Week 25, February 7, 2011: Yellow Cake

Howdy!

It has been a super delightful week here at cake30- the baking's been a little sketchy/ random, so I'll jump right in to fill you in.



For this week's cake, I did Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting- recipe from joyofbaking.com.

The recipe was simple, but required a lot of yolks and a lot of butter.  There were like two sticks of butter + for each cake and frosting combo.  What I enjoyed though, was that it was a one bowl kind of recipe and my motto is the less dishes, the better.

Joy of baking said that one of the keys to this recipe was keeping the gluten formation low by mixing the the butter and some milk to coat the flour.  This was supposed to keep the cake moist with a decent crumb.


Then I was supposed to add in the yolk mixture and combine.
I did as told.


The first round came out a little flat, the second didn't, but the cake was so dry and tough.

The frosting was a cooked job- simple and tasty.  The only complaint is that it needed to cool for a couple of hours before spreading and I have the patience of a toddler.

I'll take a fail on this one- I don't have time to revisit it and I did well enough on white cake and on chocolate cake that I can afford to not have this or pound cake in my repertoire.

And I burnt my finger.  Lame.



Now, what did I do with all of those egg whites, you ask...
I made PAVLOVA!
It's a meringue cake and it's the national cake of those lovely countries down under.
And any time baking requires a tape measure, I'm in.

It had like five ingredients and just required a lot of beating... so I was in.

 That's what it looked like pre-oven.  I'll post the after oven pictures and the general response once I have the family try it.  I didn't bring it into work because I'm still afraid of giving people I'm not related to salmonella.

In other news:

Attempting to run is still interesting.

This is me on the mean streets of the big pineapple, trying not to fall on my butt and then being attacked by the neighbor's "vicious" fur-balls.

 Notice how much happier I look setting out than I do when I'm actually running.

And of course, I'm at the library today, but just got off the phone with my bro, who was up to his elbows in someone's stinky diaper.

Good job, Em!  I love that her hair is getting long enough for a bath-time faux-hawk.

This week is chocolate heart cake- the last chocolate frosting, thank goodness (I never thought I'd get sick of chocolate frosting, but I'm pretty over it).

Happy baking!