tomato soup

'Tomato soup' may seem like an odd title for a baking blog entry but you'll understand soon.  Since I didn't bake anything yesterday (I can't bake every day, I have a waistline to think of here) I'm featuring a cake I made a while back.  This cake was a chocolate and tomato soup cake I found in Rose's Heavenly Cakes.  The tomato soup replaces the salt and gives the cake an odd but tasty zing.  I filled and frosted it with chocolate buttercream and decorated it with regular buttercream.

It was a humid day and for the life of me I couldn't get my roses to stand up nicely, they just wanted to wilt.

Since the purposes of this cake were to try this recipe and practice decorating I consider it a success despite a few decorating faults and the one friend that must not have liked it as evidenced by the 3/4 of a piece I found abandoned and sitting on a plate.

I like Rose Levy Beranbaum's book and I'd love to also have The Cake Bible and The Pie and Pastry Bible.  Her recipes are well tested and yield good, predictable results.  I'd would also love to have Bake Wise by Shirley O. Corriher.  She's so cute when she shows up on Good Eats.  Her book has lessons to go with each recipe and explains exactly why you add this now or stir in that then.  Once you understand things like that you can go off on your own tangents and create your own stuff.  Oh, and just a little tid bit .... all 3 of those books are on my Amazon.com wish list which I've place conveniently to the right ;-)