HCB: Many-Splendored Quick Bread

See the title up there?

The key word is “quick”.

This bread is super quick, as in get everything ready and then, boom, before you know it it’s in the oven and driving you crazy with heavenly smells.

At least that is what happen when I decided to make it this past Friday.

Yep, you read it right, this past FRIDAY.  As in, after a long day at work, I got to baking.  Can you tell I had a hard week?

Because I totally did.

Very hard week, in total need of full therapeutic intervention.

So I got home and knew that if I did not turn on the oven and got busy, I was going to have a meltdown.

Baking, my anti-drug.

And this was the perfect prescription.

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HCB: Caramelized Pineapple Pudding Cakes

The first weekend of the months are the hardest for me when it comes to baking.  My commitment to three baking groups makes it a bit hard, since I technically have 3 dessert to bake during the first weekend.  So usually during this time one tends to fall of the to bake list.  Since I had passed last weeks choice on HCB, I could not bring myself to pass on a second week.  One of the other baking club is going to take a hit - the jury still out as to which.

I decided to start with HCB choice, because it was the hardest of the 3.  The pudding portion had 3 pages of instructions, add 4 more if you decided to do the Brioche and you got, once more, 7 pages of instructions ahead of you.  Which mean one thing - hold on to your whisk, its going to be a bumpy bake.  After reading, I realized that after putting into account the waiting time between the steps, I was looking at well over 12+ hours of work for six baby cakes.

God, I thought the Apple Charlotte was hard.

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HCB: Apple Caramel Charlotte

Disclaimer: this post is long and there is a bit of a rant.  Just as long as making this cake was and reading about it.

A few months ago, I was emailing with Jenn from Knitty Baker and we were discussing those cakes that were still left to do in our HCB list and this one in particular came about in conversation.  We both were totally dreading it.

With 7 pages of instructions and 7 different steps, we knew it was going to take A LOT of resilience and baking savvy to do this one.  Jenn was hoping that Marie would give us this one on a long weekend so we would have more time to plan for it.  I was hoping that Marie would have a total Opps-y moment and would forget about this one.

We totally jinx ourselves.  Because not even a week after this whole discussion took place - there is was in the baking list, and NOT on a long weekend.

This cake, even from the start was a total Prima Donna, and not in a good way.  Did you know that the word “diva” means evil in some parts of the world?

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HCB: Gold Ingots {Financiers}

This past weekend I have been up to my ears in flour, butter, sugar, spatulas, and every single piece of baking equipment in my kitchen.

In order words, I think I have baked myself OUT.

Is that even possible?

I think it may be.  And just like my vast weekend-baking, there is going to be a substantial amount of posting to cover all of it.

So let’s start with the easy one.  This weeks Heavenly Cake Baker’s choice was the Gold Ingots.  Or better knows as Financiers, or at our house: “those little cakey-thingy’s-that are-yummy”

I kid you not, that is what we are calling them.  Nobody can say Financiers and Tom refuses to call them Ingots, because he said that he is not eating a bar of molted gold. (I cannot make these things up – trust me.  My house = Crazy).

But, I’m getting off topic here.  Back to the cakey-thingy’s-that are-yummy.

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HCB: Designer Chocolate Baby Grands

And I’m back!  This week’s HCB choice was baby cakes… CHOCOLATE baby cakes and covered with my favorite piano glaze – which I love to do and was introduce to the technique back with the Chocolate Apricot Roll and then again with the Bernachon Palets D’Or Gateau.

These cakes were pretty easy to put together and they are a marriage in chocolate heaven!

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HCB: Mini Vanilla Pound Cake

This past weekend was insane around our house, last week I was away in Orlando for work-related training, so upon arriving on Friday the amount of stuff that accumulated in the To Do list was ridiculous – laundry, cleaning, folding, dishes and on and on.  I mean, Tom does his share around here, but I guess what they say it true – when the cat is away…. Apparently everything goes to the dogs!  So I was very happy about this week's HCB choice, since I knew it was going to be a snap to prepare, bake and have ready for those hungry boys I live with.

This is straight easy pound cake recipe, with three perfect twist: One, they are mini cake (can you say perfect give-aways? yes you can!). Two, they are made with vanilla bean and three, soaked in a cognac base syrup. (On a side note, I'm on to Rose and her boozy syrups because in my world I trust anything that is made with liquor - it makes everything better - trust).

How can you go wrong?

You can’t.

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HCB: Chocolate Butter Cupcakes

Last weekend I tried to get away from the kitchen.  This weekend it was the total opposite, I cooked (and baked) up a storm (recipes coming!).

Unlike my savory dishes where it’s all about improvising and changing it up. Baking for me is about following directions.  I’m not very courageous when it comes to baking.  I  ALWAYS stick to the recipe religiously – if the recipe tells me to bake it in a 9 inch pan, I bake it in a 9 inch pan.  If it’s for a cake, then I bake a cake. If its for a tart, I bake a tart, or a pie or well, you get the picture.  I never deviate from the instructions. That is why, I’m one of those un-daring bakers that DO NOT convert a cake into cupcakes, or halves the recipe, or god forbid MULTIPLIES the recipe – Because: A) It means I have to do division and multiplication and anything that has to do with math!  (Which gets me in trouble – ALL THE TIME!) and B) I find a strange comfort in following the step by step and ending with the intended results - 99.9% of the time.

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HCB: Saint-Honore Trifle

This week's HCB choice has been in the calendar for over 3 weeks and most of the bakers have been talking non-stop about it during all that time, if you check out the HCB Blog and the recaps comments, the choice gets mentioned again and again.

This one would likely fall under the "difficult" category, not because it’s difficult to make, but after 6 pages with 6 different steps, we must call it SOMETHING!  Now for most season bakers, all of those steps are not very difficult, the batter is pretty straight forward sponge cake.  Then the syrup is pretty easy, the making of the Chiboust Cream is made in 30 minutes top, then there is some cutting and mixing on the next step of preparing the strawberries and the preserves.  The second to last step is the whipped cream topping and then the piece of resistant, what all of us bakers been talking about for the last 3 weeks, the spun sugar step.

Yep, Rose is making us cross boundaries here and urging us to be daring bakers.

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HCB: Two Fat Cats Whoopie Pies

About 8 months into my relationship with Tom, I was invited by his mother and him to celebrate is father’s (who passed away 3 days after Tom and I started dating) memorial up in Bar Harbor, Maine.  I jumped at the chance to visit the North Atlantic seaboard and in exchange I got to meet the rest of his gazillion family.

We flew into Portland, Maine and then took the 3 hour drive to Bar Harbor.And totally fell in love with this town on Mount Desert Island.  Full of picturesque cottage homes, inns, shops, taverns and restaurants all at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean was all I needed to know for me to announce to Tom that I wanted to move there.  By the third day there, I informed Tom that this is where we would get married, buy a home, remodeled it to a cute B&B and spend the rest of our lives living by the water, eating the lobster, whale watching, kayaking, hiking the Acadia National Parkand stuffing ourselves with the popovers from the Jordan Pond House Restaurant.

He simply said: “ok” (smart man, catering to my every whim, even then).

Then one of his brother’s (the one that lives in Bar Harbor) informed me that during the winter they get temperatures in the 20’s and sometimes in the 10’s, with, a lot of snow.  He then showed me proof with a picture of his house, where the only thing you could see was his rooftop – because everything else was hidden by a blanket of white snow.

I mentally moved my B&B dream, living by the water, lobster eating and whale dolphin watching to a coastal town in Florida.

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HCB: Banana Refrigerator Cake with Dreamy Creamy White Chocolate Frosting

FINALLY!  **fist pumping up to the heavens!**

That is what I shouted as I took a bite of this cake on Sunday morning, right after I finished frosty it with the mac-dreamy creamy white chocolate frosting. (And for the record, the code word here is DREAMY).

Because, man for the past two weeks, my baking mode has been dampen by the last two cakes in the list.  I was sooo ready to like something, anything... and if this cake should have failed me, I was going to sit in a corner and rock back and forth until my baking charm came back.

However, it was meant to be.  This week cake was the very reason why I love Rose’s book in the first place.  It was simple, great ingredient combination and if followed to the T, you are going to be rewarded with a fabulous cake, which you will bake again, and again, and pass on to your children.

Of course the main ingredient here is Bananas.

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