Yay! We had friends come over and help us eat it - everybody loved it! It’s gone.
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I made it for mother-daughter book club but then it got cancelled so I delivered the cake to the sick friends and gave some to neighbors.
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Around here we call it “good-da”. I was thinkin’ a decadent grilled cheese with that bread. I’m working on perfecting my loaf.
Those are amazingly beautiful loaves and it’s hard to stop staring at them. 
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That’s quite a compliment coming from you, who could probably hold your own on one of those Bake Off shows.
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Dorie’s Miso Maple loaf https://www.eatlivetravelwrite.com/2021/10/miso-maple-loaf-from-baking-with-dorie/ . Much nicer picture there! I probably overbaked by about 5 minutes, but wasn’t too dry, and disappeared much more quickly that I thought it would at work! Terrible picture ( even by my low standards) below…
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Black sugar and ginger pound cake with whipped honey mascarpone except I can’t get black sugar, so I used brown sugar.
I never get pairing butter cakes with whipped cream or other frostings that need to be cold. I also don’t like putting something like custard fillings or whipped cream inside cakes frosted with buttercream because most buttercreams are hard when refrigerated and whipped cream and pastry cream that hasn’t been baked really should be cold. There are a few butter cakes that stay nicely soft when refrigerated even though they do feel denser, but pound cakes are very heavy and firm when cold.
So I was iffy on this cake except that it looked so enticing that I had to make it as a way to use some of the mascarpone I have.
And I’d say the cake definitely tastes better cold because thoroughly cold whipped mascarpone just tastes much better. When even a little warm it tastes kind of bland and doesn’t meld with the cake. Meanwhile the cake is a touch sweet on its own so chilling and the mascarpone serve to cut that, but I do still find it texturally odd to eat pound cake cold. It’s so firm and dense compared to the delicate crumb when room temp. It’s not bad and I do like this one, but you definitely do keep pound cake from being at its best.
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Does anyone use silicone baking pans. How are they. I dont have any. Tried them when they first came out and hated them.
I have a 12 ct silicone muffin pan that I use semi-regularly. It’s especially handy if I want little individual things that are NOT cupcake-wrapper friendly, like brownies or thick bar cookies (which will stick too much to the paper). The other advantage to individual brownies: every piece is a corner piece : )
The color just about matches the med-dark grey of your average non-stick bakeware these days, so I do not find it suffers from excess or insufficient browning. It performs about the way it looks.
I was recently gifted a silicone hot dog bun tray as a stocking-stuffer. I have yet to try it out. Note to self: get poppy seeds and do it properly.
I don’t like silicone pans myself. I prefer to use them for things that aren’t baked, like mousses and frozen desserts.
I made Venezuelan style French bread, which is like all Latin American breads that every Latino swears is only produced in their country, a standard French bread with the addition of lard and some sugar. The hydration tends to be lower than standard French breads, too— in the 55-60% range. It’s really shape that differs. So some I shaped like mini baguettes and others like Dominican pan de agua.
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Same experience
Oh my. I am seething with jealousy at your shaping. Those are so perfect. How big of a doughball did those mini-baguettes start as? What were their post-bake dimensions?
If you have any shaping tips, or pointers to a particular technique that works for you, please pass them along. My boules and batards are ok. My baguettes are feh!
Thank you! They were 100 grams each. I didn’t measure the dimensions. These are shaped using a rolling pin, which is a no-no for classic French baguettes, but perfectly acceptable for other countries . For French ones I like the way Emmanuel Hadjiandreou does it. This video has his recipe:
Chain Baker’s method is good, too.
But really I’m still a long way from getting shaping down.
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You’re way too modest!
I use muffin cups often, mostly for convenience. Mini-quiches, egg muffins, and so on. Sometimes cupcakes, because they stick to wrappers (unless they’re parchment wrappers). I have individual ones, not a silicone pan, so I pop them into a metal tin or lay them on a baking tray.
Silicone doesn’t generate a crust for things you want crusty.
I’ve been toying with the idea of a silicone bundt pan (for obvious reasons) but haven’t given in yet. I did buy a loaf pan, but have never used it – for no particular reason…
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But would you get browning with silicone?
The newer Nordic Ware pans + some baker’s spray + the right recipe (lots of fat, like a pound cake) = really reliably good results.
I haven’t had issues – someone had recommended a lining paste that is always effective. But silicone just releases so easily.
I just made a pan of brown sugar blondies. I stumbled across a recipe on the internet and thought I’d give it a try. Sunshine tasted my experiment and declared she liked brownies better. Oh well.
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Ooh that looks good! Recipe link please?
