Some of my recent baking...

Black Forest Cake
For the week of March 14th, we made a black forest cake at George Brown.  This is devils food cake, which makes up the Black Forest Cake.

Now generally, I have never really been a huge fan of the black forest cake.  The cake is always so dry, which does not make for a nice cake-eating experience.  Well we learned a little secret in class, which helped the cake stay moist for days!  You make a syrup, add some kirsch (or whatever flavour for your cake) and brush it onto the cake layers.  Next add some cherries and whipped cream!

And then decorate it - which is the fun part!

So now I am a fan of the Black Forest Cake.  I will definitely make it again, as both myself and my boyfriend loved it. 


Shortbread Cookies
On Sunday, I decided to make a big batch of shortbread cookies, as I wanted to send out a couple of gifts to some friends and family.  It's my grandmother's recipe, but a basic shortbread, which I doubled and divided into 3 batters.  I made a plain shortbread and added some sprinkles for fun; toasted pecans (which are my personal favourite); and chocolate chunk shortbread.

I sent some to my brother and sister-in-law.  Unfortunately they were not home to accept the package, so they drove to the Purolator office to pick them up.  They messaged me, in the office, eating the cookies.  They could not even wait to get home to open them!  That made my day!!

Chocolate Eclairs

And as if that was not enough baking for one day, my baking partner at George Brown came over and we baked up some eclairs that afternoon!  I, probably like you, was intimidated by the thought of making an eclair.  But it turns out, it's not that difficult.  You just need some patience, as they have to bake for 30 minutes.  And with the recipe we used, there were about 4 batches to go in the oven.  Then there's a cooling time before filling with whipped cream and dipping in the chocolate.  We learned afterwards that we were not supposed to open the oven door, as that can flatten the wonderful morsels.  But luckily only 1 batch flattened, and we still had about 40 eclairs at the end of the day!  I will definitely make these again, but maybe do a custard for the filling next time.

Swiss Rolls

This week at George Brown, we made some Swiss Rolls.  The cake was a very light sponge cake, made up of only eggs, sugar, vanilla and flour!  Then we covered the cake with some raspberry jam, whipping cream, and rolled it up and covered it with more whipped cream.  Now the whipped cream that we used in the school was partially real and partially fake.  I found that it had a real fake whipped topping taste to it, so I would definitely change this if I were to make it again, as I am not a fan of the 'man-made' products. 

That is it so far!  I will post more when I bake again - which I am sure will be soon.

Love and Happy Eating,

April's SweetShop