Tuesdays with Dorie: Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake & Tarte Tatin

TWD celebrates it's 2nd birthday this month and members voted on what to bake. The cake and the tarte tatin were both chosen and I decided to tackle making both. My grandmother's birthday was Saturday so baking the birthday cake was perfect timing. The cake part was pretty standard as far as cakes go. I always have a hard time getting the batter distributed evenly among two pans so one layer so a little heftier than the other. I made the layers on Saturday and wrapped them tight overnight. Sunday I made the frosting and assembled the cake. I was kind of concerned about how the frosting would turn out based on some of the comments on the TWD site. But miracle of miracles, I didn't have any problems, the frosting turned out great. There was plenty of it too, sometimes when making frosted cakes I've run into the problem of not having enough frosting but with this recipe there was plenty. A very nice cake for almost any cake-worthy occasion. The tarte tatin was a different story, I have never made one and the thought of molten hot caramel + flipping an iron skillet onto a plate scared me a teensy bit. I used Golden Delicious apples and cut them into slices instead of quartering them. My iron skillet is 12 inch instead of 9-10 inch too so that something else to consider. I opted to used frozen puff pasty because as we all know I loathe making crusts. When I was caramelizing the sugar/apples there was a lot of liquid released by the apples and the sugar didn't seem to be caramelizing. So I turned up the heat and within a minute or two it started to caramelize. There were a few burnt spots but nothing that really diminished the taste. Once the tarte was baked and came out of the oven I realized I didn't have a platter big enough, I did however find a Christmas plate that a co-worker had given me (full of cookies) that barely fit. So I took a chance and flipped the tarte out of the skillet. There were a few caramel drips and a couple of slices of burnt apple that stuck to the pan. The tarte was still delicious, the apples are so.good with the caramel, even though places of the caramel were a little darker than I would have liked. This really is an easy and impressive dessert, the apple peeling/slicing is the only thing that really takes time.So again, yay for Tuesdays with Dorie as we go into a new year of baking!