It's Not Lisa's Tiramisu

Rolf is off to Germany is week, and to make sure Cakehour is still being honored in his absence, we have designated this week as the LRC Graduate Student Cakehour Competition Week. We kick off this exciting event with an entry by our favorite Italian friend, Lisa. Over the past couple years, we have all being thoroughly spoiled by Lisa's various delicious and authentic Italian desserts. What is she going to make this time? Is it going to be Tiramisu? Or perhaps Torta di Ricotta? Or is she going to surprise us with a non-Italian dessert?

It's a Cannoli Cake!

Back to Basics

You had to have noticed the two really rich cakes that came in the last two sessions.  After such  indulgence, not to mention difficulty in trying to finish the behemoths off we went back to basics today and opted for some good and respectable coffee cakes!  One was from the Boston Coffee Cake Company which does a very respectable job. This version was a "Marble Madness" coffee cake which you can imagine was indeed a marbled mix of chocolate and vanilla cake with some chocolate chips thrown in for good measure.  It was pretty good and like most coffee cakes neither too heavy nor too sweet.

Today's offering

Can't go wrong with the Old Boston Coffee Cake Company

Marble Madness!

Classic Sour Cream Cake with Cinnamon

Celebrated since 1801....hmm?

The offerings are ready.

Love that layer of cinnamon on the insid

The second one was from G.H. Bent company and was the classic - a Sour Cream Coffee Cake.  Great most, yellow cake covered with cinnamon sugar. Like you read about.  We were intrigued by the byline on the label - "Celebrated Since 1801."  The big question would be celebrated where?  We had never heard of G.H. Bent and certainly could not confirm the long history of the company nor the cakes. But this one was certainly celebrated today.  The next time we come across a Bent cake we won't hesitate!

Whoops we did it again!

After last week's monster cake you would think we would stick with more modest creations. Ha, that didn't last long! Now that all the slots for December are filled I'm sure there are many things to look forward to!  Today we were presented with an Italian Creme Cake from Sam's Club.  What is that you ask?  We don't know we reply!  We weren't at all sure what this would be but, as in the mass murder cake, it was a BIG cake.

Doesn't look half bad!

Decorative top!

Just what is an Italian cream cake?

Ready to dig in..

From the title we imagined something creamy and full of rum soaked filling.  Surprise!  The inside for the most part was a standard whitish cake with some nut flavoring and nuts. I guess where the cream comes in is with the frosting. This cake was über-frosted. Really! In one of the pictures you can see that the frosting on the top is over one half inch thick. This was not a light frosting either so if you wanted a piece from the edge of the cake you had to really like frosting. It was also covered with shredded coconut just to add some more vegetable fat. A lot of it got left on the plates but there was no serious attempt at cake art today.

Some of us were incredulous at the news today that Ryan Secrest is getting $60m for a radio show.  This on top of Google buying Groupon for $6b dollars.  Not everyone in this country is enduring tough economic times!

Two days of Famous Amos and enough is enough

No one signed up for Monday and no one signed up for Tuesday. Fortunately when we raided the machine we noticed that there was a large number of Famous Amos cookies in one of the slots and the 3 oz size to boot!  So we were able to satisfy our sweet teeth with something respectable. Famous Amos cookies aren't that bad. On Monday we supplemented it with a random pack of sugar frosted donuts form the "Broad Street Bakery" wherever that is.  On Tuesday we included a pack of Oreos and some Rice Krispies Treats.  Oreos are Oreos so no complaint there, the donuts were as they were expected to be but the commercially prepared Rice Krispies treats were God awful! They can best be described as sickeningly sweet with the Krispies seemingly predigested or mashed. Anyone who had these things growing up as a kid here would be appalled at how bad they are.  Our European friend who was trying them for the first time was not impressed and it took some reassuring that the homemade version is much better.

Monday's selection!

The 3 oz package is actually a respectable amount!

Broad Street Bakery Donuts

Tuesday's selection!

Original my foot!  Stick with the ones that Grandma makes at home!

But enough is enough!  Since we couldn't rely on pure volunteerism to fill in the cake calendar a little arm twisting was done and in about five minutes we got the calendar filled for December. Next week has even been dubbed grad student cake week because all the slots were randomly taken by graduate students. Let's see what kind of competition that turns out to be!

Mass Murder by Chocolate

We thought we had seen some pretty intense cakes but this one was quite a confection er concoction. Everyone has heard of '"Death by Chocolate" as a description of a sinfully chocolaty dessert. Well this thing was so over the top that we dubbed it "Mass Murder by Chocolate".  The official name is "Skyscraper Devil's Food Cheesecake" made by Junior's Most Fabulous Cheesecake and Desserts. It was about 6 inches tall and about 15 inches in diameter. The cake was cut into 14 slices but sticking to the  suggested serving size would accommodate 52 people.  This was basically a devil's food cake on top of a New York cheesecake.  And Junior did not skimp on any ingredients. This was one rich cake.  We ended up serving about 5 people per slice because it was truly a lot to consume.  We learned quickly that this cake was best eaten in small doses because a large slice would at the minimum provide the daily recommended caloric intake for an average person.

All wrapped up and waiting..

When there are 52 servings in the box..something is up!

Most fabulous?

The beast appears!

Only 14 slices were cut..it was impossible to eat one.

Butter cream on top, cheesecake in the middle and gigantic chocolate chunks on the side

A Devil's food cake on top of a cheesecake...who thought of this?

Ready to chow down!

It took about twenty people to get through four and a half slices.

That did not stop a few of us from trying. One of our cacklers walked away with an entire slice.  Try as she did it took several days to complete it.  We had quite an assembly for this cake but managed to use up only five of the pieces.  Imagine our surprise when the next day there were another five slices gone. Apparently it was not too much to handle for some of the after hours crowd. The next day we tried again but found it slow going.  Only an hour later though almost all of the remaining five pieces were gone. Who was pigging out on this cake?  In reality no one. The person who brought it ended up taking some slices back to his abode to share with some colleagues.  Since the paid $60.00 for the cake - a cake hour record - we presume he wanted to get a little more bang for his buck. We had no problem with that and appreciated the fact that it ended up getting the cake out of here that much faster! 

Two days later...all that remained!

Don't underestimate Pastiche!

We've had many of the fruit tarts or flans or whatever you want to call them from Pastiche on Federal Hill in Providence, one of our favorite bakeries.  Most of the time they are adorned with sliced fruit in a pretty pattern and of course finished with a glaze to hold the fruit in place. The fruit is usually chosen to create a colorful presentation and usually consists of berries, mango, and kiwi - you know - things with contrasting colors.

Always a favorite ..something from Pastiche!

Yep, those are cranberries!

Piled pretty high, too!

A few raspberries for flourish!

The glaze and the pastry cream helped the tart from being too tart!

Imagine our surprise when this time around the tart is covered to the max with a mix of raspberries and many, many cranberries. Yep, I mean cranberries. Granted this is the cranberry season but given that they tend to the sour side their prolific use on this cake was quite audacious.  We imagined we would all be going home with puckered lips from the sourness but that did not turn out to be the case at all. The glaze was just sweet enough to offset the cranberries which did provide a tang. That tanginess was further moderated by the raspberries and the pastry cream below the fruit. So despite the belief that because of the cranberries this could turn out to be a miss it was indeed a hit.

French Modern Cake Art

One of our newest colleagues hails from France as in Vive la!  For one of her first contributions she reached to a French recipe. How appropriate!  This was a yellow cake with many layers and homemade chocolate frosting. Despite the disclaimer that the cake did not rise correctly in fact the layers looked pretty good. The cake was a little squat so squeezing all four layers into it is an impressive accomplishment. Of course the best part was the decorative chocolate "art" on the top of the cake.  Not content to leave it a plain surface the cook used decorative shards, shavings, drizzle and a dollop of fruit to embellish it in a very modernistic way. This is the kind of thing that contemporary pastry chefs do. Throw conformity and all those florets to the wind and be creative with your cake decorating. It's definitely imaginative and probably a lot easier because you don't have to get out one of those pesky pastry bags.

Un gateau français

Compact but multi-layered

Jackson Pollock au chocolat

The cake certainly tasted good and the chocolate was great. As a bonus we got a French version of chocolate chip cookies both with and without the chips. As in the case of most Euro-treats these were nowhere near as sweet as the American version but we won't quarrel with an American classic. We enjoyed these extra tidbits with the artful layer cake and were impressed with the first cake offering of our new colleague française!

Cookies de la France!

 A lighter and less sweet version of the Toll House!