Feeling nostalgic and missing some food spots in my former home of Los Angeles. This was a tasty (and huge) donut obtained from the Donut Hole. You get to drive through the donut shaped building for this bad boy!
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So, I have been missing in action from this cake blog. But, truth be told, I have not really been baking at all, so you haven't missed much! I have been obsessed with The Great British Bake Off and have been on a steady diet of catching up with the show on PBS videos online. It's been (sort of) satisfying my sweet tooth, and I am drooling over all of the recipes available online as well.
And I have been saving some delicious looking recipes on Pinterest, with dreams of baking my way back to cake-lover's bliss. However...it's been a crazy hot summer and baking has been the last thing on my mind and not feasible since my husband declared that the oven will not be turned on. After a shocking heatwave, complete with wildfires in the Burbank hills, there has been a break in the temperatures, and a cool evening graced us with its presence. So...I baked a cake! Raspberry buttercream covering moist chocolate cake...three layers of it! One quick photo out of the fridge, otherwise the buttercream starts to melt. It's soft and sweet and I can't wait to eat a piece for dessert tonight. More photos to follow. I'm back! Celebrated my son's 6 month or half-birthday this weekend! We dug into a tasty chocolate mousse cake from a local shop, Ruby Bakery. I added the Pooh Bear characters, who unfortunately looked like they were wading through snow...delicious frosting snow. Happy Half Birthday Finn! You'll get to eat cake at the one year mark.
I make this cake recipe as a cupcake all the time. It's a basic vegan chocolate cake recipe found on allrecipes.com and I have to say that it's just perfect. The batter makes a dozen cupcakes, or six oversize muffins if you're so inclined! And inclined I was this morning to indulge in a "chocolate muffin", aka chocolate cake batter poured into a six-muffin tin resulting in six giant cupcakes.
This cake is vegan, but you wouldn't know it from the dense, chocolatey and not too-sweet taste. So, grab your favorite dark cocoa powder and make some little cakes for breakfast! One year ago I got married to my best friend, and one amazing dude. We had two weddings. That's right, two weddings. Due to our families living far apart and the difficulty involved in bringing everyone together for one event, we had two small ceremonies in each of our hometowns. Two weddings means two cakes! For Tom's hometown wedding, we found Tamara and her Mwokaji Cakery. She created a simple looking cake, but hidden within were fantastic flavors of lemon mousse and a chocolate layer with Oreo mousse - crazy good! The groom's cake was from Just Desserts, a small, dark chocolate raspberry cake, just perfect. However, for my hometown wedding, I had the help of my mother and aunt who created a deconstructed cake table with all my favorites: white wedding cake, chocolate cheesecake and a lemon chiffon cake. Each cake was just delightful. There were no leftovers for our freezer for the tradition of eating a piece for the first anniversary. For the love of cake, I thought about revisiting one of these recipes and baking something myself, but life this year has proved more difficult than expected and so without time to bake on this first wedding anniversary, I found a heart-shaped, store bought cake. It did the trick. Chocolate, not too sweet and just right for sharing with my sweetie!
Admittedly, I am a bit of an organizational freak. Like many chefs and cooks, I love/need a clean kitchen before I dig into a new recipe or pull out a tried and true dish that I can make with my eyes closed. Even if you have only a tiny kitchen, if it is well stocked and organized you can make anything with ease as long as the right ingredients are at hand! I'm starting this spring cleaning frenzy with the panty. I love these ingredients labels that popped up on Pinterest from The Creativity Exchange. Jo from Zuer Designs created these labels. I ordered the clear sticker sheets and I will be printing these beautiful hand-lettered labels to keep all of my baking basics labeled and lovely. I'm also seem to have an abundance of glassware, specifically jars from Italy and France. I have a substantial collection of Bonne Maman preserves jars and I use them for organizing everything from small utensils and cupcake papers to spices and cinnamon sticks. They are sweet looking with the red gingham lids and handy to use.
Whatever containers you have to use, I think clear is best and sprucing them up with these labels will do just the trick. I look forward to a clean, neat and organized pantry this spring! Welcome to my first post! It's short 'n sweet and I will definitely be back for more. "If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake" was a song that my mom taught me as a young girl. She sang songs all the time, and I'm sure she sang this one while actually baking a cake. I think about it every time I pop a sheet cake, a tin of cupcakes or the like into the oven. Here's a well known version of the song - Enjoy! |
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