PURE PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE

The Heavenly Cake Bakers project this week was to bake the Pure Pumpkin Cheesecake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes on page 247. I bought some sweedish gingersnap cookies to make the crust from and added an extra ounce of cookie crumbs to the crust recipe. It seemed a bit wet without the extra crumbs plus it was hard to cover the sides and bottom without them.

The cheesecake batter comes out very smooth because a food processor is used. Great idea that I will use in the future.

After baking and chilling the cheesecake I made the caramel topping. I did double the recipe just to have a little extra. I love caramel sauce and this one is very good.

I would suggest cutting the cheesecake before putting the caramel topping on.

Cheesecake is not my favorite but all in all this cheesecake is very good and I love the caramel sauce.

BABY CHOCOLATE OBLIVIONS

I love it when things just work out. I met with some clients at the restaurant about their dessert for a party. They wanted a tasting plate and one of the items to be part of the plate was a flourless chocolate cake. This weeks baking project from Rose's Heavenly Cakes and the Heavenly Cake Bakers were these Baby Chocolate Oblivions, which is really a flourless chocolate cake. Rose suggested we use a silicone muffin pan which I do not have so I decided to use this mini brownie silicone mold instead. I wanted my oblivions to be small for this tasting plate and they turned out the perfect size. I used a 64% extra bitter chocolate so these babies are rich. Rose suggested 60 - 62% chocolate. The recipe only has 4 ingredients, chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs and was very simple to make. After 5 minutes of baking in a water bath, Rose suggests putting another roasting pan over the oblivions and bake another 10 minutes. Because my mold was shallow I just put another sheetpan over the oblivions and baked them another 5 minutes. They came out perfect.

I chilled them overnight. To unmold them I dipped them in hot water for a minute and they lifted right out of the mold. They taste best eaten at room temperature.

When I serve them as part of my tasting plate I will put a small rosette of ganache on them and a little chocolate decoration but for this post I just sprinkled them with powdered sugar.

ROSE & MANZANETA WEDDING CAKE

Delivered this wedding cake today and when I got to the venue all the power was out. Luckily I had asked my husband to come with me to help and he had to carry the cake up two flights of stairs in the dark!! He also kept me from completely loosing it, love that man!!

This cake was designed to match the centerpieces on the tables at the reception. They were manzaneta trees with red roses on them. With all the confusion I forgot to take a picture of the centerpieces but they were impressive. A company called Arrangements made them. I have worked with them for years and Ramon, the owner is the best.

The mother of the bride came in to the banquet hall as I was setting up the cake. She was thrilled and said it was exactly what they wanted. That is the best compliment ever.

PUMPKIN CAKE W/BURNT ORANGE SILK MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM

This week the Heavenly Bakers made the Pumpkin Cake with Burnt Orange Silk Meringue Buttercream from Rose's Heavenly Cakes page 125. The pumpkin cake was a breeze to make but the buttercream is another story. There are three steps to making the buttercream, 1. Creme Anglaise, 2. Italian Meringue, 3. Put it all together with creamed butter, orange juice concentrate, orange zest and a little food color. I decided to double the recipe because it is just too hard to take the temperature of such a small amount of sugar syrup and I had a feeling I would need more buttercream to frost my pumpkin. I did have some left over but I am glad I made extra. This cake was not easy to frost. The little specks you see in the frosting are orange zest so it was impossible to get a smooth finish.


I used a 10 cup bundt pan and cut the cake down to resemble a pumpkin. I reduced fresh orange juice to make my orange concentrate and it worked out quite well. The cake is flavorful, has a nice texture, not too sweet and worked nicely with the orange buttercream.

I made my leaf and stem decorations out of gumpaste.