Cak # 93 Tropical Ring Cake

October, and thus Autumn, is upon us in Maryland, and like every fall, the weather has turned cold and nasty, and the ground soggier by the day. It seemed then a perfect time to introduce the last cake in the book that has a summer feel to it, the Tropical Fruit Cake. Eating this cake is like eating the last bit summer, sitting on a warm beach in Key West, watching the fading light of sunset over the Gulf of Mexico, smelling the salty mixture of humid air and seafood. This little slice of summer of heaven, coinciding nicely with the end of the Boy's of Summer season in New York, is a throwback to the great days of summer, with little to do but watch the kids get older and the days get longer. Now, the days are shorter, the nights colder, and schedule full of holiday related items. Last week, we took both kids to Weber's Farm to pick out pumpkins. This week, we will pick out their costumes. Next week... who knows?

The cake this week called for flour, sugar, baking powder, vanilla, eggs, butter, and dried mixed fruit soaked in lime juice. The icing, an easy concoction to make, was just lime juice and powdered sugar, drizzled over the cake. The whole thing was garnished with some more dried fruit on top for decoration. Though the recipe called for fruit such as pineapple and mango, I went with a more regional approach including grapes, peaches, and apricot. A delicious cake to say the least!

My cake:

The book's Cake:

Check in next week to see what wonderful concoction we come up! Only a few cakes to go!

Cake #91 Lime Halva Cake and #92 Pear Cake

For a weekend that is steeped in baseball significance unseen in Baltimore for fifteen years, it seems apropos that this week's blog will be a double-header. Let me just say that I, like all Baltimore sports fans, am totally psyched that this weekend we have playoff baseball, as well as a still-dominant, if aging, Raven's team taking the field at 4-1 (oh boy ... Ted would be so proud at the theme of this blog so far). The reason why this week's blog is a double-header is because this week was spirit week in school, and between Baltimore sports and Edgewood sports, there was  just no time to get a blog written for last weekend's cake, so I am incorporating both cakes into this blog.

So this week was spirit week at a school and what a week it was. Just being back to school from maternity leave, I was overwhelmed to say the least, not even counting the added stress that teaching two nights at Towson adds. Ted had soccer two of the nights as well, which meant that on nights that I wasn't at Towson, I was with the kiddies after school until Ted got home; both of the kids were fantastic and I got lots of great times with them taking pictures and posing for the camera, but it was still stressful.  We had a great time dressing up for Manic Monday, Twin Tuesday, Nerd Wednesday, Superhero Thursday, and Spirit Friday ... special thanks goes out to all my A-side buddies who dressed up with me as well! The week was great, but of course, anytime you allow students to dress up, there is going to be some extra-special craziness in the classroom - kind of like a week long full moon! 

On Saturday night, Ted and I then chaperoned the homecoming dance. I feel like after five minutes on the dance floor, I could easily write a best-selling book entitled, "How to know when your dress is too short... and other life lessons learned at a High School Dance." The dance went really well, and I certainly do not mean to imply that every, or even most young ladies were dressed inappropriately, but it was enough to make me feel old. Only a decade removed from my own homecoming,  I on more than one occasion looked at Ted and made some comment that started with the line, "back in our day..." I think this is why I love teaching at Edgewood and at Towson, as well as why I love participating in things like spirit week; it keeps me in touch with the youthful moments in life that many people lose over time, and yet it always keeps me self-aware of the positive attributes of aging, like maturity and responsibility. Anyway, enough Dr. Phil-like speeches, on to the cake.

The first cake I made, last week, was a Lime Halva Cake, an interesting creation that would have seemed quite appropriate to eat in a swanky Cuban nightclub in 1950's Havana. Calling for semolina, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, ground almonds, lime juice and lime rind. Working with semolina was weird, as I had never actually seen it before, and assumed that it was really only used in pasta. It worked well though. The cake was topped with a homemade lime syrup made with sugar, lime juice, water, cinnamon.

My cake:

 The book's cake:

This week's cake was different than the Lime Halva cake, and yet brought it's own uniqueness. Aside from the standard ingredients of flour, brown sugar, pears, butter, eggs, baking powder,vanilla, and lemon rind, the cake also called for a mixture of rolled oats, sunflower kernels, and pumpkin seeds to mixed into the batter right before baking. As the cake was placed in the oven, I had to sprinkle raw brown sugar on top, in order to give the pears on top a crunchy, sweet crust. 

My cake and the book's cake:

Overall, both cakes were successful though Ted admitted that neither were to his real taste. I think that will be the status quo for these last few cakes, as they are all ones that we have saved for two years to bake (many for obvious reasons). Check in next week to see what crazy cake we have in the oven! Until then, happy baking!