Holiday Baking 2011

A quick rehash of this season's holiday cooking: because I've been a negligent blogger.

My last Thanksgiving treat - leftover cranberry sauce bread. I view such recipes as a reason to make extra cranberry sauce, not get rid of it!

I also made the standards: cinnamon rolls, pecan pie...

apple pie...
and pumpkin pie, not pictured this time around.

My main Christmas baking this December was gingerbread men. Lots of gingerbread men:

But for the holiday dinner, I made up a three layer cake from this recipe - a caramelized apple spice cake with brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream:

The finished dessert (and yes, that is a pie in the background as well)!

Preview: Lemon Whipped Cream Cake

I like making lemon flavored baked goods:

Like those that include a good homemade lemon curd:

And many, many layers:
video coming soon.

Angel Food Cake

Angel Food Cake really shouldn't be too difficult. You just beat egg whites...

For a very, very long time:

And when they are finally done, sugar added and all:

Fold in a bit of flour and bake:
The batter can only be baked in this specific pan so that it can climb up the sides - and though it came out well...I neglected to get a picture of the final product.

Coconut Macadamia Cake

I love coconut, and I love making cakes:

This elaborate recipe seemed to be just the ticket for a recent celebration.

The first step was to melt sugar in a skillet and coat the macadamia nuts:

Once those were cooling, I moved on:

The pastry cream was next. I cooked together egg yolks, sugar, milk and cornstarch until it was thickened, and then whisked in vanilla and set it in the fridge to chill. To the side, you can see the egg whites, soon to be beaten into the cake batter, and behind that, a covered bowl where butter is softening, ready to be creamed:

The next step was the cake batter. This mixture below was almost ready...

Once it was lightened with stiffly beaten egg whites, off to the oven:

I chopped my macadamia praline rather than grind it while my cake layer cooled:

I was all set for the most fun part...

Construction!

Matt's Almond Joy Birthday Cupcakes

Happy Birthday Matt!
My brother's birthday is today, so I made him some cupcakes (and a miniature cake) from this recipe, per his request to use chocolate, coconut, nuts and a seven-minute frosting.

The cake recipe uses both cocoa powder and melted unsweetened chocolate, being mixed into the creamed butter and eggs below, to make an intense yet light cake:

And instead of making two final cupcakes I made use of my mini cake pans (about 4 inches across) to make a little celebration cake:

The cupcakes baked beautifully:

And once they were done I mixed up a seven-minute (or boiled) frosting. Here is the final step, vanilla being added to the beaten egg whites, sugar, water and cream of tartar:

The final product, topped with a little bit more coconut:

Peach and Pecan Upside Down Cake

The last of the summer's peaches, sliced and ready for this recipe:

I took the time to properly arrange the peach slices, but didn't have a good selection of pecan halves on hand, so I used the broken pieces:

There is also pecan, finely ground with spices and flour, mixed into the batter:

Whipping together the batter was the easy part of this recipe, in between all of the arranging, slicing and dicing:

And the resulting batter was thick and rich. I shouldn't tell you this, but I did lick the bowl:

The cake looks sort of unremarkable when it was ready to come out of the oven:

But once it was flipped over...

yum!

Apfelkuchen

Welcome to apple season!
With all the apples coming into the farmer's markets and fall holiday celebrations going on, I wanted to make an apple cake for a dinner with friends, and decided on this apfelkuchen, a German Apple Cake.

The cake itself is put together like most other cakes - butter creamed with sugar, eggs (here, just the yolks), and then flour and milk. I added the milk and flour alternately, beginning and ending with flour:

The batter is then lightened with beaten egg whites:

And layered in the bundt cake pan with chopped apples. I added cinnamon to the recipe for a bit of extra flavor, though the cake would be good as written:

The heavy, rich batter puffed around the apples as the cake baked:

and the cake itself turned out fairly well from the pan even though the layers of apples inside made for a more fragile pastry:

The cake did fall apart upon eating!

Sour Cherry Buttermilk Cake

Last weekend I got some beautiful sour cherries in the fruit share from my CSA:
I had seen this post, a raspberry buttermilk cake from the June issue of Gourmet, and decided that it would be the perfect recipe to adapt to sour cherries, and I had just enough fruit for the cake.

My first step was the pit my cherries. My favorite local cookware shop was out of cherry pitters, but they gave me some great advice - a piping tip will work just as well! I used my #4 Ateco:

Then, on to the cake. This was a straightforward creaming of butter, sugar, eggs following by alternating additions of flour and buttermilk:

Once the batter was done I poured it into a single cake pan, dotted the top with chopped cherries and sprinkled the cherries with sugar:

And after a quick 25 minutes in the oven, yum!

*any vegans out there can check out a great vegan adaptation of this recipe here.

Lemon-Coconut Layer Cake

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Pops!
My parents celebrated 39 years of marriage this past Saturday, June 20th, and to help them start their 40th year, I made a Lemon-Coconut Layer Cake.

The start of many good cakes has nothing to do with the batter, and everything to do with preparing the pans. For this cake, I buttered my three cake pans, then placed a circle of parchment paper in each and buttered that parchment:
After the parchment paper was well-buttered, I lightly floured the pans and set them aside until my batter was ready.

The cake layers were just plain vanilla, made by creaming the butter and sugar, adding eggs, and then alternately adding flour and milk:

In between the cake layers I spread homemade lemon curd and sprinkled a bit of sweet flaked coconut:

Then, on to the frosting. I used a seven minute frosting, which is a sweet, light meringue. The frosting gets its name from the process of making it - you combine your ingredients (egg white, sugar, corn syrup and here, a bit of lemon juice and zest) and beat it while cooking over a double boiler for about seven minutes:

Once the frosting was cooled, I spread a thick layer over the cake layers:
I also added a bit more flaked coconut to the sides of the cake for a garnish. Yum!