Two-tier Fraisier cake

Last month I had my birthday! We had a birthday party for me and my boyfriend's best friend since our birthdays are close. So, I made 2 birthday cakes! For me this year, I made a 2 tier-fraisier cake, a French cake consisting of a genoise sponge, créme patisiére, strawberries and a marzipan disc on the top. I always wanted to try and make it, it looks so nice and it is made with two of my favourite things: strawberries and vanilla cream. It was not as difficult as I thought to make. You just need to be concentrated and careful.Well, the sponge for me is always a challenge because you never know if it will rise or not. You need to be very careful, because if you lose a lot of air it will never rise.However, it is really fun to make and really tasty! And in the end you have a really pretty cake!

 I also made a snickers cake, so that we have something with chocolate too. The recipe for the snickers cake is coming soon.

As I mentioned before I made a 2-tier cake. The recipe for the sponge is for 1 cake. I made 2 sponges and cut 2 10 cm circles from the second sponge. The cream, syrup and strawberries are enough for both. If you want to make one cake use the two thirds of the recipe. But since my second cake was pretty small, if you want a cake full of cream and strawberries use it all and you can have very little left. So, this is the recipe for the fraisier:

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I had a few ripe bananas looking at me in a very sad way, so, I decided I had to do something with them. I looked through the internet and I discovered this recipe for a banana bread. I hadn't tried banana bread so I went for it. Now I know that banana bread is actually cake. To be more precise a muffin in the shape of a loaf. This one I made is actually very tasty,it smells and taste so much banana and it is a great combination with the chocolate chips. Great for breakfast. I just think that with brown sugar it would be even more delicious so, that is what I'm going to do with my next ripe banana batch.

January 2014 Daring Bakers challenge: Baumkuchen

The January 2014 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Francijn of "Koken in de Brouwerij". She challenged us all to bake layered cakes in the tradition of Baumkuchen (tree cake) and Schichttorte (layered cake).

This was an interesting challenge. I hadn't heard of this cake before, so, it was nice to try something different and unknown. What was more interesting is the baking technique. You start baking one layer of the cake and then you add one layer at a time and bake it and when you cut the finished cake you can see the different layers. They look kind of the lines that you see inside a trunk and that is why it is called Baumkuchen (tree cake). You normally do that on broiler and because I don't have in my oven I was a bit worried that I will end up with a half-burnt cake but in the end it turned out perfect. The consistency and the taste were both amazing. I used the given recipe with some small changes and I loved how soft the cake turned out and I liked that it has marzipan since I love almonds. Here is the recipe then:

Gingerbread cake with lingonberry jam

Tomorrow we celebrate Christmas here, so what is more Christmassy than gingerbread? I like the gingerbread cookies but I love soft gingerbread in the form of cake and I think it is perfect for Christmas morning. Lingonberries give something extra to it. Lingonberries are very common here and lingonberry jam is everywhere, I haven’t seen it in any other countries that the Scandinavian ones, but to me it is pretty much like cranberry. This cake is like a classic sponge cake but with buttermilk, jam and spices.  So, here is the recipe: