Banana Refrigerator Cake

This week was "free choice" for the bake-through. I had every intention of making the Designer Chocolate Baby Grands but I had all these over-ripe bananas begging to be baked into a cake. So I made the Banana Refrigerator Cake. I used orange zest instead of the lemon zest. I am not a big fan of the banana /lemon combination. Instead of the white chocolate cream cheese buttercream, I used the Light Whipped Ganache.(recipe is from The Cake Bible)

This is my new favourite banana cake. It was really moist and tender.

Left over buttercream

Everytime, I make a kids' cake I end up with buttercream in all the colours of the rainbow. I could make cupcakes and frost them with the different coloured buttercream. Knowing my luck I would have just enough pink buttercream for one cupcake and then my daughters would end up fighting over it. To solve that problem, I just mix them all together and yes I end up with buttercream that looks totally unappetizing. Then I add melted chocolate to it and turn it into chocolate buttercream. Now everyone's happy :)

True Orange Genoise

This cake served three purposes : for the bake-through, the February bake-off and most importantly my husband's b'day cake. His b'day cakes are always decorated by our two kids. I make the cake, fill and crumb coat it, then hand it over to them. I have absolutely NO say in the matter.

It's the first time I made orange curd with Seville oranges. Actually it's the first time I ever made orange curd. Somehow, I always end up making lemon curd. All I can say is, the Seville orange curd is excellent. The flavour is very intense. I used only two oranges. Everything went pretty well with all the components except the cake itself. The height was only 1 1/2" as opposed to the 2" it was supposed to be. I would have started over again but didn't have the time to do so. 1 1/2" it is!

The cake was out of this world! Need I say more??????

More Catching Up.....

Whipped Cream Cake
This cake was one of the easiest cakes to make. You don't even have to worry about bringing the ingredients to room temperature. Well, maybe the eggs, but if you place them in a bowl of really hot tap water for a few minutes, they come to room temperature in no time. I loved the flavour of this cake. It was so moist and tender too (like all of Rose's recipes). I used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract.

Chocolate Streusel Coffee Cake

We loved this cake too, specially the chocolate part with a hint of cinnamon. Perfect balance.

Catching Up

First I want to say a BIG thank you to Marie for letting me off the hook for the bake-through. My computer crashed back in November and believe it or not it took almost a month to get it fixed. When I got my computer back it was the week before Christmas and I was in the middle of a baking marathon (17 dozen cookies, 6 Yule Logs and a Christmas Cake). Then came Christmas, New Year and a virus. Thankfully if wasn't a computer virus. I don't think I would have been able to handle that. My daughter was quite sick with a horrible, horrible virus. She didn't go to school for 1 1/2 weeks. Amidst all the chaos I managed to bake some of the bake-through recipes. Here are the pictures.

This is the English Gingerbread Cake. It is so moist and flavourful and only gets better with age.

This is the Carrot Cake. I made cupcakes instead of the 9" rounds. I was able to get 25 cupcakes. I cheated and didn't weigh the batter so the cupcakes were not uniform in size. It was THE BEST carrot cake I have ever tasted.

Thank you Marie for being so patient and understanding. Thank you also to all my baking buddies who were so concerned about my sudden disappearance from cyberspace. You are all wonderful.

Catalan Salt Pinch Cake

Everytime I looked at the title of this cake I couldn't help but feel it would be salty and it never appealed to me. A salty cake.........no thanks. Of course there is no salt in this cake at all. The word salt refers to the city Salt. I would never have made this cake had I not signed up for Marie's bake-through.

I read a few of the other bakers' reviews and wasn't too keen to make it. However, I went ahead with it. Kind of like doing a home assignment that you really don't like doing. I just went through with it. I admit I didn't put my heart and soul into it. It wasn't a difficult cake to make. One positive thing was that I didn't really have to go through the mis-en-place stage. There's plenty of time to do it as you go along because of the lengthy whipping time. I didn't even prepare the pan before I started. I even had time to make a quick snack for my daughter.

What I did different: I made a 6" cake and I didn't use the lemon zest. I used 1/2 tsp of vanilla and 1/4 tsp of almond extract.

I put the cake in the oven and kept my fingers crossed hoping it would by some miracle turn out better than what I was expecting. It baked in 35 minutes. When I took it out I realized that the recipe called for a springform pan and I had baked it in a regular cake pan. Obviously I couldn't release the sides of the pan. What to do????? I just unmolded it like a regular cake and inverted it. See, I told you I didn't put my heart and soul into baking this one. I then took some pictures even though it didn't look great. Then the moment of truth. I tasted it and it wasn't bad. It was light and very moist. I think the almond extract made it more flavourful. It was not easy to cut it so we used forks to break off pieces of it.

Verdict: I don't think I'll make this again. Not only because of the cake itself but because of how I felt. I felt like an evil step-mother. This cake didn't get the love and attention I usually give my other cakes :(

Pumpkin Cake sans Silk Meringue Burnt Orange Buttercream

I was looking forward to making this cake simply because I had never made the Silk Meringue buttercream. This was the perfect opportunity to make it. Besides, my kids were invited to a Halloween party. Guess who had to bring the cake? All my plans went awry when my three year old daughter decided to make contact with a cold virus. Now, if you have kids you know what it's like with a sick kid in the house. Everything comes to a screeching halt. No matter how old they are, they need /want very high doses of "Mommy". Mommy medicine is the only cure. This meant I had no time to make the buttercream :( Mousseline it was. I had a batch in the freezer, coloured it orange and used it.


The cake was not difficult to make. I didn't have any walnut oil so I used all safflower oil.

The cake tasted amazing. The spices were just the right amount and not too over-powering. The next time I make it, I will definitely use the walnut oil because I am curious to know what it should really taste like.

I used fondant to make the leaves, stem and tendrils. The little pumpkins are candies.