Cake # 13 Honey and Poppy Seed Ring

As I am typing this I am watching my daughter get into everything in my computer room, the books, papers, her nose; meanwhile, I am singing "Old McDonald" to her, and I find myself wondering was there really an "Old McDonald" who had a farm? Because I cannot sing that song without replacing a old man with a beard and overalls with a younger one, who has flaming red hair, is wearing a yellow jumpsuit, and looks sort of like a clown. Somehow inbetween chasing her around the house and stopping her from all sorts of impending doom a house contains, I manage to make cake number thirteen.

Now I have never been the superstitious type, I love the number thirteen because it has the number three in it, so it is automatically good in my book. Plus, Friday the thirteenth is one of my all-time favorite cheesy horror movies, so I had no qualms with baking cake number thirteen, the Honey and Poppy Seed Ring cake. Speaking of rings, there was a lot of cake and a lot of rings to be had this weekend. On Friday, my twin brother got married to his beautiful fiance. They looked amazing and the ceremony was a lot of fun - my mom actually made their wedding cake:

She did an excellent job- maybe there is where I get my cake baking from. Anyway, the cake I baked for today was much different from this wedding cake - no icing, no flowers, and definitely not fancy, in fact this cake was much more akin to a sweet bread, especially because of the poppy seeds! I was thrilled to use poppy seeds, it is one of the few McCormick "spices" I have on my spice rack that had never been opened before, so it was nice to actually use it. Besides poppy seeds, this cake called for flour, sugar, eggs, butter, lemon juice, honey, vanilla, and baking powder. It was an exceptionally easy cake to make- I was able to hold Evie and make most of the cake, she had fun licking the spatula when I was finished. At 3:13 I happened to finish the cake, and somewhere in the back of my mind a signal was going off that this was my thirteenth cake and that I finished it at 3:13, but the alarm wasn't loud enough for me to pay attention to. I should have listened...

Here is what the Poppy Seed Ring looks like in my cake book:

Here is what my cake looked like before I cut it:

Here is what the cake looked like when I cut it:

And here is what the cake looked like all over my daughter's face and hair when she grabbed a piece behind my back when I wasn't looking:

Not a terrible, typical, "thirteen", tragedy. Actually very cute, and I wish I captured the devilish grin that my child gave me when she was found caught with cake in her face.

Next week, on to the Lemon Drizzle Loaf.

Cake # 12 Carrot Cake with Orange Frosting

So carrot cake is a first for me. I have never tried it before, and I never thought I would try it. I guess it is the idea of putting a vegetable into something sweet that confuses me. But after tasting the batter, I understood why people love carrot cake. To me, it tastes very similar to a spice cake, which is a flavor I can get down with. I think that I have mentioned once or twice before on this blog that I actually don't like cake. I know it seems stupid to make something every week for 2 years that you don't like. I feel like I have to explain myself. I love to bake,Ted loves cake,Ted bought me this recipe book for Christmas, challenge started. (There is some asyndeton for all you rhetoric lovers out there). It is not that I hate cake, I don't. I simply would prefer candy or a brownie or a cookie, or ice-cream cake to a regular cake. Anyway, I tried a bite of this cake (as I do with all of the cakes I make) and it tasted so good that I ended up eating a whole piece! A first for me in this baking adventure. I guess even Bugs Bunny would be proud.

Ted actually shredded all of the carrots for me, which was so helpful because by the time he finished that I had prepared the rest of the batter and the icing! Evie wanted to help too- she helped me mix the batter with this cake- well sort of - she really took the spatula out of my hand and waved it up into the air, flinging bits of carrot cake batter with it. I love the weekends for that reason. Getting out of the chaos that is work and spending time with someone who delights in everything. I know that she will lose that curiosity and awe of the world and its things as she ages, but it is a beautiful thing to be a part of now.

I made my own frosting again with this cake. It is an orange flavored frosting with a cream cheese base. It also contained orange juice, orange rind, and powdered sugar. The cake itself, besides calling for a cup and a half of shredded carrots, contained: butter, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, ginger, eggs, orange juice, and pecans.

My husband loves carrot cake and I know there is at least one or two members of his department that enjoy it too- we have to get all of this cake out of my house! We still have cake left over from Evalyn's first Birthday. So plan on cake at work on Monday friends. 

Here is the book's picture of the cake:

 Here is my cake whole -and then without the piece I ate!

Next week I am making a Honey & Poppy seed Ring cake- sounds like my kind of cake....because it is not too cakey! See you then.

Cake # 11 Vanilla Sponge Layer Cake

Greetings cake lovers! I am posting so very late today because I just got finished cleaning up my daughter's toys from her very FIRST Birthday Party! I know what you all are thinking - Did I make the birthday cake? No I did not. See my mother actually is an amazing baker and does designer birthday cakes really well. Her cakes were what inspired me to learn how to bake myself. It has always been the tradition in our family that the grandmother makes the first birthday cake. So my mom made it. She made Evie a giraffe face cake - just for Evie to eat, then she made a jungled-theme sheet cake for the rest of the party, and finally she made cupcakes with different fillings. Super awesome!

Evie thought it tasted great too!

Anyway, because the big birthday girl bonanza party was today, I made my 11th cake, the Vanilla Sponge Layer Cake on Friday and brought it to school for the Social Studies Department to devour. I will admit, I tasted a bit of it myself before I sent it to school. It was very tasty, it tasted like it should be a breakfast cake - are there such things as breakfast cakes? If not, there should be a cake group designed for breakfast - and I am not simply talking about the "I am hungover and there is left over cake in the fridge" breakfast cake, I mean a cake that is specifically made to be eaten in the morning- maybe an icing free cake? Who knows. What I do know is that I think my cake would fit into this fictitious category quite well. That is because it contains strawberry jam- and if you eat it right out of the oven, the sponge is super moist and flaky all at the same time.

Besides strawberry jam, this cake called for butter, flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and milk. The icing was super simple to make, it called for butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. I like that I know that I can whip up an icing for a cake that is going to be sweet- but not birthday- store- bought- cake- sweet, in just a few minutes and put it on anything. For example, that icing would go great on cinnamon buns too.

Here is what the cake looked like in the book:

Here is what my cake looked like:

I got a lot of compliments about this cake- none of if made it back home after I brought it to school. Next Saturday I am making a Carrot Cake with Orange Frosting- until then, I am going to bed, what a day!

Cake # 10 Country Fruit Cake

I'm not going to lie, when I first read "Fruit Cake" I was pretty disappointed. When I think of fruit cake, I think of all the stigma of the Christmas Fruit Cake and how this just might be the one food that even the starving children in Ethiopia might not eat. Maybe the fruit cake's bad image is all Johnny Carson's fault - at least I can say for sure that there is not only one fruit cake in the world being passed along from family to family.  Don't get me wrong, the Christmas Fruit Cake certainly has its purposes. For instance, I could use it as a pencil holder or a paper weight in my classroom, Ted could use it as a doorstop for our basement door,and both of us will need a good work out after all of these cakes, and the fruit cake would surely replace the average free weights. So when I read "Country Fruit Cake" I was hoping the different 'C' adjective before the word Fruit, would make all of the difference. The first difference I noticed right away when I was mixing the batter, that it would not have the consistency of jellified crust that canned fruit cake does. Furthermore, my fruit cake batter did not have nuts as traditional American fruit cakes do, nor did it have alcohol to preserve it in anyway (really why would someone want to preserve a fruit cake?)

The Country Fruit Cake consisted of butter, flour (whole - wheat and all - purpose), baking powder, nutmeg, light brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk, mixed dried fruit, and raw brown sugar. For the dried fruit, I thought change it up a bit and not use raisins at all, instead I choose dried coconuts, bananas, pineapples, cantaloupes, and papayas. Maybe I was trying to get as far away as possible from this idea of the Christmas Fruit Cake with more tropical fruit flavors.

However cruel Ted and I may be towards the troubled fruit cake, I can honestly say I have never eaten a full slice of one in my life. So, come what may, today I vowed I would eat my first slice of fruit cake without judgment! Imagine - some sappy, cliched, inspirational music, maybe coming right to a crescendo as I take my first bite, then the vibrations of the cymbals, then silence.   

Here is what the Country Fruit Cake looks like:

Here is what my more Tropical Country Fruit Cake looks like:

Note to anyone who would like to make this cake- skip the banana chips...they are hard to bite into!

Happy Baking!