Gingerbread House Bundt Cake

 

November came and went by in a flash with very little baking on my end.  To be honest I just didn't have the motivation after returning from a holiday in Europe.  Perhaps subconsciously I was also storing my energy in preparation for the whirlwind of holiday baking and candy making that awaited me in December?

 

My first real bake for the holiday season is this super cute Gingerbread House Bundt Cake using this Nordic Ware pan.   For the cake itself I used White Lily Flour's recipe for a cream cheese pound cake.  I need another bundt pan like a fish needs a bicycle but I couldn't help myself.  The design on this pan was too cute to pass up and will be added to my growing bundt collection.  

 

 

What I especially love about a bundt cake is how easily you can achieve fantastic results with very little effort.  Especially ideal for you novice bakers out there.  Let the cake pan do all the work for you!  But, whenever making a bundt cake the golden rule you have to follow is to grease the pan well.  I swear by Baker's Joy cooking spray (with flour) and 99% of the time my cakes release without any issues.

Let the holiday baking extravaganza begin!

   

Petits Fours

 

This Petits Fours post is long overdue and I mean REALLY overdue.  We're talking more than a decade people!  When you put it that way it sounds so bad, right?  My fascination with petits fours really started when I saw them made in this video, Martha Stewart Living Cake Decorating.   I was immediately drawn in by how beautiful and elegant the little cakes were.  They've been on my baking bucket list forever and I finally got my a%$ in gear and made them recently for my Easter table this year.  I packaged four petits fours into clear plastic boxes and placed a favor at each place setting.  I think they look absolutely darling and fit the Easter decor beautifully.

Essentially petits fours are small pieces of pound cake that are filled (I like jam or curd and buttercream) and covered in a glossy fondant.   I started with this recipe for the pound cake from the blog Rose Bakes which is nice and sturdy and holds up really well.  One recipe of the cake makes a half-sheet size pan and yields a lot of petits fours.  I made half of the cake into raspberry petits fours and the other half into lemon petits fours.  I'm  a sucker for fruit flavors and I think the tartness from the raspberry and lemon would be a nice counterbalance to the sweetness from the fondant. 

 

Now let's talk about fondant because that's the Archilles heel of these pretty treats.  The fondant used to coat petits fours is different from the rolled fondant you've seen covering wedding cakes and the like.  Petits fours use a poured fondant.  You can make certainly make it yourself but I was too intimidated (and lazy!) to do that so I bought some premade fondant from Amazon and it worked great.  The only thing I had to do was melt it in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until it was thin enough to coat.  Two tricks I learned from the Martha Stewart video were to have simple syrup on hand to stir into the fondant or put it back on the heat when it got too thick. 

 

 

The main caveat I have when it comes to making petits fours is that it's NOT a neat and tidy process.  The poured fondant can be very finicky to work with and downright messy.  It took me a while to get a feel for what was the best consistency for the fondant and even more time trying to figure out the best set up.  In the end I'm happy with my first attempt at petits fours.  I don't have the time to make them often so I'll save it for special occasions. 

 

Packaging Details:

4" x 4" x 2" clear plastic boxes

4" x 4" x 3/8" raised bottom box insert

3/8" grosgrain ribbon

Patriotic Pound Cake

I think it's safe to say this Memorial Day Weekend is unlike any we have ever known due to shelter in place and, of course, the Bay Area weather is forecast to be glorious and sunny.  But hey-ho, no use getting down about it, right?  I'll still enjoy the lovely weather, albeit from a safe social distance!

 

Memorial Day is the unofficial start of the summer season here in the US and I wanted to make something patriotic to celebrate the holiday.  In the past I've made blueberry pies with a star cutout crust or Ina Garten's festive flag cake.  This year I decided to try my hand at making a Patriotic Pound Cake.  I love a good marble cake with swirls of different colored batter so why not try it in the iconic red, white and blue?

I started with the Martha Stewart Living recipe for three-layer pound cake because it has the most delicious texture and crumb using the reverse creaming method.  I omitted the chocolate ingredients and tinted 1/3 of the vanilla cake with red or blue gel food coloring.   To create the marble effect there are quite a few different techniques, but for this cake I used small ice cream scoops to portion each of the colored batters into the loaf pan.  Use a sharp knife to slice the pound cake and I guarantee you'll be delighted with the patriotic swirls!

Hope everyone has a fun, safe and healthy Memorial Day Weekend! 

Cranberry-Sour Cream Pound Cake

One fruit that I rarely ever use in baking is the cranberry.  I thought I'd remedy that by giving Cook's Country recipe for Cranberry-Sour Cream Pound Cake a try.  I love how dots of ruby fruit contrast so nicely against a creamy backdrop of cake.   Don't you think it would make a great homemade gift for the holidays?

After the cake was cooled I helped myself to a slice and was very happy with the end result.  The bursts of tart cranberries were so delicious combined with the moist, tender and rich butter cake.  All that was needed was a light dusting of powdered sugar and the cake was want for nothing.  Well, maybe a cup of tea!

Beehive Cakelettes

At last count I have more than one dozen Nordicware pans in my possession, I kid you not.  Call me crazy but I seem to have become an inadvertent collector.  Whether it's the traditional Anniversary Bundt or the Pineapple Upside Down Mini Cake, I've got the whole gamut.  But I can't help myself, they truly are pieces of baking art.  So much so that when I remodel my pantry this fall I'm planning to display my abundant collection on the wall. 

When I saw this adorable Beehive Cakelette pan on sale at Williams-Sonoma I couldn't NOT buy it.  How could I pass on something that was so cute?  All I could picture in my head were the mini cakes on display at a bee-themed party.   They would have been amazing next to the  bee birthday cake I made earlier this year.

For cake recipes I recommend using one that is dense so that the beehive design will stay intact.  For these cakelettes I went with my favorite pound cake which also happens to be Elvis Presley's favorite!   The pan is nonstick and quick release but I sprayed it with some Bakers Joy for added insurance and the baked mini cakes released from the mold in a breeze.  Once cooled I poured a simple sugar and milk glaze over the top to define the beehive shape more clearly.  I just think the finished product is absolutely bee-utiful!

Three-Layer Pound Cake

This was me thumbing through the September 2018 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine and an image of this Three-Layer Pound Cake immediately stopped me in my tracks.  It was so visually stunning with its multiple layers that I knew I was going to make it.  As I read through the recipe I was pleasantly surprised to see that the cake was made using the reverse-creaming method.

Don't be scared off!  Basically this just means that the dry ingredients and sugar are mixed together first.  Then you add in pieces of butter and mix until thoroughly combined.  Half of the liquid is then added and mixed in followed by the remaining liquids.  I find this method produces a very tender cake with a beautiful crumb.

The recipe is very straightforward and easy to follow.  My only revision would be to divide the batter evenly in to thirds to achieve even layers.  The recipe said to use 1 1/2 cups of batter each for the bottom two chocolate layers which left a thinner layer of vanilla batter on top.  Also, I wouldn't be so diligent about smoothing out the top of each layer.  I actually prefer the jagged look.

The baked cake is seriously good.  I had two slices straight away because it was so delicious.  I gave away the remaining slices to my siblings because I didn't want to be tempted!

Lemon Streusel Cream Cheese Pound Cake

This was me the other day:  standing in front of the fridge and eyeing a big bag of lemons and a package of cream cheese.  What to do with them?  First thing that came to mind was a lemon cream cheese pound cake.  A) it's relatively easy to pull together and B) could feed the crowd at the office.  Done! To gild the lily a little further I decided to add a streusel topping.  Streusel qualifies the cake as a breakfast food, right?     

Be forewarned that while the batter comes together pretty quickly, the cake does take a while to bake in the oven.  I had to check for doneness three times when I made this one for the blog and even then it wasn't 100% to my satisfaction.  Seasoned bakers will notice that the inside top part of the cake could have taken another ten minutes.  Impatience on my part was to blame! It's long baking duration was most likely attributed to starting the oven at 325 degrees which was too low.  Next time I'll get the oven to 350 and then bake.  Oh well, still tastes pretty dang good!