Blackberry Hazelnut Layer Cake

September 14, 2019 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

The end of summer is my favourite, still sunny and warm with long golden afternoons but also a sniff of cooler air and the promise of sweater weather (which apparently is here now – we actually lit a fire in the fireplace last night!) and apple pie around the corner. The best part is all the glorious late season fruit – raspberries and peaches and plums (late summer is plum cake season, after all) and my very favourite: blackberries. Weekends in late August and early September, you will inevitably find me crouched on the side of the road or in the ditch foraging for blackberries, coming home with scratched forearms and purple-stained fingers and a bucket of shiny black fruit tasting of summer nostalgia.

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Cinnamon Apricot Pie with Crème Anglaise

September 8, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

This is another pie from The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, and boy, do they really know their stuff. In fact, this may be the tastiest pie that I’ve ever made. I’ve never done much baking with apricots and holy smokes are they ever delicious here! I loved their tart floral flavour next to the warmth of the cinnamon. I finally found Angostura bitters in the grocery store (I guess I didn’t look hard enough last time!) and I like what they added to this pie – the flavour I got from them was almost like allspice, and it was really good with the apricots.

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Stella Parks’ Spiced Vanilla Hot Cross Buns

March 31, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

Guys, I’m having a serious moment with Stella Parks, aka BraveTart. By which I mean, I want to bake all her stuff. Luckily, “her stuff” includes a killer recipe for hot cross buns, so I’m back this year (after a brief hiatus last year) with HCB take seven on the blog. In the past I’ve dabbled in various combinations of chocolate, sourdough, cider, porter, honey, and tea infused HCBs, and this year’s version comes with a hit of vanilla and the unexpected addition of Greek yogurt. One of the things I love best about Parks’ recipes is the way she explains the science behind certain ingredients. In this case, the Greek yogurt adds softness and moisture to the dough, and its acidity also helps with gluten development (and now I understand what “The Lemon Juice Secret” is from the back of the Rogers Flour bag!).

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Grandpa’s 100th Birthday Cake {Chocolate Mocha Layer Cake with Vanilla Buttercream}

January 27, 2018 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

My Grandpa turned 100 in December – an occasion that deserves a celebratory cake if there ever was one! I asked him what his favourite kind of cake was, and when he answered “fruitcake”, I had a worrying flashback to the last fruitcake I encountered – which happened to be the cake at his own wedding 11 years ago when he married his sweetheart Daphne, where it took three people plus a cleaver and an axe to cut through the royal icing on the outside.

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Vanilla Poached Quince

November 11, 2016 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

A few weeks ago, my kitchen was overrun with apples, pears, green tomatoes, and quince. Apples and pears are fairly routine autumnal fruit to deal with (I made apple sauce and dried pears, among other things) and the green tomatoes became green tomato mincemeat, but the quince left me at a bit of a loss: up until my Mum delivered them to me in a box, I’d never even seen one in person, let alone cooked one. Quince are a rather unusual fruit in the same family as apples and pears – in fact, they look like a cross between the two, only their waxy yellow skin is also covered in peach-like fuzz. They have a delicate floral – almost tropical – smell that is incredibly deceiving, because they are totally inedible raw – hard, woody, and mouth-puckeringly tart, even when ripe. When you go to prepare them for cooking, they are very difficult to cut and core, and their flesh oxidizes and and turns brown almost immediately.

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Rhubarb Jam with Vanilla and Earl Grey

June 8, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Rhubarb Jam with Vanilla & Earl Grey | Korena in the Kitchen

Every year I get so excited about rhubarb season, and then often don’t actually get the chance to make anything with it. I have a rhubarb plant in my garden but I’ve moved it ever single year since I got it three years ago (I keep planting it in less-than-ideal places), so it’s never really had a chance to get itself established, and I’ve never gotten a rhubarb harvest from it. But this year I was determined to do something with rhubarb – so I made jam.

Rhubarb Jam with Vanilla & Earl Grey | Korena in the Kitchen

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Mini Vanilla-Orange Creamsicle Cheesecake

May 12, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

Creamsicle Cheesecake | Korena in the Kitchen

This year for his birthday, Nate requested a creamsicle cheesecake. I’ll admit that the creamsicle combination of creamy vanilla ice cream with orange isn’t usually my first choice – especially when there is creamy vanilla ice cream with chocolate to be had instead – but since it was his birthday, I acquiesced. Compared to the chocolate caramel bacon insanity cake from his birthday a few years ago, it was a relatively simple request.

Creamsicle Cheesecake | Korena in the Kitchen

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Chocolate-Dipped Vanilla-Almond Sourdough Biscotti

April 20, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 5 Comments

Chocolate-Dipped Vanilla-Almond Sourdough Biscotti | Korena in the Kitchen

After making a chocolate-hazelnut sourdough biscotti a few years ago, I concluded that sourdough biscotti was just a novelty and not actually a practical way to make biscotti or use sourdough. So I’m not sure what it says about me when I decided to participate in this month’s Sourdough Surprises project, which was – you guessed it – sourdough biscotti, AND decided to use the same recipe as the base. I guess maybe it says I’m drawn to novelty and prone to impracticality. But whatever: I have biscotti.

Chocolate-Dipped Vanilla-Almond Sourdough Biscotti | Korena in the Kitchen

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Daring Bakers: Chocolate & Vanilla Checkerboard Cake

July 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 24 Comments

For the July Daring Baker’s Challenge, Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to bake a cake. But not just any cake; she asked us to add in a special surprise for our eyes as well as our taste buds!

It was my birthday at the beginning of July (thirty one! how the hell did that happen?!) so, as per my favorite birthday tradition, I made myself a cake. Coincidentally, the Daring Bakers challenge this month was to make a cake with a surprise on the inside, so I made this cake, which looks like nothing special at first…

Chocolate & Vanilla Checkerboard Cake | Korena in the Kitchen …

Pear-Filled Vanilla Birthday Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

October 16, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

One of my co-workers recently had a birthday and a cake was requested, so I obliged with a vanilla cake filled with pears and frosted with chocolate buttercream. It went over really well at work (someone actually said, “This is the best cake I’ve ever had!” 🙂 ) so I have a feeling I’ll be making more. This will continue the trend of me having made more cakes in the past six months than I have in the past six years, but that is totally fine with me ;).

The slightly battered piece I brought home for Nate

This vanilla cake (aka yellow cake, because it contains egg yolks) is super easy to make and comes out fluffy, moist, and delicious. It’s my favorite plain cake recipe because it doesn’t require any fancy ingredients and it could easily be jazzed-up-up with lemon or orange zest or something. I baked it at a slightly lower temperature than the recipe stated and wrapped the pan in strips of damp towel to insulate it against getting a big domed top, and the cake came out perfectly baked and perfectly level. I wanted to fill it with something fruity, and over Thanksgiving my mum gave me a big bag of gorgeous pears from her pear trees, so I sautéed some in butter and brown sugar and spread it between the cake layers. I also wanted to try proper Swiss meringue buttercream frosting after the cream cheese frosting fiasco, and it came out awesome! Fluffy, buttery, and not too sweet. I can’t wait for an excuse to make it again in another flavour. Plus it was really fun to decorate with :).

Pear-Filled Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Because of all the butter in the frosting, this cake should be stored in the fridge, but let it come to room temperature before serving – the texture of the filling will be much better, and cake tastes best when it’s not cold anyway!

Yellow Vanilla Cake

Modified slightly from A Passion for Baking by Mary Goldman.

Can be baked as a sheet cake in a 9″x13″ pan, as a circular layer cake in two 9″ round pans, or as 24 cupcakes. The original recipe says to bake at 350˚F, but I had success with 325˚F.

Preheat oven to 325˚F. Spray/grease your pan(s) and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

In a mixer bowl, cream together:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Mix until light and fluffy, then add:

3 eggs (one at a time, mixing after each)

1 tsp vanilla

Mix until well blended.In a bowl, combine:

3 cups all purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix on low speed while slowly pouring in:

1 1/2 cups warm milk

Blend until the batter is smooth. Pour into prepared cake pan(s) and spread the batter evenly. Wrap the pans in a strip of wet towel to insulate the edges of the cake from cooking faster than the middle and creating a domed top. Bake at 325˚F for 35-45 minutes, until lightly golden brown on top, slightly springy when touched, and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with no crumbs (check after 35 minutes). Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then invert onto a wire rack, peel off the parchment paper, and cool completely. Split, fill, and frost as desired (it’s easier if the cake has been chilled before splitting it).

Pear Filling

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt:

3 tbsp butter

Add:

3 cups finely diced pears

Sauté until softened. Add:

3 tbsp brown sugar

a dash each of nutmeg and salt

Cook until the pears are very soft and the juice is syrupy. Stir in:

a squeeze of lemon juice

Remove from the heat and let cool before filling the cake. The butter in the filling will solidify if kept in the fridge, so serve the filled cake at room temperature (it’s fine to store it in the fridge though).

Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting

From Sweetapolita. For a detailed tutorial on making Swiss meringue buttercream, click here.

Makes about 5 cups of frosting, enough to frost the outside of a 9″x13″ cake, to frost and fill a 9″ round 2-layer cake, or to frost 24 cupcakes. Best made in a stand mixer because it requires a lot of beating!

Cut 1 pound (2 cups) of butter into cubes and leave at room temperature to soften slightly. Pour a splash of vinegar or lemon juice in a mixer bowl and wipe out with a paper towel to remove any traces of oil. Also wipe down the whisk attachment with vinegar/lemon juice. This ensures that there is no oily residue that will prevent the egg whites from whipping up.

In the perfectly clean mixer bowl (not attached to the mixer), combine:

5 egg whites

1 cup + 2 tbsp granulated sugar

Make a bain marie/double boiler by placing the mixer bowl over a small pan of simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl is no touching the water). With the whisk attachment, stir the egg white-sugar mixture until it comes to 140˚F, or use your (clean) fingers to feel that the sugar is totally dissolved in the egg whites and the mixture is hot. Note that you are stirring to keep the mixture from turning into scrambled egg whites, not to incorporate air. Attach the mixer bowl and whisk to the mixer and beat the egg whites at medium high speed until stiff peaks form. Continue stirring on low speed until the egg whites are COMPLETELY cool – the side of the bowl should be cool to the touch.When the egg whites are cool, it’s time to add the butter. Switch the whisk for the paddle attachment, and mixing on low speed, add in the cubes of butter, one at a time, allowing the butter to incorporate before adding the next cube. The egg white meringue will fall and go through various stages of looking weird and curdled as you add the butter – this is all okay. When all the butter is added, the mixture will probably look quite clumpy, curdled, and thick. Keep stirring on low and after a few minutes it will emulsify and smooth out into a thick, creamy, fluffy frosting.Add:

2 tsp vanilla

dash salt

3/4 cup chocolate chips, melted and cooled

Stir well to incorporate the chocolate.Keep the frosting at a cool room temperature to frost the cake.

To Assemble the Cake:

Split the cooled cake in half horizontally and place the bottom layer on a cake board, protected by 4 strips of waxed paper. Pipe a wall of frosting around the edge of the layer, and spread the cake with the pear filling. Place the second layer on top, and coat the cake with a thin “crumb coat” of frosting. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes, until the frosting is set, then frost with a thicker layer. Decorate as desired – this frosting is great for piping.