HCB: Saint-Honore Trifle

May 04, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Cake, Desserts, HCB

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.

HCB: Two Fat Cats Whoopie Pies

April 19, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Cake, Desserts, HCB

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.

TWD: Swedish Visiting Cake

April 13, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Cake, Desserts, TWD

This weekend my universe must have aligned correctly. After my great success with my previous cake, I was on a roll, and that triumph rolled into this next cake.

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie choice was the Swedish Visiting Cake, picked by Nancy from The Dogs Eat the Crumbs.

And I want to take the time to send her a virtual hug and high 5, because Internet, this cake is the answer to anyone prayer when you need something quick, simple, delicious and sophisticated in a time crunch.

When you read the recipe, Dorie mentions that this cake was given to her by her friend Ingela, whose mother “claimed that you could start making this cake when you saw visitors coming up the drive and have it ready for them as soon as they were settled into your home.”