Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

I enjoyed my hazelnut cake and decided to try a pecan variation. I once again used this recipe from Gretchen's Bakery but substituted pecans. I ground the pecans in two steps. I first coarsely ground them in the food processor. I then dried them in the toaster oven for a few minutes, then reground them in the food processor. Drying helped me to grind the pecans much more finely than I could without this step. Heating the pecans before the coarse grinding runs the twin risks of either burning the nuts or not drying them enough. Here is the meringue being folded into the batter. The ground pecans went into the batter after the meringue. I divided the batter into two 8 inch pans and baked. I iced with a chocolate ganache. The result was once again tender and moist. Substituting pecans didn't make any noticeable difference in taste. Pecans are certainly easier to find in Georgia so I may make this cake more often.

We capped off our party with a doll cake made by Genni Gibbon (http://cakecreationsbygenni.blogspot.com/2007/11/college-cakes.html). She is a very talented gal. Her cakes are beautiful; they're also delicious. I have limited patience for bakers who make complicated decorations on cakes that you can't eat. While those sorts of cakes may be impressive, I don't shop for baked goods at Home Depot. This is a cake she made for me a few months ago. This cake was lovely and it tasted amazingly good. It was a very moist strawberry cake with flecks of strawberry---wow. A lovely cake is enjoyable in so many ways, from your first look to cleaning the plate.

This review focuses on Bagel Palace's baking. We will consider their breakfast service another time. Bagel Palace is in Toco Hill Shopping Center. Their bakery is very well known and for good reason. They provide a wide variety of sweets as well bagels. (I'm not a bagel expert but I think they're great.) This cake is one of my favorites. I think of it as a giant Hostess cupcake made with really good ingredients. The chocolate cake is double-iced with white and then chocolate frosting. The white icing is extremely sweet, but there isn't too much of it, so it provides a nice counterpoint. I think this cake tastes great but I love the look as much as anything. And their prices are very reasonable. This cake cost $15, which I think is a bargain given the evident quality and quantity of ingredients. I haven't reviewed any caramel icing cakes here because there's only so much cake that I can eat. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Caramel icing s...

This is the start of a short series on cakes, thanks to my upcoming birthday. On a recent trip to the DeKalb Farmers Market, I noticed a sign for Southern Sweets Bakery. It's a little farther away from Ponce than one might expect, so don't give up too early. It's buried in the middle of an industrial park. Despite the unglamorous location, it has great baked goods and serves lunch as well. I decided to try a piece of red velvet cake, one of my reference dishes that I use to compare establishments. The photo doesn't entirely do justice to the size of the piece, which was really larger than I deserved. The cake fit all the classic requirements of red velvet cake: good moist cake that is satisfyingly, artificially red; and a real cream cheese icing. The side of the cake had a texture made of small pieces---it looked like pieces of white chocolate although it tasted like the cream cheese icing. It was very pleasing but not overly sweet or cloying. It wasn't chea...