All posts tagged: Layer Cake

Honey Matcha Castella Cake

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I told myself I wasn’t going to do any baking this week. I was going to avoid the kitchen in lieu of being productive and getting important things done in all the other areas of my life. And then the spark of an idea led to me tumbling down the rabbit hole–flipping through a handful of cookbooks and spending a solid hour furiously Googling subsequent ideas… Until not only was I in the kitchen, but I had about four projects in various stages spread across every available counter space as I vaguely listened to 30 Rock playing from my computer while sitting cross-legged in front of my oven, carefully regarding the cakes inside. Despite not understanding how the oven in my parents new house can simultaneously over and under cook the things I try to bake, my evening baking adventure turned out to be quite a success. Half following some recipes and half throwing in ingredients haphazardly like the rebel I am, I ended up with a Honey Castella Cake, Almond Matcha Mousse, Matcha Spread, …

In the Kitchen at Château de Bégude

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Sometimes life throws you opportunities in ways you are not expecting. Last week I was invited by a friend to come watch the preparation of a wedding cake in her kitchen. Her chef was willing to have me, I had the day off—it seemed like all the stars were in alignment. A few days later, after a long week of working and returning home around midnight the night before, I woke up at 7:00am (after a maximum of 5 hours of sleep) in order to get myself together and be ready to spend another day in the kitchen. I woke up early enough to shower, and more importantly go find coffee, before Babette kindly picked me up—and soon we were pulling up at her hotel–Château de la Bégude. 9:30am and we are in the kitchen. I’m ready to get going, thinking that there will be a lot of mise en place and calculated running around as soon as we walk in the door. Wrong. To my surprise, after getting a tour of the kitchen and …

Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Matcha Cake

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I think this cake is my spirit animal. I can’t stop thinking about it! Seriously, it is so lovely with so many of my favorite flavors and yet it resists the urge to be ombre or monochromatic as so many other of my favorites have been. In the past few months, I had seen several cakes online–usually smaller cakes–that had one single chocolate covered strawberry that seemed to be dripping chocolate down the sides of the cake. Usually the strawberry was covered with dark chocolate, but when I saw that I thought 1) if one strawberry is good, a bunch must be better, and 2) why not use white chocolate and then add matcha to bring out the color and flavor of the red strawberries? So I did. For the base of the cake, I used my favorite Miette Hot Milk Cake Recipe, but I added Matcha Powder to half of the batter and spooned the batter into my prepared cake pans in spoonfuls to get a nice mix of green and white/vanilla and matcha …

Triple Chocolate Cherry Cake

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This technique is so much easier than you would ever dream it would be. So you have no excuse for not trying it out. Basically, you build your cake upside down, then chill it, flip it over, remove the old base and voila! You end up with a perfectly flat top…and ganache that looks like it is defying gravity! I would go out and make a dozen more cakes in this style, but I am down to counting the days (16) before I leave for France, and I am getting more into packing-and-freaking-out mode than I am into lollygagging about in the kitchen. There will be more kitchen adventures once I get to France though, so never fear! (Though you may want to fear a little bit…because I am not the most reliable at blogging-while-abroad as you may have noticed from my time in Japan and Korea 😛 ) Anyway. This cake was marvelous. The filling was not as put together as I wanted it to be, but since I made it without thinking in …

Red Velvet Bouquet Cake

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I feel like this cake is cheating just a little bit, since the lovely bouquet on top of the cake is not edible and I generally like my cakes to be 100% edible. But the adorable factor is helping me through those feelings. If anyone ever wants to give me flowers this is the perfect way to give them to me, just putting that out there. Flowers? Good. Cake? Great. Flowers + Cake? Awesome. Flowers ON Cake? I am in a puddle on the floor because my legs melted. I am trying to get better at taking videos of my baking as an extra challenge and to share with friends and the rest of the world, so if you are curious about this cake take a look! It might help to watch if you plan to use the recipe, since I use edible gold dust on the sides of the cake and am sticking literally an entire bouquet of flowers onto the top 😉   My cake ended up being a little shrimpier than I …

Raspberry Lychee Macaron Cake

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This whole cake happened because I had half of a can of lychees sitting in my refrigerator and I was sad that they might go to waste. Somehow this cake was imagined from that sad half can of lychees. What is wrong with me. The cake may look impressive and cheerful now, but let me tell you, despite the rush of imagination that allowed me to think up all of the recipes, making this cake was a struggle. After the first batch of macarons failed my expectations and I had to run to the store to get more almond flour and I took my second batch of macarons out of the oven only to find that they had browned incredibly on the top….. I simply laid down on the *dirty* kitchen floor and took a moment of self pity before moving on and figuring out a way to mask the gross brown spots (powdered freeze dried raspberries). So while the cake is AMAZINGLY delicious and in the end I literally dug in to the cake …