Heavenly Cake - Free Choice Cake - Golden Lemon Almond

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After all the praise this simple cake has garnered I knew it would have to land on our free-choice plate at some point before all things come to an end.

Dry ingredients.

Batter less the eggs. I find that the beaters tend to overly attract lemon zest whenever it is called for. Make sure to scrape all of it off the beaters, it hides there under a blanket of the batter!

Ready to go.

I added some amaretto to the sugar syrup for some extra almond flavor. 

It was golden and it was glorious!

 It totally lives up to all the hype.

Heavenly Cake - Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

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I was California Dreaming this morning with a slice of this lovely cake.

The delicious "almond gunk." I could not get almond past so I used marzipan. Thanks to Jennifer  for the tip!

I used Anjou pears. I would have preferred had they been softer.

Batter, stage 1.

Making my "ring" depression.

Fill with said almond gunk.

Layer the pears. Did I do this right? 

As you can see, the pears did not sink to the bottom as they were supposed to. Perhaps my almond gunk was to cold or perhaps the shape of the pan restricted them from sinking? At any rate, the almond gunk did not sink either.

Pop her in the toaster.

I  made this for the community service kick-off at a local girls High School. The cake on the left

 is a whipped cream cake. I also made a third cake, another Swedish Pear, so we could try it too! :)

Conclusions: Delicious! My wife felt that it was too much like a plain butter cake and the little almond pocket was to intense. Next time, she says, we should just add the almond gunk to the batter and mix it in. I dunno, I am perfectly satisfied with it.

Heavenly Cake - The Bostini

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Oh my, these are seriously sinful. Shamefully, I never heard of a boston cream pie before so I did not realize at first what we were deconstructing.

Mis en place:

Add orange and eggs to dry ingredients. This is before adding the meringue.

After the meringue.

Pop em' in the toaster.

Mis en place 2: the pastry cream.

The egg mixture.

Sugar, spice... everything nice.

Just about ready to pour into the eggs.

Pastry cream. Magnifique!

Prepare the cups. It only filled six of my cups. I would have had to make a double recipe of pastry cream. That's O.K. we ate about six of those addictive little orange sponges anyway.

I used the scale for nearly everything in this recipe. It is just easier.

Prepare the cups.

Don't use too many fingers to lick the chocolate...

To your health! קע''ה 

My conclusions: The orange chiffon cakes are absolutely wonderful all by themselves and the pastry cream is truly delicious. The chocolate coating, on the other hand, was a bit too rich for my tastes (all that butter.) I think a regular ganache or the chocolate coating from the ice cream cake recipe would have suited me just fine. All together these make an absolutely magnificent dessert that really lend an air of festivity to whenever it is served. 

I felt like Napoleon did...

Heavenly Cake - Angel Food Cake, the way it was wanted.

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Just a little plain angel food cake to temp you. 

Ripples in a billowing egg white sea.

I learned a good lesson here. Do not attempt to eat angel food cake before it cools down. It tastes terrible!   The texture has not settled completely and it tastes like a wet, soggy mush. I almost threw it out. The next morning it tasted just like regular angel food cake.

In Jewish tradition, the Manna (מן) that G-d sent down to the Israelites in the dessert was food of angels, a physical precursor the to the heavenly law that they would receive and were supposed to internalize. The Manna got completely digested to the point where there was no bodily refuse, just as G-d's law is completely pure and just. ה  לְכוּ, לַחֲמוּ בְלַחֲמִי – משׁלי ט, ה "Come and partake of my bread" - Proverbs 9:5 This was actually a cause of some contention as some people felt that at some point they were simply going to explode! Thinking: "There is no such thing as a person that just takes in but does not give out!"

Heavenly Cake - Splendiferous Quick Bread

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This was parve and delicious. I would have preferred it a tad sweeter or more aromatic. Maybe next time I'll use dark brown sugar and/or perhaps vanilla sugar.

Mis en place:

I left the flour out of the mis en place since I  have gone off the deep end and bought 75 pounds of flour in large open bags in the kitchen (with curious little kids around to boot.)

Dry ingredients.

Wet ingredients. I used light brown muscavado.

I used the food processor for this and made a double recipe as well (I was almost 100% sure I would like it and was not disappointed.)

Add flour, nuts etc.

The short fat pan took 30 minutes while the long thin one took 45-50 minutes to bake.

Hardy

Laurel

Unlike other HC Bakers, I felt like this was a bit of a hassle to make. All the vegetables type objects made this lean outside  the realm of the "baking zone." Perhaps Pretzel-Rod Sterling dictates the world I bake in...

Heavenly Cake - Lava Cakes

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These cakes are all the rage in N.Y. We order them every time we go out (um, that would be our bi-annual date...) On a different note, aren't children wonderful? :)

I believe that says: "I love you because you bake with me." The blue bowl has challah dough in it.

Mis en place.

Preheat your toaster and use the top for your "double boiler."

Whisk in your eggs and such.

"Fold" in the meringue. I am still not sure how you are supposed to "fold" with a whisk. There was only enough batter for 5 ckes. By the second batch, the batter had deflated a bit.

Must... resist... finger... poke... of.. madness... ...

Now that I know how easy these are to make, we can stay home indefinitely. Or, maybe we can just order something else. ;)...

Verdict: Delish! I truly believe that you have to have this al a mode in order to get the full textural juxtaposition of the hot, molten chocolate, firm, chocolate cake and cold, smooth ice-cream.