Clockwork Lemon

Strawberry Basil Angel Food Cake

One of the best things about spring finally being on it's way is the containers of fresh berries that start popping up in all the grocery stores at reasonable prices.

For those of you who don't live in the prairies, I'm sure that you've been enjoying spring for quite some time now... but for us it has *just* arrived.. just in time for summer! So maybe we've skipped spring this year and are going straight into the next season, but the berries have arrived regardless.

Fresh berries lend themselves to quick and easy desserts that still have that 'wow' factor. For Mother's Day this year I wanted to use a flavor combination that I've been obsessing over recently.

Strawberry, lemon, and basil. Both the lemon and basil somehow make the strawberry flavor taste even more like strawberry. Plus the sweet-tart combination tastes so fresh and summery that it makes it seem impossible that just two weeks ago there was snow falling from the skies.. still.

Strawberries always remind me of Mother's Day from when I was little and the kindergarden and grade one classes would put on a Strawberry Tea for the Moms. We would serve little slices of poundcake with strawberries and whipped cream and cups of hot tea. In my mind the dessert will forever be something that you make as a treat for your mom.

Breakfast Themed Birthday Cake

Another year, another birthday. I'm lucky in that I share the same birthday as my lovely friend Rachele which means we get double the celebration and have an excuse to throw a birthday party with double the guests, food, and (most importantly) cake.

Last year we made a big batch of cupcakes but this year I wanted to take the time to design and decorate us a themed cake.


During our party planning session we came up with a couple of party themes and ultimately decided that we wanted to have a breakfast themed party.

Not a party during breakfast time, nor a breakfast-for-dinner party, but a party with breakfast themed appetizers, mimosas, and a caesar bar. While we were brainstorming the snack bar I doodled these happy breakfast food characters to use for the cake. I wanted them to be dancing around the outside of the cake holding hands.

 Sorry for all of the poorly lit cell phone photos to follow, all of the cake work was done in the late evening. (Fact: it's important to do decorating work late at night while watching Mystery Diagnosis or Hoarders  on YouTube for maximum creative inspiration).

Chocolate Poke Cake with Bourbon Whipped Cream

Moist chocolate cake with tunnels of fudgy filling topped with bourbon whipped cream. Hellloo holiday season.

I've always loved the idea of a poke cake: bake a cake, poke holes in it, pour in a filling that compliments the cakes flavor, then top with something creamy. However, I hate that most recipes rely on mixes instead of homemade. The typical recipe calls for a boxed cake mix, pudding or jello mix, and coolwhip. The results are sweet, sweet, and sweeter with a touch of 'edible oil product' (aka cool whip).

It was begging for a homemade makeover.

I got started by making the following requirements:

-Delicious (obviously)

-No mixes

-No extra time-consuming steps that make you wish that you had used a mix

-Must be served at room temperature or warm  (poke cakes are usually eaten chilled due to the pudding or jello mixes, but it's freezing outside which makes cold cake unappealing).

 

Fixing the cake part of easy: I replaced the box mix with a simple one-bowl chocolate cake that has slightly less sugar than usual to compensate for the addition of a sweet filling.

Ingredients get stirred together in a bowl, poured into a pan and baked. Voila! As simple as a mix.

Next came the filling which was a little bit trickier. The only homemade version I had been able to find for poke cake used a dreamy sounding homemade pudding as the filling. Delicious? Yes. But much more time consuming than a mix with all the required stirring and cooking on the stove.

I wanted to be able to make the filling in the microwave from melted chocolate and some sort of dairy product. So I baked up a bunch of cakes to test out with different filling versions  made from combinations  of chocolate (bittersweet, unsweetened, semi-sweet) and dairy (cream, evaporated milk, condensed milk).

 

Pumpkin Spice Latte Cupcakes

It's that time of year again: the leaves turn yellow, air gets chilly in the mornings, and I attempt to eat as much pumpkin flavored food as possible.

I know a lot of people get tired of seeing recipe after recipe adapted to incorporate pumpkin and spices but I greet this delicious season with open arms. I want all of my baking to be tinted orange and for my house to perpetually smell like warm cinnamon spice.

I want my lattes to be pumpkin flavored, and then I want my cupcakes to taste like lattes and be covered in a salted caramel drizzle. I'm leaving the summer of light, berry based desserts behind and heading straight to calorie town (need to build up a protective layer for winter anyways).

 

It was easy to find some recipes online for these cupcakes but after testing a couple out I really wasn't happy with the results. Some were too muffin-y and others were lacking both coffee and spice flavor. I ended up scrapping them all and starting my own recipe from scratch.

 

Pinwheel Cake Tutorial

 Spring is supposedly on its way but when I look out my window all I see is little flurries of snow and a grey sky. Its probably a bit unrealistic to expect green grass and flowers in Alberta in February. I won't be vacationing somewhere warm any time soon so I've been staring at spring inspired photos and fabrics online to get my fill of pinks and greens and yellows. 

I have been reading the fabric and quilting blog Nana Company even though I don't sew or quilt. Her fabric choices are so pretty that I love checking out what sort of cute stuff she is working on. When I decided that I wanted to make a spring themed cake with pinwheels I used her creations as my inspiration for the colours and patterns.

 

 

 

Chocolate Engagement Cake

This chocolate cake recipe is a favorite in our family. In fact, I previously posted it on this blog before when I made it for my dad's birthday. I'm not letting that stop me from posting the recipe again because this cake is so easy to make and always turns out super moist. Its not ultra-chocolately or overly rich and is perfect with mocha-rum icing and dark chocolate ganache.

My brother recently proposed to his girlfriend and I offered to make a cake for their engagment party that my parents were putting on for them. I knew I wanted to use this cake recipe but I couldn't decide exactly how I wanted to decorate the cake.

 

I didn't want to do anything fussy or cover it in fondant because we would only see the cake for a minute or two at the restaurant before it was sliced. I decided that I would pour ganache over the top and then write something on top of it once it set.

I was going to write something about love, or their names with some hearts but I changed my mind at the last minute and decided to use white chocolate to write how I felt about the news of their engagement.....