HCB: Many-Splendored Quick Bread

October 17, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Bread, Cookbooks, Desserts, HCB, Vegetable

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.

The Bake Brownies

October 13, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Cookbooks, Desserts, Sweets

I baked my first set of brownies when I was about 10 years old and we had just moved to the US. We did not have anything like this dense cake in Venezuela, so upon my first taste of them, I was pretty hooked and ate A LOT of them. And of course, like any 10 year old – my first brownie batch came from none other than a box.

I just cringe writing that. Oh, if I could only go back in time and teach my 10 year old self a few things…

Tres Leches - Three-Milk Cake

October 12, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Desserts, Cake, Family Cookbook

I wrote about the Tres Leches cake before.

When I just started baking for the Heavenly Cake Bakers group back in January the “Torta de las Tres Leches” from the book was my first “official” post into the group.

I mention in that post that this is in fact my “signature cake” with my family and friends. What? Don’t you have a signature dessert or food? I been baking this cake for over 20 years for birthdays, special dinner parties, events, because any time my family or friends has “something special” this is the dessert that is requested.

When I made Rose’s version of the cake, my family went up in arms… how crazy was I to change this? To “cheat” on my original recipe and do something else! Don’t do it! And while Rose’s version was “ok” in everyone’s verdicts, mine own recipe continue to come on top.

This past weekend as most of you know by now, we celebrated my mother’s birthday. And of course as soon as I asked her what birthday cake she wanted, she all but shouted “TRES LECHES!”

So, I thought it would be the perfect time to share my version of this cake.