This week's cake-of-the-week for the Heavenly Cake Bakers is from the cakelet section, making 6 largish cupcakes using a specialty Maryann pan--that's a pan that bakes a little depression in the top of the cake or cupcake, suitable for filling with fruit or a topping. I have a Maryann pan inherited from my mother, never used until the Heavenly Cakebake-along started. It's nice to be able to get the right pan down from the top shelf, and not have to debate the purchase of something new.I think this week's post will be mostly pictures--as others have commented, this is a pretty straightforward cake, even though it has 5 components: cake, syrup, glaze, chocolate cream, and drizzle.
The Maryann pan that will create cakelets with a depression in the top of each one.
The cake itself is a genoise, which means beating the eggs and sugar for 5 minutes in a stand mixer as the egg foam provides the lift for the cake.
At the end of the 5 minutes, a lovely fluffy mixture to be blended with the flour, salt, and browned butter.
Browned butter (not very brown--I got impatient at the end), with vanilla, about to have some of the egg mixture folded in.
The genoise is complete and ready to bake.
Just out of the oven, with the cakelets barely browning and just starting to pull away from the edges of the pan.
The syruping of the cakelets was not so photogenic, but here you can see the glisten that the apricot glaze gives. The glaze also seals the cakes to keep them moist with the syrup.
The components for the chocolate cream, a chocolate custard. This was really luscious stuff.
Cakelets are filled and ready for the last step, a drizzle of chocolate ganache for decoration.
Ta da! Chocolate Bull's Eye Cake.Tasting results: very favorable. Nephew likes the way all the flavors came together (but my brother was less certain that it all melded--he liked the components but was unsure about the combination). The nieces liked it. We all thought the cake was nice and moist, a point where we often find RHC lacking. And S., a friend of younger niece's who was having a sleep-over, said "This cake is amazing!"
Your finished cake looks perfect!
ReplyDeleteI have to second Lois. It's perfect! Looks just like the booth. I envy your smooth chocolate drizzle.
ReplyDeleteyou drizzled so precisely; i love it!
ReplyDeleteI'll have to be on the lookout for those mini MaryAnn pans. Your cakelettes look perfect! I used one large MaryAnn-like pan that worked well too.
ReplyDeleteohhh look at that.. better than the picture in the book I tell you! Your chocolate drizzle rocks. I had to do mine quick.. we were having cool temperature here in FL and as I was moving my drizzle back and forth the chocolate harden second by second....
ReplyDeleteThanks, all!
ReplyDeleteFunny thing about the drizzle. I did the 3 cakes plated glass plates first for practice, thinking that my white platter with 3 cakes lined up would be the showpiece. What happened? The first ones came out great, then as I got lower on the supply of ganache in my baggie, the drizzle started to squiggle! I needed the low camera angle on the white platter to minimize the strange drizzling. :)