This homey cake is great as a casual dessert, coffee cake or after-school treat.
Fireworks, friends and food. Throw a party for Canada Day and serve this special strawberry maple-leaf flag cake. Start with a 13- x 9-inch (3.5 L) sponge cake (recipe follows), or use your favourite recipe for white cake of that size, and completely cover it with whipped cream. Then form the outside red borders and distinctive maple leaf with sliced strawberries. Be sure to refrigerate the cake until sparkler time, then cut it and toast our birthday.
This simple, delicious cake has enough body to easily hold the various shapes after cutting.
It all began with a recipe involving a calf's foot filling (the less said, the better), but Eccles cakes are now one of Britain's most famous sweet treats.
Probably more famous than the town from which it comes, the Eccles cake began its rise to popularity in the 1790s in what is now part of Greater Manchester, where bakers James Birch and his apprentice-turned-rival William Bradburn battled for supremacy in the apparently fiercely competitive fruitcake market.
These small round patties of flaky pastry with a currant filling are not to be confused with similar-looking Chorley cakes (less sweet) or Banbury cakes (more oval). Today Eccles cakes hold a special place in the nation's heart, which not even their unappetizing nickname -- "dead fly pies" -- can diminish.
This pound cake recipe is designed to be the base of our April Fool's Day recipe, Grilled Pound Cake Sandwiches, where you'll find a lemon cream cheese icing for the centre.
Named not after its country of origin but after Samuel German, who created Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate, this confection – four layers of cake sandwiched together with a super rich pecan-and-coconut filling – is one special cake. The chocolate ganache icing is not traditional but cuts nicely through the cake's sweetness and adds a certain polish to its presentation.
Crunchy meringue, silky mousse, moist chocolate cake and decadent ganache give flavour and texture to this ultimate cake, which is well worth the effort to make. You'll find already skinned roasted hazelnuts in some supermarkets. If not, just follow the tip, below.
