Cake-maker Blair

This past month has been absolutely insane. I realized how insane it’s been by looking through my cell phone and finding all the photos I’ve taken.
Mind you, most of the photos that are in there are either of food or my nephew Collin. So, I figured it was time to put them into a blog series.

First off, we have my new obsession with cakes prepared in Bundt pans. As mentioned a million times in previous blog entries, cooking and baking are not exactly my fortes. Heck, that’s why I keep practicing. For our wedding, we received a chrysanthemum-shaped Bundt pan. I thought it was gorgeous and looked like a lot of fun. So, I quickly started experimenting with recipes.

First off, I made a lemon, blueberry, poppy-seed cake. It had a lemon glaze on it that was to die for. The cake was probably the first dessert I’ve baked in high altitude that I was so proud of, I wanted to enter it into a competition. Not only did it look lovely (as you can see), but it also tasted perfect.

Next up in the Bundt pan arena, I made a lemon chiffon cake. I had never made a chiffon cake before. Heck, I’m not even positive if I’ve ever eaten a chiffon cake before. I knew it was like if pound cake and angel food cake mated and had a sexy, light-weight baby. Since I love both of those things, I figured it was time to try it out.

Of course, I’m always happy when I get to use my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer. I love that thing. I plopped all the ingredients in there, put it on low-mixing, and went to start making everything else. Turns out chiffon is light-weight for a reason. It uses a trillion eggs. The annoying part is you have to separate them into yolks and whites. Sadly, I didn’t read ahead on the recipe enough, so I ended up wasting a lot of eggs. I know, all those starving children. They’re pissed. Don’t have a solution for you, little starving kid.

I poured the cake mixture into the Bundt pan and put it in the oven. Because it is so oddly shaped, I always feel like I need to put the Bundt pan on a cookie sheet, or something that has more of a flat base. Not quite sure if that affects the cakes, but it makes me rest easier.

Then, the odd thing for me is after the cake is made, you are to cool it upside down (or right-side up, depending on your perspective). I didn’t have a cooking funnel (turns out that’s something my cookbook felt was a staple in your home kitchen…), so I decided to get inventive. I put a cooking rack over our kitchen sink and turned it upside down. This got cool air all around the cake and seemed to work well.

As it was cooling, I started making the lemon-brandy glaze. The glaze might be the best part of the cake entirely. Besides being obsessed with the Bundt pan, I also am obsessed with our cake platter, which David’s aunt gave us for our wedding. It’s gorgeous and I never get to use it enough, in my opinion. So, this was the perfect opportunity to use it.

I served it at Cinco de Mayo and people seemed to enjoy it. I brought the leftovers to work the next day and one of my coworkers actually asked me, “Blair, why is everything you bring in shaped-like a Bundt?” After that true statement, I decided it was time to slow down the use of the Bundt pan for a little while.