Tag Archives: Cake

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Crunch Cake 2.0

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I first baked and posted about this cake in 2016, for my own birthday. It was probably one of the most delicious things I have ever baked. However, my photos from that post (see below) do not do it justice.

The lighting is awful, the white balance is off and the angle I shot the cake at is just wrong. It does nothing to showcase the majestic height of this beauty. I have learned a thing or two about lighting and composition since then. It’s always a very satisfying thing to look back and see your own progress, no matter what you have chosen as your life’s work.

This cake was inspired by Bobbette and Belle’s Salted Caramel Toffee Cake. 

This was my starting point, but I made a few changes. I browned the butter for the cake. Brown butter adds a layer of toasty, nutty deliciousness. Making it couldn’t be simpler. Butter is composed of butterfat, milk protein and water. When you brown butter, you are essentially toasting the milk protein. As you heat the butter, and it begins to bubble and sputter away, the water evaporates and the hot butterfat begins to cook the milk solids, turning them from creamy yellow to a splendid speckled brown colour and your whole kitchen smells like toasted hazelnuts. It’s insanely gorgeous!

In addition to the salted caramel buttercream between each layer, I decided to slip in an extra layer of almond meringue. The textural difference of pillowy soft cake layers is fantastic with the chewy crunchy meringue. 

The cake is topped with a crown of English toffee. I made my own, because I could not find any in Ottawa this week. Laura Secord used to make an excellent version, but they are closed now. Purdy’s Chocolates normally carries it, but they were out of stock. If you live near a Trader Joes, they make an excellent English Toffee.

I made the cake again this weekend for my daughter’s 29th birthday. One of the pitfalls of having a mother who is a food blogger, is that your birthday cake is usually presented with a few slices removed and looking a bit rough around the edges from being photographed for a few hours. I always felt slightly guilty about this, so this year I made 2 smaller 6 inch cakes. One for me, to slice and shoot and the other just for the birthday celebration. Everyone loved this idea. More cake for all and no mom yelling, “don’t touch the cake yet. I need just a few more shots.”

This cake is a labour of love. Split the work over a few days and enjoy the journey. It’s worth it.

Click here to print recipe for Brown-Butter-Salted-Caramel-Crunch-CakeDownload
Click here to print recipe for English-ToffeeDownload

Late Summer Peach Streusel Cake

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It happens every summer. I get carried away when local peaches finally arrive. The rest of the year they are like rocks with absolutely no flavour or aroma. For a few short weeks each August, they are perfect. The flesh gently yields as you take a bite, and the juice drips down your chin and stains your shirt. But it’s worth it. I always buy more peaches than we can possibly consume. Last year I peeled and pitted the extra peaches and tucked them away in the freezer to use during the winter. Of course I completely forgot about them, until I was cleaning the freezer in June and pulled out a frost covered bag.

This summer, I decided to take action and bake a cake with my peach windfall. The problem with most peach cakes is that the peaches exude so much juice that the cake has a wet, gummy texture. Cook’s Illustrated cracked the code on that problem by suggesting that you roast the peaches first, and then mix them with Panko breadcrumbs.

I tarted up the Cook’s Illustrated version of this cake with a delicious streusel topping, crafted from pecans, oats, butter, brown sugar and maple syrup. I love a little crunch on top of my cake.

A drizzle of some salted caramel sauce wouldn’t be a bad idea.
And a scoop of vanilla ice cream, because it’s the last week of summer and I propose we go out with a bang!

Click here to print recipe for Summer Peach Streusel Cake.

 

 

 

Rhubarb and Pistachio Bundt Cake

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Pretty soon, we will be winging our way from rhubarb season straight into strawberry season. I am a little sad about it, my husband, less so! This pretty bundt cake was inspired by a brown butter strawberry-rhubarb glazed donut over at the charming blog, Adventures in Cooking. If you don’t know about Eva’s blog, you should check it out. It’s stunning.

Eva baked buttermilk donuts and dipped them into a pretty pink glaze, concocted from brown butter and pureed strawberries and rhubarb. I adapted her glaze and put it on this amazing rhubarb-pistachio bundt cake. Truthfully, the cake was almost faster to put together than the glaze, but taking the time to brown butter and roast the berries and rhubarb is worth it.

The first time I made the glaze, (yes, I ended up making it twice!) and poured it onto the cake, it was too thick and a bit fibrous from the strawberry seeds and stringy rhubarb pulp. So on the second go-round I strained the glaze through a fine mesh strainer and got the perfect consistency.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, the glaze is enriched with a bit of melted white chocolate to give it that extra oomph! You could, of course, make the cake plain, without the glaze, but why would you want to?

Studded with tangy rhubarb and crunchy pistachios, this cake is not too sweet. A little slice is the perfect afternoon pick-me-up.

Click here to print recipe for Rhubarb and Pistachio Bundt Cake.

KK’s Coconut Cake with Coconut Caramel Filling

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valentines day party 1If you have a coconut lover in your life, this cake is the perfect way to declare your love for them. The very first time I had this cake was several years ago. My niece, KK, made it for my mom’s 76th birthday. She was only 10 years old at the time. She has been baking ever since she could grasp a spatula. At her house, half birthdays are celebrated with as much hoopla and joy as full birthdays, so with a five person family, that works out to 10 cakes a year and almost 150 cakes in her short lifetime. She has some mad baking skills!3 slicesa sliceThis is my twist on her cake. I have added a coconut caramel filling to spread between the layers. This filling, known as kaya is created by cooking coconut milk, eggs, granulated and coconut palm sugar and pandan leaves over a double boiler until the sugar becomes caramelized and everything thickens into a beautiful jam-like consistency. I learned how to make kaya from pastry chef Anna Olsen on The Food Network. Kaya is traditionally spread on toast and then dipped in soft boiled eggs for breakfast in Singapore and Malaysia. Clearly I grew up on the wrong continent. All I got for breakfast, when growing up was a bowl of Cheerios!

Pandan leaves are long narrow bright green leaves that grow on a tropical plant known as the Screwpine.  Commonly found throughout Southeast Asia, they have been called, “The vanilla  of the east.” They can be found fresh or frozen in at Asian grocery stores or online. Vanilla extract is a good substitute if you can’t find pandan leaves. 

Making the coconut caramel (Kaya) filling takes time and patience. If you are short of either, just double the amount of buttercream frosting and use it to fill the layers as well as frost the top and sides of this cake. It will still be delicious, but I will say that Kaya pushes this cake further along on the bliss meter.

When you first start cooking the kaya, the pandan leaves will give off a grassy aroma. As they begin to steep in the coconut milk, eggs and sugar, the fragrance becomes more subdued, reminiscent of almonds and sweet cream.double boileringredients for cake 1Although my sister would never do this, I weigh the cake batter to make sure I get an equal amount in each pan. That way, the layers all cook at the same rate. weigh cake batterTo frost the cake, I made an American buttercream. The recipe I used comes from Nila, over at thetoughcookie.com. She is a buttercream wizard. Check out her Battle of the Buttercream posts. She taught me that the addition of a few drops of lemon juice really brighten all the other flavours of the buttercream without making it taste like lemon. Really cool trick!

I piped a border of buttercream around each layer and then filled the center with the coconut caramel filling. The border keeps the coconut filling from oozing out,pipe a boarder of buttercreamcoconut caramel fillingserving a slice

Click here to print recipe for KK’s coconut cake with coconut caramel filling.

cake with candy

Wild Blueberry Coffee Cake

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On Highway 7, in Ontario, about halfway between Perth and Madoc, there is a stretch of road, about 20 kilometers long, that is dotted with blueberry farm stands, every 2 kilometers, just like this:

I know this because we drove this route mid-July every summer for 10 years, to visit our son at camp. The first few summers we drove the route there was much discussion and bickering about which of the 10 stands would have the best wild blueberries and whether we would look too eager or desperate if we stopped at the very first stand. Then, in 2006 we made a startling discovery. All the berry stands along that stretch of highway are owned and operated by one woman – Isobel Wood. She lives in the tiny town of Cloyne, and the stands are all staffed by her kids and grandkids.

Our kids no longer go to camp but we discovered we can take that same route to visit our friends, The Monkees, at their cottage in the Muskokas. So our wild blueberry tradition is safe.

For those of you who have never tried wild blueberries, it is an experience you will not soon forget. They differ from cultivated blueberries in several ways. Wild blueberries are smaller, sweeter and more flavourful than their cultivated sister. They hold their shape, texture and colour better during baking. As an added bonus, they are higher in antioxidants. And, they are more expensive! (But so worth it)


They also sell bluebery pie and blueberry jam, but for me, the main attraction is the wild blueberries.

Of course we bought way too many blueberries, so I had to bake then into something before they ended up in the compost heap. I am not a huge blueberry pie fan, although I do recall some amazing blueberry buns from Open Window Bakery when I was growing up in Toronto. I opted for wild blueberry coffee cake.

I know that blueberry coffee cake does not sound like the most exciting dessert, but trust me on this one. This cake is moist and dense thanks to the addition of sour cream. It is studded with tons of little blueberries and the topping is a crunchy concoction made from pecans, oats, butter, brown sugar, flour and maple syrup. And the crunch from the topping is still just as crunchy on day 2, should there be any leftovers.

                                         I put together a little video showing how to prepare the crumble topping. Not that video instruction is necessary, this is a simple cake to make, but just because I am having too much fun playing around with iMovie on my new Mac!

Resist the urge to eat this immediately out of the oven. Give it at least 2-3 hours to cool. You can even make it a day ahead of time, as the flavours seem to improve. It also freezes quite well. I made it last week when we had friends visiting. Everyone was full after dinner so we each had a small piece. There was still almost 3/4 of the cake left. I wrapped it up, put it in the fridge and went to bed. When I got up in the morning only about 1/4 of the cake was left. Either I have fridge mice who know how to use a knife or someone was doing some midnight snacking. I’m not accusing, I’m just saying!

Click here to print the recipe for Wild

Blueberry Coffee Cake.

Almond Berry Shortbread Torte

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This post is wrong, so wrong, for many reasons.  I apologize.  In the first place, hot on the heels of 8 days of cookies, I should be coming to you with healthy and good for you recipes like cauliflower salad, in order to attone for the gluttony that preceeded. In the second place, this is not berry season, for goodness sake.  The berries in the supermarket now are pale and insipid and have had to travel many miles to get to me.  I am certainly creating a huge carbon footprint with this one, and for that, I apologize again.

However, in my defense, I had to make this cake or there would be hurt feelings in my house.  This is the cake my first born requests every year for his birthday.  It’s his favourite cake and it’s not his fault he was born in December.  Blame the mother. (we get blamed for everything else!!)  This year he is turning 21.  A very big birthday which deserves a very special cake.  And this cake, while perhaps off-season now, is nothing short of spectacular.

I found this recipe many years ago in Chatelaine magazine.  I make it twice a year now, once in September, for my husband’s birthday and once in December for my son.  Some traditions you just don’t mess with.

This is a simple cake to make, essentially you make 4 giant shortbread cookies and then layer them with whipped cream and berries.  Start with creaming the butter and sugar, add the egg yolks, then add cake and pastry flour and ground almonds.

The dough gets chilled for about 30 minutes, then divided into 4 and pressed into large discs.  The wonderful thing about this cake is that the layers can be pressed into shape by with your fingers and palms, just using a rolling pin at the end to smooth out the round.  Here is a video showing how to form the layers.

While the layers are baking, get the berries ready.  I found golden raspberries, red raspberries and strawberries in the supermarket that day.  Feel free to use whatever is in season, or looks good.  This is awesome with little wild blueberries in August.

While cake layers are cooling, whip the cream.  The original recipe called for adding a few tablespoons of icing sugar to the cream but I prefer the cream unsweetened.  You get enough sweetness from the cake layers and berries.

After slicing strawberries, assemble the cake.  To keep things tidy, cut 4 layers of waxed paper and lay around the edges of the cake plate.  Put a blob of whipped cream in the center to hold the cake in place so it does not slide across the plate when carrying it into the dining room (not that this ever happened to me!).  Spread 1/4 of the cream on the first layer.  I made an orderly boarder of strawberries and then dumped more berries, haphazardly in the middle.     Continue with 2 more layers and then finish the top layer, taking care to place the berries in a decorative fashion.

 

The cake should be made several hours in advance.  Leave it in the fridge for the layers to soften a bit, so cutting it will be easier.  It is not the prettiest cake when sliced, but it is the most delicious.

To print the recipe, click here.

Pam’s Carrot Cake (Happy Birthday To Me!)

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Every family has their own birthday traditions.  When I was growing up, birthdays were celebrated with a “Deluxe Bakery” (Deluxe was actually the name of the bakery) cake, complete with pink buttercream flowers, which my sisters and I fought over.  Now that I have my own children I let each of them choose their favourite cake and I bake it for them.  My youngest always picks chocolate.  My middle child usually selects something challenging for me to recreate.  One year it was a treasure box, another year we made a swimming pool, complete with bright blue Jell-O as the water.  My oldest, whose birthday is in December, always requests strawberry almond shortbread cake.  It’s not always easy to find great berries in the winter.This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is coconut-covered-cake-cut_-1.jpgYesterday was my birthday and I began the day by baking my own cake.  Now don’t go feeling sorry for me.  I have been baking my own cake for many years now.  When I was younger, my sister had a friend who worked at a bakery.  Every year she would bake and decorate her own birthday cake.  We always thought it was the saddest thing.  However, now that I’m grown up, I think that baking your own birthday cake is a joyous thing to do.  Think about it.  No having to be gracious and pretending to be thrilled when someone brings you a chocolate cake, when what you really wanted was carrot cake.  

Not that I would know anything about being gracious!  I am ashamed to admit that one year my good friend bought me an over the top artisan bakery creation for my birthday.  We were at my cottage for a girl’s weekend.  I told her, “Thanks, but I made my own cake for tonight.  We can serve yours tomorrow night.”  So, no I don’t get any points in the generosity of spirit category for that one, but I did get to eat my carrot cake on my birthday.

The carrot cake I’m takling about here is not your standard issue carrot cake.  I am talking about a dense, moist carrot cake with lemon curd filling and cream cheese frosting, showered with toasted coconut.  The lemon curd filling keeps it from being too cloyingly sweet, something that too many carrot cakes are guilty of.  This cake was created by my friend Pam.  This is not one of those cakes that you mix up in one bowl and then bake.  Baking it requires you to dirty pretty much every bowl, measuring cup, spoon, spatula and whisk you own.  This cake is a labour of love.

Click here to print recipe for Pam’s Carrot Cake