Back to Baking Through ...the Cake Bible

Yes, finally! We have returned to The Cake Bible. Robb and Janet actually got together for a day of baking and made a couple of things: The Scarlett Empress p.177, and Orange Glow Chiffon Cake p.155.

The Empress was OK, we had made the sponge cake and rolled it up with raspberry puree back in, dare I say... October. It sat patiently waiting in the freezer until this past week. This was not a great idea, but when we tucked it away, we thought we'd be back to it in a couple of weeks, not in several months! The texture of the cake didn't suffer, but the flavor did. We decided to push ahead and get it done, even with the not so tasty cake. This spectacle of the Empress is what we were interested in, and we figured it would be just fine if we didn't greedily gobble up every morsel.

The outside of the cake is slices of jelly roll and the filling is a vanilla Bavarian cream. It's a nice idea, an unusual twist compared to a regular buttercream filled layer cake. The flavor possibilities are endless, and all you need is a bowl to use as a mold.

We decided to whip out another cake while we were waiting for the Bavarian cream to set up. In the sponge-type cake section of The Cake Bible are a bunch of chiffon cakes and we chose the Orange Glow Chiffon Cake. Chiffon cakes have all the lovely qualities of angel food cake, along with an improved texture and flavor due to the addition of fat- oil and egg yolks. Go figure, fat makes stuff taste good. I loved the chiffon cake, it needs no frosting and satisfies a cake jones without much trouble.

Happy Baking!
Janet