Cake Slice Bakers December Cakes

I'm supposed to have a different title for the post, one which includes the name of the cake I baked, but this month I'm not able to because I baked two different cakes from our 2018 book, The Perfect Cake. In December we get to choose from the whole book. Turns out that I needed a cake for two parties so I baked two cakes! One was so good that I'll be making it again for Christmas with family. The other was spectacular looking, but wasn't as delicious. It's still a good chocolate cake, just not a great one. It didn't really have a strong chocolate flavor despite the fact that I used a large quantity of chocolate for both the cake and the ganache icing. Sweetie said that I've baked better and that's what I was feeling, too.

The first cake, the one that looked a little rustic but which everyone loved, is French Apple Cake on Pg. 182. It's pictured above and at the top of the post. Look at those thin apple slices interlaced with the custard. See how appealing the golden top crust with sugar is?  I used Granny Smith apples, just as required, some rum instead of Calvados, but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. This cake is very moist with an apple and custard base and a bit of sponge cake on top. You get those two textures by taking some of the batter and setting it aside before adding the apples and egg yolks to the larger amount. The apples have been briefly microwaved first so that they are a lovely soft but firm texture when baked instead of crisp as they might be if not microwaved. The remaining batter gets some extra flour which seems to lighten it. The top gets nice and golden brown, too. That might be because of the sugar sprinkled on. All in all, a really delicious cake with great textural contrast.

The second one, which is the Chocolate-Raspberry Torte, is similar to a flourless chocolate cake, but it does have ground almonds and a bit of flour. It's very lovely to look at but disappointing when eaten. Even with a full 8 oz of best quality bittersweet chocolate and another 5 oz for the glaze, the chocolate flavor wasn't strong. I did use the called for amount of espresso powder, too. The other problem was the filling. By combining uncooked, crushed raspberries and raspberry jam, the filling was very liquid and it tended to squish out when I was cutting the cake. It did add a nice sharp note to a pretty heavy, uninspired chocolate cake. This cake looked really pretty, but left something to be desired in the taste. 

In case you want those glazed raspberries on your next cake, just melt a small amount of the raspberry jam in a small bowl (I used the microwave), then paint each berry with the glaze. This way you'll get the jam glaze on the berries, but not the ganache glaze. 

The toasted almonds on the side are fiddly, but look so professional. Just remember to put the sifted nuts in a small bowl to work from. 

I kept them in the strainer and then proceeded to sift tiny bits of nuts onto my beautiful smooth glaze as I patted the nuts onto the sides! Fortunately it still looked great, just not perfect. Perfect is overrated anyway.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

No recipes, as usual, since the America's Test Kitchen folks asked us not to post any.

Cranberry-Sour Cream Pound Cake with #theCakeSliceBakers

Christmas is coming...it's only a little over a month away...and you may want to create some food memories of your own with my choice of this month's Cake Slice Bakers choices. What could be more seasonal than fresh cranberries? They are often on sale for Thanksgiving and on and off up to Christmas. They also freeze well and you can bake with them using frozen berries, so unless you hate cranberries, it's good to stock up on a bag or two or three.

This lovely loaf cake is a nice, buttery, rich pound cake with the added benefit of the bright color and burst of flavor of the cranberries, plus the tang of sour cream. Since mine had to be mostly dairy free (I can have yogurt for some reason, but not sour cream), I used non-dairy margarine and plain yogurt instead of butter and sour cream, and it was still rich and wonderful.

The crumb is slightly less tight than classic pound cake, but still slices nicely and holds together well. I made it at the beginning of the month and sliced it into long fingers to serve at a gathering where they were looking for something to go with mid-morning coffee and tea. Because the cranberries keep it from being too sweet, it was a hit. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the cake cut into fingers, but I bet you know how to do that anyway. The photo I did take was taken when the cake was recently out of the oven, so the slice is a bit streaky with the cranberry juices, but it was better to slice when it cooled completely.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

Next month will be the last bake from our current book, The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake. Each recipe has been well thought out and has worked perfectly for me, so do consider purchasing this book yourself. It will have the recipe for this lovely pound cake and for many other delightful cakes. Maybe Santa will give it to you for Christmas? BTW, I receive no benefits from ATK for suggesting this. I just think it is a great cake book.

Cider-Glazed Apple Bundt Cake for Fall with #theCakeSliceBakers

Can you tell that I love the fall of the year? In our area things like tomatoes and roses do really well in October, plus there are the fall fruits like figs and quince, persimmons  and, of course, apples.

I missed baking with the Cake Slice Bakers last month, but this month I was able to bake one of the recipes, Apple Bundt Cake. I used my Bundt pan that has four small cake molds so that I ended up with four very cute little cakes. The cider is easy to reduce in a wide skillet and only took about 20 minutes, so plan ahead to create your apple reduction in advance. It really adds to the apple flavor to have it in the batter, brushed over the warm cakes, and in the sweet drizzle that decorates the tops.

This is an easy cake to make because you don't even need a mixer...it is all mixed by hand. The dry ingredients go in one bowl, the wet ingredients, vanilla and brown sugar in another one. They get mixed together and then the apples are stirred in...it's as easy as that. The most time consuming part is peeling and shredding the apples and waiting for the cake to bake...if you bake one cake in a full sized Bundt pan it's over an hour of smelling wonderful fragrances of apple and brown sugar and butter.  If you like you can decorate the baked, drizzled cake with seasonal decors...I used a Harvest blend.

Worth the wait for the cake to bake, because the final cake is moist and delightful, almost like a pound cake with apples, but with a more open texture due to the technique used for mixing the batter and due to the shredded apples. Here is what a cut piece looks like (with no decorations or drizzle).

It just so happens that this recipe is available at the American Test Kitchen website, so you can try it and see why you should really buy the book. Every recipe I've tried has been perfect.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

An InLinkz Link-up

Lemon Sheet Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

A little late to the party, but summer is never an easy time to find the right time to bake. As usual, we have a project for the house going on. This July it's a refurbishment of the back deck, which is a three level affair connected by steps. Sweetie and I built it together over 25 years ago, so it has aged enough to no longer be beautiful, nor totally safe.

Today we stopped early enough that I whipped up the Lemon Sheet Cake from The Perfect Cake cookbook (no 'buttermilk' in the title since I didn't use buttermilk). Except for using non-dairy margarine and soy creamer as substitutes for the butter and buttermilk, I followed the recipe exactly. Those substitutions are necessary if I'm going to eat any of the cake, and I soooo enjoyed this cake that I'm glad I did.

This cake is tender, moist and has a heavenly true lemon flavor. The crumb is fairly tight and the crust delicate. I love the lemon sugar glaze even though it does make the cake pretty sweet. The sprinkle of lemon zest enriched granulated sugar over the glaze adds just the right touch of crunch, and even more lemon appeal and sweetness.

Allow some time at the beginning to zest and juice the lemons...takes 5-10 minutes, but is well worth the effort. Otherwise this is a fairly basic cake recipe where you cream the butter with the sugar that has been enriched with the lemon zest, then you add eggs, then the dry ingredients in three parts and the wet ingredients in two parts, with the dry added last. Using cake flour is wonderful since it makes the cake delicate and tender.

I know that quite a few Cake Slice Bakers also make this recipe. Who can blame them? This cake if just fine by itself and even better with a few ripe strawberries or raspberries or blackberries or blueberries and since this is berry season that's easy to do. I added a few  strawberries from our garden and it was the perfect summer treat with the luscious lemon cake!

Do visit the other Cake Slice Bakers to see how their cakes turned out. There is at least on who did the cake pops and one who did the almond meringue layers with fruit. No recipe, but do consider buying the book because every recipe so far has been flawless.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook,  Instagram, and  Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The Cake Slice Bakers are baking from a new book "The Perfect Cake" from America's Test Kitchen.

Our choices this month are...

1. Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake
2. Apricot-Almond Meringue Cake
3. Refined Strawberry Shortcake
4. Party Cake Pops

Visit our members to see what cake choice they baked up! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

Chocolate cake with chocolate icing has always been my favorite cake flavor combination. Imagine how excited I was when I found out that an Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake was one of the choices for the Cake Slice Bakers for June. A grand chocolate layer cake! What could be better?

There were a few new techniques which took it out of the old-fashioned category in my mind, but the trick of making a sort of pudding for the chocolate part of the cake, by cooking the cocoa, chocolate and water together, then cooling it before adding it to the batter, was one I will use again. It seemed to make for a very moist cake with a tender but firm crumb. Buy or borrow the book and check out this cool technique!

The second non-old-fashioned thing was making the frosting in a food processor. Since mine was unavailable when I made the frosting, I used the exact same ingredients called for, but put them together in a different manner. I creamed two sticks of butter in the bowl of my stand mixer, added the cocoa and slowly beat it to make a paste, very slowly added the salt and confectioners sugar keeping the stand mixer on low speed, then added the vanilla and corn syrup and mixed them in. Once the chocolate mixture was cool enough I added it with the mixer on low and once that was incorporated I added the remaining butter, a tablespoon at a time. Once all the butter was incorporated, I turned up the speed for about a minute to completely mix the frosting. Of course there was a lot of scraping the sides of the bowl and the beaters throughout the process.

The frosting was creamy but didn't seem to get to filled with air and it was easy to work with when I applied it to the cake layers. I used the back of the spoon method to put swirls on the top of the cake, then used a pastry bag and tip to use some more frosting to decorate the bottom with flowers, with one in the middle of the top.

The resulting layer cake was lovely to look at and delicious, but I found it overly rich. (I write 'butter' but really used non-dairy margarine since I can't tolerate butter. Maybe real butter would have been less rich, but I doubt it.) Fortunately we were able to share this delightful cake with neighbors (who proclaimed it perfect for breakfast!), and with my sister and her family. Thin slices worked out well.

I decorated the final slice with strawberries from our garden. Celebrating summer!

 Next time I would do a ganache icing or the really old fashioned one with cocoa, hot milk and confectioners sugar, both of which would probably be less rich than the Test Kitchen chocolate frosting. I wouldn't change a thing about the cake itself. I baked the layers two full days before I frosted and served it and the cake layers stayed moist just wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature. This is a wonderful cake, but it is expensive to make if you use (as you should) high quality chocolate and cocoa. Use a chocolate that you enjoy eating since you will really taste it. I used Scharfenberger and was glad I did.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake, Rhubarb Ribbon Cake, Lavender Tea Cakes with Vanilla Glaze, and Summer Peach Cake.

The Cake Slice Bakers are baking from a new book "The Perfect Cake" from America's Test Kitchen.

Our choices this month are...

June 2018

1. Old-Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake
2. Rhubarb Ribbon Cake
3. Lavender Tea Cakes with Vanilla Glaze
4. Summer Peach Cake

Visit our bakers too see what choice they baked up!

An InLinkz Link-up

Italian Almond Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

We had a really nice group of cakes to choose from this month as the Cake Slice Bakers continue to bake from The Perfect Cake by America's Test Kitchen. #atkcake

There was the creamy sweetness of the Tres Leches Cake, the tang of lemon in the Lemon Pudding Cakes, wonderful almond flavor in the Italian Almond Cake and fun and pretty Confetti Cake.

I chose the Italian Almond Cake because I wanted a tea cake that I could enjoy over a few days and one that wasn't too complicated since my energy levels continue to be lower than usual.

In the photo that is with the recipe in the book you can see that with the Italian Almond Cake there is a nice crunchy crust with sliced almonds, and lemon sugar. The photo doesn't really show much of the interior of the cake, but mine had a lovely dense crumb, similar to a pound cake and it was really moist. There is plenty of almond flavor in this cake but it has a nice brightness from the lemon zest, too. I did use melted non-dairy margarine instead of butter, but otherwise I baked it exactly as written in the cookbook.

I'm not going to include the recipe since, if you like to bake cakes, this book is worth purchasing. It has all the classics, plus some new and different ones. Each recipe is well written and the Test Kitchen folks  have clearly tested and tested to come up with recipes that work and are delicious. I expect this to be a book I go to again and again over the years.

Be sure to check out the other Cake Slice Bakers posts, too.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Tres Leches Cake, Lemon Pudding Cake, Italian Almond Cake, and Confetti Cake.

An InLinkz Link-up

Boston Cream Cupcakes #TheCakeSliceBakers

You've probably heard the name Boston Cream Pie at some point in your life. The immediate visual that comes to mind if you have never had this dessert is a creamy pie in a nice crust with maybe some maple syrup for flavoring or something. In fact, a Boston Cream Pie is a cake. Vanilla cake is sandwiched with a vanilla pastry cream and then topped with a rich chocolate ganache. It's a great combination of flavors and textures and a classic for a reason.

This month the Cake Slice Bakers are baking again from The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen, #atkcake, and our choices included Boston Cream Cupcakes. Being an iconoclast and not a lover of working with lots of pieces, I changed it to a small Boston Cream Pie cake, made using a 6-inch in diameter springform pan with tall sides, plus three smaller cakes made using mega-muffin pans- pretty close to Boston Cream Cupcakes. Two of those small ones were tall enough to split and fill, but the smallest on worked well for the original instructions for cupcakes, so I cut out a divot in the top, sliced off a bit of the point to make room for the pastry cream, then filled the depression with a tablespoon or so of the cream, topped it with the cake hat, then poured the chocolate glaze over it all. Here is what that one looked like:

I made this treat for Valentine's Day. Two of the little cakes went to a neighbor couple and the other went to another neighbor. Sweetie and I enjoyed ample portions of the large cake. It was delicious. This cake is not as fine crumbed as a pound cake, but still has a fairly tight crumb. It rose well and had a nice, mild vanilla flavor. The pastry cream, which I made with soy non-dairy creamer and non-dairy margarine, was wonderful...very smooth and creamy and strongly vanilla. I chilled it so that it would make a sturdy filling, which is especially important when you are cutting the cake. A too soft filling just squishes out as you cut.

The genius part of the ganache topping is the plain corn syrup. It really makes it easy to work with. Since I did use bittersweet chocolate as called for, the topping was a nice deep chocolate contrast to the vanilla in the cake and pastry cream.

I decorated the iced cakes with tiny sprinkles in heart shapes. It made a really pretty Valentine's Day gift for Sweetie, who loves Boston Cream Pie!

Because the book that this recipe comes from isn't in print yet, I'm not including the recipe. It should be published next month. You are probably going to want to buy this if you make a lot of cakes, or just want recipes for cake that are tested and perfect! Sometimes the instructions seem different, like cutting the fat into the flour for a cake like this. It's a technique often used for pie and biscuits, but not that often for cake. I'm sure it helped this cake rise so nicely and probably contributed to the tenderness, too.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through.  This year it is The Perfect Cake from America's Test Kitchen #atkcake.  We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes, or visit our blog where the links are updated each month. If you are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The choices this month were Chocolate-Espresso Dacquoise, Blitz Torte, Bananas Foster Cake, and Boston Cream Cupcakes.

An InLinkz Link-up