This year, I made a really cool apple cake for Anya’s birthday. It’s about 80% apple — very thinly sliced.

It’s called Gateau Invisible

Ingredients

• 1 pound Fuji apples
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tablespoons melted butter
• 3/4 cup flour

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Peel and core apples. Slice into very thin slices. Soak in lemon water.
3. Wisk eggs until they are frothy and add sugar.
4. Add milk and melted butter.
5. Sift the flour into liquid mixture.
6. Add sliced apples and stir gently to coat apple slices in batter.
7. Pour the batter into a parchment lined bread loaf pan.
8. Bake for 40 minutes, cover with foil, then bake for another 10 minutes.
9. Remove from pan and allow to cool
10. Pour caramel sauce over cake and serve.

Caramel Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Method:

1. Melt butter in a small pan.
2. Add sugar and heat until sugar turns a medium brown.
3. Add heavy cream and wisk to combine.

This year, I made a banana caramel cake for Anya’s birthday. She assembled her own cake & put the candles on it – messy, but she had a lot of fun. I’d have done more dulce de leche if it wasn’t melting the whipped cream. I made it in the pressure cooker – 15 mins on high @ about 10AM, let the whole thing sit until we made the cake. Microwaving the caramel enough to get it pourable made it too hot to be near the whipped cream. So we spread the caramel on the cake, let that cool a bit, then spread out the cream and topped it with bananas.

Chocolate Chip Butter Cake

Ingredients:

• • 3 cups cake flour, plus more for dusting the pans
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for coating the pans
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 large egg yolks
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat to 350 F.
2. Coat three 8″ round cake pans with butter. Line the bottoms of the pans with a circle of parchment paper. Lightly butter the parchment. Dust with flour.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder together.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar, and salt on medium-high speed until lightened and fluffy. Add the eggs and yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times while beating.
5. Remove the bowl from the mixer. Add half of the sifted dry ingredients and beat by hand until combined. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla. Add the remaining dry ingredients and the chocolate chips, beating until combined.
6. Divide the batter among the pans .
7. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
8. Set the pans on a wire rack to cool for about 10 minutes. Invert the cakes onto the racks, peel off the parchment, and let cool before frosting.

Whipped cream — mix 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream, 2 tbsp maple syrup, and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla. Whip until firm peak stage.

Dulce de leche — Pour one can of sweetened condensed milk into a canning jar. Place lid on jar and lightly screw on. Place canning jar in the pressure cooker pot and add enough water to come about halfway up the side. Pressure cook on high for 40 minutes followed by a fifteen minute natural steam release. Remove jar from pressure cooker and allow to cool for another ten minutes. Open jar and stir to smooth out the caramel.

Assembling the cake — take a cake, cover in caramel, top with whipped cream, add slices of bananas, and then add another cake. I sliced off the domes of each cake to ensure the whole thing was relatively flat and stable.

I spent a lot of time picking out what to make for Anya’s first birthday cake — chocolate doesn’t seem like a good thing to feed a little kid. I wanted it to have flavor — not just eating sugar. I found an old fashioned gingerbread cake recipe that looked perfect — a lot of the sweetness comes from molasses. Anya likes pumpkin puree spiced with ginger and cinnamon, so it’s a familiar flavor. Plus it’s cake 🙂

Gingerbread Cake

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 3/4 cup dark molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 cup boiling water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Grease and flour an 8” round cake pan
3. Sift together dry ingredients in a large bowl.
4. Add the butter, molasses and egg and beat by hand for two minutes.
5. Add the boiling water.
6. Beat for another two minutes and pour batter into prepared pan.
7. Bake 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the thickest part comes out clean.