TWD - Lemon Meringue Layer Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Lemon Meringue Layer Cake. This delicious lemony cake has four components, none of which is hard to make. The hardest part is assembly.

First up, you make the cake. It is a lemon cake, not too dense, but not too light. I reduced the recipe by half and made a single 6” cake which I sliced in half (or maybe 2/3 and 1/3 😆) for the layers.

While the cake is baking, you make a simple syrup from lemon juice and sugar, which is brushed liberally over the cake while it us still hot.

Next, you make a lemon cream, which is chilled in the fridge while the cake cools.

Finally, you make a lemon buttercream. Assembly of the cake involves sandwiching the lemon cream between the two cake laters, then freezing the cake for 15 minutes to set the lemon cream.

Finally, the whole thing is smothered in buttercream and topped with a thin layer of lemon cream.

 You have to chill the cake for 3 hours to set it - then voila! Slice and enjoy.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website. 

TWD - Orange Spice Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Orange Spice Cake. This cake is made in an unusual fashion by adding eggs to fragrant orange sugar, and adding melted butter after that.

There is an optional marmalade glaze - who am I kidding, a glaze is not optional! It makes the cake pretty and shiny and adds moisture and flavour.

I really love the crusty outside of this cake - like a yummy biscuit.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.
 

TWD - Buttermilk-Molasses Quick Bread

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe  is Buttermilk-Molasses Quick Bread.

In my case, it’s actually Soured Milk-Maple Syrup Quick Bread. 

 This is a savoury quick bread, containing spices such as star anise and fennel.

It also contains an array of flours, including rye flour and whole wheat flour.

This quick bread was good served sliced with lashings of butter.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Jelly Roll

 This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Jelly Roll.  It comprises a light sponge, rolled when still hot out of the oven, then once cooled, filled with ostensibly jelly.

I rebelled and filled my half recipe sponge roll with lemon curd. I am going to serve it for dessert, warmed, with custard. Yum!

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Pecan-Cranberry Loaf

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Pecan-Cranberry Loaf. This lovely, easy to make cake is full of pecans and cranberries. As it us an olive oil based cake, it is also quite moist.

 

It is absolutely delicious on its own, but would also be good spread with butter, or topped with a citrus glaze.

To see what everyone else made this week and their thoughts on it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Szarlotka

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Szarlotka, or Polish Apple Cake.

This cake contains over a kilo of apples, as well as raisins. The same dough is used for the base and the top.

It is a massive cake, but if you love cooked apple, it is delicious.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas all!!

Here’s my Christmas box treats for this year. At the top are macaroons from Anja Dunk’s excellent German baking book, Advent.

And these gingerbread men are made from Anja’s gingerbread house dough recipe.

These rum balls are a perennial favourite family recipe.

These are candied nuts from a David Lebovitz newsletter recipe for candied pecans.

Here’s this year’s Christmas cake, a Sunbeam recipe snipped from a magazine.

Of course, we had to have fudge. The recipe is from The Australian Women’s Weekly Sweet.
 

And here is a gorgeous light display of Australian flora on Brisbane City Hall.

Have a wonderful and blessed festive season everyone.

Helen Goh’s Favourite Orange Cake

 This weekend, I made a cake that has been on my to do list for a while - Helen Goh's Favourite Orange Cake.  You can find the recipe online here.

The smell of this cake while baking is glorious - it contains a whole boiled orange that has been pureed, and it gives the cake a beautiful orange aroma and flavour.

On Day 1, I left the cake unadorned and ate it warm with icecream for pudding:

On Day 2, instead of using the thick buttercream icing in the recipe, I made a glaze using icing sugar, water and a couple of drops of orange essence to top the cake.

Whichever way you eat this wonderful cake, it is a perfect way to enjoy the flavour of orange in cake form, and very easy to make.  You just need a bit of time (as the orange needs to boil for an hour).

Harry Potter’s Birthday Cake

 It’s Harry Potter’s 42nd birthday today, so I have made a mini replica of the first birthday cake that he ever had, made by Hagrid.

It is a chocolate cake with buttercream icing:

The cake recipe that I used for this cake is available here. I made the icing using this recipe. I made a quarter of the cake recipe for a single layer 6” cake, and half of the icing recipe.

The cake itself is sugar- tastic delicious. A word of warning - you will need to do s crumb coat when icing the cake and have a glass of hot water to dip your knife into while icing the cake, as the cake tends to stick to the icing as you try to spread it.

Happee Birthdae Harry!

TWD - Crumb- Topped Ricotta Coffee Cake

Today’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Crumb-Topped Ricotta Coffee Cake. It comprises a dense ricotta based cake base, topped with blueberries and finally with a crumb topping.

Mine took almost twice the recommended 50 minutes to bake, but came out ok.

 My recommendation is to serve it warm with icecream - just saying.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

WWDH - Cinnamon sugar coated maple apple cakes

For Wednesday with Donna Hay this week, I made Cinnamon Sugar Coated Maple Apple Cakes from Donna’s Seasons recipe book. This book is one of her earlier books, and it is just so darn pretty - if you like cookbooks with beautiful pictures, definitely pick up a copy of this book.

These little cakes contain cinnamon, brown sugar, grated apple and maple syrup for flavour, as well as being dipped in cinnamon sugar fresh out of the oven. The cakes are made in mini bundt tins.

I made a half batch and got 12 mini bundts (1/2 cup size) plus 2 muffin sized cakes.

I had one of these fresh out of the oven - it was so good, and perfect for autumn.

To see some other Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte and Margaret.

 

TWD - Miso- Maple Loaf

This week, we celebrate the release of Dorie’s new book, Baking with Dorie, by making her Miso- Maple Loaf (recipe published on the NYT website). 

This is a terrific plain  cake flavoured with miso paste and maple syrup, and glazed with marmalade:

I deliberately didn’t strain the marmalade glaze, as I liked the decorative addition of tge orange peel.

Dorie suggests buttering this loaf or toasting it and adding butter or jam on too, but I loved it as is.

To see what everyone else thought of this cake, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Harry the Hairy Nosed Wombat Cake - Book Week 2021

 This week is Book Week, so I thought I’d share a cake I made for the Threatened Species Bakeoff, but which also fits neatly in with Book Week. I dub this cake Harry, after Harry the Hairy-Nosed Wombat, the title character in a 1970 children’s book written by Australian author, Jill Morris.  This book was read to our class at primary school by the librarian, Mr Broom. It follows the adventures of Harry when a man comes to disturb his habitat by building a highway through it.

The basic concept for my cake design came from Willie the Wombat in Aussie Cakes.  However, Willie is a common wombat, so I made some modifications to end up with Harry. Hairy-nosed wombats have pointier ears than common wombats and squarer, almost pig-like snouts. 

To that end, I shaped the “ears” of my cake more sharply and used a Monte instead of a Mint Slice for the nose, which I gave some details in black icing writing.  Aussie Cakes doesn’t provide any templates for the cakes - you have to design your own from the photo in the book.

The book says to use packet cake mix to make it accessible and easy, but I made the Dutch Chocolate Cake from Christine McConnell’s Deceptive Desserts as my base cake.In hindsight, this light spongy cake was not ideal for shaping, but I got it to work. (It is a delicious cake, BTW.)

Once you have shaped the cooled cake, it literally is as easy as icing it with chocolate buttercream (use your favourite recipe, making sure to crumb coat it), smothering it in brown tinted shredded coconut (I used dessicated coconut because that’s what I could get) to resemble fur, piping details on with black writing icing, and sticking on a chocolate biscuit nose, two Dairy Milk rollos for eyes, and licorice claws. I used the cake that I cut off to make chocolate soil to hide the cake board.

I am pretty happy with this cake.  It looks deceptively simple, but it was actually quite time consuming to make. I think Harry is rather handsome, and he tastes delicious! 

Are you celebrating Book Week? I would love to hear if you bake any literary themed goodies.