Happy Happy Lemon Cake

I can't believe we haven't posted since May.   My life has gotten so crazy, and this is supposed to be a quiet season.  Oh well.  Can't say what Sarah's excuse is.  She came to visit us recently, and while we did bake a key lime pie, it got eaten so fast I didn't even get a picture.  I assume Sarah will chime in with a cupcake review at some point.

Anyway, enough excuses and on to this amazing lemon cake.  This is a cake that I made at the end of May for a co-worker's birthday.  Like most cakes from BAKED, it had about a zillion steps but it was so worth it.  Every single part of the cake was amazing and when they came together it was awesome.  One of the best lemon cakes I have ever had, let alone baked.  I did not have three 8-inch pans, as the recipe calls for, so I used two nine inch pans and cut the layers in half for four layers and it was great.

I highly recommend this cake, but only make it if you have time (you can make it over two days or so).  You will be rewarded for your hard work with total deliciousness.  You can find the recipe here.

Spring Sprang, and This Is What I Made

Monday was the first day of spring here in New York (in my very scientific definition, it's the first day that you could comfortably go outside without a coat). Don't worry, it's now back to 43 degrees and rainy, but for two and a half whole days, it was glorious. And how convenient - Monday was also the Oxford University Press bake sale to raise money for the wonderful organization New York Cares! I signed up to bring cake, and decided to make mini-bundts because a) they're adorable and b) they're easy to transport. Because they were going to be sold for money, I was very careful to grease and flour the mini-bundt pans so that the cakes would come out whole, which they so rarely do. But guess what? Every one of them did! I was inordinately proud.

Enough of the bragging, Rosenthal, tell us about the recipe! I miniaturized the excellent lemon lavender bundt recipe from Williams-Sonoma. And now I need to share the following exchange that my friend Joe Rim, who is a public school teacher in Philadelphia, had with one of his students:

Joe: I need to get a really good pot.
Student: WHAT?
Joe: Yeah maybe I'll go to Williams-Sonoma after school.
Student:...yo Rim, get me some, too.
Joe: No my dealer's name is not William Sonoma.

Anyway, this recipe tastes like spring. If I celebrated Easter, I would totally make it for Easter. The lavender flavor is so subtle and interesting, and the flowers are small enough that they don't interfere with the texture. Plus, I don't know if this was the glaze or the residual flour from the well-greased bundt pan, but the exterior had a nice l'il crunch to it. Plus, it smells great. So assuming spring ever comes back (fingers crossed!), I hope to be making it again soon. You can find the recipe here.

New Passover Dessert: Chocolate Idiot Cake

The thing about Passover desserts is, when you find one that works, you really want to stick with it.  So many Passover dessert recipes are really terrible and you don't know until you bite into it, so when I find a good one, I tend to make it every year.

However, at the last minute this year, I decided I wanted something chocolate to go with our usual berry crisp.  I thought the best course of action would be to find a flourless chocolate cake that was not Passover in any way, and make it  for the seder.

After a short google, I found this flourless chocolate cake from David Lebovitz.  Since I trust the man with all ice cream, I figure he probably also knows cake.  And, since this cake is called Chocolate Idiot Cake, I figured the chances of screwing it up are small.  

This cake was very, very easy to make.  It is just chocolate, butter (margarine in my case), sugar and eggs and then you put it in a water bath.  The cake comes out creamy and very, very rich (and pretty flat, but that is par for the course).  A small slice does the trick and is a delicious chocolate end to the seder (and if you are having a vegetarian seder, I highly recommend a dollop of whipped cream).  You can find the recipe here.

Review: Sugar Flower Cake Shop Cake Decorating Class

I know, I know, it's Pi Day! And it's near-sacrilegious to write about cake on Pi Day. But it's sacrilege I guess I'll have to commit.

Two Sundays ago I went to a cake decorating class at the charming Sugar Flower Cake Shop. I got the class as a Groupon and was very excited - though I consider myself a pretty good amateur baker, my decorating skills leave something to be desired. As I learned in the class' introductory speech from our instructor, Amy, Sugar Flower Cake Shop is all about local organic blah blah di blah blah. I kind of tuned it out because who in New York isn't into local and organic these days. But what I appreciated most was that apparently they only use buttercream, never fondant, because fondant tastes terrible. So we were off to a good start.

The lovely Sugar Flower Cake Shop

Amy and her assistants handed out squares of cake to everyone in the class. It was a vanilla cake with caramel filling, and the frosting was vanilla as well. I was lucky enough to be the only person at my table of six to get a perfectly rectangular piece (everyone else had one that had been cut from the side of the cake). Amy showed us how to hold our offset spatulas like a spoon, and instructed us to wipe the excess frosting off into a tub after every slather of frosting. This seemed excessively fastidious for me (after all, it's called a crumb coat - can't it have some crumbs in it?) but I guess it's a good habit to get in to for later, non-crumb coats. Once we had a good layer of frosting on our cakes, they put them in the fridge, and it was time to learn how to decorate! 

Amy taught us the correct angles for piping stars (large and small), shells, dots, filigree, writing, and so on. I found shells to be the most challenging. You have to hold your bag at a 45-degree angle, squirt, and then quickly move the tip to the right in order to make a thin tail. (This is assuming you're a righty, going left to right.) But it was a lot of fun to try. I was especially grateful for the tip that I should not fill my piping bag with more than a little frosting - I always overfill, and I never even realized it until now. It's a lot easier to control in small amounts, even if it's annoying to have to constantly refill it. The other major annoyance was that the frosting pretty much melted as the class went on, and became close to unusable towards the end. But Amy was adamant that buttercream should not go in the fridge, and I trust her - she's the expert!

After that, it was time for our cakes to come out of the fridge, so we could put on the final coating of frosting. This was the part I found the most challenging. Despite having the easiest piece of cake to deal with, mine took the longest to frost. I couldn't get the damned corners. Luckily, Amy was very helpful. "You can never have too much buttercream," she said, which is a fine motto for all areas of life, don't you think? Anyway, with sufficient slathering, I got the corners (mostly) covered, and got to decorating! You can see the fruits of my labor above. After we finished decorating, everyone got a box in which to take their cake home. Let's just say that my cake didn't last 24 hours in my apartment! 

I would recommend this class to any beginning cake decorator. It was totally full and so I didn't get all the personal attention I would have liked, but hey, it's a Groupon, what do you want. I feel like I learned a lot; plus, they sent all the people in the class a practice sheet for piping, so I can continue my cake-decorating education in the comfort of my own home.

Ethnic Flavor: Aaaaples and Crisco for Rosh Hashanah

So the chagim (the many Jewish holidays that come one after the other in September and October) are finally over. Every year, it seems like they’ll never end, and then they do, and you’re like, huh, a small part of me misses them. But it’s a pretty small part.

One of the more fun parts about the chagim is the eating. Well, not on Yom Kippur. But whether you’re sitting at the dining room table or in a hut, there are plenty of festive holiday meals. This year, Rosh Hashanah was made doubly special by the fact that it fell on our dad’s birthday, and our mom requested that I make him a special holiday/birthday cake. (It was also a co-cake for our Uncle Joel, whose birthday had been the previous week.) I thought about it for a good long while and then – eureka! – remembered a tasty cake that my friend Nathan once shared with me when we came back to college after Rosh Hashanah senior year. Obviously it was a very delicious cake, to have stuck with me for the last two years. It was an apple cake, which is traditional for Rosh Hashanah. (We eat apples and honey for a sweet new year, get it?) So I e-mailed him and he kindly sent me the recipe. I knew it would be delicious but I wanted to add a little spruce to it, it being a double-birthday cake and all. Caramel glaze or frosting seemed the natural thing, but because we were having meat, I was concerned that it wouldn’t work out, as caramel is rather dependent on cream and butter. Luckily, I was able to dig up a surprisingly delicious recipe for vegan caramel frosting. It used the dreaded Crisco, for which I normally would substitute margarine, but I figured that one probably shouldn’t screw around with vegan recipes, which are already dicey at best. And then it was lucky that I had made the frosting, because we pretty much had to glue the cake back together when it came out of the pan, and it looked much nicer frosted.

The most fun part about this recipe was getting to use my dad’s apple peeler-corer-slicer, the latest in apple peeling-coring-slicing technology. It took me an embarrassingly long time and the help of my heroic father to learn how to use it, but once I did, it was so fun! I highly recommend using one if you are going to make a recipe with a lot of apples, like this one.

Me, coring/peeling/slicing apples

Neat!

The cake, despite being in pieces, came out just as yummy as I had remembered it being in the fall of 2010. There were a lot of desserts at that festive holiday meal, but this cake was by far the most popular! Serve it at your next apple-related event! (Perhaps a Steve Jobs memorial service? Haw haw haw.)

Ruth Margolin's Apple Cake

5 apples (tart, like Granny Smith)

2 t cinnamon

5 T sugar

3 C flour

3 t baking powder

2 C sugar

2-½ t vanilla

1 C oil

1 t salt

4 eggs

¼ C orange juice

Peel the apples, and cut into slices.  Sprinkle with the cinnamon and the 5 T sugar, and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the remaining ingredients together until smooth.

Grease a large tube pan.  (Either use a Baker’s Joy type spray that includes flour, or grease the pan and then dust it with sugar.)

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan.  Place half the apple mixture on top.  Pour on remaining batter, spreading to cover apples.  Top with remaining apples.  (There will be some sweetened juice in the apple bowl; you can drizzle it over the apples.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 1-¼ hours.  Let stand 15 minutes and then remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

You can find the frosting recipe here.

The Final Baked Goods Friday (For Some)

Big news in Baking Sisters land - I started a new job at Oxford University Press this week. It's going well so far, with one exception. My reputation as a baker had apparently preceded me, which is great, but when I brought in Dorie's classic molasses cookies for Baked Goods Friday, no one was eating them! I was confused and dismayed, until my cubiclemate said to me, "It's so funny that you put it out right when you got here. Usually, people wait until after lunch." I, of course, replied, "Don't worry - I will train you to eat cheesecake at 9 a.m." Luckily, all the cookies were gone by 12:30, but it was a little touch-and-go for a while there. 

It was made especially galling by the fact that a number of my friends back at Basic were contacting me all day and telling me how sad they were not to have their weekly sweet fix. Now there's an office that really knows how to appreciate its 9 a.m. cheesecake. I knew that I had to make a special treat for my last day of work, and I settled on a cake recipe from Amy's Bread that had gotten rave reviews when I made for Rachel's graduation party. I don't usually make cakes for Baked Goods Friday because they're hard to transport, but I figured that this was worth it.

Here's the trick about this cake (or rather, this cake's frosting) - it's made with poured fondant, so you must remember to make that at least 24 hours before you want to make the frosting. The cake itself is pretty straightforward and quite delicious. It's got a moist density that reminded Rachel and me of the Entenmann's chocolate cupcakes we used to have on our half-birthdays. (Appropriately enough, my last day at Basic, the 28th, was also my half-birthday.) Those cupcakes were especially fun because of the stiff, thick layer of icing on top that you could peel off and eat separately. Ostensibly, the poured fondant is supposed to make the icing on this cake hard as well (although not as creepily, artificially hard as the Entenmann's kind), but it mostly tasted like regular frosting to me. I didn't make it pink, because what's the point? 

As you'll see from the photograph, I also tried to make the very dignified and classy-looking Basic logo out of Betty Crocker's finest electric blue frosting-in-a-tube, which I had bought at Morton Williams at 7:30 a.m. that morning. It didn't go that well, but whatever, it's the sentiment that counts. Oxford University Press, get ready to get fat!

You can find the cake recipe here and the frosting recipe here.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Mississippi Mud Pie (B)

As I have mentioned, I am the official office cake baker.  Whenever someone has a birthday, I find out what they want and I make the best version I can find.  I also make cakes when people leave and for other office occasions.  In the past couple of weeks we have had 1 graduation, 1 birthday, 2 people leaving and 1 person converting to Judaism.  That's a lot of cake.  I had said I was on cake maternity leave until after baby #2 arrives in a few weeks, but it seems I just can't help myself.


There is a woman who has been helping out in our office who converted to Judaism this week.  She said she likes things that are cake and chocolate and when I saw this coming up for Baked Sunday Mornings, I figured she would really enjoy this cake.


This is a serious cake -- oreo crust, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate pudding and whipped cream.  You have to really like chocolate.  Despite all those layers, this cake is lighter than I thought it would be.  The whipped cream is totally necessary to lighten things up and neither the cake layer nor the pudding layer are too sweet.


I did learn something very important with this cake.  Most of the time, especially when I make things with a graham cracker crust, I just crush the cookies in a bag with a rolling pin instead of getting the food processor dirty.  I did that with this cake, but it did not work well.  The crust was too chunky and hard to cut and it took up too much room in the pan, so there was not room for all the pudding.  Next time, the food processor is coming out.  It was still delicious though.  Don't be scared of all the steps -- you can actually do a lot of them at once.  While the crust is cooling, make the cake.  While the cake is baking, make the pudding.  Then put the cake and the pudding in the fridge to cool and all you have to do the next morning is assembly.  I highly recommend this cake for other chocoholics in your life.  Check out the Baked Sunday Mornings website for the recipe and to see what other bakers did.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice...

…That’s what pain d’epices are made of. I can’t pronounce it but it translates to “spice bread” or gingerbread, even though ginger is one of the few spices not in it! This was another one of those instances where I saw a gorgeous, mouth-watering photo on Tartelette and vowed that I would make it happen. At least this time it only took two months instead of two years. I was a little worried about the dent that all of those spices were going to make in my bank account, and then one of my officemates told me about how the Indian supermarket down the street from our office sells super-inexpensive spices. And behold, they did! I got all the spices I needed for a little over twenty dollars (and almost half of that was the cardamom, which is guess is pretty pricey anywhere you go). I ground ‘em up in my food processor, although I have to say that at 50 grams each, it was WAAAAAY more than I needed. As in, there are two sandwich bags each three-quarters full of ground spices sitting in my freezer. There’s no way I’ll be able to use them all, even if I make pain d’epices every day for the rest of the year. But hey, it’s giving me good incentive to make them again! That, and the fact that they were soooo good. I was worried that they wouldn’t be sweet enough, and the spices are definitely prominent (especially the peppercorn), but I have to say that the balance was totally delightful. They were dense yet springy, and yeasty, almost like baked donuts. Plus, they smelled awesome and looked adorable. These are a really fun winter treat for anyone in possession of a mini-bundt pan.

Pain D'Epices:adapted from Saveurs France, December 2011.

Makes 12 mini cakes

Ingredients:
For the spice mix:
equal parts in ounces or grams (I usually go by 30 grams of each & refrigerate)
cinnamon
cardamom
clove
star anise
black peppercorns
dried lemon peel
dried orange peel

Place the cinnamon, cardamom seeds and the rest of the ingredients in a coffee grinder and process until finely ground.

For the cakes:
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup milk (Bloggers note: for whatever reason, I had cream but no milk in the fridge, so I used cream. Don't think it affected the cakes negatively)
1 cup Jeanne's gluten free all purpose flour mix or regular flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon spice mix for Pain d'epices
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, kept cold
1 large egg

Sugar coating:
equal parts sugar and equals spice mix stirred together well.

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F and position a rack in the middle. Butter 12 mini bundt cake pans or other of your choice.
In a small saucepan set over medium heat, stir together the honey, dark brown sugar and milk until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and reserve.
In a food processor or with a pastry blender, combine the flour, baking powder, spice mix, and unsalted butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Whisk the egg into the cooled milk mixture and add it to the flour mix. Pulse a couple of times until the mixture is smooth. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared molds and coo 20 to 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out free of crumbs. Let the cakes cool completely before rolling them in the sugar coating.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bundt Cake

This cake is so awesome because it tastes just like a chocolate chip cookie but in an elegant cake form.  And it is parve (no dairy) so you can serve it after a meat meal.  Of course, the orignal recipe calls for butter and milk, but I substituted margarine and soy milk and it was still delicious.

The base of this cake is actually Dorie Greenspan's Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, which has nuts and fruit mixed in.  However, the brown sugar base is a lot like a chocolate chip cookie batter in cake form, so it made sense just to replace the nuts and fruit with chocolate chips (although you could probably keep the nuts if you like that kind of thing).

Here is the recipe, with my changes:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bundt Cake
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
225 g / 8 oz unsalted margarine, at room temperature
2 cups lightly packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup soy milk, at room temperature
12 oz chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9- to 10-inch Bundt pan.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately - add the flour in 3 additions and the buttermilk in 2, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix only until the ingredients are incorporated and scrape down the bowl as needed. Turn off the mixer, and with a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top.

Bake in the center of the oven for 60 to 65 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted deep into the center of the cake comes out clean. If at any point the cake is browning too fast, cover the top loosely with a piece of foil. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before unmolding, then cool to room temperature on the rack. Finish the top of the cake with a dusting of powdered sugar. 

A Holiday Triple-Header From The Baking Sisters' Dad!

Ah, Thanksgiving: a weekend of gratitude, family, shopping (for some), football (for others), and food – too much food – for all. In addition to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner (at my sister- and brother-in-law’s home in Connecticut), our family has two long-standing rituals that involve food. The first began more than 30 years ago, before any of the Baking Sisters were born. Because we live near the start of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade route, we used to take friends’ children to see the parade. After standing in the cold for several hours, we would return home to hot cocoa and chocolate chip cookies (we still use the recipe on the package of Toll House chips). This tradition continued during the many years when we stood on the parade route with the Baking Sisters. Now that they are grown, we watch the parade on television, but we still bring out the cocoa and cookies when Santa gets to Herald Square. Next year, we hope to restore the full tradition and take our grandson to see the parade live and in person! The other tradition goes back only 15 years or so. We attend the Big Apple Circus with close friends and then return home, build a fire in the fireplace (it was 60 degrees this year, but we have to make S’mores), eat plenty of wonderful food and go through several bottles of wine. So it was a busy weekend for the Baking Sister’s dad. I started with my traditional Vermont Pumpkin Pie, based on a recipe I clipped from the New York Times many years ago which I adapted to make the pie non-dairy. Beaten egg whites give the pie a light texture, while maple syrup adds New England-style sweetness that seems to be the essence of Thanksgiving. For the post-circus feast, I made Apricot Tarragon Cocktail Cookies, which go wonderfully with cheese and wine. I saw the recipe in Rebecca’s Food & Wine magazine when I visited California in October, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the recipe was contributed by Dorie Greenspan. Here is a link to the recipe. I went all-out for dessert. I always have canned pumpkin left over when I make the pumpkin pies, so I looked for a pumpkin ice cream recipe to use it up. I found a great one on David Lebovitz’s blog. As he suggests, I included rum and chopped pecans. And since it didn’t seem right to serve just ice cream, I also made Moosehead Gingerbread from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts. According to the book, the recipe came from an old-time fishing guide in Maine. In any event, the gingerbread and the ice cream were a great combination.

Fallen Souffle for Fall

I don't know if anyone here uses a blog reader (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) to bookmark stuff they want to make. Maybe some of the Baking Sisters' recipes are even on your blog reader, in which case, we're flattered. Anyway, I have no such thing, but I have a rather long-running blog reader in my head. Because it's in my head, a recipe has to really be something special in order to get on this most exclusive of lists. I saw this recipe from Tartelette when she first posted it - in December 2009 - and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. This is partly thanks to the gorgeous photographs (all the photography on that site is gorgeous), but also because I thought it sounded like such a delicious, elegant recipe. Yet for some reason, I never found the time to make it. Then, one Tuesday evening, my mom came home from the CSA (something that white people do) with a bag full of tiny pears, and I vowed that I would finally take the time to make this recipe.

Honestly, I don't know why I didn't make it before - it really doesn't take much time at all, since you can poach the pears and make the batter basically simultaneously. It was very tasty, although different than I expected. The texture was much more substantial and cake-like than past souffles I've made, but I don't think I overcooked it. Also, as you can see from contrasting my photos with Tartelette's, the pears didn't collapse into the cake but rather baked inside it. Whatever, it didn't matter, it still tasted delicious. And seriously, if you didn't already, go to the original recipe page and look at the photos, they are stunning. No wonder I remembered this recipe for almost two years.

Poached Pear And Almond Fallen Souffle Cakes
From Tartelette

Makes 6

Note: you can core the pears from the bottom to about 1 inch from the top with an apple corer but these are so tiny that I just removed the stem button at the bottom. Everything else in the core baked to very soft texture and the seeds were easy to remove while eating (kind of like tails on baked shrimp).

For the poached pears:
6 mini d'Anjou pears, peeled (or other small pears like Forelles or Seckel)
1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
2-3 cloves
2-3 cardamom pods
1 stick cinnamon
5-6 allspice berries
1-2 star anise
1/2 lemon
4 cups (1 liter) water

For the cakes:
3 tablespoons (40gr) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (100gr) sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup (190ml) heavy cream
1 cup ground almonds (blanched or skin on - your preference)
1/4 cup (40gr) sorghum flour (or use 1/4 cup all purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Prepare the pears:
Place the pears, spices, lemon and water in tall saucepan and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Lower the heat and let them simmerfor 15-20 minutes or until the pears are just soft (poke with a toothpick to check).
Remove from the water using a slotted spoon and allow to cool on paper towel or baking rack.

Prepare the cakes:
Preheat the oven to 350F and position a rack in the middle.
Slightly butter or spray 6 ramekins and place them on a baking sheet. Set aside.
In the bowl if an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffly (about 3 minutes). Add the eggs, one a time and beat well in between each addition. Reduce the speed to low and add the vanilla, heavy cream, almonds, flour and baking powder and beat until incorporated. Fill each ramekins about 1/3 full with the batter and place a poached pear in the center.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Carrot Cake: Not As Healthy As It Sounds

Last week, I set myself a challenge. We were at my grandmother’s post-unveiling lunch and my cousin Danielle, who is petite and blond and very pretty, was talking about how she had decided to give up bread for the week after eating seven slices of pizza and realizing how much bread was in her diet. She has the world’s most enviable metabolism, and can out-eat pretty much anyone I know while still remaining super-thin. Some people have all the luck. Anyway, this is relevant because she inspired me to try and give up sweets for a week. I realized that I eat three or four desserts a day – dessert encompassing candy, baked goods, ice cream and soda – and that it probably wasn’t that healthy, and that I was probably addicted. So give up sweets I did. I have to say, it was extremely difficult. Before my mom even knew what I was doing, she asked me why I was acting so ornery. My body really missed the regular injection of sugar. And since I was going to be free of my bond on Thursday night, I had this great plan for all the crap I was going to eat, especially the delicious ice cream my dad and I had made the week prior. (On Wednesday night I went to check on it, and discovered that over my sweet-free week, my dad had eaten it all! The outrage! And I didn’t even get to photograph it, so I’m afraid it won’t be making an appearance on this blog any time soon, although it was extremely tasty.)

Anyway, Thursday night rolled around, and what did I discover? I didn’t even really crave sweets any more. Sure, if you put them in front of me, I would eat and enjoy them, but I wasn’t as excited as I imagined to be re-introducing them to my digestive system. All I ended up eating that night, sweets-wise, was a bit of carrot cake batter, and I was satisfied.

Ah, carrot cake, ye most deceptive of cakes. Your name makes you sound all healthy, yet you are one of the least healthy cakes out there. My friend Allison and her kind mother gave me a new cookbook for graduation, and I wanted to try it out. Luckily, my dad’s birthday was on Friday, so I had the perfect excuse! I happily grated carrots, before being informed that using the food processor attachment would probably be a lot faster. I blithely dumped mounds of shredded carrots, toasted nuts, flour and sugar in the mixer. I gaily cracked eight eggs. As the ingredients mounted, I thought, “Wow, this sure seems like a lot of batter.” But the recipe said it made a 12 x 7 inch cake, so…

Wrong. Dead wrong. It said it made a 12 x 17 inch cake. My kitchen not being a professional bakery, I do not own such a ridiculous pan. So I split it into two pans that had roughly the same combined surface area as a 12 x 17. Grrr, I hate it when I have to do math in order to make cakes. Anyway, it took longer for them to bake than the recipe said because I think they were thicker, but whatevs. I pulled them out of the oven and decided to frost one and bring it into work the next day, and use the other for my father’s birthday cake.

WRONG AGAIN. Apparently, the Amy’s Bread cream cheese frosting is the most high-maintenance cream cheese frosting in the world, as you have to make poured fondant and then refrigerate it for 24 hours before incorporating it into the frosting. Once again, if I were good at reading recipes, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. So I had to make some quick brownie buttons to bring into the office instead, stick my fondant in the fridge and hope that I would have enough time to whip up the frosting before Shabbat dinner on Friday. Which I did. And it was really good frosting, although there was a LOT of it. Which was appropriate, because there was a LOT of cake. I stacked the cakes on top of each other, trimming one so that they’d be the same size, but even after the trimming it was still the biggest cake in history. It could feed all of North Korea. We had eight dinner guests but we still only ate about a quarter of the cake. I brought another quarter of the cake to my friends’ house, where three boys and three girls were unable to eat even half of it. This cake was nuts.

And how did it taste? Very good! It was moist and dense, but also springy, and it keeps pretty well in the fridge, which is lucky because we’re going to be eating it until my dad’s next birthday. He says that the fondant is probably to stabilize the cream cheese frosting so that it doesn’t melt, and maybe he’s right – I’ve never been much good at that kind of chemistry thing. All I can say is it’s quite a pain, although if you know in advance that you’re going to make it, you can keep the fondant in the freezer for some time and take it out when needed. Next time around, I am halving this recipe, fo shiz.

Cream-Colored Ponies and Moist Strawberry Streusel

Hey there, long time no Baking Sisters. Wassup.

When you are a prolific baker, it’s good to have what I like to call “back-pocket recipes” on hand. These are foolproof recipes with simple ingredients that don’t take long to make but always impress. Some of my favorite back-pocket recipes are tarte noire, Emily’s apple pie, and chocolate (fake) soufflés. But when I am called upon to make a dessert that is both parve and non-chocolate, this cake from Kosher By Design: Short on Time is always the one that I go to. The problem with most parve cakes is that you can really taste the lack of butter. Not having frosting goes a long way towards helping this, but usually the cake itself is still dry and crumbly. Not so this cake. It’s light yet satisfying, it stays moist and delicious for days, and it’s incredibly simple to make. Try this out, and you’ll want to keep the recipe in your back pocket, too.

I am aware that Rachel had already blogged about this. I would like to state that I have made this cake many, many times and I've never had the problems she had - thus proving categorically that I am a better person than Rachel. Just kidding. But seriously, this cake is fool-proof. Thus proving that Rachel is a fool. Just kidding again. Before I get myself into more trouble, here's the recipe.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Mom's Olive Oil Orange Bundt Cake

I know what your're thinking.  Olive Oil in a cake...for dessert...ewww!  Don't worry, I was thinking that too.  I had no idea what this cake would be like, and I was a little worried that it would be gross.  However, I read some good reviews of this cake on other blogs, so I decided to take a chance.

I'm really glad I made this cake for Baked Sunday Mornings.  The olive oil gave it a complex flavor, but you did not really know there was olive oil in it unless I told you about it.  We have a parve orange cake that we usually make, but I think this one might replace it.  It is not too sweet and the orange flavor really comes through.  I imagine you could make it with other citrus fruit as well.

The recipe gave you an option to glaze or not to glaze.  I made the glaze because I had delicious oranges from the farmer's market and because I enjoy glaze.  I just combined fresh squeezed orange juice and confectioners sugar until it looked right.  It was a really pretty pale orange color from the intense juice.  

You can see that I had a little trouble getting it out of the pan, but other than that it was super simple to throw together.  I substituted tofutti sour cream for the yogurt to make the cake parve, but otherwise made it as written.

You can view the recipe and the creations of the other bakers at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Happy Belated Birthday Blog and Beth

As I think I mentioned before, I work with a group of fabulous women.  One of the most fabulous is Beth, who happens to be our preschool director.  Although the women in my office are not great about consuming baked goods on a regular basis, they really go all out on someone's birthday.  Everyone always gets a cake or a treat tailored specifically to them and we love celebrating together (and having an excuse to eat cake).  Beth loves chocolate, so I wanted to find something delicious and festive to make for her birthday.  She works so hard and is such a great person, so I really wanted to make her feel special and celebrated.

I have had my eye on this cake for a while, since I saw it on Tracey's Culinary Adventure about a year ago.  Everything Tracey makes usually looks delicious, so I knew this was one I had to try.  I did not use strawberries in between the layers as she suggests, because Beth does not like fruit with her chocolate, but I think that would have been delicious too.

This cake was fantastic.  It was very moist with a strong chocolate flavor and the icing was incredible.  You could not really taste the white chocolate, but it make it richer and sweeter than your typical cream cheese frosting, which complimented the cake well.  I finished it off with rainbow sugar, which added a tiny bit of crunch and a festive look.  I would highly recommend this cake for a great celebration in your life.  Here is the recipe.  

The other thing this cake celebrated was the second anniversary of our blog!  It is somewhat hard to beleive that we have kept this thing going through living in four different cities and two countries over the past two years, but we did.  I feel like we have all come a long way as bakers and I am looking forward to many more delicious treats in our future!