1 Step Pound (Bundt) Cake with Vanilla Glaze

Do you know what today is? The picture is a hint :)

I am usually not too up with the foodie holidays. I will usually find out it's something like National Pancake Day at 9:00PM that night. Well, thanks to The Food Librarian's montage of bundt cakes I am prepared for this holiday. It's National Bundt Day!

In all seriousness, for the past 3 years, Mary at The Food Librarian has professed her love for the bundt cake by baking 30 cakes in 30 days prior to the holiday on November 15th. That is a lot of cake! She also hosts a 'big bundt' round-up, so I thought it would be fun this year to bake along. The timing also happens to be perfect as today is also my mother's birthday. Being several states away, I will not be able to celebrate with her in person this year, so I thought I'd offer up this cake. 

The recipe for this cake comes from a co-worker. Admittedly, I am usually more of a frosting kind of gal, but this cake was good enough on its own that I actually considered skipping the glaze. Only for a moment. It was moist and dense (in a good way), and the lemon flavor comes through just a little bit from the added lemon juice. The only negative is that this recipe makes a ton of batter. I have a 15-cup bundt pan and it still rose above the edge of the pan. If you have a smaller pan, you may want to split the batter into 2 cakes.

So, I know it's the day of but join in on the bundt fun. Mary's link for the bundt round up can be found here, and I promise I won't tell if the calendar doesn't officially say November 15th. Enjoy!

(Printable Recipe)

1 Step Pound (Bundt) Cake with Vanilla Glaze
From Vince's recipe

Ingredients:
Cake:
3 sticks of butter (1-1/2 cups), softened 
3-1/2 cups flour, sifted
3 cups sugar 
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. baking soda
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1-1/2 cups sour cream

Glaze:
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3-4 Tbsp. milk
2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Allow all the cold ingredients to come to room temperature. Grease and lightly flour a large bundt pan or desired loaf pan(s).

Combine all of the cake ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix for 1 minute on low speed, then mix for 3 minutes on medium speed. Pour batter evenly into the prepared pan and bake for 60 minutes. The cake may need to bake longer than 60 minutes. When it rises completely in the middle and a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean, it is finished. Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes. Carefully remove from the pan and place on a wired rack to cool completely. You can skip the glaze and sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

For the glaze, melt the butter. Mix in vanilla and milk. Add powdered sugar a little at a time and mix until desired consistency is obtained. Pour over the cooled cake and let harden before serving.

Club: Baked - Sunday Night Cake

The next Club: Baked recipe was chosen by one of my favorite bloggers, Julie from Little Bit of Everything. I first met Julie through SMS, and she was the first blogger that I knew in my town. We have since moved to a new state (from NE to AZ), but I still love looking through Julie's recipes!  

In the book, they talk about how this is one of their favorite cakes. While fancy layer cakes are nice, they take a lot of time and patience to make. Sometimes it is nice to make a cake in a pan, frost it, and eat! That's exactly what this cake is. It is a white-cinnamon base topped with a dark chocolate, pudding-like frosting. We really enjoyed the cake portion. The recipe called for a 9x9-inch pan, but I baked mine in a 8x8-inch pan. I had to add about 10 minutes to the bake time called for in the recipe, but it seemed to work okay. My cake turned out a little dense, but it was definitely still nice and moist! In my opinion, the frosting was just okay, but this may be due to the fact that I don't tend to gravitate towards chocolate-heavy recipes. I also think I may have let the frosting beat in the mixer just a little too long because the butter almost started to separate, so I would recommend to stick to the 2-3 minutes called for in the recipe. If dark chocolate is your thing, you'd probably love this frosting as it is chocolatey and pudding-like, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. 

But, don't let my chocolate aversions keep you from trying out this cake. We were already discussing other possible frosting ideas for the cake. I'm thinking maybe a cinnamon buttercream or even a cream cheese frosting would be great! Be sure to stop by the Club: Baked page to check out the other cakes. I know there are some other ladies there that are chocolate lovers, so they may have a better review of the frosting :) Enjoy!

Grandma's Chocolate Zucchini Cake

I never grew up with a garden. Always a couple tomato plants but never much else. When my parents moved into their current house when I was about 13, we tried one summer. Mom was weeding and pulled up all but one of the carrots that we had planted and that is about how the garden went the rest of the summer too (although not all of it was our fault). 

Despite my lack of experience with anything green, when we finished our backyard this spring, a garden was on our short list of must-haves. By the time it was finished in mid-April, we were about a month late (for Arizona standards) getting our plants in the ground, but we decided to give it a go anyway. I have to say I have been pretty impressed. We have gotten herbs, cucumbers, tons of little yellow bell tomatoes, eggplant, cantaloupe, jalapenos, little bell peppers, and zucchini so far. Still waiting on our watermelon! You can tell that we were late planting as much of our produce has been small. That is everything but the zucchini! Check out this monster! (Those tiles on our counter are at least a foot in length). I am glad that we decided to only plant one zucchini plant!

So what does one do with a surplus of zucchini? Well, we have been grilling much of it, but there is only so much grilled zucchini that two people can eat! I was talking to my mom one day, and she mentioned that my grandma has a recipe for a chocolate zucchini cake that everyone always loved. I can assure you it didn't take me to long to decide on that recipe as a destination for this monster, and after a quick phone call to my aunt for the recipe, I was armed and ready to go. 

I grated my zucchini by hand using the smaller portion of a cheese grater as I wanted the pieces to incorporate better into the batter. I can tell you that 2 cups of grated zucchini still left me with about 1/3 of this baby! As anticipated, the cake turned out great! Can you ever expect anything less from a "grandma recipe?" My aunt said that grandma usually frosted the cake with a chocolate cream cheese frosting. I went with a standard chocolate frosting that I will post below because I never keep cream cheese in the house, but if you want to make a cream cheese version, by all means send me some :) Enjoy!

(Printable Recipe)

Grandma's Chocolate Zucchini Cake
From Grandma F.

Ingredients:
Cake:
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup oil
1-3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups peeled, finely grated zucchini (I left the peel on)
2-1/2 cups flour
4 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2-3/4 cup mini chocolate chips (optional: I added these)

Chocolate Frosting:
4 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
3 cups powdered sugar
5 Tbsp. milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x13-inch pan with nonstick spray and set aside. Add the cake ingredients in the order shown (except for the chocolate chips if using) to the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix and beat on low speed for 4 minutes, pausing to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula if needed. Gently fold in chocolate chips if using. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

For the frosting, mix the cocoa, butter, and milk. Add powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached. Frost the cake once cool.

Linked to Sweet Tooth Fridays

Club: Baked - NY Style Crumb Cake Muffins

Woo hoo! First recipe for a new baking group! Club: Baked came about as an idea from Karen of Karen's Cookies Cakes and More. While it's been a great ride, our SMS recipes will wind up in August, and several of us decided that we were in for more baking so we chose another book :) Truthfully, I had never heard of Matt Lewis's Baked: Explorations before it was mentioned for this group, but after receiving the book, I am stoked for this group! If this first recipe is any indication, baking through this cookbook is going to be great (and delicious!).

Our first recipe was hosted by Karen and you can find her post here. The cake was originally intended to baked in a 9x13 with a crumb layer in almost equal thickness to the cake layer. I am definitely amongst the crumb-layer lovers, so this ratio sounds perfect! In reality, I didn't end up making the full recipe as that would be a TON of cake for only two people. Karen had noted on the website that she had trouble when baking half the recipe in a 8x8-inch pan, so I opted for muffins. The only downside of my muffins - they can't hold onto nearly as much crumb topping as the cake. I still really want to make this recipe as written and am absolutely going to keep it in mind if I ever need to bring a dish! 

My muffins came together really easily, and I ended up with a dozen typical sized muffins and a little extra crumb topping. Not knowing how long they'd need to be in the oven, I originally set the timer for 18 minutes. Not even close. In the end, they needed about 28-30 minutes to finish baking. While they were baking, my husband kept asking me are these going to be good? With that much crumb topping, how could they not? They were awesome! We were able to enjoy them warm from the oven on the first morning, and what a great way to start the day. Sounds like this group is going to be great!

If you want to see the other bakers' links or want to join up with us, check out the Club: Baked page!

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream

One of the "foodie-goals" that I set for myself this year was to venture more into the world of cakes and cupcakes. While cupcakes are definitely something that I enjoy eating (come on, the frosting to cake ratio is much higher than many cakes), they aren't something that I commonly make. There probably are a couple reasons for this. One being that there are only 2 people in our house to eat them, but the second and probably larger reason is that I have no experience in decorating cakes or cupcakes.

With my aforementioned abundance of strawberries, I decided that now was as good of time as any to give cupcakes a shot. After looking through several recipes, there seemed to be a fair amount of praise for a Martha Stewart recipe seen on blogs both here and here, among others, so I decided to give it a shot. The process of making the cupcakes went really smooth. As Tracey mentioned in her blog post, the cupcakes bake up with a flat top. Mine were also really fragile when I first removed them from the muffin pan due to the chunks of cooked strawberries in the cupcakes. At least we got to sample the one below that fell apart :)

Both Tracey and Annie mentioned that Swiss Meringue Buttercream can be a little temperamental to make. Basically, my impression from them is that you put everything together and beat the heck out of it with your stand mixer until it looks like a frosting. I have actually made a Swiss Meringue Buttercream once before for a SMS cake, and the frosting has always came together okay for me. Maybe I'm liberal with the mixing times? My only problem with the frosting process is that I didn't have enough. I halved both the cupcake and frosting recipes, and after piping it on a few cupcakes, I realized that I was only going to have enough for about 2/3's of my cupcakes (I told you I really liked frosting). Rather than go through the process of making more, I mixed up a different strawberry cream cheese frosting from Annie's site to see which we liked better.

 Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Strawberry Cream Cheese

The process aside, the cupcakes were really good but if I were to make them again, I would change a couple of things. The cake stayed really moist and had a nice crumb, but the chunks of strawberries made the cupcakes fall apart really easily. In the future, I think I would to try a recipe that includes pureed strawberries to fix this problem. As for which frosting we preferred, it is a toss up. We liked the cream cheese version for the taste, but the Swiss Meringue Buttercream definitely made prettier cupcakes! I even let the cream cheese version sit in the refrigerator overnight, and I still couldn't pipe anything with it. I am going to go against the mainstream here because I don't think Swiss Meringue Buttercreams are really my thing. Whenever I've tried them, I feel like I'm eating straight butter (which is prominent in the ingredient list). I just think it is too "greasy" seeming and not sweet enough for my tastes. I am still looking for a great tasting frosting that will pipe well enough to make pretty cupcakes, so if anyone has a great recipe, please let me know. Enjoy!

(Printable Recipe)

Strawberry Cupcakes with Two Frosting Choices
From Martha Stewart's Cupcakes and Annie's Eats (also seen on Tracey's Culinary Adventures and Annie's Eats) 

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
2-1/4 cups sugar
1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 large eggs plus 1 large egg white (to halve this use 1 whole egg, 1 egg white, 1/2 egg yolk)
1 cup milk
2-1/2 cups finely chopped strawberries

Swiss Meringue Buttercream:
1-1/2 cups fresh strawberries (8 oz.) rinsed, hulled, and coarsely chopped
4 large egg whites
1-1/4 cups sugar
3 sticks (1-1/2 cups) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting:
1/2 cup strawberries
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1-1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1-3/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans with paper liners. Set aside. 

In a medium bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking powder, and salt; whisk to blend. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla. Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs and egg white one at a time, mixing well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in two additions alternating with the milk, mixing each addition just until incorporated. Gently fold in the chopped strawberries with a spatula. 

Divide the batter between the paper liners, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake until light golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 to 28 minutes, rotating the pans half way through baking. Allow to cool in the pans a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

To make the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, place the strawberries in a food processor or blender. Puree until completely smooth. Combine the egg whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Heat, whisking frequently, until stiff peaks for and the mixture has cooled to room temperature, about 8 minutes. (The bowl should be cool to the touch). Reduce the speed to medium and add the butter, 2 tablespoons at a time, adding more once each addition has been incorporated. If the frosting looks soupy or curdled, continue to beat on medium-high speed until thick and smooth again, about 3-5 minutes or more until it comes together. Blend in the strawberry puree until smooth and completely incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a decorative tip and frost cooled cupcakes as desired. Garnish with fresh berry slices if desired.

To make the strawberry cream cheese frosting, puree the strawberries in a blender or food processor. Strain through a mesh sieve to remove seeds if desired and set aside. Beat the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add powdered sugar and mix until smooth. Add lemon juice, vanilla, and strawberry puree. Adjust the amount of puree to achieve your desired consistency. Frost cupcakes when completely cool. 

Note: Half the Swiss Meringue Butter cream recipe frosted about 12 cupcakes for me. Half the cream cheese recipe would have been plenty.

Yield: full recipe makes 34 cupcakes

Fruit-Topped Angel Food Cake Squares

Well, this dessert was the destination for the previous angel food cake. It sounds (and looks) pretty simple, but the combination of the pudding part with the berries and cake ends up with something better than the individual parts. We were first introduced to this recipe from a college friend who is one of the best cooks that I know. I think that Jenna probably fed me a couple times a week while I was still living in the dorms during my last year of college.

Since then, this has became one of my husband's favorite desserts. I have to admit that it is up there on my list too =) We usually only make it once or twice per year because around here it is one of those things that is "dangerous" to have around the house. In making my own cake, it was larger than the ones that I had previously bought. The extra cubes of cake soaked up more of the pudding mixture. In this one, I missed the little pools of pudding that normally form around the cake pieces, so next time, I will probably save some of the cake for another use (like strawberry shortcakes). Either way, there aren't too many ways you can go wrong with this dessert. Enjoy!

I am linking this to Sweet Tooth Fridays!

(Printable Recipe)

Fruit-Topped Angel Food Cake Squares
From Jenna R.

Ingredients:
1 loaf (1 lb) angel food cake (12x5 inch)
1-1/2 c. milk
3 containers (6oz) fat-free yogurt (I like vanilla)
1 can (14 oz) fat-free sweetened condensed milk
1 box (6 serving size) instant pudding mix, any flavor (cheesecake is our favorite flavor)
2 c. quartered strawberries
2 c. fresh blueberries
2 c. fresh blackberries

Spray a 9x13 inch pan with nonstick spray. Cut angel food cake into 1-inch pieces with a serrated knife. Place in the prepared pan in one layer. 

In a medium bowl, mix the milk, yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, and pudding mix with a wire whisk until well blended. Pour over the cake pieces. Gently tap the dish on the counter to remove any air bubbles. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. Just before serving, gently mix all the berries and spread over the top of the cake. Cut into squares and serve.

Angel Food Cake

Angel food cake is one of those things that I had previously never considered making at home. I never really had a reason other than this time of year it is so easy to pick one up at the grocery store (they are usually even right next to the strawberries). Growing up, mom always served our "strawberry shortcake" with angel food cake rather than with the traditional biscuit-like cakes. To this day, I like my strawberry shortcake better this way, and with spring on everyone's mind and all the berries in the stores lately, a recipe for homemade angel food cake is definitely right in season.

The making of this cake actually came about in a roundabout way. After coming home from the store loaded with the previously mentioned berries, my husband persuaded me to make one of his favorite spring-summer desserts. Since angel food cake is one of the ingredients and I didn't want to make a trip back to the store, I decided to give a homemade version a shot. The recipe is from the book The Best Light Recipe which is the same book that I used to make these stuffed peppers. I will post the recipe for this coveted berry dessert in the next couple days, but I thought that the angel food cake turned out good enough to give it a post of its own =)

Making angel food cake is actually surprisingly simple. It is basically whipping egg whites with some sugar and then folding in flour and flavor extracts. I used measure my flour and sugar using my kitchen scale to make sure I had exact amounts for this process. Since we do not own an angel food cake pan, I had to make adapt the baking process a little. I ended up baking my cake in my bundt pan which worked well except for the fact that I could not invert the pan to allow the cake to cool. My cake fell quite a bit while it was cooling, and I'm wondering if this was a result of not inverting my pan. Since I was planning on cutting up the cake anyway, this was not a big deal, but I am still not convinced that you NEED a special pan just for angel food cake if it's not something you would use regularly. As for the taste, it was spot on. I've heard that you've never had angel food cake until you've tried the homemade version, and this one was definitely delicious. Who knows, maybe we'll be purchasing a special pan because I know I will make this again. Enjoy!

I'm linking this to Sweet Tooth Friday!

(Printable Recipe)

Angel Food Cake
From The Best Light Recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup (4 ounces) cake flour
1-1/2 cups (10.5 ounces) sugar
12 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1/4 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract

Adjust an over rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 325 degrees. Have ready an ungreased large tube pan (9-inch diameter, 16-cup capacity), preferably with a removable bottom. If the pan bottom is not removable, line it with parchment paper or waxed paper. 

Whisk the flour and 3/4 cup of the sugar together in a small bowl; set aside. Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer on low speed until just broken up and foamy. Add the cream of tartar and salt and increase the speed to medium-high. Continue to beat, adding the remaining 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at at time, until all the sugar is added and the whites are shiny and form soft peaks. Beat in the lemon juice, vanilla extract, and almond extract until just blended. 

Sift the flour mixture over the whites (they found sifting to be essential), about 1/4 cup at a time, and gently fold it in using a large rubber spatula. Gently scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Give the pan a couple raps on the counter to release any large air bubbles. Bake until the cake is golden brown and the top springs back when pressed firmly, about 55 to 60 minutes.

If the cake pan has prongs around the rim for elevating the cake, invert the pan onto them. If the pan does not have prongs, invert the pan onto the neck of a bottle or funnel. Let the cake cool completely upside-down, 2 to 3 hours.

To unmold, run a knife around the edge of the cake pan, being careful not to separate the golden crust from the cake. Loosen the cake from the center tube using a wire cake tester or skewer. Slide the cake with the removable bottom out of the pan. Run a knife between the pan and the cake to loosen, then gently flip the cake out onto a platter, bottom side facing up (the bottom is the presentation side). If the pan bottom is not removable, loosen the cake from the edges and center tube as described, then flip out onto a platter and remove the parchment paper. Cut slices by sawing gently with a large, serrated knife. This cake tastes best when it is served the same day it is made. 

Yield: 12 servings

Blueberry Crumb Bars

Well, by 6:00am on Wednesday I already knew it was going to be a crappy day. My first clue, I was in Arizona sitting in an airport waiting for a flight that going to take me away from the hubby for another month. Sometimes I wonder if the leaving justifies the visit. It definitely sucks.

On top of that, the hubby called me after he dropped me off, and he got a flat tire just a couple miles from the airport that he couldn't change it because the car jack was rusted. Double fail. Bad things are suppose to happen in threes. I think the rusted jack counts as a third?!?!?

Oddly, the making of these blueberry bars went similarly (although not quite as catastrophic).  Blueberries were on sale this week at the grocery store, so I was looking for something to make with our supply. Unfortunately, I needed a recipe that would accommodate only 1 egg, not quite enough flour, and a lack of any citrus fruit to zest. I ran across Dorie's recipe here on Tracey's blog and hoped that it would hold up to my necessary substitutions.

After a quick google search to look for egg-replacements, I ended up with a recipe that matched my ingredients. I subbed 1/2 c. of orange juice for 1/2 c. of buttermilk to add citrus flavor, 2 tablespoons of unsweetened applesauce for my missing egg, and after scraping the bottom of the storage container, was only 1 teaspoon short on the amount of flour used to coat the blueberries. 

The verdict on the finished bars: pretty dang good. They were moist, perfectly crumbly, and my blueberries didn't even sink.  Let's hope this day ends up being half as good as these bars.

(Printable Recipe)

Blueberry Crumb Bars
Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Ingredients:
For the Crumbs:
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 c. sugar
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1/3 c. all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt

For the cake:
1 pint (2 cups) blueberries (if frozen do not thaw)
2 c. plus 2 teaspoons all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon 
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
2/3 c. sugar
3/4 stick (6 Tbsp.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 c. orange juice

1/2 c. buttermilk
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.

To make the crumbs: Put all the ingredients in a bowl and combine until the mixture forms clumps and curds and holds together when pressed. This can also be done in a food processor. Scrape the topping into a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until needed. The covered crumb mixture can be refrigerated for up to 3 days if needed.

To make the cake: Using your fingertips, toss the blueberries and 2 teaspoons of the flour together in a small bowl to coat the berries. Set aside. Whisk together the remaining 2 cups of flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Add the butter and with the paddle or whisk attachment of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar at medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one by one, beating for about 1 minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla extract. Don't be concerned if the batter looks curdled - it will smooth out. Mix the buttermilk and orange juice together. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture alternately, the flour in 3 parts and the buttermilk in 2 (begin and end with the dry ingredients). You will have a thick, creamy batter. With a rubber spatula, gently fold in the berries. 

Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top gently with the spatula. Break the crumb mixture into pieces and scatter over the batter, pressing them down ever so slightly. 

Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until the crumbs are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean (mine was done at 50 minutes). Transfer the cake to a rack and cool just until it is warm or until it reaches room temperature.

SMS: Sweet Potato Bread with Cinnamon-Rum-Orange Glaze

After my test on Thursday, I'm glad to back with SMS this week. This week's SMS was hosted by Lorelei from Mermaid Sweets. You can find the recipe in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book or on Lorelei's blog.

This recipe is listed in the book as "dessert for breakfast." Despite being called a bread, this recipe definitely seems like more of a dessert. I've noticed through making these recipes that I usually have a hubby peeking in the kitchen wondering when it will be finished. This one was no different. I kept getting, "Smells good. Is it done yet." 

Unfortunately, this recipe gave me a little bit of trouble. First, I realized about half way into making the batter that I only had about 1/2 of the oil that I needed for the recipe. Too late to cut the recipe in half... Luckily, I keep unsweetened applesauce around the house, so I ended up subbing applesauce for half the oil.

The rest of the cake baking went okay, but it didn't come out of the pan quite as easy as I would have liked :-(

I'd like to blame it on the lack of sleep from my exam, but I was really just trying to follow the recipe despite my reservations that it really should have cooled a little bit longer before I tried to dump it out of the pan. Oh well, I ended up patching it back together with the glaze. 

Overall, it didn't look quite as pretty as it should have but ended up okay. It lived up to the smells and ended up really moist from the applesauce :-)

SMS: Mini Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

This week's SMS was hosted by Julie at a Little Bit of Everything. With Easter quickly approaching, carrot cake definitely seemed like a timely choice. Thanks for hosting! The original recipe called for a layer cake with the orange cream cheese frosting. I ended up halving the recipe and making mini cupcakes mostly because I found these cute pastel colored muffin papers at the store :-)

Other than halving the amounts, I stuck directly to the ingredients listed in the recipe. I'm sure many of us have our "go-to" carrot cake recipes, but I think that it's fun every once and awhile to switch in a different one. I can't speak for the cake as a whole, but the mini-cupcakes were definitely enjoyed around here. They were very moist and the orange flavors in the frosting seemed to be a great touch. Of course, how can you go wrong with bite-sized pieces of carrot cake slathered in cream cheese frosting?

Head over to the SMS blog to check out how the other bakers did! On another note, I got my book in the mail this week, so I'm excited to bake my way through!

SMS: Roasted Pecan Cake with Caramel Orange Marmalade & Burnt Orange Buttercream

 

Wow. That may officially be the longest blog title ever. Nevertheless, this is my first week baking along with the ladies at Sweet Melissa Sundays (SMS), and I am crazy excited to be along! This week's recipe was chosen by Leslie of Lethally Delicious. I'm hoping this group will help me broaden my horizons on what I can make. I tend to stick in my cookie-bar comfort zone and don't venture out too often. I also need to send out a big thanks to my mother for letting me takeover her kitchen today after our impromptu trip back to our hometown this weekend.

There were a lot of "firsts" for me in making this recipe - first SMS, first meringue, first time browning butter. I did take a picture of the first meringue as proof :-)

The cake itself is great. It definitely is a little labor intensive... Maybe something best kept for birthdays and other such special occasions. Nevertheless, my father, who typically doesn't like nuts in his desserts, was using a spatula to clean out the batter bowl. While the recipe is involved, I didn't run into any major problems. I did have some trouble with the sugar-mixture crystallizing into hard pieces when I was making the marmalade, but I later realized that the orange juice that I was adding was cold. Problem solved and the marmalade was great. There were some reports of it being too sweet. I did loose quite a bit of sugar in these "hard pieces," so I must have accidentally stumbled upon the right ratio. We really enjoyed the marmalade filling. It was probably our favorite part.

I did bake the cake in a 9x13 pan and then cut it in half to assemble making only 2 layers instead of the 4 called for in the recipe mostly due to the size of the pan I used.

 

The burnt orange buttercream was just okay. With the amount of butter called for in the recipe, it seemed to be most of what we tasted. The orange flavor was lost. It may have been better to swap the vanilla for orange extract to give the orange flavor a little bit more oomph. Overall, we were more than satisfied with my first SMS and look forward to many more great weeks. Stop by the other SMS blogs and see how their cakes turned out!

Heart-Shaped Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

 

Happy Valentine's Day! If you don't already have a dessert planned for tonight or if you are looking for a fun project for today, give these a try! I know a lot of people don't like Valentine's Day, but I've always thought it was fun. Just some extra time I get to spend with my hubby :-) He was actually able to come home from his rotation this weekend, so we've got plans to try out a new Indian restaurant tonight. I've been wanting to go to this place forever, so I'm pretty excited. Curry here I come!

I saw these a couple days ago on Annie's Eats and knew immediately that I wanted to make them. Over the last few months, I've been eyeing several whoopie pie recipes, and I have to say these might be one of the cutest desserts I've ever seen. Props to Annie for coming up with the idea to make them in the shape of a heart!

I don't actually own pastry bags, but in the past, I've found that a ziploc bag with a corner snipped off often works just as well for these type of projects. You won't make any roses with a ziploc bag, but when you are just using it for the squeeze effect, it gets the job done. Plus easy clean up. Enough said.

 

 

The only problem I ran into making these was the frosting. In an attempt to make them a little healthier, I had planned on using Neufchatel cheese for the frosting. Well, when we went to the store, they were out, so I tried using fat-free cream cheese instead. Not a good idea. What I ended up with was runny frosting. Runny frosting that even more powdered sugar wasn't fixing. It did eventually set-up, but the cookies didn't nearly have as much frosting between them as I would have liked. I don't know if the Neufchatel cheese would have worked or not, but next time, I'm going bite the bullet and get the real cream cheese. It's dessert anyway.

Despite the runny frosting, the whoopie pies were still really good! Enjoy the day and make sure to let all your friends and family know they are loved!

(Printable Recipe)


Red Velvet Whoopie Pies
Adapted from Annie's Eats

Ingredients:
For the cookies:
2 c. all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 c. light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 c. buttermilk, at room temperature
red food coloring

For the frosting:
1 pkg. (8 oz) cream cheese
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2-1/2 c. confectioners' sugar

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Using a heart template cut out from card stock, trace evenly spaced hearts onto pieces of parchment paper sized to fit 2 cookie sheets. Place the parchment paper on the cookie sheets so that the side you have drawn on is facing down; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. In the bowl of stand mixer, cream together the butter and brown sugar on a medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the egg until incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Blend in the vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, beat in about 1/3 of the dry ingredients, followed by half the buttermilk, beating each addition just until incorporated. Repeat so that all the buttermilk has been added and then mix in the final 1/3 of dry ingredients. Do not overbeat. Blend in the food coloring.

Transfer the batter to a ziploc bag (or pastry bag if you have one). Cut off one small corner and pipe onto the parchment paper using the heart tracings as a guide. Bake, one pan at a time, 7-9 minutes or until the tops are set. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets at least 10 minutes, until they can easily be transferred to a cooling rack. Repeat with any remaining batter. Allow cookies to cool completely before proceeding.

To make cream cheese frosting, in the bowl of a mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter on medium-high speed until well combined and smooth, about 2-3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla extract. Gradually beat in the confectioners' sugar until totally incorporated, increase the speed and then beat until smooth.

Transfer the frosting to a clean ziploc bag. Pair the cookies up by size and shape. Flip one cookie of each pair so that the flat side is facing up. Cut the corner and pipe frosting onto the flat-sided cookie of each pair, leaving the edges clear. Sandwich the cookies together so that the flat sides are facing each other and press gently to help the filling reach the edges. Let set out until filling hardens and cookies stabilize. To store, refrigerate in an airtight container.

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

This recipe is actually one that my dad has adapted from a recipe here at allrecipes.com. My husband and I me made this over the holidays to take to a family Christmas but ended up not getting to take it due to an unfortuante incident while the cheesecake was cooling. It was really too bad because the dang thing didn't even crack! In the end that meant more cheescake for me (not necessarily a good thing) because my husband left for a rotation out of town the following Monday.

Regardless of any incidents, this might be one of the best cheescakes that I have ever had. I even got to use my new food processor to make the crumbs for the crust when making it! The only thing that bothered me about the cheescake this time was that I had some trouble with the raspberry preserves sinking to the bottom. I'm not really sure why because I've seen my dad do it several times? If you've got any ideas, let me know. I don't think I stirred it too much when swirling, but who knows.

I usually bake my cheescakes with a 9x13 pan with a little water in the bottom on the bottom rack of the oven. I find this much easier than trying to line my springform pan with foil and then hoping that it doesn't leak somewhere. So far so good on preventing cracks!

Enjoy!

(Printable Recipe)

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

Recipe from Paul Smolik

Ingredients:

1 c. vanilla wafer crumbs

3 Tbsp. sugar

1/4 c. butter, melted

1 pkg. white chocolate chips

1/2 c. half-and-half cream

3 pkg. (8oz each) cream cheese, softened (sometimes I will swap in 1 pkg. 1/3-less fat cream cheese)

1/2 c. sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

6 Tbsp. seedless raspberry preserves

Process vanilla wafers in a food processor or crush in a plastic bag until crumbled into coarse crumbs. Mix together wafer crumbs, 3 Tbsp. subar, and melted butter. Press mixture into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. In a microwave-safe bowl or on the stove-top, melt white chocolate chips with half-and-half. If melting in the microwave, melt according to package directions for the chips (or in like 15-30 second incriments).

In the bowl of a mixer, beath the cream cheese and 1/2 c. sugar together until smooth. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until smooth. Blend in vanilla and melted white chocolate. Pour half the batter over the crust. Spoon 3 Tbsp raspberry preserves ove the batter. Carefully pour remaning cheesecake batter into the pan over the raspberry preserves and spoon the remaining raspberry preserves over the top. Swirl batter with the tip of knife to create a marbled effect.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until filling is set. Cool, cover with plastic wrap, and refridgerate for 8 hours before removing outer portion of the springform pan.

September Sweet & Simple Bakes: St. Clement's Drizzle Cake

September's recipe for Sweet and Simple Bakes was St. Clement's Drizzle Cake. The cake is flavored from both fresh lemon and fresh orange zest as well as their juice in the glaze. This was a new type of recipe for me, but I was excited for it because I can remember a similar lemon-poppy seed cake that my grandmother used to make for us when we were younger that was delicious!

I did run into a little bit of a snag while making the cake. I was right in the middle of beating the eggs into the batter when I realized that if I didn't start making supper, that it would be LATE before we got to eat. I finished the batter and sat it aside in the refrigerator for a couple hours. When I finally got the cake in the oven, it started to brown FAST! At 30 minutes when I checked it, the top was pretty brown and the middle still looked like jello! Thankfully, I was able to save it by covering the pan with aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes of bake time. I don't know if it was the time or the refrigeration that threw the baking off so far, but I can recommend baking the cake immediately after finishing the

 batter!

The flavor of the cake was very good! It stayed quite moist even with my bake time adventure. In fact, I didn't get very good pictures of the slices because my husband dug in before I was able to get out there with the camera =-) The citrus glaze really does add a nice sweetness to the top, but I think I would use a larger "poking" device next time so that it penetrates further into the cake. Enjoy!

(Printable Version)

St. Clement's Drizzle Cake - Sweet and Simple Bakes

1 c. (175 g) granulated sugar

6 oz (175 g) softened butter

grated zest and juice of 1 large lemon

grated zest and juice of 1 large orange

4 Tbsp. milk

2 eggs

1-1/4 c. all-purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp. baking powder

3 Tbsp. granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a large loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray. Place 1 c. sugar, butter, and zest of the lemon and orange in a bowl and beat together until pale and creamy. Add the milk. Beat in the eggs, one at at time with a spoon of flour to prevent the mixture from curdling. Mix in the remaining flour. Spoon into the prepared pan and level the surface with a spatula. Bake in the oven for about 45 mintues or until they are golden brown and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake.

While the cake is baking, place the lemon and orange juice in a saucepan, bring to boil and allow to reduce in quantity to about 3 tablespoons. Leave to cool, and then stir in the remaining granulated sugar until it just starts to dissolve.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, prick several times with a skewer. Slowly pour the lemon and orange sugar over the entire top, letting it soak into the cake. Leave to cool completely in the tin before turning out and cutting into slices to serve.