Tomorrow is my cousins birthday, so happy birthday Delilah! Naturally, as the baker of the household, I was assigned the cake-making. I had a blast, as you can see. She almost always asks for chocolate, but being myself, I didn't want to be as unoriginal as a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. As yummy as that is, it gets boring year after year. So, since I know she loves raspberries, I made raspberry chocolate layer cake! It is a classic chocolate cake recipe with raspberry jam on each cake layer, then chocolate ganache. You have to refrigerate half the ganache to let it firm up, then the other half you pour over the cake and then freeze the whole cake so that firms up, so that's the main reason it takes so long. Other than that, it's surprisingly easy for such a decadent and impressive-looking cake. My ganache didn't even firm up very well and it still worked fine, so don't fret if it's still runny after an hour in the refrigerator. I then decorated the top with raspberries and powdered sugar, plus a couple mint leaves in the very middle, as shown below. You can cover the whole cake with raspberries if you'd like, but I thought that would be a bit too much, so I liked this design instead. Enjoy!
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Another snow day. And, not even that, I'm writing this up at night and they even closed schools for tomorrow, too! We've gotten nearly 5 feet of snow (if not more) over the past 17 days!! That's crazy! Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a snow enthusiast, I'm loving this. I am in no way complaining about my sixth snow day as a senior in high school who DOES NOT HAVE TO MAKE THESE DAYS UP! So pumped, I'm actually loving this.
Anyways, let's talk cupcakes. Cupcakes are just about the best thing to make on a snow day. They are a lot of fund and somewhat time consuming so you have something to do, but not so crazy that they talk all day. Plus, I'm always looking for a new kind of cupcake to make for the house, and I love almond! So, I stumbled upon these and just had to make them. Then, I jazzed up the frosting a little bit. My excuse was Valentine's Day, but let's be honest, it was a snow day and I was just having fun with it, which I definitely did! Have I ever mentioned that I love making cupcakes? They are actually my favorite dessert to make, for many reasons. First off, cupcakes, period. Second, I feel like they are more special than cookies. Third, I absolutely love playing with frosting, as seen below. So, there you have it, my favorite thing to bake of them all is cupcakes! And then cakes of course, but sometimes cakes can be a hassle, whereas cupcakes are the perfect amount of effort and fun combined! Additionally, these specific cupcakes are delicious! I absolutely love butterscotch anything, and who knew it was so easy to make butterscotch sauce at home! As long as you have heavy cream in your fridge (assuming you normally have butter and brown sugar on hand), then you hold the power to easily make one of the best things in this world, butterscotch sauce. Fill brown sugar cupcakes with that and then nicely frost with vanilla buttercream frosting and you're golden!
Today is the Pats game, which means a big deal in my house. My dad's the only true Patriots fan I would say. My mom follows along when it gets interesting, and to be completely honest, I couldn't care less, but it means I get to make food for people! I was trying to choose between several different cupcake recipes. One had peanut butter, one had caramel, but these ones are a classic, meaning everyone will like them, so I went with these.
The cake batter is very simple. You make it like you're making vanilla cupcakes, and then put some to the side and add cocoa powder and milk. The frosting you have to make two separate frostings for, but still rather quick. The hardest part of this recipe is trying to as neatly as possible squeeze only vanilla frosting into one side of a piping bag and then only chocolate into the other, and then hope it pipes out well. I have to say I did a pretty good job for the first time, but if you give it a try and you end up needing several tries, don't feel bad, it's difficult. My advice would be to do it in two or three segments. Start with most of the bag folded down and do vanilla on one side and then chocolate on the other. Then bring up the folds and do the next segment, and that will probably be it because you don't want to over-fill the bag. Yes, you read that correctly, bourbon. I got this really cool new cake pan for the holidays that is shaped like a mini 3-tier cake. I thought it was awesome, really awesome, but I knew I couldn't use it for a cake that needed frosting because that would be really hard to frost and the cakes would lose their cool designs. So, when I landed on this cake recipe, I thought it was perfect. The cake is light enough in color so that you can see the design and the glaze is clear, so it works perfectly. I actually hate bourbon, which I am simply judging by the smell of it don't worry, but I made these for my dad and to test out my new cake pan. However, I did taste the cake without the glaze on it and even without liking bourbon I liked it, so there you go! Enjoy!
UPDATE: After sitting in my kitchen for merely 3 days, there's only one of these bad boys left. My dad LOVED these cakes, and so did my brother, which believe me is saying a lot (I got my brother to make a nice comment about the food he was eating instead of mindlessly devouring it, yay!!). So just in case you're wondering because I may have seemed a bit hesitant about this recipe above, it is just because I hate bourbon, because apparently these cake(s) are really darn good. Plus, perfect for a super bowl party, am I right? Happy Birthday to my aunt, Devlin (or in my terms, Auntie D). Her birthday was Friday, so of course that means... a cake! I asked her what flavor and she of course said chocolate, but then I decided to jazz it up a but with Nutella, because come on, who doesn't absolutely love Nutella?
So here's the recipe. It's beautifully easy and really delicious. One thing I will say is that I barely had enough frosting to cover the cake, so if you're one who loves frosting (like me, and probably all of us), then I would actually suggest doubling it. I also love love love decorating with frosting, so I just whipped up a small batch of buttercream frosting (¼ cup butter, enough powdered sugar to reach necessary consistency, vanilla extract, and food dye) and went bananas. I was going for a lace design on the side, but decided that would be too intricate for the consistency of frosting I was using and the fact that the frosting on the cake had already hardened up a bit, so I went for some simpler swirls, but I still think it looks pretty good. Enjoy! Happy Veterans Day! I got the day off, and was home alone all day long, so of course I ended up baking. Not only did I bake, I baked the best cupcakes ever. You will be amazed, believe me, they are just so good.
These cupcakes are chocolate cupcakes with eggless chocolate chip cookie dough in the middle and cookie dough buttercream frosting on top. In other words, heaven. The way they are made was just genius, or at least I thought. You make the cupcakes like usual. Then, you make the cookie dough. Then, before you add the chocolate chips to the cookie dough, you set aside 1 cup and use it in the buttercream frosting, which makes the frosting actually taste like cookie dough! Genius! I thought it was awesome, not to mention absolutely delicious. Last note: These cupcakes are filled, so you need to make a hole in them, but I suggest not using a cupcake corer. I have one myself so I started out using it and halfway through realized I had tons of cookie dough left. You need a bigger hole, so I definitely suggest using a knife. I also have pictures of the method I use to stuff the cupcakes below, enjoy! Cupcakes are one of my favorite things to bake, so I decided to let myself make some tonight. The problem I have with them is that no one really eats them. One cookie is okay for dessert, but a whole cupcake is more of a commitment, which is not something my family is into. However... I think they will change their minds after one of these cupcakes. They are delicious! They were originally supposed to be made as a cake, but I had no occasion to make a cake, so I made cupcakes instead! In fact, I even made some mini cupcakes, too! Enjoy!
This cake probably contains the most chocolate you can ever fit into a 9"x13" pan. Of course for me and all you other chocolate fans out there, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, in fact I strive to accomplish just that.
Pretty much that was an oddly fancy way to say this cake is freaking awesome. I made it in the form of cookies in my Texas Sheet Cake Cookies (hint the similarity in name). It is a classic chocolate sheet cake with a chocolate glaze on top that hardens and becomes dimply delectable. Because it's a sheet cake, it's really easy to make, so I suggest grabbing your ingredients now to make your life complete! Also, if you're wondering or slightly confused, I halved the recipe and made it in a 9 by 9 inch pan because I was making it for a smaller party, but next time, I'm just going to go all out, because this cake was delicious! This Friday my sister is going to leave for college, very sad. But, instead of getting all sappy and sad about it, I decided to celebrate with cupcakes instead! Plus my sister really wanted something sweet to snack on. So, I made honey cupcakes with honey cream cheese frosting. Then, to decorate them, I died the frosting light blue, dark blue, and white (by not adding any food coloring) to get the colors of her future college, University of Maine! I also decorated some of them with things I thought represented either her going away or University of Maine. So there is a Maine cupcake, a black bear, a suitcase, some phrases, and the other one you may not recognize is supposed to be the symbol on the UMaine sign, as shown in this picture. So, although I am very sad that my sister is leaving me for half a year, as shown by my cupcake "We'll Miss You", at least now I have some cupcakes specifically dedicated to her that I can remember her by. So good luck at UMaine Sarah, we'll miss you lots!
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AuthorMy name is Katherine and I love, love, love to bake! You can find all my baking adventures on this blog, plus you can follow me on Social Media by clicking below! Archives
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