Monday
Jul202009
A Glorious Day of Baking
Monday, July 20, 2009 at 8:21PM
I actually scheduled a whole weekend off from the dyepots this past weekend, and stuck to it! It was so exciting. And relaxing.
Saturday night was Beth and Ryan's summer party. Every year, they have ONE HUGE BLOWOUT with a tropical theme. This year it was Magnum P.I., complete with a lookalike contest and a Ferrari photbooth (as in someone brought their Ferrari over so you could sit in it and have your picture taken.) Awesome.So I spent the day on Saturday baking (sorta) Hawaiian inspired desserts.
I used to bake all the time. I LOVE baking. Especially because I'm usually not tempted to eat what I bake. The act of baking it is enough to satisfy me. It's been a few months since I've spent the whole day sticking my head in a super hot oven, so this was long overdue and a real treat.
I had ten overripe bananas sitting on the counter, somehow. So I tossed the five that were just way beyond saving and turned the other five into this:
Roasted Banana Coconut Rum Bread, which I won't waste your time on since I've already blogged it here.
and this:
Banana Layer Cake with Chocolate Buttercream.
Yum. I roasted all of the bananas, for both the bread and the cake, because there's no reason not to. It really does bring an incredible richness of flavor to the fruit. This is the recipe I used for the banana cake, and this is the frosting.
It wouldn't be me baking if I didn't tweak the crap out of a recipe (hmm... I do that with knitting too... sensing a theme here). It turned out I didn't have enough cake flour, so I substituted whole wheat pastry flour. It really worked. I was worried the cake would turn out heavy, but it was quite light, considering the fact that I used half of the eggs required. I only had 3 eggs total, when I needed 4 for the rum cake (see below), 2 for the banana cake and 1 for the banana bread. So I used 2 for the rum cake, 1 for the banana cake (upping the yogurt to 1 cup) and just left the egg out of the banana bread altogether. It's kind of amazing what you can get away with leaving out of a recipe sometimes.
Yeah, I also made this:
Caribbean Rum Cake. Or, as I affectionately have dubbed it "Caribbean Rum Cake OF DOOM." Diane, a friend of Nina's, made this beast for a party one time and it was amazing. Oh my god, this cake is, like, WOW.
And as soon as I saw the recipe, I knew why. Look at that. There's A STICK OF BUTTER JUST IN THE RUM SOAK. Crapmonkeys. And a WHOLE CUP OF RUM in the recipe. *hicc* Oh, and is that ANOTHER stick of butter in the cake? Oh yeah? And half a cup of oil too? Okay, sure. Why the hell not.
CAKE OF DOOM AND FATNESS. It's so good, though. Really. Try it sometime. Take a bite, and then just walk away, forget about it. Don't look back.
The party was so much fun, as all their parties are. And I love having these excuses to bake the day away, while giving everything to someone else to eat (and worry about the calories). I can't wait for the next party. There's this key lime cheesecake recipe I found that I want to make.
Saturday night was Beth and Ryan's summer party. Every year, they have ONE HUGE BLOWOUT with a tropical theme. This year it was Magnum P.I., complete with a lookalike contest and a Ferrari photbooth (as in someone brought their Ferrari over so you could sit in it and have your picture taken.) Awesome.So I spent the day on Saturday baking (sorta) Hawaiian inspired desserts.
I used to bake all the time. I LOVE baking. Especially because I'm usually not tempted to eat what I bake. The act of baking it is enough to satisfy me. It's been a few months since I've spent the whole day sticking my head in a super hot oven, so this was long overdue and a real treat.
I had ten overripe bananas sitting on the counter, somehow. So I tossed the five that were just way beyond saving and turned the other five into this:
Roasted Banana Coconut Rum Bread, which I won't waste your time on since I've already blogged it here.
and this:
Banana Layer Cake with Chocolate Buttercream.
Yum. I roasted all of the bananas, for both the bread and the cake, because there's no reason not to. It really does bring an incredible richness of flavor to the fruit. This is the recipe I used for the banana cake, and this is the frosting.
It wouldn't be me baking if I didn't tweak the crap out of a recipe (hmm... I do that with knitting too... sensing a theme here). It turned out I didn't have enough cake flour, so I substituted whole wheat pastry flour. It really worked. I was worried the cake would turn out heavy, but it was quite light, considering the fact that I used half of the eggs required. I only had 3 eggs total, when I needed 4 for the rum cake (see below), 2 for the banana cake and 1 for the banana bread. So I used 2 for the rum cake, 1 for the banana cake (upping the yogurt to 1 cup) and just left the egg out of the banana bread altogether. It's kind of amazing what you can get away with leaving out of a recipe sometimes.
Yeah, I also made this:
Caribbean Rum Cake. Or, as I affectionately have dubbed it "Caribbean Rum Cake OF DOOM." Diane, a friend of Nina's, made this beast for a party one time and it was amazing. Oh my god, this cake is, like, WOW.
And as soon as I saw the recipe, I knew why. Look at that. There's A STICK OF BUTTER JUST IN THE RUM SOAK. Crapmonkeys. And a WHOLE CUP OF RUM in the recipe. *hicc* Oh, and is that ANOTHER stick of butter in the cake? Oh yeah? And half a cup of oil too? Okay, sure. Why the hell not.
CAKE OF DOOM AND FATNESS. It's so good, though. Really. Try it sometime. Take a bite, and then just walk away, forget about it. Don't look back.
The party was so much fun, as all their parties are. And I love having these excuses to bake the day away, while giving everything to someone else to eat (and worry about the calories). I can't wait for the next party. There's this key lime cheesecake recipe I found that I want to make.
Reader Comments (1)
Yummy! gotta try that rum cake! And isn't smitten kitchen the best???!!!