Pumpkin Walnut Cream Cheese Roll

I made the Pumpkin Walnut Cream Cheese Roll by Sarah Phillips today. It's my first time making a roulade and first time making a cake with Pumpkin in it. The only vegetable that I have tried putting on a cake is Carrots and I was excited to taste how a Pumpkin would taste together with the entire cake ensemble. The Pumpkin Roulade is a traditional cake served on Thanksgiving and growing up in the Philippines, the only time I get to eat Pumpkin (or is it squash?) is when my father would cook his special Chili Crabs in Coconut Milk (yum!).


It's about time that I make a roulade. I kept putting it off since December last year when I thought of making a Christmas log. So I started with mixing the batter of the Pumpkin Cake. I went on the long route of making this cake because I cannot find canned solid pack pumpkin and crystallized ginger here in Israel. Yes, it's pumpkin and ginger together, with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon juice, nuts. The recipe required walnuts but I also cannot find any at the supermarket, so I substituted it with Pecans. Mixing the batter is similar to a genoise in that it starts with whipping the egg and sugar then adding the rest of the ingredients. After a few minutes of mixing, I spread the batter onto a floured jelly roll. The cake baked for 15 minutes and it smelled wonderful!


Once removed from the oven, I started to unmold the sides from the pan and then rolled it in a parchment paper over a kitchen towel. I left it to cool completely while wrapped in the towel. While the cake is cooling, I make the cream cheese filling. Once the cake is cooled, I filled the middle with cream cheese filling and rolled it again. I let it cool in the fridge, and while doing so, I made the spike cream. The spike cream is a mixture of heavy cream, vanilla, a little powdered sugar and a little rum extract. I beat it until it's stiff. After an hour in the fridge, I removed my rolled cake from the parchment paper, frosted it with some more cream cheese frosting and topped with spike cream swirls and walnuts. Here's how the cake looked like. It was not as hard as I thought it would be. And the taste was a real surprise for me. Having no idea how it would taste like, I anticipated not liking the final cake. And I'm glad I was wrong. It was so delicious that we needed second slices of the cake. I'm excited to have it again tomorrow, for breakfast. :)

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*

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!

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.

Molten Lava Cake

Molten Lave Cakes or Volcano Cakes are usually mini cakes with gooey center which will flow like Lava once eaten. I wanted to make some fancy dessert for dinner today so I made some of these and planned on topping it with vanilla ice cream and strawberry syrup.

I made the cake at around 5pm and I was done after 30 minutes, including mixing the batter, baking the cake and surfing in between. :) I used a 70% extra bittersweet Ghirardelli bar for the chocolate and it turned out to be really decadent. While I was not able to look for that perfect recipe in the web, I manage to interlace a few to be able to come up with something simple that is perfect for my taste.


Taking a photo of the cake was a challenge because the idea was that the Lave cake was supposed to be eaten hot so that the fudge in the middle would ooze. So after 2 minutes of taking the cake out of the oven, I topped it with Vanilla Ice Cream, Strawberry Syrup and shaved chocolates. As expected, the ice cream would melt because it was still hot, and photo had to be taken fast. Even if we're fast enough, the ice cream still melted. :) I also tried to slice the cake in the middle to take a photo of the gooey center, but ice cream just flowed on it so no chance of seeing it!

After taking photos, Manny and I ended up eating the cakes already (forget about having it for dessert!) and it was so good! It was really fancy, like something that you'd order from an expensive restaurant. The Vanilla ice cream complimented the chocolately flavor of the cake while the strawberry syrup provided a nice contrast on the taste. We intended to divide one cake but we ended up eating one each so we just decided to skip dinner altogether. :P

July Daring Bakers Challenge 1

The challenge for this month is Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream. It's my first ever Daring Baker's challenge and I was both ecstatic and nervous at the same time. Then I saw the challenge, and I was like - Filbert? Gateau? English please? :) After going over the challenge for the month, I found out that Filbert is Hazelnuts and Gateau is French for cake made with almond flour. After scouting my kitchen for what I have, the only ones I'm missing were actually the hazelnuts. I had almonds over but I still attempted to find some hazelnuts in the supermarket, to no avail. I just made some Almond Gateau with Almond Praline Buttercream instead.

I was back home in the Philippines when I read about the challenge, and in the middle of vacation, I was actually thinking of the cake and looking forward to actually making it. The recipe requires a lot of work, and it probably is not something that I will make spontaneously on a lazy Saturday afternoon. But of course, I'm up for the challenge (I think. :D).

I needed to prepare the Gateau, 1 recipe of sugar syrup, 1 recipe of Praline Buttercream, Whipped Heavy Cream (which I skipped eventually because the Buttercream was already very rich), 1 recipe of Strawberry Glaze, 1 recipe of Chocolate Ganache and some toasted nuts. I am pretty much familiar with the components of the recipe, except for the Gateau, so I had to re-read the recipe a few times before starting. The Gateau is made of processed almond nuts combined with cake flour. After preparing the batter for the Gateau, I baked it for 30 minutes and when it was almost done, the smell of the baking nutty cake filled the kitchen and I swear it was one of the best scents you'd ever smell! While the cake was in the oven, I started making a plain sugar syrup. Once the cake was cooled, I torted it and brushed the layers with sugar syrup.


Leaving the cake a while, I started to make the Almond Praline Buttercream. To make Almond Paste, I caramelized some sugar and added the Almond on it. This becomes some candied pieces and after it had totally cooled, I broke it down into manageable pieces and processed it until it was first powdery and then like paste. And then I had to make the Swiss Buttercream and once done, I slowly incorporated the Almond Paste. The buttercream turned out to be smooth and delicious!

I then filled the cake layers with Buttercream in between and once stacked, I brushed the top and sides with a pre-made Strawberry Glaze and I let it chill for about an hour.

While the cake was being chilled, I made the Chocolate Ganache (which I very often use for my cupcakes so it was a breeze!) and I had it also cooled afterwards. Once the cake was out of the fridge, I glazed it with the Chocolate Ganache and I made the top with mirror finish but the sides were ugly! I cannot smoothen the sides! But anyway, I still managed to cover the sides with the Ganache. Once the Chocolate had settled on the cake, I started to pipe it on top with the remaining buttercream. It took me half a day to finish the cake!

Cutting the cake was another story. I had never been able to cut any of my cakes perfectly! :P I loved the nutty taste of the cake even if I'm not crazy about nuts! Here's how the first slice looked like.


So there goes my first challenge, on to August!

The Cheesecake Contest

I did not win the Cheesecake contest in our office. There were around 15 contestants and only 1 winner was picked. However, my cake did me very proud because it looked pretty. I kept saying that if it were only for presentation, my cake would have already won and then after trying it afterwards, it really tasted very good! After the judging, we tasted all the entries and Daniel kept saying that mine is sure to be in the top 3! But then again, they only picked one winner and his (yeah he's a guy) cheesecake was also very good with some sugar crumbs on top. The winning cheesecake was more traditionally Israeli as well, I think he used ricotta for the cheese. As a prize, he got some restaurant vouchers.

I got an Israeli pastry book as a prize. The book was very fancy with glossy pages, but was written in Hebrew! Even if I could not understand a thing written on it, I will keep the book as a reminder that I once had the guts to join a cake contest. Hehe. It was totally fun, and it is especially heartwarming hearing compliments on how good the cake tasted or how beautiful it looked like. It was a wonderful experience that I'd remember for a long time.

After a few thought, I decided to make Sarah Phillip's Luscious and No Crack Cheesecake. For me, cheesecakes are the hardest to make as they are the most fragile. A little slip on the side can ruin the entire cake and frosting cannot hide cracks. As it turned out, the recipe was very baker friendly with Sarah's detailed explanations of each step. After 1 hour of baking on a water bath, here's how the cheesecake looked like in the pan. I needed to chill it for 24 hours before unmolding.
After 24 hours, I now had to do the most unnerving part which is unmolding it from the pan. It being my first time baking a whole cheesecake, I was read and re-read the theory of unmolding over and over (hehe). I did succeed in unmolding it though! Here's how it looked like after it was removed from the pan. It looks yummy already, but the smell was so enticing! I wanted to eat it right there and then.
I know the strawberry/blueberry cheesecake won in the poll that I had here in my blog but I'm sorry that I ended up with a chocolate cheesecake. I was supposed the use whole strawberries on top of a blueberry glaze but the strawberries that I had perished in the fridge and I miscalculated the blueberry filling that I had. So I ended up thinking of other options and the next best thing is chocolate. I made some chocolate ganache and glazed it on top of the cheesecake. After letting the glaze settle down a bit, I topped it with some sugar flowers and dragees. There was a little dent on the side of the glaze but I opted not to touch it anymore because the chocolate had already started to dry down.

Making the cheesecake was pretty smooth but not without a few fuss. Here's a full view of the cake, with some chocolate glaze that got poured on the crumbs.

Bringing the cheesecake to the office was another story. Daniel helped me bring it and there were a lot of close calls like the cover almost sticking to the cake, or the mini mishaps at the elevator and at the humps on the road. Here's a photo of the cake taken at the contest. Photo is dull, I just took this on the website of the event. I'm entry #13.
And here's half of the crowd who enjoyed the cheesecakes, half of it at the back of the cameraman. It was so fun! So there goes my cheesecake story. :)

My Whimsical Flower Cake

I got my Cake Bible today as a present and I read it to look for that first recipe that I can bake straightly lifted from it. I opted for an easier recipe and decided to make a White Chocolate Whisper Cake. The cake itself will be made with some melted White Chocolates on it. Sounds yummy! Nobody's going to eat it though at the house so I will probably just bring it to the office for breakfast. I decided to frost it with a White Chocolate Raspberry Ganache for that ultimate White Chocolate blast!
The book was very good but had I started with it and not with baking911, the book would probably be lost in translation. I was even more meticulous this time, weighing my ingredients instead of measuring. Rose' recipes always start with mixing the flour first and then adding the butter and the liquid ingredients. As I had always been, I am not comfortable doing it this way. I am more comfortable doing it the other way around, that is creaming first then adding the flour at the last step. But this time around, I guess it was ok. I started getting a little comfortable with the inverted routing, this time I just need to soften the butter before hand.
The cake was done after 25mins in the oven and I frosted it afterwards.

Here's a slice of the cake. I kind of messed up cutting it because I don't have a really sharp knife or a cake cutter. It still looked good though. And at least the frosting inside looked decent enough to be served in a party. LOL!

Another shot of the slice. I wanted to take another slice for better photo but opted not to or else I will end up eating it!

Here's a closer look of the whimsical roses of the cake. These are gum paste flowers tinted in Yellow and Pink and the leaves tinted Green.
I just got today my Cake Bible from Tita Len and today's cake is the first that I directly lifted from it. I got from her a big box with pans, spatula, smootheners and even a shot glass! I was so happy, I was like a kid opening her 7th birthday present.

The Big Day (Not!)

It's my birthday today and during the days leading up to it, we were once again too busy at work. However, one thing I am certain of, I never wanted to bake a fancy cake for my birthday because there's only the two of us here anyway. I just decided to bake something small and yummy! So here it goes, I baked myself a Hot Sponge Milk Cake with Caramel Frosting. Nothing fancy but totally yummy! I don't have a party anyway.
My day actually started on the dot of 12AM, and I was still at the office at that time, having only eaten 1 meal the entire day and having been buried with tons of work. A few minutes after, the shift leader of operations called to tell me that there were food downstairs and he knows that I am hungry already. So we went downstairs to the cafeteria and saw the same food that we had for lunch. There were tons of pans with cold Beef Asado, grilled chicken, meatloafs and all sorts of salad leftovers. We took some and heated it then had our "dinner". With the thought of going home soon, I finished my food and went up again to my cube only to find out that there were problems in the jobs in the test floor that I need to fix. So I spent another hour again trying to fix all of the errors. I need to finish all that I'm supposed to do today because May 7 is actually a holiday here. It's their memorial holiday so therefore no work on the daytime and we need all the jobs running before we go on a long holiday. Afterwhich, I needed to patch my TP again to be released. I am also waiting for input files from a guy also working over time (and still had to make a 2-hr drive to Tel Aviv) so while waiting I was chatting with Roy (who was the first to greet me from back home) and I also decided to call home. That's funny eh? My mom wants me to call her on my birthday! Anyway, even if I am still at the office on such an unholy hour, I was still up and about. I even heard Creamy burp! LOL! I was finally able to go home at 3AM.
After getting some much needed sleep, I woke up at 11AM with a very empty stomach. And to make matters worse, I don't have any groceries anymore (no rice!) and I don't have much options for a meal. Since technically it's still my breakfast (and I don't have any choice anyways) I prepared some cheese pancakes, sunny side up eggs, and fried a few bacon pieces (the last ones). I also made some hot chocolates a la Max Brenner with boiled milk, vanilla and melted dark chocolates. After having a hearty meal, I took a nap again with the oven pre-heating. Haha. Afterwards, I started baking my cake and it took around 2 hours including baking time until I have the final cake for blowing. :) I also cooked some pasta for dinner. Dinner time is my "happy birthday" time with the candle already lit on my simple cake.
May 7 being a memorial holiday here meant no programs on TV (even cable), all malls and groceries were closed, no making noise and no transportation. Bummer eh? Well not really, my day is perfectly fine as it is and at 9PM, they started the fireworks outside because it's now Independence day! Israelis normally celebrate their holidays from sundown to sundown. Fireworks lit while we were eating dinner and we went out to my terrace to watch. My apartment is on the prime vista point for the fireworks being at the 13th floor facing the sea. The fireworks lasted for a good 20mins.
Just when I thought my day was going perfectly, with all the sleep that I got and the fireworks, we started watching the Rome Master Series and saw my boy Nadal, who never loses on clay, lost to Ferrero. Bummer.
So there goes my day, totally better than last year when I was on the plane going to Arizona and people greeting me were random immigration people who would see on my passport that it is my birthday!
Thanks to everyone who greeted and remembered me today. I wish you all had a taste of the cake, it was so good! :)

Lemon Pound Cupcakes

These are Classic Lemon Pound Cupcakes frosted with White Cream Cheese Frosting. I made the cupcakes using Nick Malgieri's Basic Pound Cake recipe, and halved it to make only a dozen of cupcakes. The full recipe would yield one 9x5x3 cake or about 24-26 cupcakes depending on the size of the liners. I added some lemon zest and lemon extract on the pound cake to make it lemon flavored. If you may have noticed, lemon cakes (or lemon cupcakes for that matter) are my favorite together either with a raspberry ganache or cream cheese. I bake chocolate cupcakes most of the time for other people. I try to intentionally avoid making these lemon cupcakes as I eat too much of it. I normally cannot resist it! At the office today, I brought a few pieces for breakfast and to share. However, we decided to skip lunch and just ate the cupcakes with coffee. So now, I haven't had a decent meal the entire day but I'm still full because of the cupcakes.

Butter Pound Cake with Lemon Fondant Glaze

Pound cakes are traditional American cakes and are called as such because it requires a pound of each of the ingredients like flour, sugar, eggs and butter. These cakes are lighter but has a burst of butter which provides a very rich taste and denser feel to the cakes.
This is my first time to bake a pound cake. I had always wanted because I had been keeping a good Pound cake recipe from Nick Malgieri (of the Institute of Culinary School NY) but as usual, I don't want to bake anything excessive that we will not be able to finish.
Last Thursday, Thet asked me to bake a Pound Cake and I was excited just because I now have a reason to bake a Pound Cake. However, I was too busy to be able to work on it as soon as I wanted to. I even had to go to work on a weekend because of too much work load because of my impending test program release. Thet requested me to bake a Flo Braker recipe which I assume when she saw made her crave for one. LOL! Flo Braker is also a very respected and popular baker but this is my first cake recipe from her. I always had mine from Sarah Phillips, Rose Levy Berenbaum, Nick Malgieri, and from my fellow baking911 members. I finally got to bake last Saturday night after dinner and finished up before midnight. I know I'm such an addict, considering I'd be going to work again the next day.
Preparing the batter for this recipe required sifting the cake flour three times to achieve a fine texture for the cake. After creaming the sugar and butter, and after mixing with the eggs, I had to just fold in the flour delicately to avoid overmixing. I also don't have a loaf pan that is normally used for Pound cakes so I had to just resort to my 8X3 round pan and in doing so had a little extra batter for a pint sized mini cake. The cake baked for 40mins, and I took it out and cooled it in a rack for another 30mins.
While the cake is cooling, I prepared the fondant glaze (imagine those sugar frostings on top of a krispy kreme donuts or even dunkin donuts). Once the glaze is ready, I drizzled the hot onto the cooled cake for a first coating of the entire cake. Then after the glaze has slightly cooled and the consistency had slightly thickened, I poured the second coat on top of cake in the middle and let it spread by itself. I took the photo while the cake was still on the drying pan, and then transferred it onto another clean pan and covered it ready for handling. Not without saving a mini cake for me to try if it is good though. And now I can blog about it because we ate the small piece from a leftover batter and it was all praises from Manny's discriminating taste. ;) It was very luscious and rich without being overpowering and the hints of lemon on the cake and glaze provides a good flavor kick on the cake.

Cuatro Leches Cake

Every time I bake a whole cake, I would always plan on taking a picture of the cake after it gets sliced for serving and I would either get lazy or forget about it. This time, I made it a point to take a nice photo after the first slice.
After a day of wondering what to bake, Manny thought that he wanted a Cuatro Leches cake. I have baked it before but it was rather improvised because I did not have all the ingredients back then. As I have learned from baking911, this cake is called as such because of the four types of milk used. It's basically a Vanilla Sponge Cake soaked in a four milk sauce, covered with Swiss Meringue and drizzed with some Caramel sauce.
After assembling the cake, I left it to settle for a while and we went to grill some barbecue for dinner. We were so excited with the barbecue so we set the table and then I immediately cut the cake without realizing that I have not taken a photo of the whole cake!
Anyway, Manny cut a clean and picturesque slice of the cake and I plated it, wedding style. I have always loved how sliced cakes looked neat and elegant at Martha Stewart's website. Here's a photo of my imitation. My cakes will never get nowhere close, but what the heck :)

Rolled Fondant Cake

There really is no occasion this week to make a whole cake and fancy at that. I normally make cupcakes only just to be able to bake and to try out new recipes in small quantities. This is the first weekend that I had a free weekend so I decided to try out making fondant. Or this could be my Tita Len's belated happy birthday cake! :)This is my first successful attempt at making rolled fondant from scratch. The recipe for the rolled fondant is Toba Garrett's which I got from baking911. It's made up of gelatin, corn syrup, vanilla extract and confectionary sugar mixed and kneaded together to form the dough like consistency. The final fondant was slightly on the dry side, so I had a lot of creases and folds on the cake which I cannot straighten out because of the dryness. Creases were more obvious on the bottom part of the cake.
The cake inside is also something that I made for the first time. The cake recipe is Rose Levy Berenbaum's All Downy Yellow Cake. It was very good (based on the crumbs that I got) and very... yellow (but of course! LOL!). I frosted and coated the cake with some Vanilla Buttercream.
After assembling the cake with the fondant, I topped it with some sugar flowers, sugar pearls and silver dragees on top. I would have wanted to make the flowers from gum paste (which would have made it thinner and more realistic) but since it's a no-occasion cake, I just settled with some fondant sugar flowers. After having the final cake done, I can't wait to make another one again! :)