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Showing posts with label cakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cakes. Show all posts

Monday, June 20, 2011

Raspberry Upside-Down Cake


I'll be completely honest with you, I planned on posting a dinner recipe.  Dinner was good but there are a few tweaks that I want to make to the recipe before I pass it along to all of you.  I'll work on it and hopefully get back to you next week.  I felt guilty that I haven't posted in a little while so I made this delicious cake. 

The recipe calls for cardamom in the cake.  Cardamom can be a little pricey but it goes  a long way. Most recipes call for no more than 1/4 tsp and thats more than enough.  Cardamom adds a unique flavour that is sweet and fragrant.  You might be tempted to leave it out of the mix but trust me... don't!  Feel free to use the berry of your choice, like strawberry, blueberry or blackberry.  Even pineapple would taste great.

The hubby and I enjoyed a warm slice with a scope of ice cream but I have a feeling the cake will be just as tasty when it's cooled off.  I'll have to find out tomorrow at work, hopefully my co-workers will join me for a slice.

Raspberry Upside-down Cake with Cardamom

makes: one 8-inch cake

Ingredients

For the Topping:

·         2 tablespoons unsalted butter

·         1/4 cup brown sugar

·         1 cup sliced strawberries

For the Cake:

·         1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

·         2/3 cup brown sugar

·         1 large egg

·         1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

·         1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 teaspoon baking powder

·         1/4 teaspoon baking soda

·         1/4 teaspoon salt

·         1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

·         2/3 cup sour cream

Directions

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2.      I used an 8-inch round with 3-inch tall sides.  You can also use a 9-inch round with 2-inch sides.

3.      Place butter in the cake pan and place in the oven.  When butter is melted, remove pan from the oven.  Using two pot holders, tilt the pan around and around, coating the sides of the pan with butter.  Once sides are coated, set aside.

4.      In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom.  Set aside.

5.      In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and brown sugar on medium speed.  Cream until slightly pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Stop mixer, scrape down the bowl with a spatula, and add egg and vanilla extract.  Beat for 1 minute.

6.      Turn the mixer off, scrape the bowl, and add the dry ingredients.  Beat on low speed while adding the sour cream.  Beat until the batter just comes together.  Batter will be pretty thick.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and finish incorporating ingredients with a spatula.

7.      Sprinkle 1/4 cup brown sugar into the melted butter in the cake pan.  Sprinkle strawberry slices over the butter and sugar in a single layer.  Spoon batter over the strawberries and spread evenly with a spatula.  Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

8.     Let cake rest for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge of the cake and inverting the cake onto a cake plate.  Serve warm with sweetened sour or whipped cream.
ENJOY!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Great Cake Adventure


Today was my cousin's baby shower and I offered to make the cake.  Here it is :) I was pretty happy with the end result especially since I have had a terrible ear ache for the past 3 days.  I've been in a lot of pain so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get through it all.  I figure it took a total of about 20 hours to put together, 3 9x13 sheet cakes, 12 cups of buttercream icing and 5 different colours.  

The pink coloured blocks had white cake with strawberry filling and the yellow and purple blocks have chocolate cake with chocolate icing.




All of the recipes came from with wilton website.  Except the strawberry filling was my own concoction.  I used two cups of strawberry freezer jam that I made last summer and thickened it up with some cornstarch and water slurry.  

While I'm showing off my cake making skills I'll turn back time to pretty much exactly one year ago.  My Mom married for the first time. As a gift I decided to secretly make my Mom a wedding cake.  We're talking 3 tier, double layered, red velvet with cream cheese icing.  It was quite the endeavour and I was pretty surprised in the end that I pulled it off.  This cake took me about 35-40 hours to make and transporting it from my house in the country to my Mom's house in Quebec was the most stressful drive of my life.

Mom and her husband were very surprised and loved it!  They even have a piece still sitting in their freezer so that they can have a bit this year for their anniversary. 

Both cake designs come from the Martha Stewart website. 

Thanks for reading:)

ENJOY!