Cake #44 Halloween Pumpkin Cake

What do you do when your almost two year old daughter gets up at 6:00 am on a Saturday? Why you wake up and bake a cake of course! And it was a good thing that I started early too, because this cake took me three hours to make. Besides being one of the more decorative cakes I have had to make so far, because it is a pumpkin cake I had to open up a pumpkin and grate its flesh. Which also meant de-seeding it and cleaning it. And because I have the Dahle blood in me, I couldn't waste the seeds I had to clean the seeds and roast them with butter just like my dad use to do for Halloween. Besides pumpkin flesh the cake called for the usual flour. butter, vanilla, baking powder, and eggs, but also used brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice. And that was only the cake. The icing I had to dye to make it orange, which I did not have any orange dye, so I had to mix red and yellow to make it orange. Then create pumpkins and bats out of the rest of the fondant (I had to dye the fondant for the bats, black), which I think they turned out really well, and my bats have way more detail than the book's bats. Considering I have never carved a bat out of fondant...or really anything before- I think they look great.


Here is my cake with the amazing bats (but the icing on the pumpkins dripped...oh well)

And the book's cake and much more lame bats:

Even though Halloween is on a Monday this year, and it is snowing, yes snowing today, I still have the spirit. I love Halloween- so much so that this weekend coming up Ted and I are going to Salem to do witch hunts and witch museums and grave sites and everything spooky.  Halloween also just happens to be when Ted first asked me out eleven years ago - so what's not to love?

Cake # 43 Vanilla Yogurt Hazelnut Cake

So, I have been doing a lot of eating lately (no I'm not pregnant...though I wish!) and baking another cake seemed like a bad idea for my...um waistline. But, if anyone knows me they know that I never give up something I have started. Which is probably why I still have Zelda for Nintendo collecting dust in my basement because I cannot beat the last level. So another week and another cake. This one is probably my favorite tasting cupcake I have made so far, and I have to wonder if that is because one of the key ingredients of baking a cake was taken out and another ingredient replaced it. Instead of butter, as the title of this cake mentioned, I mix the traditional flour, sugar, vanilla, cornstarch, baking powder, and eggs with yogurt. Stir in some crushed hazelnuts and you have the cake. I drizzled it with an icing of yogurt and powdered sugar and sprinkled with crushed hazelnuts on top.

My cake:

The book's cake:

This cake hit the spot this morning for breakfast- it was warm and sweet, but the yogurt and the nuts made the cupcake feel more hearty then the previous ones I have made. In turn, these cupcakes have sort of inspired to actually...I cannot believe I am going to say this... cook a warm hearty dinner tonight. Number two thing you know about me, if you well...know about me, is that I hate cooking. But, like I said I have been eating a lot lately, and mostly out at restaurants, I feel like it is about time to make a meal at home. And considering one of my adventures of eating was yesterday at a Tastefully Simple party, I figure even I can cook some of there products without any issues.

So I leave you with saying...happy cooking?

Cake #42 Apple Cider Cake

Fall is here! And with that comes the annual trip to Webber's Farm to get apple cider, apple butter, and pumpkins. In addition, fall means the annual camping trip for Halloween with Ted's family, hence the late posting. We got up early on Saturday to make the two hour apple cider cake and then headed to Gettysburg to do some camping. This camping entails trick or treating for kids and decorating the camp site. Evalyn was a pound puppy for trick or treating. See pictures below:

Our day ended with eating the Apple Cider Cake, warmed. The cake took two hours to make and bake and consisted of vanilla, eggs, flour, sugar, butter, apple cider, baking soda, 6 cored apples, cinnamon and raw brown sugar. You actually placed the whole apples inside of the cake and bakes them down- it tasted delicious.


My cake:

 The book's picture:

This week coming up is only a four day week, thank goodness, so I am hoping to relax and finally catch up on some house work.

Until then...

Cake # 41 Banana Pecan Cake Part 5

In the end this cake was made with my homemade dulce de leche, heavy cream, pecan halves and chopped pecans, bananas, vanilla, eggs, sugar, butter, baking powder, and flour.

Here is my cake:

Here is the book's

Because fall is here, next week I will be making an apple cider cake. So tomorrow Evalyn, Ted, and myself will take a trip to Webber's farm and get some fresh apple cider. See you next week!

Cake # 41 Banana Pecan Cake Part 4

Evie and...Shakespeare?! Eating the cake!

Cake # 41 Banana Pecan Cake Part 3

The finished product.

Cake # 41 Banana Pecan Cake Part 2

Dulce de leche part 2

Cake # 41 Banana Pecan Cake

You know what I like most about baking? No one judges you except yourself- and even if you fail at making a masterpiece, you learned something in the process and you had fun. That is not something that I can say about many things. Today's cake blog is a little different because the cake I made required me to do something a little different. I had to make dulce de leche (aka caramel sauce) from scratch (Safeway didn't have any in stock). So because this was something I had only read about but never had done, I decided to record the process. Therefore this blog will take place in a couple of posts. Enjoy.

Making dulce de leche:

Cake # 40 Marzipan Chunk Cupcakes

So, Marzipan again. With the disaster that was the Easter Cake of 2011, I was more than a little hesitant to tempt another cake with Marzipan, especially since it is such an expensive ingredient (an one that even Wegman's does not carry). However, this recipe was the easiest cake recipe that I have completed yet, and the Marzipan tasted great - turns out Marzipan that isn't past its expiration date isn't so bad, go figure. These cupcakes basically taste like the inside of an almond joy- besides the almond paste, or Marzipan, they called for flour, cornstarch, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, and almond extract, which I think smells wonderful.

They only took 20 minutes to make, which is about all that I have to give to baking today. We had our school's pep rally and homecoming day yesterday, our Junior Class car wash this morning at Pat's (which was freezing) and our homecoming dance tonight, which yours truly and her hubby are making a repeat of 2002 only this time as monitors of the punch bowl.

Here is what the book's picture looked like:

And are my much more fuller cupcakes:

PS- Fundraising is my least favorite thing in the world- but I really do have some amazing kids this year, so I wouldn't want to do it with any other class.