michelle- i looked at the strawberry cake recipe and the icing looks awful. all sugar, not much else. i cant judge the cake without tasting it, but i would advise a different frosting. why not some lightly sweetened whipped cream(with a little de-seeded strawberry puree for color if sparky wants a pink frosting) with fresh strawberries added at serving time? just my opinion...... justjoan

Thanks, G and Steve! (sorry, we ate it all, but if you want to stop by, there's a little tub of icing you can have for a fruit dip )

Joan, I rarely use the icing recipe that comes with a cake (as is obvious above, I tend to mix-and-match,) so I didn't even look at it; I was going to some kind of whipped-cream thing at the last minute (maybe a strawberry cream sort of thing, though that seems a bit over the top) Do you have experience with using strawberry puree in baked goods? Will it turn an awful color without additional coloring? Should I add raspberries?

I've never made a cake with strawberries in it, but I do have a cookie recipe with strawberries in it. Well, strawberry jam technically, but I used pureed strawberries and just upped the sugar slightly. The color was surprisingly muted and a bit dull, I believe mostly because the amount of strawberry puree (relative to the other stuff) was somewhat small so as not to mess up the texture of the batter by making it too wet to make good cookies, but it doesn't look like your cake recipe has much more at all. Perhaps have some red food coloring on-hand if the batter looks too muted/dull. I think adding a second fruit would just mess with the moisture content of the batter and it might not bake up as well.

I also used strawberry extract to intensify the strawberry flavor a little, but I don't know if it was worth it or not as I've only made those cookies once, and never tried them without extract/with a different extract. And now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the little bottle of strawberry extract...

This is a bit off topic -- although it's still concerned with cakes and frostings.

I made what I consider to be most amazingly chocolate cake I've ever tasted this past weekend -- it's from a recipe on epicurious

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/ ... AKE-101275

And it really was absolutely delicious. I'm picky about chocolate cake because I don't feel that many of them achieve the chocolate level I'm looking for but this one was outstanding. Almost fudgy and rich and not too sweet (despite the three cups of sugar in it!). It was a big hit.

However...i attempted to make an italian meringue to cover it -- and while what I ended up with was tasty -- it was definitely not the luscious-ness of an italian meringue. More like egg whites that had a sugar syrup poured on them. Any advice on making it? I think my errors lie in two places -- one, i reached the "soft ball" stage really quickly -- my stove is hard to regulate, temperature wise and it turned on me quickly and I didn't have a candy thermometer to track it (a mistake i will definitely fix the next time around) and two, i think I didn't beat the egg whites enough either before the syrup was added or after it was. Don't know for certain. Now...I could eat egg whites with sugar and vanilla in them anytime (in fact, I have -- my mother used to make them as a treat for us when we were growing up. I remember many times having that a lot more than cookie dough as a sweet snack) but i was so disappointed in my frosting.

So..tales from my kitchen bakery.

Those cakes look absolutely delightful, Mhays...my birthday's coming up in February if you're interested!

Good job - those cakes look delicious and beautiful! I've been tracking this thread b/c I am co-hosting a baby shower next weekend. The guest of honor requested something light and no chocolate. I think I might make the wedding cake that Smitten Kitchen posted about last month or Dorie's perfect birthday cake.

I have made this blogger's recipe for strawberry cupcakes. I don't see why you couldn't make it into a layer cake. I did not have strawberry liquor for the frosting though, so it was not as dark as hers. These were quite tasty.

michelle- i often add a very intense raspberry puree to frostings. if you have rose levy beranbaum's, 'the cake bible', she tells you how to make the best puree. i highly recommend this book to anyone baking cakes. she is the cake goddess, IMO. i've never done strawberry, but dont see why you couldnt. basically, beranbaum's advice for intense flavor is to mix cooked down puree with fresh puree. no food coloring. but for a little kid's cake i think just pressed out puree for pinkness plus fresh berries should be just fine. justjoan

Mhays-

Holy smoke, those cakes look good! Now I know what type of cake to request when my bday comes round . . .

Thanks, but Aschie, I think you may have spoken too soon...just a matter of time before this one appears on Cake Wrecks,...



Appetizing, ain't it? Well, let me explain...first of all, Sparky had a Lego-themed birthday (including a trip to the newly-opened Legoland, which IMHO isn't worth the money) so I tried this method for a lego cake(which would have worked!) Second of all, I used this recipe for buttercream frosting, which gave me no end of trouble: it broke, I tried all the fixes I could think of, finally it was too late and I had to just run with it. It had the additional advantage of tasting godawful due to the cornstarch I added as one of the fixes (other fixes, freezing, whipping vigorously, nothing really worked and it was too late to start over) What was worse, it dripped everywhere, leaving a trail of gore between the freezer and the table. Awful, awful, awful - have pity on me, oh LTH!

However, the good news - the strawberry cake suggested by Pucca was excellent, (that lady knows her cake!) tasting of fresh strawberries but not too sweet with a nice, light crumb. I didn't have time to tinker with purees for color, but did add a bit of food coloring in the end; my guess is that it would have been better if left alone. Barring the nasty frosting, it tasted excellent, much better than it looked:



I filled with Fannie Farmer's French Strawberry filling:

1 egg white
1/8 tbsp salt
1 cup whipping cream
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup mashed strawberries

Whip egg whites with salt until stiff - in another bowl, whip cream, adding sugar and vanilla and whipping to stiff peaks. Fold together with egg whites and then fold in strawberries. It isn't a very stiff filling, but it bathes the cake in strawberry juice and has a very light texture. An excellent combination with the strawberry cake - came out reminiscent of an airy strawberry shortcake, exactly what I was going for.

OTOH, for Sparky's "kid" party, we ordered a cake from Hippo Bakery at Mitsuwa (where we stopped for lunch - because, after all, what's a birthday without red caviar?) Now, THEY can do cake. We faxed them a pic of Sparky's favorite Pokemon, and recieved this:





This is their Pokemon fruit custard cake, each of the kids got a Pokemon cookie - and the cake itself was absolutely heavenly. Highly recommended.

Just for future reference, Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe about a yellow cake with strawberry puree.

Hi,

For my Mother's birthday, I made pineapple upside down cake with dried cherries.

This is a delightful departure from her long time favorite of a graveyard cake.

Regards,

Cathy, did you stew the cherries before topping (bottoming) your cake? What did you use for liquid?

Hi,

I borrowed ideas from several recipes. Cook's Illustrated cooked fresh pineapple with brown sugar to leach out the liquid as well as reduce and carmelize. I used canned pineapple, instead of cooking the pineapple I cooked down the juice with the brown sugar. I had it boiling for less than 10 minutes and stopped when it began to make big bubbles, which is where CI stopped too. I arranged the pineapple slices, then sprinkled dried cherries into the crevices. Batter on top and off to the oven. The cherries plumped as they cooked in the syrup.

I liked the dried cherries over the marashino, because I know a million ways to use the dried and very few for the cocktail cherries.

Regards,

Epicurious just printed an article on their thirty top-rated cakes (interestingly, the almond-berry and the peanut-butter are two.) There are quite a few I plan to try at some point. I liked how the definition of cake is a bit stretched for some.

Just saw Pucca's post about the dessert exchange, and realized I have this to post: For father's day, I decided to try one of the Epicurious cakes in the link above - a fresh version of the old-time southern coconut cake. I had several hiccups during the process, so my cake hardly resembles the one in the recipe, but it turned out fairly well:



How did I not follow the recipe, you ask? Well, first of all, without thinking, I assumed "fresh coconut" meant green coconut and wound up with two of those that turned out to be completely useless for this process. So, after a second trip to the store for the brown kind, I began the recipe - which I halved, since there are only 3 of us. Then I found it called for whole milk, which I didn't have - so I added some thai canned coconut milk to make up the fat and add some flavor. Then I made the genoise, and discovered that I had 6 egg yolks floating around, and decided to make lime curd instead of the filling called for in the recipe, subbing a little more (I guess about 1/4 cup) coconut milk for part of the lime juice when I got tired of squeezing limes. Between the power drills, hammer, and lime squeezer, this cake is a real workout for both your arms and your toolbox.

It was the day of that awful storm, so I decided against the royal icing and instead switched to a buttercream using this recipe. I then grated the coconut in the food processor (I'd have preferred a finer shred, but don't have one - and wasn't about to do it by hand) All in all, it came out OK - but the frosting is very, very sweet and the cake is pretty sweet. Being as none of us is a big fan of sugary desserts, while I may make the coconut genoise again, I probably will frost, fill and top it some other way. The coconut-lime curd did turn out fine (just didn't really cut the sweetness of the cake/icing) and was quite lime-y and delicious on its own. I did like the stark whiteness of the dense (moreso than usual because of the weather) cake layers, and the slight whiff of coconut from the added coconut milk.

Hi,

You're cake look's great!

For a finer grating, you can scoop up the just grated coconut and return it to the food processor's hopper for a second grating.

I learned this technique when making sweet potato latkes long ago.

Regards,

omg, Mhays, that looks so good! I wish I could bite it through my computer monitor!

Thank you both - and, Pucca, I can't wait to see yours!

How about a tres leche cake? That would be a different type of cake that is excellent and unusual for most people.

Another idea for a birthday cake alternative... What about a roll cake? I think they tend to be lighter... I usually take on a themed baking project in summer, and I was having a hard time coming up with one that excited me this year. After seeing this green tea and red bean cake roll recipe from Chocolate & Zucchini last week, I considered trying to make a different roll cake every week. At least that's what I thought I had decided until I saw this tonight:

Mhays wrote:Epicurious just printed an article on their thirty top-rated cakes (interestingly, the almond-berry and the peanut-butter are two.)

Thirty cakes...would probably have to bake 2-3 a week to keep it to a summer project... I've done crazier things... Stay tuned.

Wow. and I say it again. Wow.

Apparently I uploaded pictures and never got around to posting! At any rate, we had all our summer birthdays sqooshed into one weekend because the spouse was out of town on his birthday.

I made this cake from the list above at Epicurious, a definite winner, and sure to enter the permanent rotation. The mascarpone filling may well become my standard frosting: it's rich but light at the same time, holds up beautifully, and is easy to work with (you can easily fill the cake and have it stand up to cutting without squashing down.) The cake itself is very dense and rich - basically a pound cake - and the buttermilk gives it a buttery flavor instead of a sour one. The sherry macerating liquid sinks right into it, and it's all delicious. I just emptied out my fruit drawer for the topping: apricots, kiwis, blueberries, raspberries. Highly recommended, now one of my favorite cakes. (And what was the mhays baking mistake for this one? It was that I misread the number of cake pans, so I made two very flat cakes instead of one cut in half. Worked fine.)



Sparky decided he wanted plain vanilla cupcakes with plain vanilla frosting. I used this recipe from Joy of Baking, and wasn't happy with it: though it may well have been that I overbeat the butter and eggs, I found the texture to be too dense and a bit dry, and the lemon zest really takes a front seat; they're much more like lemon cupcakes than vanilla. As I said elsewhere, though the buttercream had a slightly grainy texture (not from the sprinkles, and not really different from many bakery cupcake icings) but good flavor, not too sweet. Sparky had fun putting sprinkles and marshmallows on them, but they weren't the hit of the party (though we went to the Pizza Place Whose Name I Dare Not Speak, so it could easily have been distraction)

Mhays-

The cake looks great. I'm still trying to find a way for you to adopt me. My birthday is in May, so stands alone from the spouse's and Sparky's.

LOL! An excuse for cake in May!

My niece and nephew always celebrate their birthdays together. This year, my niece loves Chococat (a Hello Kitty character), and my nephew loves Spiderman (especially the black Spiderman from Spiderman 3. I printed out a couple of enlarged images, laid a piece of parchment paper on it, and traced it with royal icing. I outlined them, then filled them in, and then after drying overnight, I lifted them onto the frosted cakes. I ran out of time/creativity/patience and wish I put more thought into decorating my niece's cake as I was disappointed w/those pink polka dots and flowers. These aren't the best picture, but you get the idea.

For my fiance's and FSIL's birthdays, I made the Sweet and Salty Cake from Baked. This is probably the best cake I've ever made. The cake was moist, the caramel was the perfect twist, and the whipped caramel chocolate ganache was DIVINE. You really couldn't eat too large of a slice, but nonetheless so worth it. I really hated making the caramel b/c when I followed the recipe that called for you to heat it to 350, it would lead to a burnt caramel. Both for the caramel layer and the caramel for the frosting, I had to throw out my first attempt. I followed the recipe for the cake, but made them in two 9-inch pans b/c I don't have three 8-inch pans. I halved the recipe for the caramel and the frosting, and it worked out perfectly. I took this picture the morning after so it had been sitting in the fridge overnight. You can see that the frosting is dense from the fridge, but it was actually really light and fluffy when fresh or at room temperature.

Pucca - Just awesome. The royal icing/tracing trick is a good one.

Really stunning! I think I've tried a similar trick with melted chocolate, but it does make the cake really hard to cut. The sweet-and-salty cake looks delicious, is it salty inside, or is it just topped with sea salt?

Thanks for the compliments! I have tried this technique with chocolate, but only with letters.

For the sweet & salty cake, there is salt in the caramel and in between the cake layers. When you assemble the cake, the layers are: cake, caramel, frosting, sprinkle of salt and repeat.

Pucca,

All those cakes look terrific.

I cannot imagine Bella being disappointed with her cake. She probably fixed her eye on her kitty and didn't let go.

When you served the character cakes, did you lift off the parchment decoration?

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:When you served the character cakes, did you lift off the parchment decoration?

Thank you! I took those pictures before I left my house. It was a mildly warm day, and by the time we cut into the cake, the royal icing characters softened and settled into the frosting. We were able to slice into it. It was up to each person whether or not they wanted to eat it. I did not get a piece w/the royal icing on it, so I am not sure how it was. I would've assumed that it would taste bitter due to the amount of black gel I used, but my FI said it was fine.

Hi,

My sister is fond of a popular Filippino cake named Sans Rival (translated from French, "Without rival") available at UniMart in Niles. From my house, it can be a 90-minute round trip depending on traffic.

After a day of running around, I wasn't quite in the mood to spend 90 minutes buying a cake. Especially one I estimated I could make myself. Sans Rival is several layers of meringue, buttercream and cashew nuts. Almost everything I could possibly need was at home. The one item not at home was cashews, though I had pecans.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I looked on the internet to find three recipes that might do. Two recipes were unprecise by specifying six eggs with no indication of egg size. The third precise recipe asked for a cup of egg whites, which six extra large eggs fit the bill.

The recipe I used can be found here. I have made this cake several times over the last few months. In some versions, they suggested substituting almonds for cashews. I found the texture of almonds substantially harder than either pecan or cashew. I don't suggest using almonds.

I have spread the meringue on circles penciled onto parchment paper. I also made it once in foil lined pans. The pan baked meringue had more tender sides and bottom. Personally I could go either style for baking the meringue.



One of my friends is a Filippina who offered this cake is typically square shaped not round. She thought the buttercream was too sweet. Unfortunately the one she tried there was an extra 4 tablespoons of sugar I accidentally threw in.

The best bonus of making this cake at home was an active time of less than 30 miinutes while in my pajamas.

Regards,