Le Succès

I baked this cake a week ago, because I’m trying to get a few cakes ahead so that when we start our kitchen reno, I can keep up with the group. I hate missing cakes. I think when the Heavenly Cake Bakers finish the book, I’m going to go back through and bake the ones I missed, just because I’ve so much enjoyed baking recipes that I wouldn’t normally choose on my own. This is definitely one of those “wouldn’t normally choose” recipes, but I certainly enjoyed it.

For a region with more than 500,000 people, I have to agree with my husband: this area is a shopping black hole. Jay’s been doing some work on our 1994 Firebird Formula over the last several weeks. There was a minor oil leak when we bought it from a co-worker of mine, and he decided he wanted to track it down after the weather was nice enough that he was willing to work on it out in our uninsulated garage, but before it was nice enough that he wanted to switch insurance over and start driving it again. Long story short, we spent 4 hours last weekend, looking for a bolt. Couldn’t find it anywhere. We tried Canadian Tire, Parts Source, Rona, TSC, Princess Auto, Home Hardware, and finally found something that wasn’t quite right but would work at Napa. Everywhere we went suggested Brafasco or Spaenaur, both of which are only open 8-5 on weekdays. I do have a baking related point, here. The next day, while Jay was making use of his not-so-shiny new bolt, I was going to run out real quick and pick up some crème fraiche from the gourmet food place, and finish finding the veggie seeds I wanted to get started. Think I could find either of those? No Roma tomato seeds anywhere (at least not anywhere open on Sunday), and no crème fraiche. I finally ended up going with double cream mixed with sour cream, because I wasn’t about to spend another 4 hours chasing non-existent products around town. Of course, Friday, when we went to do our regular grocery shopping, Sobeys (our normal every day very much not gourmet grocery store) had crème fraiche right there on the shelf in the dairy section.

Enough ranting. On to yummier things. First, the ganache.

Self explanatory, no? I ended up using sweetened iced tea mix for the tea flavouring, because we don’t have any such thing as unsweetened iced tea up here, unless I brew it myself. One of many things I can’t get here that my American immigrant husband introduced me to when I visited him down south before we married. No wonder he gets frustrated at times. He told his brother about his problems with the bolt, and a day later, my brother-in-law (who lives in the same town of 15,000 where my husband lived before we got married) calls him up and says “So, I was in the hardware store, looking for something, and I found the bolt you wanted…”

Next, the meringue discs.

Here is where hubby came in from outside and made rude comments about my cake.

The finished assembled product:

This disappeared very quickly at work. Wendy’s comment: “was that ever good!” I’m not completely convinced I like the texture of the ground nuts (they worked out a bit better in the peanut butter ingots), but I certainly enjoyed the flavour of this cake. Next up is the pecan torte with coffee cream, which I will have sitting in my cube at work ready to share by the time this posts.