Torta Della Nona

December 7, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

Creamy custard inside a crisp, cookie-like tart shell, the whole thing flavoured with vanilla and lemon and topped with toasted pine nuts. Is your mouth watering yet? It should be, because I’ve just described an Italian dessert called Torta Della Nona and it is SO GOOD. Translated as “grandmother’s cake”, this was the November Daring Kitchen Challenge hosted by Ginger-Z, and of course, I’m over a week behind schedule for posting about it. But once again, better late than never – this one is worth the wait!

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German Apple-Quince-Almond Cake {Apfel-Quitte-Marzipan-Kuchen}

November 20, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Luisa Weiss‘ new book, Classic German Baking, ever since she first started sharing her adventures in recipe development about a year ago. I have yet to get my hands on the actual book, but since its release, several recipes have popped up online, including one for a completely gorgeous apple-marzipan cake, which is described as “epic“. In the fall, I’m a sucker for anything apple, and almonds are quickly becoming my favourite flavour for almost everything, so this cake was immediately added to my weekend baking list.

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Decorated Swiss Rolls

October 27, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

This month I hosted the Daring Kitchen challenge and invited the group to make decorated Swiss rolls, aka “deco rolls”, in the style of Japanese food blogger and cookbook author Junko, who has taken the internet by storm with her adorable “kawaii” versions. This concept is a standard French pastry technique with the use of décor paste to create a pattern on a joconde sponge (which was tackled by the Daring Bakers back in 2011), and making it into a Swiss roll is an obvious next step, so when I was preparing this challenge, I decided to try it the French way. Unfortunately the results were not stellar – the décor paste cracked and the filling escaped when I rolled the cake up, because the décor paste was harder and less flexible than the surrounding sponge cake.

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Torta Hrapocusa (Dalmatian Dol Cake)

October 13, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

I got all proactive and made September’s Daring Kitchen challenge recipe – an almond and walnut cake called “hrapocusa” – at the beginning of the month, and then of course didn’t get my act together to post about it on time. Like, at ALL. Sigh. ANYWAY. Back in September, Jason of Daily Candor challenged us to make this regional specialty of the tiny town of Dol on the Dalmatian island of Brac. The torta hrapocusa is a two-layer cake primarily composed of nuts, with a bottom layer of orange and cherry liqueur-scented almond sponge cake and a sugared walnut topping that is meant to resemble the rocky shores of the island. This is certainly a unique cake and one that I never would have come across without the Daring Kitchen!

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Apple Pies and Pastry Tricks

September 23, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Now that it’s officially fall, part of me is like, “where the heck did summer go so fast?” and the other part of me (the part that prefers slippers to shorts and likes putting on a jacket to go outside) is all, “FALL! I’VE BEEN WAITING SO LONG!” Other than the wardrobe options, I love this season because pretty much every year, someone or other gives me a bunch of baking apples from their tree or their parent’s tree or their cousin’s neighbour’s son’s teacher’s tree. Everyone has apples to give away and I will happily take them all, because it means I can make apple pie, and that is about my favourite thing to make.

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{Naked} Carrot Wedding Cake

September 10, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 1 Comment

In July, I made a wedding cake for my friend Clare and her now-husband Tony. I’ve known Clare for most of my life – we first met in grade 1, and we shared the unique experience of having parents who were teachers and/or principals in a small town, thereby ensuring that most of our friends had been either taught social studies, ukulele, French and/or given detention by our mum or dad. We were in French immersion together from grade 7 onward, and I have a vivid memory of dressing as the Spice Girls with a group of friends for one of her epic birthday parties (I, slightly unconvincingly, was Scary Spice). We sort of lost touch after high school when we both moved away to university and started Adult Life, but I was totally thrilled when Clare told me she was getting married and asked if I would make her cake. Obviously, I said yes!

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Martha Stewart’s Carrot Cake

July 28, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

When it comes to carrot cake, there are a few non-negotiables: there must be carrots, nuts, spices, and cream cheese frosting. From here, carrot cake fans seem to be divided into two camps: those who prefer their cake “without stuff”, ie: no additions to the list above, and those who like their cake “with stuff”: raisins, pineapple, coconut, dates, etc. I discovered this divide when doing carrot cake research (it’s totally a thing) after a friend asked me to make her a carrot wedding cake. I already knew of a fantastic carrot cake “with stuff” (courtesy of the rebar cookbook), so I needed one “without stuff” to compare. It just so happened that Nate needed a birthday cake, and carrot cake is his favourite. Recipe testing win!

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Twinkie Bundt

June 30, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Never having eaten a Twinkie, and – perhaps more importantly – never having wanted to eat a Twinkie, I wasn’t all that tempted to make the Twinkie Bundt Cake when it started making the rounds on food blogs… until my cousin Cecilia posted Smitten Kitchen’s version on my Facebook wall, along with three little words: “I dare you!” It was a long weekend, I had no plans, and well, she dared me – so Operation Twinkie Bundt was born.

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Homemade Wedding Cake, Part III: Assembly and Decoration

June 7, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

At last, we are at the end of the Homemade Wedding Cake saga! To recap thus far, we’ve made vanilla butter cake, and we’ve also made vanilla buttercream, blackberry compote, chocolate ganache, and vanilla-bourbon syrup. Now it’s time to put them all together and make that wedding cake!

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Homemade Wedding Cake, Part II: Fillings and Frosting

May 19, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

Previously, we talked vanilla butter cake… and now we’re talking fillings, frosting, and et cetera (and assembly and decoration talk can be found here). The fillings here are blackberry compote and chocolate ganache, the frosting is vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, and the et cetera is a vanilla bean-bourbon simple syrup for brushing on the cake layers.

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