Birthday Cake

When I make a cake for an occasion, it's usually one type of cake - a Mousse Cake. Raspberry, Mango, Peach, Lemon, Blueberry, White Chocolate, Dark Chocolate... I made a lot of different types of mousse cakes. Contrary to a popular belief that the mousse cakes are difficult to make, I find them easy, but time consuming. I remember I tried making my first mousse cake (lemon) after work. I made it, it turned out really good, but I do not want to have this experience ever again. It was hell... I piped the lady fingers and put the cake in the oven and started on the pastry cream. In the middle of doing that I had to remove those lady fingers while trying to continuously whisk the cream. Then I had to cool the pastry cream, cool the cake, juice the lemons, make the lemon curd, cool the curd, whip the cream, soften the gelatin, make the actual mouse, cut the cake, assemble the cake, cool the cake, pour some extra lemon curd over the cooled cake (if cake is not cooled, it's impossible to spread the curd on top)... And all of it in one night after 6 pm... Now I have my system. I make my cake and the lady fingers (if I use them) on one night, while the cake is baking I make a pastry cream (I still don't know whether I prefer a mousse with or without it) and I blend some fruit. The next day I only have to whip the cream, make the mousse and assemble the cake.

But this time my schedule got in the way. There was no way I could make a mousse cake (my heart was set on a really cool recipe for an apricot mousse cake) and still have a good night sleep, so I had to choose something else. This cake was a very unlikely birthday cake, but it turned out better than perfect. It turned out to be one of the best cakes I've ever tasted.

Carrot Cake

Something salty, something sweet...

The plan was to wake up and go to the cottage. Then the plan was to wake up, bake a tray of simple brownies and go to the cottage. Then our computer decided to erase all the pictures. After my boyfriend went to bad at 5 am (that is 5 in the morning, that is 4 hours before we were going to wake up), exhausted from the fight and a victory over our PC, the plan changed.

I woke up and realized that I have about 4-5 quiet hours. There was no question what to do. It was simple. I bake bread and I try a different recipe when I have time. I chose a variation on a Lavash bread, a middle-eastern flat bread, usually eaten with BBQ and just torn in pieces. The dough turned out perfect, it doubled in size and it was light and smooth. After I let it rise for the second time, I shaped two breads and baked them for 20 minutes. The result was amazing. Golden, warm, chewy breads.. I couldn't resist to tear another and another piece from it.

While the dough was proofing I decided to bake something sweet. The brownies sounded too simple, but there was a cake I wanted to make for some time. It was from a Pure Chocolate book by Fran Bigelow and I had all (well, almost all) of the required ingredients on hand. The cake was called L'Orange and one of the main ingredients was oranges. I didn't have oranges in my fridge, but I had a Pure Orange Oil made from real orange zest. It is one of my absolutely favourite ingredients, so I used it. The batter took no time to make, it was simple and a little bit unusual because of the ground almonds used instead of a regular flour. But the baking process (the easy part, right?) took forever... literally... almost literally. According to the recipe, the cake was supposed to be baked after 45 minutes. But 45, 55, 65 and 75 minutes later it was still almost liquid. I had to increase the oven temperature and bake another 15 minutes to get that perfect moist consistency.

I'll definitely make both recipes again. That is if I don't find anything even more interesting to make...

Excuse my photos. I just got a new camer and I still have no clue how to use it

Lavash
L'Orange