I feel like I am drowning in cakes made with fresh fruit lately. The strawberry shortcake, the orange marmalade cake (omg, I still dream about how good that was), and now three more cakes made with the abundant summer fruit available. Best season for food. I dread winter and its drab ingredients. Good thing I have months before that happens.
The cake from three weeks ago was called the Great Flower Cake, so named because it looks like a flower once assembled. It utilizes a massive amount of whipped cream and strawberries, which seemed fantastic when reading through the recipe, until I saw the "Cake Assembly" section. This section is reserved for particularly complicated cakes, such as the Yule Log. I nervously went back to look at the pan preparation, and sure enough, there it was: a jelly roll pan. A roll cake?! NOOOOOOO...
I begged Tim, Maureen, and Chris to come over (and by begged I mean, "Hey, wanna help me make a cake?") to help me maintain composure and sanity during what was sure to be an epic adventure. I was nervous from the start, because the cake part of said roll contains no flour, getting its delicate structure from eggs and pecans, which made it extra nerve-wracking to flip out of the piping hot pan. The filling was simply rum-flavored whipped cream (it was supposed to be Grand Marnier, but I had rum, and I figured daiquiris combine strawberry and rum, so I just went for it), easily prepared and spread thickly on top of the flat cake. Then came the moment of truth. Thankfully, instead of having to roll the whole giant cake, I had to cut the cake lengthwise into long, thin strips, and roll the individual strips, one around the other, to make a giant cinnamon roll-looking cake (or a cake roughly the size of one regular Cinnabon... Emily: Do I sit in it or eat it? :-p ). The delicateness of the cake required two sets of hands, which Maureen helped me with, while Tim took copious amounts of pictures, which actually look pretty cool...
The cake was then topped with strawberry slices in a spiral pattern to look like a flower, and glazed with a blackberry jelly and rum glaze (supposed to be currant jelly and Grand Marnier, but... sometimes you gotta improvise. Where do you even find currant jelly?!). Dr. Robinson promises that the cake is worth the effort, and that was not a lie--the four of us ate almost the entire thing. It was fantastic. The cake was not too sweet and a texture somewhere just between crisp and soft, complimented perfectly by the sweet, airy whipped cream, and the tart, juicy berries. There are no words that can do it justice.
I was kind of taken aback when reading the chapter accompanying this cake. Apparently, Dr. R was interviewing for a position at a university in Atlanta the week she made this cake. Somewhere that would "hire [her] and give [her] lots of money" and give her the funding to "make [her] mark as a scientist," which she felt she had not yet done. In the end, she chose to turn down the position, because she didn't want to give up her short commute, lovely neighborhood, and the good schools for an Atlanta commute. (Amen to that.) I wonder which university it was... Georgia State? Georgia Tech? Emory? Is that why she suggested Emory when I said I wanted to go somewhere in the southeast? I had no idea she had interviewed here. And here I am, I left the comfort of my home for an Atlanta commute. Was it worth it? Actually, probably. I just hope that Dr. R feels now that she has made her mark as a scientist. Or at least is content with the fact that she has made her mark as a mentor, a writer, and no doubt a parent.
The next week's cake was Hawaiian Wedding Cake. Which, after trying, solidified my decision that I should probably just live in Hawaii. Does food get any better? Coconut, pineapple, fresh fish, macadamia nuts, and those amazing purple sweet potatoes I can NEVER find to make myself. If this is what they eat at their weddings, I'm so in.
The cake is essentially carrot cake, but instead of shredded carrots, it uses shredded coconut. Before this little project, I felt somewhat ambivalent toward coconut. But my baking adventures made me realize... I LOVE coconut. Seriously. I cannot get enough. So this cake was fantastic to start with. But then it was also filled with pineapple and pecans and topped with cream cheese icing (another direct line to my heart). So good, and so easy, and so perfect for summer. It was a hit in the office as well.
This week's cake was peach upside down cake. Upside down cakes rank just below jelly roll cakes on the list of Cakes That Scare Liz too Badly to Bake. There's too much flipping of hot pans and magic involved. Especially when you don't have the right pan. I was supposed to use a cast iron skillet, which is something I dearly desire, but I don't have one and after a month of surprise bills and subsisting off left over baked beans from a graduate school mixer (no, seriously, there were so many beans, they have lasted a month), I was not about to spend $15.95 on one. That's like a week's worth of groceries if I eat rice with frozen vegetables and yogurt. So I used the alternative plan outlined in the book, which was to wrap a springform pan tightly in aluminum foil. I melted the butter and brown sugar in the bottom, lined the bottom with peaches and cherries (ugh, cherries... apparently an essential part of upside down cake and another reason not to make them) and pecans, made the ridiculously thick batter and coaxed it into the pan. Then I baked it and flipped the hot pan as described.
When you use a cast iron skillet, the walls are very low and when the pan is flipped over, the bottom of the cake will touch the cake plate. A springform pan, however, has very high walls, so when it is flipped over, the cake is left hanging precariously by it's top from the bottom of the pan. Not thinking of this, I released the side of the springform pan, and... WHAM! My cake went crashing to the plate. When my heart resumed beating, I carefully pulled off the pan bottom. While the structural integrity of one side of the cake was questionable, the rest of the cake seemed alright. Almost pretty, in fact. I took it to Tim and Maureen's, where we again devoured about 2/3 of the cake. It was actually quite good... the cake was slightly crumbly and almost velvety in texture, and the sweet brown sugar glazed peaches showcased the fantastic early peaches we're getting now. (I tried to eat as few cherries as possible... Maureen, who shares my aversion to cherries, described them as not bad, but not essential. Agreed.)
And now, a Cake, Hope, and Love special report, brought to you by Liz's Lab:
My boss's birthday is this week. We always have a little celebration, with a card and a cake. This year, when the planning commenced, I volunteered to make the cake if people would pitch in a couple dollars to help with ingredients, so we wouldn't have to worry about buying one. I have been thinking that if I really want to open a vineyard bakery one day, I can't just steal other people's recipes, so I need to get creative. I used this as opportunity. Instead of choosing a cake recipe, I chose 4, and modified. I used the dark chocolate cake from the New Orleans chocolate cake (I still dream about that one, too), the chocolate frosting from the Perfect Chocolate Cake (the very first cake made for this project), the meringue buttercream from the Yule Log (hey, I just said I wasn't making the log again... the individual parts were delicious) flavored with vanilla instead of white chocolate, and used the protocol (wow... I'm obviously a scientist) for the orange marmalade filling from the Orange Marmalade cake to make a raspberry filling. It took me 4 hours, and my kitchen looked like a war zone, but it actually came out beautifully. I'm so proud. I have clearly come a long way in my cake baking and decorating skills. Now... we just have to hope it tastes as wonderful as it looks...
