TWD: Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake - and a lot of catching up

I don't post, I don't post, I don't post... bad me :-(
I try to catch up...

Let's start whit the most recent one, the Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake. The probably longest name of a cake I made up to now :-)

I used a special sugar I have from a friend, a "seasoned sugar". What I did not think about was, that the spice-mix included also rosemary and mint, what was not too bad for the cake but for sure dominated the vanilla... and made the cake green. Funnily, I did not even think about that as a possibility until I mixed the sugar into the butter. Big surprise, haha!
The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspans book Baking Chez Moi, p. 6. For the results of the whole group, head over to TWD! (this is true also for the ther recipes mentioned here except the Amnesty Cookies and the Eiffel-Towers!)

As the cake was not quite like the recipe wanted it to be anyways, I decided to top the cake with a creamcheese frosting (from Dorie Greenspans "Big Bill's Carrot Cake" from Baking, from my home to yours). To avoid the cake to loose its flufiness, I split the cake and added some Black Butter, a speciality from Jersey/Channel Islands - a spread made from apple cider, licquorice and spices. That worked very well with the spices from the sugar!

I like this cake very much because it is very easy made and very very moist. Next time I'll try the classic version :-)

What I made some way back are the Granola Energy Bars (Baking Chez Moi, p. 328). I had to use maple syrup and gold syrup so they went dark brown, but the taste was good and I think only the looks differ from the recipe.

Then I made back in December the annual Amnesty Cookies, As usual, they turned out great in taste, as usual, they turned out ugly in looks. But why change a winning team ;-) The recipe can be found at David Lebovitz' page.

And I made "Rugelachs that won over France" (recipe on p. 301 in Baking chez Moi). For the Rugelachs I have to say, that they turned out really really ugly. I don't know why exactly. Rugelachs are a bit finickey to make, but  I made them several times, with different recepies from the other TWD-books, and they turned out better. But in the end Rugelachs are always great, whatever they look like. This is one of the treats I am happy to got to know trough TWD because in Vienna I never saw Rugelachs before.

As I go on writing I see that I actually made a lot the last weeks... I really forgot about it! How good to catch up!

One of my colleagues leaves us and heads over to Paris to start a great job there. She is goint to spend t least two years there with her partner and their adopted child. I am a bit jealous but most of all very happy for them!
For their farewell-party I made plain Sugar Cookies with a bit of lemon taste and used Eiffel-Tower cookie cutters. I glazed some of them and sprinkled them in red, blue, whit, the colours of the french flag. Unfortunately; I have no picture of the sprinkled ones.

Uh, and then there was the Vanilla Hazelnut Cheesecake as a rewind. (Baking with Julia, p.) Very good. Maybe not my all-time favourite cheesecake recipe, as I prefer more cheesecakes with mostly creamcheese and not so much cottage cheese. Unfortunately I used a too big form so it went very flat.  But it was very good - how can a cheesecake not be very good?

Done! Yay!

TWD: Lemon Loaf Cake

Oh this was great! And as so often - the ones that sound least appealing to you are often the best recipes.
It was not really "not appelaing" to me but it did sound kind of boaring. Lemon Loaf, ok. But the resulty... yummi!

It was very easy in the making. I slightly reduced the amount of melted butter but kept the rest just as foreseen. Finally I did end up with a very moisty loaf cake, that had a perfect texture - soft, but dense enough to cut slices. And the taste was incredible! Three zested lemons make all the difference to an ordinary loaf cake.

If I were not that lazy I would have made an lemon icing (or white chocolate?) to dress it up. But I am. Lazy.

Because it's so easy and in the end so tasty this is really a keeper. What else can you ask for from a cake?

For the recipe have a look at our TWD-host's pages (Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life - both with wonderful pictures!) or open the book Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan on pp 252/253.

TWD: Date-Nut Loaf

Super!Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet chose Date-Nut Loaf for this week's TWD. You can find the recipe on her page or in Dorie's book on page 228. [personal comment: what are popsicles??]

Easy in the making, great in taste!
I used dates as in the basic recipe. When it was time to fold in the nuts I realized I ran out of them - but I had some pinenuts left. And dates and pinenuts - doesn't sound too bad, or?
I had no time to roast them, what would have given them an extra flavour, but it was good like that, too.

Super moisty and tasty cake! If you haven't already: try it out!

P.S.: I always have the problem that my cakes tend to become tents. I had two recommendations. One said: Obviously the dough has problems to raise at the edges, so you should butter the form better. The other one said the complete opposite: Leave some space at the upper end of the mold free from butter. I tried both, and: even if the first tip sounds more logical, in the end the second one did work out! So, no tents anymore, yay!

TWD: Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake

 June has arrived! And with June came full summer - and berries! Blueberriess belong to my favourite fruits so I was very excited to bake this. I don't need no fancy dressed up cakes and torte. Give me a plain and simple cake, made with some of my favourite fruit, and you see me happy! Therefore - thanks to Cindy of Everyday Insanity who has chosen Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake for this week's TWD. Go to her page to have a look at the recipe or buy Dorie's book - you find it on page 36.

This cake is not only simple, but also fast in the making. I am sure it would also work with many other fruits and if you like it a bit dressier there are plenty of options that could work out fine - crumbles or just the most obvious, I guess. I am pretty sure my fellow bakers will show you other creative ideas.

I made one loaf that did work out fine. My baking time was a bit longer and the cake still turned out very very soft and mellow. I sprinkled the berries a bit with flour following Nicole's recommendation. Most berries sunk about into the middle of the cake so in the end it looked a bit marbled.

I also made six minis to have "test-pieces" and they did not work so well. I guess the problem is that the molds are a bit hard to handle because they have a heart-shaped bottom, so very humid batters tend so stick in the mold. I am sure, with ordinary muffin-cups it would have worked perfectly!

The cake did taste just great. It was so fast away from my office-kitchen that I had no time to take pictures of single pieces to show you the inner look of the cake. Therefore you must be satisfied with the pictures of cakes and mini-cakes in molds :o]

Verdict: Perfect summer treat!

TWD: Basic Marbled Loaf Cake

Marbled Cake. How odd. I thought. Am I really going to do this? Hmpf. I got to. I missed so much during pre-Easter lentening. So I thought.

Well, I should have learned by now that it is very often the most unexpected of Dorie's wonderful recipes that leave you most astonished and excited. Again, this time.

I am not so creative as many of my fellow bakers who experimented with colourful variations. Funnily, in fact I thought about using my red and blue sugar for a second, but did not follow this idea. I made the chocolate-orange version.
For the orange batter I took aranzini (Not sure if this word exists in english. I am talking about thick pieces of candied orange peel cut in stripes with a lot of sugar around. They are widely used in fruit loafs for christmas in Europe; picture source: www.gewuerzhaus-altstadt.de) and orange aroma. Next time I would also use some orange flavoured chocolate to support the taste, but it was also very, very good like that.

I just do not understand why all my cakes, no matter what mold I use, tend to form a tent. A friend suggested that I might not butter the mold enough, because obviously the batter sticks to the mold. But today I buttered the mold like mad, but still - there is a tent. If anybody has a hint, I would be grateful!

I followed the "lay stripes and zigzag 6-7 times"-method, but it didn't marble a lot, so it looks more like checkers-cake than marble cake, but who cares.

So, thanks a lot to Carol from The Bake More for chosing this surprisingly good recipe. Have a look at her page for the recipe, or go to Dorie's book to pages 230 and 231.