Alpha Bakers -- Cream Cheese Butter Cake

Nothing to see here, really. Cream cheese butter cake is more for eating than looking at. I went simple, frosting it in the pan (but with luscious lemon cream, my favorite), and serving it with forks. This dense, rich, pound-cake style sheet cake got no complaints. Even after sitting in the refrigerator for a few days, it was chosen over the blueberry pie sitting next to it by everyone at the table. That's the power of cake.

Alpha Bakers -- Blueberry Buckle

This was the picture, a classic American farmhouse dessert. Worked out fine except for the part where I didn't leave enough breathing room when dropping the dough on the filling and it never quite...baked. Very pretty, but too sweet and a little too much raw batter underneath.

Alpha Bakers - Marble in Reverse

Costumes are the greatest. If someone would just make me a costume every morning and lay it out for me, I would never stop cosplaying. I love dressing up, especially if someone else does the hard part. When it goes well, I love Halloween, especially because I also love candy and running around outside at night. This year, most of the running around was done during the day, but I did get the chance to see some suburban costume action (first prize to the 10 year old girl who went all in as a toilet). 

The sugary part of the night was embodied in a ridiculous birthday cake that I made for my dear friend, the second in a yearly series of cakes based on Herrell's Ice Cream flavors. Last year I made 'Cafe L'Orange' in fluffy sponge and coffee mousseline. 

This year, the flavor inspiration was Malted Chocolate & Vanilla. The final product was an unfrosted beauty alternating layers of banana cake and chocolate chip malt cake with layers of chocolate malted Bavarian cream, malted whipped cream and Whoppers. 

 

After all that cake-making, I didn't think I had enough chocolate left to make the reverse marble bundt that was this week's Alpha Baker project, but I plundered the leftover Halloween candy (news flash: orange KitKats are great) and made my marble out of fun size Hershey bars instead of the the dark chocolate called for. I threw in the towel when it came to making the ganache topping, though. Enough is enough. 

The cake came out beautifully, with a very light texture. I sent a picture to a friend, who exclaimed that it looked 'delicious and also a bit like a butt.' 

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Unadorned Simplicity

Is that an oxymoron?

I considered dressing up this cake for the camera, but I decided that its rigorous simplicity demanded simple presentation. We ate it just like this, and it was complete in itself. The Karmel Cake, which is also a caramel cake, is a butter cake made with a milk/brown-sugar caramel in the batter, which gives it a subtle depth of flavor and a crunchy brown crust.

I subbed some white sugar and molasses (my usual) for the brown sugar in the caramel. I also baked it in an 8" pan instead of a 9" (I don't have any 2" high 9" pans), which made it a little taller and increased the baking time (and the dome), but no matter. I wish I'd taken the caramel just a little bit farther into the dark side, but there will be other chances. It was supposed to cool entirely, which would have made for a bit of a stiffer batter, but even warm, it did just fine. Having had a terrible horrible experience with a large vat of chai caramel at work the other day (think shop filled with smoke, oven filled with goo, entire day's production thrown off), I decided to take this one easy. Sometimes cooking at home is just so peaceful.