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 - Moist Chocolate Genoise (anniversary cake)

As you can tell from the title of this post, I skipped the "raspberry" part of this week's Heavenly Cake Bakers cake. I also skipped the cocoa syrup and the ganache. So what did I make? Just half of the chocolate genoise recipe in two 6" round pans, and then I took a big detour :o) One of the main reasons is that I didn't want to make the cake too "chocolaty" because hubby is not a fan of super-chocolaty desserts. Since this is our wedding anniversary cake, I figured we should both like it :o)

Four layer chocolate genoise cake with strawberry-and-cream filling and chocolate whipped cream frosting

Génoise Très Café

Making this week's Heavenly Cake Bakers' recipe, Génoise Très Café, was très fun :o) Marie and I decided it was time to bake again and so we picked this recipe. Luckily, Woody was also able to make it. He brought bread dough with him to bake rolls with. And Jim took on his role as the food and process photographer. You can imagine how much I was looking forward to this! I won't bore you with too many details, because Marie did a great job summarizing our baking adventure in this post.

In addition to the Génoise, we had another cake to eat. Woody brought a cake with him to share with us. It's a secret cake so I can't tell you anything about it other than it was rich! :o)

HCB - Chocolate Bull's-Eye Cake

Happy New Year to all my blog visitors!!! I hope 2011 is filled with love, happiness, and lots of sweet creations :o)

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers falls into the "baby cakes" category: Chocolate Bull's-Eye Cakes, baked in mini MaryAnn pans. I don't have these pans so I baked the genoise batter in a large MaryAnn-ish pan. I'm not sure what the exact name of my pan is, but it had an indentation in the center and a nice fluted edge, something I bought at a garage sale 2-3 years ago and never used, and so I went with it. I'm glad I did because it worked perfectly!

HCB - Chocolate Genoise with Ganache Glaze (rewind)

Before I begin my HCB post, I have something fun and exciting to share: my State Fair baking adventure of this past summer is featured on Rose's blog alongside Woody's first State Fair entry!!!! Thank you Rose and Woody for your kind words about my baking. You can read all about it HERE.

This week's cake for the Heavenly Cake Bakers to bake is the Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake. Almost exactly a year ago to the day, I made this cake as part of a super awesome Volcano Cake for a close friend's daughter's 11th birthday. Click HERE to check it out!! So this week, I opted to do a rewind and make the Chocolate Genoise that the HCB-ers made a couple weeks ago. I used regular ganache instead of the prescribed Peanut Butter Ganache. The other change I made is substitute an equal amount by weight of corn starch for the flour and I threw in a handful of toasted almonds, which I chopped finely in the food processor. My inspiration for this change comes from Hector. A while back, he mentioned experimenting with corn starch in the Genoise to make the cake gluten-free. His reasoning for this change is that a Genoise gets its structure from the egg foam and not as much from the proteins in the flour.

I used my standby recipe for syrup which consists of sugar, water and orange juice. The cake's texture is super soft. It's melt-in-your-mouth tender. I thought it was moist enough for a Genoise (I used about 1/2 cup of syrup). The chocolate flavor was just right and the ganache was very smooth. Unfortunately, the cake formed a thin layer of dense and rubbery mass at the bottom, which I had to cut off prior to serving the cake. Other than that, the cake was fine, and I would call this a successful gluten-free experiment.

HCB - Genoise Rose (great for sandwiches too)

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers is the Genoise Rose. The recipe calls for a rose-shaped Bundt pan. I came across one last summer at a garage sale and bought it. At the time, I didn't know about the HCB baking group but I knew this pretty pan would come in handy some day, and it sure did :o)

Genoise Rose served with homegrown strawberries and homemade Triple Berry Jam

HCB - True Orange Genoise (with and without curd)

This week's recipe for the Heavenly Cake Bakers was the True Orange Genoise. Although the recipe calls for the elusive Seville oranges, Rose also provides instructions for regular navel oranges, which is what I used. Marie was kind enough to offer me some Seville oranges that Vicki sent her, but by the time we agreed on the pickup, the oranges had started to go bad already.

I made the curd on Friday, baked the cakes (yes, that's 2 x 6" cakes) on Saturday, and assembled everything on Sunday. While making the curd, I didn't want to take any chances of it being undercooked. I found an orange curd recipe in Rose's P&PB that calls for cooking the curd to 185 F. I wanted to be on the safe side, and cooked it to 190 F. Although the curd tasted really good and wasn't "eggy" at all, I had a funny/itchy feeling in my throat after eating it. With all my food allergies, I didn't want to push my luck. So I decided to bake two 6" cakes instead of one 9" cake, so I could make two different fillings.

Enough said. I'll let the pictures do all the "talking" :o)

This is the navel orange curd. It thickened beautifully.

I made beurre noisette for the genoise and added a pinch of salt to it. Am I the only one who likes to dip their bread in the caramelized milk solids?

Baked two 6" cakes so I could use two different fillings.

After 20 minutes in the oven, the genoise looked like this. My favorite way to bake a genoise is in a spring form pan. As soon as it comes out of the oven, it has to be unmolded. It's a snap (no pun intended) when you use a spring form pan.

Carefully measured half the amount of curd called for in the recipe. I was over by 5 grams but I figured that was OK.

The assembled cake looked like this. Pretty huh? :o) I thought it was.

A slice of the True Orange Genoise. Just grab a fork and dig in!

Here's the cake with the orange whipped cream filling, aka Hanaâ's cake :o)

A big slice of Hanaâ's cake. I'm a good girl. I promise I'll wait until *after* dinner before eating all of it :o)

Orange whipped cream filling:
(my original recipe)

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 oz sugar + 1 Tbsp orange zest: rub zest into sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup orange juice reduced to 1 Tbsp in the microwave on High

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and beat with mixer until stiff peaks are formed. Use immediately or refrigerate.

Final thoughts/tips:

• I took a very small bite of the curd-filled cake and liked it a lot. The orange flavor just explodes in your mouth. The slight bitterness of the dark chocolate glaze cuts through the sweetness and offers a very pleasant contrast. The cake could have been a bit more moist. Maybe I should have used all of the syrup. I had about 3 Tbsp left.
• The orange whipped cream filling was delicious. Light, fluffy, not overly sweet and chock full of orange flavor. This also paired very well with the dark chocolate.
  
• The genoise recipe didn't call for salt, so I added a large pinch to the butter when I was making beurre noisette.
• The recipe called for Wondra flour. This was my first time using it. Although the Wondra flour produced a finer crumb compared to cake flour, I think I prefer genoise made with cake flour. I find that the syrup is more readily absorbed when the crumb is a tiny bit coarser. I don't have scientific proof as to why but that's just a hunch.
  
• I didn't use the ganache called for in the recipe. Instead I used my standby chocolate glaze recipe to which I added 1 Tbsp of the syrup used on the cake and the zest of a 1/4 orange.
• Although the curd tasted great, given the mild reaction I had to it, I will probably avoid it in the future.
• Dip your knife in hot water, wipe it and then use it to cut clean cuts of cake. This is especially useful when cutting through a chocolate glaze layer.