Heavenly cake - Miettes Tomboy

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My lemon canadian crown post

This week I made Miettes Tomboy. It was A fantastic chocolate cake!

Mis en place:

My helper

The 'Ez Man' was with us for moral support and beater licking.

The super market near us, that has not enough baking supplies I now call 'half - baked'. They did not have any plain dutch process cocoa. They did, however, have Hershey's Special dark cocoa which is partially dutch process. We were quite pleased with the result actually. It had a terrific texture and a nice dark chocolate taste.

Ready for baking. It only filled up 1/4 of my 9 by 2 inch pan.

Nonetheless, after some time in the toaster, it looked like this. :) I did use a cake strip, which, I am sure helped a bit.

In better light.

Making moussline is always fun. As usual, I cut the butter in half for a more intense flavor. I forgot to add the vanilla again. Drat! It still tasted fab.

We could not find a candy rose lying about so I put a lollipop a-top.

Happy 4th!

Heavenly cake - Puddin' Cake

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This cake was O.K. but something of a disappointment. The cake had tuff, chewy pieces in it and the flavor was just so so. The toffee was too lemony and, at any rate, I didn't have any more muscavodo.

The dates and beer.

I did process the dates for a good while. I am surprised they still gave tuff texture. I am not sure it was really the dates. Perhaps it was nutmeg pieces from the nutmeg mill I used.

The batter and the dates.

Ready for the toast...

The worst part is that we also found a bug in the cake. Not Kosher!! Needless to say we threw out the cake. Oh, well I must be loosing my touch being so out of practice baking, having moved and all.

My bookshelves are set up. Now for some lighting...

I don't know if it seems worth it to me to make the red fruit cake. The genoise is from another recipe and the fruit, is well, just fruit and does not seem to challenge enough.

Brioche 2011 and mis en place for a Heavenly Cake

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Well, the cake is not done yet. Here is some brioche I made recently though, for the Shavuout holiday. I have come to the conclusion that Rose's Brioche Recipe is the best! I have made several versions of brioche from 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice' and Rose's is just all that much better.

This is about as far as I got tonight. Mis en place! I'll have to try and finish tomorrow.

And here are some random flowers from our new neighborhood. I was disappointed to see that the fancy big suburban supermarket in our new dig has mostly cake mixes, whereas the overcrowded urban store in our old brooklyn neighborhood had what I can consider now a nice selection of baking supply goods.   

Rose! If you are reading this, we still are only 1/2 hour drive from brooklyn in West Hempstead, LI! You are welcome to drop by anytime. :)

Old link

I have been so overwhelmed. I hope to post something this week if I can. In the mean time here is the link to my attempt at the mud turtle cupcakes.


Mud turtle cupcakes

Heavenly cake - Chocolate Raspberry Trifle

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Here is the link to my Swedish Pear Almond Cake:

Better late than never.

A lovely trifle. Very good chocolate and raspberry flavors. Nothing, when compared in taste to the honore trifle though...

Slicing and spreading.

In case you were wondering, no our kitchen is not set up yet...

The chocolate. It would have been better with a higher percentage chocolate.

 The creme englaise turned out a little weak for my taste.

 The genoise seemed to get a good height but them seemed a little dense. Perhaps it was all the chocolate or perhaps it was because I did not use Wondra, as I usually do.

Checking the raspberries for (non-kosher) bugs by soaking them in cold water and dish soap (found two or three...)

Composing...

Dear old toasty is up and running again.

Tiramisu and Hand Whipping Egg Whites

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We have wanted to make the Tiramisu from Rose's Heavenly Cakes for a long time. This was just fabulous!

It has taken a long time to start and un-pack after then move. First the move, then Passover then a project with a deadline at work. All of the sudden, I check up with the Heavenly cake bakers and Marie is on the last cake! Ack! How did time go by so quickly? I had meant to try and jump back in. Oh well, very glad to continue along with the rest of you HCB who are still going to do it.

Really mad props to all of you Heavenly Cake Bakers who finished and a hefty Mazel Tov! to Marie for orchestrating the whole thing. Not sure how we will continue without your wry wit and encouragement. :)

I still can not find where I packed the camera cord, so you'll have to enjoy my cell-phone shots. 

Mis en place:

Getting to this mis en place took a lot of effort. It went something like this.

"Honey, where is the vanilla?"

"I don't know. But I just found the vanilla sugar and vanilla beans."

 After unpacking a couple boxes:

"Hey I found the Vanilla! Do you know where the instant espresso is?"

"I don't know"

 After unpacking a couple boxes:

"Hey I found the espresso! Do you know where the Sunbeam is? 

"I don't know"

 After unpacking a whole bunch of boxes, tailing the place apart and only in the end realizing that the movers had put it in the attic for some reason:

"Hey I found the Sunbeam!" 

My trusty dairy Oster toaster was, of course, moved by myself in our car, not wanting the movers to mess with it.

Finding Kosher Marsala was a miracle in its own right.

Eggs wine sugar...

The new kitchen window. :)

The "Ez Man" was with me for moral support..." This is at my mothers house. I promised I would make her a Jansci Torta for Passover. I buy the ingredients and ask her where her kosher for Passover hand mixer is. "Oh, I don't have one." Um, how about a whisk? No, sorry. Forks? "Yes, we have forks! You don't mean to say you plan on whipping it by hand do you?" That is exactly what I planned. If Joe Pastry says you can do it, I knew it could be done. At any rate, it was Passover and I was trying to celebrate the idea of the Jewish sage who said "Some people say, if you can't go through, go over. I say, jump over to begin with!" In under twenty minutes in fact! I took pictures with my other camera, but alas, I can't find the cord. :( At first I whipped with two forks back to back. Then i realized that it got very heavy and it was easier to just use one. My sister than came in and, when finding out my mother did not have a mixer, was about to get upset. "I'll whip it for you by hand!" I selflessly offer, saving the day. My arm ached for the whole next day but it was totally worth it! I got lots of praises on the cake, even if I did not get quite as high a rise out of the eggs (I was still able to get to stiff peak stage though.) Roses Passover cakes are the best! :)

Scrambled? Maybe. It came out O.K...

I ended up making a second batch of the espresso mixture since I ran out.

Finding 'Chalav Yisrael' type Kosher Mascarpone was, again, a miracle. Blend until creamy? Hmm, looks more like cottage cheese. Came out O.K...

The finished topping. It was Really good!!!

Easy to make and really delicious! Highly recommend.

The Moove...

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Some of the book boxes.

We are finally moving tomorrow! Our landlord gave us two months to move out. 2 1/2 months later (ahem) here we are. After Passover (18th - 26th April this year) maybe, just maybe I can get back into baking into time to la'bamba!

The new shtub in West Hempstead. No more Brooklyn for us! There is a Jewish saying, Don't do to others as you would not like done unto you. In Brooklyn the saying seems to be 'Trample unto others, or they shall trample onto you!' I'm still trying to figure out if that is implied somehow by the phrase 'fugedaboudit.'