After last week scrumptious cake, I was not sure about the next one.  For the past 5 days, I been helping my sister with her business and basically been putting 14 hour work days.  I can not even see straight.  I was not even sure it would be safe of me to be around anything that required measuring and handling a hot oven.

I’m exhausted folks.  

By noon, today I was feeling antsy, because I remember that Tom had invited some friends over to watch the US vs Canada Gold medal hockey game and I had promise to served something sweet.

There went my vegetation plans.

I got home, read the recipe again and realized that I could have this cake done and over with in less than 1 hour. Plus, for once I actually had all that I needed in my kitchen, including the poppy seeds! 
I figure that Tom’s friends would love to have a cake that had opium in it. Side note: Don’t panic, the seeds contain very low levels of opiates, the most this cake can do to you is give you a sugar high.

And oh boy did it ever!

The cake was simple to make.  And yes, if you are wondering about repeating myself, yes, I am, about how simple Rose’s cakes are made... (Come back next week and see if I’m singing the same tune).  Or maybe I’m getting good at my prepping ahead of time, that when it comes to the actual mixing, it goes pretty effortless and fast.

Dry ingredients of sugar, flour, baking power, soda, the lemon zest (I added some lime zest as well) and 50 grams (1/3 cup) of poppy seeds.  And here I stopped and was WOW, FIFTY grams? I had to read the measurements again.  Really? That many?

My bottle was for only 35 grams!  What do I do now?

I bit the bullet and only put 35 grams in.  Hey, its not like anyone is going to count right?

Mixed it up for the required 30 second in the KA and then incorporate the butter, and the eggs, which have been previously whisked with the vanilla and sour cream.

Batter DONE!

I did not have a fancy pan, and I seriously thought of doing cupcakes, just to change it up.  But my tired mind was shutting down at this point with thoughts of having to subtract and add in order to figure out the ration of batter to cupcakes and all that, so I went with my boring, old bundt cake pan.

Place it in the oven, clicked the timer in the iPhone and went upstairs to catch up on Project Runway on my DVR.

And promptly fell sleep.

And no, I did not burn the cake.

Because, at 40 minutes my timer was beeping and I woke up to the house smelling all lemo-ny and delicious.

And when the cake came out of the oven, all of those smells seem to intensify.

Good things were coming.  Tom, started to shout from the living room “its it ready yet!?!”

I made the necessary holes all over the top, drenched it with the syrup, waited another 10 minutes and then did the flipy-floppy and on to the platter it went.

Another good dousing of syrup and ta-da!

The cake lasted un-touched 20 minutes, before Tom pounced on it, before his friends even arrived!

Verdict(s):

Tom: “I’m not taking this one to work, because It’s not going to survive the night”

Me: I like it and love the taste of the lemon and tartest of the sour cream. The books description that “it’s buttery and tender” its spot on. I thought I was going to be short on poppy seeds. But to be honest, I thought it was way to much to begin with in the first place. And in some cases it overpower the cake. Next time I’m actually going to reduce the poppy seeds (or do it without) and up the lemon zest.

And congratulations Canada on your win!

I’m not a great fan of ice cream.  I like it, if its there I will eat it, depending on the flavor that’s being offered, because you know I can be fickle with my choices as well. Plus, ice creams now a days are just so over-the-top sweet.  What ever happen to mild balance flavor, creamy soft ice creams?

Oh yeah, that’s called GELATO.

And if there is a type of food I will fight you over is Gelato.  When I lived in in the northern part of Italy.  I found the most creamiest, soft gelato that existed.  For them it’s all about using full fat creams and mild flavors when making any gelato. And the results is a little piece of heaven in a cup.  And while I love most of the gelato flavors, my favorite was always the “Fior di Latte” (FYOR dee LAH-tay) - which is literally translated to “flower of milk”.  The ingredient is cream, yummy cream, period.  Whipped and then cooled into this wonderfully subtle ice cold, soft natural sweet cream flavor. 

I adore it.

And you may wonder why I'm talking about Gelato when the title of this post is Cake.  I know, I know, but my rambling has a point.

This week the HCB group gave us a free choice. We could choose any cake that has been baked before by the group or that you have past up.  Having come into the baking group a bit late, I have missed quite a bit cakes on the list. So this was hard - so very, very hard… SIDE NOTE here: I move to remove the “Free Choices” in the future because it’s just too hard to choose.

After much deliveration, I narrow it down to two contenders the Chocolate Streussel Coffee Cake and the Whipped Cream Cake.  I was so torn, that by Thursday, I convince myself, I will do both of them!  Plenty of the other bakers have done it. I’m super-baker! Why the hell not? I can do this. 

Umh, yeah, nope, did not happen.  Because life happens that is why, and suddenly I was too busy to even think straight or care about baking.  So, I contemplated passing this one by, until Tom gave me the guilt trip and asked what I was baking this week?  And when I showed him where I was stuck on the choices, he told me "let me clarify it for you" and pointed to the Whipped Cream Cake.

Score for me. Because, it was the easiest one to do, and the one that I can share the actual recipe with everyone since Rose’s has it posted in her blog here.

The recipe calls for 40% high-butterfat heavy cream, I was able to find 38% in an Asian market (no joke), I figure that being off by 2 was good enough.

And the steps were pretty straight forward.  I measure everything and put it in order to be used, then I started to whipped the cream in the Kitchen Aid and had one of these internal dialogues filled with doubts “will it double?, "I need to make sure to gradually increase it, careful, careful”, "does it look like the book said?".  All that internal talking (and constant re-reading of the receipe) paid off because not only did it double up, but those stiff peaks were a sight to see.

Then in the eggs went. And my crispy white batter turned into a soft buttery cream color (my eggs are bought from the local Hispanic market, and I swear the yolks on these eggs are a bright yellow-orange color that its to die for, and the flavor, lets not even talk about that!).  So I’m creaming and sure enough it turned into a homemade mayonnaise consistency that Rose said it would. The sugar went in next, and then I folded the dry ingredients, with a balloon whisk.

And I panic a bit at this point, because it seems to curdle on me for a bit and I was like “oh, oh...” so, I speed up the process of folding the rest of the dry and dumped the whole thing in the pan, making sure I smoothed the top well and into the oven it went. I may or may not have made the sign of the cross, to you know ask the power above to bless it and not deflate or something, I just did not have it in me for a do over.

The next 25 minutes waiting for the cake, where spent riveted to the TV watching some of the Olympic Games.  Has anyone been caught up in the curling competition too?  There is something oddly relaxing about seeing that stone glide across that smooth surface.

At the 25 minutes mark, the house started to smell delicious. I checked the cake, but it was not done yet.  Another 10 minutes of that  bake goodness and out it came.

And it was perfection in a pan. Light color, with a hit of a crack all around and soon it started to shrink from the side of the pan, like it was suppose to.

I let it cool off for 10 more minutes and then flipped it and at that moment that cake won the gold medal for the smoothes unmolding to date.

I took Rose’s advice and simply dusted it with some powdered sugar.

And remember the gelato story? 

Well this cake, when done took me back to eating that creamy, soft gelato. When I took that first bite, I was transported to my days in Italy.  Under an umbrella in the middle of a piazza, eating a scoop of “Fior di Latte” and watching those good-looking Italian men.  It was light, not sweet. Just perfect! Like eating whipped cream from a spoon, this cake just melts in your mouth.  It was amazing.

My grandmother was right.  Sometimes LESS is MORE.

Tom’s verdict was less poetic. He took a bite, gobbled it up and then cut another piece, ran to the refrigerator and topped that slice with some of the leftover Orange Curd from the True Genoise cake. 

Yes, people we are still eating that curd!

In tribute to Valentine Day the Heavenly Cake Baker group baked the sinful, delectable Double Chocolate Valentine cake this week.

And let me tell you this cake, well this cake is ... There are NO WORDS except to say that if you like chocolate then this cake (and I’m going to quote the book) “is really the final word in chocolate cake...” The basic ingredients of cocoa powder, eggs yolks, sugar, flour and butter with a touch of vanilla extract and salt gives you a rich, not so sweet flavor with a fudge-ty and moist texture.

I wanted to make it on a heart-shape baking pan, like the book picture. But, apparently everyone in Tampa had the same idea, because after visiting 3 Walmart, 2 Targets, 3 Michael’s and the William-Sonoma (which was the hardest thing I have done to date, going in and walking out without buying the whole store up) store, I came up empty.  No heart-shape pan to be had ANYWHERE in town.

The round 9x2 pan was it.  But I had a plan.

The cake was not complicated to make, once you gather the ingredients you are pretty much done in about 15 minutes and into the oven it goes. On a side note: I’m really loving the way that Rose’s recommends mixing the cake batter, which is putting all the dry ingredients in the mixer first, giving a spin for 30 seconds and then incorporating the butter and wet ingredients which in most cases have been whisked before hand.  It just creates a better cake batter in my opinion.

I do have to say that I took a peek at the video that Rose’s blog had posted for this cake before hand.  I wanted to make sure that I was going to do all of this the right way.  So, I was super prepare for the next steps, which were basically taking the cake out of the oven after baking it for 30-40 minutes and then soaking the top with the Ganache Glaze, then flipping it, taking the baking pan out and soaking the bottom with more ganache (YUM!).  I was a bit scare that the cake was going to be way too hot and crumble on me during all of this flip-flopping.  But, to my surprised it held its own.

Then of course the waiting... Since I made this cake on Sunday, I knew that the waiting period was going to be hard because,
a) the smell of the cake was just driving everyone in the house crazy and had us all salivating and
b) I was running out of natural light to take pictures of the finish product. 

The book said to put it aside to cool for 1 or more hours... And I knew deep down that the more it rested and cooled the better it would be at the end. But....

...I was on a deadline people! I waited an hour. (queue foreboding music here)

I took it out of the refrigerator and put my plan into action.  I really wanted the shape of the heart, so I thought shaping it like a heart by carving it out could not be that difficult to do.  As you can see, I watch way to much Ace of Cake and Food Network Challenge shows.

Before all the carving started, I needed to move it to the serving plate, so I tried to do a flip and flip and realized that it was not going to work.  So, I tried to slide it, and nope, nada. Next up lifting the cake with two spatulas and transferring it to the serving plate, and it seem to work, except that I did not count on it still being wet at the bottom, so when I tried to remove the spatulas, the cake started to split ... YIKES!

Abort! Abort! And yelled for HELP!  Tom came to my rescued and together we were able to place it on its final resting place, but not without some damage.  My type “A” personality was going into overdrive at this point.

My carving idea flew out the window, since I realized that it was not going to work.  The cake was way to moist and soft within and there was no way it would hold the planned sculpture without really making a total mess of it.

Next up...I thought of doing the heart shape with the raspberries!

And it seem to work, except that my heart-shape looked waked and off-centered.  At this point I gave up and covered the whole thing with the raspberries.  Then I gave them a quick glaze over with the red currant jelly and off it went to be photographed.

As soon as I came back into the house with the cake, Tom and the little men were awaiting with forks and grins in their faces.

The verdict:

Tom:  “I take it back, THIS is my favorite cake so far. I love that its light and not sweet  at all, but very chocolate flavor. (the poor man, I still have over 80 more cakes to have him taste)
The little man:  “Its not so sweet, I really like it”
The neighbors (after ringing the doorbell and sticking a paper plate at me): “Just gives us another piece for us to fight over”
Me:  Rose’s keeps pushing the envelope in giving me cakes with fruit and me having to take back my restraint in liking the combinations.  I’m a chocoholic, I love chocolate and if its the dark kind, even more, so this cake just hits my happy center dead on, even with the raspberries on top, which I promptly remove from my piece and give them to Tom to eat.

Plus by the time I finish writing this and posting it, the caked looked like this:

This week heavenly Cake was the True Orange Genoise Cake and boy was everyone looking forward to that one.  The buzz on this cake was tremendous.

It started with a mad hunt for Seville oranges.  You would think that living in the sunshine state; I would have no issues finding this orange, especially since Florida at one time was the main exporter of Sour Oranges to England! (that’s a fact, look it up). But, you would be wrong.  It was incredibly hard to find them… specially since we had a couple of weeks with temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s, which means that many orchards/groves lost most of their crops to freezing temperatures.

Strike one for the cake!

My hunt began by simply calling our local Fresh Market and talking to “someone” in the produce department, who told me that nope, they did not carry it and there was no way to pre-order them either.

I.was.not.giving.up…There was a cake that needed to be made and the hunt continued

Next up was Whole Foods, I mean WHOLE-FREAKING-FOODS, if they did not carry those little suckers - the end of the world was near. 
Note to Whole Foods management: You need to work on their produce department education because the phone call went something like this:

Me to the produce rep:  Wondering if you have Seville Oranges in stock?
Produce rep: I’m sorry, Sev.. what?
Me [thinking, OH BOY!]: Seville Oranges or you may know then as Sour Oranges?
Produce rep: No, I don’t think so, we have regular oranges, is that what you want?
Me: [counting to 10]: no I’m looking for sour oranges, would you be able to order them for me?
Produce rep: I don’t know
Me: is there a manager there?
Produce rep: I don’ know…
Me: Thank you, never mind. *Click*

Strike two for the cake!

Then during a dinner with the future mother in law, I explain what had happen and she promptly told me to give her a couple of minutes, left the room, picked up the phone and the next thing I knew, I had a bucket of sour oranges compliments of a farmer that had some trees in his back yard.  The power that woman yields!

Point one for the CAKE!

Since I have been keeping up with the bakers and all keep writing how delicate the oranges were, I decided to not take any chances and bake it a week earlier than scheduled.

Baking the génoise cake was easy and as Rose suggests in the book, I baked it a day earlier.  I’m really getting the hang of this new technique of warming the eggs, sugar, and vanilla together before whipping it up to full volume in the mixer.  (Previous sponge cakes were done without this pre-cooking step, and I think it just makes a huge difference on the final texture of the cake).

Then, because I was on a roll, I decided to make the orange curd the same day.  And this was fairly as simple mixing the orange juice, sugar, eggs, butter and zest together and stirring until it thickened - The hardest part for me was factoring in a whole lot of patience while it cooked over the stove. I hate to wait around for anything – you know that phrase, “good things come to those that wait”, It’s OVERRATED, seeing as, this orange curd took FOREVER (at least in my world) to get to the point that the book said it would be done.  You know how boring facing your stove and stirring is?

I bet you all do.  Because IT WAS THAT BORING to the power of 3!

When it was FINALLY done, I put it away and decided to quit while I was ahead and do the syrup and ganache the next day. 

    And those two things went without any major roadblocks.  The only thing I did different was not use Triple Sec, but instead used Patron Liqueur Citronge which I happen to have in my liquor cabinet (I’m fancy that way). Putting the cake together was reasonably easy as well.  The only doubt I had was not using all of the orange syrup and curd as the book pointed out, my instincts were shouting in the inside to use it all, but again, I followed the instructions, so a continued on…after I hid the left over curd from Tom, who stole a quick taste and wanted to eat it with a spoon.

I had a lot of fun covering the cake with the chocolate ganache and I wanted to make sure I did justice to the picture in the book… I was very proud of the way it came out.  Very sophisticated and classy looking. 

But, did it taste as good as it looked?

The Feedbacks:

Tom: Oh, this is my favorite so far.
The Little man:  It’s good, I like the orange flavor, but I like the pineapple one better.
My mother:  The cake was a bit dry for me (A HA! I knew it!), but the flavor was good, and by the way can I have the recipe for the orange curd?
The Future Mother in Law: I like it but, I would not make it again, the orange flavor is quite strong.

As for me?

Remember my cook fruit with cake anything hindrance?

This cake almost made me a believer, mainly because I’m a huge dark chocolate fan, and the dark chocolate combination with the tangy/sweet orange curd was YUMMY!  I had to agree with my mother and found the cake was a bit dry and I know it’s because I did not use the whole syrup/curd.  My other take would be that while is a beautiful cake and show stopper, it’s also a cake that needs a certain sophisticated palate (not to offend anyone here) to be enjoyed.  The majority of people out there would have some reservations to this type of combination (see future mother in law comment above), limiting the pool of people you can served it too.

Would I make it again? Only if Tom really, really, begged for it.  Plus it looks pretty. 

As far as the Orange Curd, that has been made twice already. And if you don't believe me, moosy over to Rose Levy Beranbaum site where you can find the recipe.