Cake #66 Rich Pecan Square Cakes

Miss Evalyn Lucille woke Mommy and Daddy up at 6:30 am this morning, considering we get up every day at 5:00am anyway, we were hoping for a little bit of cat eye this weekend. I guess we should be thankful for the extra hour and a half. Fortunately though, our family got to enjoy cake for breakfast because I was able to make it so early. This week I made Rich Pecan Square Cakes. Since we did not win the Megamillions, we figured we would eat our richness in cake. This cake is a warm cake that uses light brown sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, butter, sour cream, coffee extract (which by the way Ted is becoming the expert at making it), and chopped pecans. 

Here is my cake:

Here is the book's picture:

The best part about making this cake was the fact that I got to use my Christmas present, a square bar cake pan, for the first time. The cakes came out perfectly and I topped them off with a sour cream and maple syrup drizzle and a pecan half. Evie enjoyed it so much she ate two pieces! Plus she had a bowl of cereal. I cannot understand how she can eat so much and still have her pants fall down her waist when she walks.

Next week is Easter, and just like Christmas, Halloween, and Evie’s Birthday, this will be the first Easter that Evie will be able to remember. We haven’t decided if we are going to get her picture with the Easter Bunny yet- she didn’t do so well with Santa Claus, but we will see. I am very excited for her to wake up on Easter morning and get her basket from the Easter Bunny! We told her if she was a good girl we would put in a good word with the Easter Bunny and ask him if he would get her a “My Little Pony” as well in her basket – which is her newest love. Fortunately, we have a plethora of dresses to choose from because my sister gave me all of her daughter’s old dresses, which is a big help because as true for everyone, times remain to be tough. However, Ted and I were just talking about how lucky we are to have such an amazing daughter and soon to be a beautiful baby boy. We are so excited and cannot wait to meet him! I am six and half months pregnant now . . . not too much more to go!

So next week ,I will make an Easter cake- but not the disaster of an Easter cake that was last year- something much more tasty that does not involve the flambéing marzipan! 

Cake # 65 Chocolate Cherry Gateau

After an incredibly long work week, we celebrated this end of this week and the end of the Speech and Debate team's winning season with - well what other than cake? My students have been bugging me to let them try my cakes that they hear about. Because at school we have a policy about not bringing homemade food, I have never brought in my cakes for them to try. However, because Wednesday night, and I mean I did not get home until 10:00pm, gotta love 15 hour work days when you only get paid for 6 1/2 hours, was our final tournament for Speech and Debate, my co-coach and I decided that we should celebrate on Friday at the end of the school day. So, I thought this would be a good time to bring in a homemade cake. So Thursday night I made my cake of the week, a Chocolate Cherry Gateau. Gateau is a fancy French word implying a cake with a lot of cream, or icing, and it is often made with almond flour -as my cake was made with. Besides almond flour, the ingredients were eggs, sugar,vanilla, butter, baking soda, heavy whipping cream, unsweetened cocoa, shredded chocolate, powdered sugar, and cherries.

This is the first cake that I have made that Ted did not even get to have a slice - the kids ate the entire two layer cake in less than fifteen minutes! It is a good thing that neither Ted nor I like to eat cherries, because not only was there no cake left for us, but there was none for poor Evie either, though I am sure she will survive with one week without cake.

Here is my cake:

Here is the book's:

So you will notice that my cake uses maraschino cherries and the book's cake calls for real cherries - because real cherries are not in season, I could not find any at the store and had to make it work.

Next Saturday Ted may be going to a hockey game with his friend- so I will have to figure out what kind of cake to make that he can take along!

Cake #64 Banana Whiskey Cupcakes

Saint Patrick's Day is my husband's favorite holiday. He is a part of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, he works at the Irish Festival every year, and for the majority of his life he walked in an Irish parade. In fact, he showed up to school on Friday in a kelley green blazer. He is Irish through and through and when our daughter was born with red hair, he had recieved his Saint Patrick's day present for years to come. This Saint Patrick's day we are six months pregnant with our first son, and we are naming him Liam, which is another amazing gift for Ted, a boy with an Irish name that is a variation of Ted's own middle name, William.

So, it should not have come to a surprise to me that when I went to make my cake of the week, a simple banana cupcake, that he would want to made some adjustments, like dying the batter green and adding a bit of Michael Collins to the batter as well as to the glaze on the top. The cupcake itself was simple, eggs, flour, sugar, cornstarch, butter, vanilla, baking powder, and bananas. Then we add a shot of whiskey to the batter and for the glaze we mixed honey and whiskey, topped with a sliced piece a banana and viola we have Irish Banana Whiskey Cupcakes, or as Ted called them, the "Michael Collin's favorite".

Here is the book's original Banana Cupcakes with a passionfruit glaze:

Here is our Irish modified cupcakes:

In a couple more months our Irish boy will be born and I can only hope he loves my cupcakes as much as our Irish princess...

Cake #63 Berry Crunch Cake

Of course when you are extremely busy, the only thing to do is to add more to your plate. So with Evalyn’s party only a day away, cleaning looming, and a whole lotta school work to be completed – I decided to make my Saturday cake, a Berry Crunch Cake. This cake was a lot of fun to make and is very colorful. It consists of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, raspberries, blueberries, and ginger snaps. The cake was filled with the berries and then the rest of the batter was mixed with crushed ginger snaps to create a cookie crumb topping. Ted has been so gracious today to do a lot of the cleaning and I have been on school and baby duty. Which I think I got the better of the deal; because, who wouldn’t want to spend more time with my beautiful daughter, who as she will tell you herself, is TWO! (Well she is almost correct, she will be two on Monday). She also knows that she is going to have a party and that means cake and that she blow out candles, which she has no problem with as we found out at her great-grandfather and Aunt’s recent birthdays. However, I think I am driving him crazy, because if I were the one cleaning I would pay much more attention to other details, but since he is doing it and I am watching Evie – I need to make sure to keep my mouth quiet and be happy that is he helping!

Tomorrow may not mean anything to my daughter, and she would much rather have her daddy and mommy to play with today as oppose to cleaning for her party tomorrow- but to us it means another year with a truly smart and beautiful little girl. To me, it means that she is no longer my baby- which brings tears to my eyes as I type this, but that she is my little girl. Who incidentally is sitting next to me as I am typing this and having a full conversation with her Ariel doll.

This time next year my one cake a week challenge will be over – but I cannot imagine what will change in my little girls life in the year that is to come.  I do know one thing. Even if the cake challenge is over – there will be cake!

Cake # 62 Blueberry Cupcakes with Sour Cream Frosting

This weekend's cake had more to do with convenience than anything else. We had left over blueberries and an orange, some powdered sugar and sour cream- and bazonga we get our blueberry cupcakes.

From swollen feet, chocolate fairs, birthday dinners, and church- I am worn out - and gasp I almost did not make the cake Saturday morning. As Evalyn is flashing her belly because her 2Ts no longer fit her, I am definitely feeling the pressure of her second birthday coming up in eight days. Pressure is not the right word, more like, oh my god, where did my baby go? Who is this girl? And why is she so tall? (Check that- we all know why she is so tall.) So the cake had to be a no-brainer- I made it, baked it, frosted it, and ate it all in thirty minutes, so this cake definitely won out for its speed.

Besides blueberries and orange rind, the cake called for flour, butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and baking powder. The frosting was powdered sugar and sour cream- and the cupcakes were topped off with a single blueberry.

Take a look!
Here are the book's cupcakes:

Here are my cupcakes (I did more powdered sugar than sour cream for the frosting... it just seemed nasty to do too much sour cream).

Off to wrap presents for Evie's birthday!

Cake # 61 Blueberry Orange Streusel Cake

My daughter loves blueberries! She is totally my husband's child - I am much more of a raspberry or strawberry girl, and I don't even like blueberry flavored anything (including candy! - shocking I know). Every Saturday when I bake a cake, Evalyn is my little helper. I normally get her to throw away trash, hold a bowl for me, or taste the batter to ensure its tastiness of course. As I was putting in the orange grind for this cake, Evie could not stop staring at the blueberries. Now, knowing how tart they are, and how much I hated them, I thought to myself no way will she like them. But, Evie was pretty persistent in her "peassseee" so I of course gave in to see what would happen. To my surprise she popped it in and smiled and said "more peease". Six blueberries later, I made Ted go out and buy more because If I can get Evalyn to eat fruit that is not a banana or mixed in a drink or a yogurt- I am a happy momma. So it is not surprising that this Blueberry Orange Streusel Cake is not only a big hit with my husband, but also with my daughter.

Besides the blueberries and orange grind, the cake called for flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs, butter, baking powder, and almonds. I then made a crumble topping of butter, flour, sugar, and orange grind.

Here is my cake:

And the book's:

In other Evie related news, we also got her to tells us where her brain and her heart were, as well as what sound her heart makes. She is growing up so fast - the transition from the crib to the big girl bed was no problem at all she not gotten out of her bed once, and she turns two in 15 days! As all parents say: She is growing up so fast! I am just truly grateful that something as spur of the moment as "Hey Laura, why don't you do a two year challenge cake blog?" has turned into a place where I can capture the sweetness of my cakes unfold with my daughter.

Cake #60 White Chocolate Valentine Cake

What a weekend! After a particularly disappointing work week, I decided to make some changes in my life that I can control – my house. So, this weekend has been the beginning of the “Evie Project,” as we are calling it here at the Childs’s residence, or in other words we are moving Evalyn out of the nursery and into a big girl room. Because Evalyn is turning two in . . . twenty-two days, and we only get weekends to really have enough time to do any significant damage, we realized that we needed to begin the “Evie Project” this extended President’s Day weekend. Now, it would seem that moving our child from one room in the house to the room directly next to her would not need such hyperbolic terms as “Project” and “damage,” but because our house just fits in the bracket of “charming” in its smallness, changing one room means rearranging three.

            Evalyn is getting a Little Mermaid themed room, and the new baby (a boy! Liam Pearse) is going to take over Evie’s current nursery, which actually means no new furniture to buy for the nursery. However, you better believe that I already have a registry for new bedspreads and bumpers and curtains and everything that I can to make it more “boy-like”. So, what basically was an idea of “let’s turn the computer room into Evie’s big girl room” turned into, “let’s get everything down from the attic that is baby stuff and figure out what we need for Liam’s Nursery, move all of the computer room desk, and bookshelves, and crap down stairs, make Evie’s playroom smaller from downstairs and add some upstairs to her new big girl room ,and oh yeah- actually get all of my old furniture from the attic down for Evie’s room. Which then turned into, “Laura you have all your old stuffed animals, and Barbies, and toys, and apparently over fifty TY Beanie Babies in the attic- can we get rid of them all too?” Well you can imagine how the week has been going from there- somehow, I felt it to be an imperative to clean out the hall closest amongst all of this rearranging - and even now as I am typing I am looking at the computer desk (that is now currently downstairs) and am thinking “ the desk and computer need a good cleaning too.”  

Picture of our newest addition!

Liam Pearse Childs

Pictures of our damage during "Project Evie"( I realize I look like I have a belly here...but I am 5 months prego! No judge!)

            So it is shocking to me that I was able to make a cake- a Valentines White Chocolate Heart Cake nonetheless, amongst all of this chaos. This cake called for the standard, sugar, flour baking powder, eggs, butter, and vanilla, but also required white chocolate shavings and chocolate chips. To make things even more interesting, the cake is in the shape of a heart- and I do not own a heart shaped pan, so I make a round cake and then cut it to a heart – I think it turned out well and the dog sure enjoyed the scraps. 

Here is my cake and then the book's picture.