TWD: Dressy Chocolate Loafcake

This cake was a challenge for me. It looked easy. I've been busy lately so easy was perfect for a birthday cake I needed to make for someone at work. And this could have been easy too, but I'm getting ahead of myself.



I had a pan a little longer than suggested. This made getting the baked cake out of the pan and flipping it a little difficult. I should have waited longer than the 5 minutes Dorie suggested for it to cool (I almost lost the whole thing at least twice). I was in a hurry. This would be my downfall the following morning as well.


I didn't quite have the correct plate size. You can see that I've already lost a corner of the cake. I found the raspberry filling a little runny.


Then came the cutting. This is where I made my biggest mistake. Being in a hurry led to the leaning tower of chocolate cake. Also known as "the cake too ugly to serve." At this point, both out of frustration and a lack of time, I wrapped the thing up and went to work. No birthday cake for you, co-worker!



Hating to let a perfectly good cake go to waste, I decided to try again, only this time on a surface that was appropriate for the cake.


After some shaving (and eating the extra bits - yum!) I had a cake that was almost presentable. I cut off the ends to make them even and smaller, and shaved the top to even it out. I hoped with the icing no one would notice how uneven and unattractive the layers were.



I had some delicious left overs. Overall I liked this cake, but as I'm not a big fan of chocolate and raspberry (I know - what's wrong with me) I probably wouldn't make it as is again. A different filling, with more time to cool before taking out of the pan, and better knife skills - I could be persuaded!

So thank you, Amy at Amy Ruth Bakes for this week's pick. Want the recipe - visit Amy for the details!

TWD: Sadly -- not this week

This cake looks delicious, and I really wanted to give it a try. I was enthusiastic despite my shaky relationship with butter cream. I've yet to master it and the thought of trying again gives me nightmares (I'll temper eggs any day rather than try butter cream frosting).

This week the spirit was willing but the schedule was not. I'll eventually get to it, but this week it just isn't in the cards. I look forward to seeing what everyone else does (I'll probably need to wear a bib while visiting y'alls blogs so I don't drool on myself).

My apologies to Carol at mix mix....stir, stir for not baking along this week. She had quite an adventure with her cake and the results look yummy. I look forward to having my own adventure with this cake soon.

TWD: Cinnamon Squares

You know how sometimes you just sit and stew about things? Or wash dishes and stew about things? Or bake and stew about things? Well, that's where I was at when I made this very yummy dessert picked by Tracey at Tracy's Culinary Adventures. Plans continue for Mom's party, and those are going great. The trouble comes when relatives try to throw monkey wrenches into the plans. But that's why we love relatives, right???

Good thing this recipe was easy with all the stewing going on, in addition to the fact that half of my tiny kitchen (I mean TINY) has turned into a photo lab. I use my kitchen table for a variety of tasks, and really need the space when it comes to baking day. But with the photo scanner, little laptop, and pictures and slides o'plenty being cleaned and prepped for a presentation at Mom's party, space is at a minimum. Happily this recipe didn't need a lot of bowls or fuss, so the photo lab remained undisturbed.

How embarrassing!

Lucky for me I find stirring and mixing to be very therapeutic, so before long I was done stewing and enjoying the baking. Everything worked out great in putting this together. It took a little longer than stated to bake (almost an hour), but other than a very golden top, the cake turned out great.


Had a little trouble with the frosting when I put that together -- it got a little runny, so the frosting spent a few minutes in the fridge, and the frosted cake took a quick trip to the freezer to set before cutting this up and bringing it to work for my boss' birthday. My co-workers made quick work of it, and I must admit I was over getting a square or two throughout the day. Very yummy indeed.


Another tasty and easy pick to put in the repertoire. I would definitely make these again.

TWD: "Tiramisu" Cake

This is going to be a pretty quick post, but it's a pretty quick dessert as well. I must confess that the reason the Tiramisu is in quotes is because I'm not a fan of coffee, or any coffee flavored thing. When the Tiramisu craze hit I simply didn't get it. I'm sure if I liked coffee I would, but alas, I don't. The upside of that is I haven't given half of my earnings to Starbucks in the last decade.

I made the cake as instructed, only half the recipe to go into my 6" cake pans. I passed on the syrups. When I took a cake making class a year or so ago just about every cake (scratch that -- every cake) had some kind of liquor based syrup that went on it, so I feel like I've had plenty of experience in that area. I did add a smidge of brandy to the frosting, since it clearly needed some flavor and liquid. I didn't add enough, so a couple of drops of milk had it to the correct consistency prior to adding the whipped cream.


A few left over Nestle' chocolate chips in the middle and a few on top for decoration, and viola! A variation on a cake which is a variation on a dessert I don't like very much. Since it is late, and the cake needs to sit before consumption (I'm assuming the chocolate and the brandy need to make each other's acquaintance and become friends prior to eating) I don't know how it tastes all together. But I can say that the individual components are quite tasty. Since it's a crazy week at work, and I am a stress eater, I'm sure the cake will be gone by this time tomorrow. I'm only kind of kidding.

Many thanks to Megan over at My Baking Adventures for this week's recipe. I enjoyed practicing the cake skills I learned in the aforementioned class and seeing how far I've progressed.

TWD: French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze

Welcome to another "how many minutes 'til midnight?!?!?" TWD posting. Once again I'm starting this near the end of a Tuesday. The lateness of the post has nothing to do with my enthusiasm for this week's pick (thanks to Liliana at My Cookbook Addiction for choosing another non-chocolate, lemon (yay!) dessert). I was really looking forward to it, but made a critical error - I used the last of my oil for dinner Saturday night, didn't realize my error until Monday night (oops!), prompting an emergency after-work stop at the store and the last minute rush for cakey-goodness.

Maybe it was the last minute rush that made me feel like the Swedish chef this evening - instruments going here, flour going there (happily nothing came to life like in this example!). I think I caught myself singing the little song at some point. Regardless of which Muppet I was channeling (usually it's either Waldorf or Statler) this cake was fun. I liked how easy it was, and surprisingly, I really liked how it was mixed by hand (no KitchenAid to do the work). And the aroma - ah, the aroma. My house smelled like a little slice of heaven. After a rough week (yes, I know it's only Tuesday!) I found it all of this very therapeutic.

A small bit of trouble getting the cake out of the pan (whole, that is). I'll just blame that on spending too much time reading other blogs and not enough at reading the directions (take the cake out of the oven and put on rack, NOT put on top of oven on hot baking sheet and walk away). Since this cake isn't going anywhere there's no reason to panic over a little cake left in the pan (a little something to nibble on).

I have no lemon marmalade for the glaze (I want to find some though as it sure sounds good), and my bread pan was a little bigger than the directions, so the end result required a bit of improvising. I do love how Dorie gives some ideas, and other TWDers are so creative and share theirs too. I culled from the group and went with a little lemon curd (store bought from Trader Joe's - not the same as home made, but still very good), with some strawberries for color and variety. I decided not to "curd" the whole cake as I wanted to put some in the freezer, so I only worked with what I wanted to eat.....um.......should eat..... soon.

Since I like the look of pictures with natural light much better than the lousy lighting I have in my kitchen at night, I'll update my photos in the morning (guess what I'm having for breakfast!). This cake is easy and yummy. The only thing I would do differently is either buy almond meal or use all AP flour. The cake was a little nuttier than I liked -- not horrible or anything, just a bit too much -- and I'm sure that has to do with my shabby little grinder not making them fine enough. No worries -- just a great excuse to make this again!

TWD: Devil's Food White-Out Cake

Finally - the cover cake! Thanks to Stephanie over at Confessions of a City Eater for picking this cake (be sure to check out her cute dog!). Everyone over at TWD was very excited about this pick, as was I.

That is until the angst. At first I thought I'd get a head start and make this early. But I work in an industry that's a wee bit busy around February 14th, so that didn't work out. Then, as the days got closer to the 14th, my cubicle world started sounding like a T.B. ward. The coughing, the hacking, the sneezing -- it was only a matter of time before I caught the dreaded company cold.

Since no one wants to eat baked goods from a sick person (well, actually some of my co-workers would, but I want to save them from themselves) I thought I'd do what so many of the creative TWDers do and make a smaller cake. I went over to Great-News (simply the best cooking store in San Diego - hands down!) and bought 6" cake pans. How cute are they!

That was all good until I realized I'd have to do math to cut down the recipe. We've already established I'm not so great at that. So after much head scratching and scribbling, I decided to just go with the full recipe, use the 6" pans, and make cup cakes to freeze for later. Shesh - so much effort and I hadn't even started baking yet!

One of the very cool things I learned in culinary school is how to easily make a round parchment bottom for any sized pan. For my 9" pans I have some cool silicon inserts, but had to use the parchment paper for my new 6" pans. Very easy - just fold the parchment paper in half, then in half again, so now you have a square. Bring one side up to form a triangle (like you're going to cut out a snowflake) and keep going until it's as small as you can make it. Put the triangle at the middle of the pan, and cut to fit. Perhaps everyone knows this trick, but I sure didn't. I was the person tracing the pan on the parchment paper and then cutting it, and re-cutting it, trying to make it fit. This way is easy, breezy.

Because of all of the angst I started this project at my usual 7pm Tuesday night. All seemed well until the frosting stage. Just like many other bakers, my frosting seemed to take a long time. I was beginning to think that Conan O'Brien would be on before I got to the magic 242 degrees. Happily, I didn't have to wait that long!

I think one of the things I like most about this cake, is that it is so forgiving of BHMOTW (bone head moves of the week). Cook the sugar mixture too long and get a slightly brown frosting? No problem! Have a little trouble cutting your cake in two and have a big chunk fall off mid cut? No problem! All of these little mistakes are covered up by the cake crumbles. Genius!

The cake is firming in the fridge, but I did sneak a taste from the cupcake above. The frosting is really yummy and nicely complements the cake. A little too well, I'm afraid, considering I now have a cake all to myself. I wonder what my landlords are doing tomorrow???

See Stephanie's blog for the recipe. It's a keeper!