A Little Bit of All Right

In December, the each Cake Slice Baker chooses any cake from the current book to bake.  Because December also brings many activities with it, I found myself flipping through the book one morning looking for something that seemed manageable.  I landed on the Lemon Drizzle Bundt Cake. This is a lemon sponge with a layer of lemon curd baked into the middle and on the top with more lemon curd drizzled on top.  The cake was yummy and delivered a nice lemon taste.  The curd soaked into the cake as it baked, making it moist.  The lemon curd didn't really drizzle.  It was a little thick for that, but it was good.  I served each piece with a generous dollop of curd. Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is The European Cake Cookbook by Tatyana Nesteruk. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rule

For the past several years, I've made a ginger pumpkin tart instead of a more traditional pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.  Below is the recipe I use.  For the crust, I prefer the Triple Ginger Snaps from Trader Joes.  We generally top the slices with whipped cream. Ingredients 2  3 ⁄ 4  C   ginger snap crumbs (I used 1 box) 8 T   unsalted butter   melted 1 can   dulce de leche 1 can   pumpkin puree 1 T   flour 2 T   brown sugar 3 ⁄ 4  t   ground cinnamon 1 ⁄ 2  t   ground ginger 1 ⁄ 2  t   kosher salt 3  eggs   slightly beaten 1 ⁄ 4  C   heavy cream Directions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Put a 9-inch removable-bottom fluted tart pan on a baking sheet. Make the crust by combining the ginger cookie crumbs and melted butter in a large bowl, until well blended. Add the crumbs to the tart pan and evenly press over the bottom and up the sides with the bottom of a measuring cup. Bake until set and a bit darker in color, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from the o

For my penultimate Cake Slice Bakers bake for 2019, I chose the Chocolate Kiev Cake. This cake consists of layers of chocolate hazelnut meringue and chocolate sponge cake with chocolate mascarpone buttercream between. In addition, each sponge cake layer is brushed with a chocolate syrup - a runny chocolate ganache. After layering everything, the cake is covered with buttercream, topped with chocolate ganache, and decorated with chocolate meringue kisses and chopped hazelnuts. Chocolate upon chocolate upon chocolate. What's not to love! The cake was a bit of a mess as I was assembling it. The first problem was the same one I've had in the past - splitting the cake layers.  The layers were a little thin to begin with, and splitting them created a few uneven spots.  Then came the meringue layers.  The instructions say to mark an 8-inch circle on parchment paper, pipe meringue inside the circle and bake.  Then when you layer with the cake, you're to trim off any

The Chocolate Mint Mousse Cake was one my whole family had begged me to make since we first started perusing  The European Cake Cookbook.  Chocolate mousse, mint mousse and layers of chocolate cake all combined to (hopefully) make a beautiful brown and green layered confection.  I used the leftover egg whites to make some chocolate meringues to decorate the top of the cake and serve as additional snacks for a few days. First the good news: the components tasted delicious individually, and even better combined.  Next the good or bad news depending on your perspective.  Even though the recipe called for an 8 inch springform pan, and I used a 9 inch, I still had almost 2 cups of mousse leftover.  Good news in my house, especially that week as my son had his wisdom teeth removed, and the leftover mousse was a soft, sweet treat.  Finally, the bad news.  The mint mousse was too soft to hold it's shape.  It oozed over as I removed the side of the pan. The chocolate mostly held i

I've baked many coconut cakes, but have found them all either too complicated (crack open an actual coconut, really?) or too lacking in actual coconut taste.  With this month's Cake Slice Bakers recipe, I've found a keeper.   The cake starts with a basic white cake recipe except you add coconut milk and coconut extract to get this cake off on the right foot.  You bake them into two layers which you then split in half.  May cake cutting skills need a lot of work as you can see in the pictures.  The cake was tasty all by itself, but then you soak each layer with more coconut milk.  In between and all around the cake is a glorious coconut whipped cream frosting. The frosting was easy to work with and tasty.  Toasted coconut then gets patted on the sides and sprinkled along the top.  An easy cake to make, and delicious cake to eat. Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This y

July's Cake Slice Bakers' choice was an easy one for me.  The Strawberries and Creme Crepe Cake required no oven time make it a perfect choice for a hot, summer day. This cake has three main parts: crepes, creme filling, and sliced strawberries.  Start by making the creme filling so that it has plenty of time to get cold and firm. We happen to own a crepe pan, but I had never actually used it.  My husband is normally the crepe-maker in the family.  I collected a few tips from him, made sure I was clear on the directions, and started cooking.  The recipe claims there is enough batter for around 20 crepes.  Using the 1/4 cup measuring cup as recommended, I ended up with over 30.  Not a bad thing as the cake had to sit overnight in the refrigerator, so this gave everyone something desserty that they could fill with whatever was on hand. Once all the crepes are cooked, filling cold, and strawberries sliced, begin assembly.  I assembled in my 9 inch springform pan.  The pictu

My family was feeling the need for a chocolate cake after several fruit-based cakes, so I turned to American Cake  as I hadn't baked from it in a while.  In the 1917-1945 chapter, I found exactly what we needed, The Brooklyn Blackout Cake.  This is chocolate cake, layered with chocolate pudding, and covered first in chocolate buttercream and then chocolate cake crumbs. The cake layers were moist and chocolatey.  I split the two layers in half to make four, used three for the cake and the fourth was crumbled up to cover the frosting with. The filling was pudding-like but made without eggs.  The buttercream was unlike any I've ever made.  The instructions had me melt the chocolate, add the butter and mix until it was melted, then place the warm mixture over ice and beat until thick and spreadable.  At first it looked like it would never thicken up, but then, right around 8 minutes, it thickened up beautifully.  All of the components were delicious on their own, but comb

I thought this was my June bake with the Cake Slice Bakers, but I was not paying enough attention to detail and baked the WRONG Pistachio Raspberry cake.  You've got to love a cookbook that has two completely different recipes for pistachio raspberry cakes. The cake I baked starts with pistachio sponge cake layers.  You then make a pistachio buttercream and use that and macerated, sugar-soaked raspberries in between the layers. The pistachio sponge cake was lovely.  It rose beautifully and had a nice light taste.  It mixed perfectly with the raspberries.  The buttercream was a little bland and heavy and didn't quite fit in with the rest of the cake.  Perhaps I've become a bit spoiled by the smoothness of the cooked buttercreams I've used the last few times.  I may need to see how to incorporate nuts into a Swiss or French buttercream and try this again.

In addition to the Lavender Lemon Blackberry Cake, I also baked the chocolate selection for my Daughter's birthday party.  The Kladdkaka-Sticky Chocolate Cake bakes up like a big brownie. It was pretty perfect just as it was, but we served it up with vanilla ice cream and blackberries for the birthday party.

May's cake choices all sounded lovely, but there was one that was looked exactly like what my daughter would want for her birthday party - the Lemon Lavender Blackberry Cake.  Normally she's a chocolate girl, but the idea of that light purple cake gracing her party overrode any dreams of chocolate frosting. And then to seal my nomination for mom of the year, we found a kit at the party store that allowed us to turn any layer cake into an unicorn. The cake recipe was pretty straight-forward, and produced a moist cake with a light lemon taste.  The instructions said to place whole blackberries into each pan of batter before you bake, so that's what I did.  It made for a pretty cut, but we couldn't really taste much blackberry flavor. And even though I felt like I followed the directions for placing the blackberries, there were still pieces without very many.  I used an entire container, but it seems like more would have been better in this case. The fro

This month I needed a cake that was both fast and had ingredients that I already had on hand.  Fortunately, one of our choices met both requirements.  The Marbled Chocolate Orange Bundt Cake uses and orange flavored cake batter, divided into two parts.  Melted white chocolate mixed into one half and melted semi-sweet chocolate mixed into the other half.  You then swirl the two batters together, bake, and top with an orange-flavored icing.  The original recipe did call for orange oil which I did not have, so I substituted 1 teaspoon orange extract for the 1/4 teaspoon orange oil. The cake was okay.  The batters didn't stay swirled the way I had hoped they would, and the chocolate taste was very muted.  But the cake was moist. Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is The European Cake Cookbook by Tatyana Nesteruk. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before -

This month I needed something that was a little less time-consuming than the last few cakes I've made, so I chose to bake the Austrian Pound Cake.  It's a moist cake with bits of dried fruit mixed in, baked in a Bundt pan.  The original recipe calls for golden raisins and dried apricots.  My kids are not fans of raisins, and for some reason my store was out of dried apricots, so I substituted dried cherries. The cake itself was quite tasty and moist.  I think it would make a great foundation for just about any dried fruit or other addition.   I did have a bit of problem with the fruit all sinking to the bottom.  The recipe calls for soaking the fruit in orange liqueur and then mixing into the cake batter without any additional steps.  I imagine if I had then coated in flour, I might have had better results.  It's also possible that the actual fruit called for would have "floated" a little better. Either way, it's definitely a cake I

For my February bake with the Cake Slice Bakers, I chose to bake something for a small Super Bowl Party we were having at our house.  The Banoffee Cake from The European Cake Cookbook  seemed like a great choice as one of our guests hails from England.  The original Banoffee Pie is claimed to have been invented in England in 1971.  The name comes from the combination of Banana and Toffee - two of the three key ingredients in the pie, the other being whipped cream. The cake base is a simple cake with finely chopped pecans added. Cut the cake layers in half to get four layers all together and then top each layer with toffee, sliced bananas, whipped cream, and a sprinkling of cocoa power. The toffee in my cake is actually a can of Nestle's Dulce de Leche.  I was a little suspicious, but the stuff was amazing! The cake was a huge hit. Even my banana-hating son gobbled it up.  We had some left that went into the refrigerator where it was completely edible for an early mornin