HCB: White Gold Passion Genoise

Passion fruit!!! Where have you been all my life?

HCB: Golden Lemon Almond Cake

As I do not feel like making the Chocolate Tomato Soup cake for this week's HCB selection, I decided to play catch up and make something else from the book.

The lucky cake of the week is the Golden Lemon Almond Cake.

As a habit of making 1/2 a recipe, I thought of taking Rose's alternative suggestion - making 2/3 of the recipe and baking it in a loaf pan.

Of course as I am so used to halving recipes, I started well by toasting 2/3 of the almonds, and measuring 2/3 of the sugar, but then proceeded to measure 1/2 recipe of the flour and leavening, and then mixing all of them together. Okay, so I am not that adventurous that I want to try to bake the concoction - not to mention that it will be awfully sweet - so I threw away everything and started over. If I am a math whiz I can probably figure out what's missing and backtrack but math is pretty low on my list of skill sets :).

Anyway, so first things first, toast almonds! Then grind with some of the sugar until they say "MERCY!" Mix it with the flour, remaining sugar, leavening, and a lot of lemon zest. I used a little bit more than the recipe requires. In a separate bowl, eggs are whisked with a bit of sour cream, lemon oil, and vanilla. Then added in the remaining sour cream and butter to the flour mixture, mix and mix until they are incorporated. Lastly, added in the egg mixture in two additions. Mix, mix, and mix. Well okay, the KA is the one doing all the mixing, I was just standing there and timing the procedures :).

While the cake is baking, I made the syrup. Combined lemon juice and sugar over medium heat until the sugar dissolved. I am happy this recipe calls for turbinado sugar, it gives me a chance to use up my supply.

The cake looks awfully plain in it's loaf pan shape, so I whipped up some dreamy creamy white chocolate frosting and piped roses and rose buds all over. I made 2/3 of the recipe and still had a lot left, so I piped some cute words and presented the cake to hubby - who said "AWWW" at the writing, before he proceeded to chow down a little piece and gave his thumbs up :).

Tasting impressions:
It is so good. Very lemony and moist. It reminds me of a pound cake - a REALLY good one. The frosting adds a nice chocolate sweetness to it. This will definitely get made again and again!

HCB: Banana Refrigerator Cake and Lemon Poppy Seed-Sour Cream Cupcakes

I am blogging about 2 cakes, but I didn't make 2 cakes this weekend. I actually made the banana cake last October. I did, however, made Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes yesterday. I missed it on the bake-a-long so now am trying to catch up.

Back to the banana cake. I love bananas. It is one of my favorite fruit and probably is the one I ate the most. Prior to being part of HCB I used to make banana bread once a month. When I got Rose's new book I couldn't wait to make this cake. So much so that it was one of the 1st cakes I made. I hope it still qualifies as an entry as I haven't blogged about it.

This cake was very easy to make. Process the banana and creme fraiche until smooth in the food processor, add eggs,lemon zest, and vanilla. Then incorporate the flour, salt, and leavening to the banana mixture. Into the oven it goes. The cake baked up very nice with a little dome in the middle.



I read somewhere in Rose's blog that the banana cake would have a little dome because the banana fibers are so strong so it is not possible to make a flat banana cake (you would have to trim it if you want it flat).

Next is the frosting. Also very easy to make. Heat the white chocolate until almost melted, wait until it cool. Then process the cream cheese, butter, and creme fraiche until smooth and creamy. Add the white chocolate into it, and add the almond extract.

And that's it folks!

Decorating is even easier. I wanted to make it look like the book so I just spread the frosting on the cake with an offset spatula and try to make the swirls as nice as I can.



Tasting impression. I love this cake. Sort of expected as I like banana so much. However, I think I should have let the bananas ripen more so it would have more flavor. In any case, it is a very good cake. The frosting is a little rich and sweet for me, I think it's because the white chocolate is very rich. There is not a lot of frosting though so it's still okay.



Now let's talk about the lemon poppy seed-sour cream cake. Boy that is a long name for a cake. I want to make 1/2 a recipe again so I made it as cupcakes.

This cake was also easy to make. Whisk the eggs, 1/4 of the sour cream, and vanilla. Then mix all the dry ingredients in the mixer, add the butter and remaining sour cream. Then add the egg mixture in 2 parts.

I used a tip from Hector from his Hector's Takes website in filling up a cupcake pan, which is to weigh it to make sure each cupcake are the same size. This is also a good rule for me as I tend to overfill the cupcake molds, so weighing it keep me in line! LOL!



1/2 recipe of the Lemon Poppy Seed-Sour Cream cake makes 9 cupcakes, weighing about 58 grams a cupcake. I only have 1 silicone cupcake pan so I have to bake twice, but they still turn out nice. It takes about 35 minutes to bake these instead of the prescribed 45-50 minutes.

Once they are baked, I poked them all over with a skewer, then brush with the lemon syrup. Picture from the top, you can see the skewer holes!