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.

Heavenly Cake Bakers: Mini Vanilla Bean Pound Cakes

I couldn't take it any more, Brooklyn. I've escaped to Truro. 

And, since I found some mini loaf pans at a tag sale (where I was also able to pick up some farm-fresh eggs), I decided there was no reason to mess around with this week's Heavenly Cake, a basic vanilla pound cake. 

The cakes were not, sadly, vanilla bean pound cakes, as my Ugandan vanilla beans were left behind, but they were sweet and vanilla-tasting all the same. I baked the little loaves in the wall oven at the house my uncle and my parents are renting, a small octagonal building with space saving arrangements worthy of a hobbit hole.  I've never seen so clean an oven door in a place where the oven is clearly in use. The eggs were not the aforementioned farm fresh ones, but were products of my aunt and uncle's beloved hens, which they had schlepped from New Hampshire.

That's my father in the background with the paper. My mother was unsatisfied with my original photo shoot, taken indoors, and marched the cake board outside to capture the full beauty of the light and the trees.

The cake was supposed to be soaked in a vanilla cognac syrup, but we spread it with leftover chocolate buttercream instead, and that did just fine.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Cinnamon-Sugar Loaf Cakes

For those of you awaiting Monday's cake post, it'll be a little longer, as I mislaid the camera for a few days, including that day on which I made Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose Genoise cake (which tasted exactly like my family's recipe for Passover sponge cake, incidentally). Update: I found the pictures I took of the genoise, posting to commence immediately.

This week, I switched it up, and did my Heavenly Cake at home, and made my TWD recipe at the bakery. The recipe was entitled Rum-Drenched Vanilla Loaf Cakes, and while I did put the rum in the batter, I didn't make a rum syrup. Instead, I brushed the two mini-loaves with butter and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar to make a crunchy top. Then I sold them, so I didn't taste them, but they looked like excellent little pound cakes. Dorie compares them to Sara Lee in general consistancy and crumb. 

A little housekeeping--those who aren't reading this blog in a reader may notice some design changes, which are hopefully the first of many. Any thoughts and/or suggestions are appreciated. I've also set up an Amazon recommendation widget, through which I can highlight the books and gadgets that I love the most. Just FYI, in the interest of keeping me in chocolate chips, if you are interested in buying any of these items, and you purchase by clicking through my widget, I get a small percentage of the sale.
If you are the sort of person who likes to look at things on Amazon and then buy them at your local businesses, I salute you and support you.