A Vision in Lemony Yellow

This cake is like a shopping list of dairy products: Sour Cream Cream Cheese Butter Cake. Actually it's just Cream Cheese Butter Cake but it does have a lot of sour cream in it. I predict 100% Alpha Baker satisfaction with this cake because it's dead easy, incredibly quick and absolutely delicious. The only change I'd recommend is to double the recipe. This recipe goes straight to the pool room*.

*check out the film The Castle if you're not familiar with this expression.

Although the icing is called buttercream, forget nightmares of never-ending instructions or *shudder* pouring hot syrup into whizzing egg whites. This is just a simple lemon curd with butter beaten into it. With an immersion blender!  Barely any washing up...except for the two bowls, saucepan and sieve (yes I even sieve things these days). The only difficulty in the whole process is standing over the lemon curd patiently stirring while it thickens on the stove (do NOT walk away but if you do, a bit of wild whisking can resurrect a curd on the brink). 

Oh, and it's absolutely delicious.

I used ordinary unbleached (Australian*) plain flour rather than cake flour (which Rose notes is critical to this recipe). I mentioned early on in the Alpha Bakers that I wasn't that keen on the texture and taste you get from cake flour. This could be because it reminds me of lower quality commercially baked goods (which is the only place you really find cake flour here and they always taste of preservative), or perhaps because cake flour isn't commonly used here by domestic cooks and I'm used to more 'robust' baking. Whatever it is, in this case my cake certainly does look robust, although it had a very soft texture. I'm not sure if it was the flour or actually just the baker :) but it would be interesting to try it again with cake flour. And maybe I will. Particularly since I have had (oops) some lemon curd icing left over.

*which, as bakers around the world will know, differs from flour in the UK and USA (and elsewhere) in many ways, including the protein levels.

Next week we're making Lemon Curd and Raspberry Pielets. I just looked at the recipe and it requires 18 egg yolks!! No wonder spellcheck keeps changing pielets to piglets.

An epic Pink Pearl Lady Cake

What an epic this cake from the Baking Bible was! The Pink Pearl Lady Cake is definitely one for a special occasion, not only because it takes so long but also because it has a rich, sweet butter cream filling and fondant icing. These are not the elements of an everyday cake.

This cake is rich and quite dense, and the meringuey butter cream is sweet and buttery. The butter cream was nice but it's never my favourite and I thought it could do with more berry flavour. The white chocolate fondant gave the cake more flavour but it was too intensely sweet for me after a couple of bites and I peeled mine off. In fact I'd prefer a cake with a simple filling of fresh raspberries or jam and cream rather than something this fancy. But it's true there are some occasions when something more substantial is needed to last through an event and that is where fondant and structured butter creams come into their own.

And the fondant icing? I'm not a fan of fondant and for most of my life considered it very old-fashioned since it was always found covering a thick marzipan layer on a heavy traditional fruit cake at weddings, funerals and special occasions. Hardly anyone has iced and decorated fruit cakes for weddings etc anymore, although they're still trotted out at Christmas sometimes. I have memories of my parents agonising together over fondant icing on fruit cakes at Christmas time - how to get it perfectly smooth! I know that fondant has come back with multiple colours and whiz-bang cake designs but I'm still not much of a fan of either the style or the taste. However I decided to make the fondant for this cake because I thought I should try my hand at it at least once.

My decorating style has a definite juvenile bent which lead my colleague to start calling this the pink princess cake. I bought the coloured balls ages ago for no particular reason and it seemed an ideal time to use up some of them since I had none of the prescribed 'lustre dust' (I wish I did - it looks very sparkly). 

Before I started this cake I debated with myself 'would I make the fondant or not? Little did I realise (not really having read the recipe properly) that the fondant was the easy bit.

You make the white chocolate fondant in two steps. The first is white chocolate and corn syrup which makes a chocolate plastique (sounds stretchy, right?). The next is the fondant itself which includes ingredients you used to have to buy from the chemist - glucose and glycerin. I made a half quantity after I realised I didn't have enough of the most ordinary ingredient - icing sugar. Then you roll and knead them together. This was surprisingly easy and successful. 

I took several days to make this cake which is lucky otherwise I don't think I'd have lasted the distance. The 'mousseline' filling included making a raspberry butter (I used frozen raspberries instead of strawberries because the strawberries in the shops didn't look too good), whipping butter and making a meringue using hot sugar syrup. And the !@#$%^! sugar syrup - it still hates me.

Actually you were meant to buy the strawberry butter but I'd never heard of or seen such a thing. Good old google found me a recipe which included the berries, a little sugar and whipped butter. Not too hard really and quite delicious.

'Good God!' as I think I've said before in the middle of one of Rose's recipes 'will it never end?'. Lucky I hadn't really read the recipe properly all the way through because I might never have started. I think it's easier to ignore the length of the recipe when you use an eBook. Scrolling up and down seems effortless unlike turning multiple paper pages.

The next step is mixing all the butter cream components together one after the other to get a lovely pink and luscious-looking mass. Lucky no curdling.

It was at this point I read the words as 'smooth and flat' as possible and realised that's what I should have aimed for rather than the slap dash hacked in half cake and slapped on mousseline. But really, smooth and flat is not my style and there's no room for that in my impatient, on-the-verge-of-grumpy baking approach. The idea was to give fondant a go. Smooth was a bridge too far.

Perfect! Too late I realised I'd left out the extra raspberry butter from the middle of the cake. Tasting a piece I thought it needed a bit more raspberry flavour, so the next morning (I couldn't bear to do it that evening) I prised the cake open and slathered it with the extra raspberry butter - breaking the cake in the process. But I pressed it all back together firmly, like a loving but sorely-tested parent buckling their child into a car seat. My commitment to decorating perfection is unchanging... i.e. nil.

Next week I really hope there's something shorter.

Six steps to a Lemon Almond Cheesecake

I should say up front that the Lemon Almond Cheesecake is completely delicious and well worth the effort. But oh what an effort! It's not something to make when you're feeling tired (which I was). I had to compartmentalise this recipe to avoid being overwhelmed by the amount of work involved.

Step One: baking tin Tetris

If your oven is small like mine then you need to work out the biggest baking tin you can use to take the voluminous cheesecake batter, that will also fit into a slightly larger tin which is used as a water bath, that will all fit into your small oven. You also need to find a tin which is very slightly bigger than the cheesecake tin in which to bake the cake bottom. 

There was quite a lot of grumpy banging around in the cake tin drawer before I found the winning combination. Next cheesecake I'm buying some more tins.

Step Two: the cake bit

The light almond cake which is used as the base of the cheesecake is not too difficult but it requires toasting some almonds and then grinding them finely. It's the little steps that drive you crazy. 

I had a slight panic just before adding the eggs. I could find no weight in my ebook for the egg whites. Just when I've been trained into weighing eggs the rug (shell?) is pulled out from under my feet. Luckily Alpha Bakers Hanaa and Patricia came to my rescue with the right weight.

The good thing about this cake is that it makes two layers. Good housekeepers can use this opportunity to freeze one layer for later. I ate mine. It was delicious. And very light.

Not the best looking cake you've ever seen, but a bit of trimming got rid of the 'browner' bits. 

My gorgeous colleague asked me genuinely what the brown stripe was between the cheesecake and the cake. I had to fess up that it was a darker than desirable cake top rather than, say, a deliberate chocolate layer. 

Step three: more sour cream than you've ever seen in your life

The cheesecake batter-making part of this recipe is a bit of a blur. And my camera ran out of battery so I have nothing to remind me. I remember zesting a lot of lemons and weighing out my own body weight in cream cheese and sour cream. I also had to google 'substitutes for turbinado sugar' (again). I used golden caster sugar.

This was a truly delicious batter and there was a lot of it. I didn't add the suggested almond essence (I'm a bit scared of its potency) or lemon oil (I don't have any and the potency thing also). 

Step four: water bathing

Is this a new form of torture? It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have oven/baking tin issues. But all the same I still manage to somehow flick water on the cheesecake. Every time.

And all the foil in the world can't seem to keep out the water. The cheesecake survived despite this, although my state of mind was a little fragile by the time I took it out of the oven. And that was a little too soon perhaps, but by the time I realised there was no way I was putting the bath back together.

Oh good God, there's a step five??!!

Lemon curd glaze. I've made a a lot of this recently. I have the zombie stance standing over the pan stirring, down pat. I was so comatose by the time it thickened up, I even found myself straining it, just like the recipe says. 

And possibly it was worth it because it looked pretty smooth once I put it on the cheesecake.

Step six: almost too tired to eat

Not really. I'm never that tired.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Irish Cream Scones with Raspberry Butterscotch Lace Topping. I just looked at the recipe. Multiple steps!! Scones! How does Rose do it?!

Renee Fleming Golden Chiffon Cake

This week is a rest week for the Alpha Bakers (because we've done A LOT of baking). I chose to make it a catch-up week because I don't like to miss out on trying cakes (I missed baking this cake when it was scheduled at the end of last year) and plus it looked pretty delicious. It's the Renee Fleming Golden Chiffon, which is a lemon chiffon cake served with lemon curd cream. It's also meant to be sprinkled with some lemony dust but I miscalculated and ran out of lemons to zest, so no fairy dust for me.

This cake was incredibly soft and light and, served with the lemon curd cream, was absolutely delicious. I'll be making this again very soon. Rose dedicated this cake to her favourite soprano, Renee Fleming. I have to admit I wasn't familiar with her before this cake, but was able to appreciate her beautiful voice courtesy of YouTube. I can see why Rose is a fan.

This cake is made in a very similar way to the other light cakes in The Baking Bible. A mix of flour, sugar, lemon zest, egg yolks, oil and water are whipped together until thickened, and then the beaten egg whites are folded in. It's meant to have lemon oil but I didn't have any so I put some lemon juice in instead. I thought the finished cake was lemony enough with the juice and the zest. 

I considered cutting down the sugar since I found the Pavarotti cake a bit sweet. Then I panicked and put it back in because I thought it might ruin the structure of the cake, and structure is all with chiffon cakes. I feared ending up with a collapsed mess. 

The recipe instructs us to use a high sided springform tin but I have this reasonably expensive angel cake tin which I'd like to get my money's worth out of, so I used that. It's also custom made for balancing upside down, which you need to do when cooling this cake. (the cake, that is, not the baker). When I took the photo I didn't realise the bunny was peeking at me from behind the tin.

The cake turned out looking very nice and it didn't fall out of the tin when I cooled it upside down, which is always a relief. I forgot to take any photos of the lemon curd cream process. It is a very stiff lemon curd which is beaten into whipped cream. This is a fantastic recipe just by itself. And, oh so delicious!

This was also a great recipe because I got to use my new angel cake cutter. This has to be one of the most unnecessary kitchen tools ever invented. I'm not sure who did invent this (did they have a lot of time on their hands?) and I've never seen it used or sold in Australia. But there's nothing wrong with a bit of inexpensive frivolity and I've had it on my wish list ever since I saw it on another Alpha Baker's post (sorry I can't remember who). I was lucky enough to get a gift voucher for Christmas and promptly ordered this and a rotary apple peeler (also pretty cheap) that Patricia from ButterYum recommended. The reasoning behind the cutter is that the cake is so delicate a knife would squash it when you cut a slice. The sharp tines of the cutter loosen the cake and then you can gently separate the slice. It makes a fluffy but slightly ragged cut.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are all back from our break and baking Lemon Almond Cheesecake.

Henrietta and the White Chocolate (no Peppermint) Christmas Cake

No peppermint was harmed in the making of this cake. I'd like to try the proper pepperminty version at a later date but at this point in time I thought it might be difficult to market to my current limited clientele of two parents, a cat and six chickens*. Also I made a half recipe of this because it's just after Christmas and frankly no one I know needs any extra cake. The cake itself with just vanilla flavouring is very nice and even though I botched the buttercream, it tasted lovely and I used it as filling rather than icing.

*I need to get back to work because my colleagues will try anything...several times, if required.

Making this cake is quick and easy, although since I'm still in Tassie I had to wait around while the butter softened. At home I only have to take it out of the fridge for a minute and it's at room temperature. 

This is another of Rose's recipes where you mix odd ingredients together to get funny looking mixes - the small bowl with the whisk has egg whites, vanilla and milk - quite a (temporarily) unattractive combination.

The white chocolate custard is brought to you courtesy of Henrietta and friends and their delicious eggs. The girls are big fans of Christmas, just like me, and for similar reasons. Christmas is a scraps bonanza, their top favourites this year being ham fat and Christmas pudding (a sad baking failure due to lack of suet). They're a competitive lot when it comes to food, as you can see. You need to watch out for your toes when the frenzy begins.

You can see how yellow the egg yolks are in the white chocolate custard below. The recipe says to test the temp with an instant thermometer (very good advice) but the toffee thermometer I found was about as instant as dial-up internet.

A not-so-perfect looking cake. It's quite freckly, plus it has a distinct hill on one side despite my efforts to smooth out the batter before I baked it.

I wasn't going to make the white chocolate custard into buttercream because it's not my favourite.  I thought I might add some whipped cream instead and just use it as a mousse-like filling for the cake.  However my mother pointed out there was no problem since she was going to take it for church morning tea and I wasn't going to be eating it anyway (hmmm...a casting vote for the buttercream option). It was hard to argue with that logic so I whipped up the butter and added the custard. It didn't look that good and I think I may have over whipped it. I thought vaguely about looking up ways to fix buttercream but holiday-itis won out and I forgot to care.

'How's the serenity?' Who can worry about cake or icing with this beauty to admire?

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Lemon and Cranberry Tart Tart. If I remember rightly this is a spectacular looking tart - as photographed in the Baking Bible I mean. I'm not promising anything here.

Baking-rage and reverse marble cake with Rose's chocolate ganache

I thought I was being clever when I made this the first time. I decided to whip up Rose's Reverse Marble Cake a few weeks ago for a work meeting, thinking, rather smugly, that I would be ahead of the Alpha Baker schedule...

HOWEVER making this after work during a very busy work week meant that I didn't take enough notice of the cake tin size (too big), plus the instructions for layering the different coloured cake batters nearly drove me to distraction. I honestly couldn't bear to read 'take just under a third of the batter' one more time. In the end I read over the instructions, got the general idea and just fudged it from there. The pattern turned out quite well but the cake was a bit flat as well as dry on the outside, due to the tin being too big. My colleagues were intrigued by the reverse marble pattern and thought the cake was nice, but I was disappointed. I also forgot to take more than two (yellowish) photos due to my post-work weariness and the near-homicidal rage induced by the instructions.

I've seen a couple of the other Alpha Bakers' posts on this cake and none of them have mentioned problems with the instructions (or homicide) so I think we can deduce from that that I'm just not a very calm baker.

So when the cake came up on the schedule this weekend I thought I would try again and see if I could get a better result. The second try - in the photo immediately below - turned out a better height and more moist, since I used a smaller ring tin (unfortunately I don't have a bundt tin in this size). It did dry out a bit on the top where it rose above the tin and the rest I undercooked slightly. I ignored the instructions this time to avoid enraging myself, and the pattern still turned out nicely. So this cake wasn't an unqualified success the second time round and the flavour didn't wow me either. I'm not sure why but this cake is obviously not meant for me

This is my first slightly flat attempt below. It does look nice with the shape from the bundt tin. I drizzled chocolate ganache on it (which pretty much solves all problems) but I made a wrong calculation in combining the white, milk and dark chocolate I had in the fridge, so it turned out very pale. Couldn't take a trick with this cake.

My goodness this cake batter was delicious. I'd like to try it again without the chocolate. I know that sounds like sacrilege but I'd like to work out why the baked cake flavour didn't impress me that much when it showed such a lot of promise in the batter stage. 

I still forgot to take photos of the initial layering of the two batters for the second cake. It's not difficult to do, even for someone who's definitely on the slapdash end of the baking method scale. The first layer of vanilla batter is put into a small trench in the first chocolate layer, and the other layers all build on that. It's really a fairly simple but clever idea (so I shouldn't complain too much about the instructions).

Despite not being at all exacting (just under a third!) in dishing out the amount for each layer, somehow it came out all right. 

You never quite think the last chocolate layer is going to stretch far enough but it does.

Possibly this tin was a bit too small (hmmph) so the cake rose over the top of the tin. I'm tempted to try this again but there are so many cakes I really love that I might just have to chalk this one up to experience.

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making Sugar Rose Brioche which sounds like the stage name of a blues singer.

Baking banana split chiffon cake with Parker

Hey Parker, do you want to make a cake with me? We have to take pictures and put them on the internet. It's called a Banana Split Chiffon Cake.'

'Aunty Catherine, we're going to make a cake an' take pictures. Cos I want to.'

'226 grams, that's enough banana'.
'But I want to put more in.'
'Well that's all we need for the recipe.'
'But I want to put more.'
'You can eat that bit.'
''I don't want to.'

'I'm going to mix it with my hands, Aunty Catherine.'
'Good thing you washed your hands.'

'How's the mixing going?'
'Good.'

'Finished mixing yet?'
'No. Not yet'

'Aunty Catherine, Look, I've got flour all over my hands.'

'Have you got that egg yolk? Oh, well, we'll try another one.'

'Okay, just a drop more vanilla. Not too mu...! Oh, well, that should be okay.'

'Parker, I've finished the noisy mixing. Do you want to help me tip the batter into the tin?'
'Parker? Parker? Parker...?

'Did you try the cake Parker? What did you think? Was it nice?'

'Yes, I had a bit and it was a bit nice but then it was a bit yucky. Cos it was too much vanilla.'

Happy birthday to a gorgeous four year old (cos I'm a big boy now). Next week it's unfortunately back to just me baking Fudgy Pudgy Brownie Tart.

*Photo credits to Pilar Tronzik (Parker's mama).