I walk past this store front every time I go from work to the Daily Grind weekday mornings. It would be the PERFECT spot for Kara’s Cakery. Fell’s Point doesn’t have a stand-out cupcake/cake shop. I’m secretly hoping I get a call one day from someone with more money than they know what to do with and want to fund my shop. Maybe someday.
Last week was a busy week. First, a black forest cake for a work colleague’s birthday:
Believe it or not, this is my first black forest cake. And it was good. Really good. Layers of chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling, covered in homemade whipped cream and topped with chocolate shavings. And of course, the signature black forest cake cherries.
I think one of my favorite parts of a making a cake is cutting into it and seeing what each slice looks like. Here’s this one:
And here are my pink ribbon cookies for our bake sale. I packaged them up in little cookie bags with a satin white ribbon.
Hope you had a nice week!
Today felt like one of those days back when I had orders nonstop every week. I got home from work, took the cookie dough I made Sunday out of the fridge to soften, made two 8” chocolate cakes and then four dozen ribbon – shaped cookies. All before 9pm, phew!
Believe it or not, I actually forgot my sugar cookie recipe. Sad, I know. It look all day for me to find it.
I love fresh vanilla beans. They make all the difference. And good butter. Never skimp on butter.
My office does a Breast Cancer Awareness Bake Sale every October to raise money for Susan. G. Komen. An email hit my box about a month ago… “Calling all bakers!” … why yes? Bake cookies to raise money for a cause? I’m in.
Four dozen ribbon cookies to cool over night before I ice them with pink royal icing.
And two 8” chocolate cakes. These will be torted and put in the freezer over night to firm up before I make them into a Black Forest Cake…. stay tuned.
I made some white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for some very special ladies this week.
Fun fact #1) I have never made white chocolate macadamia nut cookies before in my life. However, I am fond of them.
Fun fact #2) These are the best white chocolate macadamia nut cookies I’ve ever had in my life.
Here’s the recipe, adapted from allrecipes.com
I could eat this cookie dough with a spoon… every last bit of it.
All packaged up and ready to go!
I think I may have found the cake I’m going to make for Thanksgiving…. we are having enough people this year for both a pie AND a cake!
My turn to bring in breakfast again.. I’ve brought cupcakes, quiche and bagels (after failed breakfast cupcakes). I tried making angel food cupcakes in hopes of a sweet but lower calorie breakfast treat, but working with angel food is much harder than I imagined.
Angel food cake is essentially a powdered sugar mix slowly added to a meringue. But what resulted was a sunken disappointment. They looked better than they tasted.
I decided to give it another go, this time using my vanilla cupcake recipe. I lined up some blueberries, juice and zest of a lemon and a second shot at some cinnamon streusel mix.
For the first batch, I layered cinnamon streusel and cupcake batter. A much better result than the first!
I also tried a lemon blueberry cupcake with cream cheese filling. It needs a little work, mostly because I wasn’t sure if it would rise and spill over the top of the cupcake liner so I stayed conservative with the batter. They are a tad small, but not bad for my first REAL attempt at breakfast cupcakes. We shall see how they go over tomorrow morning. I’ll grab a dozen bagels just in case.
A few weekends ago, my future hubby spent the weekend with his friend Bobby in New York. While I miss him dearly whenever he’s gone, I enjoy spending my Saturday nights baking new recipes. This particular night I made coconut lemon bars (which I didn’t take a picture of) and salted millionaires shortbread, which I changed a little and renamed salted chocolate caramel bars.
Adapted from Une Gamine dans la Cuisine
Crust ingredients
1/2 cup (that’s 1 stick) of unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
2 Tablespoons of sugar
Dulce de leche ingredients
1 (14 oz) can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup (that’s 1 stick) of Salted butter cut into cubes (this will help it melt faster)
3 Tablespoons of dark brown sugar
dash of kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon of pure almond extract
Chocolate topping ingredients
6 ounces of chopped dark or bittersweet chocolate
1 Tablespoon of butter
Sea salt
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line an 8×8 inch square baking pan with foil and butter or spray the entire pan (bottom and sides.) Make sure you use foil – I didn’t and it made it hard to get the first couple pieces out. Set aside.
Crust: In a medium bowl, beat the butter on high speed until it becomes light and fluffy (about 3 minutes or so.) On low speed, add the flour, salt and sugar and mix just until a crumbly dough forms. Try not to over mix. Press the dough into the prepared pan, going up the sides a bit. Prick the dough a few times with a fork. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the crust is just starting to turn a light gold. Remove from the oven and cool completely. You may turn off the oven at this point since you won’t need it again.
We were invited to a pool party not too long ago. Of course it’s always nice to bring a side dish to these sorts of gatherings. Mine are usually sweet. For this particular occasion, I decided to go with a rich chocolatecookie and add peanut butter chips. I highly recommend using a high quality cocoa powder, even if it’s Ghirardelli, which you can get at most grocery stores. It just makes this cookie so much better!
Chocolate Cookies
adapted from the Food Network
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup quality cocoa powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 – 10 oz peanut butter chips
In a large bowl, add the butter and sugar and cream together using mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla extract to the creamed mixture and mix until combined. In a medium bowl, mix the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients and continue mixing until incorporated. Remove from mixer and hand mix in the peanut butter chips. I used about 8 oz, but next time I’ll use the whole bag.
Roll the dough into 2 logs that are about 2-inches high and 1-foot long. Wrap them in waxed paper and place in the refrigerator. I left mine in over night. It makes it so much easier to cut and they won’t spread when baking.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Slice into cookies, about 1/2 inch thick. Place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 minutes.
Remove to a wire rack to cool.
Enjoy! I’ll probably have a few more good recipes up over the course of the weekend. Assuming we don’t loose power, I’ll be baking as Irene passes through.
When my grandma made pies, she always had leftover pie crust so she’d make these. Although, according to google, everyone’s grandma does. I had a small disk left over from our Fourth of July pie I made. Brandon was bro-ing out with the guys and I was bored so I made the pie-crust rolls.
Roll it out and cover it in softened butter.
Cover in brown sugar and pecans – or really anything you’d like! Cinnamon and sugar, cocoa and sugar, etc.
Sorry ladies, dad isn’t home yet.
Cut in strips and start rolling!
Bake at 350 until pie crust is done – I think it was about 20 minutes, but I am terrible at keeping track.
The brown sugar oozes out and caramelizes on the parchment. It hardens and would actually make really neat edible decoration on cupcakes!
I am surprised it look me this long to put these two divine sweets together… ready? This is so easy anyone can do it…
Smash up some oreos (these are double stuffed, but that really isn’t necessary since we’re adding plenty of creme)
Make up a batch of buttercream. I suggest swiss meringue, but any frosting you prefer would be perfect.
Add one wonderful thing to another! Easy as pie – cookies and cream buttercream!
You could ice a whole cake with the c&c frosting or use it as a filling, as I did.
I iced my cake with vanilla buttercream. Instead of the flowers, I tried a swirl. Not bad…
Eh we’ll stick with the 1M roses. Always looks beautiful!