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?

Heavenly Cake - Chocolate Banana Stud Cake

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This was a birthday cake for my father-in-law.

Mis en place:

I made this cake parve so we could have it with a bbq. Toffuti and bananas. I also made a double recipe so I could make a real layer cake.

Chavi loves chocolate. :)

The one on the right is a make shift cake strip. One of my cake strips became dairy when I tried to make cheese cake with a cake strip instead of a water bath. It actually worked nicely, but the cake strip got totally spattered with cheesy stuff. Perhaps I filled it too high.

The birthday boy. The hat says "Yankees" in Hebrew.

I used Trader Joe's Chocolate chips which are somewhat largish. The white film went away after the cake sat out in the heat for a while. I used banana liqueur for the ganache.

Have a mental piece of cake. This cake came out rich and chocolaty with a perfect texture. I added 3 1/2 tablespoons of cocoa to the double recipe. I also weighed the dry ingredients on my new scale. Even if you were to find fanaticism in didactic measuring a fault you can't beat the ease of just pouring straight from the box into the mixing bowl.

Heavenly Cake - Vanilla Bean Pound Cake - Post Reference

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Please see the post below for this week's Heavenly Cake post.

Heavenly Cake - Vanilla Bean Pound Cake

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Yummy pound cake...

Mis en place.

pinch the vanilla into the sugar.

"אֶת-חֲטָאַי, אֲנִי מַזְכִּיר הַיּוֹם." -"My sins do I recall today." - Genesis 41:9; All those times I measured the flour with out a scale... Here is my shtotty new scale. It was a gift from the missus (along with a scrape-a-bowl and a williams sonoma apron.) So far it was useful for measuring the flour. ;)

I wonder how this one compares to the beater blade. It's got this sort of curvy thing going on...

Mix mix...

One of the nice things about using real vanilla bean is that you can see the specks of vanilla in the cake.

I could not find the vanilla cognac so I used Amaretto instead. It complemented nicely.

Lemonade anyone?

Heavenly Cake - Chocolate Ice Cream Cake

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This was a real treat! The ice cream cake was still soft even though it was in the freezer. Amazing!

Mis en place

Eggs and chocolate.

Dry ingredients.

Ready to bake.

Smells yum!

I cut it in half and stuck it in the freezer  (rack and all) so it would be easier to work with. 

Cherry chocolate chunk ice cream. 

I used parve Ice cream so I could eat this after the cholent. I was not up for experimenting with the creation of home-made parve ice cream. I'll have to browse through erstwhile HCB Shoshana's recipes next time...

Wrapped in plastic and in a cake pan to keep the cakes shape (so the ice cream does not spread all over.)

Instead of using a double boiler I simply put this bowl with the chocolate on a warm part of the stovetop and wait 10-15 minutes or so for it to melt.

Mix in the coco powder.

Vroom!  I used 99% Sharffen Berger. Oh Man! What a revelation. Now that's what chocolate is supposed to taste like!

I made this in a regular 9x2 cake pan and figured I would just do the sandwich version. Since I messed up in cutting the cake and sort of cut the cake closer down to the bottom, it cake out more like the cake version. In all honesty, I do not see the difference between the two versions or understand why this should be made in a special larger cake pan. 

Server Issues...

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Having some server issues. Ice cream cake coming up Sunday night, vanilla bean pound cake the next.

Been a bit busy and have not had time to read the heavenly cake posts yet...