Raspberry and Almond Streamliner Cake

~We got a new toy.... a GoPro camera.  We use it for our off-roading but I thought what the hey why not try using it for my blog.  Hubster set up the camera on my counter before I started on the custard and away I went.  Well it worked ok.  Not great and I think my other camera works for this better.  I know that so many think that a blog is all about the pictures but I am not a photographer.  I am a chef that will type up my creations to share with y'all and add some hopefully decent pictures.~

The April choice for the Cake Slice Bakers is the Lemon and Almond Streamliner Cake from Vintage Cakes.  My son DJ is not a citrus lover so I asked what berry he would like and he picked raspberry. Snap of the fingers and we do raspberry!  

But I get ahead of myself.... One ingredient called for in this recipe is almond paste.  Having used the store bought almond paste once before I wanted to try making my own almond paste.  It is really simple to make if you have a food processor.

Measure in your almonds then send it for a grind.

Add in your sugar, egg white and any flavoring you would like to add.

Process until it smooths out into a paste.

My recipe made enough for the cake plus extra.  I stored the rest in 2 ounce bags for future use.

Next up making a raspberry puree to replace the lemon in our custard.  I put the thawed raspberries into the blender - didn't want the food processor to have all the fun - and gave it a whirl.

Put it into a strainer and worked through the puree, leaving behind a lot of seeds.

I simmered the seedless puree for about 5 minutes then set aside so the puree could cool.

Time to make the custard.  This is a pretty standard custard.  It needs to be made a few hours prior to use so keep that in mind before making this cake.

Whisk together your egg yolks, sugar, raspberry puree and corn starch.  Heat your milk and slowing whisk together then cook over low heat until thick and bubbling.  Strain the custard and then whisk in your butter piece by piece.  Save your butter wrapper!!

 Cover the custard with plastic wrap, laid directly on top, refrigerate at least two hours before using.


Move onto making the cake.  A simple buttermilk single layer cake with the additional of almond paste.
Prepare your pan .... use the wrapper from your butter cube that you saved to butter your pan.  Fold your parchment paper while thinking about making paper snowflakes as a child (or a couple of weeks ago) and cut your circle to fit into the bottom of your pan.  Rub it down a bit then flip it over and set it.

Cream together the butter, sugar and almond paste.  Once this is relatively smooth, there will be bits of the paste throughout, add in your eggs and vanilla.  

In a separate bowl sift/whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Measure out your buttermilk.   Mix in your dry ingredients and the buttermilk, alternating until just mixed.  Using your spatula scrape down the sides and give it a final mix.

Pour into your prepared pan, smack it onto your counter a couple of times to release any large air bubbles and bake it.  

Once out of the oven allow to cool in the pan for 30 minutes then turn out onto a rack until completely cool, leaving the parchment on.  

 

When you are ready to top it with your custard remove the parchment - 

yes I am saying this because somewhere out there one of us - not me! - will plop that custard right down onto the parchment.

Give the sides a quick coat of the custard to help seal the edges.  The top with the remaining custard.

There you have it!  Ready to serve.  

If you don't serve it right away be sure to refrigerate the cake until you do so.


Lemon Raspberry and Almond Streamliner Cake adapted from the recipe found in the cookbook Vintage Cakes.

The recipe can be found online in several spots including on Oprah's site.



Almond Paste
by My Sister's Table

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups blanched almonds
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 large egg whites, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
a pinch of sea salt

Directions
Pour almonds into the food processor and process until finely ground.
Add the sugar and pulse a couple of times.  Whisk together the egg white, vanilla, and salt.  With the processor running pout the egg mixture onto the almonds and process until a smooth paste forms. 

Use the paste right away or place in a an air tight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.  Bring to room temperature before use.  If you decide to freeze the paste it may become a bit crumbly but will work fine once back to room temperature.


Printable recipe here.

*Side note - if I make the custard this way again I think I may add a drop of red food coloring to it to brighten the color.  It turned out of but a bit flat looking.

The cake was smooth with a nice fine crumb that we have come to expect from the buttermilk cake.  The almond would make a nice complement to the lemon.  We were split on whether the raspberry went with it - we all liked the cake and we liked the raspberry custard but not necessarily together.  

I say fine for them!  More cake for me! *wink*

Enjoy!

Visit the other Cake Slice Bakers here.

The CSBs are now on Facebook ~ check them out here and be sure to 'like' the page.

:)

Honey Bee Cake

The March choice for the Cake Slice Bakers is the Honey Bee Cake from Vintage Cakes.  I was looking forward to making this cake because it sounded so ....'old-fashion' to me.  Timing happened to line up with my Aunt Lynn's birthday party so I offered up this simple yet tasty treat for her dessert.

I decided to make the cake in a springform pan for ease of serving.  The recipe calls for a standard cake pan that you have to do a double turn to get the cake onto a serving platter.  The springform just sounded so much easier to me.

In my book honey = sticky so I buttered the pan all over just to play it safe.

Nothing fancy on the making of this cake.  Cream together the butter, sugar, honey then add the eggs and vanilla.  

Next mix in the dry ingredients and buttermilk; alternating between the two until everything is incorporated but don't over mix this batter.

Spread the batter into your prepared pan.  Tap it flatly on the counter a couple of times to release any large air pockets.

While the cake is baking you want to make your honey glaze.  I found that making it too soon meant I turned it off and the butter separated a bit as it cooled.  When it came time to pour onto the cake I had to reheat the mixture.  Next time I would wait until the cake was almost ready to make the glaze.

Once the cake is just shy of being done pull it out of the oven.  Poke holes all over with a skewer, pour half of the honey glaze over the top.  Do this slowly so that you don't end up with puddles on the edges.  Distribute your nuts all over the top and pour the rest of the glaze onto the nuts.  The recipe called for a heaping 1/2 cup but I used closer to a cup of nuts.

Put the cake back into the oven for about 5 more minutes.  Cool for about an hour... this cake is served best slightly warm.

The Honey Bee Cake recipe can be found in the cookbook Vintage Cakes.

The group really liked this cake.  I was told that it had a comfy 'old fashion' taste. ;)

I will enjoy trying this with different nuts and honey flavors.

Happy Birthday Aunt Lynn!

Enjoy!

Visit the other Cake Slice Bakers here.

The CSBs are now on Facebook ~ check them out here and be sure to 'like' the page.

:)

RVC = Red Velvet Cake

When this cake came up as the next cake to be made for Cake Slice Bakers I was not... happy.  Yes I am one of THOSE people.  I loathe today's RVC.  I am one of THOSE people that can taste the chemical flavoring of the red dye.  But I am one of THOSE people that really wants to be a team player so we make the RVC!!  Even though there will be some tweaking.  No. not tweeting, I am not one of THOSE people.

This month we are making the Red Velvet Cake with Mascarpone Cream Cheese Frosting.  I have read here and there about the origins of the RVC, about the red being the result of a reaction between vinegar, buttermilk and the cocoa used.  Another way of making the cake reddish was by using beets and or beet juice in the cake.  I am not trying to completely change this recipe so I discarded the idea of causing a reaction, instead I wanted to use beets to achieve the color.  I really had no desire to make a beet cake either.  I simply did not want to use the food coloring so I decided I would swap out the food coloring for beet juice.

I started off by pureeing a small can of sliced beets.  Poured them into a strainer and let them sit to get as much of the juice out of the puree.

I then put the juice into a sauce pan and simmered it for about 10 minutes until it reduced down to a syrup.

Set it off to cool and moved to making the cake.

Start by preparing your cake pans.  I choose to use two rounds.  It is quite helpful to line the bottom of your cake pans with parchment.  Remember making paper snowflakes?  Yep, you got it, like that! But without the frilly cuts.

Once you have your circles cut you need to butter the pan and it is helpful for removal later to butter the cake side of the parchment too.  Using your empty butter wrapper go to town on the pans.

Now open up your circle, place it in your pan and rub it down.  Grab an edge and turn it over, there you have both sides buttered. *wink*

Sift together your dry ingredients and set aside.

Next cream together your butter and sugar until it is fluffy.  While it is fluffing, crack your eggs into a bowl and in an other bowl mix together the oil, vanilla and your coloring.  I added in the beet juice - about 2 tablespoons.  Once you achieve fluff slowly add your oil mixture then your eggs one at a time.

Well it is slightly pink.  Yep that is it - with all the extra work and I get slightly pink.  Oh well let's proceed and see how it turns out.

On a low speed add in the dry ingredients and buttermilk, alternating between the two until all is incorporated.

A side note... I was given a scrapper paddle.

It is a love - hate relationship! I love that I don't have to stop and scrape down the sides as often but I hate the mess it makes!  It kicks out huge amounts of stuff when you turn on the mixer - at the lowest speed even.  Plus the scrapper edge gets gunked up so you do have to scrape off that part pretty often.

Verdict is still out on this tool...

Yes that messy!

Alrighty then!  All mixed and poured into your pans, ready for the oven.  Looking brown not pink or even red-ish.

Cooked the cakes to 200 degree internal temperature but was not real happy with the slight dark edge on the top - easily gotten rid of thankfully because this just became a birthday cake for my cousin.

Let the layers cool and got busy on the frosting.  This was a pretty straight forward frosting, fluff, sweeten and flavor.  It came out quite tasty and not overly sweet.  I made a double batch because I decided to split the layers.

Started off by leveling the layer. Using a sharp bread knife just slice off the bump.  Try to avoid any downward pressure, if you press down it will get wonky.

Put a small blob of frosting on your cake plate before placing your first layer.  This will help your keep your cake from sliding around.

Many years ago I was taught an easy way to split a layer is with floss.  You read that correctly, dental floss.  Just be sure it isn't flavored!  Take a long piece of floss, wrap it around the layer, make sure it is in the middle all the way around. Now holding both ends in one hand and steadying the cake with the other hand, pull the floss right through the cake.

Brush the loose crumbs off of the cake and place your first layer onto the cake plate and give it a nice coating of frosting.

Repeat with the rest of the layers.

Red Velvet Cake with Mascarpone Cream Cheese Frosting

can be found in the cookbook Vintage Cakes.

This cake turned out well even if it lacked the red color.  It was very moist and not overly sweet.  Try it!

Happy Birthday to my cousin Heather!!

Sorry for the not great slice pic - it was a quicky shot and then gone.

Enjoy!

Visit the other Cake Slice Bakers here.

:)

The Classic

Cake Slice Baker time!
This month from the Vintage Cakes cookbook we got to choose from Banana Cake with Coffee Walnut Buttercream and The Classic.  I choose the Classic with the Fudge Frosting.
The Classic is described as ~ An all-American birthday cake! The sunny yellow layers, surrounded by rich fudge frosting will sweeten any special day.

I have to admit that while doing my mise en place for this recipe I kept thinking - my gosh there are way too many ingredients for a simple classic cake but let's try it!

Preheat your oven.

Prepare your pans... I am making cupcakes with this one. 

Sift together your dry, measure out your wet, crack your eggs and get your butter sugar creaming.  

A tip for you , especially when using a stand mixer, crack your eggs into a measuring cup with a pour spout. It is much easier to pour them into the mixing bowl when it is running.  You will find that each egg will pour in as an individual so the "add one egg at a time" is not difficult at all.

Butter and sugar creamed, oil and vanilla streamed in, and eggs mixed in one at a time.  Time to mix in your wet and dry ingredients alternating between the two.

When whipping cream use a large, chilled bowl along with a large whisk.  Tilt the bowl several times during the whisking.  These key pieces to the whipping puzzle will make for a quick job.

Fold in your lovingly beaten whisked cream.  Be gentle and the lightness of your cake will be your reward.

A three-tablespoon size scoop works well for filling a standard cupcake with minimal mess.

I baked the cupcakes for 21 minutes with a swap/rotate halfway through the bake.  As you can see my 1939 oven has a bit of an evenness issue.  We will be seeking therapy for it soon.

I would have to say this is not the optimum recipe for cupcakes as it did not bake up with a nice dome but rather flat and spread out.  Which resulted in a few cupcakes becoming tasting volunteers.

Onto the frosting.  Heat your cream and sugar until it just starts to simmer.  Pour over the chocolate and let sit for a few minutes.

Whisk the mixture until it is well mixed and the chocolate is completely melted.  Place the bowl on a rack to allow for even cooling.  

For a nice airy frosting, place the cooled mixture into your mixer with the whisk attachment and whisk on medium for 2 to 3 minutes until light and fluffy.

  

This frosting is a breeze to work with making it one of my favorites - you can't go wrong with ganache!

I decided to fancy up these cupcakes since I was taking to to a get together.  First I made some curls.  I only made a few because they weren't being team players.

So I moved onto piping free form squiggles.  Much easier.

Let those set for a few and then slid a off set spatula under them and they came right off the wax paper.  Simply laid the decorations on top of the frosting and poof! In-sto-pres-to fancischmany!

The Classic can be found in the cookbook Vintage Cakes.


*My side notes... in the original recipe for the frosting it calls for the bowl to be covered after pouring the heated cream over the chocolate.  I would not advise this because of the condensation that will occur on the covering and may get into your mixture.

I got pretty good reviews on these cupcakes.  The cake was light and airy.  The most common complaint was overall a bit too sweet.  Maybe if the frosting did not have the sugar in it or used a bittersweet chocolate instead.
I find it interesting to have made this recipe this month since I have been reading up on high ratio cakes.  A good bite (pun-ish) of information on high ratio cakes can be found at Joe Pastry.

Enjoy!

Visit the other Cake Slice Bakers here.

:)