Last Cake, Next Cake

A short LC NC today and an early one!

Mendy made She Loves Me Cake in a bundt pan. He split lobotomize the bundt horizontally in half and filled it with lemon curd topped with fresh blueberries. "This was a fabulous cake! The kind of cake that must have made Rose famous. Very classic."

I'm so proud of Hanaa. She made 1/5th recipe of the Marble Velvet Cake. The cake looks super cute and has nice little swirls in it. "Rose has every right to call this a "velvet cake". The texture is phenomenal. Soft and velvety smooth. It just melts in your mouth. The chocolate sections are intensely chocolaty which is a nice contrast against the buttery non-chocolate part."

Our FEATURED BAKER this week is someone who decided she should "start facing my sponge cake aversion. So I started with the sponge cake I have the most aversion to: the Catalan Salt Pinch Cake." That person, ladies and gentlemen, is ECL. Her aversion is mainly because the cake got mixed reviews in the taste department. I thought it's impressive that ECL decided to face the challenge head on. And it paid off too! ""This is the kind of cake that you can just pinch off a little every time you walk by it, and if you start making special trips to the kitchen in order to walk by the cake more often, well, don't say I didn't warn you."

I want to mention that Hanaa is doing a book review and a giveaway at her blog. The book is ATK's Cook's Country Blue Ribbon Dessert. The giveaway is open until midnight on Saturday July 16th (CET) and the winner will get a copy of the book, so head over there for your chance to win!

Next week we have the Chocolate Tomato Cake with Mystery Ganache. I've read the recipe and it is a pretty typical butter chocolate cake, except that it uses tomato soup in both the cake and the ganache. There are mixed reviews on this cake. Some said it's the best chocolate cake, others said it's good but can't get over the fact that it used tomato soup. I tend to think I will fall into the latter category, but who knows. Should be interesting to find out, :).

One note about the ganache is that Rose said it should be made several hours ahead. However, looking at Hanaa's experience,  said that her ganache was still liquid after 3 hours so she ended up using whipped ganache instead. I think I will make the ganache the night before or early in the morning before I start on the cake.