This week is free choice week and I asked my son to choose a cake. He wanted to know how Rose's Heavenly Cakes were grouped so I showed him the Contents page with: Butter and Oil cakes, Sponge Cakes, Mostly Flourless Cakes & Cheesecakes, and Baby Cakes. He went straight away to Sponge cakes and chose the Chocolate cake with Peanut butter icing. We've been on a bit of a Reese's Peanut Butter cups binge lately so I wasn't surprised when he picked this cake. A Costco supermarket has just opened in Canberra and someone from work went out and came back with a huge bag of Reese's Peanut butter cups. So, the love was shared and I got a handful, which I brought home, and the children quickly scoffed them. Reese's aren't super rare in Australia these days, not like when I was growing up. But still, they are a novelty item around here and everyone in this abode agrees: Peanut butter and chocolate is a winning combination.
I feel like I've made this Genoise batter a few times now and I do love it, the way the warmed eggs froth up and quadruple in volume. After the cake came out of the oven, my daughter helped with painting the syrup on the cake. I insisted that we take more care this time and we used up almost every last drop. When I did the Passionfruit Genoise cake I didn't syrup it enough and it went hard and dry after a few days. What a waste. I didn't want that to happen again. Lessons learnt were: (1) eat the cake more quickly, and (2) syrup it up a bit more.
We took Rose's advice and let the iced, syruped cake sit for a day in the fridge. When we cut into the cake it was suitably soft and moist, and the icing was perfect. Everyone loved it. Definitely on the 'make again' list. And thankfully, the peanut butter softens the bitter taste of the ganache, so it was popular with the young ones.
If anyone out there is familiar with Costco....do you know if they stock Wondra, Cake flour, and Graham crackers? I'd be a bit tempted to pay the $60 annual fee if I thought I could get some American baking products (and Reese's...of course....big bags of them apparently).
And one final comment, we are heading off for a family holiday on Saturday so I'll miss at least one week of the bake-along. Enjoy the next cake....forgotten...remind me...Angel food? I was scared of that one.
