Bakers Royale

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Carapelli Olive Oil for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Cake with olive oil? Yes, it’s true and it’s mighty good. Yeah, I was skeptical myself, but what a pleasant surprise. The key to finding the right flavor in an olive oil cake is using a high quality olive oil that is good enough to eat on its own.

Citrus Olive Oil Cake

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Did I tell you I was on a recipe kick with these Andes Peppermint candy? I’m pretty sure I did. If you haven’t heard, I’m sort of crazy for the candy and even more crazy about how it can take almost any recipe from good to great. It’s latest dress-up can be found in this chocolate Genoise recipe. The soft, but denser crumb makes it roll-friendly, so you don’t have to worry about cracks as you coax it into shape. Standing up to the denser crumb is a classic buttercream that spirals its way through for a balanced bite.

Chocolate Peppermint Roll

As many of you know I seldom deviate from my favorite Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMB). But this recipe needed a filling that would not disappear mid-chew while the crumb was left hanging with no counterpart. And since the classic buttercream is slightly heavier in texture than SMB, that’s what I used. With the right textural balance in place and the flavor nailed down it was time to get on my fancy pants on and finish a humble cake roll with an elegant touch that would not require flipping it to a Buche de Noel.  I thought about getting all fussy with maybe piping some swirls on top and finishing with chocolate curls, but I decided against it.

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This cake has all the holiday scents and spices wrapped in a nutty brown butter cake and finished with a splash of tart cranberries and evened out with some chopped pears.

Cranberry & Pear Brown Butter Almond Cake

Too bad it was 80-plus degrees this weekend. So while my cake may have smelled like Christmas, as Matt describes it, we both bemoaned the fact that it felt like summer. I couldn’t help it though, I’m one of those annoying people when Halloween is over I’m ready for the Christmas decorations to come out and play. Well since Halloween isn’t until tomorrow, I was itching to get started with some Christmas, so I baked a cake.

Makes perfect sense.

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