Cake Thursday , April 2nd: Every cloud has a silver lining,

and (almost) every fallen cake can be salvaged.

Case in point:



which was supposed to be a very simple, straight-forward French Yogurt Cake with Lemon (recipe courtesy of Orangette).

Though I was sure the toothpick came out clean, after letting it cool for a spell in the pan, I removed the cake to a rack and watched the middle not just sink, but collapse. Clumps of heavenly-scented warm lemon cake fell onto the table top below.

With neither the time nor the lemons to make another, I decided to forge ahead. Once the mostly complete cake was cool, I trimmed some of the edge off to fill the hole in the center, applied the glaze and the icing from the Orangette recipe, then covered the lot of it in an obscene, swirly mound of my favorite cake fix-it: whipped cream...



I figured with a catchy name and curls of freshly-zest lemon, I couldn't go wrong.



It probably didn't hurt that the cake tasted amazing as well. Tart and sweet and, with all of that cream, light as a...

well, you can probably guess.

On my short trip to Wonderland.

A few days ago, my friend Meg and I decided to try Sweetiepie, a new restaurant in the West Village with an Alice in Wonderland-meets-Versailles decor and waiters decked out in white buttondowns and black bowties. In an interview, the owner called it "a place where children can take their parents out to."

Indeed, the giant gold bird cages surrounding cafe tables, the bright mural in the back room and the kid-sized door within the regular bathroom door (opened with a big gold key) are very whimsical-child friendly. Wealthy, whimsical-child friendly ($17 salads!?!).

As not-at-all-wealthy-but-kind-of-whimsical-adults, we decided to forge ahead—it was really the desserts we were after...





Had we a few more stomachs and a lot more money, we'd have gone right for the aptly named Sweetiepig, a giant glass bowl filled with five kinds of ice cream, cake, berries, bananas, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, and whipped cream.

Alas, we ended up going with a trio of Micro Cakes and a Mint Chocolate Hot Fudge Sundae...



The sundae was pretty good.

The cakes, frosted and flavored chocolate, lemon, and orange, were...ok.



When I asked the waiter if they were frosted in buttercream, he gave me a confused look and said, "yes, there is butter." Each was floating on a small pool of correspondingly flavoured syrup which soaked the little layers in an overwhelming way. Which fits, I suppose, as the entire place is overwhelming—mirrors everywhere, batty old woman coming in and out (sometimes for no reason at all), four different waiters to our one little table, and an unexpected mix of music, including Duran Duran, playing overhead.

Will we go back? Probably not—too expensive for what you get.

That said, if you have, or can pretend to be, a wealthy seven-year-old, then by all means, it's worth a visit. If I was a kid, I'd want to live there—who cares what the cakes taste like, look how damn cute they are.

A homemade Coconut Snowball

...from Sage General Store in Long Island City, Queens.

Cake Thursday: March 12th

From the book, Sky High.



I also baked a Sour Cream Walnut Streusel Bundt Cake for a Monday morning treat:

The Most Beautiful Bundt Pan in the World

Makes the most beautiful cake...







The Heritage Bundt Pan from William Sonoma

Cake Thursday: February 26th

The invite:



And the outcome:



The lovely hostess photograph inspired me to cut the cake into small squares and serve them as "hors d'ovueres".



The cake was, in one word, splendid. Moist and deeply chocolaty. And, it is the easiest cake I've ever baked.

The recipe for Aunt Frannie's Crazy Cake does not come from my Aunt Frannie (nor do I have an Aunt Frannie), but rather from this fantastic vintage cake book I picked up recently:



It is kind of crazy, which you'll see when you read the recipe below. I had my doubts, but it worked beautifully, and will definitely make many future visits to my oven.

A post after my own heart

over at The Kitchen

Cake Thursday: February 12th

The invitation:



(click on image to enlarge)

The Cake:



The stencil that I used for powdered-sugar-decoration was a quick design that did on the computer, then printed up and cut out.




Though the lemon mousse (homemade lemon curd mixed with whipped cream) isn't part of the original recipe, I wanted to break away from the usual cakes coming out of my kitchen as of late.





This is undoubtedly one of my favorite cakes I've baked thus far.

It tastes wonderful, has great texture, and is not too sweet. I always tend to love lemon and almond together, and the airiness of the mousse was a nice contrast to the sand-sized denseness of the finely-ground almonds. (Side note, if you've never blanched your own almonds before, I highly recommend it—easy and rather meditative!)



There are many (mostly identical) recipes for the cake online, but the one that I chose to go with can be found here.

Pictures of Cake, A Miscellany

Last weekend's Classic Vanilla Pound Cake topped with Blueberry Compote and Unsweetened Whipped Cream:



Two wedding cakes made by my friend Branda:

A Chocolate Butter Cake filled with Chocolate Ganache and frosted with Basic Buttercream



A Yellow Buttermilk Cake filled with Lemon Curd, also frosted with Basic Buttercream



The insanely delicious Red Velvet Cake baked by Roger Kuhn for our friend Alexis' birthday:

Cake Thursday: January 29th

The invitation:



The cake: Sweet and Salty (recipe from Baked).






Salted caramel, dark chocolate caramel buttercream, and sea salt between each of five layers of dark chocolate cake which was then slathered with the buttercream and and sprinkled with sea salt.



Utterly intense and overwhelming.

Oh, and thoroughly addicting.