HCB - Whipped Cream Cake

Whipped Cream Cake has been chosen as the first recipe of the year from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, for the Heavenly Cake Bakers to bake. This cake contains no butter. All of the fat, not counting fat in egg yolks, comes from using whipped cream. Interesting, huh? I thought so!


My friend made this cake a couple of months ago and I loved it. The very first bite reminded me of my favorite childhood (butter) cake. How can this cake taste buttery when there's no butter in it? :o) Needless to say, I was very excited to make it myself this week. To make this cake extra special, I used a rose-shaped bundt pan.

I was so happy it came out of the pan in one piece. Thanks to Baker's Joy with Flour!

About 2 hours after the cake came out of the oven, it was cooled completely (thanks to our below zero temperatures). I couldn't wait to take a bite (so what, if it's 11:00pm?). I boiled water to make tea, then cut two slices (hubby wanted to taste it too), took a few pictures and then brought everything downstairs. Without tasting it, I knew the cake was moist, and in looking at the cake's crumb, I knew it was going to be soft and tender. The first bite was everything I imagined it to be. Actually, each bite was. I was going to ask hubby how he liked it, but seeing how he was scraping the remaining crumbs on his plate onto his fork, I had my answer. The best part about eating a cake the same day it's baked, is that the inside is soft and melts in your mouth, while the outer edges of the cake are still crispy. Another winner!!!

An inside look. Have a bite! :o)

SMS - Chocolate Cream Caramels

Yay, the SMS baking group is back. Thanks to Jeanette of The Whimsical Cupcake for picking this week's SMS recipe, Chocolate Cream Caramels. I was going to sit this one out as I have more sweets in the house than furniture :o), but the thought of sitting out the first SMS recipe of the year just didn't sit right with me.

Make-shift 5" x 4" pan using Reynolds non-stick foil, sprayed with non-stick spray. Used Ghirardelli's unsweetened chocolate for the caramels.

The caramels need to set before being cut. Guess who gets to lick the spatula? I call it quality control :o)

Boy, am I glad I made these, even though I only made a 1/4 of the recipe. The unsweetened chocolate cut right through the intense sweetness of these caramels. After a 4 hour rest in the cool basement, they were perfectly set. Cutting them with the chef's knife was a breeze. Instead of wrapping them in wax paper, I put them in paper candy cups which gave them an elegant look.

A quarter of the recipe yielded 25 pieces. That's enough to eat *and* share with friends!

Put caramels in paper candy cups and you're ready to serve! Bon appetit!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby, who normally doesn't like caramels, liked these a lot. The chocolate flavor came through very well.
• I took the caramel off the heat at 248 F degrees, per the recipe. This produced the perfect consistency in my opinion; not too soft, not too hard.
  
• Instead of honey, I used amber agave nectar.
• I asked myself, what would make these awesome caramels, even more awesome? A bath in melted chocolate! These would give the store bought candy, Riesen, a run for its money.
• Next time, I might add coarsely chopped (and toasted) almonds to the caramel.
• For the recipe, please visit Jeannete's blog at The Whimsical Cupcake.
  
• As always, don't forget to check out the SMS blog roll.
  

HCB - double feature: Classic Carrot Cake and English Gingerbread Cake

Today's post consists two cakes from Rose's Heavenly Cakes book. The first one is the Classic Carrot Cake. It's very similar to my favorite carrot cake from America's Test Kitchen. They're both oil-based, with the same amount of carrots and sugar. The flour amount differs a bit. And Rose's recipe has an interesting ingredient: cocoa powder. This gave the carrot cake a beautiful dark color. A great backdrop for the shredded carrots. Instead of the white chocolate cream cheese frosting, I used my "standby" cream cheese frosting which I had in the freezer. Will have to try Rose's frosting recipe next time since everybody raved about it :o)


I made a few small changes to the recipe:

• Cut the recipe in half and reduced the oil to 1/2 cup (4 oz by weight). Baked the cake in a 8"x8" glass pan.
  
• Carrots and oranges are a match made in heaven, in my humble opinion. So I added 1/2 Tbsp of orange zest to the batter (zest of 1 orange).
• Accidentally used bleached all-purpose flour. Glad I did because it produced a finer crumb.
• For the most volume in the cake, beat the sugars, eggs and orange zest together until thick and pale colored. Slowly drizzle in the oil. This emulsifies the batter, the way it does when you're making a vinaigrette. Then add shredded carrots, followed by the addition of the dry ingredients in three steps.
  
• Grated white chocolate on top of the cream cheese frosting for decoration.
  

Everybody who tried it, loved it. Myself included. In the end, it was the addition of the orange zest that set this carrot cake apart from others.

This week's Heavenly Cake Baker recipe was the English Gingerbread Cake. I was very happy that the cake didn't have any molasses. That, and the overuse of ginger is usually what makes me not like gingerbread cakes. Not at all the case here so I was excited to try it. Especially since I need a dessert to take to work tomorrow for a potluck.

The cupcakes are baking away...

I made the following changes to the recipe:

• Since I didn't have orange marmalade, I used my friend's homemade spicy apple butter, and orange zest from 1/2 an orange.
• Used white whole wheat flour for the whole wheat flour in the recipe.
• Use two-thirds light corn syrup and one-third organic amber Agave Nectar from Mexico, so maybe I should call this Mexican Gingerbread Cake :o)
• Yielded 22 cupcakes, which baked for 19 minutes in my convection oven.

After liberally brushing the cupcakes with the syrup, I still had a bit left, so I added powdered sugar to it and made a quick icing to drizzle on top for decoration

My husband calls this "playing around". Let me tell ya... this is fun :o)

The lemon butter syrup was delicious and I'm glad I didn't skip it. It added a nice zing. These cupcakes were light, fluffy, tender, moist, and mildly spicy. Oddly enough, I thought it could use more ginger flavor. Next time, I will add finely chopped candied ginger to the batter.

An inside look. Isn't that beautiful?

SMS - Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake

This is a very late SMS post but better late than never, right? :o) Shandy of Pastry Heaven by Shandy picked the last SMS recipe of the year: Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake with Blackberry Glaze. This cheesecake was delicious. It's very chocolatey, creamy and rich, so thin slices will go a long way. To find out for yourself, check out the recipe HERE.

Out of the oven, cooled completely, and ready to be glazed

Used homemade grape jelly in place of the blackberry glaze

A thin slice of delicious cheesecake. Come to momma :o)

I will keep this post short and sweet. The shortcuts I took and other changes I made can be found below.

Final thoughts/tips:

• Replaced the rum in the recipe with heavy cream. For a silkier texture, I added 1 egg yolk.
  
• Instead of the chocolate cookie crust, I used my favorite gingersnap crust with ground almonds.
  
• Skipped pre-baking the crust and the thin layer of melted chocolate on top of the crust. The cheesecake itself is already chocolatey enough.
  
• Cut the amount of espresso in half since I'm not a coffee fan. Glad I did!
• Baked the cheesecake in a water bath in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. Afterwards, with the oven door closed, shut off the oven and left the cheesecake in the there for 1 hour.
• Instead of a blackberry glaze, I made a glaze from homemade grape jelly. The cheesecake was delicious without the glaze too.
  

Kitchen remodeling = completed

The kitchen remodeling project is finally over. During this process I kept reminding myself that it will be worth the wait, and it certainly was. I might have to change my blog's name to Hanaâ's New Kitchen :o)

Tada!

The cabinets are maple which I really like. The granite counter top is called Verde Jade and is a beautiful shade of green with some black, silver, and red. I took it upon myself to design the backsplash. The main goal was to have a nice pattern which completely avoided the (many) switch plates we have. The hardware for the doors and drawers are a satin nickel, from Home Depot.

Every contractor we worked with, did a great job, so I highly recommend all of them. If you live in Minnesota, make sure to check out these contractors:

• Custom cabinetry: Freeman's Custom Cabinets
• Granite counter top: Universal Stone Inc
• Wood flooring and tiled backsplash: B & R Hardwood and Tile

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So without further ado, here are before and after pictures of my kitchen.

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After...

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Volcano Birthday Cake

A quick note to my SMS friends: I will be baking and posting my Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake for Sweet Melissa Sundays later this week. I will be getting my new oven tomorrow and decided to "break in" the new oven with this cheesecake :o)

When my friend asked me to make a "science-themed" cake for his daughter's birthday, I had no idea what to make. While strolling on the Vegas strip with my husband, I was telling him about the cake. At that point, we were walking by the Mirage which has a big Volcano in its "front yard". Hubby then said, "how about a volcano cake?". What a great idea!

My friend is very creative and wanted to add some special effects to the cake. His plan was to use dry ice and water to create smoke, and a foam cup with a balloon filled with baking soda, with a small syringe taped to it, containing vinegar, covered in "lava" (red icing). So to accommodate all this, I decided to bake 2 Bundt cakes and stack them on top of one another.

The bottom cake is a Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The top is is a Chocolate Butter Cake from CakeLove. Both cakes tasted great; moist, tender and very chocolatey. The volcano was covered with my original Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting (something I wanted to try out for a while). It was great; light, creamy, chocolatey, with a little tang at the end.

Here are some other pictures:

The batter is silky smooth. Too bad I don't eat raw batter. This smelled great.

One cake baked in a Bundt pan and the other in an Angel Food Cake pan

The two cakes stacked, with 3 straws inserted in the bottom cake and a alu foiled wrapped cardboard in between for support

After the carving was done. The first cut was the scariest of all :o) Now it's ready for frosting.

A big volcano and a mini volcano!

HCB: Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was a Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake. Other than the spices in the gingersnap crust, the cheesecake contains no spices which really lets the pumpkin flavor come through. I ended up using Dutch gingersnap cookies called pepernoten for the cheesecake's crust. And I substituted toasted whole almonds for the pecans in the crust, as I'm allergic to pecans. This worked great. I think that the crust would work well without nuts as well.

I always like to spray the sides of a spring form pan with cooking spray and line the sides with parchment paper. This helps keep the sides of the cheesecake smooth, and it helps with the removal of the cake from the pan after baking.

Fearing that the batter might overflow if made in the food processor, as suggested in the book, I decided to make the batter in my KitchenAid mixer. This worked really well. I started beating cream cheese, then added the eggs and egg yolks, followed by the pumpking/cream mixture.

I loved loved loved this cheesecake. It was super-creamy, not too rich and full of pumpkin flavor. Furthermore, it didn't crack or sink, which is a common cheesecake problem. The turbinado sugar added a subtle caramel flavor to the cheesecake which I enjoyed. I skipped the caramel syrup merely because I ran out of time. I figured I'd make it later for the leftover cheesecake. But since it was this delicious as-is already, I left it out.

My friend had a chance to taste the cheesecake and loved it. She said: "it's the best cheesecake I've ever had". Needless to say, she will be making it very soon herself :o) It has definitely made it to my "favorite desserts"-list as well. Hubby enjoyed it very much too.

Here are some step-by-step pictures:

Prepping the pumpkin and sugar for the filling

Gingersnap and nut crust for the cheesecake in prepared pan

Cheesecake batter poured into the aluminum-wrapped pan

Fresh out of the oven, all set

A slice of the pumpkin cheesecake, decorated with a few sliced almonds

The perfect bite! Bon appetit!