This past weekend, I had a birthday party and a dinner to attend. Now that I have my baking business, I enjoy going to such things so I can create new recipes and test them out on others. Since I’ve been making a lot of cookies and cupcakes lately, I thought I would change it up a bit and try cake and macaroons.
What’s better for a birthday party than a cake!? Given that many of the attendees were French, I thought I would try something, well, French! I made a chocolate genoise cake, which is a lighter, fluffier version of what we normally think of as chocolate cake. Also, the chocolate flavor is a bit lighter, which worked for this cake because I used lots of chocolate elsewhere. Where, you may ask? I cut the two cake layers in half, making it a four layer cake. Each layer was soaked with a vanilla syrup and topped with a whipped chocolate ganache, which I seem to use a lot of these days! I then topped the cake with a light, airy chocolate Italian buttercream. OK, I could have done French buttercream, but the Italian is so good! The results? The birthday girl approved!
For the dinner, I decided to make French macaroons, yes, sticking with the French theme. I know there are so many flavors out there now, which I am looking forward to experimenting with. For now, I made hazelnut macaroons filled with a whipped chocolate ganache (there’s that ganache again!). It was delicious. I made almost 2 dozen and decided to bring them all over for just the four of us (plus a 2 year old). By the end of the evening, there were six left…and the picky 2 year old ate three! The conversation quickly went to, “How can you market these, Georgie?”
Honestly, I love to bake, but I think I love it more because of people’s appreciation for what I make.
Georgie Girl Confections 