Nigella's Gingerbread

 We had a deliciously nontraditional Christmas dinner this year  - we bbq'ed steaks and made fries and gravy and yorkies on the side (and veggies too, I promise).  

I was so looking forward to the steak and yorkies that I nearly forgot to plan a dessert.  I pulled out my lovely Nigella Christmas book and immediately decided on gingerbread for the big dessert.

 

Other than buying the wrong sort of molasses, it was an easy cake to make.  

The house smelled heavenly, and if you just slightly under-bake it as Nigella suggests, its lovely and soft and keeps for days.

Recipe: Sticky Gingerbread

carrot cake with chocolate glaze

That title above would have made me keep moving past that recipe.  Carrot cake?  Great.  Love it.  With CHOCOLATE GLAZE?  What are you even talking about?  No way.  Get out of here.  Cream cheese frosting or maybe whipped cream, those are the only acceptable toppings for carrot cake.

Or so I thought.

The Grandpa found the recipe in the BC Liquor Store free magazine, and passed it on to me.  And that meant of course, that he was hoping I would make it for him.  Dang it.

I wasn't super excited, but if it wasn't good, he would get all the leftovers.

 

 Guys, it was good.  It was GOOD.  

Now I will say that it did not taste anything like a carrot cake.  If someone made it for you and didn't tell you it had carrots in it, I don't think you would know.  It just tastes like a nice cake with a delicious chocolate glaze.  And sometimes that's all you need.

Recipe: Chocolate Glazed Carrot Bundt Cake

2020 birthday cakes

 Some things changed (which kids cake I messed up this year), and some things stayed the same (my kids love sugar).

The Boy is still obsessed with The Simpsons, and he wanted another Simpsons cake.  I found online a cake with a photo of Homer reaching up on the cake for doughnuts (homemade of course), but we swapped it out for Timbits. 

I bought a couple of 6 inch cake pans so I could get good height on the cake without it being super huge.  I made the cake and icing from scratch, printed the Homer photo, and sent The Mister to Timmy's for the Timbits.

It came together perfectly, into a super cute cake:

 The Boy loved it; he and his sister had plenty of sugar, and everyone was happy.

Recipes I used :

6 inch 3 layer cake recipe 

 vanilla buttercream 

A month later it was The Girls turn and I am not ashamed to admit, I was worn out.  When she (finally!) decided on a candy cake, I decided to go the easy route and use not only box cake mix but also store bought frosting.

I was going to make a Pinata cake full of candy, so I knew it had to be assembled the day of her birthday so the candy inside wouldn't go all gross.  I baked the 4 layers of cake the night before and was up nice and early to knock the cake out of the park.

Pretty much right away I realized that a 4 layer, 9 inch cake was going to be way bigger than we needed, so I changed it to 3 layers.  Then to make sure I had plenty of room for the candy I cut a very large hole in the middle layer.  Too big, I would realize later.  As soon as I started frosting the bottom and middle layers together, I realized I probably hadn't bought enough frosting.

I kept plugging along, trying to frost sparingly to make sure I had enough frosting left for the outside, but it sure didn't look good.

I  mean, it really didn't look good.

In addition to the tubs of white frosting I'd also bought a can of frosting with a variety of nozzles you could use to do your final decorating.  I wasn't going to be able to save that for the decorating, I was going to need it to try to frost the cake.

The spray can of frosting was A PIECE OF GARBAGE.  It was hissing and spitting and would randomly stop dispensing frosting and just shoot out air.  The cake looked bad before; now it looked hideous.

I was hysterical with laughter by this time - what good would getting frustrated and upset do?  The cake looked terrible and I couldn't stop laughing.  I laughed so hard I cried.  Eventually I pulled myself together and smoothed the pink frosting into the white and it just barely covered the whole cake.  Almost.

The good thing about 6 year olds is that if their cake is covered in candy, they don't give a hoot what it looks like.

After we ate some cake, (sooooo sweet) I told The Mister that he's in charge of birthday cakes in 2021.  Mom needs a break.

Smitten Kitchen morning

 I spent some time on the smitten kitchen website recently, bookmarking delicious recipes, and Sunday morning I headed into the kitchen to do some cooking:

Morning Glory breakfast cake

What a lovely cake!  Everyone enjoyed it, especially The Grandpa, who requested I make another just for him.  And I did.

Then I made some also very delicious whole wheat chocolate oat cookies.

When you put wheat germ and whole wheat flour in a chocolate chip cookie, they are automatically healthy.  It's science.

Next, for breakfast we made a batch of blueberry yogurt multigrain pancakes 

but without the blueberries.  They have rye flour in them, which you don't often see in pancake recipes.

The grownups made pancake sandwiches, with sausage and cheese and hot sauce, and a drizzle of syrup.

Birthday Cakes 2019

Birthday cake season has come and gone and whoooo, it was a nail biter!

Both kids had strong, ever changing opinions on their cakes, and every time I tried to nail down specifics a new idea popped into their heads and we were back to square one.

The Boy finally decided on a doughnut cake, Simpsons style, meaning pink with sprinkles.

I found a recipe for a bundt cake that tasted like a doughnut, so I whipped that up, let it cool, and then popped it out of the pan.

Almost.

DANGIT.

I carefully pried the stuck piece out of the pan and tried to stick the pieces back together using the power of my mind.  When that didn't work, I used toothpicks instead, and instructed The Mister to make sure I removed the 'picks before serving.

Can you spot the toothpick(s)?

I made a pink glaze for the top and sprinkled it with gold sugar because of course I forgot to buy real sprinkles for the top.

And guess what else we forgot?  TO REMOVE THE TOOTHPICKS BEFORE SERVING IT.

Lord.

The Boy loved it and it tasted pretty good, so that's all that matters.

_________________________

Her brother's birthday always throws The Girl into a frenzy about her own - what she would like to eat, what gift she would like, her cake.....

The cake ideas changed almost daily until I put my foot down a couple of days before her birthday and told her to pick.....an easy one that I could actually produce.

She settled on a cotton candy cake, and friends, I have no story to tell you other than it was a pretty cute cake.

I even marbled the dang thing because I was feeling so good about it.

My only wish was that I could have found fluffier cotton candy for the top but whatevs, look at these cakes!  It was a good time.  My babies are happy and healthy and loved their cakes.  Life is good

Unicorn Birthday Cake - or, Thank God Four Year Olds Don't Have High Standards

So The Girl is like many other kids out there and is currently obsessed with unicorns. 

I remembered a video someone had shared on The Facebook about how "easy" it is to make a unicorn (or lots of other animals) out of a 9x13 pan cake.

It was her 4th birthday!  A fancy cake was needed!  And so I went for it.

I made the cake (box mix with sprinkles mixed in) the day before her birthday and so the morning of, I was up early to knock this thing out of the park and wow my family.

I realized right away that I hadn't thought about what I would serve the cake on, and I knew we didn't have any sort of tray or pan big enough to hold it.  I knew The Mister would not be excited if I woke him up at 5am to share this info, so I wandered around the kitchen for a bit before deciding I would have to cover my biggest baking sheet with foil and use the back of it.

I covered the pan in foil, and briefly felt a little sting on my hand, but I was too busy getting nervous about how wrong this was all going to go to give it much thought.

Following the video, which by now I had watched 20 times, I made my first cuts:

I started to move the pieces to the unicorn shape when I noticed something red smeared on my hand and on a bit of the cake.  It was blood.  I had cut the palm of my hand on the TINFOIL and was bleeding onto the CAKE.  Nice.

I bandaged myself up, cleaned up all the blood, and trimmed the blood off the cake.  Thank God no one was awake and watching this.

I had realized already that the tray covered in foil looked like crap BEFORE I got blood everywhere, so I trimmed the cake down a smidgy more and left it on the cutting board.

A month before The Girl's birthday, The Boy had his birthday.  I had a cake plan in mind and some ingredients bought - he is very much into Harry Potter lately and I thought he might like a cake like the one Hargid made for Harry - but then a couple of weeks before his birthday he announced that he wanted a totally different cake, so I had the package of white icing and a tube of pink icing already in the cupboard.

I bought the icing at Bulk Barn, it was some sort of "professional" icing that all you had a to do was add water to and whip.  I had planned on following the video and piping little dots/blobs all over the cake, but this was not that sort of icing.  

The pink tube icing went on sort of ok, but it was heavier than the white icing and it was looking like it was going to slide right off the hoofs - which it actually did a few hours later.

The black tube icing was a real pain in the ass and I was getting very frustrated that I couldn't get it quite where I wanted it.

Also, I feared the unicorn looked more like a pig.

I started working with the little tub of fondant I'd bought at Michaels, and it was wayyyy harder than I thought.  I was getting pretty unhappy about the whole thing.  At this point, The Boy woke up and came into the kitchen and was so excited about how the cake looked.  He flattered me enough to keep me going, and together we managed to get that damn fondant shaped into a horn and tail.

The video we were following also had a rainbow mane, but we didn't have a big enough unicorn to fit one in nicely.

The girl was beyond thrilled with her cake, which made all the blood loss, sweat and tears worth it.

One super weird thing that happened, that you can see the starting of in the last photo, is that the white icing actually began  to dissolve in spots shortly after the cake was done.  The icing on the right leg above you can see it looks almost bubbly.  So odd.

Very awesome YouTube video here .

 

Princess cake

Both kids have birthdays at the end of the year - November and December, about a month apart - and once The Girl got to help decorate her brother's birthday cake for his party, she became quite interested in her own upcoming cake.

"A BIG cake!  A THOMAS cake!"  She announced, and struck fear into my soul because I am in no way artistic or creative please see pretty much any of the posts here if you don't believe me.

Now, she doesn't even really like Thomas much anymore, so I think it was just the first thing that popped into her head.  I panicked, and replied with the first thing that popped into my head - wouldn't you rather have a princess cake?  YES!  She replied enthusiastically,  and then talked non stop about it for the next month. 

Now, before anyone rolls their eyes at me, trust me that this was not a sexist Girl can't have a Thomas cake thing.  It was a I remember my Boo (aka BFF) made a princess cake for one of her daughters a few years back and she said it was so easy that even I could do it thing.

The Big Day came, and my Boo came over to get me started.

The night before I had made the cakes- 2 - one in round pans, and one in a large measuring cup my Boo had lent me.

I wrapped the dolls legs in plastic wrap and we hacked one of the round cakes up to make a bottom and a top to go around the measuring cup cake.

I used this buttercream frosting and we dyed it pink.

My Boo got the decorating started, and then turned the reins over to me.  The kitchen and the icing got warmer, the kids were all amped up, and my little frosting blobs were not turning out as neat as hers. But hey, 3 year olds don't have super high standards.

I was starting to get fatigued by the time I got to the lower part of the dress, so I added some purple food coloring to the pink frosting and tried my hand at a big swirly design to hurry it along.  

If you stand back and squint a lot, it doesn't look too bad.

What matters most is the The Girl loved it - a lot - so that made my day.

And I'm in the clear on kids birthday cakes for 9 more months!

A Tale of Two Cakes

The Mister had a birthday recently, and I accidentally left the cake planning to the last minute.  Whoops.  

I found 2 delicious cake recipes on the internet that I thought were good; 

one was an interesting sounding chocolate cake, and the other was a pumpkin cake.  

I was really leaning towards the chocolate cake because it sounded fudgy and 

delicious, but I knew that he would really rather have the pumpkin cake, as he 

is a fan of all things pumpkin, PLUS, I had a can of 

pumpkin puree, so problem solved.

I ran to the little store by my work and spent a ridiculous and painful 

amount of money on some butter and cream cheese, and that night 

after dinner I went to make the cake except - where was the can of pumpkin?????  

I tore the kitchen apart but didn't find it.  So Plan B, chocolate cake.

I did not need to butter and crumb the pan all the way to the top, apparently.

The cake was easy to make and was pretty tasty - rich and delicious.  A little went a long way.

The Mister enjoyed it, but he was sad about the pumpkin cake, 

so that weekend I bought a can of pumpkin puree and made the pumpkin cake.

What.  A.  Cake.

Moist, tender, perfectly spiced, delicious.
(I skipped the brown butter icing in the recipe and made some cream cheese frosting instead.)

Both were great and I would make them again, but The Mister was especially 

in love with the pumpkin one.  Can't blame him a bit.

Swedish Gooey Chocolate Cake

Pumpkin Cake with Brown Butter Icing 

Birthday cake

2!  Good gravy.  It's loud over here, y'all.

I was completely out of cake ideas for the big day, so I resorted to asking the (not yet 2) birthday girl what kind of cake she wanted.

"Strawby."

Ok, sure, it's December, but a strawberry cake you shall have!

I found the exact same recipe on Pinterest over and over, with differences in the method, and most of them didn't make sense, so this is what I did to end up with a pretty nice Strawby Cake.

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1½ T baking powder
¾ t salt
¾ cup vegetable oil
1½ cups pureeed strawberries
1 t vanilla
1 t lemon juice
4 eggs

Pureed strawberries - just throw your strawberries (thawed if using frozen) into a blender or food processor and whiz until smooth.

Note:  Even though your batter will be a pretty pink, your cake will not.  If that's important to you, add some food coloring.

Beat the sugar and oil together until thick and smooth.  Add the vanilla and lemon juice and beat again.  Add in the flour, baking powder and salt,and mix.  Add 2 eggs, mix again, then add the other 2 eggs.

Pour cake into pans - this is a lot of batter, so you'll need a big bundt pan, or square pan, or at least 3 9" cake pans.

Bake at 325' for 20-30 minutes, checking at 20 if you think the cake is getting close.

Remove from oven, let sit 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and let cool completely.

Delicious with whipped cream!

Sunday dinner - Chicken with Coconut Pineapple Sauce and Coconut Tea Cake

This was a GREAT Sunday dinner!  We tried 3 new recipes, and they were all hits.

First was Chicken with Coconut Pineapple Sauce.  This was a recipe saved from my recipe collection purge.  I've probably had this recipe at least 10 years.  No idea where it came from.

We served the chicken with salad, green beans and delicious roasted carrots 

from Gwyneth Paltrow's second cookbook.  The book is growing on me, 

but I don't like it nearly as much as I like her first.  

The carrots could change my mind though - so good.  

Dessert was Coconut Tea Cake from Dorie Greenspan, from her very good book, Baking. 

 I omitted the rum, and served with berries and whipped cream.  

It's good on its own, but so tasty with berries and cream. 

Chicken with Coconut Pineapple Sauce

source unknown with some changes from me

6 boneless skinless chicken breasts

3 Tb flour

salt

2 Tb oil

Sauce:

2/3 cup coconut milk

6 Tb pineapple juice or orange juice

4 Tb soy sauce

2 Tb lemon juice

2 Tb brown sugar

2 tsp cornstarch

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp ginger, minced or grated

Preheat oven to 425'.  Spray a baking dish with cooking spray.  I used a 9x13.

Stir flour and salt together.  Lightly coat the chicken with flour.  Shake to remove excess.

Heat oil in a large pan over medium heat, and cook chicken until brown and nearly cooked through.

Place in one layer in your baking dish.

Meanwhile, whisk together the sauce ingredients.  

Pour the sauce over the chicken and bake uncovered for 15-20 minutes, until the chicken is cooked.

Coconut Tea Cake recipe here, with bonus icing recipe.  I would try this bonus icing recipe.....

Carrot recipe here - although note that the website says the recipe 

is suitable for vegans which it is not, because of the honey.

Bake sales

Now that I have a kid in school we have entered the lovely world of fundraising, donating and volunteering. We do what we can when we can but it never seems enough. 

Ah, mom guilt.

The school has an annual festival in the Spring, and I'm on the list to bake for 

that section of the fundraising. 

Things like this normally put me in a tizzy because I worry that what I bake won't taste good, so I have a few favorites I like to make each time. 

The Pioneer Woman's brown sugar oatmeal cookies are the bomb.  So easy and so good.  It make a huge batch, so I had enough for a plate for the school, one for us, and one for work.  

This time around I added 3/4 cup of coconut, and they were extra delicious.

brown sugar oatmeal cookies

A few years back at a work potluck I tried a Lazy Daisy cake.  Another delicious and easy recipe.  The cake is very flavorful and that buttery coconut topping is heavenly.

Hey, I just realized I made 2 coconut things this year!  We do love our coconut.  

lazy daisy cake