Everything Sirious
I bake almost every day; rather than list all my bakes, I thought I’d list those that were exceptional, along with suggestions, comments, and sources.
Being part British, I can’t help but love scones, though it’s not something I make that often. I have tried a number of recipes but this one takes the cake, er, the scone! It’s got a great taste (got to like cherry and orange of course), but mostly it’s got that dry but melt in your mouth combination that I find so difficult to achieve. A long chilling time is the key: I’ve done 6-10 hours for mine. https://www.chelseasmessyapron.com/cherry-scones/
This is a strawberry cheesecake – a homemade graham cracker crust baked, then filled with a combo of whipped cream cheese and whipped cream, and topped with a fresh strawberry compote. You could add whipped cream on top but I didn’t think it necessary. Plan on 6 hours in the fridge prior to cutting but then it sliced beautifully and was absolutely yummy.
This strawberry cake is really amazing. It’s not fancy, it’s fairly easy, it’s got a nice presentation, and it just tastes yummy – plain or topped with whipped cream or ice cream. A definite keeper! https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/summer-strawberry-cake.html
Lemon Queen Cakes with Meringue Frosting, Vintage Cakes, pg 50. First of all, this is an amazing dessert if you like lemon curd, lemon cake, and marshmallowy meringue. And it’s a marvel of baking that the water bath allows for a curd to form on the bottom and the cake to appear at the top and it’s all from the same batter. It would be an amazing dinner party dessert and tasted even better on day 2 and day 3. But there are some things to note: I used 6 oz ramekins, filled 4oz up and needed 8 of them. Speaking of 8, note that you need a total of 8 eggs for this – so take them out early to get them to room temp (not mentioned in book, both sets of whites will need to be whipped). When you are ready to distribute the batter into the cups you are using, it’s best to have the batter in a bowl with a spout or a large measuring cup as it’s a little messy otherwise. Note to self to make sure the roasting pan fits in the oven without removal of a shelf; removing the shelf while the oven is hot is always trickier and you lose your oven heat. My bake time was 38 minutes till I saw golden and cracks on top (it is possible my oven temp was closer to 335 than 350). Once you remove the pan from the oven, it’s a little tricky to get the cups out of the hot water without burning yourself or dropping a cup; I needed to use tongs and even then I was worried. For the topping, my whip time was 4-5 minutes (high speed, not medium high speed). Distribute all the topping so you make sure you have enough before shaping it, I found it easiest to distribute with a spatula vs a spoon. The topping was the one thing I might change. It is super sweet and while yummy, I felt it detracted from the amazement of the curd plus the cake. I think next time I would choose a lighter, less heavy and less sweet meringue topping. Still an amazing dessert. YUM!!!! Vintage Cakes’ Lemon Queen Cakes with Meringue Frosting-Famous Fridays — Unwritten Recipes
Oh my. These are richly good. This recipe hails from Frosted by Bernice Baran. While it has several parts that need to be put together, the end result is well worth it. You start with two deeply chocolate sugar cookies that have just the right amount of chewiness and are a good size. These form the outside of the sandwich cookie. The inside is a Italian Meringue Buttercream mixed with a homemade caramel and some espresso powder and vanilla bean paste mixed in. They are good in the fridge for up to a week and you only need one to make a great dessert! This cookbook is a winner.
An interesting no bake recipe from the cookbook “Frosted” by Bernice Baran. And even with no bake, it was a two day ‘bake’, if you will. But oh, how yummy.
You start with a graham cracker crust. Pretty simple. The cheesecake layer is amazing – is it whipping cream, cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, lemon zest and juice, salt and vanilla bean paste. You beat all this to high intensity. Meantime you make a lemon curd (really lemony) and spread the curd on top of the cheesecake layer – and then you freeze the entire thing overnight. The next day you make a Vanilla Meringue Frosting (basically a 7 minute frosting) and layer that on top of the frozen curd, and toast it with a torch. The result? A super airy and light (these two words are key) but very lemony bar. Definitely five stars!!!!
This has to be one of the best things I’ve made, but then I adore whipped cream filled roll cakes. This is a sponge cake (6 egg whites) filled with an espresso/kahlua flavored whipped cream and then topped with a crunch topping which is an espresso toffee that you make on top of the stove, let harden, and then smash into tiny bits. The only caveat is you can’t put the crunch topping on until you are ready to eat it, as if left one for longer than an hour or so it becomes chewy like taffy (and hence a teeth breaker). But OH the taste on this. An excellent dinner party dessert. From Julie Richardson’s Vintage Cakes, a highly recommended cookbook. (Since I shared the dessert with neighbors, I couldn’t put the crunch topping on for the picture).
Frosted, by Bernice Baran, scores another 5 stars with the recipe for Lemon Meringue Cookies. Two sugar cookies sandwiched together with a homemade lemon curd filling, and holding the filling in, a meringue frosting piped around the edge. Wowza. They may not look like much but trust me, one is an entire dessert in itself and is SO good.
Definitely a five star bake, and pretty easy at that. This recipe came from Sarah Kieffer’s The Vanilla Bean Baking Book (highly recommend), pg. 39. With the exception of an orange and maybe the bittersweet chocolate, it has ingredients probably sitting in your baking pantry. It does require a little dough rolling but minimal; also ten minutes in the freezer at one point. It made 8, next time I might cut them smaller and double the amount. Just delicious!!!
You know, I wasn’t going to give this a five star rating until day 2. NOW it’s five star. Don’t get me wrong, I love peanut butter, so much that I eat it every day for breakfast. But I rarely bake with peanut butter – no idea why not, it’s just not been a popular ingredient in my recipe repertoire. But this cake, day two, wow. And day one was not too shabby.
I am not finding it on her website, but it came from her cookbook, Sally’s Baking Addiction (pg 73). This is a dense but delicious peanut butter cake that is one layer and doesn’t rise much, topped with a very thick, very fudge-like chocolate frosting (the recipe makes more than you need for the cake, so you end up with some yummy leftover to use on something else). You do have to be careful not to overcook the cake (pay attention to her note to cover the cake half way through the baking so it doesn’t brown too much); I also needed 8-9 TB of heavy cream in the frosting vs. her 6TB. Use a good quality cocoa powder (note, I recently learned that Dutch Processed Cocoa and Natural Cocoa are totally different and really not interchangeable in recipes, although I’m sure I’ve done it before) – good article at https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/types-of-cocoa-powder-recipes-article. Like I said, day 2 is amazing. (Next time I wouldn’t grid the drizzled peanut butter and simply stripe it I think).
