Cake Week 13: PROUD
Cake Week Thirteen was an interesting beast to tackle.
It was my fortieth birthday.
It was lucky number thirteen.
It was going to be HOT.
We don’t have air conditioning in our kitchen and the week’s forecast meant daily temperatures in the mid-90’s with extremely high humidity. As a reference, butter melts between 90 and 95 degrees. Luckily, I planned all the cakes before i knew this, so I didn’t let the impending dread of this terrible weather curtail my plans.
As far as the cakes themselves? Well… they were a little altered from planning to execution. By the middle of the week my body and mind were not in a great place, so I made a couple of smart decisions:
I store bought some ingredients I had originally planned on making (violet syrup, lemon curd, peach jam)
I eliminated a cake.
I baked from 5AM - 7AM.
I decorated in my bedroom, which is the only room with air conditioning.
Cake Week 13: Proud ended up being one of the easiest cake weeks, which is exactly what I needed leading up to my fortieth birthday party. Inspired by midwest Cake Walks and San Francisco’s Cake Picnic, in lieu of gifts all guests were asked to bring a cake to share. And cake they brought. And cake they shared.
Overall, Cake Week 13: Proud really did elicit pride in my skills, my friends, and my community.
Will I be able to out-do Cake Week 13 next year? Probably not! But that’s okay. “Always bigger and better” is a mindset for youth. I’m fully prepared to move into my bog-witch phase. So for the next year I’ll be nesting, refining my favorite recipes, and luring villagers beneath my moss-draped eaves for coffee cake.
Cake One: Red Orange Pounder
Orange Pound Cake (The Perfect Cake by America’s Test Kitchen)
America’s Test Kitchen’s pound cake recipe has had a strangle on my baking for a long time, and this cake reminded me why. It’s somehow both super dense and incredibly moist and light. I use this pound cake as a base for all sorts of flavors but it really lends itself to citrus and fruit. I topped it off with a simple raspberry icing and ruined the whole thing by cutting up fresh raspberries! Liquid + icing = runny mess. A perfect kick-off to Cake Week.
Cake Two: Yellow Banana Baclava Bundt
Banana Baclava Bundt (@wellmadebykiley)
This bundt was DECADENT! It’s essentially a super moist banana bundt cake with a nutty caramel (think pineapple upside-down cake) shell baked into the top. Oh, then you drown it in honey syrup. It really did mimic the flavors and textures of baclava. Although I often eat cakes over the course of several days, I really must insist you eat this cake sooner than later. It’s very delicious, but she’s too wet for world.
Cake Three: Green Deep Dish Key Lime Pie
Deep Dish Key Lime Pie (@buttermilkbysam)
What an easy upgrade to pies!
It’s no secret that I’m not a pie maker. I don’t dislike pies, but I’ll never choose to make them when I could be making a cake instead.
Doubling the crust recipe and building it up in a 9” springform pans allowed for a ton of whipped cream and even more crunchy, buttery crust to counterpoint the sweet-tart key lime filling. I will be stealing this method for all future crumbly-crust pies.
Cake Four: Blue Violet Ube Angel
Angel Food Cake (The Perfect Cake by America’s Test Kitchen)
This was a near miss… as in I nearly made a good cake. I added a little ube powder and ube extract to the base cake recipe for America’s Test Kitchen’s Angel Food recipe, but something was a bit off. The cake ended up a little gummier than I would have preferred, which was likely my error in mixing this cake. The blueberry whipped cream was absolutely necessary, but the heat did it’s work on the whipped cream so fast that the berries quickly brought about this cake’s ruin.
(Side note: I can barely taste ube, so this may have been better than I give it credit for. The only time I’ve ever really noticed ube’s earthy, lightly sweet potato goodness was when I had it in a delicious soft serve sundae in Hilo, HI.)
Cake Five: Brown Flourless Chocolate Meringue Cake
Flourless Chocolate Meringue Cake (What’s For Dessert by Claire Saffitz)
My good friend Jen has a birthday two days before mine, so it’s become a little bit of a tradition for her to join Cake Week midway through! This cake was DELICIOUS and super easy. It’s basically a flourless chocolate cake with meringue swirled into the top. Very easy and a big crowd favorite!
My original idea was to top this cake with meringue soot sprites, but because of heat and time I opted to top it off with some thick chocolate whipped cream instead. This was a good call in the end as I think the soot sprites would have just been more crunch to an already crunchy cake. The whipped cream added a nice creamy contrast.
Cake Six: Black and White Cup Cake
Black Cocoa Cakes (Zoë Bakes Cakes by Zoë Francois)
Chocolate Frosting (Zoë Bakes Cakes by Zoë Francois)
Cupcake Cream (Midwest Made by Shauna Sever)
Another cake’s decoration and execution sacrificed to heat. Zoë Bake’s chocolate cake recipe is my absolute go to. It’s super moist. It’s rich but not sickening. It takes flavor well because it has a healthy amount of liquid. It never disappoints. I slapped some thick cupcake cream in the middle which made it even more incredible. I doctored up Zoë’s devil’s food recipe with some black cocoa and extra vanilla, but anyone could make this cake as written and wow the chocolate lovers in their life.
Cake Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten: Seraphic Celebration
Cake Base (Blooms and Baking by Amy Ho)
Italian Meringue (Zoë Bakes Cakes by Zoë Francois)
For my fortieth birthday party, I knew I needed a centerpiece cake. I’d asked 50+ friends to bring a cake to share, but the show boater in me knew mine still had to be the chum in the water around which the party frenzied.
Over the course of three days I made four different cakes (chamomile, lavender, rose, and chocolate-violet) using Amy Ho’s incredible cake base from her chamomile cake recipe. I’ve found this recipe incredibly adept at infusing floral flavors into a fluffy, sturdy, delicious white cake.
At one point I thought I’d make my own fillings, but the heat broke me so I just bought lemon curd for the lavender cake, rose jam for the rose cake, sour cherry jam for the chocolate cake, and peach preserves for the chamomile cake to complete my biblically-accurate cake.
After three days of baking, carving, chilling, filling, spackling, and feathering I almost lost the whole thing because the cake was so heavy that when I brought it down from my bedroom my arms almost gave out (I had to frost the wings in there because it’s the only air conditioned room in our home).
By the time the cake picnic ended there was barely anything left of the angel, which is exactly what you hope for when you make cake for others.