TOPSY TURVY CAKE

I made this cake for my accountant's wife's birthday. It was a surprise so I had to sneak it over to their house while they were out.

The bottom tier is a 9" chocolate cake with hazelnut buttercream and ganache fillings. I put callebeaut's new crunchy pearls in the ganache to give it a crunch. The middle tier is a 6" marble cake with chocolate buttercream and ganache fillings, and the top tier is a 4" white cake with vanilla buttercream.

I have decided I love 4" cakes. They are so cute!! I never used to make them because they were hard to cover with fondant but I just love their petite size and I think they balance out the whole cake better than 6" toppers.

I love how this cake turned out. The birthday girls' favorite colors are mint green and peach and she also likes gold. I added the lavender because I thought it went well with the other colors. I used an ivory colored fondant over the cakes.

I sure hope she was surprised when she came home to find this cake, I know I would have been.

CHOCOLATE BANANA STUD CAKE

This weeks Heavenly Cake Baker project is the Chocolate Banana Stud Cake. We were supposed to "stud" the top of this cake with upside down chocolate chips. I decided to shave some chocolate onto the top instead. I had a wedding cake tasting today and decided to use this one as one of my cake offerings. I baked the cake in two 6" cake pans because I needed to put a filling in it for the cake tasting. The bride wanted strawberries, I like banana and strawberries together so I thought this would be a good choice. The flavor of the banana is very subtle and I didn't even tell them it was in there at first. The other cake choices were white cake with pastry cream and fresh strawberries and my all time go to chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream.The couple chose the white cake pastry cream combination. They did not love this chocolate banana cake, they thought it was dry. They preferred my regular chocolate cake and I will agree, it is more moist.I noticed after making the chocolate banana cake and refrigerating it overnight that the crumb was a bit crumbly upon torting it. Maybe that is why Rose's suggestion was to make the cake in 1 - 9" round cake pan. I didn't think it was dry just more dense than my other chocolate cake.My husband is eating the leftover Chocolate Banana Stud Cake right now and thinks it is great.

MINI VANILLA BEAN POUND CAKES

After a long time away and many challenges I am happy to be back to participate in this weeks Heavenly Cake baker's project. They are Mini Vanilla Bean Pound Cakes. I wanted to try out this new mini loaf baking pan and this was a good time to use it. The cakes baked up heavenly as do all of Rose's recipes. The cakes have a wonderful taste and vanilla aroma and were very easy to make. The recipe called for a Vanilla Cognac Syrup. I made a Triple Sec syrup because that is what I had on hand.
Check out Rose's Heavenly Cakes for the recipe.