Baby Shower

I spent a long time thinking about what would be appropriate, what people might like and how I would decorate these cakes for my friend's baby shower. I even did single layer cakes a month earlier in each flavor just as practice! The final cakes were triple layer (because I wanted to make triple layer cakes for some reason, though just two would have been plenty). In the end, they turned out just perfect...

Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream frosting on the left.
Classic White Cake with a hint of Almond, accompanied by Vanilla Frosting and sprinkles on the right. Can you guess what she's having?

I also made a decorative garland of pennant flags that I had so much fun doing! Apparently I felt the need to get my craft on.

Nutmeg Feather Cake with Penuche Frosting

This is one of my favorite cakes, and somehow, every time I make it, I underestimate how quickly the frosting changes from too hot and liquidy to too chunky and un-spreadable. I finally jotted down a couple notes on the recipe for next time. Namely- the option to add cream in at the end if it's too thick needs to be rewritten as mandatory. Even if you start to spread it and it works just fine, by the time you get half way around, it is not the same consistency. Then you think if I add cream now, the frosting will have two distinct consistencies, I can't do that! So the game day decision is to just go with it as, after all, it is homemade (and it looks it)! Another note should be to double or at least 1.5x the frosting so it is easier to frost at will.
Hoping that I see those notes before jumping in again. The great news is that it always tastes wonderful. The smell and flavor are so nostalgic for me, I just love it!

Spice Bundt Cake

Hooray for Bundt!
I made this cake for the heck of it. With my newfound understanding of just how hot my oven runs, thanks to the sugar test, I thought it would be fun to bake something without the fear of over-baking or having it not rise or whatever. Truth be told, I think I relaxed a little too much and accidentally over-baked it by a hair anyway (darn that pestering judgement call after the first buzzer). Next time I'll take it out a little sooner. But all in all, it was tasty and a breeze.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cake plus Lime Squares

A couple of desserts for a friend's baby shower…

Lime squares

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cake

Where's the milk?

Wedding Cake

Carrot Cake

Salted caramel buttercream yellow cake.

freakin' yum.

Freedom Cake

Last year I saw a photo of a flag cake that I could not get out of my head. It appealed to me as a baker and a graphic designer (and an American darnit!). I patiently waited until Independence Day to give it a try. The results were pretty good. Visually, I could not have been more pleased. But if I make it again, I will be sure to make a cake I really like, with frosting that compliments it perfectly. The white cake I made was pretty good, thanks to the addition of almond extract. But the confectioner's sugar vanilla frosting was wayyyyy too sweet for anyone but a child.

Notes for the future: I might want to make red velvet for the red layers, and try and figure out what other flavor would go well with that.
I wanted to make buttercream frosting but could not find cream of tartar in time. I now have it in the pantry, I must make a batch to see if it would work. Another idea is cream cheese frosting.
Freezing the cake layers; I made the cake 10 days in advance, wrapped them individually in plastic, then tin foil and froze them. I moved them from freezer to refrigerator the night before assembly. Night of assembly, I set them on the counter for a little bit, made frosting, cut all the layers and assembled and frosted the cake. I kept the finished cake in the refrigerator overnight. The cake itself was very moist, and quite dense.
One more thing - I need to be sure that the cake pan fits into the cooler or vehicle that I will use to get the cake to its final destination. In this case, the goal was to bring it along on our annual camping trip to Bishop, a 4.5 hour drive away and 20 degrees warmer. Near snaffu when I attempted to shove the cake box into one of the coolers to find it was about one-half of an inch too long. Thankfully, I had a soft cooler I was able to strong-arm the cake into. Just lucky we had enough room in the car for the additional cooler!

Chocolate

Baking with chocolate day in Baking class….

Chocolate decadence (flourless)

Cupcakes with whipped ganache

Healthy Eats

Over the weekend, I was in the mood for healthy and delicious (as if that's news). Naturally- I turned to Greek/Mediterranean food! I had a flourless cake recipe I wanted to try, from my cooking school. It would use a lot of lemon zest, so I knew I would have lots of lemon juice to put to use afterward. I used some in the marinade for chicken kabobs, some in tabbouleh, and I will use some more as a splash of acid in salad dressing tonight.

I love that lemon was the driving force in my cooking choices this weekend. Everything I made turned out so well and it all went well together! This light and lemony menu made me really crave summer - warm weather, barbeques, picnics, and general lingering about out of doors.

Chicken kabobs, marinated in yogurt, lemon and oil

Lemon, Ricotta and Almond Flourless Cake

The cake was delicious and extremely moist. I had never made a flourless cake before, but because I love almond, lemon and ricotta I figured it was good excuse. This definitely satisfied the sweet tooth, and although there was a decent amount of sugar, it was a healthier alternative. 

cake

I just felt like making a butter cake with chocolate frosting, so I did! I used two new recipes that sounded like they'd fit the bill. And, well.... it turned out to be not so much the cake I wanted. It was very simple-tasting, as if it was store-bought. Would be perfect for children, who generally don't care that much about depth of flavor. A couple of critiques: first is that when making the cake, and creaming the butter and sugar, it said to mix for 4-5 minutes. I thought that sounded like too long. Typically you don't want to overwork these things, or else you change the consistency. And when the cake came out of the oven, it had the consistency of poundcake, kinda crumbly, not butter cake (with lots of holes in it). So my suspicion about mixing for too long may have been accurate, and caused this result.

Then there's the frosting. I probably should have chosen milk chocolate that I knew I liked before starting, but I was in a hurry so grabbed what was there. Well, I think the frosting turned out exactly as it was supposed to, but being that I don't prefer this flavor of milk chocolate, the frosting wasn't my bag either.
I write about it because I still consider this recipe a success in that I learned from it. I learned that my instinct about the cake was spot on! That ingredients matter. That, as green as I am, my experience and knowledge are growing. I am getting better at this!
Plus my coworkers don't care. They gobbled it up!

**NOTE: I was rereading this post, and now I know my suspicion was wrong. I actually should cream butter and sugar for a long time. It's when the dry ingredients go in, that you don't want to overwork it. 4-5 minutes seems pretty long, but I will try it next time.
**Another side note: I have been struggling lately trying to figure out why my cakes at home aren't rising like I expect them to. In the case of this one, I'm sure the insufficient creaming time was mostly to blame. But I really need to look into this further, because I am often expecting a different result. It may be time to call an oven calibrator in...

Olive Oil Cake with candied kumquats and whipped cream

Thank goodness, it's finally kumquat season again!

vanilla bean

citrus zest

cake

candying the kumquats

delightful

Two!

Two years doing this blog. I baked a German Chocolate Cake to celebrate! It was a recipe from Donald Link. The cake was nice and moist, and the recipe was pretty easy.... But I have to say, not as good as my mom's recipe. Sometimes you have to try these things out just to confirm what you already know. Moms is best.

Blood Oranges

Photo by Greg Jacobs

It's blood orange season! I thought I would try a different recipe (different for me) and make a Blood Orange and Cardamom Upside Down Cake with Cardamom Whipped Cream, from David Lebovitz. Results were tasty. But I can't help but think it might have tasted better with pears perhaps. I am attempting to use ingredients in new and different ways (again, for me). I am used to oranges as something to eat fresh, or squeeze for juice. So making a cake with them was definitely a stretch. I think it turned out pretty well though. Next citrus experiment, I'm pretty sure will have to involve kumquats, before they are out of season. Check out the beautiful colors...