Savory Inspired Plated Dessert

The basil and candied pine nut ice cream was very good, but as with any ice cream it is better as an accompaniment to dessert. In this case I used white cake I'd had in the freezer (I toasted it slightly to refresh it) and just a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil. If I'd been planning this I'd have made Thomas Keller's madeline cake (I really must post about that, it is delicious) and some sort of citrus olive sauce, probably thickened with xanthan gum. Still, it was a delicious dessert--and not just for something thrown together on a whim.

Put the Lime in the Coconut

I made this cake for an aquantaince whose adult sons wanted to speak with my mom about financial consulting careers. We had them over right around her birthday so I figured, why not make a birthday cake?!

Coconut frosting going on the first layer

Sixtieth Birthday Party

My pops turned 60 earlier this month. We threw him a big surprise party. And even with all the cooking and preparation we did, he (shockingly) was surprised! We really went all out too; it's quite something that we still managed to surprise him.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Whoops, I forgot to post this after the other Passover cake, so I may not have entirely retained the details. But really, a nut free, gluten free, chocolate cake. Rich, dense, moist--almost brownie like. What more is there to say?

Topped with whipped cream, it is a decadent treat for Passover or any time of year.

Quinoa Flour Cake with Kumquats

I made this for Passover, but I will have to try it for my gluten free cousins, because it was really good! The quinoa flour made the cake much lighter with a smaller crumb than the average nut flour based Passover cake. Plus the it lent the cake a nice nutty flavor without being overpoweringly nutty.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

My mom made me my birthday cake as she always does. This year it was chocolate cake--Thomas Keller's recipe. It was good. Very moist and chocolatey but not too heavy and dense. 

Crumb cakes and quickbreads

I could have sworn I posted these two cakes, but apparently I didn't because the photos were still in my "to post" folder. So here goes:

The cake above, a raspberry sour cream crumb cake, is a really excellent and rather large crumb cake from the Williams Sonoma cookbook Muffins. It is dense, moist, great with coffee (or tea if you prefer), and has a crumb layer on top. What is really special about this cake are the fresh raspberries nestled between the cake batter and the crumble layer. The sour cream makes the cake moist, tender, and ever so slightly tangy. I'm all for substituting fat free yogurt for sour cream, but I'd hesitate to do it here--it does alter the texture and flavor slightly and I'm not sure it would be for the better in this case. On the same line, use full fat sour cream; the fat is what makes the cake tender and without oil or butter this cake is light enough already.

Red Velvet Bundt Cake

I cannot stand bright red red velvet cakes. Originally the reddish color came from the reaction of vinegar with cocoa powder. Now most recipes have tweaked the ingredients to make a richer, moister cake, as I understand it. This means that a bit of food coloring does need to be added. I use the tiniest bit--just to make sure it's clearly red velvet, but not so much as to dye your mouth.

Because this was a Bundt cake, I wanted a glaze rather than a frosting. This ended up somewhere in between; pourable but still thick. It was cream cheese, warmed, and mixed with a bit of heavy cream, plenty of powdered sugar, and a dash of vanilla extract. Yum!

Peppermint Chocolate Bundt

Just because it's after Christmas doesn't mean I can't still use peppermint. I like peppermint! This moist bundt was nicely minty but not as richly chocolaty as the deep color indicates; it's made with high quality cocoa, you see, rather than melted chocolate, so it looks chocolaty but could be richer. That's why I made a nice chocolate glaze to kick up the flavor a bit. Then I just sprinkled on some crunched up candy canes. Yum!

Gluten-Free Battenberg Cake

I mentioned this a while ago. I told my cousin that, as her birthday present, I'd make her a birthday cake (it's so difficult to find good gluten free cakes that are fit for a birthday). Any cake you want, I said. She asked for the one type of cake I'd never even heard of: a Battenberg cake. Apparently it's a very common feature at afternoon tea. After some research I discovered that it's a less almond-y, checkerboard version of an Italian (or rather Italian-American) tricolor cake. They are traditionally pink and white, filled with a thin layer of apricot jam, and covered with untinted marzipan that is scored in a diamond pattern.

British Birthday Cake

Since I recently posted my aunt's old birthday cake I thought I'd put this on as well. I have a close family friend exactly 10 years younger than me. She's very sophisticated for her age so I made her this elegant (but still a little bit girly) cake for her 14th birthday. It's white cake with two layers of raspberry buttercream and one of chocolate; she's not quite as much of a chocolate fan as I am, so I limited the chocolate. It's topped with lovely shell pink fondant and a scalloped chocolate fondant polka dot border (it worked so well on the anniversary cake I made, after all.) It's pretty, I think. And she enjoyed it.

By the way I call this a British birthday cake because it's very common to use fondant on birthday cakes in England, unlike the traditional buttercream cakes we tend to consume in the US.

Orange Pound Cake Bites

I'm still without a kitchen so I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about some of the desserts I never posted. In this case, I made it before I blogged. It was for my cousin's wedding shower. It had a purple theme and I was asked to make purple desserts--the cake was supplied by another family member.

I made purple spritz cookies, which I believe I previously posted, and this. This is orange pound cake (really delicious orange pound cake, if I remember correctly.) It's topped with little purple (they were more purple in person, I swear) royal icing flowers. The bowl is filled with a purple-ish, mixed berry dipping sauce. It was very nice! (Is it terrible to say that it was better than the official cake?)

Birthday Cake with Kahlua Ganache

I made this ages ago. Seriously it's been a couple of years, but I didn't really have the blog going then so I didn't post it. It's just too good not to post here, so here goes. This was magnolia bakery white cake, filled with layers of chocolate ganache flavored with plenty of kahlua. The cake was decorated with vanilla buttercream and a couple of roses--gumpaste and modeling chocolate. I wish I'd done a thicker coating of buttercream (you can see the ganache layers through the buttercream) but I was running low on it and I wanted to practice my piping skills. Ah well, it was still delicious and my aunt (it was for her birthday) loved it!

Chocolate Cake with Pumpkin Frosting

Apparently I've been on a pumpkin kick lately. Here's a lovely chocolate cake I made topped (and filled) with pumpkin, cream cheese, white chocolate frosting. It's a bit like a simpler version of the pumpkin spice mocha cake I made last year. Simple but still delicious. And pretty too--I like the color that the pumpkin gives the frosting.

Pumpkin, Sage, and Brown Butter Cakes

I've made this quick bread before, but I decided that I'd give it a try with my pumpkin cakelet pan. Cute right?

Gluten Free Desserts, Sightseeing, and my Dissertation

I stayed with my cousins for the last couple weeks of dissertation writing. I can't thank them enough for putting me up and putting up with me during such a stressful time. In an attempt to thank them, I baked quite a bit for them. Below follows a stream of consciousness post including some gluten free baking and some miscellaneous non-food photos.

 

Circus Cakes

I clearly have a mental block about posting these, seeing as I made them just about 2 years ago. They were for a Diabetes UK fundraiser. Yes, I know, cake for an event about diabetes... The event was for children with Type I diabetes and their families. And what kid, diabetic or not, doesn't want cake?

The challenge was twofold. First, I had to make at least some of the cake gluten free since type I diabetics are more likely to be ceoliac than the rest of the population (also the carbs in flour aren't great for the blood sugar.) Second, the cake had to be circus themed.

Chocolate, Blackberry, Coconut Cake

Every year, my mom asks for a chocolate birthday cake. Past that, I get to do what I want. So I decided to try an idea I'd seen on the food network: using jam to flavor buttercream. In this case I used a high quality blackberry jam. For the filling I made a coconut buttercream by adding creamed coconut to the buttercream. Two delicious, flavored buttercreams with minimal effort.

Chocolate and Pear Tart

My friend, Katy, had me over for dinner ages ago and made me this delicious chocolate pear tart from Martha Stewart. Turns out I have the recipe and, since it is gluten free, I figured I'd make it for the cousins. As when Katy made it, it was a hit!

Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream

I'm Mercedes and I'm a stress eater. Just about two months ago, I was writing multiple term papers and, unfortunately, was deciding if we had to put my cat to sleep (we ended up having to.) She was quite old and had been healthy until about a week prior when her kidneys started shutting down. The vet was trying a few things that would keep her quality of life up and hopefully give her a few more weeks or months.