Last Cake, Next Cake

3 bakers and 5 cakes. 4 bakers and 7 cakes. Yes that's right. Our speedy baker, Jane, made Rose's Red Velvet Cakes, Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake, and Chocolate Ingots. Jane made a 2-layer Red Velvet Cake and decorated the outside with colorful fondant. A little baffled at the amount of food coloring required to color the batter red, she proceeded and use the bottle of food coloring gel, resulting in a very red cake. "The cake was a success.  It was incredibly moist and the food coloring did not affect the taste at all." The Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake was a big success, as proven by Jane's housemate, Elizabeth, who couldn't wait until the party in the evening and wants to eat the cake for breakfast. Not wanting to miss out, Jane also had it for breakfast, 2 slices to be exact."It turns out that this was a spectacular cake and I'll definitely be keeping the recipe around.  I've already had four slices today." Lastly for Jane this week, the Chocolate Financier. It calls for cacao nibs, which she ordered from Amazon. Excitement turned into disappointment when she discovered that cacao nibs are bitter, but then it quickly turned into excitement when the nibs were caramelized. "I guess when you put caramel around anything it turns out alright." As for the financiers, "I liked the texture of the caramelized cacao nibs on top but the taste wasn't my favorite."

Our next baker this week is Lola, who made the Gold Financiers. Goofing off on the butter amount, the batter was too thin but it turned out "not too bad. A tasty buttery treat. I will try the Chocolate Ingots for the next free choice post."

Finally, Melissa made the Chocolate Genoise with Peanut Butter Whipped Ganache. Her son chose the cake, as they've "been on a bit of a Reese's Peanut Butter cups binge lately so I wasn't surprised when he picked this cake." Learning from prior mistake of not using enough syrup for genoise, Melissa took more time and care and used every last drop of syrup. "We took Rose's advice and let the iced, syruped cake sit for a day in the fridge. When we cut into the cake it was suitably soft and moist, and the icing was perfect. Everyone loved it. Definitely on the 'make again' list. And thankfully, the peanut butter softens the bitter taste of the ganache, so it was popular with the young ones."

Edited to add: Finally, I made the Catalan Salt Pinch Cake. You can read about it here.

Our next cake is the Angel Food Cake. As I've said last week, the recipe in the book is a base recipe and give a formula for using 1 egg whites. If you want to make this in a 10 cup angel food pan, you need to multiple the recipe by 16. If you want to make a smaller size version and don't have an angel food pan, you can always make it as cupcakes, as I've done with the Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake.