That’s a really nice photo. I find sandwiches kind of hard to photograph to make them pretty.
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Thank you!
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I love bulk stores for that… Bulk Barn here in Canada is one of my favourites…
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I’m skeptical that such a specialty item (natural cocoa powders with at least 14% fat content) would be sold at most bulk stores. Does Bulk Barn have that?
I’ve seen what happens at the bulk bins at stores around here. (wild children often access). Not a fan.
It might? They have had higher fat cocoa powders. I can totally appreciate your concern about hygiene and bulk stores, but the ones that I have been to are very clean with respectful clientele!
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I made this blood orange tart today. Wow, it’s delicious. My husband liked it so much he had five slices.
What attracted me to the recipe is the high ratio of blood orange juice to eggs and butter. The blood orange flavor comes through loud and clear
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I wondered about the ungreased tin - I too greased it. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to grease it but might be a disaster ow. Glad to hear you were successful halving the recipe- I am always hesitant to change a recipe til I’ve made it once. But next time it will be half the recipe.
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I’m not baking this (not yet anyway) but it was such a saga, I had to share.
I got bit by the “Russian Honey Cake” bug a few years back via Instagram and the version served at the 20th Century Cafe . I don’t live in California, so I never had that particular cake, but waited patiently until I might try it locally in NYC.
Unrelated to cake, I had joined a “Buy Nothing” group on Facebook; in these groups, hyper-local neighbors offer, for free, anything they’re giving away. If you live in walking distance, you can bop over and pick it up. Chairs, sporting equipment, unwanted gallons of milk, clothing, retired infant onesies - all sorts of things are offered by people to their neighbors.
You can see where this is going.
One evening, a neighbor offered slices of fresh homemade by her Russian mother-in-law Russian honey cake. The neighbor had had a huge, swanky benefit party in her home, and several kinds of cake were left over.
You never saw me put on my shoes so fast.
I walked over and received the huge slice of cake. I ate it with my hands on the way home. It was such a Brooklyn moment! The cake was delicious, just as I had hoped, with an unusual graham-cracker flavor and a beautiful texture, unlike anything I’d had before. And it wasn’t sickeningly sweet like most American baked goods.
Since that day I hadn’t had the cake again, and I left NYC temporarily for quarantine, so I figured it would be a while before I had any access to it. I thought many times about making it myself as a pandemic project. What stopped me was my suspicion that I wouldn’t have help eating it, and while that might sound like a feature, not a bug, I really need to stop making and eating entire desserts by myself here in year 2 of a worldwide pandemic.
Last week I heard about a Ukraine-related benefit at an Eastern European church about 45 minutes from here. Having eaten almost nothing but my own cooking for 2 years, and starved for anything different, I immediately planned to go. Not thinking about honey cake specifically, but interested in whatever food might be on offer, I drove to the benefit with a plan to arrive just as it was starting. It was so heartwarming to see the parking lot already overflowing, despite bad weather! I hustled over to the bakery tent so see what the church ladies had baked up, and there it was: a honey cake.
$40 later, the cake was in my trunk.
It turns out the church ladies there are minor cake-baking celebrities, and I was lucky to arrive early to snag one of the honey cakes. There were several other varieties I would’ve loved to try, but there was no “by the slice” option, so I had to stick with my choice. (In particular, there was a “Kyiv cake” with lots of coffee and hazlenut going on, and that sounded so good to me!)
It’s so good. I froze half of it, after consulting with The Ladies, and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for the next benefit. Even with the price of gas these days, it’s well worth the drive, and the money’s going to a good place, too.
The End!
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Love the story! Congratulations on scoring your dream cake! 
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What a find! By any chance did you ask “The Ladies” if their church group has put out a cookbook?
I don’t see anything on the church website, but it’s a good question - I’ll inquire at the next event 
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I had the idea of a white chocolate and cranberry blondie in my head and was torn between making a blondie with chopped white chocolate and cranberries, or more of a white chocolate brownie. I decided to try out the brownie idea and in the end I ended up with something more like cake than blondie or brownie but oh, do I love this cake! It is a moist buttery cake with a beautiful golden crumb that I really want to make plain someday. It reminds me of pound cake made with almond paste, texturally.
The cranberries are a bit more tart than I’d like for this because it’s not all that sweet. Raspberries would be perfect in this instead because they’re a little less tart. I have quite a few white chocolate blondies/brownies to try out still, but this base is getting saved as an awesome snack cake.
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My first 10 person Paris-Brest . I used the recipe of Conticini (similiar to this one). The choux pastry didn’t raise as much as expected. It was my mistake, I should have stopped adding egg at one point, but was distracted and tossed all the egg in the mixer. Also I used a too big pot for the small volume of dough, it wasn’t dry enough in the heating process.
Ratio needed to be adjusted between the dough and cream. Tasted good despite the look. 
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Envy your cake!! Lovely story.
I’ve wanted to make this forever, but I have very little experience with choux.
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Start with something small like cream puffs
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Exactly! I frequently only make 4 small puffs. This is adapted from a Pierre Hermé recipe.
30 g. Water, 30g. Milk 28g. Butter, 1/4 t. Sugar 1/4t. Salt 35.5g. Bread flour, 1 egg.
(The filling is a passion fruit cremé patisserie .)
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Yeah, agreed with others, start small batch, make often, like puff pastry with whipped cream and chocolate. Once you understand the dough, you can make whatever you want!
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Thank you Heidi, I’ve improved my math skills by downsizing most recipes. The Choux pastry is so quick to make especially in such a small quantity.
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