cake – Wild Yeast

A Piece of Cake

Birthday cake

Yes, this is a cake. And on this blog, a cake can only mean one thing: it’s Daring Bakers challenge time again.

Morven (Food Art and Random Thoughts) selected Dorie’s (as in baker/author extraordinaire D. Greenspan) Perfect Party Cake for this month.

I made the cake for my own birthday party. This got me slightly in trouble with my family, who have a notion that one should never make one’s own birthday cake. But this is Birthday Rule #2. Rule #1, which always trumps Rule #2, is that the birthday girl gets to do what she wants. They knew I had them there, and they were just going to have to get over it. As you can see if you count the candles carefully, this was my 20th birthday. Sure it was.

I wish I had an amusing tale to tell about something going horribly wrong but salvaged in the end by my brilliant ingenuity and intrepid Daring Baker spirit. But no. This was, in fact, a piece of cake from beginning to end. This is a testament not to my mad cake-baking skills (ha! not!) but to the true perfection of Dorie Greenspan’s recipe, from her book Baking From My Home to Yours.

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Warmth and Light, Daring Baker Style

December is a month for lists, so here we go:

What this is:

A Yule Log, or Bûche de Noël.
The December Daring Bakers challenge, hosted by Lis (La Mia Cucina) and Ivonne (Cream Puffs in Venice), who are also the illustrious founders of the DBs.
My interpretation of the recipe Lis and Ivonne adapted from Perfect Cakes by Nick Malgieri and The Williams-Sonoma Collection: Dessert. (The recipe should be up on their blogs soon.)
A genoise cake rolled with coffee buttercream filling and frosted with mocha buttercream, garnished with meringue mushrooms and other embellishments.

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Bostini Cream Pie: Folded, Not Whisked

Daring Bakers logo When I joined the Daring Bakers, this was exactly what I was afraid of, and exactly what I was hoping for.

I’ll come right out and admit it, I’m afraid of cake, my number one baking nemesis! Although the name of this month’s challenge is Bostini Cream Pie, it’s cake alright, individual orange chiffon cakes no less, atop creamy vanilla custard and drizzled with smooth chocolate glaze. I’m quite sure Mary (Alpineberry) didn’t mean to freak me out on my very first challenge, but goodness, did it have to be cake? With me and cake, it’s always something: it sticks to the pan, it falls, it cracks, it’s too wet, it’s too dry. It’s always something with cake.

But as much as I was dreading cake, I was also hoping to learn some things and have fun exploring new baking territory. And this challenge did not disappoint in those departments. Who better than a cadre of Daring Bakers to help me face my cake phobia and come out with something that was lovely and delicious? (See the recipe here.)

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