HCB - Red Fruit Shortcake

This week's cake was a winner! The Heavenly Cake Bakers baked the Red Fruit Shortcake. Although this sponge cake is supposed to be topped with 3 kinds of red fruit (strawberries, raspberries and red currants), I made it with all strawberries which worked really well too. That's not where the deviation from the recipe ended (and if you've read my blog a couple times, you're not surprised) :o) For a change of pace, I baked the cake in a heart shaped pan. The genoise rose beautifully and is probably my most successful (aka high) genoise to date! I also decided to make my standby orange syrup to brush on the genoise, mainly because I wasn't patient enough to wait for the macerating fruit to release all of their juices :o)

Who says heart-shaped cakes are for V-day only? :o)

HCB - Mud Turtle Cupcakes

The Heavenly Cake Bakers baked Mud Turtle Cupcakes this week. I tried to do the same. Yes, "tried"... After what happened tonight, I think every recipe should start with "don't bake this if you're in a hurry" :o) I guess those books wouldn't sell very well because we all bake in a hurry every once in a while. Right? But when you forget one of the most essential ingredients in the recipe, it's hard to "fix" the problem after you find out. Care to guess what I forgot? No, not the eggs, or the butter, or the leavening. Nope. Just the sugar!!! Yikes! Now these cupcakes really ARE going to taste liked mud :o(

I should have known something was wrong when I made half the recipe and only had 6.75 cupcakes instead of 8. I shrugged it off and baked them anyway. After 17 minutes in the oven, the cake tester came out clean so I figured they were done and took them out of the oven. I noticed they looked "different". The top was cracked (like those chocolate crinkle cookies). Hmmm... I go through the ingredients list in the book and that's when it hit me. The sugar! The superfine sugar! I remember thinking, let's skip the sugar for now (it's not like I'm going to forget the sugar, duh!), because I have to put some granulated sugar in the food processor to make "superfine sugar". That never happened and now here we are. After giving it some thought, I realized what I really baked today is something similar to biscuits. Chocolate biscuits! I tasted a crumb... ewww! But I wasn't ready to give up (yet).

HCB - Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

For this week's Free Choice, I decided to bake a cake that everyone raved about just a week ago: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake. I didn't have a chance to bake along that weekend so I baked it for Free Choice week. A big thanks to Jenn of Knitty Baker for convincing me that I didn't want to miss out on this cake, especially since I love almonds. An even bigger thanks to Rose for creating this recipe. It's another masterpiece! :o)

Look at that crumb!

Although it's a bit hard to see on this picture, during baking, the almond cream sinks to the bottom of the cake, which is now the top part of the cake slice. It's so creamy and smooth with a wonderful almond flavor. It's my favorite part of the cake :o)

ABC - Favorite Buttermilk Cake

This month's challenge for the ABC-ers is Flo Braker's "Favorite Buttermilk Cake". It's a butter-based cake with buttermilk for a little tang. I also added some orange zest to the batter to perk up the cake's flavor. As for the filling and frosting, we were free to choose whatever we like. I decided to go the simple route and dress it up with some macerated strawberries.

Buttermilk cake with macerated strawberries

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby liked it a lot, stating that the cake is moist, soft, with great flavor. His rating: 9 out of 10. I liked it a lot too, even though the crumb is a bit on the coarse side (visually, that is, not when you eat it).
• If you'd like to make this recipe yourself, you can find the recipe in Flo Braker's book, Baking for all Occasions, or online here.
• Don't forget to check out what the other ABC-ers thought of this quick-to-make cake.

Weekend baking

An impromptu invitation to an afternoon tea, Moroccan tea, that is, prompted me to bake something to take with me. The recipe must be chocolate, quick, and not require a trip to the store. Chiffon cake it is! While I was on vacation recently, my family loved the chiffon cakes I made. However, I never made a chocolate chiffon cake before, so I grabbed my copy of The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum and got to work. I made half the recipe and used this small Bundt pan I had purchased in Morocco. It was the perfect size. To decorate the cake, I made a quick chocolate glaze which I drizzled on top, added some fresh berries and a tiny sprinkling of powdered sugar. Et voila!

Chocolate Chiffon Cake

The cake was light, chocolatey and moist! I was mostly impressed with the intense chocolate flavor. Amazing what good Dutch cocoa and boiling water can do :o) Hubby even thought it bordered on being "too chocolatey" with the addition of the chocolate glaze! Definitely try this recipe if you have the book.

On Sunday, I decided to bake some wheat bread to eat with the chicken tagine I was cooking for dinner. Some day I'll post the recipe but for now the pictures will have to do :o) The bread turned out great, if I say so myself. It was wheaty, light as feather, and flavorful without being overly yeasty. I'm trying hard to get over my yeast phobia by baking yeasted baked goods more and more frequently. I think it's working... :o)

2 large round breads (Moroccan-style) and several rolls

Bon Appetit!