October Daring Bakers Challenge 4

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge is Pizza and Toppings. The Pizza recipe is Peter Reinhart's Pizza Napoletana which I had made a few times in the past and then a combination of sauce and toppings on top.

I was pleasantly surprised that this is this month's challenge. I love this pizza recipe, in fact this is the only pizza recipe that I bake. It is very easy to work with and the resulting pizza is just divine! It is perfectly crunchy and chewy, and it does not get soggy with the sauce and the toppings.

Making the dough, I started with combining the dry ingredients together and then slowly adding the cold wet ingredients. Having the water cold is a key factor. I then mixed the dough until everything is combined and starts to form a ball. Afterwhich, I kneaded it with the dough hook attachment until it is smooth but still sticky. Then I kneaded it for 2 minutes with hand. Cold hands for kneading is also important. When my hand started to get warm, I run it with cold water. At this point, I divided the dough into 6 pieces, lightly spraying each with oil before wrapping with plastic and then I made it rest in the fridge overnight.

The next day before using it, I took it out of the fridge 2 hours before baking to let it rise. Once the dough has risen, I attempted a toss but ended up rolling the dough. LOL! I rolled the dough in a sheet pan and baked it at almost 500F. After 5 minutes, I took it out and then I placed my sauce and toppings. For the sauce, I used a tomato sauce. I mixed a few teaspoons of lemon juice, spices like oregano, thyme and parsley, dash of garlic salt and pepper. For the toppings, I added some ground beef, green bell pepper, onions, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and lots of mozzarella cheese. It was so delicious!

Here's how the pizza looked like.


And here's a fuzzy picture of me attempting a toss!

Very Chocolatey Cheesecake

I had been on a chocolate baking streak and this time I made Sarah Phillip's new Very Chocolatey Cheesecake Recipe. Before I started baking, cheesecakes were one of my ultimate indulgences so when I learned how to bake, I swore that I will learn how to make cheesecakes because they're expensive to buy!

I was initially intimated to make cheesecakes, just because it seems like a lot of work. I then found out that it's not if you find the best recipes that are easy to work with and almost fool proof. It's my first time baking a chocolate cheesecake and I'm quite excited. The steps were almost identical to that of the regular cheesecake, and I just needed to add chocolates and adjust baking temperature and time.



After mixing the batter, I baked the cheesecake for about an hour. It smelled wonderful in the kitchen. I let it cool completely at room temperature for about 2 hours and then chilled it afterwards, for about 24 hours. The topping was a dark chocolate ganache glaze and some homemade gumpaste flowers.

The cheesecake was so good! It tasted like Rocky Road Ice Cream and the chocolate crust was a nice contrast to the smooth filling. I brought some to the office and they loved it, and gave some to our friends at 1106. It makes a really delicious dessert and elegant at that!

Chocolate Overload

I have not baked anything with chocolates for the past month so I decided I will go over the top with chocolates. I baked the Ultimate Chocolate Butter Cake by Sarah Philips, filled it and frosted with Chocolate Ganache and then wrapped it with Chocolate Plastic. Everything will be chocolates.

Somebody asked me what I love the most about making cakes, is it decorating? Actually, no. I love baking the most, the part where you mix flour, butter and all other stuff, then put it in the oven and then have a pretty layer of cake or nicely domed cupcakes. I always strive for perfection on the height and edges of the cakes. I don't mind having imperfect icing or decorations as long as I have a good cake. That is why I get frustrated when I cannot get a recipe perfectly, I keep baking the same recipe over and over until I get it perfectly. Having said that, I baked my cake pretty nicely and that's what mattered most to me. I love stacking layers and not having to torte or trim edges. The chocolate cake was so moist and very decadent, because it has melted chocolates and cocoa powder on it. It's like those expensive European cakes in cafes loaded with chocolates. I then made the ganache and it was so rich and fudgy! Once the cake layers were cooled, I assembled the cake with the ganache filling and frosting.

It is my first time making chocolate plastic and it was easy. Putting it on the cake though is another story. I had a great time kneading the chocolate plastic, it was just like clay dough. I easily rolled it but I had a hard time putting it on the cake. I'm a total bummer with fondant and I think there is only one fondant cake that I had been happy about because I put the fondant nicely. The others had a lot of issues from folds, creases or cracks. As expected, I was not able to put on the chocolate plastic without issues. I had to do a lot of smoothening of creases after I put it. However, I think I produced a decent cake. I just topped the cake with a single rose and lined with a tiny lace at the bottom.

So here's my chocolate overload cake. We will have it for dessert tonight, I bet it tastes good! I should know, I've tasted the components individually while making it. :)

Raspberry Cloud Cake

To celebrate my first baking anniversary, I made a mini-tiered cake. This is the first time that I made a tiered cake and since it's my first time, I tried with smaller pieces, a 4-inch cake on top of a 6-inch cake. I also wanted for days now to try the Raspberry Cloud Cake by Sarah Philips so it's like a match made in heaven. The Raspberry Cloud Cake is composed of a Genoise, Raspberry Buttercream and a Raspberry Syrup.

A Genoise, a type of Sponge Cake, is a light and airy cake which is made with gentle folding of flour into the beaten eggs. This is my first time making a Genoise and it was not as easy as I thought it would be. I had to make it thrice, having failed on the first two attempts. I was tempted to give it a rest and try it some other time but I was so decided on making it a success. After carefully thinking of what went wrong, I figured why. My oven rack was in the middle instead of the lower third! When I thought I had a breakthrough, I decided to give it a try again, very carefully folding again and following Sarah's very detailed instruction and I succeeded. After 12 eggs down the drain, I finally have two 6 inch and two 4 inch layers of Genoise beaming at me. It was very late at night, but it was so worth it. :)



While the cakes were baking, I made the Raspberry Syrup and when the cakes were totally cooled, I just brushed the layers with some Syrup. Yum, I could imagine already how it taste like once made. I gave my layers a rest for the night. When I proceeded, I made the Buttercream and added some Raspberry preserves and the Raspberry liquer. Yum again! But anything with Raspberries is just yummy! The liquer gave it a huge flavor boost. And after adding the raspberry preserves and liquer, the buttercream turned into a pretty pink color. Maybe I should do blueberries next time and I'll have a nice blue tint in my cake.

So I then frosted and smoothen the icing of the cakes and then stacked it up. I had to put a few dowels in the cake so that it would stand straight in the top layer and won't fall. I was so excited seeing the cakes one on top of the other! I then just decorated it with a few flowers that I made. I bought this edible lusters and it was fun brushing the flowers with it. It was like applying blush on. I was amazed at how pretty the flowers were after applying the lusters. I should probably get it in more colors. Hehe.



So here's the final cake, not perfect but not bad for a first time either. As they say, practice makes perfect. :) And greet me a happy baking anniversary~

White Mini Cakes

We've had a lot of holidays lately because of the Jewish festivities. Last week, we had a 4-day weekend and it was really a quiet weekend because they shutdown operations at work so we did not get work calls. We were able to do a lot of stuff, like go to the supermarket earlier and not hurry that it's almost closing, swim in the beach because there were less people due to the holidays, watch tennis and play some vintage family computer Mario games that Manny downloaded (which I am itching to finish, LOL!).

I also had some wonderful time baking some mini-cakes over the holidays. My mini-cake pans are thanking me right now because they've been in good use lately.



These mini-cakes are made with layers of Creamy and Luscious No-Crack Cheesecake and Cream Cheese Pound Cake by Sarah Philips. I love how the flavors of these two cakes blend perfectly. Both cakes are smooth and light, and are complimentary in taste. I could have eaten the cake straight from the oven without frosting! I also frosted the cakes with Italian Meringue Buttercream which is also light. I did not want the frosting to overpower the decadent flavor of the cake.

As for decorating the cake, I just made some basket weave patterns of the first one and decorated it with royal icing flowers and leaves, and the second one just plain with some pink swirls.



And as always, the office breakfast gang loved it. They said they'll miss my cakes when I go home. *Sniff*

Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake

I'd been dying for weeks now to make swirls on my cheesecakes. I made several attempts and I failed over and over. On those attempts, I had cakes that started from a cake that had been an earthquake epicenter, to another which seemed to have Chinese writings (or Manny called it the "olympic cheesecake"). And I'm not exaggerating!

This time around is a huge improvement from the previous hideous cakes that I made a few weeks back. Sarah told me to mix a little cheesecake batter on the strawberry jam because the jam is too heavy for the batter that it sinks, so I'm left with very thin pink lines at the top. I did as she told me and here it is, my swirly cheesecake. There's still a lot of improving to do with the swirls though, I did not get the deep pink/red color that I'd like it to be. I also think I incorporated air to the batter when I made the swirls so there were some popped bubbles on surface. For now however, I'm happy with the fact that I managed to do it!



The bottom of this cake is the Cream Cheese Pound Cake which I baked and cooled, and then I topped it with the cheesecake batter. I baked it again in a waterbath and once it's done, I took it out, cooled it at room temperature for 2 hours before chilling it for 24 hours.
To decorate the cake, I made some ladyfingers which I put on the sides. Then I piped some Raspberry Buttercream on the corner of the cake and the ladyfingers. Lastly, I tied the whole cake with a ribbon. It was so difficult finding a ribbon here in Haifa! I was so happy to find a store that sells one, but they won't sell me per yard. I had to buy the whole roll! Imagine buying a thick roll for an 8-inch ribbon? Oh well forget it, I ended up buying a pre-made ribbon at a giftshop that I had to break down to get a length that I can tie around the cake.
I brought my cake to office the next day and everyone loved it. I myself am surprised at how delicious the combination of the Cream Cheese Pound Cake and the Strawberry Cheesecake tasted like.

Mini Cakes

I made a couple of mini cakes today because I wanted to try my 4-inch springform pans. I bought these little pans about a year ago (I think) and I had never made good use of them. I ended up making a Yellow and Pink Mini Cake.

The Yellow Cake is the Golden Butter Cake from the Cake Bible. I made it because I was planning on making buttercream and then I will be having some leftover egg yolks. The Golden Butter Cake uses egg yolks only and uses heavy cream instead of whole milk. I mixed up the batter and ended up with a thick one that I transferred on the springform pans. I baked the cakes for 20 minutes and once out of the oven, I left the cakes in the pan to cool for additional 10 minutes then took it out of the pan to cool completely. The cakes baked very even and flat. I made 4 layers of the mini cake out of the recipe.

The Pink Cake is the Cream Cheese Pound Cake by Sarah Philips. I baked the Cream Cheese Pound Cake for around 18 mins and I also cooled it in the pan for a few minutes. I took out one cake out of the pan to cool completely and the other I left on the pan. I had a leftover Cheesecake batter from a Cheesecake that I just made. What I did was pour the batter on the cake that is still in the pan, and baked it in a water bath for 20 minutes. After baking and cooling at room temperature, I refrigerated the cake to chill the cheesecake. I was able to make 2 layers of the mini cake, plus 1 layer of cheesecake.

While the cake was cooling, I made my buttercream. Once I had my buttercream, I divided it into half. I flavored one half with Raspberry and colored it Pink, while the other half I flavored with Lemon and colored it Yellow.

Lastly, I made a White Chocolate Frosting from Sarah Philips. I used Callebaut white chocolates. It was so good! I have learned never to scrimp on ingredients because it compromises the taste and whenever I need chocolates, I only use the finest, Ghirardelli or Callebaut.



I started to assemble the cakes as soon all are cool enough and the frostings were done. For the Yellow Cake, I stacked 3 layers of the cake with White Chocolate Frosting in between layers. I also coated the entire cake with the frosting and I let the frosting crust. I did not need to crumb coat it because the frosting was thick. I left it for a while to cool in the fridge. As for the Pink Cake, I stacked the layers and sandwhich the cheesecake in between. Then I used the White Chocolate Frosting the coat the cake, and then I left it together with the Yellow Cake to cool in the fridge. After around 20 minutes when both cakes are chilled, I frosted each with the Lemon and Raspberry Buttercream, smoothened it and decorated.

The Yellow cake slightly shrinked at the top, probably because of too much frosting. But it was still nicely upright. I piped a top and lower border for it and decorated it with some sugar flowers. I also left some buttercream to be colored green, but for some reason, I can't get a good green, therefore the dull color of the veins and the leaves. Hehe.

As for the Pink Cake, I tried it with some messy vertical lines on the sides. Not sure if it worked, but the whole cake looked cute anyway. Hehe. I decorated the top with some basketweave patterns and some sugar flowers.



Here are more pictures of the cake, I know it is overloaded with color but it looked very pretty! We had the pink cake for dessert already and it is so yummy!

Ladyfingers

Ladyfingers are a popular pastry in the Philippines and it was one of my favorites growing up. It is more commonly known in the Philippines as Broas. I'm not sure where the best Broas were in the Philippines but I remember my mother frequently buying a lot of it whenever we pass by Quezon Province.

I was actually going to try to make Ladyfingers because I saw several cakes which had it as a component, like Tiramisu and Charlotte. I was intrigued by what this Ladyfinger is, and I never knew that it is our beloved Broas. Only after baking and trying it did I realize that it is the same thing! Boinks!

I baked Sarah Philips' Ladyfinger recipe and it tasted really good! I would say right now that it is the best broas that I ever had, but I'd wait to judge that when I go back home because I may just be Broas homesick right now. LOL! It was very light, tasty and crunchy, which is my kind of broas. I loved it too because it was not too sweet. The recipe required whipping the egg whites and the egg yolks separately, and then slowly folding them together with some flour afterwards. I was extra careful not to overmix the batter in fear of it not rising. It baked for around 10 minutes and once out of the oven, the smell reminded me of the good old broas days.

September Daring Bakers Challenge 3

Lavash Crackers by Peter Reinhart with Toppings are this month's Daring Bakers challenge. Aside from the Lavash Cracker recipe, the toppings that will go together with the crackers should be vegan. It's a first for me, first time baking crackers and first time making anything vegan (or at least consciously). My staple pizza recipe is Peter Reinhart's so I know that the Lavash Cracker recipe will be just as good. Reference for the full recipe is Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker Apprentice (pp 178-180).

I started working on the crackers by mixing the flour, salt, sugar, yeast and oil with water to form a ball. I used up all the 1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp water for the recipe, because for some reason, my dough was quite dry. Once the dough was mixed and formed a ball, I kneaded the dough for about 10 minutes. After kneading, I coated the dough with a little oil, wrapped it with plastic and then refrigerated it overnight. When I was ready to make the crackers that next day, I took out the dough from the fridge and then let it rise at room temperature until it doubled its size. It took around 2 hours to let the dough rise enough. I rolled the dough in a sheet pan as thin as I could and cut it up into small squares with a pizza roller. I topped all of the squares with Kosher Salt, and then I made a variety of spice toppings on each row, with each row topped with additional Thyme, Oregano, Parsley, Sesame Seeds, Garlic Salt and Rosemary. I wanted to find out which combination will be the best one. I let the toppings settle for 3 minutes on the dough and then I baked it at 350F.

While the crackers were baking, I prepared the Salsa sauce. It's just a tomato sauce and I added some salt, lemon juice and pepper to it. The crackers were done after 15 minutes and I took it out to cool for 5 minutes. I tried each of the combination that I made and it was all so good! My favorite though would be the one with Oregano and Garlic Salt.

Here's how the final Lavash Crackers with the Salsa looked like.

White Chocolate Butter Cupcakes

What do you bake when you've got a huge headache? Cupcakes, of course. :) These are White Chocolate Butter Cupcakes topped with Raspberry Buttercream.

I have not had Butter Cupcakes for quite sometime now and I kind of craved for it the other day. I decided to make some with the White Chocolate variation. The cupcakes were very easy to make, and I just added some Callebaut White Chocolates on the last mix with the flour. It also baked perfectly! Whenever I bake this recipe, I always end up throwing out a few pieces or leave it undecorated to be eaten as test pieces because the cupcake falls off the liners. However this time, I yielded a 100%! I did not have a single piece that peeled off from the liner. I cooled the cupcakes first and then frosted with the buttercream.

I also wanted to decorate the cupcakes afterwards with some fancy flowers but the cupcakes ended up being how it looks like in the photo. I had a really huge headache over the weekend and even if I really wanted to make some decorations for the cake, I ended up doing nothing. I very rarely get headaches and I hate it when I do because it will be some downtime. I even went to work yesterday, only to end up going home after an hour at work because of the horrible headache. Anyway, back to the cupcakes, it still tasted good despite the headache drama. The white chocolate gave the cupcakes a different layer of flavor and the raspberry buttercream was a perfect adornment for the butter flavor. I'm kind of loving the raspberry buttercream right now, it is very light but so delicious!

Meanwhile back home, Ly gave birth already to baby Sam a couple of weeks back, and Ice gave birth a few days ago to a baby girl named Jem. Congrats Ly and Manueli, and Bry and Ice!

And about the headache, I still have it right now while blogging. Please make it go away.

Breakfast Cinnamon Rolls

These are Cinnamon Rolls that I made for breakfast over the weekend, some topped with Cream Cheese Frosting and others with Caramel Frosting.
I made the rolls the night before and left it to rise overnight. The next morning, the rolls have risen quite well and I baked it at 425F for 10minutes. Afterwards, I topped it with the frosting and voila, I have some freshly baked pastry for breakfast. With some hot chocolate, breakfast was perfect.

Cheesecake in Raspberry Buttercream

For this week, I made a cheesecake frosted in Raspberry Buttercream. I made the cheesecake the other night and baked it for about an hour. After letting it cool on room temperature for 2 hours, I chilled it in the fridge for another 24 hours. Making cheesecake is relatively easy but takes a lot of patience because of all the time that it is required to be cooled and in the fridge before it should be eaten. I had some left over batter so I decided to pour it on some liners for a few cupcakes.

A week ago, I also did not get to bake anything because I was practicing how to make sugar flowers with royal icing. To give you an idea what it is, those are the traditional sugar flowers that we get on cakes bought on local bakeshops (i.e, Goldilocks in Manila). These were very sweet but I loved those sweet little flowers. It reminded me of my childhood because those were normally on the birthday cakes that I used to get. Anyway, it took me two frustrating hours to figure out how to get the correct consistency of the royal icing to pipe it into a flower. The flowers that I made were not good at all, but colorful enough to be decorated on a cake. As they say, practice makes perfect. :)

The flowers with stamen below were the royal icing flowers. The rest were gumpaste.


The next day, I prepped the cheesecake by unmolding it from the pan and thawing it to room temperature. I also prepared the Raspberry Buttercream and I found an already forgotten Raspberry Extract that I had all along. Manny bought it for me a few weeks back and I forgot that I have it. I opened it and I was so surprised how good the buttercream was after I added a few drops of the extract.

I then frosted the cheesecake with a good serving of the buttercream. The light raspberry buttercream was a perfect adornment for the rich cheesecake. We had it for dessert over dinner last night and it was so indulgent!

Here's a pic of the whole cake and of the few cupcakes that I made with the leftover. I still managed to make 7 more cheese(cup)cakes out of the leftover batter, 2 of which never made it to the "decorating stage" because Manny and I snacked on it. :)

August Daring Bakers Challenge 2

The challenge for this month is Chocolate Eclairs by Pierre Herme. I have not made eclairs before and the August challenge is my first time making some. The challenge consists of 3 elements, the Pate a Choux or the Cream Puff Dough, Pastry Cream and Chocolate Glaze.

Having no prior experience to making eclairs or cream puffs, I was actually scared of making the eclairs especially after seeing that making it requires boiling the liquid ingredients first then adding the dry ingredients. I don't know when to add the dry ingredients, I don't know how the dough will look like afterwards and such concerns. I kept reading notes before attempting on making the eclairs but I guess experience is the best way to learn it. Also because of having no eclair experience, I followed the recipe to the tee.

I started boiling the milk, butter and water together on medium heat and once it got to a rolling boil, I added the dry ingredients consisting of flour, sugar and salt. Then I mixed it until smooth for 3 minutes while still on medium heat. Then I took it out of the heat onto the mixing bowl and beat it with paddle for 3 minutes until it was cool enough. I then added 5 eggs, one at a time, adding the next one only after the previous was well combined. Then that's it, that's my dough. I now piped the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, about 3 inches long, 2 inches apart. I baked the eclairs at 375F for 7 minutes, and then after 7 minutes, I slipped a wooden spoon in the oven to keep it ajar, then rotated the pan when it was already in the oven for 12 minutes. I took it out after a total of 20 minutes in the oven.

Once taken out, my first batch lost its fluff, flattened out and got soggy in the middle. I was disheartened. I had never had such a baking disaster in the recent past. Nevertheless, the soggy eclairs were still very tasty. I was planning on leaving the eclairs for the day and give it a try some other time, but I can't get it out of my head. After an hour of reading about possible mishaps and thinking of what could have gone wrong, I was back in the kitchen for my second eclair attempt. I did everything all over again but baked it all throughout with the oven door closed all the time. It was at 375F for the first 7 minutes, and then I lowered it to 350F for the rest of the 20 minutes. Once baked, I turned off the oven, opened the door and let the eclairs cool there for 20 minutes. All the while, I kept checking if the eclairs will sink again to see where it will start to flatten again just in case I fail again. It didn't. I took it out after 20 minutes, transferred to a cake rack and cooled it completely. Here's how it looked like:

While the eclairs were cooling down, I prepared some mocha cream filling and chocolate glaze. Preparing these two went uneventful. I then filled the eclairs with the mocha cream filling and glazed the topped with the chocolate glaze. Once prepared, Manny and I sampled it and it was so delicious! Good thing it was at an odd hour that we ate it, or else we'll be skipping dinner again.

What's not to like? Eclair, good. Chocolate glaze, good. Mocha cream filing, good. :)

Useful notes:

• In Baking911, Sarah Philips has a very informative page on eclairs (and pastries in general). See her Pastry101 page.



• Pate a Choux, as I found out from Wiki, is "a light pastry dough used to make profiteroles, croquembouches, eclairs, French crullers, beignets, Indonesian kue sus, and gougères. It contains only butter, water, flour, and eggs. Its raising agent is the high moisture content, which creates steam during cooking, puffing out the pastry".

Our Weekend Get-Together

We were busy the entire week and we never had the chance to celebrate Manny's birthday so last weekend, we decided to invite our friends over for a small get together. We haven't had a get together in a long while since most of the guys here went back home. We had our mini get together last Friday.

The past week, the earliest time that we get home was at around 9pm. We were never able to do anything else because we were so dead tired, and once home, we do get work calls from the night shift. We planned on going to the supermarket Thursday night so that we'd just be preparing come Friday. But then again, we were able to go home very late Thursday so we had no chance to buy stuff. I woke up very late Friday (at around 12noon) and we still needed to go to the supermarket. So we got moving at around 1pm, and I went to the dirty market for a while, and then went to my "suki" baking store (which I need not go to that day, but I can't help it!) and then off the the supermarket (which is a good 30mins drive from where we live). We were back at my place at around 4pm, and I invited people to come at 7pm. It's 3 hours away, and I have nothing edible yet (except for an unfrosted chocolate cake). And crammer me did not start cooking right away. I sat for a while, ate pistachio nuts, watched the olympics and before I knew it, it was almost 5pm. Hehe.

We started cooking at 5pm, Iron Chef style because of the time constraint. After 2 and a half hours of chaos, we started plating our dishes just in time for our first guests Daniel and Edsel to arrive. I was not yet done though. I needed to frost the chocolate cake and since I had no time, I ended up dumping the mocha buttercream just on top of the cake, hence the cake above. :) I was planning on frosting it nicely with pipes and sugar flowers but I never got the chance.

We had a wonderful dinner of spare ribs, mashed potatoes, pizza, fried dumplings, crab salad with desserts chocolate cake and cream cheese cupcakes, all homemade! We had a really hearty dinner! Afterwards, we just chatted the night away, had some wine and played xbox. Here's all of us.

Happy Birthday Kabibe!

It's Manny's birthday today. Here in Israel, or at least in our office, the birthday tradition is that you are supposed to bring your own cake and announce to everyone that it's your birthday and you have a birthday cake in your cube.

I made him a Cookie Dough Cheesecake. Instead of a graham crust, I made a cookie batter and pressed it at the bottom of the pan to serve as crust. I chilled the cookie crust while I prepared the filling. I then mixed up the cheesecake batter and poured it onto the prepared crust. After removing air bubbles on the poured filling, I then put the pan to a prepared water bath with boiling water and then baked it for about an hour. Cheesecakes are supposed to be chilled overnight or up to 24hours before unmolding so I left it wrapped in the fridge for a day. Once chilled properly, I then unmolded it and started to decorate it. I put some strawberry syrup first on top for flavor and then piped Vanilla Buttercream on top.

We brought it to the office today for his birthday. Some of our officemates came back for second serving and before we knew it, the cake was gone.



Happy birthday kabibe! I hope you had fun today. :)

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

This week had been hectic at work and by Thursday, I was starting to dream of a weekend where I would lazily be glued to my bed watching olympics all day. It kind of happened, but only because I was feeling sick. I didn't want to move all day yesterday even if I was already hungry. I also got weekend work calls which I was forced to attend to. I started feeling better late in the afternoon, probably after getting a lot of sleep and popping two mefenamic acids. As my day started (which was already around sundown), I decided to bake something for breakfast the next day. I had been fancying baking the Cream Cheese Pound Cake recipe from Sarah. I love yellow cakes, and the recipe had been getting rave reviews from those who tried it at baking911.

The recipe is a variation of the original Pound Cake recipe by Nick Malgieri. The recipe replaces some of the butter with cream cheese (yummy!). The batter was very easy to make, and after mixing all the ingredients, I poured the batter on a disposable baking foil because I don't have a real tube pan. The cake was supposed to bake for 45 minutes and when the cake starting to brown, the smell swirled in the kitchen. It smelled so delicious. After 45 minutes, the cake was done and here's how it looked like in the oven.


I was planning on frosting it with some strawberry or chocolate syrup once served in the morning. However, it tasted so good that we did not bother touching the syrups that we had on the side. It's really that good! The crumb and the texture of the cake is also very smooth and fluffy and would be ideal to make and layer. I would make this again soon on a round pan, and try decorating as this one is also sturdy. I still have some leftover slices, I'll be eating it for breakfast again tomorrow in the office with some really hot coffee.