Category Archives: Cake

March 26, 2012 · 11:19 pm

Lemon Lavender Tea Cakes


 
I adore winter and its frostbitten cheer. Autumn is lovely in its burnt orange shade, bringing apples crisp as fallen leaves and a cool wind, warm with cinnamon. Summer is divine in its simplicity, and its navy night skies that never really let go of the sun. But this is the first week of spring, the season of bird songs and lavender and budding new life. My most favorite season of all.

(Excuse my merciless adjective abuse.)

I’m sitting here trying to think of things to say about how much I love spring and I just can’t. I cannot put it into words. I guess it’s like Mother Nature went down the pastel aisle at Michael’s and drew all over everything in the world. That’s what spring is like. It’s like all the puppies and kittens and bunnies and baby chicks are parading around flaunting their cuteness and snuggling in fluffy white blankets because that’s what cute baby animals are supposed to do. Cuddle with things. Spring is one big cuddle fest of nature. There. I found words.

Note to self/everyone: when faced with writer’s block, start talking about baby animals and everything will be okay.

In all aspects of life, the springtime has brought many beautiful things. Like cookies for friends, mason jar candle lanterns, pottery, and pizza night.

And when I wake up and the birds are singing, I like to open all the windows and make breakfasts like this.

Is it just me, or is more than just the earth in bloom this season? In a matter of months I’ll be embarking on this new cool adventure called my dream college, in New York City nonetheless. (!!!!!!) I feel like my brain is a cauldron of bubbling ambitions… it’s the best feeling in the world. There are a bazillion new babies and everyone’s in love and the sky is blue and it’s beautiful. Maybe it’s the whole apocalypse deal. I dunno. But I love it.

Okay, lemon cake. I made some. It was Spring, in the form of a dainty tangy light and lovely little cake. It is the edible embodiment of ‘chic.’ If Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a dessert… okay, you get it.

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Filed under Cake, Lemon, Uncategorized

May 2, 2011 · 4:16 pm

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Once upon a time, I made three cakes in one night.

Three.

50% of which was fed to my ever so voracious garbage disposal.

It was traumatic.

I had been dreaming of lemon cake for weeks. Weeks! Lemon layers, lemon curd, and some fluffy cloud frosting. That’s all. Not that huge of a request, right? Wrong. I had a promising recipe for a two layer cake… but I had been dreaming of three. You can just spread out the batter into three pans, right? They’ll just be uber thin. Wrong! They’ll be crunchy and ew. When you’ve got sketchy cake layers, take my advice and stop right there. Don’t try and stack them with too-thin-but-really-good lemon curd and don’t make last minute cream cheese frosting instead of meringue. Just don’t do it. It’s really a poor choice all around. It tastes good, yes, but it’s a soupy flop hot mess mush cake lemon thing. No one really wants one of those.

If you’re anything like me, it’ll be close to midnight when you assemble your disaster. You might eat a decent amount of it out of shame, and then sit on the kitchen floor and cry. Through your tears you will then decide that it’s a great time to start making a redeem-yourself lemon poppy seed bundt cake. When you realize you’re one and a half egg yolks short and don’t have authentic buttermilk, stop. Don’t make it anyways. Go to sleep, and make it in the morning.  Don’t use extra egg whites and butter instead of the missing yolks. Don’t take it out of the oven before it’s done, and above all, do NOT let your impatience get the best of you and take it out of the pan while it’s still hot. It will come half out of the pan and taste/feel like spongy supermaket angel sponge food cake.  And by then, it will be two in the morning, your feet will hurt, and your tearstained cheeks will be covered in abstract drippy eyeliner art.

Apparently, the whole “third time’s a charm” deal is pretty valid. When you’ve passed the two failed cakes mark, it’s about time to make some cupcakes. Cupcakes are invincible.

These are a bit on the laborious side of things, but they’re worth every mix and scoop and fill and toast. They’re filled with my favorite ever lemon curd and topped with the meringue of your dreams. These are time-to-make-amends cupcakes. They’re sorry-I-forgot-to-pack-your-lunch cupcakes. They’re look-at-my-fancy-cupcake cupcakes.

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Filed under Cake, Cupcakes, Lemon

February 14, 2011 · 8:38 am

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hello sweet world, I’m Jordana. I’m a sprightly seventeen and have a fabulous affection for dessert.

Today is a lovely day, it’s Valentine’s Day! A day to celebrate love, the only thing more important than a KitchenAid mixer. The one day of the year it’s acceptable to cover everything in roses and chocolate and kisses and pink and get away with it, oh what a beautiful thing!

My valentine’s day this year was a pinkie’s up, no elbows on the table, please pass the scones style tea party with some of my nearest and dearest friends, and it was out of this world delicious.

There was tea. Lots of tea. Lots of tea on the tablecloth.

There were buttermilk scones, which were really buttermilk biscuits cut in triangles, shhhh.

These truffles happened. My first truffle making experience ever! By the time they were finished I looked like a little boy playing in the mud.

Obviously, there were sugar cookies.

Let me tell you something about royal icing– it’s worth it. It’s without a doubt more annoying than a bug bite on the bottom of your foot in knee-high boots, and it doesn’t even taste all that amazing, but the Wow Factor is unbeatable.

Here’s what our out-of-an-unrealistic-movie-or-american-girl-craft-book table looked like ! :

Above all, this cake happened.

Strawberries + Rosé Champagne + a lot of butter = Great success. Make this cake! It’s dense and almost gooey from the moisture of the strawberries, super sturdy and easy to assemble, and the frosting is fluffy and bubbly and sweet with just enough tang from the champagne to make you giggle.  It’s a good thing, this cake.


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Filed under Cake, Holidays, Strawberry