Tiramisu Cake

I’ve made tiramisu several times in the past so was interested to see exactly how Dorie Greenspan’s twist on this classic dessert would turn out. Dorie’s tiramisu cake is a layer cake made with yellow cake, a creamy marscapone frosting, a liquor syrup, and chocolate.

I was extremely tempted to make a mini version of this cake or turn it into a trifle, since I’ve stated before, frosting cakes is not my strong suit. But, I was feeling slightly less than creative and ended up pretty much following the recipe word for word. I skipped sprinkling the cocoa powder on top but did put some Trader Joes chocolate covered espresso beans on top. 

For being a tiramisu cake I found this cake to be a little dry. I think one of the best parts of traditional tiramisu is the way the ladyfingers end up nice and moist and the flavors meld. I didn’t quite have that result with this cake. Perhaps if I make this cake again I will double the syrup to allow the cake to have a more boozy soak.

The recipe for this cake can be found in Bakingby Dorie Greenspan or on Megan’s blog My Baking Adventures. Check out how the rest of the bakers did with this cake on the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll.

French Yogurt Cake

Plain yogurt is one of those staples that we always have in our fridge.  We use it a lot… in raitas, sauces, baking… you name it. I was thrilled to discover that I already had all the ingredients for Dorie Greenspan’s French Yogurt Cake already on hand in my kitchen…no need to run out to the grocery store.

I changed Dorie’s recipe slightly to use orange zest instead of lemon zest in the cake batter and to glaze the top with orange marmalade instead of lemon marmalade.

The yogurt cake was almost everything my husband looks for in a cake: moist and citrusy. He uttered a “Woah” as he took his first bite.

For the recipe go here to Liliana’s blog My Cookbook Addiction. Thanks Liliana for selecting the recipe!

Check out what the other TWD bakers are making on the TWD blogroll.

Mango Crumb Cake

So, this week’s TWD recipe was Blueberry Crumb Cake, but I just had to Mango-it-up. I substituted diced fresh mango for the blueberries and orange zest for the lemon zest.  I also veered off the beaten path slightly from Dorie’s instructions and mixed the crumb topping by hand rather than drag the food processor out of its hiding place.  Plus, I baked this cake in the wee hours of the morning and didn’t want to wake up my honey with the whirring of kitchen machinery.

The resultant cake was moist and studded with juicy bits of mango.  The cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange zest in the batter added a nice flavor the complimented the mango well. Though my husband did use this as another opportunity to preach to me about how the mangoes in American supermarkets are nowhere near as good as the ones that he can get back home. Sigh, then take me THERE and buy me a mango! 

 

Sihan of Befuddlement chose Dorie’s Blueberry Crumb Cake for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection. She has the recipe posted on her blog so be sure to stop by and check it out.

Irish Cream Bundt Cake

I originally found this recipe several years ago on the Bailey’s Irish Cream web page. I don’t want to sound like a total booze-hound, but I love the flavor of Bailey’s Irish Cream, so any dessert that contains it immediately catches my eye. This is one of these not-quite-from scratch recipes that starts off with a box of cake mix. If you won’t tell, I won’t tell.

I took this cake & the Chocolate Irish Whiskey cake to a family St. Patrick’s gathering at my mother’s house this past weekend.  After a brief game of family trivia (How come all of the questions were about the older generation???), and stuffing ourselves with corned beef and cabbage, we all dug into the never-ending supply of desserts. The Irish Cream cake was a super hit– moist with a nice touch of added crunch on top from the pecans.  The Irish Cream glaze was gooey and caramel-like. The alcohol in the glaze doesn’t completely cook off, so don’t eat too much of this cake or you might get a bit tipsy. I hope that everyone’s cake buzz wore off before they had to drive home!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
• 1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup Irish cream liqueur

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan. Sprinkle chopped nuts evenly over bottom of pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine cake mix and pudding mix. Mix in eggs, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup oil and 3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur. Beat for 5 minutes at high speed. Pour batter over nuts in pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then invert onto the serving dish. Prick top and sides of cake. Spoon glaze over top and brush onto sides of cake. Allow to absorb glaze repeat until all glaze is used up.
4. To make the glaze: In a saucepan, combine butter, 1/4 cup water and 1 cup sugar. Bring to a boil and continue boiling for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in 1/4 cup Irish cream.

Chocolate Irish Whiskey Cake

I saved this Dorie recipe until St. Patrick’s day since I decided to Irish-it-up a bit by substituting in Irish Whiskey for the Armagnac. I reconstituted 1/8 cup of golden raisins in 1/8 cup of Irish Whiskey and then dumped those drunken raisins into the deeply choclatey cake batter. I halved Dorie’s recipe and made it in a 4″ spring-form pan instead of an 8″ spring-form pan since I was already baking another booze-y Irish cake for St. Patrick’s Day and didn’t want booze-y cake overload.

 

As I’ve already asserted, a cake decorator, I am not!  (anyone local want to go take a cake decorating class with me???)  And this poor baby got beaten and battered during the 50 mile stop & go car ride to my mothers house.  Even if it was beaten with a Blarney Stone, it was still pretty tasty. It was very dense and moist and had a rich chocolate flavor and you could definitely taste the Irish Whiskey!

For Dorie’s original recipe head of to LyB’s blog And Then I Do The Dishes.  She selected this recipe a couple of weeks ago for Tuesdays with Dorie. Her cake came out much prettier than mine. (of course!)

Devil’s Food White-Out Cupcakes

 These cupcakes were some of the richest, chocolatiest cupcakes ever. Not only are these devil’s food cupcakes, but the cake is flecked with chunks of bittersweet chocolate. I opted to turn Dorie Greenspan’s layer cake recipe into cupcakes since I know my limit. I am a bit too much of an amateur baker to make a layer cake quite as beautiful as the one that graces the cover of Dorie’s cookbook. Plus, cupcakes are a lot easier for me to transport to work on the train.

My only real issue with this recipe was the frosting, which didn’t come out quite a fluffy as I would’ve liked. Okay, it was fluffy-ish but it faded once I started putting it on the cupcakes. But it was still really tasty.  I would definitely make these cupcakes again, perhaps with a different frosting recipe.

This cake is the cover recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours . This  recipe was selected by fellow Bostonian Stephanie at Confessions of a City Eater. She has the recipe posted on her blog.

Chocolate Pistachio Bundt Cake

I recently finished reading the essay collection Talking with My Mouth Full where the author talked about various food memories. With each essay, the author included one or more recipes. One of the chapters was about Bundt cakes. This recipe was one of the ones associated with that essay. It’s definitely not a from scratch cake, but it was quick and easy.  You start with a box of yellow cake mix and a box of pistachio instant pudding…add a little orange juice, chocolate syrup and a few other things…and voila: Bundt-y Goodness. You can’t really tell by the picture but the cake has a slightly green tint to it from the pistachio pudding.

Chocolate Pistachio Bundt Cake

• 1   pkg.   yellow cake mix (about 18 oz.)
• 1   pkg.   instant pistachio pudding mix (3 oz.)
• 1/2  C.   orange juice
• 1/2  C.   water
• 1/2  C.  vegetable oil
• 4    eggs
• 3/4 cup chocolate syrup

1. Butter & flour a Bundt pan and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl add: cake mix, pudding mix, orange juice, water, vegetable oil, and eggs. Blend to moisten, then beat 2 minutes on medium speed. 
3. Pour 2/3 of batter into prepared bundt pan.
4. Add chocolate syrup to remaining batter and mix well.
5. Pour over batter in pan and drag knife through top of batter to encourage marbling.
6. Bake cake for 50-60 minutes.
7. cool on rack for 15 minutes and then invert cake onto serving dish. Sprinkle with powdered sugar (optional).

Berry Surprise Cake

Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen had her turn at the center of the Tuesdays with Dorie stage this week. She chose the Berry Surprise Cake. Reading this recipe, it sounded like one of my husband’s favorite cakes from a local bakery. I was excited for this week to roll around so that I could make it. and then…. (ominous music plays) … I read the P&Q discussion at TWD about this particular recipe. It seemed as if lots of folks were having issues with this cake. Their genoise wasn’t rising enough or was collapsing a lot after it had risen.

So, I proceeded with caution. I followed the recipe very closely and followed the tips from the P&Q but, alas my genoise collapsed..not just a little collapse, it lost a lot of height and ended up with a well in the center. EPIC FAIL! 

I opted to just go with the flow and instead of cutting the cake into 2 layers as instructed (since that would result in 2 very thin layers), I kept it as a single layer and used the well to my advantage… I brushed the entire top of the cake with Chambord syrup, filled the well with a layer of the cream cheese based filling, added a layer of raspberries, topped that with another layer of filling then frosted the whole cake with the fresh whipped cream topping.

The cake was quite dense but it still tasted incredible. MrMango said to me “You can make this again, but next time make sure it doesn’t collapse.” ha!  try, try again, I guess.

If you are interested in trying this out yourself, you can find the recipe on Mary Ann’s blog.  You can also check out how other TWD Bakers fared with this recipe that foiled me.

Tall & Creamy Cheesecake

I am pretty tall so I don’t take the word tall lightly. And while this cheesecake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours is relatively tall for a cheesecake, it is not as tall as me. So there!

I followed Dorie’s basic recipe for the Tall & Creamy Cheesecake and added some fresh fruit on top that I then glazed with some apple preserves. It looks really colorful and festive and will surely be a stunner on the buffet at the New Year’s Eve party I am headed to shortly.

I haven’t cut into this baby yet since I think it would be bad form to bring a partially eaten cheesecake to a party. Silly manners. I will report back tomorrow on how the cheesecake tasted and what the other party goers thought of it.

This recipe was selected by Anne of Anne Strawberry. She has the recipe for this cheesecake posted at her blog. She did a great twist on the recipe making a beautiful Peppermint Bark Cheesecake.

Stop by the Tuesdays with Dorie blog roll to check out what the other bakers have cooked up recently!

Mini Orange Chocolate Chunk Cakes

There were two bonus recipes this month for Barefoot Bloggers this month. The first were the super yummy Chive Risotto Cakes that I posted earlier this week. The second bonus recipe is Mini Orange Chocolate Chunk Cakes and it was selected by Lisa from Lime in the Coconut. 

These little bundt cakes were bursting with fresh orange flavor. My husband said he could’ve done without the chocolate ganache, yet he still ate it.   He wanted pure unadulterated orange cake. He loves his citrus!  The cakes were really cute and they gave me a reason to use my mini bundt pans. I love to justify the existence of my plethora of kitchen stuff.

These cakes would be a great dessert for a Christmas dinner. I really liked the combo of semi-sweet chocolate and orange. They complement each other well.

Mini Orange Chocolate Chunk Cakes(from Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa)

Ingredients

• 1/4 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 extra-large eggs at room temperature
• 1/8 cup grated orange zest (2 large oranges)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour plus 1 tablespoon
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 3 ounces buttermilk at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• 1 cup good semisweet chocolate chunks

For the syrup:

• 1/4 cup sugar

• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

For the ganache:

• 4 ounces good semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 6 individual serving baking molds, such as the flexible non stick 100 percent silicone molds.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for about 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, then the orange zest.

Sift together 1 1/2 cups flour, the baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the orange juice, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately in thirds to the creamed butter, beginning and ending with the flour. Toss the chocolate chunks with 1 tablespoon flour and add to the batter. Pour into the pans, smooth the tops, and bake for 30 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in the molds on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the syrup. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, cook the sugar with the orange juice until the sugar dissolves. Remove the cake from the pans, put them on a rack over a tray, and spoon the orange syrup over the cakes. Allow the cakes to cool completely.

For the ganache, melt the chocolate, heavy cream, and coffee in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until smooth and warm, stirring occasionally. Drizzle over the top of the cakes