This week’s heavenly cake bakers selection is from the “quick and easy” list, so this is going to be a “quick and easy” post for a “quick and easy” cake. It’s called chocolate velvet fudge cake, and I’d almost be inclined to call it a chocolate pound cake. Quite dense, not dry, but I wouldn’t say it’s particularly moist either, and yes, kind of fudge like.
Category: Baking
Lemon Canadian Crown
The “Lemon Canadian Crown” is a frozen lemon dessert. Its name apparently comes from the fact that the recipe is from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Canadian in-laws. I figured since it has “Canadian” in the name, it was my national duty to make this week’s cake, as the only Canadian participant that I’m aware of in the Heavenly Cake Bakers group.
The cake is somewhat similar to a baked Alaska, in the sense that it’s a frozen dessert, with a sponge cake base, topped with meringue and baked to brown the meringue. There, the similarities end.
Chocolate Génoise with Whipped Peanut Butter Ganache
Like many, I wondered how this week’s heavenly cake bakers selection would work. It seems an odd combination of flavours — chocolate, black raspberry liqueur, and peanut butter. Chocolate and peanut butter, I get, completely, but add black raspberry into the mix? That being said, when Marie, our host, likened it to a peanut butter and jam sandwich with chocolate bread, it clicked.
When I went looking for Chambord at the LCBO, I knew I only needed a couple of tablespoons of the stuff. There was no way I was about to pay $40+ for a big bottle of Chambord when I only needed two tablespoons. We looked around for anything that we figured would work well with peanut butter and chocolate. We determined that it pretty much had to be a berry flavour. My husband spotted this:
At $15 a bottle, I was willing to give this Framboise (raspberry dessert wine) a shot. Plus, hey, it’s from just down the highway, instead of coming across the ocean, which I’m always in favour of. When the cashier asked if we’d tried it before, I replied that we hadn’t, and she informed me that it was really flavourful. “Perfect!”
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Movember Cupcakes
Several of my colleagues are participating in Movember. What’s Movember, you ask? Well, in order to raise awareness of Men’s Health and funds for prostate cancer research, they’re growing moustaches in the month of November. Well, some of them are trying to, at least. I uh.. don’t have the right hormones to participate directly, so when I saw the Manly Cupcake challenge at C&C Cakery, I thought, “Cupcakes. Now there’s something I can do.”
The rules are pretty simple. You have to post your recipe, pictures, and links to the challenge details and prize sponsors on your blog.
Here are the sponsors.
The Manly Cupcake Contest Prize Sponsor’s Include:
- Blush Printables– a $15 electronic gift card
- Hello Hanna – A pack of Sweet Stands (for every finalist)
- Elise Steven’s Illustration and Design – a hand-painted ornament featuring our mascot, Colonel Cupcake.
- Taraduff – a handmade bearded beanie
- Miss Kitty Creations – a special edition Tuxedo Cupcake Charm
- Bella Cupcake Couture – one pack of Cupcake Wrappers for each finalist and one extra for our grand prize winner
- Drama Llama – a handmade secret stuffie
- My Creative Side – Two dozen Mustaches on sticks
I figure that I’ll support my coworkers in their endeavour. You can donate to their campaign at their mo space.
Ok, preamble done. Let’s bake!
Ginger Cheesecake with Gingerbread Crust
I’m a little late on this post, but I baked the cake early! This week is another free choice week with the heavenly cake bakers. My husband had a halloween potluck at work on October 28, and he was tasked with dessert. I’m the dessert person in our house, so he asked if I could make something. I gave him the list of unbaked cakes, and told him to pick something. He headed straight for the cheesecakes, and came up with this one.
Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake
I had quite a conversation about the name of this cake with a friend/coworker and my husband. The friend came over to make use of some tools and (my husband’s, not my) expertise with replacing the rotors on his (girlfriend’s) car. After the guys took the car for a test drive, they came inside to chat, and I offered up some cake. The two of them ganged up on me a bit over the title of the cake. The exchange went something like this:
“What kind of cake is it?”
“Swedish pear and almond cream cake”
“Does it have Swedish pears in it?”
“No, Bartlett pears.”
“Well, does it have cream in it?”
“er.. no..”
“What about almonds?”
“Well, it has ‘almond cream’ in it.”
“Then you should call it Swedish … pear … and … almond cream … cake, not Swedish pear … and almond … cream cake.”
So, when we went out for dinner later with this couple later, and the girlfriend asked what kind of cake it was this weekend, I was very explicit in my pauses in the title. 😛
The Bostini
This weekend’s choice with the heavenly cake bakers was The Bostini. This cake is supposed to be a deconstruction of a boston cream pie. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually had Boston Cream Pie, but I have had Boston Cream doughnuts from Tim Hortons. I can say with certainty that this is nothing like those, and I can’t say that’s a bad thing. Heck, their chocolate glaze doesn’t even taste like it has any chocolate in it.
Angel Spice Cake
First, I just wanted to say thanks for all of your lovely comments on our kitchen pictures. It’s somewhat gratifying to know that our efforts weren’t just to our own tastes, but other people like the look of the changes. 🙂
This week’s selection with the Heavenly Cake Bakers group is angel food cake “any way you like it”. Rose provides a recipe for a single egg white, telling you that it will scale up to 1 egg white per cup of pan capacity. Since I always seem to have a stash of egg whites in the freezer, I decided to base the size of my cake on how many egg whites I needed to use up. I had about 300 grams worth, so I multiplied the base by 10. For my version, I decided to add a few spices and see how it tasted as a spice cake.
Many Splendored Quick Bread
You know what I like about being lazy? I can wait for the other bloggers in the heavenly cake bakers group to post their thoughts on something before I even decide to bake it. Plus, I can get ideas on what to tweak so that I’ll like the outcome better. This week’s selection is the “Many Splendored” quick bread. I’m not sure what “splendored” is supposed to mean, and since Firefox’s spell check doesn’t recognize it, I suspect I’m not the only one. 😉 This is a ‘cake’ with zucchini, carrots, oatmeal and bananas. Maybe those are the splendours referred to in the title?
Followup Post with Pictures
So… I think I’ve been walking around in some sort of a daze the last day or so. I couldn’t connect my camera earlier this week to download my pictures, because I was using the wrong cable. Whoops. Who knew that a “charge only” cable for a blackberry wouldn’t work to transfer data off a camera. Duh. I had even checked to make sure I wasn’t using the wrong cable, but apparently I’m blind.
eatsndrinks.ca 