cake Archives - Page 2 of 2

June 16, 2015

Orange Sponge Cake with Whipped Ricotta Filling

Another month, another cake! This one is for my friend Nicole — the same one who conquered her fear of cooking clams just a few weeks ago! Her birthday was this past weekend, so of course I had to provide her (and the office) with a celebratory cake. Any time you survive another year, it’s just cause to have a fête, if you ask me.

Nicole has a soft spot for puddings and custards, so I figured for her birthday, I’d try to capture the moist, rich qualities of those things with this: a citrus-y, spongy cake with soft ricotta filling. I used a combination of this recipe from The Life Harvest and this one from Tart to Heart.

Both are a take on the Italian dessert Schiacciata alla Fiorentina, though it seems like traditional recipes include yeast, whereas this one does not. I’ll certainly try the yeasted variety soon enough. Read more

AmyK

Carrot Graham Cracker Cake

This was a productive weekend. I finally hung up the the little raincloud mobile I made…

…along with two paper lamps from the Japanese supermarket.

Then, I drilled drainage holes into my darling Anthropologie “Perch planters.” The store had a 20% off sale recently, and I checked out with a whole mess of fish-shaped planters because that’s the kind of person I am.

Aside: why don’t more cute planters come with drainage holes? Having those makes a huge difference in plant mortality. I mean, let’s not even talk about the Terrible Thyme Tragedy of 2013, or the Great Succulent Massacre of 2014 — for me, the grief is still too near.

Planters need outlets for water runoff or else you risk overwatering your plants (which will kill them), or underwatering them for fear of overwatering (which will also kill them). Now all the planters I buy get drainage holes punched into them.

I don’t have a clever segue planned, so I’ll just abruptly drag us back to the point of this post: I also spent the weekend baking a tasty carrot cake. Read more

AmyK

2 Comments

April 7, 2015

Lemon Gradient Cake

My birthday was this past weekend, and I had a great time thanks to a wonderful dinner hosted by my friends and coworkers at Il Terrazzo Carmine (if you want the best clams and linguine in the city, that is the place). I also had boxes of treats sent to my home from my out-of-town friends and family, and who doesn’t like mail, especially if said mail contains cookies?!

I’m sure my heart did a Grinch-style “grow three sizes” thing, which was welcomed after a particularly rough week. So in case any of my Houston, Seattle, Atlanta, wherever lovelies are reading this — thank you from the bottom of my heart for making all of my years wonderful, and I look forward to spending yet another one with all of you.

Now that we have the sentimental crap out of the way, let’s get down to the really important business: cake.

AmyK

1 Comment

September 22, 2014

Hobbit Birthday Cake (Chocolate Stout Cake with Mascarpone Frosting)

I reread The Lord of the Rings every summer. I’ve done this for the past seven years, so at this point, you can probably say that I’m a bit of a fan. And today, my friends, is a very special day: it’s Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday!

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, these two characters are the intrepid hobbits who found and then helped destroy The One Ring, which was originally created by the villain Sauron during the Second Age of Middle Earth and wait, where are you going?

Hobbits live the kind of life I want to live — they enjoy eating and drinking, followed by more eating and drinking, and then perhaps with a light dabbling of more eating and drinking. I also get the distinct impression that when there’s a celebration to be had, they do things big and dramatic, including the dessert. I mean, did you see Bilbo’s cake in Peter Jackson’s LOTR movies?
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AmyK

2 Comments

September 8, 2014

Clementine Cake

I love when birthdays roll around — it gives me an excuse to whip up a special cake that might seem too weirdly decadent when the only other occasion is “It is Tuesday.” This month, my wonderful friend Samantha celebrated her survival of another year, thanks in no small part to the absence of overnight zombie apocalypses and/or spontaneous raptor attacks (though I also suspect she’d handle herself juuuust fine in either of those scenarios).

Samantha is also living the gluten-free life, so I made sure her birthday cake was devoid of those pesky flour products. But I didn’t want to just make a cake that tastes good “for a gluten-free dessert,” which is like saying that Leprechaun: In the Hood is good for a movie about a leprechaun in the hood. Just because something is good for what it is doesn’t mean it’s actually good. In my eyes, a truly successful dish is one that is great and wonderful all on its own, to the point where you don’t even notice it is vegetarian, or dairy-free, or is made entirely of kale and corrugated cardboard. Now that is a culinary homerun.

That is why I arrived here at this lovely citrus cake by Nigella Lawson — it is gluten-free, but it isn’t just delicious for a gluten-free cake — it is delicious in general. And that, my friends, is how you do it. And to add to the list of Reasons Why You Should Make This Cake, consider this novel concept: to get all that juicy clementine flavor, this cake uses three entire clementines, peel and all. Whoa.

AmyK

2 Comments

July 14, 2014

Light, Fluffy Pound Cake

When I saw Deb’s recipe on Smitten Kitchen for a lighter, fluffier pound cake, I knew I had to give it a whirl. A pound cake that won’t be so dense and rich that it tastes like delicious regret? SOLD. I like pound cake, but I think I’d like pound cake even more if it wasn’t so assertive in reminding me that it contained a approximately a pound each of butter, flour, sugar, and eggs.

Delusion — I like to live my life in it sometimes.

Luckily, a friend’s birthday was coming up, giving me the perfect excuse to whip up a cake. But why is it that you need a reason to make a cake anyhow? Like if you made some cookies just for the hell of it, people would just all agree on the greatness of homemade cookies. But if you made a cake for no reason, all of a sudden it’s like “You’ve got a problem, do you need to talk to someone?” It’s unjust.

This recipe makes one regular-sized loaf of cake, or two mason jar cakes and one adorable mini-loaf. I sent the tagged jar to Atlanta, where I hope my currently sugar-free friend broke her fast for her own birthday or at least was able to give it to a pro-sugar buddy.

AmyK

3 Comments

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