Goodbye to A Piece of Cake

I recently (like yesterday) left my position at A Piece of Cake Bakery. Here are some pictures of cakes I did while I worked there. I rarely did a cake start to finish, so I had help with several of these, but many I did not. 

YAY! for Christmas!!

For Christmas Eve dinner I made a Yule Log Cake. I make one almost every year. This is the recipe I use:


CAKE

• 3 eggs
• 1 C sugar
• 1/3 C water
• 3/4 C flour
• 1/4 C cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 recipe Fudgy Icing
• 1 recipe Chocolate Mousse
• 
  

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375°

Line a jelly-roll pan with wax paper, grease paper.

Beat eggs until thick and lemon colored. Beat in sugar, then water and vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients. Gradually beat into egg mixture. Mix until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake 15 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes then turn out onto tea towel sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar. Slowly roll up cake and towel. Let cool.

When cool, gently unroll cake. Spread Chocolate Mousse on cake and re-roll. 

To decorate, pipe fudgy icing with a rose tip in long and short stripes to resemble bark.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

6 oz chocolate, chopped

2 cups whipping cream, divided

3 2 T sugar

DIRECTIONS

Bring 3/4 cup cream to a boil, pour over chocolate, stir until melted. Let cool.

Whip remaining 1 1/4 cups cream and sugar to stiff peaks. Fold into chocolate. 

FUDGY ICING

1/3 cup butter, softened

1/3 cup cocoa powder

2 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1-3 T hot water

Beat butter, cocoa, and sugar. Add vanilla and enough water to make it pipable. 

FUDGY ICING

YAY! for Sans Rival Cake!!

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

I made a cashew sans rival with a chocolate french buttercream (from my own recipe, it uses whole eggs not just yolks). The meringue came together quickly and easily. I traced 5 4"(ish) circles on parchment and piped a half recipe onto the rounds. I baked them for about 20 minutes and let cool. I cut a cardboard round about 5" (I just traced bowls for the circles so the sizes are approximate) to stack the cake onto.

The project wasn't too difficult or time consuming. The buttercream I used wasn't as solid as I would have liked, and if someone was paying me for it or I was trying to impress someone I would have added a second coat of buttercream after the first was cold (this makes it easier to get sharp corners with soft icing)

YAY! for Angry Birds!!!

For this year's Scout Spaghetti Dinner and Cake Auction, Jonathan made an Angry Birds cake (with plenty of help and supervision) We used this recipe from epicurious.com, brushed it with a simple syrup soak, iced it with chocolate buttercream and covered it with marshmallow fondant.

YAY! for Fancy French Desserts!!

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

I did mine to be kind of like a Princess Cake, with raspberry and custard and marzipan.


I piped the colored paste in a scroll design to mimic the pink marzipan rope often around the bottom of a princess cake. I made an almond genoise and layered it with a gelatin set vanilla bavarian cream and a gelatin set raspberry mousse. I topped it with the traditional green marzipan and roses.



I decided to do a square because I knew I couldn't make a single piece go all the way around like I would want (and the design would be harder to match up) so I built a cardboard frame, wrapped it in plastic and put it on a square plate to set in the fridge. I forgot to take a picture of it in the frame, but I took one after I removed the cake.


It was delicious, and fun to make.

DB August 09- Dobostorte!

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

I've made a Dobostorte before and didn't like this one better, so I'm going to stick to the other recipe if I ever make it again. I did use the chocolate buttercream from my recipe because I already had it in the fridge. It's a whole-egg buttercream made with a boiled sugar syrup, and made even better with the addition of melted dark chocolate. I really like it and use it for other things as well. I'm using it for a wedding cupcake tower in just a couple of weeks.

I made mine rectangular because it's faster. I lined two sheets with parchment, divided the batter between them, and baked them for 10 minutes, switching racks halfway. I cut each sheet of sponge into four and stacked it with the buttercream. I cut it into six pieces and arranged them on a cake plate for serving. I covered long, thin triangles of sponge with the caramel and put them on top to decorate. I think they looked pretty fantastic, and tasted fine, although I wasn't a fan of this sponge recipe.

Cheesecake!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. I added melted dark chocolate since we were having it for my dad's birthday and he loves chocolate. It turned out fine, but with a huge crack in it! I've never had a cheesecake crack like that before. The crack was 3/4" deep and several inches long, so I made ganache and poured it over the top. The edges were higher than the middle so the ganache didn't go over the sides but stayed in a nice round pool.
I'll post pictures soon, but they aren't on my computer yet.

DB Flourless Chocolate Cake

YAY! for flourless chocolate cake
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge

I made my chocolate cakes in heart shaped pans and served them with spiced ice cream and salted vanilla caramel sauce.
I used David Liebovitz's vanilla ice cream recipe, first flavoring the cream with the zest of one orange, a few whole cloves, two cinnamon sticks, and a few pieces of fresh ginger before making the custard.

Christmas Cupcakes

Here's a gingerbread cupcake with a lemon icing and large crystal sprinkles. They look better than they tasted, unfortunately. Next time I'll do a lemon cream cheese icing or a brown butter icing and put more spice in the cupcakes, maybe even some crystalized ginger for crunch and pizzazz.