Last Cake, Next Cake

There is not a lot of participation this week. Only 6 people - including myself - made the trifle. I suppose people have other plans that involved things more exciting than laboring in the kitchen making this trifle. My grand plan of scheduling it for the long weekend so we have more time composing it backfired? Oh well, I have no regrets. The trifle was made, eaten, and everyone happy.

"The day Rose's Heavenly Cakes arrived, this Chocolate Raspberry Trifle is the very first page I saw.  It stunned me" - says Vicki. She quickly added that she has dreaded making this recipe because her nemesis is genoise. Fortunately this time the genoise turned out great, "no hidden flour balls and it rose to the required height." She loved this cake - "the custard alone would make this recipe worthwhile" with eldest granddaughter wanting to "jump into a swimming pool of custard."

Lois celebrated US Memorial Day in Poland, invited friends over and served Spanish food and this trifle for dessert. She couldn't find raspberries so she used cherries, making her trifle "Black Forest-like." She made a 9x13 cake so they could fit into her "very flared salad bowl." Complete in her substitution, she used cherry preserved instead of raspberry. Though she noted that it takes more time to use fresh cherries, as they have to be "lovingly and patiently sliced and pitted." The trifle is a big hit with her dinner guest, with one friend said "you couldn't buy something like this: it's so special. It should be for a wedding or something."

Kristina halved the recipe and made it while her husband "was cutting the rafters for our shed’s roof." In the midst of that, she also did a couple of loads of laundry. If you're not impressed yet by her energy and multi-tasking ability, while the cake is cooling she went outside to help Jay with the shed. "Later, just before supper, I came back in for assembly of the cake." She loved the flavor combo of the trifle, though thought the cake was a tad soggy. She brought it to work, where "like always, it disappeared quickly."

Katya also made half the recipe and smartly used the content of her refrigerator. "The final product was composed of Moist Chocolate Genoise, apricot preserves, creme anglaise made with cream, milk, coconut milk and the dregs of the milk chocolate ganache syrup left over from the wedding cake prototyping (it was in the glass measuring cup I used, hence the brownish flavor), and raspberries." She brought the trifle to a picnic, where it was a hit.

Melissa, who proudly listed the new techniques she learned by making this cake "melting chocolate with boiling water, warming eggs, the mousse-like consistency of the batter, no butter in a cake," saying "it was fun." This is why she is our FEATURED BAKER this week. Melissa joined the Heavenly Cake Bakers to encourage herself to try out new cake baking techniques and to move outside her comfort zone. Her trifle looks grand, with voluminous piping of whipped cream that looks like it's crowning the trifle, instead of adorning it.

Our cake next week is the Swedish Pear and Almond Cream cake from page 58. This cake seems pretty straightforward, except it calls for a special ingredients: almond paste. Though you can substituted with marzipan as Jennifer and Mendy both did back in Nov 2010. I somehow had it in my head that someone made their own almond paste for this cake. My first thought was Hanaa, our champion substitutor, but upon searching on her blog I could not find it. I wonder who it is or if my mind is playing tricks on me, a much more likely scenario!

In any case, I plan on substituting the almond paste with homemade almond concoction, as I do not want to spend $5-6 on a tube of almond paste that I only use once. I think there's a frangipane recipe in the Pie & Pastry Bible that I could use. If my memory is correct, it's basically ground almond, butter, and sugar mixed up. Should be interesting :).