Julia Child’s Queen Of Sheba Cake
For a while there, I was wondering if I was ever going to bake anything again. I had the best ingredients on hand (Van Houten cocao, various Beanilla products) but no idea what to do with them. Read more
Posts tagged ‘cake’
Aug 12
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The Madderneine Cake
I am extremely happy to be showing you this cake. This cake is the product of my 5-year-old daughter’s imagination. Read more
Cocoa And Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake
I have not had the oven on for days – it has been so hot here in Sydney! Unfortunately, we don’t have air-conditioning like some other lucky people, so having the oven on just makes it worse (especially in the kitchen, of course). Read more
Jul 29
Neapolitan Layer Cake
As I was planning for my daughter’s 5th birthday party, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Donna Hay magazine’s annual kids’ issue. Judging by the cover of the magazine, I would surely find something beautiful inside to make for my daughter’s birthday. On the morning of the magazine’s release, I bought my copy and started flipping through the pages. There were so many neat things, including the cover recipe for chocolate cups. But I found what I wanted on page 115. It was called a rainbow layer cake, but it looked more like neapolitan cake, with chocolate, pink and white layers, rather than a rainbow. There was what looked to be a fluffy, white frosting in between the layers and all over the cake. Dotting the frosting in 3 rings around the cake were pink and white mini marshmallows that had been cut in half. It looked really beautiful and it looked exactly like something my daughter would love. There’s a picture of the cake in the magazine at the bottom of this post.
I was a little skeptical about the cake to begin with. One reason is because I have never had a good result from any recipe I’ve tried from Donna Hay. I think the reason for this is that Donna Hay is a food stylist, not a chef! Another reason I was skeptical about this cake is because the entire thing contains 750 grams, or 1.7 pounds, of butter. That is a lot of butter. Unfortunately, I still wanted to make it and my reasoning was that it was just a birthday cake, we don’t eat that much butter all the time!
I was also skeptical because the way this cake is made involves a method I have never used before. Donna Hay calls it “melt and mix”. 250 grams of butter is melted, then the entire list of ingredients is dumped together into the mixing bowl at once and then mixed. This is not the normal way to make cake. This method is used in most of the birthday cake/cupcake recipes in Donna Hay’s kids’ magazine. I want to say right now that I will never make a cake this way again! There are definitely other things I want to try in the magazine, but I will be using my own favorite cake recipes instead of Donna Hay’s.
Jul 6
Chocolate Malteser Cake
We celebrated my son’s 3rd birthday over the weekend. It wasn’t anything special, as I’m not that great of a party planner! We just invited nana over, had a picnic and cake outside and opened presents. I didn’t even make the cake from scratch (I can hear your sounds of disgust at that statement!). I used Green’s Really Good Chocolate Cake mix and got a lovely, dense, chocolatey cake that I decorated with crushed Maltesers (the Australian version of Whoppers in the US).
Jun 22
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
I don’t have a lot to say at this particular moment in time, but I did quickly want to share with you something sweet I made last week. It was a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie cake, which I found at Almost Bourdain. This blog is becoming one of my favorites – I found the recipe for the coconut bread I made there, which was just lovely, and I just stopped by the blog a little bit ago and found popcorn ice cream with salted butter caramel sauce. Oh my, there are just no words I can find to describe that, it pretty much left me speechless in awe.
Back to the peanut butter chocolate chip cookie cake. This is a cross between a gigantic peanut butter chocolate chip cookie and a cake, so it’s sort of difficult to classify it as either a cookie or a cake, in my opinion. It has the texture and appearance of a cookie, not the soft, tender crumb of a cake. The only way in which it resembles a cake is that it’s about 10 inches in diameter.
You can call it whatever you like, but chances are when you taste it, the only thing you’re going to be calling it is absolutely delicious.
Jun 4
Chocolate Raspberry Cream Cake
My current favorite show on TV is MasterChef Australia. I watch it almost religiously each night (except Saturdays, which is the only day of the week that it isn’t on). It’s gotten to the point where, anytime I’m actually cooking or baking something from a recipe it feels like Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston are looking over my shoulders, probably getting ready to play some mind games with me and ask if I think what I’m doing will turn out okay, or if I’ll finish in time.
I can’t say that watching MasterChef has made me any better in the kitchen. I have learned a couple of tricks and gained an ounce or two of knowledge about something or other. For instance, I don’t use a garlic crusher anymore; I use a knife and finely chop the garlic instead (Matt Moran is apparently disgusted with garlic crushers as they bruise the garlic). And if I need mayonnaise again, I’ll be making my own (Gary, George and Matt were obviously disgusted when one contestant used a jar of pre-made mayonnaise). Just things like that, I’ve learned. Nothing too life-changing.
My favorite parts of MasterChef are the Invention Tests (where the contestants have to make a dish based on one theme ingredient) and the Pressure Tests (where the 3 contestants of the least-liked dishes from the Invention Tests have to face off and one will be eliminated). One week, at one of these Pressure Tests, the dish they had to prepare was a black forest cake (recipe & photo here). This cake was 5 layers of sponge cake, chocolate ganache, mascarpone, hazelnut praline mousse, cherries, shaved chocolate, more cherries, it was like the black forest cake to end all black forest cakes.
May 15
Bourke Street Bakery Carrot Cake
As we were planning on moving back to Sydney last year, I made a list of bakeries that I wanted to visit once we returned. One of them was Bourke Street Bakery in Surry Hills. I haven’t made it there yet, but have heard only the best things about the bakery.
Coincidentally, one of the delicious. magazines I borrowed from the library recently had a handful of recipes straight from Bourke Street Bakery. I copied them all down before returning the magazine, but wasn’t sure which I’d try first. After seeing a post on FoodGawker from Eat Well Eat Green, I knew my first recipe to try from Bourke Street Bakery would be the carrot cake.
Sep 19
Microwave Chocolate Mug Cake
I was a huge skeptic of the microwave mug cake when I first heard about it, well over a year ago now. How could a microwave produce a good cake? I tried out the recipe soon and discovered that the microwave could not produce a good cake! I believe I overcooked it, as it was super rubbery and barely edible.
I gave it one more chance earlier this year, and cooked it for less time. I even added chocolate chips that time. But no, I still didn’t consider it to be edible. I gave up on it and decided to never “bake” a cake in the microwave again.
Well, my sweet tooth got the best of me last week and there were no sweets in the house. I decided to try out the microwave mug cake just one last time. But this time I’d add frosting.
I only cooked the cake for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, but ended up taking it out with only 10 seconds remaining – I did not want to overcook it this time and have it turn into yet another rubber bouncy cake ball. I cut the mug cake into four slices and made two cakes out of them. I layered the inside of each one with chocolate sour cream frosting and then completely frosted the outside of each one, complete with a ring of white sprinkles.
And you know, it wasn’t quite as bad as my previous attempts at this cake. I did try a different recipe this time, but I think it was just the fact that I didn’t overcook it this time that made it taste slightly better (it wasn’t too rubbery this time!). My chocolate sour cream frosting was just a thrown together made-up mix of melted semisweet chocolate, sour cream and vanilla. It made the end result taste more like bittersweet chocolate.
I stored one of the tiny cakes in the refrigerator and I have to say that the refrigerated cake was much, much better. The cake and frosting both firmed up and reminded me of a mud cake. I was pleasantly surprised.
I’m still not a fan of the microwave mug cake. If one had the time to prepare the ingredients, as well as frosting as I did, you may as well just do it the real way and bake up a small batch of cupcakes in a real oven!
What’s your take on the microwave chocolate mug cake?
Find the recipe for this particular mug cake at Recipezaar. Note that I did not use the full amount of sugar, I reduced it to about 3 or 3.5 tablespoons, and I used Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa.
Mar 7
Ghirardelli Devil's Food Cake & Mocha Buttercream
Yesterday was my birthday, so I just had to bake a cake. It took a while for me to decide what kind of cake I wanted and I ended up with a couple of recipes inside of a Ghirardelli 100% Cocao baking bar (that’s an unsweetened chocolate baking bar, in case you weren’t sure). It was for a one-bowl devil’s food cake and mocha buttercream.
This was going to be a bit of a dare, however, as the recipe asked for shortening – 1) I don’t have any shortening because 2) I don’t like shortening. I had read many comments from people who always substitute butter for shortening with minimal or barely noticeable differences, so I took a chance and substituted unsalted butter for the shortening.
What I thought would happen though, ended up happening. The recipe tells you to sift a flour mixture into a large mixing bowl, then put all the wet ingredients on top of that and mix for 2 minutes. That’s a really strange way to make cake batter, in my opinion. I thought that the butter wouldn’t mix in thoroughly and would leave butter chunks in the batter. And, well, I was right.
I didn’t want to keep beating the batter so I wouldn’t overbeat it, so I poured it into a pan and sat it on the stove over gentle heat for just enough time to melt the butter. I kept thinking I should have went with a different recipe, because this one would end up a disaster and I would have wasted a whole bar of that 100% cocao!
However, the cake ended up baking just fine, much to my surprise!
Note, number of candles not relative to my age (although some could argue that)
The buttercream was very strange to make as well, even though I did have all the required ingredients for that. The recipe says to melt a bar of 100% cocao. Then dissolve two teaspoons of instant coffee in 2 tablespoons of boiling water, and stir it into the melted chocolate. This turned the melted chocolate into a sticky clump of chocolate and my first thought was that this would not be able to mix into the frosting without clumping. And, well, I was right again.
I beat the frosting for quite a while (maybe two minutes?) at medium-high speed just to work out the clumps and this did actually work. It’s a very light and creamy buttercream with a strong mocha taste. I didn’t need to add all of the milk the recipe asked for, I left about 2 teaspoons (give or take) of the milk out. If I added more it would have been to wet to stick on the cake, I think!
So, how did this cake end up, overall? First I will say that I will not be making this cake again, even with using shortening. I personally don’t think this cake tastes all that great, but it isn’t bad. I feel like I wasted my nice unsweetened chocolate on this cake, though.
