A Little Bit of All Right

 December is always free choice month for the Cake Slice Bakers. Some years I know early on which cake I'll bake in December; other years I find myself flipping pages, looking for a recipe that calls my name. This year was the second kind. I was looking for a cake that was something I hadn't made before and that I had all the ingredients on hand. I finally settled on the Chocolate Orange Marble cake. The recipe has you make one batter, divide it into two sections, and then flavor one with melted chocolate and the other with orange. You then put the orange batter in a loaf pan, top it with the chocolate, and use a spoon to try to marble it. After baking, you slowly add an orange flavored simple syrup to the cake while it's still hot. Once cool, remove from the pan, slice, and enjoy. This is a delicious and fairly easy-to-make cake. Both the chocolate and the orange flavors were present, one not overwhelming the other. I opted for dark chocolate (70% cocoa), but you could cer

This recipe starts with a coconut cake that then gets layered with yuzu curd, frosted with a vanilla-flavored French buttercream, and dusted with flaked coconut. Because yuzu can be hard to find, the author suggests a number of substitutes including other citrus curds and chocolate buttercream. I opted for lime curd. The cake recipe is simple, the instruction for rolling it up worked like a charm. My experience with cake rolls has been a little rocky in the past - the cake has cracked, broken or even stuck to the pan. I had none of those issues this time. The cake is flavored with coconut extract which gives it just the right level of coconuttiness when combined with the other components. I followed the instructions for the yuzu curd but substituted lime juice for yuzu juice. My curd need a little longer on the stove as it was not quite thick enough, even when mixed with 1/2 C buttercream as the recipe suggests. But it did taste delicious. If you haven't made French buttercream bef

Suzy's Cake is a rich, chocolatey layer of goodness that we all enjoyed eating. It was simple to bake and used ingredients that I generally have on hand. Definitely a go-to recipe for special occasions as well as those days when you just need something decadent.     The cake may not be much to look at initially, but that first taste had everyone closing their eyes in ecstasy, so it really didn't matter. It has a moist, soft texture and held up well overnight. The instructions have you refrigerate it for an hour before taking it out of the cake pan, probably so it doesn't fall apart. Then you're to let it come up to room temperature before slicing and eating. I followed those instructions the first night, but the second night I just ate it cold, and it was still delicious. We served the pieces topped with a dollop of whipped cream and some fresh strawberries. Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking thr

I chose to bake the Gluten-Free Fig Cake this month because we had just received a gift of home-grown figs from a friend of ours, and the opportunity of including some of them in a cake was too good to pass up. This cake starts with a layer of quartered figs that is then topped with an orange-flavored cake batter. It's baked in a springform pan, and the author says not to unmold but rather scoop out as the texture of the cake is somewhere between traditional cake and pudding.  The cake batter was easy to put together. While I did need to make a trip to the store to buy some mascarpone cheese, the other ingredients were all household staples for me. The recipe uses almond flour instead of wheat flour. Unfortunately, this cake was not a hit with anyone in my household. Some of this was because some members of my family prefer raw figs to cooked figs. But another complaint was that the figs weren't integrated into the cake. It felt like eating cake with cooked figs and not like ea

I had a hard time choosing my cake this month. I felt like I should bake the Apple Cake as our apple tree was full of fruit waiting to be used, but nothing speaks to me quite like a rhubarb dessert. Then I went to the grocery story. Strawberries were on sale, and right next to them was a huge stack of rhubarb. Rhubarb is hard to find where I live. Rarely does anyone have it at the farmer's market, and there's only one store I've ever successfully bought it at, and that's always been in June. So to find such an abundance in early August - it was a sign.   This recipe provides instructions for either a layer cake or a roll (think Yule log or pumpkin roll). I opted to make the layer cake. The recipe as written produces an extra layer which I didn't want, so I halved the ingredients. The Genoese layer gets cut in half, filled with a strawberry-rhubarb compote and frosted with lemon buttercream. In general, I found the recipe easy to follow, though both the compote and b

This month I decided to make the Raspberry Clafoutis in part because the raspberries available locally have been amazing this month. This is a dessert more traditionally made with cherries, but the author opts for raspberries, and I agree that they did add a lovely counterpoint to the sweet cake. The family all loved this cake. My chocolate-loving and preferring daughter declared it her new favorite and said this was what she wants for her birthday cake from now on. I did manage to save a small piece to eat for breakfast the next morning. While it was better warm from the oven, it was still quite tasty as a cold breakfast. Blackberries are now in season at our local PYO farm, so I foresee a blackberry clafoutis on this weekend's menu.  Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is  Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes  by Aleksandra Crapanzano. We each choose one cake to bake, and t

The Walnut Espresso Cake is a quick-to-make dessert whose ingredients are generally ones that bakers have on hand. The cake is a butter cake flavored with espresso powder while the frosting is an espresso-flavored buttercream. The only walnuts are those used in between the layers and on top of the cake. The author suggests either making it as a two layer cake using 8-inch springform pans or as one layer using a 10-inch springform pan. As I only own the 10-inch springform, I opted for the single layer.  The cake is described in the cookbook at good with the icing really being the star of the show. Every member of my family agreed with this description. The cake's coffee flavor was definitely muted. I used espresso powder instead of coffee extract (the recipe says either will work). We were fine with that, but if you're looking for a stronger coffee flavor, you might want to try the extract or add more of the espresso powder. The frosting is a buttercream with dark rum used in pl

The Breton Butter Almond Cake recipe is an easy-to-make recipe that uses ingredients that I generally have on hand, making it convenient for anytime I need a simple dessert. It's described as being similar to shortbread which it definitely is, but with a more complicated taste and less crumbly texture.    The cake is flavored with a little bit of rum and vanilla, and I found that made a great platform for a variety of embellishments - whipped cream, berries, strawberry jam, and lemon curd are all ones we tried at home. But it was also tasty without anything added to it, and most importantly for me, it made a great grab and go breakfast the next morning! One note about the recipe, it says to pour the batter into your tart pan, but my batter was thick - more like cookie dough than cake batter, so I had scoop it in and then smooth with a rubber spatula. I was worried I had made a mistake, but if I did, it didn't seem to affect the taste or texture. Each month The Cake Slic

This month I decided to make the Pine Nut Weekend Cake. It uses a technique I had not used before. Instead of starting with creamed butter and sugar or whipped egg white, the recipe has you whip heavy cream until "it holds its shape." Traditional cake ingredients are added until a thick batter is produced. You then layer the batter with pine nuts in two loaf pans and bake for about an hour. The recipe is easy to halve if you only want one loaf. I didn't think to take a picture before I put the cakes in the oven, but I had my loaf pans about 3/4 full with pine nuts sprinkled evenly all the way to the edges of the loaf.. About halfway through the bake time, I started to smell burnt cake. I quickly opened the oven door to discover that my cakes were overflowing the pans. I put a cookie sheet on the shelf below and scrapped as much batter as possible from the sides of the pans before closing the oven back up to let everything finish baking. The picture below are the loafs whe

Aleksandra Crapanzano, the author of this year's Cake Slice Bakers book, Gateau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes , recounts how most Parisians would have a small piece of dark chocolate each day. Clearly, I must be partly Parisian at heart because I also try to have at least one small piece of dark chocolate each day; it's the American part, undoubtedly, that contributes to the "at least." These small chocolate cakes definitely filled that need completely. Traditionally, they are made in special molds that make them take on the shape of a cork. I do not own one of those molds and so opted to use my brownie pan. The recipes makes around 12 standard sized corks; I was able to get 8 out of my brownie pan. This was an extremely simple recipe to follow, and the only ingredient it called for that I did not have in my house was mini dark chocolate chips. The author you can just chop up a couple pieces of chocolate instead, but I opted to finish up some mini semi-sw

February required an easy cake that I didn't need to collect any special ingredients for. Luckily, the Olive Oil cake was one my choices. It's flavored with a lemon and an orange, both of which I already had in my house, and the other ingredients are all household staples for us.  It was an easy cake to make. And baked up beautifully.  The cake was extremely moist and had just the right touch of citrus.  Unfortunately, we were not big fans of the olive oil taste in the cake. I've not made an olive oil cake before, so I don't know if this is just a preference or if it was a result of the type of olive oil I used or how long it had been in my cupboard. I also wonder how the cake would taste if I made it with a more neutral tasting oil. Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is  Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes  by Aleksandra Crapanzano. We each choose one cake to b