Heavenly Cake - Chocolate Cake with Caramel Ganache

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The ganache really stole the show with this cake.

Mis en place:

Dry ingredients and cocoa.

Before the eggs.

Ready to go in.

I'm really not sure what I did wrong here but the cakes crumb turned out very dense. I even measured the ingredients and everything. Maybe I did not bake it long enough.

Heat the sugar for the caramel.

Pour the cream etc.

What a fantastic ganache! I bet this would go well with a lot of other cakes. Really classic.

Heavenly Cake - Strawberry Shortcake

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To bad I could not find marion berries as It would have been really nice to try them.

Mixing the batter.

They got a little overdone. Remember to adjust the baking time for cupcakes. There is also not really enough room in a cupcake to dig out a proper hole for the berries.

I mixed some of the left over strawberry juices into the whipped cream for a pink tinge. I had to do a second batch of whipped cream since it was not enough.

Getting a little cake baking burn out. Not enough time for bread baking. I have been attempting to find the time and headspace to make sourdough pumpernickel bread for awhile now...

I am looking forward to (eeek) that apple charlotte though. Any cake with a cut out diagram has got to be a little work intensive. Maybe I'll make it for Rosh Ha'shana (Jewish New Year.)

Fresh Yeast Challah

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Marcy Goldman was right! Fresh yeast really does make challah more pillowy. I have discovered that the secret to a creamy crumb (in between bready and doughy) challah is using a good portion of all purpose flour.

Heavenly Cake - Chocolate Feather-ish Cookie-Type-Cake with Chocolate Sludge

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It tastes better than it looks. :)

Egg whites.

Egg Yolks and chocolate. I only made a half recipe so it was a little bit difficult to mix.

I made this parve. I only had an hour to make this cake and after the cake was ready there was only 10 minutes to sundown on Friday (when the Jewish Sabbath starts and all appliances must be turned off.) I just did not have time to wait for the Rich Whip to defrost properly so I could whip it, even with the time saving option. I mixed it in to the hot chocolate and hoped for the best. It turned into this lovely sludge. :)

However, when I applied it to the cake it started to behave a bit better. I also  over baked the cake by 5 minutes so it was a somewhere between a cookie and a cake. It still had a bit of the "feather bed" type quality so the effect it was supposed to have was not completely lost. I applied some sludge, folded it over, added some more sludge, folded again. Chocolate Shavings? As we say here in Brooklyn, "fugedaboudit!" This would definitely make an awesome passover cake.

In the end, the "sludge" really tasted like ganache. The only thing I would change is to use the 55% chocolate and not the 72% that I ended up using. It was a bit too intense and rich.

My wife's fabulous Potato Kugel. BTW, she is still planning to post something on this blog for my b-day if she can...

The reason I had so little time to make this was that I went into Manhattan to try and find greengage plums and Marion berries. No Luck! Sorry Marie, even in the big city they are hard to find.  I may have to mail order. They did however have 6 different kinds of pluots.. Seeing that fellow HCB Monica seemed to have good luck with these, I decided I would go give it a go. I went with the "Mango Tango Pluots," since they are green. The "Dark Sweet Pluots" were the ones really calling me though. All of them were $3.99 a pound.

Delish!

Heavenly Cake - Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Cake

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This was an easy and delicious cake. The way the fresh blueberries transform into a creamy blueberry top is almost magical. The taste of the plum offsets the blueberries nicely.I had no problem having one slice (and then another) when it was warm and fresh out of the oven. It goes nicely warm with some vanilla ice cream.  Classic and homey. I will definitely make this one again. I wonder what the greengage plums would do to it...

Heavenly Cake - Lemon Meringue Cake

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I knew that blow-torch would come in handy!

Lemon curd. Takes me about half an hour at the stove to make a batch, around 10pm.

Ran out of bowls so I had to put the egg-yolk mixture in a pyrex container. around 12am

Around 1am. I did not want to bake this in two batches in the toaster (the second sponge always collapses a little and it was getting late, er I mean, early. ) I used a cake strip to try and keep the shape from getting unruly. It expanded outwards over the top of the pan so I lost some height, but at least it was a reasonable shape and did not have a large hill on top to cut off. I cut off the outer edge, top and bottom to apply the syrup. The cake strip saved me most of the height, I think.

Spread with lemony yum.

This cake was absolutely scrumptious! I took it as a gift to friends we were visiting. The wife had sworn off of sugar and is only eating agave so she did not touch this cake. The husband and their kids though were mighty appreciative (my wife and kids as well.)  I bet she's having second thoughts now about her whole off-the-sugar kick! She has challenged me to substitute agave in my baked goods next time we go there. This, from someone who made her kids last chocolate-birthday-cake using honey and whole-wheat flour... 

3am, bring out the blow-torch!

Roasted agave anyone?