Dessert Club - CAKES

Cakes and Pies by Wayne Thiebaud

It finally came.  The chance for us Dessert Club-ers to really strut, whip, layer, pipe, mold, fold, stack and frost our stuff in the form of CAKE NIGHT.  You can only imagine.

For my own preparations, I pored through all my cake cookbooks, and even got two from the library, to be sure I was making the most inspiring cakes I could find.  I ended up settling on two - who knows when CAKE NIGHT may come again?

Cakes are so special, we decided they warranted two prizes - one for YUMMY, as usual, and one for PRETTY.  Because cakes should really be both.

We moved venues for this gathering, because one member's husband was out of town, and she really needed to be at CAKE NIGHT because her birthday was the next week, so we went to her house.  And she found out what a beast it is to get your kids to bed in time to spiff the place up by 8:30.  But she pulled it off with grace.  And even had time to make this strawberry topiary centerpiece - and that's marshmallow dip in the pot, my friends.  Aah, Dessert Club.

Here are the cakes we made:

"SASSY"
...a mango-cayenne cake with orange Italian meringue buttercream (mine)
I bought that pan special just for this cake.  Had to have it.

Speculoos Crème Cake with Raspberry Coulis

"Spring Cakes" with Meringue Frosting
(got my vote for PRETTY)

Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Chocolate Chips
(got my vote for YUMMY)

Raspberry-White Chocolate Bombe
(the other one I made - it warrants two pics so you can see the pretty pink inside!)

 

Neopolitan Cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream
(you would NOT BELIEVE that frosting - a dream!)

WINNER for "PRETTY"
Birthday Cake Oreo Cake
(inspired by the 100th anniversary birthday-cake-flavor Oreos that are out now - that frosting is cake batter flavored!)

WINNER for "YUMMY"
Gateau de Crêpes

And just because they are ALL.  SO.  PRETTY., here are some more pictures of the spread.  It was quite the production cutting into them all!

My plate...poor me...

Sometimes I forget to mention the prizes but it's fun to know.  PRETTY won a cake leveler and a new glass cake stand.  YUMMY won a cake lifter and Warren Brown's Cake Love: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch - it's one of the ones I got from the library, and I liked it so much, I thought it would be a worthy prize (and I secretly hoped to win it myself!  Alas...)

As always, I will post some of these - let me know if you have any requests.  It also so happens that many of the other things I've been baking lately have been cakes, for some reason or another, so you are about to get a slew of cake posts on here.  No complaining :)