Sweet Potato Cake

Hey, look at this: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/holidays-valentines-day/recipe-sour-cherryalmond-ice-cream-with-chocolate-chunks-076238.

I really like the combination of cherries, chocolate and almonds -- especially with a malted or sour vanilla cream. Remember the creme fraiche and buttermilk ice cream bases at Ici? I would make this if I had an ice cream machine, but I think I would get frustrated because I HATE seeing melted ice cream. I would rather have rock hard ice cream than semi-melted, soft ice cream. If it not ice cold, it is not ice cream. It is just cream. Yuck.

Today I had two cakes. Though my family usually sticks to the ube (purple yam) cake from Red Ribbon Bakery, I wanted to try the sweet potato cake from Tour Les Jours. Hey! The TLJ on Colima closed! The recession is finally hitting close to home.

:(

Anyhow, I drove to the other TLJ and picked up the sweet potato cake. I almost got the tiramisu, but the worker gaves me a nudge in the other direction. It makes me long for the AMAZING bakeries in Berkeley and SF. You guys are so lucky!!!!

So I brought it home, and we just ate it. I was disappointed. It was a dense, mushy mousse. If you have eaten cake with me, you know that I do not like mousse. I prefer cake to mousse, but I can enjoy a good mousse (especially chocolate). This cake reminded me of uncooked carrot cake batter! It was very, very thick and pretty bland. I have had better sweet potato cake. I was sad. Oh well, at least I tried. I want to go here: http://www.portosbakery.com/home.htm. My mom swears by their fruit tart, and she is PICKY about her fruit tarts.

My high school friends stopped by with a mocha cake from another Korean bakery closeby. It was yummy -- light and not too sweet. It also had lovely glazed fruits dusted with powdered sugar. I remember when we brought cakes for each other's birthdays in high school. I had a group of thirteen friends, and every single girl got a cake for her birthday. It was a pretty big deal, and we made a huge scene during lunch, lighting candles and singing in the middle of the lunch area. That's how we rolled. We were very organized about the cake business; each girl was responsible for the girl whose name preceded her own alphabetically. For example, C bought A's cake. E bought C's cake.

Today was very lovely. I will post pictures soon.