Pink Lemon Poppy seed cake

Here's a fun cake!

A little contrast with the frosting made this lemon poppy seed cake POP!

The frosting is a new recipe, normally I make swiss meringue buttercream but not having any egg whites on hand (sometimes a bad thing can turn into a great thing!) I ventured out to try something new.

A cooked buttercream recipe, the milk, sugar, heavy cream and a tad bit of flour are cooked into a bachamel type consistency then it's cooled down and whipped while small cubes of room temp butter are added.

It's really amazing!

The recipe is courtesy of Bourbonnatrix without the caramel part, and even so the sugar amount was perfect.

She mentioned having a little trouble with it going soupy and thankfully that did not happy with me, I cooled the creamy mixture down really well and actually made the entire process by hand (I know, totally stupid but my kitchen aid broke down!! Check out the bang up marks on my hand from whisking like mad with my teeny tiny whisk)

It worked! Had to put it in the fridge a few times before it was about to split, and also while adding the food colouring. You could use red food colouring or concentrated beet juice (if I had any I would have gone with it - natural colours are so much healthier than artificial)

Frosting:

Cooked Frosting

Inspired by Baked Explorations recipe

In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

Add:

1 1/3 cups milk (I used 2% honestly)

1/2 cup heavy cream

If using whole milk use 1 1/2 cups and 1/3 heavy cream.

Cook over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until the mixture comes to a boil and has thickened, about 10-15 minutes.

Transfer the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer, and beat with the paddle attachment until cool. Reduce speed to low, and add:

1 1/2 cups softened butter, cubed

1 tsp pure vanilla

Mix until thoroughly incorporated, the increase speed to medium-high and beat until the frosting is light and fluffy.

If using food colouring add it in at the end or mix it with the creamy milk mixture.


Cake recipe is thanks to Technicolor kitchen

I varied it slightly by using up some extra coconut milk I had instead of the water in the glaze.

Also using sour cream instead of buttermilk and thinning it down to the consistency of buttermilk also using canned coconut milk.

She got 3 cakes out of the batter and I measured 2 and 6 cupcakes. All the syrup was used to drench the two cakes.

Fresh Coconut Loaf cake

I saw this fresh moist looking coconut cake and knew my little sister would love it!

There were two versions of the cake on the original site (here) and I went with fresh, it was a lot of peeling and shaving and to be honest half of the flesh did not infuse into the milk at all (which evaporated into about 1 tbsp) so I went with the fresh flesh and canned coconut milk to make up the rest of the milk that had evaporated.

The glaze also split once, then the second batch split while on the cake (which was probably still warm) but all in all it was good, and everyone loved it!!

So for all you coconut lovers out there this is a keeper, but I would recommend adding a coconut extract for more flavour and maybe finding a good coconut tasting fresh coconut (some of them taste of nothing)

If you can buy pre shredded then you're in luck as it'll save you lots of time.

Give it a try and let me know! :)

p.s I got one loaf by halving the fresh coconut recipe but using 3 eggs instead of 2.5 as there is no point in trying to halve an egg.


Thanks to my sisters for the lovely shots, that's me holding the cake in the shots below and pigging out while they both shoot the cake.