CakeTease!

Long absence on the part of Poppycakes.  To talk about why is to talk about the audience for any creative act in which one engages. A cake has a community implicit in its abundance. And my cakes have been fortunate feeders of more than one set of masses. But there is always the favorite recipient, the person that a good cake is made to please. For my fig cake, an old recipe, tried and tried and true, I have always enjoyed serving my father. My father is a professional cook and to bake or cook anything that he might compliment is a fine thing.  But for the last two years, I have been able to bake for my partner's father, a man with a sensitive palate, one of those rare persons who sees the poetry in a cake's blend of flavor and texture and that welcome, welcome soul who asks, each time the cake is unveiled for a description of the cake and filling and frosting and upon hearing the words: white chocolate, cream cheese frosting, or raspberry filling gets an extra glitter to the already-sparkling eyes.

He was eighty-four, dashing, elegant and so handsome that even at eighty-four it was easy to see how smitten his wife of sixty years must have been when that beautiful man came to her door that first time. Such was this man, such was the cakemaker's new favorite connoisseur.  With the exception of dollcakes, every cake on this blog made by Poppycakes was made for GCM.  So today's cake is as much in memory as it is in gratitude, not just for Thanksgiving but for those souls that pass through our lives and make every sweetness the sweeter for it.  Today's cake was meant to be made with a smaller cake version of itself that was going to be frosting-inscribed Happy Thanksgiving GCM. Every cake is still for you.  I was going to leave the smaller cake in the woods and let some soon-to-be-diabetic raccoon swear his initials were GCM. But my frosting-inscriptions aren't ever legible enough for long notes and the cake I chose to bake was devil's food in its base, I worried about the dangers of chocolate to wildlife. Also, the loss was recent and I was sad. So I chose to make this cake and add my own personal symbol to include my old friend and favorite taster in the cake's message. I made small white frosting loops or ribbons on the edges with my own makeshift baggy-with-a-hole frosting bag. The frosting, a cream cheese white chocolate blend was rich and divine and the filling, raspberry preserves with marshmallow sauce and pure almond extract added just enough difference in texture as did the toasted almonds, and the cake itself was moist enough to have made my friend smile, the thought of which made a bittersweet holiday, a little bit happier.  

Recipe: Cakes Made Simple Magazine 
Reading:  Blue Nights by Joan Didion

This is a caramelized pear upside-down cake I've made a few times. It's fairly easy to make (the caramel can be a little tricky and takes more time than you think it will). It's quite tasty. Recipe: Fine Cooking


This is a white chocolate lemon cake from a cookbook I received as a gift, and which I served at a holiday party last year. It was delicious, but challenging - so much so I dubbed it the "Complicake."



-Sweetcakes

It's easy for a cake to look and taste dramatic with lots of poppyseeds and cream cheese and whipped cream frosting.

 The cake recipe is incredibly simple, just six ingredients - butter, superfine sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and poppy seeds.

Instead of the buttercream frosting from the recipe, I made whipped cream and cream cheese frosting and added grated orange peels, which upped the flavor quite a bit.

Here's the whole cake, frosted. After this photo, I added more poppyseeds to the top.

And here's a slice.

-Sweetcakes

That was the name in the recipe, but really, these were just cookies. I didn't even have a cup of tea with mine. Still, they were delicious, buttery wedding cookies with chopped maraschino cherries, then drizzled with white chocolate.

Recipe: Just a Pinch Recipe Club

-Sweetcakes

You can't smell ice cream swirling the way you can smell a cake baking. And indeed, homemade ice cream is underway at chez Sweetcakes.  But first, Thai curry chicken for dinner, thanks to the chef of the house. Hope your Sunday is sweet.

Poppycakes made a cake for Easter and now, eyeball-deep into summer, it's only fitting she serve it up.

The cake was a pineapple-confetti cake, extra vanilla pudding and a fragrance, enhanced by a dash of orange blossom water to the filling that was meant to resurrect one's every sense.

 There was just enough sweetness suggested by all of the summery scents, that I wanted to keep the frosting light and leave room for Ghiradelli's white chocolate inlay of "tile work" on the sides.
The icing was a light glaze, oranged up by some zest and a little orange extract.

Reading: Crazy in the Kitchen