August 2010 •

Archive, Cakes, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache

August 30, 2010 5 Comments

Seems so many of the other Heavenly Cake Bakers are disappointed when we bake something chocolatey. This is something I really cannot comprehend. I LOVE chocolate! In fact, one of the reasons I decided to join the Heavenly Cake Bakers was to widen my horizons and force myself to bake more things that aren’t chocolate. But I am always very happy when the assignment involves chocolate.

This week’s assignment was the Chocolate Layer Cake with Caramel Ganache. I made sure to read through the instructions a few times before starting so I wouldn’t have any surprises. Since the ganache needed to sit for several hours I decided to start with that.

The first step to the ganache is making the caramel. I have three little words that I suggest everyone write in the margin of their book: Mis en place! I started heating the water and sugar and thought I would get everything else together while it came up to temp. Only problem was that there wasn’t a whole lot of time and the caramel was starting to darken by the time I finished getting the food processor out, chopping the chocolate and measuring the cream. Next time I will have everything ready before I start the caramel.

Rose instructs you to check the temperature of the caramel which turned into a bit of a challenge. I considered skipping that step but was afraid there might be something magic about 370 degrees so I figured I had better do it to avoid any problems. I had to tip the hot pan to get enough liquid for the thermometer and every time I checked it was only a little over 300 degrees. As the caramel kept getting darker and darker I suddenly realized that maybe my thermometer didn’t go any higher and sure enough, that was the problem. So I let the caramel get a bit darker and then pulled it off the heat and added the cream. I ended up with some chunks of caramel but was able to melt them back down over the burner. Then I added the caramel to the chocolate in the food processor. The end result was a very lovely and tasty ganache.

The cake is baked in one 9″ cake pan and then the cake is sliced into two layers. The ganache is used as a filling between the layers and as icing on top.

The cake was very good and the ganche, which thickened up into a fudge-like consistency, was fabulous. I would have preferred a stronger caramel flavor as it seemed rather subtle to me, but perhaps the caramel needed to be darker. I will make this cake again and I will probably use this ganache with some of my other recipes as well.

Archive, Cakes, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Marionberry Shortcake — Takes 1 and 2

August 23, 2010 4 Comments

MMMM — Marionberries! They make me think of Oregon because of course that is where they are from. Our family lived in Oregon for 7 years and we absolutely loved it. We loved the climate, the people, and the lifestyle. And I loved being so close to the ocean. My vision of a perfect day is to gather the family and head to Cannon Beach. When I mentioned that I was making Marionberry Shortcake this week, the first thing my daughter said was that she missed going to Sauvie Island. I miss that and so much more.

Because I live in small town USA I did not think that I would be able to find any frozen Marionberries so I was absolutely thrilled when I found them at my local store. And I have to tell you that the Marionberries are really what made this dessert fantastic.

The genoise cake was pretty strait forward to make. You first make beurre noisette. Then you heat your eggs over steam just until they are lukewarm. You whip the eggs on high in the KitchenAid for about 5 minutes. Then it is just a process of folding in the flour and the beurre noisette.

Now I ended up making my cake twice. This was not because I made it incorrectly, but I made a very bad choice in what pan to bake it in. First of all, I should say that I was very good and resisted buying the Nordicware Shortcake Basket pan. I really really wanted to buy it and I even saw that the local cooking store had it available. But right now I am trying to be really good about not spending money I don’t need to. So, I did not buy said pan. So I wondered what else I might use to make it feel a little special. I decided that I could use my mini bundt pan. Now I DID ask myself if it would be a problem to make genoise in that type of a pan. But, I figured that if we could make a genoise cake in a rose shaped pan, I should be able to use a bundt pan. Well — no, it did not work. I greased the pan well, and the cakes looked great after coming out of the oven, but when I attempted to take them out of the pan, they were just not coming out.

So, take 2 on the cake. Made the batter again, and this time I decided to try my little mini cocotte dishes by Le Creuset. I greased and lined them with parchment and popped them in the oven. They baked up very nice. And this time, they came out of the pans very easily and looked very nice.

I brushed the cakes with the marionberry syrup and made up a little whipped cream for the top.

All I can say is YUMMM! Every bite made me feel like I was back in Oregon. Hubby thinks the recipe is a definite keeper –so much so that he even thinks we should buy the basket pan! I’ll probably wait until next summer for that, but I think we may be making this again soon.

Archive, Cakes, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Chocolate Feather Bed

August 17, 2010 7 Comments

I had mixed feelings about this recipe from beginning to end but after all was said and done, I thought this cake was excellent!

Normally I only make half of the assigned recipe but since we were having a gathering at our house on Monday night I decided that this week I was going to make the full recipe. Figures that I would decide to do this on the one recipe that actually requires more work to make the full recipe and I notice most bakers only made half this time (lol). But that’s okay. . . it was actually worth the effort.

For some reason I thought that the ganache was supposed to be made two hours before the cake. So, I dove right in and made the ganache. I skipped the food processor directions and just heated the milk and then poured it over the chopped chocolate. It was a bit unusual to have twice as much cream as chocolate in the ganache. I kept wondering if this could be right clear up to the point that the soft peaks appeared while beating it and I felt very relieved. Then it needed to go into the refrigerator and stirred every 30 minutes until it reached 65-68 degrees.

With the ganache made, I proceeded to make the cake. To make the full recipe, you must make two separate batches of batter and bake two separate pans of cake. Each cake is cut in half so that you have four layers to stack with the ganache layered between. The egg yolks and egg whites are each beat separately so I felt like I would never quit beating eggs and the recipe would never end. It probably didn’t help that I ran out of cream of tartar after the first batch so I had to run to the store to get more.

Finally, both cakes were baked! But then I realized that I was supposed to chill the cake before I assembled it. That was a small problem since my ganache had just reached 66 degrees. Hmm. . . . well, I decided that I was just going to plow ahead. I proceeded to beat the ganache and it came out perfect (although it took longer than the 30 seconds it says it will take in the book). I popped the warmest layer of cake into the freezer for about 5 minutes (the other one was at room temp) and I proceeded to assemble.
The layers were pretty fragile but with the help of a cake lifter it was all good. I put a full cup of ganache on top of the first cake layer (because that’s what the recipe says), but by the second layer I could see that there was not going to be enough ganache to put a cup on each layer. So then I just spread it thinly on top of each layer and it came out perfect at the end. I wrapped the whole cake in saran wrap and put it in the fridge.

Monday night I pulled the cake out of the fridge about an hour before our gathering was to begin. I put some chocolate curls on top and voila!

The cake definitely seemed to be a hit. I say this not because people were raving about it, but because I think nearly every person went back for seconds.

I wasn’t sure about the texture of the cake layers right after I made them. But when the cake sits in the fridge overnight, the layers meld right together and it is completely transformed into an AMAZING cake. It is intensely chocolate but actually has a very light texture. I guess that’s why they call it a chocolate feather bed!

Archive, Cakes, Heavenly Cake Bakers, Rose's Heavenly Cakes

Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte

August 9, 2010 4 Comments

The last several weeks have been pretty crazy for me. I’ve had lots to do at work and lots going on at home too. I didn’t even get last week’s assignment done. So I told myself that I absolutely had to get this week’s baking project done. Since I’m headed out of town on Sunday afternoon (back to Mayo for a few days), and since I ended up having a short work day today (Saturday) I decided to stop on my way home from work to get what I needed and get to work baking. I honestly hadn’t even looked through the recipe until this morning so hadn’t had much time to ponder anything about it. But it looked pretty straight forward.

Of course I had only one choice when it came to the plums because of my lovely small town (note the sarcasm). Anyway, I bought said plums and blueberries and headed home. There is no picture of this recipe in the book so I was excited to see what it was going to turn out like. The first step in this baking project is to make caramel. This is done by heating sugar and water together until it turns a deep amber color. You must watch carefully so that you pull it off at the right time. The caramel is then poured into the bottom of a prepared pan. I decided to halve the recipe and use a six inch pan because I didn’t want to make a whole recipe and have it go to waste.

Next, you remove the pits from the plums and then arrange the fruit in the bottom of the pan. I had PLENTY of fruit for my six inch pan so I left some of the blueberries out.

The final step is to make the batter. You mix the dry ingredients first and then mix with the butter. I decided to do this by hand (literally) instead of using the food processor. Then you add the eggs and vanilla. The batter could not have been easier to make. I filled the pan and I was a little worried that the pan would overflow in the oven. After I took the picture, I decided to remove a little batter. The cake baked up perfectly and came out of the pan quite nicely.

We were pretty busy most of the evening and so we didn’t actually try the cake until the next day. My hubby, my daughter and I really liked it and we definitely will make it again. I definitely liked how easy it was to make. My husband liked that it wasn’t too sweet yet it was still sweet enough for the rest of us. It was just a nice balance of flavors.

Archive, Life

TGIF!

August 7, 2010 No Comments

Thank Goodness it’s Friday! This week has been crazy at work. Most people look forward to Friday because they know that once they get through the day they have an entire weekend to relax and get caught up on life. Well, for the last two and a half years, I haven’t had that little luxury in life. And just for the record, I really miss it. For a while I only worked four days a week and that wasn’t too bad. But now that I am working five days a week, I never get two days off in a row and I always have to work on Saturday. To make matters worse, as the week progresses, my stress level gets higher and higher. It seems that people do not plan ahead anymore; and since my boss refuses to turn any orders down, that means that the cake orders keep multiplying as Saturday nears. And I’m not only talking about your average quarter sheet birthday cakes either. People will honestly wait until the day before they want some elaborate sculpted cake. Seriously, people! Then of course I have the wedding cakes which are usually on Saturday and can vary in number and complexity. By the time I get home on Saturday I am literally exhausted.

But this week was not my typical week. This Monday, instead of getting the store stocked and getting control of the cake room after the cyclone of my typical Saturday, I got to make cakes. Lots of cakes in fact. I even “got” to sculpt a car cake. So it was a busy day and not much time for looking ahead or planning.

Wednesday was the day of the mixed up cakes. Typically people order tiered cakes for the weekend but Wednesday we had two 3-tiered cakes and both for 50^th Anniversaries. Cake 1 was for a restaurant and was to be decorated the same as the couple’s original wedding cake. Cake 2 was for a person who had never had a wedding cake and so their children wanted them to have one on this momentous occasion. Well, the day went along pretty good and I had both cakes set up but the pickup times were approaching and I was still working on the decorating. I was just finishing Cake 1 when they came back and said that the customer was there to pick it up. I really wanted to get a picture of it but there wasn’t time so off it went. I immediately began the decorating of Cake 2 as I knew Customer 2 would be there shortly. About 5 minutes went by and they came back and said someone from the restaurant was there to pick up their cake. You cannot imagine my panic as I realized that they had just given Cake 1 to the Cake 2 customer!!! I absolutely could not believe it. Luckily for all involved, after Customer 2 had loaded the cake into his car (and while Customer 1 was waiting for his cake), he came back into the bakery because he forgot something. We were able to explain what had happened and Customer 2 retrieved Cake 1 from his car so that Customer 1 could have it. Customer 1 was not upset and was actually quite grateful that we had made his cake because it was a last minute order so he left quite happy. I finished Cake 2 soon after and again it was whisked away before I could get a picture. Happily, Customer 2 liked Cake 2 even better than Cake 1 and so he went home happy. It was a happy ending for all. What a relief!

And then we come to today which is Friday. And because this was not my typical week, this was not my typical Friday either. I had two large wedding cakes for today and only one wedding cake for tomorrow (Saturday). Both of the cakes for today were quite time consuming so I spent all day working on them and headed up to deliver them about an hour before they were due. I was about half way to where they were being delivered when I realized that I had forgotten my camera at the bakery. I was feeling stressed for time and also didn’t want the cakes in the car any longer than necessary. But, I finally decided that I would really regret not getting pictures so I turned around and got my camera. to go back to the bakery and get my camera. I drove all the way back and then headed to the deliveries for the second time. I got the first delivery all set up, stood with my camera in hand feeling happy that I had gone back to get it, and looked down to see that the battery was dead. Are you kidding me? I absolutely could not believe it!. So I ended up using the camera in my phone to get a picture. I am not sure how it is going to turn out. I did the same thing for the second delivery. And by the way, I actually thought I might collapse while delivering the second cake because for some weird reason they refused to give me a cart. The room I had to deliver to is downstairs and the elevator that you take to get there is like the slowest elevator I have ever seen in my life. I had this heavy heavy cake and I not only had to wait for the stupid elevator to get there but just going down a floor took what seemed like forever. I was waiting not only for the stupid elevator to get there but to actually go down to the next floor took forever. I was so glad when that cake was on the table and all in one piece.

So I survived my day and I survived my week. And for once in a very long time I get to say, Thank Goodness it’s Friday!