Last Cake, Next Cake

Jane started the Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake while her roommate was still sleeping, which means she grated the chocolate by hand. "It probably took me about 20 minutes to get all 56 grams of chocolate.  My arm was killing me." A full recipe of this cake used 13 extra large eggs. Not wanting to waste the egg yolks, Jane made pasta for lunch. Fort he frosting, Jane combined whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and almonds. The result: "the icing tasted like cookies and cream ice cream which everyone seemed to enjoy. But as delicious as the icing was, I felt that the cake could have had more vanilla in it or something else because it didn't have a distinct flavor."

Melissa began her post by talking about fete season. I was confused about what fete is but reading her description and the fact that it's summer in Australia, I think it's the equivalent of fairs and farmer's market in the US. Melissa's gingerbread cake has a dip in the middle, which bothered her terribly because well, the cake's appearance just does not look appetizing. "It's really hard for a drab, brown, un-iced cake to compete with the glamorous girls of chocolate icing, sprinkles, cream cheese icing, banana cakes, marble cakes, chocolate cakes with chocolate icing, vanilla cakes with chocolate icing. You get the picture." The appearance is the only thing she didn't love about this cake though. "It has a remarkably balanced set of flavours. The sweetness of the sugar is balanced with the spicy tang of the other ingredients."

We have a new member this week: Colleen. Colleen hails from Santa Cruz, California who married a guy from Punjabi, India. She just bought a copy of Rose's Heavenly Cakes and discovered our group. It is sad that she just stumbled upon us now but we are very happy to have her for the last few cakes! Colleen happily made English Gingerbread Cake for this week's assignment, as she called it. Unfortunately her 1st baking adventure from RHC did not turn out as planned. The cake collapsed in the oven and came out looking like "a flat sticky disk somewhat between bread pudding and undercooked brownies." As she watched the cake collapsed, her husband noticed the eggs sitting on the counter. Eggs that were supposed to be in the cake. "Mystery solved!" This is why the cake collapsed! Though it looked "horrible, heavy, and quite gooey," it tasted delicious. Please join me in welcoming Colleen to our little club!!!

Our FEATURED BAKER this week, Mendy, made the White Gold Passion Genoise using Mango, renaming the cake to Golden (Mango) Genoise. He doubled the recipe for the genoise but only made 1 recipe of the buttercream. "Rose's buttercream recipes in this book are always enough for two layers." He made his own "fab" mango curd from Dole's frozen mango.Mendy found a mistake in the recipe for the buttercream section. "The recipe calls for 6 oz of cream cheese which should be 170g. However, 6 ounces was only 123g and the 170g was for the full 8oz package! I know it is not a big mistake but I feel pretty good for having spotted it! :)" Mendy, you should be proud! No one has else noticed this error.

Next week we have the Bernachon Pale 'd'Or Gateau on page 109 of the book. I would really like to know how to pronounce this cake. I've been calling it "bernachon" and even so I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong. It is not a complicated cake but it does have 3 components to it. There's the cake, the creme fraiche ganache, and the lacquer glaze. The cake uses some sour cream and if you do not want to have to buy both creme fraiche and sour cream, Rose gives an alternative of using sour cream for the ganache. On the cover of the book this cake is adorned with edible gold flakes and currants. If you don't want to use either one, you can follow Marie's footsteps and use other fruits.