I just checked my “heavenly cakes” photo folder, and it looks like this is the 63rd cake I’ve made from Rose’s Heavenly cakes. That’s a lot of cake! This week’s selection was the “cradle cake”. I gather the name comes from the layer of dacquoise that lines the loaf pan, in a cradle shape, with a buttermilk butter cake batter nestled inside. My aunt and uncle were here for dinner and a visit on Friday night, so we took the opportunity to share this little cake with them. They made some commentary on the name, wondering aloud if it had a double meaning. Now that they’re grandparents, I think they want to be great-aunt and great-uncle, too. I think they’re already a pretty great set of aunt and uncle, and don’t need any help in that respect.
Archive for January, 2011
Cradle Cake
Monday, January 31st, 2011Génoise Très Café
Monday, January 24th, 2011Let me preface this post by saying: I can’t stand coffee. I like the smell (I have since I was a kid), but the taste is just awful. Even flavoured coffees just don’t do it for me. That being said, this week’s selection with the Heavenly Cake Bakers is a génoise with coffee three ways, and I’ll admit to having enjoyed it. There’s instant espresso powder in the génoise, then it’s brushed with a coffee liqueur syrup, and frosted with a whipped mocha ganache. Relatively simple ingredients, and a simple procedure, if you’ve been baking along. I think this is the 4th génoise we’ve made. It’s pretty similar to a chiffon, and we’ve made 3 of those, so far. Or at least, I have. Let’s bake!
Eggs, clarified butter, vanilla, sugar, flour, espresso powder, and a prepared pan. The eggs are from my aunt’s hens. I love baking with these!
Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake
Monday, January 17th, 2011It’s another Free Choice week with Rose’s Heavenly Cake bakers. Jay stayed home from work sick on Friday, and still wasn’t feeling like himself on Saturday, so I let him pick the cake for the week. I gave him a few choices from the list of cakes I have left to bake. Heavenly Coconut Seduction, Red Velvet, Apple Cinnamon Crumb Coffee cake and Sicilian Pistachio cake were all on the list. He stopped me at the Coffee Cake and said “That’s it. Don’t bother going any further.”
White Velvet Butter Cake with Milk Chocolate Ganache
Monday, January 10th, 2011I decided to do like Faithy and make this week’s Heavenly Cake Bakers‘ selection from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes as cupcakes. It’s a white cake recipe that I’ve made many times before, and I absolutely love it. In fact, I made it for my cousin’s wedding cake a year and a half ago. It’s in The Cake Bible, as one of the handful of recipes that have the “Rose Factor” charts for scaling to just about any size and of pan. I’d never made a milk chocolate ganache though, so I was more than happy to bake this recipe again!
Chocolate Bulls Eye
Monday, January 3rd, 2011I’ve got another confession to make. Unfortunately, this one isn’t a tasty tip like IKEA chocolate. This one is that I had last week off work, and I still managed not to find the time to write up last week’s cake, from the Heavenly Cake Baker’s group. Last week’s cake was the cranberry crown cheesecake. After all my angst about trying to figure out what should be used for the base, I neglected to post about it after it was baked. In fact, after checking all of my ingredients for their sodium content, picking the lowest sodium cream cheese, lowest sodium sour cream, leaving out the salt, and calculating what the max sodium content might be if I cut it into 12 pieces (about 250 mg, if I did the math right), I neglected to take the cheesecake to my family’s Christmas celebration up at my uncle’s house (about a 1.5 hr drive from our place).
Some of you may remember that my grandfather’s been having health issues off and on over the last year, and the doctors have finally made it known that he should be on a very-low-to-no-sodium diet. Congestive heart failure can apparently be mitigated by eliminating sodium. Who knew? Anyway, he’s been turning down food left and right because “nothing tastes very good”, so I thought this cheesecake might go down well. Well, Christmas morning, at about 9ish, we were about an hour from home, and I said to my husband, “I forgot the cheesecake.” He offered to drop me off at the farm (my grandparents’ home – adjacent farm to my uncle’s) and turn around and go home for it, but that just didn’t seem worth it. When we walked in at my uncle’s place, after I greeted my cousins and removed boots, etc, my husband asked my aunt if I’d told her my sad news. She looked quite concerned, and when I told her I’d forgotten the cheesecake, her face dropped. “I only stayed awake all night thinking about cranberry cheesecake.”
Oh well. Here it is, before I forgot it in the fridge.
Now let’s talk about this week’s cake.




