More specifically, mine contained Waterloo Dark beer. The recipe called for stout, but since we keep Waterloo Dark in stock, and we really like it, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

The Beer of Choice in our home

Start by bringing the beer to a boil, which smells terrible, no matter how tasty the beer is when it’s cold. Pour it over the dates. I mis-weighed the dates at the Bulk Barn, so I didn’t have quite enough to make 170g, so I added a couple of apricots and a few raisins. I figured it couldn’t hurt. After the mixture cools, puree it in the food processor.

Mise en Place

Unlike most of the butter cakes in Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, this one has a standard cake mixing procedure: Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then add flour mixture alternately with more liquid, mixing as little as possible after each addition.

Adding dry ingredients

Adding pureed dates and beer

I honestly found the stand mixer to be more of an annoyance than a help after the first couple of additions, because the flour mixture would get caught in the middle of the whisk attachment, and never actually mix into the rest of the batter, so I ended up doing the final couple of mixing steps by folding them in by hand with a spatula.

Baked cake

I think this is the first sheet cake we’ve baked from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, and I discovered that what I thought was a 9×13″ pan is actually about 10×13, so my cake came out a little thinner than it should have. It took about 25 minutes total to bake.

Next, make the toffee sauce. Since I wasn’t planning on serving this right away, I waited until after the cake was out of the oven and I’d taken care of a few other things before starting on the toffee. Rub vanilla pod seed goo into sugar, melt it with butter.

Making the toffee sauce

Then add heavy cream and lemon juice. The lemon juice was an unexpected twist, but it really cut the sweetness and richness in an amazingly delicious way. I decided that creme fraiche and toasted pecans would just be gilding the lily.

This is the product of my Sunday afternoon.

An afternoon's work

This is the treat I got to enjoy after supper.

Yum!

I brought the remainder of the cake into work today, and everyone loved it — the sauce especially got rave reviews. One of my co-workers decided he’d only have a quarter of the piece… then had another quarter… then another one…

PS: I think the leftover sauce will be perfect on vanilla ice cream, don’t you?!

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.

Yum!

The bulk of the flavour in this cake is in the lemon mousse filling, but the actual cake component is in making the ladyfingers to line the pan. I figured since this was the only real cake-y part, I’d make them from scratch, so I can knock another recipe off the list.

First step of Mise en Place for Ladyfingers

You start by beating egg yolks and sugar to the ‘ribbon’ stage. This means that when you lift the beater from the batter, the batter falls from the beater in thick ribbons, as opposed to a stream of droplets. When that’s done, add some water and vanilla, and beat that in until it thickens up again. Then fold in the flour.

Folding flour into fluffy egg yolk mixture

Beat egg whites, cream of tartar and sugar into a stiff meringue, as we’ve done so many times before.

Meringue components for Ladyfingers

Add some of the meringue to the egg yolk/flour mixture, to lighten it up.

Folding meringue into yolk mixture

Fold in the rest of the meringue gently but thoroughly, and you’ve got a completed ladyfinger batter.

Completed ladyfinger batter

You have your icing sugar (told you I was Canadian) and a sheet pan with parchment paper (with your guides marked out on the underside), ready, right? The oven’s preheated too, right?

Icing sugar and sheet pan ready to go

Pipe a bit over an 8″ round circle, if you’re using a 9″ round pan. Since the actual finger shaped ladyfingers will be going on the outside of the bottom portion, it doesn’t need to be the full 9″.

Disk for lining bottom of pan

The little smudge at the top is where I had a gap I had to go back and fill, but since the mousse is going on top of this, who cares? Dust it with powdered sugar, and stick it in the oven. Refill your piping bag, and have a go at the fingers while it bakes.

Baked bottom disk

You want the fingers to be about 3″ long, so make sets of parallel lines, 3″ apart. I didn’t figure that the width of the “fingers” really mattered, so long as they’re touching, so they’re easy to line the mold with.

Baked ladyfingers

I had to trim the bottom disk a bit to get it to fit inside the ring of lady fingers (I guess it spread out a bit during baking), but that left some nice samples for us to eat.

Springform pan, lined with Ladyfingers

There, the cake-y part is ready for the freezer. Now on to the filling!

I uh… only got one picture of this part. It’s not a particularly illuminating picture. Hey, here’s what an uncooked lemon curd looks like!

Lemon curd, before cooking

I used turbinado sugar for my curd. I’m not sure I could really detect the flavour of it, since it was a little overwhelmed by lemon, but that’s ok.

So, once you’ve made the curd, and let it cool, whip up some cream. Fold the whipped cream into the curd, and pour it all into the frozen mold.

5 (I think it might have been 4 for me) hours later, make a meringue, and swirl it prettily on top of the mousse. Put it in the oven under the broiler, and let it burn while you go grab your oven mitts. No wait, don’t do it in that order. Go get your oven mitts, put them on your hands, put the cake in the oven under the broiler, squat in front of the oven, and pull it out before you think it’s done.

Whoops

Or, if you do it in the order I did, scrape the burned top of the meringue off, then put the cake back under the broiler, hope the whole thing hasn’t gone melty yet, and toast it nicely, this time watching it the whole time, with your oven mitts already on your hands. There we go. That’s much better.

Finished Lemon Canadian Crown

Observations:

1. I need my own set of oven mitts, on my side of the kitchen, now that we have two ovens.
2. This was really lemony.
3. I like lemons.
4. I now know what ladyfingers taste like.
5. I like ladyfingers.
6. I like frozen desserts.
7. I’m Canadian, and so’s this cake.
8. This post is really long.

Last weekend, the heavenly cake bakers baked the Chocolate Tomato Cake with “Mystery” ganache. I baked this one the weekend of the apple caramel charlotte, and took them both into work on the Monday, and promptly forgot to blog about it. I didn’t tell anyone there was a secret ingredient (people know to ask me if they have allergies), and nobody mentioned noticing anything unusual. Several people did comment on how nice a big cold glass of milk would be with it. This one was pretty quick and easy to throw together.

Simple butter cake

Smoothed in pans

With the cakes in the oven, it was time to make the ganache. Pretty straightforward: chop the chocolate, heat the cream and soup, add to the chocolate, stir to melt. Waitaminnit. Soup? In ganache?

Peculiarly pink cream

The little bit of soup turned the cream a disturbing pink colour, but I guess that was to be expected. No matter, I could hardly taste it once it was mixed in with the chocolate. I’m not sure whether that should be considered a good thing or not, though. If you’re trying to feature tomato soup in a cake, shouldn’t the cake taste like tomato soup? I don’t know that I’d want to eat such a cake, though, so I think it’s best this way, covered up by the chocolate.

As I said above, none of my coworkers noticed anything unusual about the cake, so I’ll chalk that up as a success. Not sure I’d bother making it again, though.

On to the caramel pineapple pudding cakes! I made this one last weekend. This is the one where I got hardly any pictures… and the ones I have seem to be stuck on my camera. I may reboot and try to add them after I post this.

This cake starts with a brioche. I made it without too many incidents, though it did threaten to eat the contents of my fridge, then threatened to take over my windowsill, then tried to consume the oven. To say this was an active dough was an understatement. Once you have the brioche, you take off the crusts, cut it up into cubes and dry it in the oven. I’m too impatient to use the ‘wait overnight’ option for staling bread.

Cubes dry, move on to making the creme anglaise, to soak the bread cubes in. By the time I got to this point, my Mom was here visiting from New Brunswick, so we got to spend a little time in the kitchen together again, which was nice. I stashed the soaking bread in the fridge while we ate dinner. After dinner, it was time to tackle the caramel and the pineapple. The caramel was all going well until it was time to add the butter. I added the butter, and it bubbled up like crazy, probably hitting some crystallized sugar on the sides of the pan, and the whole thing crystallized into a frothy mess. I poured what I could into the bottom of my ramekins, scraped the rest in more or less evenly, and figured that was ‘good enough’. Mom wondered if I should start the caramel over, and I said that since it was all getting baked, it might dissolve again. From reading everyone else’s posts, I don’t think I was alone in struggling here.

Next up, the pineapple. I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a fresh pineapple, but with Mom’s help, I managed to get something resembling 2 peeled, cored, pineapple quarters. Then it was time to make the roasting syrup for the pineapples. I think I burnt it, just a touch. I carried on anyway, and was going to do the whole roasting and basting thing suggested in the recipe, but instead I decided to slice up my pineapples into the slices and thirds of quarters (12ths?), and just kind of sauté them on the stove top instead. What can I say? I’m lazy, and didn’t feel like babysitting something in the oven for half an hour. Once the pineapple pieces are soft, put them into the bottom of the ramekins.. I added a spoonful of the basting liquid on top of the weird sugary “caramel” stuff, hoping to assist in the dissolving process. Add the soaked bread cubes on top, and bake in a water bath. By the time our dessert was done, it was too late to eat it that night, so I stashed it in the fridge for the next night.

When it came time to unmold, I was expecting a bit of a mess, really. Much to my surprise, they turned out perfectly. The burnt taste from the pineapple syrup wasn’t too strong, and counteracted the sweetness of the weird sugary bits (which didn’t really dissolve, but seemed to kind of work anyway, somehow). Jay’s figured out that he doesn’t like pineapple, and it’s not just a distaste for it on pizza, but he liked this dessert without the pineapple pieces. More pineapple for me! Now I just need to figure out what to do with half a pineapple in my fridge.

This past weekend, I baked the lemon meringue cake. This was one of the ones the other heavenly cake bakers did while we were in the thick of our kitchen renovation. We’re still in process, but we’re getting really close to finished. Pictures soon. For now (since my camera’s not cooperating), let me just leave it at this: Jay won’t let me take this one to work.

First, let me say I was baking this on a weekday evening, so I got none of that lovely natural light that usually makes my pictures look better than my photography skills should normally allow. They’re all using the flash. Second, my workspace was a mess, so my pictures are zoomed in way close to hide that fact. Luckily, this is definitely a quick and easy cake, especially if you take the shortcut of using pre-ground almonds.

Mise en Place

So, basically, you put the almonds, turbinado sugar, flour, lemon zest and some other dry ingredients I don’t remember in the mixer. Add your butter and some of sour cream, and mix well, “to build structure”. Add the egg/sour cream/vanilla in a couple of additions.

Adding the egg mixture

Once the eggs are mixed in, spread it in your pan.

Ready for the oven

Bake it, then poke it all over with holes for syrup.

Ready for syruping

You may notice my marshmallow roasting stick there. This worked well for the holes. I forgot to mention the other week — Leftover caramel ganache makes a really good chocolate base for smores. We have a (legal, permitted) firepit in our backyard, and regularly have friends over for weekend fires. A couple weeks ago, I guess we got a bit peckish and decided to dig out the marshmallows. I found some graham wafers, so went looking for some good chocolate to use when I remembered the ganche. Yum! Since it’s already slightly soft due to the added cream, it worked really nicely.

For the lemon syrup, I couldn’t find my little plastic hand juicer thingy, so I ended up juicing my lemon by hand. I was surprised at how much juice I managed to get out with very little effort, so I might just end up giving away the juicer when I do find it. One less thing to clutter my new cabinets if they ever arrive.

Ready for eating!

Once the syrup is applied, it’s ready for eating! I made it on the Thursday before Labour Day, then we waited to cut into it until Friday night, when we brought it to our friends’ cottage. It was a big hit. Between 5 of us, we ate more than half the cake Friday night, and the rest disappeared the next morning. Jay’s convinced there has to be some way to improve it, though. He wants me to keep making it until I find a way.

Baby Lemon Cheesecake

This recipe begins by making a biscuit, which acts as the crust for the cake. It amused me that in this case, the biscuit name is actually literal — bis (meaning twice) and cuit (meaning cooked). It’s baked once on its own, then goes into the oven again as the base of the cheesecake. I’m easily amused.

Mise en place for biscuit

For the biscuit, you basically beat egg yolks and sugar until very light and fluffy, mix in flour and vanilla, beat egg whites into a meringue, then fold the two together, spread into a sheet pan, and bake.

Baked Biscuit

Let that cool, which doesn’t take long because it’s so thin, then cut into rounds, about the size of the bottom of whatever you’re baking this in. I had leftovers, which I stashed in the freezer. Hopefully the texture won’t suffer too much.

Leftover biscuit

Once you’ve lined the bottoms of your molds, get the cheesecake batter ready: sour cream, cream cheese, lemon juice, and eggs. I halved the recipe, because my silicone cupcake liners are about half the size called for in the recipe. In retrospect, this is probably why they baked up much quicker than the recipe called for.

Mise en place for cheesecake

Pour the batter into the molds, then fill the outer pan with hot water for a water bath.

Into the oven we go

After baking, and when the cakes have had a chance to chill in the fridge, make the lemon curd. I didn’t take any good pictures of this process, so you’ll just have to use your imagination. Spread the lemon curd as evenly as you can on the cakes, then chill again for a couple of hours before attempting to unmold.

Finished Cheesecakes

Jay really enjoyed these, and as I said above — anything that hints of cheesecake isn’t allowed to leave the house, so his was the only feedback I got. He thought they might be better with a more solid crust, but I think that’s because the temptation with anything ‘cupcake’ size is to want to eat it with your fingers. These are just a bit messy for that. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with these, but they weren’t my favourite dessert ever or anything. They don’t contain nearly enough chocolate for that.

Mise en Place

This recipe, again, follows Rose’s standard butter cake method. Mix dry ingredients with sugar, add some liquid and the butter, beat, then add eggs and the rest of the liquid in 2 stages.

After mixing the butter and most of the sour cream into the dry ingredients, I was almost certain that I’d done something horribly wrong. Look at the “batter”! I could make cookies out of that!

It looks like a dough!

I knew that mixture would never beat up to the point of light and fluffy, so I added a splash or two of the egg mixture to smooth it out a bit before the “beat for 1 1/2 minutes” step. That helped tremendously, and I moved along to adding the rest of the egg mixture with no major mishaps.

Swoosh!

I spread the batter in my boring old Bundt pan (go look at Raymond or Nancy‘s blogs to see the beauty that a bundt cake can be).

Doesn't look like much...

After it comes out of the oven, you poke it with a stick (ok, skewer, but that’s not as much fun to say), then drown it in lemon syrup. Ta-da!

I love the light that comes in this window. I think it's the only thing I like about this kitchen.

Then go feed your hungry co-workers. At least, I think they must be hungry, because my plate always comes home with nothing but crumbs on it, and sometimes it doesn’t even have many of those.

Anton said it was refreshingly lemony. Sergey said it had a “moist skin”, and came back for a small second sliver later in the afternoon. Matt said “The whole thing is moist.” Adam got the last piece again, and scraped most of the crumbs off the serving plate. Martin took two pieces, claiming he had someone visiting, but I think he just wanted both for himself. Jay agrees with Marie‘s husband Jim and says “I wouldn’t know”. To be fair to me, though, I asked if he wanted a piece and he said “Does it have frosting?”. I looked at him and looked at the cake and said “Does it look like it does?” “Take it to work.” I don’t think he likes poppy seeds. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about the quantity of poppy seeds, but I’m glad I made the recipe as written. I really liked the texture they provided.

My favourite non-fiction books!

Curd Mise en Place

See all the lemon zest in there under the strainer? Yeah, I misread the recipe and used all of my zest there, rather than saving some for the cake. Oops. On to cooking the curd. Our kitchen has such bad lighting that I couldn’t tell when it went from translucent to opaque, but I can see it clearly now in the pictures!

Translucent

Opaque!

As someone else mentioned, once you’ve done this sort of thing a few times, it becomes fairly intuitive as to when it’s properly cooked. It doesn’t even take as much practice as you might expect.

Next day was making the cake layers. I decided to do the entire batch in a single 12″ square pan. This way I could cut it in half, torte each half, and stack it all up. This also meant I could cut it ahead of time into little individual portions (picture later). The cake is a fairly standard butter cake, but the addition of white chocolate provides a wonderful tenderness.

Cake Mise en Place

I expected the batter to take me a little longer to mix up than it did, so I ended up having to keep the prepared cake sitting on the counter for a bit while I waited for a sourdough loaf to finish baking. It turns out I didn’t wait long enough and the sourdough ended up doughy, but my husband and I are enjoying it as toast. So, into the prepared pan the batter goes. I put a flower nail upside down in the centre of the pan first, as a bit of a heating core. The batter was so thin in the pan that I was sure this would be next to impossible to torte, but I forged ahead anyway.

12 inch square with flower nail

The cake came out perfectly level with a beautiful crumb.

Cut cake with sourdough in background

So, I stacked the layers with a piece of greaseproof cardboard in between, wrapped them up and stored them overnight in the fridge.

Next up: the white chocolate lemon buttercream!

I took my mise en place pictures twice. See if you can spot where I went wrong, before I re-read the recipe and fixed my mistake.

Buttercream Mise en Place 1

Buttercream Mise en Place 2

If you guessed that I should be using the saucepan for simmering water instead of directly for melting my butter, white chocolate and scraped vanilla beans, you guessed right!

Now, if you read my previous post, you know that despite fixing that error, I still had problems at this stage. Something caused my white chocolate to seize. I tried beating it back together with my hand mixer, but it didn’t help at all. Since adding eggs was the next step, I gradually beat those in, using my electric hand mixer, and ended up with a smooth and creamy custard. I was too embarrassed and frustrated to take a picture of the broken mess, but I’m really glad I didn’t throw it out. For one thing, it would have been an hour round-trip to get replacement white chocolate, and I definitely wouldn’t have finished the frosting that evening.

White Chocolate Custard Base, fixed!

After letting that reach the required temperature, then cooling it down, you beat up the butter, then beat the custard into that. I absolutely loved the flavour of this frosting at this stage. I said to my husband, “I really don’t like white chocolate, but I think this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” It was like licking the beaters from vanilla cake batter, but without the uncooked flour & egg taste. Seriously fantastic, and I think it’s going to become my go-to frosting for a cake that doesn’t require a solid white base for decorating. Since this was going on a lemon cake, though, I forged ahead and added the lemon curd, though I have to admit I didn’t wait 2 hours.

I did put the frosting into the fridge overnight, and tackled assembly the next day.

Assembled cake

My assembled cake doesn’t look all that great, but it doesn’t look too bad after cutting off the sloppy edges and cutting it up into servings.

Woody's Lemon Luxury Layer Cake

You can see my leftover bits of baby chocolate oblivion there, too. I added a little swirl of a peanut butter buttercream sort of thing. I basically took a recipe for “Reese’s peanut butter filling” and beat in some butter to thicken it up a bit and smooth it out to my tastes. The chocolate Oblivions and lemon layer cake were both big hits at our party, and I think my cousins went home with too much sugar and holding their stomachs. My coworkers finished up the handful of leftovers today at work.