A Little Bit of All Right

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 boo...

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 ...

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 d...

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 ...

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 the...