Last Cake, Next Cake

As I'm writing this post, I am slowly eating my small slice of the cake, savoring every bite, :))).

There are not many people who makes this week's cake, but we have a great group regardless as many of you took this opportunity to play catch up.

ECL brought her cake to a summer BBQ where it was a hit. "Its like a lemon cloud, one person exclaimed. The cake got the thumbs up from all the peeps. It is light and creamy, and very lemony. The ladyfinger shell looks amazing but the delicate flavor gets lost against all the creamy lemon." ECL made her own ladyfingers, and a lot of it from the looks in the photo. Her broiler is broken so she used her fancy torch to toast the meringue, making it look really grand!

Vicki made her last genoise on her list: White Gold Passion Genoise. The genoise turned out really well, with her saying "it took the entire book but finally I no longer fear genoise." She used passion fruit concentrate and unfortunately the curd and syrup came out too strong. Quick thinking, she turned the whole cake into what she called a "fruit basket with bananas, peaches, nectarines,strawberries and mango sorbet, cutting the highly acidic flavor of the passion fruit." For the frosting, Vicki used whipped cream instead of buttercream. " It turned out to be the best fruit basket cake any of us have ever had."

Lois made it last November, so she made the No-Bake Whipped Cream Cheesecake as a catch up. There are apparently many varieties of cream cheese in Poland, flavored with chives, herbs, peppers, and berries. She bought a brand without pictures, thinking it must be plain cream cheese, only to come home to find out they were "strawberry and taste of chocolate cream cheese."  Not wanting to go back to the store to buy more cream cheese, Lois improvised, adding melted chocolate and cocoa powder to the chocolate one and raspberry coulis to the strawberry one. The result is a yummy cheesecake. "The texture is so light and fluffy. It's calling for me from the fridge now."

Mendy made Miette Tomboy as a catch up cake, with the help of his beautiful daughter and adoorable Ez-Man " for moral support and beater licking". "It was a terrific chocolate cake," even though all he could find was the partially dutch processed Hershey Dark Chocolate. "We were quite pleased with the result actually. It had a terrific texture and a nice dark chocolate taste." He made the Lemon Canadian Crown back in November. "It was really yummy. The ladyfingers and the billowy lemon really balance each other nicely."

Kristina made the Southern Manhattan Coconut Cake for her birthday. She opted out of the buttercream and made the Pillsbury Seven Minute Frosting instead. "Everyone loved it. Even people who normally don’t go for cake finished off their pieces." As for the Lemon Canadian Crown, she liked the cake and was happy to know what ladyfingers tasted like.

Our FEATURED BAKER this week is Jane, who baked 3 cakes since last Friday (4 if you count the ladyfingers). "The Lemon Canadian Crown cake was surprisingly easy to do and turned out to be really pretty.  There is nothing I love more than finishing up a pretty cake." Jane hasn't posted her tasting impression on this cake so I have nothing to report about it. The other cake she made was White Gold Passion Genoise, using frozen passion curd concentrate. The cake tasted great but it was a tedious process. Not helping that the buttercream was melting under the Mississippi heat, so Jane improvised by making beautiful white chocolate leaves. She also made a Flag Cake, using the White Chocolate Whisper Cake from the Cake Bible and frosted it with the Dreamy Creamy White Chocolate Frosting from Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

Next week we have FREE CHOICE again. You know the drill, bake anything you want from the book, a cake you haven't made or something you have that you really really like.

The week after we have Chocolate Tomato Cake with Mystery Ganache. I'll be honest that this cake scares me! Canned tomato soup in a cake just doesn't sound right, despite all the reviews. For those of you who are not a fan of Campbell's canned tomato soup, check out this post by Hector. He made his own tomato soup by roasting 2 lb of tomatoes. I might do this, especially since I can get tomatoes pretty cheaply at the Farmer's Market. While you're at Hector's website, you should also check out his awesome take. He made a 3 tier cake using only 2 tier cake. Click here to see how he did it.