Tag Archives: Vanilla Cake

Maple Crunch Birthday Cake

What I love best about my birthday is making my own cake. I spend weeks before the actual day pondering flavours and textures. Buttercream is not optional, it is a requirement. While some people might think it’s a little sad to have to bake your own birthday cake, I disagree. I get exactly what I want, and get so much joy creating it.

If you’re looking for a one bowl “dump and stir” cake, this is not the post for you. My birthday cake has many elements and usually takes the better part of a day.

This year’s cake is a “virtual collaboration” between Anna Olson, Rose Levy Beranbaum and me! I started with Anna’s Classic Vanilla Birthday Cake, which is a perfect canvas for everything. I had my heart set on a maple cake. I thought it would be a good idea to substitute maple sugar for the granulated sugar in the recipe to really intensify the maple flavour. I was wrong. I have never baked with maple sugar before, but the texture is different from that of traditional granulated sugar, and it resulted in a crumbly cake that tasted really strange. When I remade it with granulated sugar, it turned out perfectly. Moist and light with a beautiful tender crumb.

Next I moved onto the buttercream. I decided to make Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Neoclassic Buttercream, which is basically a French buttercream that uses egg yolks and butter. This is not a buttercream for the faint of heart. We’re not fooling around here . This is straight-up rich and luxurious. Rose suggests that you can replace the corn syrup for maple syrup and that’s what I did. Rich and silky , practically exploding with intense maple flavour.

The final component of my cake is the addition of a layer of crunch. I love a cake that combines texture. I crumbled up some Dad’s Oatmeal Cookies (because maple and oatmeal!!!!) and mixed them with malted milk powder (the umami bomb of the baking world, as Stella Parks is fond of saying), a bit of sugar, some melted butter and a pinch of salt.
Mix the crumb mixture until clumps form. Bake and cool. The finished crumble is crunchy and very addictive. It reminds me of the clumps in granola. The recipe makes more than you will need, so there is some leftover for snacking!

Click here to print recipe for Maple Crunch Birthday Cake.

Brown Butter Salted Caramel Crunch Cake

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Last week was my birthday and I made my own cake. Some people think that having to bake your own birthday cake is quite sad, but I’m not one of them. When you bake your own cake, you get exactly what you want. I gave quite a bit of thought about what to bake. (Way more thought than is probably healthy, I’ll admit).

As an early birthday present to myself I ordered Bobbette and Belle’s new cookbook. I read through it and stuck post it notes on over half half the pages. The photography is gorgeous and there are so many recipes that inspired me. It is a very well written book with lots of tips and techniques. While some of the recipes are not for rookie bakers, the instructions they give are very thorough.
As soon as I saw their Salted Caramel Toffee Cake, I knew I found my intended. Three layers of classic vanilla cake filled with homemade salted caramel buttercream, toffee pieces and a caramel drizzle.

This was my starting point, but I made a few changes. here’s how my cake came together.

I started with their recipe for a classic vanilla cake but I browned the butter first. 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!

It is best to brown the butter in a light coloured pot, so that you can easily monitor the browning process. Note that only the milk solids will turn brown. the butterfat stays clear. As soon as you reach the perfect brown colour, pour the butter out of the hot pot to let it cool completely.You will need to chill the brown butter and let it harden before you can cream it with the sugar.Divide the batter evenly into 3 pans and bake.Next I decided to alternate layers of brown butter vanilla cake with layers of almond meringue. I thought the textural difference of pillowy soft cake layers would be fantastic with chewy crunchy meringue. A salted caramel buttercream would be the perfect glue to hold all these layers together.Admittedly, there are a lot of components to prepare for this cake. Don’t try to do it all in one day. Make the components on day one and assemble on day 2. I have included detailed instructions on how to make all the parts, in the recipe below.

Click here to print recipe for Brown-Butter-Salted-Caramel-Crunch-Cake

Light the candles and make a wish!

Double Brown Butter Cake and the True Meaning of Love

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In your teens and early twenties, love often resembles the flu. No appetite, sleepless nights, trouble concentrating at work, dizzy and lightheaded. No doubt about it, this is love. However, love begins to look very different once you have been in a relationship for a while. As someone who has 30 years of marriage (to the same man!) under her belt, I speak from experience.

Here’s what love looks like after all those years. My husband and I share not only an office but the same desk. It’s one of those partner desks where we sit across from each other. Last week we were both hard at work when he looked up at me and asked me if I was almost done. When I inquired why he was asking, he told me he needed a break and really wanted to eat his apple. He knows that I suffer from Misophonia. Hearing him crunch and chew his way through an apple literally sends me into a rage. How sweet that he wanted to check that my work was done so that one of us could leave the room while the other one enjoyed his snack. That’s why I love this man. This is a very special cake to make for someone who really understands and loves you. Both the cake batter and the frosting call for brown butter. If you have never had brown butter before, you are in for a treat. It adds a layer of toasty, nutty deliciousness to anything it touches. 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!

It is best to brown the butter in a light coloured pot, so that you can easily monitor the browning process. Note that only the milk solids will turn brown. the butterfat stays clear. As soon as you reach the perfect brown colour, pour the butter out of the hot pot to let it cool completely. I first saw the idea for this cake on Serious Eats. It was created by contributor Nila Jones. She baked it in a loaf pan. I decided to give it a makeover and turned it into a fancy layer cake, with lots of brown butter frosting and a lavish coating of Skor (or Heath if you live in America) Toffee Bits. The trick to baking with brown butter is to chill the melted butter completely in the fridge. Then you must let it soften on the counter for about 30 minutes before using it. If you try to cream fridge hard butter, it will be impossible to beat air into the cake batter, which is necessary for the perfect crumb structure.

Click here to print recipe for Brown Butter Cake with Brown Butter Frosting.

I found these adorable heart mobiles and straws online at Target.

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen