Heavenly Cake Baker - a new baking group

I've recently joined a new baking group called Heavenly Cake Bakers, organized by Marie. Once a week we bake a recipe from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. This is Rose Levy Beranbaum's newest book, published about 2 weeks ago. As many of you know, Rose is the famed author of The Cake Bible.


The publisher, Wiley & Sons, gave away 10 signed copies to the first 10 people who sign up for this bake along. Guess who made it to that top 10? Moi! Yay! I received my signed copy last Friday. It read: "For Hanaa, charter member of the bake along. Blissful baking. Love, Rose". How cool is that?! For one thing, hardly anybody spells my name right :o)


So a big thank you to Rose, for writing yet another beautiful book with stunning color photos, and to Wiley & Sons. Last but not least, a big thanks to Marie for organizing this bake along.

If you would like to join the Heavenly Cake Bakers baking group, here are the rules:

• You must own, or have easy access to, a copy of Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

• You must have a blog.
  

• At the beginning of each month Marie will post the recipes that will be featured for that month. Marie will bake one per week, but you only have to agree to bake two of the selections. Of course you can bake more often if you like.

• Blog posts should be made within a 24 hour period on Mondays.

• If you run out of steam or feel you can’t keep baking, let Marie know so she can remove you from the list of Heavenly Cake Bakers - that way, readers will know that only active bakers are on the list of bloggers.

• Recipes will not be posted on your blogs since everyone will have a copy of the book and we want to encourage sales of Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

• Don't forget to have fun!

This week's recipe was for the Barcelona brownie bars. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate this week as I'm in the middle of a kitchen remodeling project. If you would like to give these deliciously fudgy and nutty brownies a try, you can find the recipe on Rose's blog (click HERE for the recipe).

For your entertainment, here's a picture of my very first cake from The Cake Bible, about 4 years ago. I made a white butter cake, with a lightly whipped white chocolate ganache filling, topped with lemon curd. The frosting consisted of the same whipped white chocolate ganache. My inspiration for the laced "chocolate band" came from Rose's Strawberry Cloud Cake. I had also just learned how to temper chocolate and needed an excuse to practice (my birthday couldn't have come at a better time!).

I couldn't believe I was able to pull off the lattice band without any problems!

It tasted as good as it looked and I never went back to store bought cakes ever again!