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

SMS - Strawberry Lemon-(Orange)-ade

This week's recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays is Strawberry Lemonade, chosen by Jessica of My Baking Heart. If you're tired of winter and are looking forward to spring and summer, this is the recipe for you. You can find it HERE. It's sweet and tart, with a great strawberry flavor. Thanks for a great pick, Jessica!

SMS - Strawberry Rhubarb Preserves

This week's SMS recipe was chosen by Margo of Effort to Deliciousness. She chose Strawberry-Ruby Grapefruit Preserves. You can find the recipe here.

This recipe was absolutely delicious. Due to the abundant amount of rhubarb in my garden, I decided to make the Strawberry Rhubarb version of the jam, it was delicious!!! Thanks for choosing such a great recipe, Margot.

Rhubarb from garden + cinnamon sticks + whole cloves

The fruit is ready to jam

Jam on toast, yum!

Strawberry Rhubarb Turnovers

Strawberry Rhubarb Turnover sprinkled with powdered sugar

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I loved this jam. It had the perfect amount of sweetness and tartness. The color was bright and beautiful. Hubby's rating: 9 out of 10.
• I skipped the orange zest simply because I didn't have any on hand. And I used store-bought orange juice.
• Total amount of sugar used: 3/4 cup.
• Added 1 cinnamon stick and 2 whole cloves to the fruit (and fished them out later) for a little spice (it lingered quietly in the background and wasn't overwhelming).
  
• It took me 40 minutes from start to finish to make 1/4 of the recipe. Will definitely make it again.
• Check out the SMS blogroll to see how other SMS bakers "jammed" this week.
  

My Very First Wedding Cake

When I was asked to make my friends' wedding cake, I was both honored and excited. Shortly after that, I got a bit scared and then panic set in. Oh my gosh... a wedding cake! Those things are HUGE. And they have to look stunning and taste fantastic. I kept telling myself, it's like a birthday cake, only bigger. I can do this! I can do this!

I needed information from a trustworthy source so I went to my library. There were several books on the subject of Wedding Cakes. I browsed through several books but decided to take home Dede Wilson's "Wedding Cakes You Can Make". The first half of the book discusses everything you need to know, from tools and cake pans, to creating a schedule. I highly recommend this book because I learned a lot from it.

Another invaluable source of information was Rose Levy Beranbaum's website: "Real Baking with Rose". The forum is great with lots of cake experts willing to help out. One of the major contributors to the website and master cake baker, Hector, has graciously answered numerous questions of mine. I thank you sincerely, Hector!

After some experimenting, I finally decided on the cake to make: yellow butter cake from Rose's book, The Cake Bible. This decision came after baking several different cakes and having my husband, friends and coworkers give me their opinions on what they liked and disliked. This cake won hands down. After one bit of Rose's cake, my husband said: "this is the one". He said he didn't even need to taste the other piece cake on his plate, awaiting a taste test :o) The other thing I loved about this cake is that in Rose's book, the math for all the different pan sizes was already done for me. Piece of cake! :o)

For the filling I used my own recipe for a Strawberry Cream Cheese filling. The frosting needed to be white so I went with a buttercream frosting. Both were made in advance and frozen.

I used a floating tiers cake stand by Wilton. This way the cakes didn't have to be stacked on top of one another. This cake stand holds a 14" cake, a 10" cake and a 6" cake. To ensure there was plenty of cake fore everyone to eat, my friends wanted me to make an extra 8" cake (not displayed on the stand) and an extra 6" cake so they could serve one and save one for their first wedding anniversary.

The best part after completing my very first wedding cake project was that everybody loved the way the cake looked, and more importantly, how it tasted.

Without further ado, here are the pictures. Enjoy!

Roses and Baby's Breath for decorating the top of each cake

Bride and groom plus the wedding cake on the cake stand
(I asked and they were OK with me posting this picture on my blog)

A close-up of the 14" cake with a total of 8 lilac roses and 5 white roses

This is the 10" cake decorated with 6 lilac roses and 3 white roses

Another close-up of the 10" cake

This was my slice of wedding cake - very tasty, if I say so myself :o)

SMS #10 - Peach Cobbler (kind of)

Andrea of Nummy Kitchen chose this week's SMS recipe: Bear's Peach Cobbler. This would be my first time making a cobbler so I was pretty excited about it. I decided that I would use frozen peaches, since fresh peaches would probably not be sweet and juicy (yet). During my last stop of my Saturday grocery shopping routine, I remembered I needed to buy the frozen peaches. Well, guess what? They didn't have any. With no time to go to a different store, I decided I'm either going to skip this week or be creative and use something else. I already had strawberries. What else to add? Hmmmm... the rhubarb in my garden is ready for harvest and I love the strawberry/rhubarb combo. So I went for that.


I had to make a few changes to the recipe. Given the tartness of the rhubarb, I omitted the lemon juice in the filling and used orange juice instead. Same thing with the lemon zest (replaced it with orange zest). I actually used the orange zest in the topping as well as the filling.

All in all, the Strawberry/Rhubarb Cobbler turned out great, even though it became somewhat messy in the oven when the juices overflowed. I would definitely make it again, and maybe try peaches next time :o)


A special thanks to Andrea for choosing this recipe. It was a fun and easy recipe to make, and most importantly delicious. You can find the recipe for it here. Don't forget to check out the other SMS bakers and see what they thought of this recipe.

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I enjoyed this dessert a lot. When asked for a rating, hubby gave it a 9 out of 10. The aesthetics (as the cobbler was a bit over browned) is what kept this puppy from getting a perfect grade.
• I cut the recipe half and used 1.5 cups of strawberries and 1.5 cups of sliced rhubarb. Given the tartness of the rhubarb, I used 1/2 cup of sugar
• Instead of mixing the corn starch with the fruit, I followed a technique by Greg Patent where you add sugar to the fruit, let it sit while you make the dough, then drain it. Now add the citrus juice and corn starch to the liquid and bring it to a boil and cook for a minute. Add this thickend mixture to the fruit and divide the fruit filling into ramekins.
• I made the dough in the food processor (dry ingredients first, mix, add cold butter, mix, add cream, mix, done).
  

SMS #5 -Strawberry Shortcakes

This week's SMS recipe was chosen by Wendy from Pink Stripes. What a great choice!! Thank you, Wendy. Not only had I never eaten shortcakes before, I had never made them before either, so this was a perfect opportunity to do both :o) Check out the recipe here.

I cut the recipe in half. Some SMS bakers commented that the shortcakes were pretty big, so instead of 3 shortcakes, I decided to make 4 (smaller) shortcakes, which ended up being big enough for us. The shortcakes turned out crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. I ended up needing 1 tsp less cream in the dough. The lemon zest in them was definitely a good addition. I decided to add some freshly ground cardamom to the shortcake dough which added spiciness as well as a lemony aroma. Instead of regular sugar, I used raw (turbinado) sugar to sprinkle on top of the shortcakes.


The kitchen smelled so nice while the shortcakes were baking. While the shortcakes were in the oven, I macerated the sliced strawberries and whipped the cream. As soon as the shortcakes were cool enough, I used a fork to split open the shortcakes and was pleasantly surprised at the tender crumb. The assembly was truly a piece of (short) cake :o)


Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby and I enjoyed these strawberry shortcakes very much. It's such a simple dessert that's packed with great flavor. I would definitely make them again.
• Leftover shortcakes (not assembled) were great the next day, although they were a tiny bit crumbly which was fine.
• I used a large pizza cutter to cut the dough into 4 equal pieces.
  
• Don't forget to check out the other SMS bakers' Strawberry Shortcakes.