Tag Archives: baking

Strawberry-Almond Upside-Down Cake

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Last week, I picked up a few pounds of fresh strawberries at the store. Unfortunately, work was crazy, so I was at the office super-late and living off of take-out. So I never got around to eating the strawberries. The end of the week rolled around, and I found the strawberries when cleaning out the fridge. Instead of racing to eat them before they spoiled, I knew I needed to find a way to bake the strawberries in to something awesome!

I’ve made a few upside-down cakes before, from a traditional pineapple upside-down cake to my Pear & Ginger Upside-Down Cake last fall. I’d never seen a spring-y upside-down cake, so I decided to go a little outside of the box and make one using my abundance of fresh strawberries!

This cake is sweet and fruity, with a soft and moist almond sponge cake. Sprinkled with slivered almonds, it is a perfect spring cake! The boyfriend has now moved it to the top of his list. He says it’s his favorite cake I’ve ever made! But he’s said that 3 or 4 times now, so I know this one must be good. ;)

Click below for the recipe! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments. And thanks for reading! :)

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Banana Blondies

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As most of my friends know, I am a banana hoarder. I buy bananas every week at the grocery store but frequently forget to eat them. This “problem” has been somewhat solved since the boyfriend and I moved in together because he’ll eat the yellow bananas that I won’t touch. (Like my grandfather, I need some green on my bananas!) But even he has limits…

I hate throwing away perfectly good food, so I keep bananas around long past their prime. I hide them above the fridge until the brown spots take over and stash them in the refrigerator or freezer until I’m ready to turn them in to, usually, Banana Bread. But, this time, I wanted to do something different!

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So I tweaked a normal Blondie recipe to include a hearty amount of banana! I replaced the normal chocolate chips with white chocolate and added some toasted macadamia nuts. And the result is absolutely magical!

I’ve made this recipe twice now, and my Banana Blondies have been devoured both times. Even the boyfriend loves them, and he doesn’t even like white chocolate!

Click below for the recipe! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments. And thanks for reading! :) Continue reading →

I’m back!

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For my friends and regular followers, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t posted anything new in a while! A few weeks ago, I experienced a pretty decent personal setback that left me reconsidering my love of baking and blogging, as well as my personal and professional goals going forward. And I fell in to a little downward spiral of depression and self-doubt, two things I generally struggle with…

So I decided to take a little time off and gather my thoughts. Unfortunately, running the blog started to feel like work, and it got really stressful instead of fun. And I have enough stress in my life between other personal and professional commitments!

Well, I’m happy to announce that I’m back and (hopefully) better than ever! I have new short- and long-term goals and have gained a most of my confidence back thanks to my wonderful friends and family, including the boyfriend. (Super thanks to him for putting up with my crazies!)

To make a long story short, I’ll likely be publishing fewer recipes, supplementing them with other things from my crazy life! I’ll have a new recipe up later this week, and I have a lot of really great things planned for this summer! But for now, a few pics of the last event/baking competition that I entered…

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The competition was for the National Capital Area Cake Show (NCACS), and the theme was Candy! I went a lot outside of the box, as I tend to do, and entered a Root Beer Barrel cupcake and a Licorice Allsorts cupcake. The Root Beer Barrel cupcakes are a root beer cake topped with a root beer-scented meringue and root beer caramel. The Licorice Allsorts cupcakes were a black licorice cake topped with coconut-almond buttercream, shredded coconut, and a little pie of black licorice. Both cupcakes came out amazing, tho I didn’t take home any blue ribbons this time. Hey, you can’t win them all, eh?!

I’m going to hold on to the Licorice Allsorts recipe because I intend to enter it in another recipe contest, but I’ll probably be modifying the Root Beer Barrel cupcake in to a cake to post on the blog later this Spring! So watch out for that soon! :)

As always, thanks for reading! Happy baking! :)

Fish Fingers & Custard

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Happy Fish Fingers & Custard Day!! For those who are not HUGE Doctor Who fans (like me!), Fish Fingers & Custard Day celebrates the anniversary of the Eleventh Doctor (the third Doctor of the reboot), played by Matt Smith. You can watch a little clip of the scene on YouTube. :)

This year is my first celebrating Fish Fingers & Custard Day, as I only recently became enthralled by Doctor Who. The boyfriend has been quietly prodding to get me to watch it since we started dating, and I finally gave in when we moved in together a few months ago. After the first few episodes, I was hooked! (It’s all on Netflix streaming, which makes it really easy to catch up quickly!)

So to celebrate my new-found obsession, I wanted to make my own version of Fish Fingers & Custard. And no, no fish is actually involved. But cake definitely is!!

The fish fingers are sliced pound cake, which I made from scratch in preparation but feel free to purchase store-made to save time!. The pound cake is battered in panko and chopped pecans and fried. (Fried cake, what?!) The custard is mango-flavored, made with custard powder to cut down on prep time.

All in all, these “Fish Fingers & Custard” are really good! The fried pound cake tastes almost like funnel cake, and the pecan coating goes splendidly with the mango custard. The “fish fingers” also go really well with chocolate ice cream, as the boyfriend discovered last night! :P

So Happy Fish Fingers and Custard Day, fellow Whovians! To make your own Fish Fingers & Custard, click below for the recipe! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments. And thanks for reading! :D

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Basics of Cupcake Icing: More Icing Tips

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Pun definitely intended… ;)

In my first post about cupcake icing, I started organizing together the techniques I’ve learned for icing beautiful professional-looking cupcakes. I’m cobbling all of this information together because I’ve seen parts of it referenced in other pages around the interwebs, but I’ve never found a source with everything in one place. So that’s my goal: organizing all of the basics of icing cupcakes in easy-to-follow instructions with pictures!

Also, in my last post, I referenced the different types of icing tips that are typically used for cupcakes. I showed the one I use most often, Wilton’s closed-star 1M tip. I reference this tip most often because it’s the easiest to find (usually in stock at craft stores like Jo-Ann’s or Michaels).

But there are lots of other tips available, including the open star…

And the French tip and round tip.

Click below for more Tips on these tips! Have a question? Feel free to ask in the comments below. And thanks for reading! Be sure to check back again soon for the next post about cupcake icing! :)

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