blizzard, and the brownies, as of Sunday night, were tasted only by Jim and me, both of whom were crazy about them.

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

I thought that everyone would be dying to make this little cake for Valentine's Day, but we actually had a pretty small participation this week. Whether the low turnout was caused by quail-egg anxiety or other baking commitments or winter vacations I don't know. In my opinion, the people who missed this one may want to give it a try on a Free Choice week. But that's just my opinion--I'll admit that this cake got mixed reviews.

Like me, Jennifer fell in love with the quail eggs (and the quail, for that matter: "if I ever came across ... one, and I could get away with it, ... I would hug the little bird. They are just so dang cute!") Oh, and the cake? Well, she liked that too: "dense, rich, and soft with a crispy buttery crust."

Mendy also liked the quail eggs ("little lovelies"), and the cake as well: he thought his cupcakes "had an exceptional, indulgent flavor. Really something special."

Lois had two heart-shaped pans, so she made two cakes: one, in the spirit of a giving holiday, to give to friends. Lois gave a good description of what we all experienced when trying to break and separate the quail eggs: "Working with quail eggs is not easy. Rapping the shell on the edge of a bowl will crack the shell, but I still had to poke through the very tough membrane. The eggs are mostly yolk, but this does not help with separating. The small amount of white clung to the yolk with great tenacity." Rose recommends a quail egg decapitator (how's that for a specialized piece of equipment?!)

Nancy B. knew just where to find her quail eggs: she'd seen them a thousand times at a local farmers' market. She found them at a second market, and bought a spare package so she could double the recipe, using Texas muffin pans. Results? Everyone (except one nephew) "loved the crispy crunchy crust (as advertised), the fine crumb, and the nice vanilla/butter flavor." But, unless she gets an egg decapitator to make quail-egg-separating time easier, she thought she'd probably use chicken eggs next time.

And using chicken eggs is just what Vicki did. (She called hers a "quail-free egg indulgence cake.") Vicki, who has self-proclaimed "guilt issues over eggs as a non vegan vegetarian," just couldn't bring herself to hunt down the quail eggs because she remembered when it was a common sight in California to see a covey of quails, but all that construction has invaded their habitat. Her tasters thought they resembled a "sugar cookie in cake form."

If you've read Raymond's blog entry, you'll know that he gave the cake a decided thumbs down, both because of the ridiculous price of quail eggs ($3 per egg, or $15 for enough eggs to make the petite cake), and because he just didn't like the cake. (" I made it on Saturday morning and when we ate it at dinner it was hard and dry. We literally took one bite and tossed the whole thing into the trash.")

Our Valentine's Day FEATURED BAKER is Jenn--one of just a few who had the small heart-shaped pan recommended for this recipe. What I really liked about Jenn's cake was that it wasn't perfect, but she used her cake lemons to make lemonade. She photographed her cake that failed to come out of the pan in one piece against a pretty pink lacy background and dubbed it the "broken heart" cake. And, because Jenn is seriously into catching up, she baked a second cake--the chocolate streusel coffee cake. "32 cakes to go YAY" Finally, I loved Jenn's endearing revelation that she was fed quail eggs as a child in her mother's undying effort to put some fat on that skinny girl's bones.

Lola thought she was making the Cake of the Week--only she thought that it was a Free Choice week. (In fairness to Lola, I should point out that it was Free Choice week until I switched it around so that the Quail Egg cake would be the cake for Valentine's Day). She made the Double Chocolate Valentine--which was our V-Day cake last year, and is hard to beat, especially when it's covered with whipped-cream rosettes.

But it's this upcoming week that's Free Choice week. Grab your cookbook and choose a recipe that has already been made, either by me baking alone, or by the group--and bake away!

On February 28, the last day of February (hooray! winter is almost over!), we'll bake the Sticky Toffee "Pudding." As you may guess from the quotation marks around "pudding," this isn't what we Americans think of as pudding, but others will not find it at all odd to call a cake a pudding. It's flavored with stout, preferably Guinness. For those of you who don't drink alcohol, a non-alcoholic beer could substitute. Several internet sites also say that ginger ale can be a beer substitute.

Coincidentally, two of our bloggers, Mendy and Lois, announced that they would be off the baking rotation for a few weeks because they're moving. Mendy just found out he needed to look for a new place, and Lois is going to move to Poland, where she frequently visits, for a few years at least. Good luck to both of you--may your moves be smooth and your return to baking be speedy.

Quail Egg Indulgence Cake

2011-02-13T18:24:00.000-08:00

Before I start talking about cake, let me apologize for not getting the mid-week blog done this week. By the time I got home from New Orleans, it was the end of the week, and too late. Of course, I read everyone's blogs when I got home. I was so surprised to learn that chocolate-pecan-caramel is not at the top of everyone's flavor combinations! When I was a little girl, there were two kinds of candy that made me happy: chocolate-covered cherries and pecan turtles. I think they were made by either Russell Stover or Fanny Farmer. At the time, those were considered (by me, anyway) high-class chocolates. Now, of course, I'm much more finicky.

So finicky that I must have quail eggs in my cakes! I thought I might end up just using chicken eggs since the first Asian grocery store I went to only had canned quail eggs, but I hit the jackpot on my second try. I had no idea they were going to be so goldarn adorable!

And produced locally on a quail farm, so I didn't have to worry about my quail egg cake decimating the wild quail population.

Yes, they are hard to crack open. It's not so much that the shell is hard; it's just that the inner membrane is tough and stubborn. If you whack the egg too hard, the yolk will break from the knife's force. If you tap it too gently, you may break the yolk with your fingernails when you're trying to pry open the shell. I think it took me seven eggs to get the requisite 28 grams. But I still have a kazillion eggs left. (A dozen or so anyway). I'm going to hard boil some tomorrow and use them as a garnish for a salad. Then maybe I'll have 3 or 4 for breakfast.

The yolks are actually bigger than I expected. I think that the yolk:white ratio may be a little different than with chicken eggs, with more yolk than white. But I'm just guessing about that.

Once the eggs are broken, the batter is easy to mix up. (It's not on the Quick &Easy list, although it would be if you didn't have to 1) drive all over town looking for quail eggs, and 2) spend a lot of time trying to break them.
The batter is thick and rich-looking, not surprising because of the butter/cream/egg yolk factor.

The crust promised a lot of crunch. It delivered on the promise, too.

I actually had more trouble finding a small heart-shaped cake pan than in finding quail eggs. Since I was in New Orleans, Jim volunteered to buy me the pan, so he set off on a cake-pan quest. He tried Williams-Sonoma, Kitchen Window, and several other likely places before giving up. When I got home, I made a quick, equally unsuccessful, trip to Cooks of Crocus Hill, but apparently no one bakes heart-shaped cakes any more (there are lots of heart-shaped cookie cutters available). So I bought a six-inch round pan, which I guess I should have anyway. And then I ended up stencilling a powdered-sugar heart shape on the round pan.

Since the cake only served two, I didn't have a tasting panel. Jim and I ate the whole thing. We decided we might as well eat it today, one day ahead of Valentine's Day, so that we'd taste it at its freshest.

My only complaint about the cake is that half of it was too much--not that I didn't eat every crumb of my half. We both liked it a lot, and agreed on the appropriate adjectives: rich, moist, tender, good.

It's just a plain cake--sort of in the way a simple Chanel suit is a plain outfit.

Mud Turtle Cupcakes

2011-02-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

As you can imagine, when my very nice dentist put in a temporary crown and told me that I couldn't eat caramel, the first thing I thought of was these cupcakes. How was I going to test gooey, caramely cupcakes if I couldn't eat caramel? I made one cupcake for myself, topped only by ganache and pecans, neither of which was on the dentally forbidden list, and felt sorry for myself. To make myself feel better, I put one cupcake in the freezer, where it awaits me coming home with a permanent crown and permission to eat caramel once again.

These little cakes can't really be on the Quick and Easy list because of the piping, smoothing, caramel-making, pecan-placing, etc. But the cupcakes themselves are nice and easy. Just mix up cocoa, eggs, and sour cream. (You know they're going to be good).

Then everything else (flour, sugar, butter, etc.) is mixed together until you get a nice, smooth light brown mixture. If you're feeling daring, you can taste it.

I wanted to be sure not to overbake these little cupcakes, so I took them out after 16 minutes--perhaps still a bit underdone in the middle, but I figured the continued heat from the cake itself would take care of that. I think I could have baked it one minute less and it would still have been okay. If I were testing, I'd try them at 14, 15, and 16 minutes. I think I could get into this testing idea!

The caramel was the maiden voyage for my new Thermapen. I did the same thing I always do with caramel. I wait just seconds too long. I see that the temperature has somehow gone above 360, and goes even higher after I turn off the heat. Now, however, I've written "LOWER" in the margin of the cookbook, because Woody has advised me to write more notes to myself in my book, and I always take Woody's advice, even though I was brought up not to deface books.

Adding the cream causes the caramel to "bubble up furiously," just as advertised. And the butter melts in easily.

I even pipe the ganache "mud" over the top of the cupcakes in a little circle, leaving the middle bare for the caramel placement. The caramel looks and smells so delicious that I'm undergoing a serious bout of self-pity. On the other hand, it doesn't stay as soft as I'd like to it be. Although it softens easily in the microwave, I can tell that it's not going to remain as soft as I'd like it to be on the cupcake. It would surely rip my temporary crown right out of my mouth. How embarrassing to have to return to the dentist with the crown stuck to a big hunk of caramel. Apparently temporary crowns fall off with alarming regularity, or so I assume based on the many hits I got on my Google query regarding what to do when your temporary crown falls out.

Based on the caramel's consistency, I thought it would be a bad idea to pipe it, so I just used a spoon to place a glob of approximately one teaspoon in mid-cupcake. I reminded myself they were supposed to be turtles, and part of their turtle-y charm would be based on a casually careless look.

Top with five--no more, no less--previously toasted pecans. That should be enough to get a piece of pecan in every bite. If the caramel were softer, the pecans would stick better. I tell myself to quit obsessing about the danged caramel.

And finally, more caramel and more chocolate ganache (mud, if you prefer). I love the picture in the cookbook of the little girl looking completely entranced as she gazes at the cupcake she's getting ready to eat. We took a plate of cupcakes to our neighbors, who have two small boys. They looked equally entranced.

I loved the cupcake I'd made for myself without caramel. It was moist and chocolatey, and you can indeed get a piece of pecan in every bite if you carefully plan your attack. I'm sorry not to be able to sample the caramel, but I can see it's not really "soft sticky," although it's plenty sticky. The ganache is delicious, but bears very little relation to mud. This is not a bad thing. I hope that someone requests these cupcakes to give me a chance to try them again.

TASTING PANEL
Karen: "Yummy. It's the best cupcake I've ever had. A wonderful chocolate treat."
Jim: "It's pretty messy. I'm spilling cake all over the floor. The caramel is very chewy. I sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not. The cake is light, but still chocolatey. It's very good."
Gabe and Nat: "Thanks for the cupcakes!"

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-02-03T15:17:00.000-08:00

Remember the old story about the blind (or blindfolded) men who all touch an elephant and then describe what they've just touched? The one who touches the leg says the elephant looks like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says it's like a rope. Then they have a violent disagreement about the elephant's looks until some wise person comes and straightens it out.

I felt like I was reading that story when I read through the blogs this week. The reactions were so different you'd hardly know that everyone baked the same cake Some people thought it was excruciatingly difficult to make; others thought it almost too easy. Some people loved the dacquoise; others thought it was too sweet. Some put it on their all-time favorites list; others were lukewarm about it. But it was the same cake. Chacun a son gout, right?

Hanaa was one of several people who had been hinting broadly that they wished I'd hurry up and schedule the cradle cake because they wanted to make it so badly. However, before she started making her own version, she heard about Monica's difficulties, and approached the cake with "caution," even cutting the recipe in half in case things didn't go well. But she ended up liking it "a lot. The dacquoise was crunchy and chewy at the same time (like a macaroon), and the cake is so soft and tender, it just melts in your mouth."

Monica's experience--the one that scared Hanaa--was described like this on her blog: "The whole middle of the cake was one hot mess. The whole thing had collapse on itself and I had a thousand little heart attacks in front of my oven. I took it out and for the longest time just stared at the ugly mess in front of me." Well, you can see how this would make both Hanaa and Monica nervous. (Monica's second attempt turned out to be quite successful.)

Unlike Hanaa and Monica, Raymond was not at all intrigued by the idea of the cake, and thought it looked like a "simple snack cake and nothing more." But he ended up giving it "high marks for ease of assembly" and "on the taste scale." "It is richly flavored with butter and vanilla and the nut dacquoise adds a very nice chocolatey, nutty crunch to the exterior." He gave it low marks on the presentation scale, however. . He thought he had to slather it with leftover ganache to make it presentable.

But Jenn was so happy with the way her little heart-shaped cradle cakes looked that it "made her happy to look at them." She was less pleased with the taste, which she thought was "pretty good" but "too sweet."

The ever-cheerful Mendy thought "this fantastic cake was fun to eat and fun to make." He even wished he had made two!

Lois was in the group that thought the cake tasted good but wasn't very pretty. Although she thought the "flavor was wonderful," her heart sank when she saw how much the cake sank.

This cake tied Lola "in knots." Her first try was "a disaster," and her second was "not as big a disaster as the first," but it still sank in the middle. In fact, she decided that "although it tastes really good, I[she] really cannot gift this cake to unsuspecting neighbors." (My personal opinion is that the neighbors would have ben happy to have it.)

On the other hand, Gartblue really had no trouble with the execution of the cake, and thought "the dacquoise was superb, crunchy and sweet and much loved. The girls, literally stripped it naked of its cradle." But she wasn't as enamored with the cake, which "left an aftertaste" in her mouth, reminiscent of an overdose of baking powder.

Nancy disagreed: she described the cake part as a "nice moist buttermilk cake in the middle." In fact, she added the cake to her all-time favorite list but wasn't sure she'd ever make it again because "it was a lot of trouble to get that nice crunchy chocolate-pecan cradle."

No trouble for Kristina, who found that "it comes together super quickly once you have everything ready. I actually managed to make this after I got home from work and before my guests arrived on Friday evening."

Jennifer falls firmly in the category of big fans who had no trouble with the cake at all. Or, as she put it, "this week's Heavenly Cake is magical cake alchemy at its best. A tender, buttermilk yellow cake is baked inside a crispy, nutty dacquoise--something I would never have thought possible. Magic, I tell you!"

Our FEATURED BAKER this week is Andrea. She had not been looking forward to making the cradle cake, and wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, but found that it tasted "amazing." Once she got the cake out of the pan, she decided "it definitely needed something on top. I decided to go with the glaze because it was much quicker, and Daniel wanted some cake." In fact, it was a good thing she fed Daniel, because he thought it was the "best cake so far."
Not only did Andrea make a super-looking cake, but the good news is that she also found a new job! Congratulations, Andrea--glad you found a new job so quickly!

Next week, we're back to the Baby Cakes chapter, with Mud Turtle Cupcakes: chocolate, more chocolate, caramel, and pecans. I'm going to New Orleans this weekend, so I've already made my cupcakes, and they are fantastic. My caramel got overdone, and I'll be very curious to read the blogs to see how everyone else's turns out.

Following that, another cake from the Baby Cakes chapter! (Sorry Raymond--don't know how that happened). This Quail Egg Indulgence Cake is only big enough for two (a perfect Valentine's Day cake!) and calls for, as you might suspect, quail eggs.
As we say in Minnesota, "Well, that's different."

Cradle Cake

2011-01-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

There is a cake under all that greenery--a Christmas Cradle Cake. I had planned to make the cranberry cheesecake for our family's Christmas dinner dessert, but I made it ahead of time for an office potluck. Not wanting to repeat, I looked at the list of upcoming cakes and decided the Cradle Cake was a likely prospect. And so it was.

This cake has two distinct parts: the soft, tender buttermilk cake inside and the crisp, pecan-chocolate-egg white dacquoise on the outside. If you're smarter than I am, you already know that the word "dacquoise" comes from the French town Dax, the home of the famous "Dax spa" and of lovely meringue cakes. Those Daxians apparently like the sybaritic life.

My daughter Liz was home for Christmas, and she suggested that we divide up the components: she would do the dacquoise because that was the interesting part of the cake while I would do the boring part. She had never made a meringue before, so I kept checking on her progress..

Egg whites beat until glossy? Check.

Pecan mixture carefully folded in? Check.

Egg white mixture spread into pan so that it forms a rectangular hollow? Check.

Meanwhile I was making the cake batter. But as we put the cake in the oven, and I began putting things away, I realized that there was no half-stick of butter on the counter to put in the refrigerator. And that meant ... that I had added the butter twice. And that meant that the cake that was supposed to have 4 tablespoons of butter now had 8 tablespoons.
"Well, I hate to say it, Mom," said my daughter, "but that's what you get for back-seat baking. If you'd focused on your own part instead of hovering over me, that never would have happened." Hmmph. Back-seat baking indeed.

I had hopes that the butter incident wouldn't adversely affect the cake, but no such luck. The cake sank down in the pan and a small testing bite revealed that the cake had a heavy, lumpen quality that wasn't going to impress anyone. Proof positive that there can indeed be too much of a good thing. We had plenty of ingredients and enough time, so we started over. This time, the chastened chief baker stayed focused on her own job. We also put the first attempt out in the back yard for the birds and squirrels. They seemed quite jolly about it. I almost expected them to burst into song.

No problems at all the second time around. The cake didn't sink. We unmolded it without incident. The sous chef decided it looked boring and needed considerable spiffing up to make it worthy of its status as Christmas dessert.

My so-called assistant decorated the cake with stripes of chocolate drizzle glaze, and decorated the sides of the platter with various holiday greens. Then she decided that even the side greens and the drizzle weren't festive enough, so she added more on the top of the cake itself. Finally, she pronounced it gala enough for the occasion.

I personally loved the simple but flavorful buttermilk cake that is the backbone of this dessert; others preferred the taste of the dacquoise. In the end, it's the combination of creamy and crunchy, mellow and complex, that makes this cake so special.

TASTING PANEL:
Liz: "The outside crunchy part is really good. The cake itself is more boring."
Danny: "Aren't we supposed to say things that will sound good in print? This pleases my palate."
Lisa: "I really like this cake. I know I'm supposed to say something witty but I can't think of anything."
Jim: "I hate to say this, but the outside part with chocolate and pecans is really good."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-01-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

In Mark Bittman's farewell Minimalist column in Wednesday's NYT, he praised the virtues of cooking with others: "And I discovered that you never cook with someone else without learning something. In every case, there's a two-way transfer of knowledge. If they know less than you do, you grow from teaching. If more, of course, you grow from learning."

It's this "two-way transfer of knowledge" that I've grown to appreciate from this blog and the wonderful bloggers who have devoted their time and passion for baking to this project.

Of course, we all know and love how Rose manages to work in techniues and instructions in every recipe. When we follow a "Rose rrecipe," we don't just end up with a final project; we've taken a class on the subject.

And we teach each other. This week's blogs about the Tres Cafe Genoise are a perfect example.
Some people had problems with the whipped ganache in this recipe.

Monica, for example, "trash talked" the cake, and the cake trash talked Monica right back, forcing her to make the ganache five times until she got it right. "It probably would have been six, but it was eleven at night and I totally threw the white flag at the cake."

Not far behind was Lynnette, who took "three tries" for the ganache and still ddidn't think she got it "perfect," although she liked the way it tasted.

Jenn also put herself in the "third time's (almost) a charm" category. Her first attempt curdled, but she saved it (thanks to Rose's instructions), only to have it curdle again. The third time was perfect - until it threatened to curdle once more. But there was "no way" she was going for a fourth time.

Vicki also credited one of Rose's hints ("continue whipping ... just until very soft, floppy peaks form when the whisk is raised") with keeping her ganache in shape.

Mendy reported that his ganache was a little grainy, but he blamed that on his chocolate, which he thought was subpar. (No brand given--to protect the guilty?)

Nancy B. started out with a "lovely, smooth" ganache, but by the time she was ready to frost the cake, she had "an instantly grainy mess. At this point I wasn't putting more effort into it (hey, the ganache still tasted fine, and didn't have an objectionable mouth-feel), so I frosted away regardless."

Not only does Rose give helpful hints in her recipes, which are read and repeated by our bloggers, but along comes someone like Hanaa, who has perfected her own shortcut to the whipped ganache. (I know it works--at least for Hanaa--because I watched and tasted).

After Hanaa posted her 25-minute ganache pointers, Jennifer had a chance to try them out. The result? "A curdle-free whipped ganache, for the first time in my life. Thanks Hanaa!"

We traded hints and suggestions on more than ganache. Jenn suggested to Andrea, who resisted the Tres Cafe cake because she's cut out caffeine, that she give it a try using decaf coffee. (The very same Jenn, always helpful, also reminded Monica, who was making noises about moving to Minnesota from Florida, that it gets considerably colder in MN than in FL).

Surprisingly, we had a few people who baked this "tres" coffee cake when they don't even like coffee. Kristin put it as plainly as possible: "I just don't like coffee." And yet, she liked this cake. In fact, she "really enjoyed" it: "I guess if you put enough sugar and chocolate in anything I can probably be convinced to get on board!"
Jennifer doesn't like to drink coffee, but she does like its smell.

Now Raymond--well, he just liked everything about this cake: the beurre noisette, the vanilla, the coffee, the cake, the ganache. I think this week Raymond was one of of those who was transferring his knowledge outward.

Special appreciation to Maria, who made this cake after recovering from croup (I thought you only got that when you were under five years old!) and after saying goodbye to her beloved dog,Bruzer.

Our FEATURED BAKER this week is Lola. Her post was short, but sweet, and her picture of the cake, resting on colorful Mexican pottery (at least that's what I choose to believe it is), was an appetizing sight to behold. Good enough reason right there--but there's more. Lola just returned from a trip to Guanajuato and San Miguel Allende with some frostbitten friends from Toronto. She generously offered to share her "information on absolutely perfect B&Bs and restaurants in that area." If anyone is interested, just let her know.

Next up: the delightful Cradle Cake. It makes a very nice Holiday cake (any holiday will do). If you don't have a holiday, it makes a good non-holiday cake too. If anyone feels like tackling the mocha ganache again, one option for decorating the cake is to frost and swirl the cradle cake ewith the ganache. If that idea makes you scream in frustration, I would suggest the Drizzle Glaze option.

The following week we'll be doing Mud Turtle Cupcakes. I can't wait to try the combination of caramel, toasted pecans, and ganache.
Raymond, you'll be glad to know that after these cupcakes, we have only two selections from the Baby Cakes chapter left.

Genoise Très Café

2011-01-23T14:57:00.000-08:00

I won't even try to pretend that I'm the one who did the beautiful piping on this cake.

Once again, the fearless Minnesota Threesome baked together, and Hanaâ the Magnificent is responsible for the piping. She also patiently gave me an introductory lesson in cake decorating, which I resisted (to no avail).

Hanaâ, Woody, and I did a blind chocolate taste test. Neither Hanaâ nor I had found 53% cacao chocolate (although when I was at Whole Foods the next day, I saw that they had bulk 53% chocolate). I provided Lindt 50% and Paul Newman 54%. Hanaâ brought a big brick of Cote d'Or, which she had bought at an airport in Europe.

We all preferred the Cote d'Or, even though it had the lowest percentage of cacao. It was smooth, yet had a bold chocolate taste. The Lindt was smooth, but a little too fruity, and the Paul Newman wasn't bad, but had an aftertaste.

After we chose our chocolate, we got to work on the genoise, which we could (almost) do without looking at the directions. After baking cakes for a year and a half, I have gotten very fond of a genoise. When I first started baking, my preference was definitely the butter cake. Every time I make a genoise, though, I see its virtues more clearly. Delicate, light, and moist, with a chameleon-like ability to take on other flavors, it is now perhaps my favorite cake.

As usual, I am amazed by the transformation of eggs to genoise batter:

I had made the beurre noisette ahead of time. I cooked the butter for a few minutes longer, hoping to get a nice, rich brown and not a burned mess.
Fortunately for me, I did; I think this is the best one I've made so far.

Just 20 minutes in the oven yields a lovely, golden layer.

I put myself in charge of syruping the cake and Hanaâ in charge of the whipped mocha. That's because all I had to do was cut the top off the cake. Hanaâ got the hard part.

I also got to fill out the testing form that Woody had brought for us. I couldn't find a ruler. Woody told me I should always have a ruler at my side when I'm baking. Jim was pretty sure he had a Ruler App. Luckily, I found a ruler before Jim could start talking about Apps.

Woody warned darkly that we had not allowed enough time to make the ganache. Hanaâ smiled sweetly and told him we could do the shortcut in no time. She briefly zapped the chocolate, and quickly cut it into small bits. She is no slouch with a knife.

Before you knew what was happening, she'd melted and cooled the chocolate, and whipped the cream--voila! light whipped mocha ganache.

We had a little discussion about who was going to frost the cake. Since Hanaâ no longer had the knife in her hand, I felt free to be stubborn and tell her there was no way I was going to do it when she was in the same room. I admired her skill, not to mention the results. She could have been a surgeon. Just as well she went in a different direction--she'd probably want to decorate people's midsections after doing appendectomies.

In no time at all, we were ready for tasting. Woody brought along another top secret cake. Since it's a secret, I will only say that it's over-the-top chocolate. Or, if you don't want to say it's over the top, you'd have to say it's at the very top of the chocolate heap--the Pinnacle Cake?

Although, come to think of it, the Tres Café Genoise could give any cake a run for its money in a contest for top-of-the-heapdom. When you've got a delicious genoise with just a hint of coffee (Hanaâ and I opted not to add coffee powder to the cake itself, so I guess ours was really a Deux Café Cake), that you top with a sinfully smooth and delectable whipped ganache, you have to bow to no cake. I loved this cake so much I was glad to cut it in half. I'm still trying to lose that stubborn holiday weight, and having this cake around would do me no good at all.

TASTING PANEL:

Woody: "Dee-licious. You two done good."

Hanaâ: "I think this is one of my favorite cakes."

Karen: "This cake has such a nice texture, and it's very moist. The coffee flavor is wonderful--and I don't like coffee. Very, very good cakeJim: "The cake is so moist it doesn't really need the syrup. I really like the ganache because it's so light but it still has a good chocolate flavor."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-01-19T18:23:00.000-08:00

I believe that the last time we had a Free Choice week, I mentioned that no one ever did the Pinecone Cake for that occasion. Now I'll have to eat my words, since Jenn made not just one, but two of them. Okay, so they were mini-pinecones, each one a quarter of the full recipe, but still. Jenn reported having trouble with both the cake and the fondant, but you couldn't tell it by looking at her photos.

Nobody else made the pinecone cake. In fact, there were no duplicates at all this week. If I were a statistician, I could tell you the odds against that happening, but I'm not, so I won't. I will say that the most popular catch-up cakes tend to come from the Quick and Easy list, and this week was no exception. Even though this group doesn't shy away from challenges, it's always nice to bake something easy, not to mention something that's almost guaranteed to be a success.

For example, Mendy made the chocolate butter cupcakes, which his whole family "enjoyed immensely." Unfortunately, after making them as a catch-up cake, he remembered that he'd already made them. But it's hard to be too unhappy about making chocolate cupcakes.

And Katya made the lovely carrot cake for her lovely sisters. She's also going off to lovely Lisbon next week. Bon appetit and bon voyage!

Andrea wanted a quick and easy cake to take her mind off her job search. She was a little wary that something as decidedly easy as the Whipped Cream Cake might not be worthy of her new cake pan. But, as almost everyone else found out with the whipped cream cake, sometimes simple things are the best.

Kristina made the Apple Cinnamon-Crumb coffee cake--a popular Free Choice selection because what's not to like? Kristina let her husband choose this week's cake: "I gave him a few choices from the list of cakes I have left to bake. Heavenly Coconut Seduction, Red Velvet, Apple Cinnamon Crumb Coffee cake and Sicilian Pistachio cake were all on the list. He stopped me at the Coffee Cake and said 'That’s it. Don’t bother going any further.'” He loved it--as soon as he recovered enough from his cold to taste it.

Nancy's choice was the Banana Refrigerator Cake with Dreamy Creamy White Frosting. All she had to do was wait for the ice in the streets to melt enough for her to venture out of her house. It was "a hit" with her entire extended family, so it was worth the trip.

Finally, Raymond picked the Black Chocolate Party Cake from the Q&E list. He thought the flavors were a little "too intense" for a party cake, and that if he made it again he might omit the nuts and try using plain white superfine sugar instead of the turbinado sugar recommended in the recipe.

The cakes that were not on the Q&E list all ended up varying in some degree from the original recipe.

Sarah made Woody's Lemon Luxury Layer Cake--sort of. Part of the cake was an extra layer of the Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake that she had "lying around." (It's a true baker who has cake layers "lying around.") She made the lemon curd from The Cake Bible instead of Rose's Heavenly Cakes because TCB's curd has "more lemon juice and butter--very important." She also conquered her disdaim for white chocolate enough to make two batches of white chocolate frosting (she thought she'd ruined one, but resurrected it through the judicious use of eggs). Most importantly, this was the recipe that caused the "frayed jacket" of her cookbook to "rip right off."

Faithy opted for the Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache. The only problem was that the caramel didn't turn to caramel because she stopped cooking the sugar before it turned to caramel. Even with that mishap, though, Faithy received kudos for her baking skills, which she modestly tried to shrug off. And she loved the ganache even though it was a "mistake."

Faithful Gartblue posted from the airport on her way to Bandung, Indonesia, about her "chocolate-filled strawberry cake." But I'm pretty sure she meant the strawberry-filled chocolate cake. She promises to write more when she gets home, so we'll find out for sure when she returns.

Back on schedule next week: it's the Genoise Tres Cafe. As you might guess, it has coffee three different ways: cake to which coffee has been added; coffee-flavored syrup, and mocha whipped ganache. Remember, this whipped ganache specifies 53% cacao. I don't know about you, but I have totally forgotten to search out the 53% cacao. My guess is that we'll see quite a range of percentages among the scofflaws among us who don't care what percentage is specified in the recipe.

The following week is the Cradle Cake. Hanaa and Monica have been begging for this cake for about a year now, and I finally relented. I think you'll love it.

Rose's Cinnamon and Sugar Popovers

2011-01-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

I suppose that popovers are not technically cake, but these--from The Bread Bible--seem like they could qualify as a cake, with their coating of butter, cinnammon, and sugar. Besides, even though they're not from Heavenly Cakes, and they occupy this No Man's Land between cake and bread, I chose them for Free Choice Week because I like to talk about how wonderful these popovers are: easy, delicious, and virtually foolproof. (Jim says he will make them sometime himself, just to test how foolproof they are).

The batter is a snap to mix, with the added advantage that you can make it ahead of time, which is very nice if you're serving them in the morning, as I was, or you can make it immediately before baking. One of Rose's secrets to never-fail popovers is using Wondra flour, for its ease of incorporation in the batter.

I doubled the recipe because when I last served these, they popped off the plate quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.

As an aside, people who have been following my not-so-daring exploits may remember that Jim and I host coffee hours every Saturday morning in January. Jim gets up early and makes the trek in (usually) bitter cold weather to buy doughnuts. I get up early and bake something. Last year, these popovers were the runaway hit. I was under orders to repeat them this year.

Another secret is to heat the buttered popover pans for a few minutes before pouring in the batter.

Since I'd mixed the batter the night before, my Saturday morning job was easy. Heat and pour.

Third secret: quickly pierce the popover midway through baking to release some of the steam, thus insuring that the inside of the popover will not be eggy and goopy.

If you don't like the cinnamon-and-sugar idea, you'll have a lovely plain popover straight out of the oven; it's ready for butter, or--even better--butter and jam.

But I've discovered that the very best thing to do is to brush them with melted butter.

And then roll them in cinnamon and sugar.

When people start wondering in, sometime between 9:30 and 10:00, they grab a mug, pour themselves a cup of coffee, and then take a doughnut and/or whatever I've baked that morning. This week the popover platter was emptied early on--even though I'd made twice as many as last year--while there were still leftover doughnuts at the end of the morning.

Keep this recipe in mind when you've baked your way through RHC, and you're going through pangs of withdrawal at not having a new cake to try out every week. Then you too can ponder this burning question: are cinnamon-sugar popovers more like cake or more like bread?

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-01-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

I wasn't the only one who was feeling a little snooty about plain white cake and milk chocolate frosting, only to be wowed by the actuality.

Perhaps Sarah said it best: "Whoa, Nellie! This cake is a dark horse if I’ve ever met one. And it has nothing to do with dark chocolate. The white velvet cake itself is lovely, but the ganache–oh baby! Never will I look down upon milk chocolate again." Sarah also has an amusing minute-by-minute accounting of her day--or how the easiest cake in the world "ate her day."

Faithy didn't feel like making a whole cake, so she made cupcakes, which she declared to be "totally yummylicious! I love the "whiteness" of the cake. So pretty! Cake texture is soo soft with such delicate crumbs. I love it." In other words, she loved it.

Mendy, with the big family and/or generous heart, doubled the recipe, as he sometimes does, and ate it up within two days. (I'm sure he didn't eat it all by himself.) If you haven't read Mendy's post yet, do read it especially for his beautifully appropriate quotations from Song of Songs.

Kristina loved it, but that fact didn't come as a surprise to her because she's made it many times before, including as a weddingcake. She made them as "velvety soft cupcakes."

Shandy thought the cake was "nice and fluffy" and the frosting "delicious," but didn't think it had the "to die for" quality that she's found in some of the other cakes.

And, of course, some people were more smitten with the ganache than with the cake.
Jennifer confessed her love of milk chocolate to the world: "The ganache is made from milk chocolate, and I love milk chocolate. So creamy! I like to let a square of milk chocolate melt on my tongue; it melts so nicely and is so delicious! Dark chocolate, although better for you and more aligned with foodies everywhere, just doesn't satisfy me. I guess I will always be lower class ;)" The plebeian Evil Cake Lady made a luscious-looking cake.

Some people were at least as impressed with how easy the cake was to put together as with how good it was.

For example, Raymond thought it was so simple to make that it would convert even the laziest of bakers: "This cake is proof positive that a top quality scratch cake is even easier than a mix (not that any of us would ever use a mix), but for those of you out there that still do, try this once and you won’t ever use a mix again."

Katya called this cake "simple but snappy"--"Not the most exciting cake but solidly good, a basic, a birthday cake...or, as Jill said, 'A good cake to mas into ice cream.' It's a reminder of how far I've come since the days when I could bake mean bread but had no clue how to turn out a perfect white cake." (Katya made the cake even snappier by using a chocolate-caramel-cranberry ganache).

Lola also liked how easy it was (she made it in cupcake form), as well as "delicious," and said it "will be on [her] list when [she] needs a lovely white cake."

Andrea echoed this theme: she found the cake to be "incredibly simple." As well as praising the cake for being "wonderful" and the ganache for its "creaminess," Andrea was pleased with her pretty new glass covered cake stand--a Christmas gift from someone who got the hint after hearing her complain about her "ugly plastic cake container."

After I saw the other cakes, I was glad that I'd remembered to do some decorations. As I thought,some of the other cake bakers really tarted their cakes up--although many left theirs "plain," which turns out to be very attractive.

Maria's was most like mine--tiny white sprinkles on top of a ganache that she loved for its "slow, lava-like swoopiness."

Nancy B. calls her pretty piped-on lovelies a "token amount of decoration." I call it professional-looking myself.

Monica's cake took my breath away. And any baker who can make me stop breathing is a FEATURED BAKER. I remember the day when Monica did not consider herself a cake decorator. Now that she's started taking classes, though, she's really blossomed. Not only is her ganache perfectly beautiful, with artful spiky studs on the side, but she also used "leftover fondant" (see what I mean? Who has leftover fondant?) to make gorgeous ice-blue flowers. Always the sentimentalist, I gave Monica extra credit for making this cake for her BFF and writing a heartfelt tribute to her.

Speaking of extra credit, Jenn gets some. Jenn had baked this cake and blogged about it way back in November. Not wanting to be idle, however, she used this week to bake the Fruitcake Wreath (in cupcake form).

Don't be idle next week! It's yet another Free Choice week, and whether you make the Fruitcake Wreath, the Whoopie Pies, or the Pinecone Cake is up to you--but I'm sure you'll want to cross another cake off your list.
Coming up after that--the Genoise Tres Cafe: a "coffee cake" made with real coffee (and Kahlua, if you've a mind to). If you've already made the White Gold Passion Genoise, the cake will be a repeat for you, but the final outcome is not going to resemble the White Gold Passion. This cake specifies 53% cacao chocolate--I'm going to be spending this weekend looking for that. I may also look around for some chocolate-covered coffee beans, one suggested decoration.

White Velvet Cake with Milk Chocolate Ganache

2011-01-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

I really wasn't looking forward to making this cake. It seemed so, well, plain. No syrup, no special filling, no ladyfingers. Just a plain vanilla cake. Literally. And milk chocolate? We chocolate snobs look down our noses at milk chocolate. Why not just eat a Hershey bar? But, as usual, I'm forced to admit that my scorn is misplaced. It's a cake so light and tender that you think it will disappear on your tongue, and the ganache--not too sweet at all--bursts with rich chocolate flavor. And it's kid-friendly. Since there's no alcohol in it, I was able to give a big slab to our neighbors with their two little boys who love chocolate, thus saving me from my unfortunate greed.

The cake itself was so easy to make there were barely any pictures to take. It's practically a dump everything in the bowl and mix cake. I say "practically" because you really dump everything except the egg whites, some of the milk, and the vanilla in the bowl and mix it up. Then you add the egg white mixture. Easy as falling off a log, and considerably less painful.

For the ganache, I finally got to use the bar of Valrhona milk chocolate that's been waiting patiently in my chocolate bin (needless to say, I did not have a chocolate bin before starting this project). This huge chocolate bar wasn't enough chocolate, so I had to supplement with some other milk chocolate that Woody and I purchased in bulk long ago.

The chocolate melted nicely in the microwave. If this were Thanksgiving and I were giving a list of things I was thankful for, one of them would be that I can now melt chocolate in the microwave instead of having to drag out the double boiler. I wonder if my daughters even know what a double boiler is.

Cream poured into chocolate? Also a thing to be thankful for.

Ummm. Butter mixed into chocolate into which cream has been poured? I don't know whether this is a good idea or insane arterial-clogging overkill.

While I am mixing various fat-filled ingredients into fat-filled chocolate, the cake has baked. In contrast, the cake is a model of healthful eating, ready to earn the seal of approval from even those who gasp at the idea of eating Fettuccine Alfredo ("You might as well eat a whole stick of butter!"). The cake has only egg whites and milk. Oh, and yes, there is that whole stick of butter, but still--divided by 10? It's nothing.

The instruction, "divide the cake in half" no longer sends me into a tailspin. Now all I have to do is adjust the feet of my cake slicer so that the wire cuts more or less through the middle of the cake. Much easier than blindly running a cake knife through the cake or trying to figure out the dental floss trick.

The ganache, bless its heart, turns out to be just the right consistency for spreading, and the frosting actually proceeds fairly uneventfully. But which I mean 1) the cake didn't split into a million crumbs and 2) the kitchen remained a curse-free zone.

I actually thought the cake looked quite nice plain. But then I remembered who I was baking with. All my super-baker colleagues would no doubt bring out their pastry tips and their designer tricks and I'd be the only one with a plain cake. I remembered I had some little snowflake decorations left over from the last time I made decorated sugar cookies, and I thought they'd look cute. Hoping that sugar snowflakes never go stale, I sprinkled them on the top.

Now that I've made this cake, I really want someone to ask me to make them a plain white cake. And I'll say, "Oh, I know just the thing."

TASTING PANEL

Karen: "This ganache is heavenly. Milk chocolate is my favorite. The cake is light as a cloud."

Jim: "The cake is good, but not delicious. I like the ganache, but I like dark chocolate better. It's good for what it is."

Mary: "Delicious cake. You didn't make the little white sprinkles, did you? That would be beyond the call of duty."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2011-01-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

I got a little nervous after recommending this cake so highly, in case it turned out that everyone else hated it. But I didn't have to worry--almost all the bakers who tried these little beauties were as crazy about them as I was.
One of Nancy's tasters (who can be pretty picky) declared it "amazing!"

Mendy, who recommends listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach while making the cakes, describes them as "pretty fab." (Which could also describe Glenn Gould playing Bach).

Jenn's reaction? "Oh man oh man. This is so good. The sponge cake is so moist and boozy it's so good. The cream filling is so yummy and fit so well with it." AND you must look at the lovely butterflies than Jenn (somehow) piped as cake decorations. AND--for the second week in a row--Jenn made a second catch-up cake: this time the She Loves Me Cake. AND she decorated those with piping that said, "Happy Birthday, Jenn" because, as you might guess, it's her birthday.

A few people had minor quibbles:
Kristina, who ended up doing a double post with this week's cake as well as last week's cheesecake, thought that the texture was "almost gummy" but that it "sure tasted good." Kristina's blog also has a nice thank-you to Rose, written in response to Rose's blog post about the mistakes she made when she started baking.

Katya thought they were a "bit too sweet" for her taste but "intense." She used a Kahlua-based syrup and a strawberry-rhubarb glaze, but, other than that, she stayed with the recipe.

Cake pan envy was mentioned more than once:
Monica, for example, posted an "ENVY ALERT" before mentioning the Mary Ann pan. But her brand new KitchenAid might cause other readers to feel their own equipment envy.

Joan decided she just HAD to have the pans, and went out looking for them. She found a super-deluxe version, with a basketweave pattern, which turned out looking great (despite Joan's concerns that she'd "manhandled" the genoise batter). The raspberry adornments look great too.

Jennifer too invested in the Mary Ann pans: her "investment" consisted of the eight dollars she paid at a big sale at Sur La Table this summer. She said she was willing to fork over eight dollars for a "single-use pan." After eating these cakes, though, she decided it wasn't likely to be used only once after all.

Raymond definitely felt no pan envy. In fact, he almost passed on this dessert because it was "another of the dreaded mini cakes which everyone knows I loathe intensely." However, he persevered, making two of them in 6-inch springform pans, hollowing out the center, and he fell in love: "This is total bliss. And, I have to say, make this in the six inch pan and you have the perfect Valentines dessert for two."

Hanaa found a big Msry Ann pan at a garage sale--one of those things you pick up because you never know, it might come in handy someday. After sitting on a shelf for a few years, it did come in handy. Hanaa, who can never resist the orange/chocolate combination, slipped a layer of orange pastry cream under the chocolate cream, for a double-creamy version. Much appreciated by her tasting panel, who called the cake "light", "European-style", and a "good flavor combo, the chocolate and the orange."

I also want to mention Nicola. Although she didn't bake this week's cake, she posted last week with a summary of some of the cakes she'd baked but hadn't had time to post about. She also announced that she was pregnant--with twins. Her delicate condition gives her a permanent excuse to be late, or not to have time to post. But, as several people pointed out, she might as well bake now, while she's not a complete stranger to sleep. Congratulations, Nicola!

Lois is this week's FEATURED BAKER. How can she not be? She didn't just double, but tripled the recipe! She took them to her office for a birthday treat--I'm sure the birthday person never envisioned something like these cakes when she made a vague request for "something chocolate." Even with the triple recipe, Lois blithely described the cakes as being "quick and easy." How far we've all come!

Next week is a true Quick & Easy recipe--the White Velvet Cake with Milk Chocolate Ganache. This is one of the few recipes that doesn't have a photo, so you're on your own for decorating ideas. In the spirit of quick and easy, however, the less decorating, the better. You will have no problems with this cake, with the possible exception of cutting it in half. Some people (me, for example) look at this instruction with trepidation; now that I've got my cake slicer, however, things are easier. You also need a big hunk of milk chocolate, something we haven't used much for our baking recipes. Rose has specific suggestions for kinds of milk chocolate to use.

After that, it's yet another Free Choice week. Yes, I know we just had one. But, as I keep reminding you, we're counting down to the last cake. If you didn't make these Bull's-Eye Cakes, I can't think of a better candidate for your Catch-Up week.

Hope you all had a lovely New Year's holiday, and that your resolutions remain unbroken.

Chocolate Bull's-Eye Cakes

2011-01-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

These cakes may be small in size, but they're anything but small in flavor. Especially the chocolate filling--smooth and suave, it's a very grown-up pudding that makes you want to lick the bowl just like you did when you were a kid.
I liked these so much that I made them twice. I said I'd provide the dessert for a meeting at a friend's house. That meeting had to be rescheduled because of a blizzard (which are becoming all too familiar this year), and I made it again for the rescheduled date.

Like many of the other sponge cakes in the book, this one started with beurre noisette (now as familiar as blizzards but much more likable). This picture is just beurre before it gets to the noisette stage.

This recipe made me very glad I'd sprung for the Mary Ann pans. I bought them months ago and used them for Coffee Chiffonlets. Who knew they'd be so versatile?

We could probably all make sponge cakes in our sleep by now--except that it would be a little hard to fall asleep with the KitchenAid whirring at high speed for five minutes. Sometimes I think I should be wearing protective ear plugs at this stage. I'd rather be running my KitchenAid than a leaf blower. I hate leaf blowers.

Oddly, I didn't have any vanilla Cognac in my now well-stocked liquor cabinet. The first time I made the cakes, I just used a little extra vanilla in the syrup; the second time, I added vanilla and apricot brandy. For the delicious apricot glaze, I added just a teaspoon of apricot brandy to the strained apricot preserves.
Oh, by the way, remember the Chambord that we bought for a cake a while back? A friend of mine told me to mix it with Champagne for a festive cocktail, and that's exactly what I did on New Year's Eve. Very pretty and it tasted good too. Thanks, Suzanne!

The glaze not only added an unexpected touch of fruitiness to the cake; it also made it shiny and attractive. If you like fruit with your chocolate, you'll like this. You might still like it even if you don't because it's not at all overwhelming.

But my very favorite part of this cake is the non-cake cream filling. I was glad no one was in the kitchen with me when I made it the second time. I usually taste whatever is in the bowl, and I mean "taste"--a dainty, ladylike tip of a teaspoon full. I ate my usual taste, and then I licked the bowl clean. One of othe best chocolate experiences ever. The chocolate glaze, which I drizzled (dribbled is more like it) on with a plastic bag was good too, but not as delicious as the filling.

The highest compliment I can pay these Bull's-Eye cakes is this: it is the only cake so far that I've made twice. And I'm already hankering for a third time.

TASTING PANEL

Susan: "Out of this world. The chocolate was so creamy. Not only delicious to eat but beautiful to look at."
Becky: "I feel like I'm eating something that I got at a fancy French patisserie."
Jim: "Love the combination of flavors. The cake is really nice and moist."
Rosemary: "It's delicious, and the cake is so moist. The chocolate filling is wonderful."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-12-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

It was a struggle. Many of us--faced with blizzards, a demanding family, and stressful holidays--had to drag ourselves in the kitchen to bake one more thing in order to finish this week's cake. But those of us who did (including those who started the project at midnight) were glad we'd forced ourselves to open the oven door one more time.
Some of the draggers also were forced to substitute ingredients with what they had on hand.
Katya, for example, snowed in in her New York home, substituted ricotta and buttermilk for cream cheese and sour cream. She said it tasted good, although the wetter mixture seemed to cause some "bottom ladyfingers [to] float up, giving it an odd 'pond filled with floating logs' appearance." Hope your street has been plowed by now, Katya. I feel your pain.
Gartblue nearly didn't have time to bake, given the "rushy week" it was. And then she ran out of aluminum foil, had only the wrong size springform pan, and had blueberries but not cranberries. Did she have a snit? Well, yes, she did, but she still persevered.
It will probably surprise no one to hear that Jennifer was the above-named midnight baker--this isn't the first time that's happened. She also made some substitutions: a mixture of reduced-fat sour cream and full-fat yogurt. Again, the subs worked out well, converting at least one cheesecake naysayer to a fan.
Not everyone had to fly by the seat of their pants. Andrea was organized enough to make her own ladyfingers (after getting the right-sized piping tip--amazing what a difference that makes!). She also rolled out pie dough for two homemade pies: a pecan tart and a lattice-topped cherry pie. Nice work!
Raymond breezed through this cheesecake, even though he was also committed to "so many cookies and cakes and desserts for friends and parties" and San Diego was having "weird" weather (not blizzards). His reward? A "terrific" cheesecake, and high praise from one of the guests--a professional chef--at the party where the cheesecake was guest of honor.
Mendy's cheesecakes could have been guests of honor at about ten different parties--I don't know what size pan he used but he ended up with a multitude of cheesecakes, all looking very good. (Although there was one that "someone decided to poke their finger into ... a couple times.") That one looked, well, like someone had decided to poke their finger into it.

And then there were a few people who just couldn't get enough of baking--even in one of the busiest kitchen weeks of the year. Lois's extra baking time was a little inadvertent, since she ended up making two batches of ladyfingers. Apparently if you neglect to add flour to the ladyfingers, they end up being a little flat. You know how far you've come as a baker when you decide that it's easier to make another batch of ladyfingers from scratch than to run out to a nearby store to buy them.
Jenn chose this week to play more catch-up. Along with the cheesecake, she also made the financier-style vanilla bean poundcakes from a few weeks ago. She made five of those, which she and her husband "wolfed down" in minutes. (Can't imagine how "wolf" came to mean greedy eating).

This week's FEATURED BAKER is Nancy B.--in part to honor her as the only person who has made every single cake on the Heavenly Bakers list, and in part to show off her cheesecake, which was met with choruses of "good cheesecake" at the office potluck to which she brought it. Nancy made homemade ladyfingers to "reinforce her ladyfinger skills." She worried about a few imperfect spots, but was told that her ladyfingers looked so good they must be storebought. She thought she would have some left, so she could get a picture of an individual piece, but when she went to pick up her platter, all that was left was a "pile of crumbs." And I'll bet the pile wasn't very big.

And honorable mention goes to Joan, who didn't do the cheesecake, but instead did a reprise of the fabulous Saint-Honore trifle.

I think people are really going to like next week's Chocolate Bull's-Eye Cake. Don't be scared by all the components. Each one is easy, and the cake can be put together in a snap. It's going to be easier if you have the MaryAnn pan, because then you won't have to cut a circle out of the cake to put the chocolate in.
If you want your cake to be a little boozy, you have a couple of options. You can flavor the syrup with a vanilla cognac (or other liqueur) and you can also add a bit of apricot brandy to the strained apricot jam. Water, plus a little extra vanilla, works just fine as well.
This will be our first cake of 2011!
The following week, we go again to the Quick & Easy list, which is quickly diminishing. We'll make a layer cake: the classic White Velvet Cake topped with milk chocolate ganache. If anyone's birthday is coming up, it looks like it would be a fine birthday cake.

Happy New Year to all of you dear Heavenly Bakers!

Cranberry Crown Cheesecake

2010-12-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

Once you have your ladyfingers for a cheesecake lined with ladyfingers, the rest is pretty much a walk in the park. As you may have guessed, I am unwarrantedly proud of my ladyfingers. I haven't yet stopped strangers on the street to tell them of my accomplishment, but I've come pretty close to it. So you may see a number of pictures of cheesecake that may look more like pictures of ladyfingers.

What a clever idea it is to make the ladyfingers so they spread together and make a solid line of cake. If you have such an unbroken line, you can shave off the bottom of the ladyfingers and tuck them in the pan so they form an unbroken circle. They don't fall over, nor do they lean precariously. They are so well-mannered you'd think they'd been attending a school for cake etiquette.

Granted, they don't fit so neatly in the bottom, but they can be cut and gently stuffed in holes so they make a pretty fair base for the cheesecake. No one complained that there was a hole in the bottom of the cheesecake.

In fact, no one did any complaining at all. I really do think that Rose's cheesecakes are the best on earth. At least they're the best I've sampled so far in my many years on earth, and I've tasted a fair number. This one is no exception--a basic cheesecake made only with cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, sugar, fresh lemon juice, and vanilla--it's rich, light, and flavorful.

With three cups of sour cream (compared to two cups in the coconut cheesecake and two cups of sweet cream in the pumpkin cheesecake), you may think it's going to be too light and not cheesy enough. But it's just right.

It goes in a hot water bath. A 9-inch springform pan set in a 10-inch silicone cake pan set in a large, heavy skillet works perfectly for me. You do have to pay attention when you're pouring the hot water in the pan.

45 minutes later, you turn off the oven. An hour after that, you open the door and remove the cheesecake. Even after all that time in the oven, you will notice what is NOT on the top of the cheesecake: not a gap, a crack, a canyon, or a chasm. I've made cheesecakes in the past that tasted good but were nearly split in two by such imperfections. Of course, you can tell yourself that it doesn't matter because it will be covered by some topping, but in your heart, you know it's wrong.

No apologies are necessary when you serve this cheesecake. And there's just the right amount of cranberry topping that's just the right tart-sweet blend. (I made a cranberry cheesecake a few years ago that I was really looking forward to, but the cranberry topping turned out to be an overly sweet, cornstarchy mess.)

I took this to an office potluck for the project I've been volunteering for, and it was the star. Jim was convinced he'd never get a piece of this cake, but, fortunately, I was able to bring home a few pieces for him. I think otherwise he was going to take his camera and go to the basement and pout.

TASTING PANEL:

Julie: "This was really good. I don't even like cheesecakes-they're so heavy--and I just took a piece to be polite. But then I had to take another piece because I liked it."
Bridget: "You know, she made the ladyfingers. She makes everything."
Rachel: "I really liked it. I thought it was cherry topping because it wasn't too tart. Now that I know it's cranberry, I'll have to take another piece."
Erika: "It's delicious!"
Jim: "It really tastes good. The cranberry sauce is not too sweet or too tart, and the cheesecake was light but still rich. It's also quite pretty."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-12-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

Free Choice week is like going down Memory Lane for me. I love reading about peoples' discovery of the recipes I've already made--makes me feel like The Old Baker who says, I remember when I made that Tiramisu back in 2009. Those were the days.
I also have noticed that most of the recipes picked for Free Choice week tend to be from the Quick & Easy list. This makes sense to me because why would you voluntarily make a lot of trouble for yourself?

For example, both Mendy and Andrea made the Heavenly Coconut Seduction Cake. If you like coconut at all, how can you nut be tempted by a cake that has both "heavenly" and "seduction" in its name? Andrea decorated it beautifully, although she kind of apologized for just using her "standard shells and rosettes"--don't know how to break this to you, Andrea, but there are some households where shells and rosettes are not standard. Mendy doubled the recipe, for a tall, lovely layer cake, and said that his guests commented on how "fancy" it looked.
Gartblue made the Golden Lemon Almond cake, also on the Q&E list. She was actually sure that she had already made it; but then, checking her blog, realized that it was still on her to-do list. How much did she like it? Here's her response: "Whatever possessed me to make the Holiday Pinecone cake and miss this?" Hmmm. I have noticed that no one has done the Holiday Pinecone cake for a Free Choice week.
Jenn did the Spice Cake with Peanut Buttercream--on the Q&E list and the first cake that I did from Heavenly Cakes. But Jenn doesn't get full credit for doing a cake from the Q&E list because she also made Whoopie Pies, for a double catch-up week. Check out Jenn's Heavenly Cake List, in which she gives the full list of cakes to bake with the ones she's already baked crossed out. Congratulations, Jenn!
I thought at first that Vicki also did a double catch-up because she blogged about two cakes as well: the Deep Chocolate Rosebuds and the Fruitcake. But it turns out that the fruitcake is a repeat: it has already become an annual event at Vicki's house.
Lois salso did the Fruitcake Wreath, but it was brand new to her, and she was doubtful about the whole fruitcake thing: "I haven't eaten fruitcake since I was a child, and my memories mainly involve disappointment. Shouldn't a cake have frosting? And even in its candied version, I couldn't understand why anyone would eat citrus peel." But she gave it a try, and was glad she did--she likes it so much she's been eating it for breakfast.
Raymond and Jennifer both did the Apple Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake, which I assumed was on the Q&E list, but, try as I might, I couldn't find it on the list. I have no idea why it isn't, especially since Raymond said he chose it out of "pure laziness" and Jennifer has already made various incarnations of this cake from The Cake Bible. Of course, both of them liked it--how can you not like a sour cream coffee cake filled with apples and topped with crumbs?
Not everyone went the Quick and Easy route--a few took detours off to, for example, Tiramisu-land and Bostini-ville.
Nancy is not a big fan of tiramisu, but she definitely liked this, as did one of her tasters who considers herself a connoisseur of tiramisu. And Hanaa was thrilled that she finally got a make the Bostini that had received such rave reviews. She made it three different ways, and liked all three.
Katya was finally able to work in the Torta de las Tres Leches at her parents's house. She said, "The tasting panel was enthusiastic, although they refused to write down pithy, witty commentary on an index card, citing exhaustion. Several did, however, reach for a second slice." I have that same problem with Tasting Panels--they're eager enough to eat the cake but but balk at being required to come up with pithy, witty comments.
Kristina resisted the Q&E temptation and tackled one of the more complicated cakes ("really fussy" is how she put it): the Chocolate Featherbed--and did a bang-up job. You should see the thin, beautiful layers she carefully made. Kristina's post is also noteworthy in that she therein confesses to a secret vice (that is no longer secret).

I have the good luck to have already made the next two cakes on the list: the Cranberry Crown Cheesecake and the Chocolate Bulls'-Eye Cakes. (I had two parties to go to, and said I'd bring dessert to both). I know that many of you will be super busy the next few weeks, but don't miss these cakes! The cheesecake is one of Rose's patented light-but-rich cheesecakes, and it's absolutely beautiful in a ladyfinger crown.
And don't be put off by the four components in the Bulls'-Eye Cakes. All components are easy to make, and come together to make an impressive, delicious dessert. I used my MaryAnn pan (which is nice, but not essential), and I was very glad that I had it--the chocolate filling (superb!) fits perfectly in the indentation made by the pan.

Happy Solstice, everyone! At least everyone living in the northern hemisphere. Maybe you can't quite tell it yet, but days are starting to get longer at last. You can't say spring is right around the corner, but I think you can believe that it's a possibility.

Ladyfingers--Take Two

2010-12-19T18:22:00.000-08:00

I remember when I blogged about the Lemon Canadian Crown with the misshapen ladyfingers, and I said if I ever made them again, I should have my head examined. Well, I tried them again, and I actually think that my head is in pretty good shape.

Would you believe me if I said I made these chocolate ladyfingers?

I thought not. This picture is courtesy of Dana Bellefeuille, a blog reader who took pity on my woeful attempt, and showed me how they make them at the resort she works at. The pictures she sent, and her narrative accompaniment, helped me quite a bit.

Would you believe me if I said I made these?

Yes, you probably would, because, although they look considerably better than my first attempt, they still don't look professional. The main reason they look better is that I bought the appropriate piping tip. As in so many things, having the proper equipment is key. You'd think I would have figured that out before now.

This is the biggest tip they had at the kitchen equipment store. It's about three times the diameter of the tip I used before. I can't tell you how much easier it was to use the recommended piping tip. As I keep saying to myself (although it doesn't seem to take), following directions is usually a good thing.

From Dana, Hector, and Rose's video, I learned that the template for the ladyfingers should go the length of the pan, not the width. Through Rose's video, I learned that you can put dabs of ladyfinger batter under the four corners of the parchment paper, which will make the parchment stay in place. Rose also tells you to turn the paper over because you wouldn't want to get pencil marks on your ladyfingers. Having traces of graphite on my ladyfingers was the least of my worries, but I turned the paper over anyway because I didn't want to seem like I didn't care about culinary hygiene.

Presto! Eight minutes in the oven and reasonable facsimiles of ladyfingers emerge from the oven. And, better yet, I'm all set for next week's cheesecake. In fact, I have so many ladyfingers, I might have to make two.

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-12-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

We are on a roll here. The second cake in a row from the Quick & Easy list (I hate to break this to you, but there are only 3 cakes left to do on that list, which may mean we have some killers ahead of us). That is, we will have some exciting challenges.

Most people loved these easy little gems, although several missed the richness that egg yolks generally bring to something named "pound cake," and a few thought the cake was just okay.

Jennifer, for example, was just a wee bit grumbly when she discovered there were no egg yolks in the cake, but she recovered, and admitted that once she got "over the lack of egg yolk, they really are quite lovely. Almost tea cake-like in their dense crumb, and with wonderful flavor." See, she's really quite open-minded.

Neither Nancy nor her always-willing-to-give-it-a-try family members were "wowed" but this cake. Nancy prefers the "tighter crumb" of traditional pound cake, and liked the "classic financier" best of the four financier (or pseudo-financier) recipes she's tried.

Monica also tsk-tsked a bit about calling these "pound cakes" when they're made sans egg yolks. Her final conclusion: "They were good, not spectacular; I guess I was missing the rich, dense texture that a true pound cake gives you."

On the other hand, ButterYum found them "moist and addictive," as well as "delicious and very easy to put together."

And Raymond liked them so much ("pound cake, vanilla, butter! Are there any better or sweeter words in the English language?") that he barely complained about their baby size, although he did say that the next time he made them, he'd try using his mini-loaf pans, brought back from Paris. They are "mini" but not as mini as a financier pan.

Mendy made his ("the taste was very vanilla-y eand fantastic") in his brand new tiny silicone fluted pans--a thoughtful Hanukkah present from his wife.

Gartblue sounds like she'll be making them again. Not only were they buttery, she said but she also loved "the vanilla bean effect on them. Pretty and tasted heavenly. Another winner in my book"
(By the way, Gartblue's post was the first one I read that pointed out that Rose had foresaw the curdling problem. I missed that little warning in the directions, so when I was making them, I thought, "This is weird--the batter is curdling. Hope that's okay." It was.)

Vicki also gave them high marks: "Topped with a dab of marscapone and apricot jam, these were delicious. Everyone very much enjoyed them and they go on the Make Again List."

Lois focused on their Q&E nature. How easy? "So easy that I've just whipped them up in the wee hours of the morning - before the sun is even up. If you can tackle a recipe before you're really awake, how hard can it be?"

Kristina also liked how easy they were. And how easy it was to write her blog post because she "refused to spend longer typing it up than [she] did making it."

Lola didn't make the pound cakes [yet}, because computer problems forced her to play catch up. She posted about last week's chocolate velvet fudge cake. Like everyone else, she liked it. And she also shared her "BTG" technique for baking, but not eating, whenever she pleases. "Buy-Taste-Gift."

The beauty of these little cakes is that they don't need much dressing up. They can be served as is or with a little fruit. But Maria, our FEATURED BAKER, showed that they also take well to getting dressed up. Maria put a single sour cherry atop the batter, and then carefully placed some green pistachio slivers around the cherry. Who would have thought these little financiers could double as Christmas cupcakes?

I warned you that I was going to load up the "Free Choice" weeks as we go into the final stretch. (I have only 16 cakes left!) You'll see from the "Next in the Oven" list that there's one scheduled for next week and another one on January 17, just a month later.

After the Free Choice week, the Cranberry Crown Cheesecake is up. It'll be a perfect winter dessert, whether or not you celebrate Christmas. You may notice that the cheesecake can be made with soft ladyfingers as a base. It can also be made with Savoiardi biscuits or angel food cake. YOU CAN BUY ANY THESE. You do not have to make the base unless you really, really want to.

And then, believe it or not, it will be 2011! We started this project in 2009. Holy crap.

Financier-Style Vanilla Bean Poundcake

2010-12-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

These little "financier"-style "poundcakes" are not true financiers (no ground nuts) and not true poundcakes (eggwhites only, not whole eggs). They may not have a technically accurate name, but you could call them tender, moist, buttery little nuggets of flavor. They don't knock your socks off, but they might cause you to wiggle your toes in delight. I ate one just two hours ago, and I wrapped up the rest to put in the freezer so I wouldn't eat all the rest of them in one sitting.

If you thought last week's cake was easy, wait until you try this one. Jim missed the photogenic slicing and seeding of the vanilla bean. The second step--mixing the dry ingredients, including the aforesaid sugar, turned out to be not very photogenic. Ditto for the third step, whisking eggs, milk, and vanilla in a small bowl.

Had I piped the batter into the financier molds, as recommended, I might have gotten something more photogenic, or (more likely) something a lot messier. You know how I feel about piping. Instead, I used the time-honored glob and smooth method of filling the pan.

Mixing everything together was only marginally more photogenic, and that's just because the Beater Blade made nice designs in the batter.

We had a kazillion inches of snow today. Our neighbor Fred used his snowblower on our front sidewalk this morning, so we took him and his wife a little plate of cookies and cakelets to thank them. The cakes look a little on the pale side, but they were perfectly done. If they'd been browner, they might have been too dry. As it was, they were perfect.

The tasting panel this week was cancelled due to a blizzard. Jim says to tell you that he liked these cakes a lot, although there weren't very many of them (9 because that's the number of openings my financier pan has), and he wishes I hadn't put them in the freezer.

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-12-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

Here are Rose's pictures of the original marzipan candle, and the original recipient of the cake and candle:

I'm afraid that this week's roundup may be a little boring. One after another, bakers reported that the cake was not only easy, it was also delicious. But how many ways are there to say "good" and "easy"? Let us count the ways.

For example, Jennifer found it "simple to make" and "satisfying to eat."

Joan said it was "luscious" and "not difficult or time-consuming."

Raymond judged it "so easy" and "nice and light and flavorful."

Katya thought it was "very simple" and "easy to eat," although, to be honest, she was perhaps more enthralled with her new Heritage bundt pan than with the cake.

Lois, still cooking in her "little Polish kitchen," thought the cake was "soft and tender." She thought it was easy even thought she had to substitute migdałów aromatycznych for the aromat waniliowy, which you'd think would be enough to drive anyone to drink.

Vicki declared that the cake was "incredibly light crumbed" and "very easy to make."

Andrea thought it was "super simple," but hadn't tasted yet as of posting time.

Monica really said it all: The cake is "perfect because its easy to make, easy to decorate, easy to served and the most important easy of all? To eat."

For Kristina, it was so easy that it didn't present enough of a challenge--she had to try the marzipan candle in order to make it interesting.

Mendy, who found the cake "delicious," also tried the marzipan candle. Nice work, Mendy, but the marzipan decoration isn't as pretty as your Hannukah candles.

For Sarah, the candle was the hero (or villain) of her piece. Villain because she thought it looked "ridiculous," and made both her and Steve "burst out laughing."

Although Jenn found the cake "dense and fudgy," she wasn't jumping on the quick and easy bandwagon, mostly because she broke her stride when she realized she'd forgotten to add sugar. She recovered, but worried about overbeating, and also worried that part of the cake stuck to the cake pan. She's going to give it another shot, though.

And Nancy was having so much fun making quick and easy chocolate cakes that she added another one: the Black Chocolate Party Cake, which she made in addition to the assigned chocolate fudge cake.

Our featured baker this week is Gartblue. As you may have noticed, I'm a pushover for anyone who goes all out, since I like to go all out myself. So I love it that Gartblue gave a birthday party for her daughter Ayisha that included not only the Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake ("what a surprise this cake turned out to be despite its deceptive appearance"), but also the Lemon Canadian Crown, which she'd stashed in the freezer last week, AND the chocolate ice cream cake. A birthday lunch at Gartblue's also includes lamb kebabs, meatballs in black pepper sauce, and fried vegetables. Coincidentally, this is what I want for my next birthday lunch.

Our next cake should also be quick and easy--unless, of course, you try making it with marzipan candles. Then I'm not responsible. It's the Financier-style Vanilla Bean Pound Cakes. You'll need half a vanilla bean, as you might guess, and egg whites only. Check your freezer. And isn't it about time for you to break down and buy those silicone financier pans?

After that, it's another Free Choice week. We've never had so many, but I want to give everyone a chance to play Catch-Up.

By the way, since cocoa is the basis for nearly all of the chocolate cakes--which means almost half the cakes in the book--Jenn was wondering if people have found a brand of cocoa they're satisfied with, and, if so, what is it and where do you get it?
I used Droste almost exclusively. Then I ordered a big bag of Perugina from King Arthur, and I've been quite pleased with it. It has a higher fat content than cocoa you can buy in the supermarket. I'll either buy it again when I run out, or I'll try some French cocoa and compare.

Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake

2010-12-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

If I were naming this cake, I think I'd just call it Plain Chocolate Cake. Not plain as in ugly, but plain as in unadorned, simple, essential. If you only had one chocolate cake in your baking repertoire, you'd want to give serious thought to making it this one.

First of all, unlike some of the other recent cakes which seemed easy, but weren't on the Q&E list, this one really is. That is, it's on the list, it's quick, and it's easy. Easy enough that I had it almost entirely put together by the time Jim went upstairs and got his camera. (He's kind of a slow walker).

In fact, the hardest part was picking the pan. I already announced I wasn't going to buy a new silicone bundt pan when I'd mortgaged the house for various Nordicware pans. I decided it was time to bring out the Christmas wreath pan again.

Here's how you put it together.
1) Mix cocoa and boiling water.
2) Mix eggs, water, and vanilla.

3) Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, and cocoa mixture.

4) Add egg mixture.

5) Put in pan.

6) Bake

Really. If you can make a cake mix, you can make this.

My cake took a few minutes less than the minimum 50 minutes, probably because the pan was wider and flatter than a typical bundt pan.

The simple decoration of powdered sugar brought out the ribbon and pine cones that you couldn't see before sugar was sifted over the cake.
And that's it--eat, taste, love.

You could also serve it with ice cream or whipped cream, if you wanted to gussy it up. If you wanted to further gussy, you could put some chocolate sauce on the ice cream that sits next to the cake. (Maybe you have some leftover sauce from the Bostini?) But I like it best plain.
Even writing the blog was quick and easy. Whereas it took me hours to write about the Lemon Canadian Crown cake, and required multitudes of photos, not to mention a fair amount of complaining, this blog virtually wrote itself. Thanks, Rose. I needed that.

TASTING PANEL:
Jim: "Really good chocolatey taste. I like the light texture. I think I'd like it even better with whipped cream."
Rachel: "Delicious. I don't think it needed anything else."
Steve: "I'd eat it with ice cream or with frosting or plain because I'm so agreeable."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-12-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

It was a pretty small group that tackled the Lemon Canadian Cream this week, and an even smaller group that made the ladyfingers as well. But those of us who did were rewarded with a wonderful, (deceptively) light dessert that was perfect for Thanksgiving. And perfect for just about any other occasion.
Since I was obsessed with my own ladyfingers, and their lack of professional smoothness, I was also obsessed with checking out how the other Heavenly Bakers fared in the ladyfinger department.
Frankly, I was most impressed with Gartblue and Vicki, who both bought their ladyfingers. Not only did they buy them, but they bought the "wrong" kind--Saviordi instead of soft. But what they did with their "mistakes" was pretty impressive. Vicki turned hers into a kind of trifle, adding blueberries to the mix, to make a "showstopper" dessert. And Gartblue's looked stunning, even though she thought she'd burned the meringue.
Kristina also burned her meringue; she claimed that it looked bad enough that she had to scrape it off and start over. I couldn't tell because I was too jealous of her ladyfinger perfection. I tried not to be jealous, I really did, but when I saw her beautiful concentric circles, I couldn't help myself. But enough about me.
Special praise to Lois, who made her ladyfinger baking debut in Poland, using the white powdery substances she explained to the authorities were her baking supplies. And then she realized that she didn't have powdered sugar with her, so had to go to a Polish supermarket. And then, after all that, she remarked about how easy it was to make ladyfingers!
Nancy also found the ladyfingers to be "surprisingly easy." She had the good sense to watch Rose's video before tackling them--something which Hector also recommended and which, of course, is an excellent idea. Nancy made a half recipe, as she often does, and ended up with something both beautiful and, because of its small size, cute.
Raymond found the ladyfingers to be "so easy it hardly seemed worth the effort of tracking down the store bought ones." He also described the whole dessert as "deceptively simple." And, I have to say, his pictures make it look like he's been making ladyfingers his whole life.
Monica didn't think they were easy to make; in fact, they drove her to distraction. But they were on her "kitchen bucket" list, so she went at them with determination--and success--and then she wrapped her "crown" up with a big blue ribbon. So pretty!
But the FEATURED BAKER this week is Mendy, who likened his his ladyfingers to the "Great Wall" of Ladyfingers, or, perhaps, to a baseball glove. Mendy made his ladyfingers with a makeshift piping bag (a Ziploc bag), and his trusty toaster oven. I loved his wall of ladyfingers, his sprightly ribbon, and his good humor.

No piping bags next week, with the Chocolate Velvet Fudget Cake, although you will have to make a Marzipan candle if you want to imitate Rose's presentation. You would then cut the candle into very thin slices and drape a slice over each individual piece of cake. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be opting out of the Marzipan candle, but a good dusting of powdered sugar sounds like a great idea. We haven't made a plain butter chocolate cake for a while, and I'm excited about getting out a bundt pan and seeing what happens. (By the way, Rose recommends a silicone bundt pan, but after investing in a half-dozen different Nordicware pans, I think I'm committed to using one of them).
Next up are "Financier-Style" Vanilla Bean Pound Cakes--not really Financiers, as Rose says, because they don't have ground nuts in them, but you can make them in silicone financier molds. These baby pound cakes are, I think, going to look very elegant on a holiday dessert platter. (And in case you're missing your piping bag after the chocolate cake, you're welcome to bring it out in order to neatly pipe the batter into the financier molds).

Lemon Canadian Crown with Homemade Ladyfingers

2010-11-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I predicted last week that my ladyfingers would not be picture-perfect, which turned out to be an understatement. But I'm including pictures anyway. Feel free to laugh at my wobbly efforts--I certainly did. As it turned out, they tasted just fine anyway--much lighter and lovelier than anything I could have bought, and the meringue--the first thing you see when you look at a piece of this cake--looked good. So I'm not unhappy at all. If I ever venture into ladyfinger territory again, however, I should have my head examined. Once is enough.

Here are the piping guides I drew on a piece of parchment paper. If there's anything I'm worse at than piping, it's drawing. My poor third-grade art teacher tried so hard to compliment me on my drawing. But she always guessed wrong about what I was trying to draw.

It was easy enough to make the ladyfinger batter. Just an egg-yolk and Wondra flour mixture into which a meringue is folded.

It's the piping where it gets tricky. I used a 9-inch parchment round that some machine had already cut for me. I figured all I'd have to do is make the circle a little smaller since I was supposed to have an 8-inch round. Whoa! The piping apparatus appears to have a mind of its own. I envision nice thick swirls going in concentric circles. What comes out of the tube is skinny, wobbly, and going in curlicues. It reminded me of Mickey's magic broom in The Sorcerer's Apprentice section of Fantasia.

The ladyfingers didn't go much better, although I cheered up when I decided that I would just think of them as ornate, somewhat rococo ladyfingers instead of the plain straight ones that anyone can buy in the grocery store.

Here's how the bottom turned out when I took it out of the oven and sprinkled powdered sugar on it. It was somewhat humbling to realize that that was as good as it was ever going to look. Oh well, I thought. It's on the bottom, covered by lemon cream. No one will ever see it. And at least I tried, I thought to myself, unlike Woody who just went to a big-box grocery store and pulled some lame factory-made ladyfingers off the shelf. So what if his looked perfect?

I think it's at least within the realm of possibility that ladyfingers like this could start a fad for homemade Baroque ladyfingers.
Enough of that. I lined the springform pan with misshapen ladyfingers and put them in the freezer. I was going to make the lemon cream next, but I decided I'd had enough trauma for one day. Instead, I put the pan in the refrigerator and had a glass of wine, along with a couple of ladyfingers. A much better choice than continuing to bake. The ladyfingers actually tasted pretty good. I gave some to Jim even though he had tried to cheer me up by suggesting that I should watch someone who knew what they were doing a few times and maybe then I wouldn't be so bad.

The next day was so much easier. Just make a lemon cream--a version of lemon curd made with whipping cream instead of butter. For those of you who object to lemon curd because it's too eggy, you might want to try this. Although it's got plenty of eggs in, the cream somehow mixes in a different way than butter, making the mixture seem more creamy than eggy. Of course, I don't object to lemon curd in any form so I may be the wrong person to give advice.

I remember a day that I said I hated recipes that told you to have a sieve at the ready because those were always recipes that bore many possibilities for failure. I don't know what I was talking about. A sieve no longer inspires terror in me.

Two cups of whipped cream. Now that's a recipe I can love.

And so pretty when the white cream is folded into the brilliant yellow of the curd.

All that lemon cream is spread into the pan that's been lined with frozen ladyfingers since the previous day. Some of the ladyfingers have somehow tilted inward, but it's easy enough to straighten them up. Even though they're frozen, they don't crack or break.

And now the meringue. This is the second meringue I've made for this project, the first one having been folded into the ladyfinger batter. As I was making it, I was very thankful that it was not an Italian meringue, which would require me to make a sugar syrup. I was grateful that I could just fold in a bit of powdered sugar and call it a day. I was also grateful for the directions about making "swirls and peaks" in the meringue. I was familiar with swirls, but hadn't tried peaks before. To my utter amazement, just dabbing at the meringue with a small spatula caused attractive-looking peaks to form. Just one minute in the broiler is enough to brown the meringue perfectly.

I actually loved making this collar. For such an elegant dessert, it had a Rube-Goldberg quality that's unusual in Rose's desserts. For example, I believe this is the first time I've ever heard Rose mention masking tape. I didn't know she had ever heard of masking tape.

Et voila! A very impressive dessert that tastes absolutely delicious and turned out to be a perfect, if nontraditional, Thanksgiving dessert. And if I do say so, my daughter Sarah, cooking her first Thanksgiving dinner, did a great job. Heckuva job, as they say in Washington. Her turkey was made with a half-pound of butter. It runs in the family.

TASTING PANEL:
Sarah: "Delicious--but you know how much I like anything with lemon."
Mary: "I love it. It looks like it was a lot of work, though."
Roger: "Now that's a good dessert."
James: "Very tasty."
Jim: "I really like it. A really good lemon taste. The ladyfingers were kind of overwhelmed by the lemon. Also, it was really pretty. I was very impressed with the browned meringue."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-11-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

This is our third winner in a row! Everyone who tried the chocolate genoise with peanut butter whipped ganache--even those of us who, like me, were doubtful about the combination--fell in love.
I didn't even think about decorating mine. I was happy just getting the frosting on the cake. But most of you did beautiful and imaginative decorating.
Faithy, whose bottle of Chambord is still in mint (unopened) condition, used miniature Oreos for a cute touch.
I can't tell what kind of chocolate candies Raymond used, but they look pretty. He also took the extra step of cutting his cake layer in half in filling it with the ganache. To me, slicing a cake in half is a step to be avoided if possible, but Raymond seems to take it in stride.
Vicki, who loves Valrhona, had some chocolate pearls on hand, and she used them to decorate her cake. The pearls look like the candy that Raymond used--my apologies if I didn't recognize pearls when I saw them.
When it comes to decorating, Jenn knows how to pull out all the stops. First, she made cute little cupcakes. Then she piped on different decorative icings. And then she topped them with assorted chocolate flakes, including some that were the initials "KB" (for "Knitty Baker"). Mind you, even after all this, she wasn't satisfied, and complained that her icing looked too grainy. I don't think so. Jenn, if I had your piping skills, I'd take a grainy frosting any day.
Joan's decorations didn't take the chocolate route. Instead, she placed fresh blackberries on her cake--a nice marriage with the Chambord. After our cake was long gone, I noticed that I had another bag of frozen marionberries, and I wished that I had used those for a garnish. Too late.
Katya's cake was topped with just a few raspberries (red, not black) in the center. A nice touch. Katya thinks that this frosting would be excellent with a yellow cake, and I'm inclined to agree.
Andrea is another baker who knows her way around a pastry bag. She said she had just enough frosting left to make her cake "look pretty" before she took it into work. It almost looked too pretty to eat.

Jennifer didn't use anything extra to decorate, but she did do her trademark swirl, which looks pretty and festive.
Gartblue also used her trademark swirl, which is different than Jennifer's. Congratulations on your promotion, GB!
Nancy used still another swirly pattern for her cake, which her supervisor at work declared to be the best ever. (As Nancy noted, however, supervisors do not necessarily always get a piece of cake brought into the office, so his sample was limited).
Mendy didn't decorate either--he did something even better. He doubled the recipe for a dynamite-looking layer cake.
Lois's cake is pure in its simplicity. Besides, she was so busy gathering up varieties of white powdery substances, hoping to get them all by the TSA people, that she had no time for any decorating folderol.
Like Katya, Kristina thought red raspberries instead of black. She translated that thought into a Framboise syrup rather than using fresh raspberries, and that also sounds like a good variation.

Did I mention that we fell in love with this cake? Our FEATURED BAKER, Sarah, really fell in love. She describes the cake as "a peanut butter and jelly sandwich meets a Reese’s peanut butter cup from heaven, and it is so divine that feeling guilty simply didn’t cross my mind as I licked every spatula in sight." Feeling completely enamored, Sarah put together a series of pictorial tributes to a slice of the cake: imagining it as "on a yacht, parked outside of its mansion," "represent[ing] our country in outer space," and being completely at home in the oval office.

Is it possible that this cake could encourage across-the-aisle peace and understanding? Could it be that a slice of cake with a cup of tea could make angry Tea Partiers happy? Sarah, your assignment is to take a bunch of cakes to D.C. and bring about detente.

We'll see if next week's cake, the Lemon Canadian Crown with homemade ladyfingers (optional, but recommended) , can continue this unbroken chain of love. I have already made the ladyfingers and, as I predicted, they did not turn out to look exactly like the pictures. In fact, Jim said they looked like arthritic old woman's fingers instead of lady's fingers. On the other hand, I tasted the lemon cream filling, and I think its glorious taste should outweigh the less than handsome ladyfingers.

The next week, we're back to chocolate: the chocolate velvet fudge cake. This cake, which is on the Quick & Easy list, is your reward for making the ladyfingers.

Chocolate Genoise with Whipped Peanut Butter Ganache

2010-11-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

To tell you the truth, I wasn't really looking forward to making this cake. I'm one of the few people I know who isn't crazy about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups--too sweet, too sticky, and not at all subtle. And the black raspberry liqueur? That just sounded weird. But this cake was different: one of the best chocolate cakes I've tasted, and definitely the best chocolate genoise. Not too sweet, not too sticky, and subtle as the dickens. Move over, peanut butter cups. You've been bested.

Of course, I had to add another expensive liqueur to my steadily growing supply. You can see why Faithy fell so in love with the bottle that she refused to open hers. But the pretty crown stays intact when it's opened, so there's no reason not to. I'll confess I had a few nips while I was baking. It tastes kind of like a very grown-up version of black raspberry Kool-Aid but improved my mood much more than Kool-Aid would have.
Here are some of the other bottles I've bought/used for various cake projects:

This was another very easy cake to make. No, it's not on the Q&E list. Are the cakes getting easier or am I actually getting better? Whatever--it's nice not to face every new cake with dread of failure. (Although, as you'll see, there was a total failure involved here). Note that I left my whisk in the cocoa mixture, just as instructed.

I can never resist including a picture of the lovely, billowy egg mixture after it's been beaten for "at least five minutes." Don't be fooled and stop beating after three!

The cocoa mixture is gently folded into the batter, making--what else?--a chocolate batter.

I baked the cake for 25 minutes, and immediately took it out of the pan "to prevent the collapse of its delicate foam structure." This takes two wire racks that have been coated with cooking spray. By the time I turned the cake back over, the lines of the first rack were etched into the cake. Not a problem, though, because the top is going to be taken off anyway so the syrup can soak in.

Here is the cake after it's been syruped on both sides. Note the tart pan bottom in the background. After seeing a genoise fall apart before my eyes when I transferred it to a serving dish, I never tried that again without the assistance of this sturdy pan bottom.

On to the ganache! I melted the chocolate, added the peanut butter, and tried the whip in the cream. It didn't whip at all. "Rose! WTF?!" I said to myself. "This is never going to work!" Suddenly I had a thought. Surely it wasn't possible that I had poured in the half-and-half instead of the heavy cream? I checked the refrigerator. Oh, it was possible all right. Note: making whipped ganache with half-and-half is not a good idea. Jim said, "Do we have to start over?" "Yes." "Do I have to go out and get more chocolate?" "Yes." "What percent?" Don't you love that? My non-cooking, non-baking husband is asking me what percentage of cacao is supposed to be in the chocolate he's going to pick up.

Armed with more Scharffenburger 60% semisweet chocolate, I start over. This time it works. First it looks speckled and unpromising.

Then, in just seconds, it whips into the perfect consistency. It's so good! I was afraid the peanut butter would overwhelm, but it's just the right amount of peanut butter to make itself known but stay in the background.

It was amazingly easy to frost this cake. Really, it should be on the Q&E list. If you don't make the mistake of grabbing the half and half carton, everything about this cake and ganache goes together so smoothly. I had a little trouble again slipping the waxed paper strips out from under the cake, but I left it refrigerated for longer than I did last week, and I got them out without doing much damage to the frosting. I wonder if parchment would work better than waxed paper.

We went out for dinner with some friends. When the waitress asked if we wanted dessert, I told them they couldn't eat dessert at the restaurant; they had to come back to our house. They are used to my bossy ways and didn't put up much of a fight, especially when I told them they could also taste the Chambord.
Perhaps the only thing I'd do differently next time is use all the Chambord syrup. I didn't think the cake would need much syrup because I could see it wasn't going to be dry. And it wasn't dry, and probably didn't need all the syrup, but the black raspberry flavor was so delicious that I wished I could taste it even more. On the other hand, you could make a case for it being perfect just the way it was.

TASTING PANEL
Karen: "This is no ordinary chocolate cake--it just bursts with flavor."
Jim: "I like the black raspberry taste. Now I know why there's a crown on the bottle--it's royally good."
June: "It looks like it's going to be a dense, heavy cake, like a flourless torte, but then it turns out to be so light. It's a really good cake."
David: "I agree that it's really good. It doesn't have much relation to peanut butter candy."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-11-19T09:14:00.000-08:00

This was definitely a fall-themed Free Choice week, with lots of people being attracted by apples, pumpkin, and spice.
Both Vicki ("lovely cake for this time of year") and Lola ("a good keeper recipe") made the apple-cinnamon coffee cake. What could be better on a chilly November day?
Well, maybe an apple upside-down cake, which is what both Lynnette ("easy to like") and Hanaa ("Hubby liked this cake a lot. He gave it a 9 out of 10") made.
And, of course, apples aren't the only fall fruit--and Shandy made good use of fall pears with her Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake ("The cake is moist, the almond and pear combination delicious; I will be baking this cake again.")
Like Shandy, Andrea didn't have to go very far back to find the cake she wanted to make--the highly praised Bostini. You can now add Andrea to the list of The Bostini's devoted followers: ("Daniel and I both really loved this one. It certainly lived up to the rave reviews").

Katya was attracted to the pumpkin cake (in a bundt cake pan instead of the pumpkin-shaped pan pictured in the book). In fact, she was so attracted to the pumpkin cake that she and her tasters thought it outshone the burnt orange silk meringue buttercream frosting, even though the frosting was "more addictive" than she expected (she likes making frosting more than eating it). Rachelino, who had opted for a simple glaze the first time she made the pumpkin cake, decided to tackle the burnt orange etc. frosting ("ranks high for flavor with its notes of citrus and caramel") this time.
Jennifer was also attracted to pumpkin, but she took it in a different direction, with the pure pumpkin cheesecake ("the texture was impossibly light and fluffy"). Julie tried another cheesecake appropriate to fall: the ginger cheesecake. When I made this cheesecake, I passed on the cute but optional gingerbread girls and boys that could decorate the sides of the cheesecake. Julie made them, though, and I'll admit they're so precious that they probably justify the work.
Raymond's yen for autumnal spice flavors led him to the first cake I baked from Rose's Heavenly Cakes: the spice cake with peanut buttercream ("When I was a child the smell of a spice cake baking in the kitchen always screamed out fall, thanksgiving, turkey").
And, in the spirit of winter coming on, Nancy B. transformed the "She Loves Me Cake" (a cake that just said "spring" to me) into a great seasonally appropriate cake with the use of a snowflake pan. By the way, Nancy is only eight cakes behind me: that is, she has (I'm pretty sure) baked every cake since the group started baking together, and she's done enough catching up so that there are only eight cakes left that I've baked and she hasn't. I plan to schedule a Free Choice week about once a month through the end of this project, which I anticipate will end sometime in May, so, Nancy, if you sneak in an extra cake here and there, we'll end at the same time!
Mendy did another cake that says "spring" to me--the Golden Lemon Almond Cake.
Jenn did a catch-up (Black Chocolate Party Cake) plus a preview (White Velvet Butter Cake) for her Free Choice week. Sad to say, she wasn't crazy about the chocolate cake, which she described as being "too dense" for her taste (although this remark led other readers, who like dense cakes, to say they now wanted to try it). As they say, Chacun a son gout.
Jenn also gets a mention on the small list of people who baked cakes for Free Choice week that did not, strictly speaking, follow the rules of Free Choice Week (a cake that has been baked before, either by the group or by me, but not yet baked by you).
Jenn went to the Ethereal Pear Charlotte, the kissing cousin of the Apple Caramel Charlotte that caused some of us to swear off baking (or at least to swear). The Pear Charlotte is from The Cake Bible, and Jenn's rendition looks perfect.
Joan had made Woody's Lemon Luxury Layer Cake (or WLLLC, as she affectionately terms it) months ago, but returned to it in spectacular fashion when she made it, decorated beautifully with fresh flowers, for her daughter's 50th birthday.
And Sarah, not in catch-up mode, baked ahead, giving us all a nice preview of the Southern Manhattan Coconut Cake, which she actually turned into two smaller cakes.

Next week--and the baking weekend is coming up very soon--we turn to the all-American flavors of chocolate and peanut butter, fancied up with a Chambord-flavored syrup. For some reason, when I was claiming that this Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache required no exotic equipment or ingredients, I overlooked the fact that the syrup has Chambord, a black raspberry liqueur, as an ingredient. I'm sure there are many things you could substitute, but I'm interested to see how black raspberry blends with peanut butter. I guess you could think of it as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on chocolate bread.
The following week brings more complexities. Whenever I see a piping bag, it sends chills down my spine. The piping bag comes in with the homemade ladyfingers, made for the Lemon Canadian Crown. If you choose to make the ladyfingers, this is another two-fer. You'll be able to cross two recipes off your list in the same weekend. Of course, you can also buy the ladyfingers and eliminate the whole trauma of the piping bag, but I plan to soldier on, even though I'm expecting some rather wobbly-looking ladyfingers. Perhaps they'll look more like peasant-woman-fingers.
I'm sorry I couldn't give you a more obviously appropriate Thanksgiving dessert, but I actually think either of these desserts would be lovely for Thanksgiving, if your family wouldn't throw a fit at the idea of a pumpkin pie substitute. Even so, I'm seeing the Lemon Canadian Crown as a welcome adjunct to the traditional pies. And if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, there is no reason to protest.

Woody's Test Cake with Light Whipped Ganache

2010-11-15T08:50:00.000-08:00

Free Choice week always presents a problem. (Not a real problem, I hasten to add). I sometimes bake a different version of something I've baked before. This time, however, I pair something I didn't bake at all with a frosting from The Cake Bible that I'd never tried.

A few weeks ago, Woody dropped by on his way to tai chi, or broomball, or one of his esoteric activities, and invited Jim and me to sample the cake he was taking along for his buddies. Honestly, I don't even remember what the cake was, so taken was I with the frosting. He showed me the recipe (p. 268 in The Cake Bible), and problem of Free Choice week was solved! I didn't even have to bake a cake to put under the frosting because Woody had also given me several sample cakes a while ago when he and Rose were testing flours.

You can see the test slices in the cake. I just covered them over with frosting and no one was the wiser.
In case you're wondering, yes, I do know how lucky I am to know someone like Woody, who drops by the house with delicious treats, a big hug, and an even bigger grin. I just don't want him to develop a big ego to go along with the grin.
The whipped ganache begins with melting bittersweet chocolate with part of the whipping cream. (In TCB, Rose doesn't specify the cacao %. I felt giddy with freedom, and chose a 70%).

I healted the chocolate and the cream in the microwave, and let the hot cream gradually melt the rest of the chocolate.

This mixture is lovely, and you almost feel like stopping right there. But you don't. I used the "quick" variation, which Rose describes as involving a little more work. It actually seemed pretty easy to me.

After this chocolate mixture cools, you whip the rest of the cream (I halved the recipe and used 4 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and a cup of whipping cream), and then add the chocolate mixture. In retrospect, I see that this picture shows the whipped chocolate to be just about right.

Did I stop when it was just about right? No, I did not. I continued beating, and guess what? It didn't become thicker, it became thinner and somewhat grainy. I had a deadline, however, so it was going to have to be good enough.
And it was. Like so many of Rose's recipes, although the directions and amounts are completely precise, there is still room for user error.

Piling the ganache on the cake--the piece that was cut out will no longer be visible.
I had refrigerated the ganache briefly to make it more spreadable, but it was still pretty soft. Usually the strips of waxed paper I put under the cake while I'm frosting it will slide out easily, leaving a clean bottom line.

But in this case, some of the frosting came off each time I pulled the waxed paper out, no matter I gently I tried to slide it. I would have avoided this problem entirely if I'd used it to frost cupcakes, which was my initial plan. However, there was really no contest when I weighed the cupcake plan against the getting-a-cake-out-of-the-freezer plan.

You can see the imperfections in the frosted cake, but I didn't hear anyone complaining. I loved this frosting as much as I did when I first tasted it. It's so chocolatey, and yet, even with all that chocolate and cream, it seems light, rather than rich.
The cake was fine, but the frosting was so much the star of the show that one of my tasters carefully ate all the ganache and left the cake.

TASTING PANEL:
Jim: "This is delicious. I like the cake too, but I really like the frosting."
Liz: "I'd give the ganache an A, but I'm not even going to bother with the cake."
Sarah: "I usually don't want dessert after a big meal, but who can resist this?"
James: "Very good, especially the frosting."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-11-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

The Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake was another big hit. Just when I think I've already baked Rose's very best cakes, along comes another winner--last week the Bostini, and this week the pear cake. I'm either going to have to rethink my top five cakes at the end of the project, or I'm going to have to expand the list to the top ten.
Thanks to Kristina for clarifying what I finally figured out how this cake should be described. As it's not made with Swedish pears, and it doesn't have cream in it, it should be a "Swedish … pear … and … almond cream … cake, not Swedish pear … and almond … cream cake.” Got that?

Not so many variations this time--people mostly stuck to the recipe as written. Katya, whose mantra is "bake with what you have," used Bosc pears rather than Bartlett (because she had nice Farmers' Market Bosc).
Jennifer and Mendy used marzipan instead of almond paste: Jennifer because she mistakenly bought the marzipan and Mendy because he read Jennifer's comment on LCNC last week, which told him that marzipan would work. I like how we watch out for each other. By the way, Jennifer's blog is especially fun to read this week--not only does she show the cake, but she's also got some fascinating stories about her past life as a 20-year-old student in Simferopol, Russia.
Lynnette had already baked this as a pear cake for a "Free Choice" week, and decided to try it with apples this time. It worked with apples too, but she thought she'd add a little cinnamon if she made it again with apples.
Rachelino, who made hers for a party for a long-time, new-mother friend of hers, "dressed it up" a bit with a citrus glaze.
Sarah used all the requisite ingredients, but baked her cake while "camping out"--that is, without access to her KitchenAid, scale, and thermometer. Practically like a pioneer.

Joan used the intricately designed chrysanthemum pan.
Nancy B. chose the Bavaria bundt pan (excellent choice, Nancy!)
Vicki baked her cake in the classic bundt pan.

No matter what pan was used, the verdict was pretty much the same: a fabulous cake.
Lola said that the cake was "tender, delicious and light. My honey loves a little not too sweet treat in the morning with his second cup of coffee - this will be perfect!"
Raymond found this cake so much to his liking that he imagined Rose, recipe in hand, looking directly at him, and saying, She looks across the counter at me and she says, “Raymond, I know that you’re a tired, cranky, old curmudgeon, but just to prove that I do listen, this one is for you.”
Vicki called it an "amazing cake, so simple and yet utterly sophisticated."
For Maria it was comfort food par excellence, and she paired it with chicken soup as a welcome-home dinner for her parents, the weary travelers.

As soon as I saw that Andrea (who's been out of baking commission lately because of foot surgery) was so taken with the cake that she just had to bake it--by scooting around the kitchen on an office chair on wheels, I knew she had to be the FEATURED BAKER. What dedication! She had to send her husband to the grocery store to pick up almond paste (first going on-line and showing him a picture), and she had to do the cake in stages, resting after making the almond cream, but make it she did. And love it she did--she described it as having an "outside [that] was hard and slightly crunchy, and the inside was very soft."
I heard from Bungalow Barbara a few days ago. Barbara had to drop out of the group a while back, but she still follows our progress and now and then bakes along with us, as she did this week. Nice to hear from you!

Next week, it's time for another Free Choice. As we head into the final stretch (I have only 20 cakes left to bake!), the Free Choice week is a time for you to catch up, either by baking cakes that I baked in the three or four months before this group was formed, or by baking one of the cakes that you missed. It's always fun to see what choices people make.

After Free Choice, it's back to regularly-scheduled cakes. Next up there is a sponge cake: the Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache (p. 184). If you like the classic chocolate/peanut butter combination, this one's for you. No special ingredients or equipment required.

Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

2010-11-07T22:51:00.000-08:00

When I saw that this was a sour cream cake, I knew I was going to like it--even if the pears and almond cream didn't rise to the top like they were supposed to (which they did). I love the rich, moist, slightly tangy cake you get with sour cream, and I wasn't disappointed. In fact, this cake might now make my "Top 5" list.
I breezed through this cake. It was so easy to make, I assumed it was on the "Quick and Easy" list, but it's not. Maybe because you have to go through the extra step of making the almond cream?

I had a tube of unmarked almond-y smelling paste in the freezer, but was it marzipan or almond paste? I couldn't remember. Once I stopped sniffing the unidentified tube, and stopped dithering about whether I should just use it or go to the store and get something labeled "almond paste," I put together the almond cream in about a minute.

The cake batter presented no problems, either--just a simple butter cake (with sour cream, of course). A rich, creamy batter that filled only about half the cake pan, making me wonder if I had the right size pan. And it was easy enough to slice the pears.

Jim suggested that the reason the cake wasn't on the Q&E list was because of the trough you have to make in the top of the cake. After making the trough, you fill it with the almond paste, which has been sitting patiently in a bowl, just waiting to be added to the cake.

And then pear slices are layered on top.

I was sure there was no way the pears and almond cream were going to miraculously make their way to the top of the cake, as pictured. They were both solidly placed on the bottom. I turned the oven light on, and checked The Pears' Progress about every 10 minutes. Sure enough, I could see that they were sinking into the batter. And, by the way, this cake smells wonderful while it's baking. If you ordered up a particular smell to remind you of a crisp, sunny fall day, you couldn't do better than this.

When I took it out of the oven, it looked solidly embedded into the pan. I didn't think it would come out in one piece. But, again, the cake followed the instructions and flipped right out. Very handsome, if I do say so.

And look! It's just like the picture in the book, with the subtle layer of pears and almond cream at the top.

So pretty, in a homey, unpretentious way. And so good. We had a piece for a mid-afternoon snack. Jim finished his, and immediately cut himself a second (and bigger) slice. I only had one piece and felt more virtuous than Jim, if not as happy.

TASTING PANEL:

Karen: "Elegant and smooth. I just love that pan, too--the cake is just gorgeous. Although I love chocolate, the cakes that have fruit in them have been my favorites. I know you've made some really complicated cakes, and it's nice that something this simple can taste so good."

Jim: "I was surprised at how many different flavors there are in this cake, and especially how prominent the taste of pears was."

Teddie: "Delicious."

Sarah: "Yum. Very tasty. It really has a great moist texture."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-11-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

Before getting into the various Bostinis, let me talk just a little about my trip to New York. It was great fun all around, but the very best parts were my meetings with two Heavenly Bakers: Katya and Rose herself, the original Heavenly Baker.
We met Katya in her capacity as leader of a Ghost Tour. If you're ever in New York (or even if you live there already), I recommend taking a tour from Katya--ghost or otherwise. She knows a ton of New York lore, is both funny and erudite, and will give you one of the best tours you've ever had. We definitely fell down on our picture-taking responsibilities.

In this picture, Katya is assuming a suitable pose for a ghost-tour leader. I'll tell you that it's not a particularly flattering picture, but she manages to look cute even when she's narrowing her eyes and trying to appear forbidding.
We fell down even more as picture takers when we met Rose and Elliott. Jim forgot to take pictures of them, and forgot to take pictures of the food at chef Suvir Savran's amazing Indian restaurant, Devi, until the dessert course, when Elliott said, "Jim, why aren't you taking pictures?" Our only excuse is that we were enjoying the food (and the company, of course) so much that we completely failed in our recording duties. We do at least have pictures of the delicious desserts that we shared:

SHRIKHAND

BLACK FOREST CAKE WITH CARAMEL ICE CREAM

MANGO CHEESECAKE

And now, on to the Bostini!
I think this was one of the most uniformly successful undertakings for the HCBs. Not only did it turn out well for everyone, but everyone liked it. Even Raymond, whose dislike of cupcakes is well known, said, "I could have eaten all 12 of these little beauties. They were so good I couldn’t get over it." (Although to be fair to Raymond's sense of consistency, I should point out that he said he'd make them next time as a whole cake).
To me, the most fun of reading all the posts was seeing how creatively the Bakers plated (or should I say "glassed"?) this dessert.
Lola used a pretty green Mexican Margarita glass.
Lois got a few extra because she chose smallish Ikea juice glasses.
Kristina's sundae glasses also gave her a few extra Bostinis, which she said were way better than Tim Horton's Boston Cream pie.
Katya said the Bostinis were also superior to Dunkin' Doughnuts' Boston Cream Pie doughnuts, and also more elegant. Her version, in heavy-stemmed clear glass, definitely looked more elegant than a doughnut.
Joan's version, in her cappuccino cups, also looked elegant and overflowing with chocolate. (Joan had made hers in May, and she was one of the early reporters of the Bostinis' deliciousness).
Nancy used both 6-ounce white wine glasses and custard cups, and thought the wine glasses worked perfectly but the custard cups, filled to overflowing, were difficult to manage.
Both Monica and Jenn managed to track down the same glasses used in the photo in Rose's Heavenly Cakes--good choice. You might also want to make your way over to Monica's blog because she's got a nice giveaway to celebrate her blog's first-year anniversary.
Sarah also used wine glasses, and, for some reason, although her Bostinis looked great, I'm especially fond of her picture of the empty glass, scraped clean of nearly all traces of this dessert.
Maria bucked the trend of using tall, skinny glasses and presented hers in a short, wide glass that looked like a miniature fruit compote bowl.
Julie used 8-ounce glass cups, and she used up most of her pastry cream just filling the cups. They look sumptuous.
Jennifer had an eclectic group of glasses, including one with an embossed honeybee on it and a couple of jam jars.
Mendy said he'd managed to go through life without ever hearing of Boston Cream pies, so he didn't even realize he was making a deconstructed one; you apparently don't have to have this knowledge to turn out a good-looking Bostini, however. Like Jennifer, Mendy had a kitchen-sink approach to the cups--whatever you have on hand works.
For pure cuteness, Faithy's Coca-Cola glasses and bubble tea straws probably take the cake and chocolate sauce, especially against the pink polka-dotted background.
This was another week that I had great difficulty in choosing a FEATURED BAKER. So much imagination! So many beautiful presentations! In the end, I picked Lynnette because her first photo just said PARTY! Since she used a short, wide dish, you could really see the cupcake, which wasn't hidden by the pastry cream or under the chocolate. And her chocolate glaze drizzled down over the cupcake instead of over the glass, so every component was clearly visible. Finally, her festive sprinkles on top of the dessert added a touch of exuberance that I loved. And not only did the cake look great, but her family loved it too: "it was gone as soon as the photo shoot was done!"

Next up: the Swedish Pear and Almond Cake (p. 58). For a sneak preview, take a look at Joan's blog. What you'll need: almond paste, a Bartlett pear, sour cream, and the regular suspects of eggs, flour, sugar, and butter. Any kind of 10-cup fluted metal pan (or Bundt pan). Be ready to serve this cake "shortly after cooling, when the crust is still crunchy and the crumb is at its softest." But save some for yourself, for "it is still delicious for at least two days after baking."
Following that: another Free Choice week. Time to catch up!

The Great Bostini

2010-10-31T02:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know why it took so long for me to schedule these marvelous little desserts, but now that I've made them once, I'll certainly make them again.
While they weren't on the Q&E list, and they do have three components, nothing was particularly difficult. They're also impressive and everyone loves them--although it's probably not a good idea to advertise the half-pound of butter. People are funny about butter.

The little orange cupcakes are good in themselves, which is helpful, since you'll have leftovers if you make the whole recipe.

Fresh orange juice and orange peel give them a definite orange flavor that holds its own with the other two components.

The cupcakes are made with oil and meringue, so they're lighter, moister, and spongier than regular butter cupcakes. But they don't get soggy when they're sandwiched between the other two layers of this dessert.

They rise up quite a bit higher than the muffin pans while they're baking, but sink to about even with the pan's height after being out of the oven for a while.

Next comes the Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream Sauce. Why such a plain name for this sauce?

I think that if the cream cheese frosting deserves a name like Dreamy Creamy Frosting, this filling should be called something like Shazam! Sauce. It definitely deserves something snazzy. 6 egg yolks and 2 1/2 cups of cream. (Don't mention this to your guests either--people are as funny about cream as they are about butter. Really. You'd think that everyone was scared by a cow at an impressionable age).

Again, the sauce isn't difficult, although there's always the possibility of curdled eggs when you're mixing hot ingredients with egg yolks. Just do it gradually, and all will be well.

Finally, the coup de maitre--the spectacular and spectacularly easy chocolate glaze. You put a bunch of butter (8 ounces) and a bunch of dark chocolate (also 8 ounces) in the microwave, and whisk them until they're combined. Since the amounts are the same, you can easily make the amounts smaller or larger, as your heart desires.

The fun part: composing them. I have some 8-ounce Irish Coffee glasses, which were perfect, except that they were a little too big (6- to 7-ounce glasses are recommended). According to the photograph, it looks like the glasses should be filled about two-thirds full with the Shazam! Pastry Cream, but I divided mine among eight glasses, and got only about one-third to one-half.

Then the cupcake, bottom side up, is tenderly squished atop the cream.

The photo indicates that the cupcake top (bottom) should sit jauntily above the rim of the glass. Mine didn't, but who cares because nobody knew what the picture looked like except me. Finally, chocolate glaze is lavishly poured on top of the cupcake. A deconstructed Boston Cream Pie that's better than anything they ever served in Boston.

TASTING PANEL:
Doug: "Wonderful fancy dessert. I'm a sucker for Boston Cream Pie."
Mary: "I loved the three layers. What a great combination of cake, chocolate, and creamy custard."
Jim: "I really liked it. I'm sorry we didn't gather more people to enjoy it. Great orange flavor in the cake."
Karen: "I enjoyed the different flavors and different temperatures. It's a fun dessert, and the most fun was watching you pour the chocolate in the cup."

Last Cake, Next Cake

2010-10-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

It felt a little like Top Chef around here last week, where the challenge was to create a unique and interesting angel food cake--the kind of cake that you'd pick as one of your three foods to have on a desert (dessert?) island. We had lots of great entries.
Some people reached back to their mothers' cakes for inspiration:
For example, Raymond made a cake "in a strawberry cloud"--like his mother used to make. No offense to your mother, Raymond, but I'll bet she never made a cake that looked this grand.
Vicki also took a page out of her mother's cookbook and filled her cake with lemon filling from "Heaven Only Knows Where, i.e., Mom's Recipe Box." She frosted it with whipped cream, and declared it to be "exquisite--the best angel food cake ever."

Mendy's was plain, but still good--at least it was good after he let it cool. A word to the wise from Mendy: angel food cake straight from the oven is not angelic. Mendy also shared a bit of Hebrew lore about manna, the food of angels.

Chocolate, not surprisingly, played a part in a number of the cakes.
Hanaa made the Chocolate Tweed again, with the inspired addition of orange rind to the shaved chocolate. Hanaa, if you like the combination of orange and chocolate, be sure to make the Bostini next week!
Maria thought her 9-egg-white cake was a little plain--but she fixed that in a hurry. She filled it with raspberry sauce, topped it with chocolate ganache that she just happened to have in her refrigerator and frosted the whole thing with chocolate whipped cream sprinkled with silver dragees. No longer plain.
Lynnette made a chocolate angel food cake straight from Rose's playbook. She found the cake to be "moist, tender, and simply delicious" as is, but thought that for its second night, she'd sit it "next to a scoop of ice cream."
Nancy made very adorable mini angel food cake cherubs. Although she admired their looks, even their cuteness didn't quite persuade her or her tasters that angel food cake was as good as chocolate.

Some people took more unexpected routes.
Jennifer did a very creative take--a coffee angel food cake (to be eaten for breakfast, with coffee, of course). She dissolved instant espresso--next time she thought she'd use a little more--in boiling water and got a beautiful caramel-colored cake.
Kristinadid another variation that had never occurred to me: the spice angel food cake. A mixture of cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg jazzed up her version.
Speaking of jazzing up a cake, Julie did just that in her exotic lime and coconut cake, dreamed up as the perfect finale to a Thai dinner. The cake looks very pretty, filled and frosted with lime custard, and topped with toasted coconut. Julie did her cake in an eight-cup pan.

Sarah discovered that she didn't have a tube pan, so naturally she had to pay a visit to Sur La Table, where she got the required pan and the not-required (but great to have!) balloon whisk. She put both to immediate good use in her vanilla-bean angel food cake.

Most weeks, the Featured Baker is somebody who made a particularly beautiful or imaginative version of the week's cake. But sometimes you have to honor someone who may not have turned out a beauty, but who kept trying ... and trying ... and trying. Joan prepared for his first angel food cake bake "as if it was surgery." When the cake was beautifully done, it came out of the oven and "a huge surge took place and the cake turned on its side and slid out halfway into the colander receptacle." Undaunted, (or not daunted very much), Joan sent her agreeable husband out for more eggs. Cake #2: Joan investigated possible problems on the Forum and tried again. "Boom. It plops on its side." Cake #3: Husband, now fully invested in the success of this cake, buys more eggs. This one looks promising: "It was so perfectly gorgeous in medium brown, luscious and tender looking; domed to about 3 inches, and then flattened out as it was supposed to do. It tested well.... Oh, I have accomplished a miracle. I ran for the camera, only to hear my husband shouting: 'It's falling!'"
Joan, I promise you, one of your next cakes will work!

******
If you haven't already done so, be sure to go to Rose's web site and find out the answer to the mystery of the caramel!

Next week is the Bostini--the dessert we've all been waiting for! I'm going to be out of town next weekend, so I made it early, and I can tell you that it's worth waiting for. Delicious orange cupcakes, incredibly rich and flavorful creme patisserie, all topped with chocolate glaze (don't let people know that the glaze is made with a half-pound of butter!). The Bostini is not for the cowardly.
Have a great Halloween weekend!