Archive for the ‘Cakes’ Category
First Birthday Cake: Baby Einstein Edition
Posted by: Liss
September 7th, 2009 >> Cakes, Chocolate, Specialty Cakes
My friend asked me to make her son’s first birthday cake and the theme was Baby Einstein. I have no children so I agreed, not knowing what that meant! She sent me a link to the party decorations so I knew what things looked like. Man, it was a lot of characters!! So, I enlisted the help of my wonderful mother to help me cut out all the animals since I would not be able to do it alone in any sort of reasonable amount of time. The top is the smash cake for the baby (who ended up not really smashing it, just playing with the frosting a bit…) and the middle layer is vanilla and the bottom is chocolate. I’ve been told the cake was a hit! 
Banana Bundt Cake
So after a somewhat long sabbatical, I am back. I have been baking but I keep forgetting to post and/or forget to take pics before its all gobbled up! I did make the last TWD, the vanilla ice cream but had no pics and forgot to post. And I’m posting on a Wednesday because, yes, I forgot yesterday! I need my blog to be able to meow at me like the cats do when they are hungry! haha.
So this cake was SUPER delicious. I gave some (most) to my TKD instructor and he and his family had it gobbled up within 30 minutes of it arriving home!! His brother said it was some of the best banana cake he’s ever had. So moral of the story? BAKE IT! Its so delicious! It will definitely be a fall back recipe for me when I need to use some black bananas! Very moist and dense. Wish I still had some laying around!
For the recipe, see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or read The Food Librarian. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll!
This is my first official TWD post. Yay!! This is also the second recipe I ever made out of her book since I just got it (for the sole purpose of participating in TWD). Wow, this cake is yummy!! I was very skeptical about the lemon because the only thing lemon I like is lemonade. No desserts, no candy, not even lemon in my water. I was super close to leaving it out and then I remembered I was giving most of it away anyway so I might as well follow the directions and then ad lib later.
Well, I’m certainly glad I played along! This cake is so light and delicious and not at all overpowering with the lemon. There is lemon juice in the frosting as well but its very good. Two thumbs up from this non-lemon lover!!
That being said, I did break the rules a tiny bit. I didn’t do the parchment circle because I never have sticking problems with my pans. Well, one layer stuck. Ugh. So I couldn’t slice them in half since I was piecing together one layer as is. Plus, they are pretty thin layers and slicing them in half would have made me very nervous. So mine is a 2 layer cake, not a 4.
I also tweaked the buttercream. I read some reviews about it being too buttery (3 sticks is A LOT of butter!) so I only used 2 sticks and then thickened it up with powdered sugar in the end. It came out a nice texture and not at all over powering butter flavored. Don’t ask how much sugar I added, I ‘feel’ my buttercream and never ever measure the sugar. I know I use far less than my original recipe calls for but I never add milk to it at the end either.
When it came to assembly, I left off the coconut. I have no idea if the recipients of the cake enjoy coconut so I didn’t want to taint the cake if they don’t. I decorated with extra raspberry instead.
If you want the recipe, please see Carol at mix, mix… stir, stir since this was her TWD selection. If you want to see how others did, check out the TWD blog roll
