Cooking ABC: March 2nd Half

Since I wasn’t interested in the cooking menu that was on offer, there are many cakes and breads for the second half of March.

This walnut and banana cake may not look like much, but hidden inside the batter are caramel coated banana pieces, almond powder and rum.



It tastes of perfectly ripened bananas, sweet with just a hint of alcohol. Jason and I agree it’s the best banana cake we’ve had. We like it with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

After recovering from my strawberry-picking weekend, I went for a bread course, and made this cheese filled loaf.



Jason maintains his stance of being indifferent to butter breads, but my friend Rachel seemed to like it. I thought it was quite flavorful too, and chockfull of cheese.

Right after the bread session, I scheduled a free trial lesson with Rachel, and we each made a cute little chocolate mousse cake with cherries inside. You probably can’t tell from the picture, but it was tiny.



We baked a small chocolate chiffon cake and split it into three rounds. Two of the rounds served as base for our cakes, and the other round we cut into cubes to pile on top of the chocolate mousse layer. I took this cake to a friend’s house for tea, but because I didn’t expect it to be so tiny (probably because it was free) I had to make another pumpkin pie so I had enough food to feed four people. My friends really loved the cake though, and I thought it was all right too but you couldn't really taste the cherry.

My next bread lesson was hotdog and hamburger buns.



Nothing too exciting, but the buns turned out really chewy and flavorful as far as buns go. I am even considering making my own hotdog buns from now on, since the ones sold in supermarkets are totally tasteless and way too soft.

The next cake I made was the exact opposite of the banana cake, looks fancy but tasted surprisingly blah. My friend Anna said it reminded her of a Ho-Ho, and I think she’s right. Needless to say, Jason didn’t think too much of it either.



Chocolate plum cake: I was way too greedy with the white chocolate drizzles and the lines turned squiggly because it was still warm and not completely set when I brought it back on my bicycle.

I then scheduled two free trial lessons with Rachel and Tomoko, back to back. It was a long day.

First, Rachel and I made the café aulait bread, which I made before joining the school. Then Tomoko and I made these cinnamon coffee almond rolls.



I took these pictures before we drizzled them with coffee flavored icing, and you can see the cinnamon sugar oozing out of the rolls because we were too greedy and put in probably twice as much cinnamon sugar, hehe… Tomoko and I shared one while it was still hot and it tasted like cinnamon roll, but not as sweet or fattening. Jason, predictably, didn’t think it was all that great, and I have to agree with him.