Hey there TFL community,

I am planning a wedding for September in Charlotte, NC and was wondering if anyone might be able to recommend a baker or two that I could check out for the cake.

Thanks all,

Tara

Black Prince Cake 

Known in Russia as Black Prince, this is a cake made with lightly moist chocolate sponge layered with sauce that tastes a bit like toffee, and finely chopped or ground nuts. My version also includes sour cherries which makes it similar to Black Forest cake. Black Prince in the Wood if you like J

 Ingredients

For the sponge

• 3 medium or 2 large eggs
• 180 g sugar
• 180 g sour cream
• 120 g plain flour
• 2 level teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• 50-70 g dark or bitter chocolate, grated; or, 2-3 tablespoons cocoa powder; or, a mixture of both
• 50 g ground or finely chopped almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts

 For the sauce

• 400 g tin sweetened condensed milk, boiled (see below for instructions)
• 150 g butter
• 100 g ground or finely chopped nuts
• (Optional) 2-3 teaspoons brandy, cream liqueur or strong sweet wine

 Also

• 1-2 handfuls sour cherries, fresh or frozen, stoned

For decoration

• Some more ground/chopped nuts, and/or nut flakes
• A few cherries, if desired
• Butter-cream icing, if desired

Method

Sponge

Beat eggs and sugar together until pale and smooth. Switch your mixer to a low speed and add the sour cream in 3-4 increments (or more). Stir the bicarbonate of soda into the flour, fold into the egg mix. Add chocolate/cocoa. Lastly, fold in the nuts.

(NB Most common versions of the recipe don’t include nuts at this stage, but I find that they improve the structure. Made as is, with just 120 g flour, this cake had collapsed on me a couple of times. Adding a little nuts makes sure the cake keeps its shape, yet does not make the sponge denser in the way an equivalent amount of flour would.)

Transfer the batter into a greased cake tin. A springform tin is best, because you’ll be layering the cake in it afterwards. It’s important that the tin is no larger than 18 cm diameter because we want a tall cake. Don’t worry, the batter is too runny to bake to a volcano shape! Mine usually comes out with a perfectly flat top.

Bake at 180 C/350 F for approx. 30-40 min, or until a wooden stick inserted into the middle comes out dry.

Sauce

Boil the condensed milk. This will need to be done in advance.

Peel any labels off the tin and place it in a saucepan, on its side. Do not open or pierce the tin. Pour in enough water to cover the whole tin + an inch or so. Cover, put on a hob and heat until the water begins to boil. Then turn the heat right down and cook for 1 hr 30 min. Check that the water is bubbling slightly. Don’t worry the tin will not burst AS LONG AS you make sure the water doesn’t boil away.

Allow to cool completely before opening. When ready, boiled condensed milk has a dark caramel colour and a taste very similar to toffee.

Leave butter on the counter until it is room temperature. If you wish to speed up the process, cut into small chunks or slice. Cream the butter with a spoon or mixer on low speed. Add the cooled “toffee” and nuts and beat together until well combined.

Layering

Slice the sponge horizontally to make 3 equal size layers. If not using a springform tin, lay two sheets of parchment paper, crosswise, into the tin so you can later lift the cake out by pulling at the ends.

Lay the first piece of sponge into the tin. Place half of the cherries onto the sponge, holes down, so that the juices moisten the sponge rather than make puddles in the sauce. There’s no need to defrost frozen cherries, but if you have, pour the drained juice over the sponge. Spoon the sauce in between and over the cherries. Place the next layer of sponge on the top, then cherries and sauce. Finish with sponge and a layer of sauce, but reserve a couple tablespoons for later.

Refrigerate overnight.

Take out, carefully lift out of the tin onto a serving plate. Spread the remaining sauce over the sides.

Decorate as you wish, the easiest way to do it is to dust the top and sides with ground nuts. I used some cherries, almond flakes and butter-cream icing (creamed butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder), and dusted the sides with almond powder.

(Please be lenient on my decorating ability, this was only my third ever go with the icing bag!)

I also like this cake with pieces of prune instead of cherries.

The bottom of the dough.
200 gram flour
1 egg
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 tablespoon of fat (cold)
Pin 1 teaspoon salt
1 vanilla sugar
Baking powder ½
1 tablespoon sour cream

The sponge cake:
6 eggs
6 tablespoons powdered sugar
6evőkanál flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
Baking powder ½ Package

Spreading on the dough by 2 spoonful of jam.

Stuffing.
½ kg of sour cherry
4 medium apples
Optionally, sugar
3-4 tablespoons bread crumbs

The soft dough knead dough hozzávalóiból. If you are a bit stuck, a bit of flour to be.
Aside to rest.
Kimagozzuk Meanwhile, slice the apples and cherries. Not grated!
Put baking the dough, brush a very thin layer of jam. I had raspberry jam.

The pitted cherries and sliced ​​apples Sprinkle two tablespoons bread crumbs firstand then granulated sugar and mix. Sugar to taste.

The baking pastry brush spread with jam. It is very thin!
Alternating stripes we put cherries and apples.
I've also scattered tablespoon bread crumbs on top.

Hi-

I would like to turn a recipe for cupcakes into a layer cake. I would like to use Ina Garten's red velvet cupcake recipe from the How Easy Is That? cookbook. It makes 15 cupcakes. Does anyone have any idea what cake pans I could use instead?

TIA-

Beth

Happy Easter Everyone!/ Wesolego Alleluja!

Polish Babka (babka is not only cake but also 20-30 years old  woman or grandmother)

recipe:http://przytulankaneo.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/polish-babka-for-easter/

Babka's Companion- Sernik- Polish Cheesecake: 

Does anyone have a recipe for a Yeasted Coffeecake but there is no rise required? Recently I saw a recipe but didnt write it down. It had you putting the batter/ dough in a cold oven to start out. Im assuming it was instant yeast....

If you enjoy my blog, please check out the original at leighbakes.wordpress.com!

Thanks for reading!

Read the original blog post here!

On Valentine's Day, I rediscovered a heart-shaped cake pan in the back of my pantry and knew I had to put it to use. Since it was my first cake attempt, I wanted to use another fairly simple recipe, so I found this recipe for dark chocolate cake on allrecipes.com: Dark Chocolate Cake. It got some pretty excellent reviews from the site's readers, including one person who wrote, "I am a pastry chef, and this is the only chocolate cake that I will make from now on." Awfully high praise! When I pictured the finished cake, I couldn't get the image of a glossy chocolate ganache-covered heart cake out of my mind...so I dug up a recipe for red wine chocolate ganache I'd seen on cupcakeproject.com. What could be more sexy and romantic than dark chocolate cake with red wine ganache for Valentine's Day? Okay, here's something you should know about me (if you haven't already noticed): I'm a chocoholic. This means that I often don't consider a dessert worth eating unless it contains a fair amount of chocolate. This also means that I'll need you guys to urge me to try recipes that aren't all about chocolate. I'd gladly welcome any non-chocolate recipe suggestions any time! I didn't really run into any problems mixing the batter, although it did take a long time to prepare the chocolate mixture, sift all the dry ingredients, and beat everything together. I tend to be a slow worker, but I also lack some of the tools that would make all this a lot easier, like a freestanding mixer. The cake came out looking good, though I found those big cracks down the middle distracting. Is that normal for a cake? Maybe I filled the pan too high. Because I wanted to cover this cake with poured ganache instead of frosting, I knew I had to flip it over to hide those cracks. I did, and it looked pretty great. Because I had a lot of extra batter (the recipe fills three cake pans, which I don't have), I made some extra cupcakes. These looked nicer than my last ones, but just like last time, one oozed in the oven. Seriously, why does that happen? Of course, the oozy cupcake became my taste test. I liked this cake a lot, and I can see why it got good reviews: it had a delicate texture and a nice chocolate flavor. It wasn't as moist as my last batch of cupcakes, though, so I think I'll stick with that other recipe the next time I make chocolate cupcakes. But if you're looking for a classy dark chocolate cake, this is a lovely one. More on those cupcakes later! Back to the cake... The ganache was a breeze to make. I liked the way it tasted, though it's not for the faint of heart--that stuff is rich. The very thin layer I poured over the cake turned out to be plenty; if I'd spread it on, it might have been overwhelming. As for the pouring process, it went well except for two snags. Because the cake was so rounded on the bottom, it cracked a little when I flipped it over, which showed through the ganache. Second, it was difficult to coat the sides of the cake as thickly and neatly as I'd have liked. If I were to do it again, I'd make a little more ganache for that purpose. Here's a photo of the cake covered in ganache, plus an ill-advised decoration attempt. I've learned my lesson: ganache and edible red gel do not look good together. I wanted to make a border of gel hearts, but they barely showed up on the dark background. Should've known better. As you can see, I ended up with more of a broken-heart cake than a heart cake...which seemed a little more cynical than what I was going for. I decided to cover up my bad decoration and the crack down the middle with a design using pecans. It was very experimental, but I'm pleased with the outcome. The result was a tasty cake with just the right amount of tasty ganache. The pecans didn't hurt a bit, either. My mom, who loves all things rich and chocolatey, was in love. This was the first thing I'd baked entirely from scratch that I was truly proud of! I'll save my stories about frosting those cupcakes for my next post. As always, thanks for reading and thanks for commenting! It's great to have supportive readers to keep an eye out for me as I stumble through this self-taught baking course.

Read more...

If you want moist homemade chocolate cake that's super easy, you really need to give this one a try! 

Seriously folks, this is mouth happiness!

http://www.brightbakes.wordpress.com

Love,

Cathy B. @ brightbakes