Coffee Banana

I think this is the best cake I have ever made. It's a coffee banana cake from the Frankie Collectors Edition. It went so fast I didn't get time enough to take a pic of it dressed in its coffee and cream cheese icing. Truth is I couldn't take a photo with cake in may hands so the cake won!

Meringue Tower

By Tara Sloggett

Cakes

Harriott & Grace (the most amazing cakes & cake flags), stunning flower trail - Sweet & Saucy, Style Me Pretty.

Cute!

via Kavka

Cake Bunting

Cake Bunting by forty-sixth at grace and Kiki La Ru

Vanilla Orchid Cake

As it's winter here, roses, peonies and all the delightful fluffy, generously petalled flowers are out of season. Magnolias bruise too easily, I decided on these flat mottles purple orchids. I considered sweet peas but thought it might end up looking like a granny's floral swimming cap (which it kind of did anyway), I think it also looks a little like the scales of a mermaids tale. Turned out that sprinkling icing sugar on them was like water off a ducks back and in hindsight I think they would have taken excellently to being crystallised. I used the vanilla triple layer cake with vanilla buttercream recipe from More from Magnolia.

The Most Amazing Orange Cake

This cake was well know at Agostini in Woollahra when the leafy courtyard by the bookshop was home to Margie Agostini's cafe. Bill Granger has now moved in and is serving up his own Sydney food favourites (it's only a matter of time before his famous ricotta hot cakes and scrambled eggs land on this blog), but the ghost of Margie's cake lives on. The foundation of this cake lies in the butter, flour + sugar being of equal weight. This recipe makes a very large cake (which is a good thing as, trust me, it goes quickly), but I halved* the recipe when I made it this time.

Serves 10
Takes 1 hr 30 mins + cooling time

Ingredients:
500g butter
500g castor sugar
8 x 60g eggs
1 tbsp grated orange zest
500g self-raising flour
200ml freshly squeezed orange juice

Icing:
250g icing sugar and 50ml orange juice

+++++

Heat the oven to 170C/Gas 3. You will need a 30 cm cake tin with removable sides, lined with non-stick baking paper.

• Cream the butter and sugar well, until it is very pale and thick - this will take quite a while
• Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition, and the zest, if using. Add the flour all at once, and beat well, then slowly add the orange juice, until it is incorporated
• Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin, and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes - or until an inserted skewer comes out clean (slow is best, so don' t be afraid to cook it longer. If it starts to brown too much on the top, cover loosely with a sheet of buttered kitchen foil)
• Leave the cake in the tin on a wire rack to cool, then gently remove the sides of the tin

To make the icing, stir the orange juice into the icing sugar until you have the right spreading consistency, and apply with a palette knife, allowing the icing to drip down the sides of the cake. Leave the icing to set before cutting the cake into wedges or storing in an airtight container.

* If you halve the ingredients bake at 170C/Gas 3 in a 22cm cake tin for 45 to 50 mins or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Margie Agostini shared her recipe with Jill Dupleix.

The Most Fabulous Banana Cake

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt*
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 cup mashed banana (2 - 3 large or 4 small very ripe bananas) – I like to keep it quite chunky
1 2/3 cups castor sugar
125 g cultured unsalted butter* in small chunks at room temperature
100 ml buttermilk (substitute normal milk if you don’t have buttermilk)
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
* you could use normal/salted butter and just not add the salt

Icing:
125 g cream cheese at room temperature
60 g cultured or normal unsalted butter, at room temperature
250 g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

+++++

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease a round 26cm cake tin, loaf tin or muffin pan

• Place banana, sugar and eggs in a food processor and whiz for a minute
• Add butter and whiz for a minute more until thick and creamy
• Add buttermilk and vanilla and pulse with quick bursts until just mixed in
• Combine sifted flour, baking powder, salt and bicarb soda and add to banana mixture and mix in using quick bursts, scraping down the sides, until just combined
• Scoop batter into tin and bake for 30 – 35 mins or until a skewer comes out clean (don’t be surprised if it doesn’t rise a lot, it’s quite dense). When the cake is ready leave it to cool on a rack in the tin for 7 minutes then invert on rack to cool.

For the icing: cream the cream cheese and butter, then add the icing sugar and vanilla and whip until smooth

Decorate:
I made baby muffins and a thin cake in a slice tray. If you wish to make more of a celebration cake, bake a number of smaller round cakes and pile them on top of each other and double the icing quantities then smother the icing in between the cake layers and all over the cake. Alternately slice the cake in half horizontally with a long serrated knife and spread icing on the bottom layer, then sandwich together and spread a thick layer all over the cake smoothing it with a knife.

Recipe adapted from Belinda Jeffrey's 100 favourite recipes.