A Little Bit of All Right

The recipe header describes this as banana heaven, and that is certainly a good description. It required 5 bananas, and came out both smelling and tasting wonderfully banana. The cake starts with a spiced banana batter. You then fold in diced bananas that have been cooked briefly in a mixture of rum and brown sugar. Once the cake is baked and cooked, it gets a brown butter rum drizzle that is a good match for the banana flavor.    My drizzle did not drizzle, and it was much darker than the picture in the book. I did add a little bit of milk to the mixture even though the recipe didn't call for it. I probably should have added some more to get a looser mixture. Instead, it was more like frosting. It was still delicious, and there were not complaints from the tasters. One suggestion the author makes is that when you're ready to remove the cake from the pan you should flip it onto the cake plate, and then let it sit for a minute before slowly lifting the pan off the cake. I had ne

Where does February bring to mind for you? Mae Jemison, Shirley Chisholm and Josephine Baker? Hearts, candy and flowers? Snow, ice, and cold? In our family it's Samoas, Trefoils, and Thin Mints. Yes, February is Black History Month, and it has Valentine's Day right in the middle, and it is (at least where we live) the coldest month of the year, but it is also Girl Scout Cookie month, and my daughter is a girl scout who actively participates with her troop in selling cookies. So of course I had to try out this month's choice of a Thin Mint-inspired cake, the Thicc Mint Cookie Cake. It's a layer of chocolate cake, topped with mint buttercream, and covered in ganache. It did not disappoint. This cake had a great mixture of flavors and textures that is indeed reminiscent of the cookie. It was easy to prepare and sliced up neatly. I'm especially a fan of the buttercream mixture. It starts with 1 cup of butter and 1/2 cup of shortening to which 3 1/2 cups of powdered suga

 This year the Cake Slice Bakers will be baking out of The Cake Book: Beautiful Sweet Treats for Every Craving . Based on January's recipes, I believe I'll find the subtitle completely accurate. We had three recipes to choose from: Lemon-Olive Oil Chiffon Cake, Glazed Tangerine Donut Cake, and a Dark Chocolate Cajeta Cheesecake. I opted for the Glazed Tangerine Donut Cake. The cake is supposed to be baked in a tube pan which will give it the appearance of a donut. It then gets topped with a tangerine glaze to finish the look. I opted to use my Bundt pan, so it doesn't quite have the expected appearance, but the taste was still spot on. The cake is flavored with vanilla and nutmeg giving it a light spice cake flavor. It's light, airy, and moist, and tastes lovely without the glaze. With the glaze, it's the perfect cake for cup of coffee or tea, and carries over to make a nice bite for breakfast.  I'm really looking forward to what the rest of the year will bring.