Mocha Brownie Cake

This sounded like my kind of cake… a brownie cake.  As previously mentioned in this blog (with every cake recipe), I am not a cake fan.  I am a huge brownie fan however.  So, if there is a cake out there I might like, a brownie cake just might be it.  (I am slightly exaggerating as there are a few cakes out there I have enjoyed and would even eat again (Rhubarb Upside Down cake is one of them).  This cake, however, was more cake and less brownie.  A great one for cake lovers.  A tolerable one for brownie lovers.

It has some redeemable qualities worth mentioning:

- the ganache frosting/ filling is delicious and super easy to work with (I will dog-ear the recipe for this alone.)

- the recipe comes together easily

- the ganache has coffee in it

- the recipe outlines a simple and effective way to assemble a layer cake which was new to me, utilizing the spring form pan used to bake it

- there is never a bite without the ganache

I must confess that this may have been a bit more brownie-like had I baked the cake for less than the stated time.  As it was, the first time I checked it, the cake was already done and possibly a bit dry, but this was hard to tell given all that delicious ganache which lent moisture to every bite.  I will be curious to see how my fellow bakers baked this one up.  Check theirs out at Tuesdays with Dorie.

Rhiannon- a cake eater

Buttermilk Scones

Scones are one of those things I had a love affair with about a decade ago.  I could not go into a coffee shop and not get a scone.  Well, I actually could, but it was very difficult to do so.   At one point in this addiction, I realized I was spending way too much money on these pastry nubbins and decided to make them on my own dime.  It took fiddling with a few recipes here and there, before I settled on one that satisfied my coffee shop cravings.  Simple enough, one of the key components for me in a scone is the crackly top sprinkled with turbinado sugar.  Another is the crumb- dense but flaky at the same time (is that even possible?).  This one from Baking with Julia comes pretty close.  The buttermilk lends a tenderness to the scones I appreciate, yet does not weight it down.   The butter flavor comes through and the added lemon zest brightens everything without being "lemony".   It may just rekindle my old flame. 

Perfect with peach jam.

Rhiannon approves of this one.