HCB: Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake

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Rose writes on this recipe that this cake is “wondrously soft, light, and deeply chocolaty.

Check! Check! and Check!

This cake is all that.  Perfect because its easy to make, easy to decorate, easy to served and the most important easy of all? To eat.

Which was perfect for me, since I been sick with a nasty cold since Thursday, compliments of our wonderful temperamental weather here in Florida - for the past 4 days - we had 40, 30 and 80 degree weather all in one day.  Perfect situation to catch a cold and make life just a little bit hard.

So I was not looking forward to complicated baking.  In fact I was not looking forward to being in my kitchen period.

But, when you are sick you crave comfort food and for some inexplicable reason, I craved chocolate cake. So it was my luck that I could actually whipped this up in not time at all.

There is nothing complicated about making it.  I don’t remember if this is in the Quick and Easy section of the book - it may not be, because there is a complicated sidebar of instructions in of how to make the marzipan candle.

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HCB: Lemon Canadian Crown and Ladyfingers

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Do any other cooks/bakers out there has a kitchen bucket list?

I do, I decided a while ago, to write everything that I wanted to accomplish in cooking/baking - specific recipes, techniques, things that made my legs go jelly (I’m looking at you fondant).  My list has stuff like, puff pastry, pie dough (I think I got this one conquered), bread, pate, croissant, and yes among all of those difficult techniques and dishes is written “ladyfingers”.

From scratch.

This is the part where I thank my lucky stars that I found Heavenly Cake Bakers group, because without the push of having a weekly deadline, I would have never gotten around to making ladyfingers from scratch. And if I continue to write “scratch” over and over is because - Oh.my.god, I made ladyfingers from scratch!

Were they difficult? Was there a lot of swearing from my kitchen - a la Apple Charlotte? Did head rolls? Dogs and cats go into hiding? Did Tom walked out and told me to get my *stuff* together?

No, no and no.

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HCB: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

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Besides my love affair with chocolate cakes, I have a love affair with the TYPE of texture of the cake.  I like mine to be dense – a la pound cake consistency.

Those airy cakes – Not GOOD

The heavy cakes – GOOD

Those types of cakes remind me of my grandmother’s homemade cakes, heavy on the butter, eggs, with a bit of sour cream to give it a tangy taste.

Yep, those cakes are close to my heart.

So when I flipped to this weeks Heavenly Cake choice and read up, I was pumping fist in the air and yelling around the house – SCORE!

Ok, I may or may not have done that.  (The cats aren’t talking)

Not even the fact that it had a fruit in there could damper my expectations for it, because according to this, the pears would disappear through the cake, end up at the bottom, which will then be the top and well… its all a bit like maaaagic.

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