My sister had an impromptu picnic for her birthday earlier this year. So I made her an impromptu lemon cake that was picnic appropriate. I guess all cakes are picnic appropriate, but adding some paper flags to this bright yellow cake made it seem a bit more festive.
Somehow I've turned into the birthday-cake baker in the family. But every cake I've made this year is nothing compared to the rainbow cake from last year. I'm going to have to make something amazing to beat that! One day, one day...
P.S. My sister's Happy Whale collage is going to be on Avant Cards. Keep a look out for it!
This song is by First Aid Kit, a Swedish band, and is so dreamy and nice!
It seems I have created my own tradition. I've never created a tradition before, so I don't know if it actually counts...
My friend Steph and I have breakfast together on our birthdays. Breakfast with just us, because everybody else works and can't have breakfast during the week.
This started last year, when I wanted to do something for my birthday, but everyone in my family was busy, and so Steph took care of me and we went out for breakfast together.
This year, Steph's family were all busy, so I took care of her and we went out for breakfast.
Does this count as a tradition? If it happens two years in a row, that's a tradition, right?
I guess we'll have to wait until next year to see if it sticks, but I hope it does.
Another good birthday tradition that I did obviously not come up with, is cake.
Cake and presents. That's a good tradition that everyone should get in on, if you're not already.
Cake and presents and candles. I know I said that when you turn 23 you don't get candles, but 22 is different. You still get candles when you turn 22. Didn't you know?
It was hard deciding what cake to make for Steph. She doesn't like cheesecake, or carrot cake. She does like coffee though, so that's the direction I went in.
Coffee and chocolate, what a good combination! Perfect for a girl with a coffee addiction.
I actually baked this cake in a vintage jelly mold, because I didn't have a decorative bundt pan, which is what I originally wanted to use. The jelly mold wasn't very big, so I made 6 cupcakes as well.
If you wanted to make all cupcakes, I think this recipe would make 12. Just raise the temperature of the oven and shorten the baking time by about 5-10 mins.
Every birthday deserves cake. It just wouldn't be the same otherwise.
This cake was for my friend Kirby's birthday.
It's full of chocolate and almonds and even more chocolate.
But when you turn 23, you don't get candles or singing on your birthday. Especially not in a lovely cafe when you're eating lunch.
We had a lovely lunch at Jam Jar, and there was sav blanc and lovely ladies and warm winter salads.
After lunch, there were more drinks, and more friends, and cocktails that came in bear-shaped jars.
The rest of the night looked like this, dark and a little bit blurry.
(I'm not even sure that I'm allowed to call Kirby 'turdy'. I don't know where the nickname came from, and I don't know if people still call her that. But it kinda just happened on the cake bunting and so we'll just go with it.)
Chocolate & Almond Cake: Slightly adapted from Julia Child's "Mastering the art of French cooking"
I doubled Julia's original recipe to make the layer cake above. But if you just want to make this to bring to a nice family dinner, halve the recipe back down. Although, it won't look quite as impressive that way...
200g dark chocolate
250g butter, softened
300g sugar
6 eggs
pinch salt
2 tbsp sugar
2/3 cup almond meal
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 cup plain flour
Preheat oven to 170C. Grease two 20cm springform pans.
Melt the chocolate in a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Don't let the water touch the bowl. When melted, take of the heat and set aside.
Separate the eggs, placing the whites in a large bowl.
Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt, until soft peaks form (about 1-2 mins). Sprinkle the sugar over and continue beating on high until stiff peaks are formed (another few minutes). Set aside.
Beat the butter, sugar and egg yolks in a large bowl, until pale.
Stir the melted sugar into the butter mixture. Stir in the almond meal and extract.
Quickly stir in a quarter of the egg whites.
Fold in a third of the remaining whites. When partially incorporated, add a third of the flour and continue folding.
Continue alternating between adding eggs and flour, until all ingredients are incorporated.
Divide the batter between the two pans.
Bake for 25 mins, until the edges are cooked, but the middle is not quite set. A skewer should come out clean around the edge, but be slightly oily in the middle.
Leave to cool for at least 2 hours before icing.
Chocolate ganache: Slightly adapted from Julia Child
200g dark chocolate
100g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
Place all ingredients in a metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Don't let the bowl touch the water.
Allow the mixture the melt before stirring until smooth.
Plunge the bowl into a larger bowl of ice cold water, and quickly whisk with a spoon until the mixture has cooled and thickened.
You have to work really fast with the icing, because once it has begun to set, it hardens very quickly and becomes difficult to work with.
Use a spoon/knife dipped in hot water to spread the icing onto the cakes, and sandwich them together. Continue dipping the spoon into hot water to smooth the icing.
Decorate with roasted almonds.
I would like a cake that is tall, and moist, and dark, and full of nuts and carrots and brown sugar. I would like a carrot cake that doesn't have pineapple in it.
I would like a recipe for carrot cake that doesn't need tweaking. A recipe that is perfect all on its own. A recipe that can become a household staple for me, one that I can pass down to my children and make for their birthday parties.
I do not want a carrot cake recipe like this one, the one that I used. It looked promising, but it wasn't meant to be.
And now I'll be eating this dry, dense, flat, undercooked cake for a week because I can't bring myself to throw anything away, and I can't even share it with other people because it just isn't good.
I did find the perfect carrot cake once, at my old work. The cake was exactly like it should be: tall, moist, not too sweet, with it's three layers full of cream cheese icing. But I didn't get the recipe because it's not appropriate to go into a bakery and ask them for their recipes.
So I'll just have to keep making every carrot cake recipe that I come across. I might even have to start buying cream cheese in bulk.
This cake was both a disaster and a success. It seems odd that one cake can be so contradictory, but it's true. It was a success because I hadn't made a cake with quinces before, and there were so many opportunities for it to go badly, but it didn't. The quinces were perfectly poached, the batter tasted good and the syrup on top was amazing.
It was a disaster, though, because of the syrup on top. If you only learn one thing today, please, let it be this: Don't be impatient.
I poured the syrup on the cake while it was cooling in the pan. And then I flipped out the cake onto a plate. When I tried to flip it back onto the cooling rack, the syrup was stuck to the plate and ripped the sticky top off the cake. Not completely, but enough for me to freak out.
I freak out a lot when I'm baking. And I don't think the cake was quite cooked properly.
So there you have it: Contradictions.
A quince is not a pretty fruit. They're motley yellow and covered in a grey fluff. You can't eat them raw because they're outrageously tart. And when you peel and chop them, not only do they brown almost instantly, but they smell funny. After they've been poached, though, they turn a lovely rosey colour and they taste much better than you could have imagined.
I made a fairly simple tea cake batter (is that what you call it?) for this recipe and mashed half the poached quinces into the batter. Then I put the rest of the quinces into the batter, imagining that they would be nice to bite into. Next time, I'd mash all the quinces into the cake, just to see what a difference that makes. I'll have to wait till next year, I guess, because I used all my quinces in this cake.
I took this cake into work and made everyone eat it, and they all seemed to like it. So take that, Disaster!
2 cups poached quinces*
220g self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
110g unsalted butter, softened
330g sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup pure cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and flour a 20cm springform pan.
Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.
Mix flour, cinnamon and salt together.
Beat in half the flour mix.
Add the cream.
Beat in remaining flour mix and vanilla.
Strain poaching liquid from quinces and reserve.
Mash half the poached quinces and fold into the batter.
Pour half the batter into the prepared tin.
Arrange remaining poached quinces over the batter.
Pour the remaining batter over the quinces.
Bake for 1 1/4 hours, or until cake tester comes out clean.
[Optional] Make a sticky quince syrup. In a small saucepan, mix the reserved poaching liquid with 1/2 cup water, 3 tbsp caster sugar and 2 tsps lemon juice. Cook over a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, until mixture starts to thicken. Pour this over the cake once it has cooled.
*Poach peeled, cored and chopped quinces with about 2 cups water, 4 tbsps sugar, cinnamon and 1 vanilla bean, until soft, about 20-30 mins. If you're new to quinces, you could use less than 2 cups. This was about 8 medium quinces that were a bit bruised and had been eaten by bugs. So I ended up with less use-able fruit than I anticipated.
Here is a list of things I like:
Birthdays
Siblings
Family dinners
Rain
Cake
Suprises
Well, tonight had all of these things. And more.
Tonight was my little sisters 16th birthday. That's a pretty important age. I remember when I turned 16, but that's another story for another day. Because this story is all about cake, and sisters who like cake.
That's my sister there. And that is a slice of the cake. Gotcha! I bet you weren't expecting that!
This cake was pretty epic. It took me a week of planning and two days of mixing and baking, but I got there in the end. And I think it was totally worth it. Don't you? If you've got an important sister or friend in your life, and they have an important birthday coming up, why don't you surprise them with a rainbow cake? It will brighten up their rainy birthday and everyone will think you're amazing, that much I promise you.
As I said, this was pretty time consuming. Mainly because I only had one cake tin and I had to bake each layer individually. I wouldn't call this an everyday cake, not by any means. But if you've got a special occasion, it's probably worth it. The icing was a bit much though. I had about a cup of icing left over, and I originally was going to keep it for cupcakes, but I threw it out because I didn't ever want to look at it again. The icing was a lot of effort for something that I didn't think was particularly good. For starters, I don't really like white chocolate, it doesn't do anything for me. And for seconders, it had too many things in it, making it expensive and not really worth it for what you get. If I made this again, I think I would make a cream cheese icing, or something a bit more tasty. But if you really like white chocolate - I mean, if you're really all about it - then it's probably worth it. The icing does set hard though, which is really good if you have to run from the car to the house in the rain and you don't want your icing getting all messed up.
Also, the original recipe called for gel colours, but I couldn't find these, so I just used regular food dye and it worked fine. The icing originally called for nearly a kilo of butter, but I ended up using about 200g less, because I didn't think it needed it and I was right. The icing also called for 'sugar'. It took me a while to decide what type of sugar she meant: icing, white, castor; but I went with plain white sugar and it worked fine.
For Cake:
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 cup whole milk
6 egg whites, at room temperature
2 tsps almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups white sugar
4 tsps baking powder
1 tsp table salt
170g unsalted butter, softened
food dye.
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 20cm (or smaller) springform cake pan.
Pour milk, egg whites, and extracts into a bowl and mix. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and beat at high speed. Add butter. Beat at slow speed until mixture resembles crumbs. Add all but 1/2 cup of milk mixture to crumbs and beat at high speed for 1 1/2 minutes. Add remaining milk mixture and beat 30 seconds more. Stop mixer and scrape sides of bowl. Return mixer to high speed and beat 20 seconds longer.
Divide batter between six bowls. Add enough food dye to each bowl, whisking until you get the right shade. Pour one colour batter into the cake pan. Transfer to oven and bake until cake tester comes out clean, about 9-10 minutes. Let cakes rest in pans for 3 minutes. Invert onto wire rack. Repeat with remaining colours.
Allow each layer to cool completely.
For icing:
2 1/2 cups white sugar
10 egg whites
700g unsalted butter, chopped, softened
2 tsps vanilla extract
500g white chocolate, melted and cooled
Put sugar and egg whites in a large heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved and mixture registers 140F on an instant-read thermometer.
Take off heat. Beat on medium-high speed until fluffy and cooled, about 10 minutes. Continue beating until stiff peaks form. Reduce speed to medium-low; add butter by the spoonful, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and white chocolate.
To assemble cake:
Place four strips of baking paper around outside of a cake plate. Place the purple layer on the plate. Scoop filling over the first layer and spread with a spatula so it extends just beyond edges. Repeat process with blue, green, yellow, and orange layers.
Place the remaining red layer on top, bottom-side up. Using a spatula, cover the top and sides with a layer of icing so that the colours cannot be seen. Gently pull out the layers of baking paper. Refrigerate until set, about 30 minutes.
I went to my Dad's house today, because my sister was sick and wanted me to hang out with her. She likes to watch the O.C, and I like to bake things. So we did both. This cake was super easy to make. Caitlin made the batter, and I peeled the apples. The end.
But wait! There's more! This cake is more than just a regular apple cake. Soft morsels of cinnamon-y apple hiding amongst a moist cinnamon-y cake, topped with a crunchy, hard coating of sweet, buttery caramel. Goodness me was this combination delicious. We ate half the cake in one go!
This cake is a Smitten Kitchen recipe, and I trust what she says in all her recipes, but I couldn't stop thinking about caramel after I saw David Lebovitz's post on how to make dry caramel. So we added that as well. I hadn't made dry caramel before, but it's really easy. I think I prefer it to regular caramel made with water.
I don't have anything more to say about the cake, so here's a heap of photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's six thousand words for you to look at. Hopefully they convey this delicious experience.
As I said above, my sister made the batter, so I'm not sure how much she deviated from the recipe (if she did at all. She follows the rules), so I'll give you the original batter recipe. But we did mix it up a bit with the caramel topping (which wasn't in the original recipe) and by changing around the order of the batter/apple layers. Also, the recipe said to bake the cake for 1 1/2 hours, but after an hour, our cake was done, so I've changed the baking time in the recipe. Like I said, only slightly adapted.
6 apples, we used golden delicious, peeled, cored and diced
1 tbsp cinnamon
5 tbsp sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup orange juice
2 1/2 tsps vanilla
4 eggs
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a bundt tin.
Toss the apples with the cinnamon and sugar, set aside.
In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, mix oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla.
Mix wet ingredients into the flour mix.
Add eggs, one at a time.
Arrange half the apples on the bottom of the tin.
Pour half the batter onto the apples. Arrange the remaining apples and then pour the rest of the batter on top.
Bake for about 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean.
Turn the cake out onto a large plate and pour over the caramel topping.
Pour 1 cup caster sugar into a heavy based pan. Place over medium heat. Don't stir it, but just watch it until it starts to liquify around the edges. When this happens, start to drag the liquid bits into the middle of the pan, but try not to stir it too much, otherwise it can crystallise.
The sugar will start to caramelise at this point, so keep watching it until all the sugar is dissolved and the caramel is bronze coloured. Try not to burn it, as burnt caramel cannot be fixed. If you're using a black pan, lift some of the caramel out of the pan to check what colour it is. Once all the sugar has liquified, and is bronzey coloured, it's ready!
If you prefer a buttery caramel (I sure do), add a tablespoon of butter and stir it in. It will bubble up as the butter melts, but keep stirring it in until incorporated.
It hardens fairly quickly, so only make the caramel when you're ready to pour it over the cake.
This cake is moist and light and dense all at once. Next time I make this, I'll substitute the water for some kind of alcohol, like baileys or schnapps. Not that I'm obsessed with making boozey cakes or anything... Recipe: Adapted from Nigella Lawson's "How to be a domestic goddess."
Oven 190C
225g butter
375g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 cup boiling water
Melt the chocolate in a metal bowl over boiling water.
Meanwhile, Cream the sugar, butter and 1 egg. Add the vanilla and the other egg.
Fold in the melted chocolate, being careful not to put too much air into the batter.
Mix the flour and the bicarb.
Add 1 spoonful of flour mix, and then 1 spoonful of water. Repeat until all mixed in.
The batter will be pretty thin.
Pour into a lined loaf tin.
Bake for 30 mins. Then turn the oven down to 170C and bake another 15 mins.
Cool completely before taking out of the tin.
It rained all day today. It was super cold and it snowed on the mountain. The first day that it snowed heaps all winter, and I have to work all weekend so I'm not gonna get to see the snow even a little bit! That's just typical.
It stopped raining just long enough for me to walk to the shops and buy the ingredients for a chocolate whisky cake. I've been thinking about this cake since Brent's sister left a bottle of Canadian Club at our house 2 weekends ago.We've got a cake at work that is a Grand Marnier Chocolate mousse cake which is delicious, and I thought I could make something similar using the CC. ThenI saw a recipe for bourbon cupcakes on everybody likes sandwiches, and I thought I'd adapt it a little bit to make a whole (non-vegan) cake.
I was super excited about it. Chocolate? Booze? What's not to like.
Except, something went wrong. On this cold, rainy day, somewhere, something went wrong and I just didn't make a very good cake. The sauce was ok, but it wasn't thick enough. It just ran straight off the cake and it was Super alcoholic. It was like eating chocolate liquors, but without the satisfaction.
The cake was soft, but wasn't as chocolatey as I'd hoped. Basically, disaster.
Originally I'd made this to take to a dinner party, but the party was cancelled at the last minute. This was a stroke of luck, really. How could I face anyone with this horrible, boozey cake I'd made? Thank god no-one else had to eat it. No. Not really. It wasn't seriously that bad. But it wasn't seriously good. It wasn't even plain good. I guess we can't all be good in the kitchen all the time. I'm not even gonna give you the recipe for this, because I'm sure you can find a nicer one somewhere. Maybe you could just have some whisky and some chocolate and you'll be happier than me.
So I'll just sit here, while Brent watches the footy, and eat my boozy cake. Maybe if I eat enough, it'll start to taste good. We'll see what happens.
There are lots of things that are better than the federal election. Orange cake is just one of them. Do yourself a favour and make an orange cake on Saturday, to cheer yourself up.
We served this cake straight out of the oven, covered in syrup and thick, plain yoghurt. It was like a proper afternoon tea, where everyone drops in at just the right moment to sit around talking about their how day was, while they enjoy some cake and tea.
The orange syrup bubbled away nicely while the cake cooked and the sun shone into my parents kitchen through the big windows that overlook the ocean.
This cake is moist and textural and the syrupy oranges on top make it look lovely. If I do say so myself.
125g butter, softened
1/2 cup castor sugar
zest of 1 orange
2 eggs
1 cup semolina
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup almond meal
Orange Syrup:
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 orange, sliced
2 tsp orange blossom water
Cream butter, sugar and orange zest.
Add eggs, beating between each.
Fold in semolina, almond meal and baking powder.
Pour into bundt tin and bake for 30 mins. For the Syrup:
Put juice, sugar and oranges in saucepan over medium heat. Simmer, then pour over cake.
When I walked to work the other day, I passed this woman who smelt like chocolate. Melted chocolate. Chocolate walking around in lady form. She smelt so strongly of chocolate, that I couldn't stop thinking about chocolate cake all day.
8 hours later, after having dinner, I made a chocolate cake. Finally. I'd never made this particular cake before, but it was perfect. Dense and chocolatey. I actually think it was better cold, rather than when it was straight out of the oven.
This isn't a particularly fancy cake. Just a good, chocolate cake.
Oven 170
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
Grease a loaf pan.
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and beat.
Add milk and vanilla.
Add flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Stir with a spoon until well mixed.
Pour the batter into pan.
Bake for 50-60 mins until cake tester comes out clean.
(Remember this song? Definitely a good one to bake a chocolate cake too.)
It was my Step-Mum's 50th birthday and I offered to make a cake (or two) for the celebration. I figured, seeing as I missed my Dad's 50th and both my siblings birthdays' this year, I should at least make an effort for one of them.
This was before I realised how many people would be turning up to the party. About 40 or 50. Now this may not sound like very many, but I've only really cooked for small amounts of people before.
No pressure!
So I searched high and low to find a cake recipe that would be big enough to feed so many people. Apparently, they don't exist. So I decided that I would make two cakes, plus a batch of cupcakes, to keep everyone happy. But most importantly, to keep everyone full of cake.
As it turns out, having lots of choice for birthday dessert is something that everyone appreciates. So there I was, donned in my finest attire, with everyone saying how nice the cakes were and what a good effort I'd gone too. Apparently, hardly anybody knew that I had so much talent! (Ha!)
So here's the recipe for one of the cakes I made. A rosemary cheesecake with added pinenuts, for that extra crunch we all crave. I made this with low-fat ricotta, but full-fat ricotta would probably be just as good, if not nicer, I imagine.
Rosemary and Honey Cheesecake: Adapted from Karen Martini
oven 180
100g fresh breadcrumbs
2 sprigs of rosemary, finely chopped
100g honey, plus extra for glazing (about 4 tbsp)
620g ricotta
1/4 cup castor sugar
5 eggs
1 cup plain yoghurt
250g mascarpone
zest of 1 lemon
50g pine nuts (use more, if you like)
Grease sides of a 26cm springform pan with butter. Press breadcrumbs around the tin.
Mix rosemary and honey, bring to a simmer in a saucepan.
Beat ricotta and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating between each.
Add cooled honey, yoghurt, mascarpone and lemon, mix.
Pour into tin, and sprinkle with pinenuts.
Bake 1 1/4 hours until golden.
Melt extra honey and spread over cake to glaze.
Plus, here's a super song for you to listen to while you're getting your bake on!
A little while ago, Brent and I had my sister and some of her friends over for afternoon tea. Being in high school, they all think they're pretty punk and shit. Wearing tartan and listening to 'Against Me!' and whatever else kids are into these days.
So 3o'clock comes and 4 kids turn up at our tiny apartment (and I mean tiny). So they all pile in, and sit on the floor (because our lounge room isn't big enough for a table) and I bring out tea. Of the English Breakfast variety.
Then it gets awkward. I'm not even sure why we decided to have all these 15-year-olds over in the first place! Who's idea was this? Not mine, that's for sure. So we're sitting there, me and Brent, my sister and her friends, talking about bands that we've been listening too, and then I remember the whole reason they came over.
Cake!
But, to be more precise, punk cake. (Forgive the pictures being on their sides. I couldn't work out how to get them around the other way. Whoops!)
[Note: I just want to clarify, that I don't actually think of myself as a punk, not even a little bit.]
Recipes:
Punk As Chocolate Cake:
oven 180.
125g butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup self raising flour
2 eggs
100ml milk, combined with 2 tbsp cocoa.
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat again.
Fold in half the flour, then all the coca mix, then the rest of the flour.
Bake 45 mins.
(You could easily make this in a regular springform tin, or a (meat)loaf tin, if you're feeling creative.)
For the ganache and piping
90g dark chocolate
1 cup cream
icing sugar
water
Melt the chocolate and cream in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. (you can mix icing sugar in at this point, if you like it a bit sweeter).
You don't want the ganache to be too runny, either.
Smooth ganach over cake.
When cool, pipe words on, (made from glace icing- a mix of water and icing sugar and food dye) making them as anarchic, or not, as you like).
Lemon Anarchy Cupcakes: oven 175 makes 18
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups self raising flour
4 eggs
1 lemon, juice and zest
icing sugar and more lemon juice and food dye.
Mix all ingredients in a bowl and beat with electric mixers until combined.
Spoon into Patty(Smith) pans.
Bake for 20 mins, or until golden.
When cool, mix icing sugar with extra lemon juice until desired consistency (not too runny!).
Separate into two bowls, leave one white and colour the other.
Ice each cupcake with white icing, finish with coloured piping.
Rock on!
(If you like, you could listen to a bit of Against Me! while you're baking.)
