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.

Cape Cod Cloche

Cape Cod girls, they have no combs
Heave away! Heave away
They comb their hair with codfish bones;
We are bound for Australia


Heave awy me bully bully boys
Heave away! Heave away
Heave away and don't ye make a noise;
We are bound for Australia!


Cape Cod boys, they have no sleds
Heave away! Heave away!
They slide down hills on codfish heads
We are bound for Australia!

Guess where I got to get snowed in last weekend...

A foot and a half of beautiful snow deep in a many-windowed house in Welfleet, generously lent by Judy and Richard, good friends to me from the day I was born. They did themselves one better this time, opening their house to me and three dear friends for a wool-socked, Scattergories-playing sister weekend. The snow was deep, the kitchen was stocked, and we couldn't have asked for much more.

As I mentioned once before, Judy is a potter, and a big fan of the no-knead bread, and now she's experimenting with making clay baking vessels. One such attempt was waiting for us on the counter at the cape house, with the bread recipe etched right into the glaze under the lid. The compact shape and the recipe combined were almost irresistible, and I was glad when Judy encouraged me to try it out, and then to take it home. She doesn't consider it her finest specimen, but that only makes me want to make with it more--no danger of ruining high art, and the shape is just so satisfying--small without being tiny, and perfectly rounded. I made a nice no-knead raisin bread on the Cape, but took no pictures. Many more to come, both kneaded and no. I might even think about baking some beans.

I did take a picture of the bread I made after I got home, Hamelman's pain au levain, which I tested for the bakery. The test was successful, and as I write this there's a batch rising in the proofer for Saturday's crowd. Hamelman says that refrigerating the dough overnight isn't recommended for this variety, so I started from the beginning at about 6 am, and am just nearing the shaping point by 9:30.

Updates and Housekeeping: BBA, CSA, camera, and wedding updates

A few bits of housekeeping. I've been out of town and rushing around. Still cooking, from olive oil cake with mutant blackberries in Welfleet, to new potatoes and crunchy kohlrabi at home, all the way to Rose's chocolate butter cake with Smitten Kitchen's Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting and raspberries. Still cooking, but not really taking good pictures, because my camera batteries died and I have been too lazy to update. Still, be assured it was beautiful. We ate wonderfully on Cape Cod, from Matt's mother's excellent cooking, to fresh tart blueberries from the yard, to my mother's cheesy omelettes and linguica egg sandwiches at the Portuguese Bakery in Provincetown, one of the best places in the known world. At home, Jon picked up the CSA, which included another kohlrabi, greens, and a large bunch of cucumbers.

Along the way, the past few weeks' efforts have included BBA challenge bread #9, Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread (with pecans and craisins), twice. It was excellent, and not photogenic, no pics. Next up is corn bread, filled with honey, corn, buttermilk, and possibly bacon.

And, in wedding cake news, Stacey and I took a trip to New York Cake and Baking Supply on 22nd Street, and played with everything. We piled pans on top of one another in several different configurations, and finally decided on a tiered cake, using 10", 8", and 6" layers (Rose tells me that standard size is 12", 9", and 6", which serves 150 people. This wedding will be closer to 90 people, and they will also have access to a 'brownie tower,' so I think that the layering we've chosen will be perfect. I do wonder if having only a two-inch different between the layers will make the tiering look less pretty, as Rose leaves a three inch difference in most of her combinations, but when we stacked the pans the result looked pretty good. The rigging needed for stabilization might mean that there are some dowel/straw holes in somebody's piece of cake, but hey, it's a wedding. Also: super-secret possible fondant magic, from a mystery guest. After playing with all the pans in the store, I went right home and ordered them all online, from a much cheaper source. Details when my new toys arrive.