A Week of Baking

Last week could be classified as the baking week.  It started with making mushroom pie for dinner early in the week and culminated in cakes for Saturday and Sunday dinners.  (I did chicken out of also making Tarte Tatin for Saturday as well, mostly because being a mother of a then 7 week old child I could not spend all day baking.)

The cakes required a lot of planning and baking ahead, since I never have more than 2 hours at a time for any activity, and I was not going to give up my precious fewer than 6 hours of night time sleep.

The Saturday cake was inspired by the Miroir aux Fruits, or Fruit Mousse Miroir cake, from the Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts book.  I say "inspired" because I changed just about every single component called for by the recipe--sheet genoise instead of Biscuit Joconde, no egg whites in the fruit mousse, raspberry  instead of apricot jam for the mirror.  One of the wonderful things about this cake is that you are supposed to freeze it as part of the preparation.  So it is perfect for the very occasion when you do not want to be cooking on the day of the "event".

I tried to reproduce the "look", and I might have achieved it if I managed to make enough mousse. That would be something to look forward to next time.

Taste wise, my raspberry mirror mousse cake was definitely a success, which you could not say about the Sunday cake.

Sunday cake was planned to be a true cake in the American style--multiple layers, lots of frosting, etc.  However, I went a bit overboard.  I have used all the components of this cake in other combinations with success--super moist chocolate cake, ganache, swiss meringue buttercream, raspberry puree.  However, all of these wonderful things together made such a rich cake, that it almost felt like we were eating a little bit of cake with a lot of sweet butter.  Nick and I "struggled" for 2 days, but tossed almost half the cake in the end.

To redeem myself I made just the chocolate cake yesterday, which Nick and I have been enjoying without any filling or frosting.