Coffee Chiffon Cake with Dulce de Leche Whipped Cream, and Meeting Rose!

Hello everyone. Life has been a little busy over here at Evil Cake Lady headquarters, and I am tired. So this post may be a little thin, but don't let that fool you into thinking this cake wasn't delicious, because it was.

April 26, 2010
Name of Cake: Coffee and Caramel!
Occasion: HCB
Constituents: Coffee chiffon cake with coffee syrup and dulce de leche whipped cream

This recipe is designed to create a bunch of mini chiffonlets, but as per usual, I didn't want to buy the pan. I was thinking of cupcakes but then Kristina let us all know that it works just fine as a regular-sized chiffon so I happily opted for that.

The chiffon was really easy to put together. I was actually surprised by this--for some reason I thought chiffon cakes were laborious.

After cooling, the cake is brushed with a Kahlua-coffee syrup. That sounded so delicious but I didn't have any Kahlua (which I usually do!) so I just substituted more water.

The dulce de leche takes about 90 minutes to make, but those 90 minutes don't require you to do anything at all. I actually made it a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling industrious, and had the oven on. Basically a can of sweetened condensed milk gets poured into a pie plate, which gets placed inside of a cake pan, which gets filled with hot water to make a bain marie. Then you cover the whole contraption with foil and shove it in the oven and wander off until the timer goes off. Easy peasy!

This yummy caramelly stuff is then whipped into cream, which makes this amazingly delicious caramel whipped cream basically. I made a double batch, just in case I needed it for the large cake, but mostly because I thought extra dulce de leche whipped cream would be nice to snack on for the rest of the week.

I even made coffee, which I never do, just so I could stir in a dollop of dulce de leche cream. I'm looking forward to another cup tomorrow morning!

Speaking of morning, this cake was excellent for breakfast this morning. It really isn't the right way to start one's day, but it was tasty.

Cookie loved this cake a lot. She immediately got up for a second helping last night. In fact, all of us had 2 slices yesterday.

This cake was delicious, but I think I like Sybil's Pecan Coffee Torte better. It has more bite to it, which I enjoy. I will be pairing this dulce de leche cream with Sybil's cake in the future!

And on a side note: I met Rose and Woody last weekend! They were in town for the IACP conference, and as you all probably know by now, won best cookbook of the year. I feel a little bit proud that it happened here in my city, even though Portland was only the host, and not the deciders. Rose and Woody were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedule to let me come to their hotel lobby and meet them, as I couldn't make it to her book signing earlier that day. I dragged along my battered and worn copy of The Cake Bible and Rose's Heavenly Cakes anyway. Rose was so sweet and personable. Woody was a giant ball of energy. Woody, how do you do it? He ran about us, taking photos with our cameras. I wish I had insisted upon somebody else taking a photo of all of us. It was a lovely little meeting, and I offer Rose and Woody my hearty congratulations on an honor well deserved!

And now, off to bed. Goodnight!