Cake # 49 Frosted Raspberry Almond Ring

Finally December! As a kid, my favorite holiday was always Easter. I loved everything about it. Dyeing my fingers and my clothes more than my beloved "eggies" as I called them, trying to find more eggs than my twin brother, and most importantly, eating jellybeans. Believe it or not, the regular flavored, regular sized jellybeans (preferably from Wockenfus) are still my favorite candy of all time. Yes-- that does include the black ones, and I have always wondered why licorice is given such bad cred- really what's not to like? Sweet and bitter favors all in one chewy bite-- yes please! However, now that I am getting older, and I have a child (soon to be two!) of my own, my heart has followed my husbands, (and probably most of America's) and switched to Christmas as my favorite holiday.

Wrapping my daughter's presents from "Santa" and "Rudolf" and "An Elf" is what makes this holiday so special for me. All of our family traditions, old and new, coming together with a kid who is finally old enough to get excited herself-- well you can't ask for more than that. So because it is the first weekend in December, I am beginning the first of four of my holiday cakes.

This cake, the Frosted Raspberry Almond Ring, does not only scream winter in its flavors, but also in its colors. The topping of the cake is "frosted" with homemade marshmallow, which was my first experience in making marshmallow. To make a marshmallow topping you need, 1 extra large egg white, 1 1/4 cups of confectioners' sugar, 1 tbsp of dark corn syrup, and 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar (which if you didn't know is basically a compounded acid in order to help egg whites stiffen up). Since I do not have a double broiler, I do what many a moms have done before me and heated up a pot of water and stuck a bowl on top of it. Next, you mix all of the ingredients with a hand mixer over the hot water until the mixture can stand on its own and takes a more sticky consistency. The marshmallow came out perfectly, and tasted -- well just like melted marshmallows!

The rest of the cake was fun for me to make as well, because I love raspberries and I got to mash about a cup of raspberries to put them into the cake. The cake was also made of butter, flour, sugar, eggs, almond extract, and baking powder. Then after frosting the cake with the marshmallow topping- I added more fresh raspberries and slivered almonds.

Here is the book's cake:

Here is my cake:

All that is left is to have my two most favorite people in the world, (besides Lucille Ball and Jane Austen) Ted and Evalyn to try a bite! Tune in next week for more holiday baking!

Cake # 48 Banana and Carrot Squares

The holidays are among us and our family has much to give thanks about; if you have not heard yet, I am pregnant. We officially told everyone on Thanksgiving Day and it was fantastic. In an effort to make sure the family found out in a creative way (come on… I teach Creative Writing, could you expect anything else) , I gave my Mother a bottle of Prego with a baby pacifier tied to its lid, and I wrote a creative message spilling the beans on Teds Mom’s message board in her kitchen, waiting patiently through dinner until someone actually read the message and screamed. All in all it was a memorable Thanksgiving break. Ted, Evie, and I have since spent the rest of our weekend preparing for the holidays. The stockings are hung with care around the picture of rich people dancing on the beach in our living room, Ted spent hours (no lie) on the roof making sure the lights were just perfect, and the smell of baked goods is now pervading every corner of our house.

This week’s cake was a set of Banana and Carrot Squares. It was easy to do and delicious to eat. The recipe called for flour, baking powder, nutmeg, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon juice, banana, carrots, walnuts, and had a topping made of ricotta cheese, powdered sugar, banana chips, and rind of lemon. Though Ricotta Cheese sounds like something best served in a savory pasta dinner, it is quite tasty on deserts as well.

My Picture:

The Book's Picture:

Check in next week as the now expanding Childs’ family bakes up something special!

Cake # 47 Caramel Sponge Layer

Almost halfway there, and you would think I would be an expert by now, maybe this is the universe's nice way of saying, "Give up! You're just mediocre!" - And I just made the worst cake ever to prove it. Even worse than the Easter debacle- the cake just looks nasty. And it has been a pretty crappy week too. Car problems galore everything from slashed tired, burnt out lights, and a recall for an air bag problem that we had just shelled out 560 big ones for (at least we will get reimbursed). In addition, we are digging all in the front of my house to put a drain in because when it rains, we get lake Pequot in the front of our yard that no amount of running and leaping can surpass, and Ms. Utility marked the wires wrong (marked two wrong and completely forgot to mark the last one) so of course, we dug and we cut our neighbor's Comcast cable. To top it all off, Ted and I have to head to school tonight for play duty- now don't get me wrong, I love our school's plays and our students really do an amazing job, but Edgewood is not the place I really want to be tonight.

The cake itself took forever to make because I had to make the cake, make the frosting, and make caramel candy to go on top of it- which of course was the part that ruined my cake because the sugar was taking forever to caramelize so I decided to turn up the heat, and of course I burned the caramel candy- worse off I had no more ingredients to do it over, and since the tires are slashed in our car- no vehicle to get me to the store to get more sugar. Besides the sugar for the caramel topping, the cake included: butter, flour, baking powder, vanilla, brown sugar, eggs, and milk. The icing was a mixture of corn syrup egg yolks, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

Here is what the cake is supposed to look like:

Here is what my ugly cake looks like (however Ted said it tasted great, minus the burnt caramel)

Yuk. What else can I say?

Cake #46 Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

November has come and is rapidly going, and for this week’s cake, I chose to complete a recipe more in tune with the fast approaching holiday season; the Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cupcake. Tasting equal parts Christmas cookie, candy cane, and breath mint, this recipe has been an instant success in the house, as Ted, Evie, and Shakespeare have all enjoyed the cupcakes. The recipe called for flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate chips, semi-sweet chocolate, peppermint bark (for the garnish), and peppermint extract (an ingredient I feared would be devilish to find, but was in plentiful supply at our new local Wegmans). 

My Picture:

The Book's Picture:

This blog is coming to you later this week, because after completing the cupcakes, the entire family jumped in the car and made their way to the Timonium Fair Grounds for the other Childs’ November tradition, the Baltimore Irish Festival. Ted works the bars at the Festival with his bestie Ben, and I walk around with the family listening to the music, enjoying the best fries and champs imaginable (the Irish really do potatoes well), and  yelling at Ted’s Mom for spoiling Evie with constant presents. Evie was hysterical while there, dancing to the music and at one point sticking her fingers into Ted’s Jameson, licking her fingers, and then going, “mmmmmm.”

I hope in a year or two, as Evie grows more, we can look into an Irish Dancing School somewhere in the area for her to start taking lessons. With her fiery temper, red hair, and unlimited supply of energy, she should do really well.

            Until next week, Sláinte! 

Cake #45 Gingerbread Cupcakes

An earlier post than normal this week, because my husband and I are taking a vacation to Salem, to do the whole witch hunt thing, which I am so excited for, especially after being "professionally developed" today at school- we both need to wind down. Lately I have been on a Holiday spirit kick- with almost all of my Christmas shopping completed already, (I know I'm sick) I felt like it was time to bring out the ginger and the cinnamon and the brown sugar and make some Gingerbread cupcakes. I actually prefer them to Gingerbread cookies because they are less bitter- most likely due to the larger amounts of butter. These cupcakes also called for flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla, and of course candied ginger. I also made my own frosting of butter, powdered sugar and orange juice.

I figured I would let Evie tell you how they tasted:

My cupcakes:

The book's

Have a haunting good weekend!

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?